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This thread is devoted to DMs who have experienced Path of War sharing advice on how to run it on the DM side of things. These classes run unlike anything most GMs have seen before, so they can be intimidating sometimes. So lets all give each other some pointers, eh?
My tips:
Individual Boss Monsters Are Not Challenging: While this is not always true, it will be often. Individual bosses were usually at a disadvantage before PoW was released, due to the players having superior action economy. This gap is increased now that martials have counters.
A good solution to this is to never run big bosses alone, and to try to make sure they have more than 1 attack per round as ounters mean that most PoW martials will have something similar to pre-nerf Crane Wing. They need minions. They need flanking buddies and distractions. Your players will probably feel threatened, but this is good. Better than them ganging up on the boss monster and finishing it within 2 rounds. If you are running an adventure path, you will probably want to tweak encounters to avoid big boss encounters without minions.
Did I Mention Minions?: Adding more creatures to your combats can always help. Just try to make sure they are easy to run. They don't need to be completely built NPCs. They just need HP, saves, AC, CMD, BAB and Power Attack. Make sure their attacks can actually hit your PCs, so they aren't just ignored. These kinds of creatures actually make the game more fun. They will provide a challenge, but go down a little easy, making the players feel strong. It will make them think about their choices in combat too. "Do I counter this guy, or save my immediate in case I really need it? What if I need to boost next turn?" Just make sure they are never the main attraction. If you spellcaster likes blasting, this is also a chance for them to feel empowered.
Spellcasting Baddies: You want spellcasting baddies in most fights you want to be challenging. Spell-like abilities on monsters work too. This will throw a variety of effects at your players. Even if their Warlord felt invulnerable most of the time, they will still be challenged by well placed spells. Blasting spells can be very strong, but control spells are the most effective (especially if you have minions). Grease, web, and entangle are all good examples of low level spells that fit my definition of "control spells." Spellcasters can create problems that swords and arrows won't fix, so this is a good way to keep the rest of the party involved too.
Things Will Die Fast: Try not to knee-jerk that these classes are overpowered. There are similar core-only builds that can do very similar damage. Following some of the above advice will help if you don't want your encounters completed super fast. At level 1, everything dies fast to a martial with power attack, Path of War or not. At later levels, only corner cases will have your PoW martials killing equal CR creatures in one round, just like how corner cases of Core (or wildshape druids with pouncing animal companions) will do the same.
I hope that my advice helps someone, and I would love to hear what everyone else does to help their PoW inclusive games run.
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I'll be honest, ever since I saw one of he developers basically say that balance wasn't a priority when converting these classes I pretty much started ignoring them.
If I remember correctly that conversation was in relation to the Rogue, Fighter, and Monk.
They've stated a few times that they aimed to be comparable to a decently played Barbarian, Ranger, or Paladin.
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Magus, Barbarian, Inquisitor, and Psychic Warrior were the targets.
-X
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I'll be honest, ever since I saw one of he developers basically say that balance wasn't a priority when converting these classes I pretty much started ignoring them.
What you read was "We don't believe the Path of War classes should be balanced against the Rogue, Fighter and Monk" which are hands down some of the worst classes in Pathfinder.
If you choose to read this as "we don't want balance at all" then all you need to do is read through the PoW book (or even just on the PFSRD) and realize that the vast majority of stuff in it is beautifully balanced, and therefore that reading is silly. The majority of DSP's stuff falls into T3 and T4, pretty much the sweet spot of balanced, versatile and effective classes that don't outright bend the game over its knee, like, I don't know, every full caster Paizo has ever put out.
Yeah, you're damn right they're not balanced against the Rogue, Fighter and Monk, and if Paizo never makes another class balanced against those three, we'll be better for it.
-e-
On the actual topic, make sure you have a good understanding of exactly what each class can do before you bring it to your DM/table. The PoW classes do a lot of really neat and unique things, but if nobody is really clear on them, it'll lead to people getting turned off to the system in general.
On the actual topic, make sure you have a good understanding of exactly what each class can do before you bring it to your DM/table. The PoW classes do a lot of really neat and unique things, but if nobody is really clear on them, it'll lead to people getting turned off to the system in general.
Good point! Yeah, if the parties involved don't read it, I bet some things will be scary when they first happen. Though I bet most will be welcome to a TWF character actually getting to TWF at level 1 frequently.
Yeah, it's kind of freaky when a player counters for the first time.
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Use the Path of War: This might seem obvious, but it needs stated. If your players have access to a book, you have access to it to. You don't have to go all out and stat up every monster with warder or warlord levels, but adding a strike, boost or counter to an enemy's repertoire can give them some great new tricks to pull out. Giving your minions a warder's Defensive Focus could help them keep the party off your main bad guy, while giving the boss a counter can add great drama and a sudden shift in combat, even if it's only used once. Strikes, boosts, and counters can make combat dynamic, action packed and interesting for both you and your players.
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The biggest thing that I'd want to make sure new DMs know is that the name of the game for Path of War is options. Specifically, that the Path of War developers have worked very, very hard to create "worry-free" classes, where the player can pick stuff that looks cool, and it actually is cool.
It has been noted in this thread that the developers did not balance the classes around, say, the monk, fighter, or rogue. This is not to say that they're "stronger" than them, because a well-built rogue, fighter, or monk can fight alongside a Path of War character and do just as much damage (if not more, if you build it right). The problem with those classes (which has been a known factor since 3e days) is that they can fight just fine (even the monk, although it's weak in most cases), but they don't have many options in fights, and don't do well outside fights, beyond the rogue's specialization against traps.
In addition, to do well as one of those classes, and to "keep up" with even a moderately-well-built spellcaster, the player needs to really know what they're doing. There are a lot of "trap" options that someone playing a fighter (or rogue/monk/etc) has to navigate around them, and if they don't quite manage it, it creates imbalance in the party and makes life harder for the GM.
In contrast, the Path of War classes, feats, and maneuvers are designed with the goal of having minimal trap options. This can come as quite a shock for many tables, because it raises the baseline of what a martial character "should" be able to do. They're balanced around classes like the paladin, ranger, barbarian, and psychic warrior, but not just that, they're meant to emulate ones that are decently built, because the goal was to make a system where players could take options and end up viable no matter what they pick.
This can come as quite a shock to some GMs, because of how it's percieved. Regardless of caster strength, or druids being ridiculous, or the like, a fighter-type is percieved as being "supposed" to do some amount of damage/utility, and if that perception is of something below the T3/high T4 baseline, it might cause them to have a knee-jerk, "this is overpowered" reaction. The most important thing that a GM should do if they feel that way is to take a step back, and do some research into the game's numbers, and what's possible, and then take another look.
A Path of War character, built decently, will likely have damage numbers around the level of a fighter or rogue that's been well-built. However, in practice, they might actually be doing less, because of the way the maneuvers system works.
The core of Path of War is the maneuvers, of which there are several types:
Strikes are generally standard actions (occasionally full-round actions), which are mostly a variation on "hit something, and apply a rider effect". These rider effects are generally either a debuff of some sort, or extra damage. The biggest thing to remember is that, while Strikes, it's almost always one attack (or maybe a few, if it's a high-level one), so it will be significantly less damage than you might expect out of a character of that level's full attack.
Boosts are swift action self-buffs, generally, that apply some extra damage to your attacks, or movement, or maybe bonuses to hit. They can be combined with Strikes to boost your damage to levels where you're competently fighting at around the same level as a well-built character, or they could be combined with full attacks to match the damage of classes like the Paladin or the Barbarian. They're a fairly limited resource, however, because some classes use their Swifts to recover maneuvers, and readying Boosts means you're not reading Strikes.
Counters are, in my opinion, the most fun and interesting thing in the maneuvers system, and also probably the most game-changing. In short, they are immediate action abilities that, well, counter things. These allow the Path of War character to have some effect on the battle outside their own turn, although they are generally fairly minor things, like "negate an attack", or "use a skill check instead of a save." They might be a bit freaky at first, but overall, they're balanced by the fact that they're limited in use (have to be triggered, generally, and they eat slots that could be offense as well), and they take an important action you only get one of (your next turn's swift).
Stances are passive buffs that are generally either something that is a buff to your offense (often in the form of minor bonus damage, some attack bonuses [for example, TWFing without penalty], or rider effects on hits), a buff to your defenses (bonuses to AC, somethimes miss chance, iirc, or even something like "you have mirror images"), or some sort of utility or mobility ability, sometimes combined with the previous things ("add your heal ranks to Stealth", for example). Overall, they're fairly strong, and if someone spends all their resources in a round, they will end up being around the same damage level as a well-built, non-PoW martial (or a bit lower, because they're not full attacking if they're using Strikes).
The biggest 'problem' here is that the Path of War is written raises the "floor." Most Path of War characters will end up around the level of a well-built non-caster, non-PoW character, which means that unless the group has a decent amount of knowledge about Pathfinder, they will appear to be stronger and more versatile than the characters that they are used to. In my opinion, as someone who has playing D&D since 3e's inception and Pathfinder on and off since it's inception, this is not a bad thing.
tl;dr: If, at first glance Path of War seems like it's full of overpowered stuff, take some time to go through it and compare it to the stuff that the normal characters can do, if built well. Even in the case that you decide it's not for you, by doing so, Path of War will enrich your game, and overall lead to more fun characters.
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I find Adam's advice in the first post to be true whether you're using Path of War or not. Honestly I haven't had any problem with balancing encounters with Path of War characters around except for one thing. I almost always underestimate how limited spellcasters are. When it's against mindless beasts or hordes of soldiers it's all well and good but when smart enemies that use the same kind of tricks PCs use casters have so lose their good spells quick and are always so close to just dying. The 15 min workday makes sure casters stay on top but when you want to make adventures I like to make adventures there is always the situation where they blow their load on some targets and beg to sleep and the problem is multiplied by classes like Initiator classes. Who have a lot of power on a semi unlimited resource.
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Forrestfire gave some really spot on advice so instead of just repeating what he said, I'll note that I agree with the greater majority of it and touch on a few other things:
The first is perception. The same GMs who feel like Path of War is too strong probably also think the Rogue is a beast, with his Sneak Attack. But if you step back and look at the numbers, the Rogue's (eventual) 10d6 Sneak Attack is worth 35 damage per hit, on average. That's equivalent to what a THF Fighter is dealing with just Power Attack, but the Fighter has better to-hit and we haven't even started calculating in all his other feats and class abilities yet. Big handfuls of dice look crazy, but they're not actually the best way of dealing damage the game offers.
Secondly, lower system mastery and/or inexperienced GMs will often fall into the trap of thinking that something like a Balor's vorpal sword is his scariest weapon; it's not. The SLAs, minions, auras, and movement modes are. The vorpal sword is just the icing for cool effect when the balor decides the battle is almost won. Path of War classes, with their strikes, counters, and boosts, are better balanced against the balor's real weapons, so if he's not using them, it'll give a false impression of the PW class' strength.
The third item is that you need to be aware of how a PW character's mobility changes the game. They generally have the same action economy as a caster since they don't rely on full attacks, which makes combat much more dynamic. This raises the stakes for GMs, as the battlefield will like be a much more confusing cauldron of chaos as the martial characters join the spellcasters in bouncing all over the map.
Finally, to address the "too wuxia" nonsense: casters have been anime for years. They fly around flinging balls of flame, transforming into horrific creatures, crying out mystical words while making elaborate hand gestures, etc. It's like Naruto was written by someone who'd been given a copy of the CRB with all instances of "wizard" and "magic" replaced with "ninja" and "chakra". Giving martials martial art techniques isn't stupid, having Gimli the dwarf with his axe running around doing the exact same thing for 20 levels while his wizard buddy starts out as a guy who can create illusory duplicates a couple times a day and eventually evolves into a world eating monster that can summon allies from other dimensions, that's stupid. The Fighter and the Wizard start out playing the same game. Every 5 levels, the Wizard learns how to play a different game, but the Fighter keeps playing the same one. The PW classes are a little bit better at keeping up with the game-changers, and I personally am glad for it.
Wow! We've got some pretty good responses so far! Thank you everyone for contributing!
...adding a strike, boost or counter to an enemy's repertoire can give them some great new tricks to pull out. Giving your minions a warder's Defensive Focus could help them keep the party off your main bad guy...
I can vouch for this. You don't even have to give them levels in an initiating class. Giving 1 or 2 class features, and some maneuvers from each category works just fine.
For instance, take a standard fighter, and level it up throughout the campaign to be the standard "bad guy minion." Choose a discipline that works (Ex: Scarlet Throne, Golden Lion, Piercing Lance), and just give them 1 strike, counter and boost of appropriate level as one time uses. Very simple and easy initiating bad guy minion. It never gets crazy, and has no subsystems to manage.
Meanwhile, and elite bodyguard version of this guy would get defensive focus from the Warder, and 1 extra strike, counter, and boost. Maybe even a 1st level stance (those are always very simple). This is very little legwork on the GM's part, especially if they already level up NPC minions to be used at all levels.
The third item is that you need to be aware of how a PW character's mobility changes the game. They generally have the same action economy as a caster since they don't rely on full attacks, which makes combat much more dynamic. This raises the stakes for GMs, as the battlefield will like be a much more confusing cauldron of chaos as the martial characters join the spellcasters in bouncing all over the map.
Boy is this true. Even at level 1, my Warlord can walk up to a guy, slap his face, then walk 10 feet away. Then if he feels like it, walk another 30 feet away behind a corner! It's a nice trick for when your party is pinned behind a corner by enemy archers.
... When it's against mindless beasts or hordes of soldiers it's all well and good but when smart enemies that use the same kind of tricks PCs use casters have so lose their good spells quick and are always so close to just dying. The 15 min workday makes sure casters stay on top but when you want to make adventures I like to make adventures there is always the situation where they blow their load on some targets and beg to sleep and the problem is multiplied by classes like Initiator classes. Who have a lot of power on a semi unlimited resource.
Yeah, though I kind of consider this a good thing. It can teach players better resource management skills. Did my player really need to blow 3 named bullets in one encounter, when he only just got 4th level spells? Probably not. The party was ahead after the first one (fired by a gunslinger) took care of the big commander dude. But I digress, forcing an empty caster to keep going is the same anti-fun as being forced to 15 minute workday by the caster. I seriously recommend that mixed parties such as this are encouraged to talk about their expectations before-hand, that way 1 side doesn't end up controlling the others actions.
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I find Adam's advice in the first post to be true whether you're using Path of War or not. Honestly I haven't had any problem with balancing encounters with Path of War characters around except for one thing. I almost always underestimate how limited spellcasters are. When it's against mindless beasts or hordes of soldiers it's all well and good but when smart enemies that use the same kind of tricks PCs use casters have so lose their good spells quick and are always so close to just dying. The 15 min workday makes sure casters stay on top but when you want to make adventures I like to make adventures there is always the situation where they blow their load on some targets and beg to sleep and the problem is multiplied by classes like Initiator classes. Who have a lot of power on a semi unlimited resource.
It may just be a difference in playstyle, but I've never had a caster run out of spells after about 5th or 6th level, and I abhor the 15 minute adventuring day. My wizards have usually had enough time to create/acquire an arsenal of useful scrolls and wands, so every spell slot is pretty much dedicated to game winners and swift/immediate action spells. Sorcerers I tend to just brute my way through with, given their large number of slots. Arcanists are actually the only spellcaster I've played who struggled into the 6-10 levels of play, and that was largely because I went with a counterspeller, and that build devours spells slots.
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It might be a good idea to print out a few pages with the important info in this thread and pass it between players during the week or via email so people with no system mastery who just don't know better than to consider the Ftr, Mnk, Rog , to be the bar to be measured against, then learn the problem is not with tier 3 classes, the problem is with tier 4/5 classes.
I find Adam's advice in the first post to be true whether you're using Path of War or not. Honestly I haven't had any problem with balancing encounters with Path of War characters around except for one thing. I almost always underestimate how limited spellcasters are. When it's against mindless beasts or hordes of soldiers it's all well and good but when smart enemies that use the same kind of tricks PCs use casters have so lose their good spells quick and are always so close to just dying. The 15 min workday makes sure casters stay on top but when you want to make adventures I like to make adventures there is always the situation where they blow their load on some targets and beg to sleep and the problem is multiplied by classes like Initiator classes. Who have a lot of power on a semi unlimited resource.It may just be a difference in playstyle, but I've never had a caster run out of spells after about 5th or 6th level, and I abhor the 15 minute adventuring day. My wizards have usually had enough time to create/acquire an arsenal of useful scrolls and wands, so every spell slot is pretty much dedicated to game winners and swift/immediate action spells. Sorcerers I tend to just brute my way through with, given their large number of slots. Arcanists are actually the only spellcaster I've played who struggled into the 6-10 levels of play, and that was largely because I went with a counterspeller, and that build devours spells slots.
Its not so much running out of spells but running out of useful spells. I see a lot of casters either try to be a martial or be a utility belt and quickly run out of relevant spells. Less so with spontaneous casters who specialize due to a limited known list and always have spells because they stay to their gimmick.
After Drop Dead Studio's Spheres of Power introducing at-will casting I started using at-will staves for casters that run out of things to do. The spherecasters are weaker but they generally last all day without panicking that they ran out of black tentacles.