Kobold Cleaver wrote: Those are pretty dang cool! I may need to use some for my campaign. That's a great tool martials can use to stay relatively nonmagical themselves and still gain narrative influence. Pity it's so obscure—we need more like it. Weaponmaster's Handbook has all kinds of cool stuff in it, and its directly from Paizo.
If you haven't picked it up that's where the item mastery feats come from and even the Item Mastery based Fighter Archetype.
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Trinam wrote: Oh my god, they killed knightnday! Don't worry! I'm sure some martial can ressurect him without using magic...
Oh... Right...
Guraranteed niche protection of some kind, at least for every PLAYER Base Class, is what I think of as the bottom line on this hair-puller.
And for goodness' sake, the devs should have already had a firm establishment of the DEFINITION OF CHARACTER LEVEL.
As long as each classes' total performance for most aspects of in-game events (like combat, dungeoneering, diplomacy, etc.) same number of accumulated levels are in a closer ballpark (like M:C=5:7), the ill feelings will be significantly diminished, unless one side has a blatantly malicious intent to outshadow the other and runs with it.
P.S. Or make all PC classes supernatural (that saying, give them plenty of useful Ex, Sp, Su tagged class features) in some degree or another and leave the truly non-magical department to the 5 NPC classes.
These days I'm actually considering this approach more and more seriously.
CWheezy wrote: Hi, you asked for a wizard who could, so I posted one. That is how the game is. Pathfinder is literally unplayable rules as written because of how broken it is.
Also I could solo encounters from 13 on. Don't feed me "the gm could use infinite enemies!!!" Or whatever garbage, if the gm has to literally cheat or use something impossible then it proves the game is broken.
So if its unplayable how, or why did you stay at your GM's table from 13th to 20th level with this character? That's a lot of encounters and wasted days/evenings doing something that's unplayable.
How many people were you playing with - what did they think about you soloing all these encounters?
How'd this guy do in role-playing encounters?
GM 1990 wrote: CWheezy wrote: Hi, you asked for a wizard who could, so I posted one. That is how the game is. Pathfinder is literally unplayable rules as written because of how broken it is.
Also I could solo encounters from 13 on. Don't feed me "the gm could use infinite enemies!!!" Or whatever garbage, if the gm has to literally cheat or use something impossible then it proves the game is broken.
So if its unplayable how, or why did you stay at your GM's table from 13th to 20th level with this character? That's a lot of encounters and wasted days/evenings doing something that's unplayable.
How many people were you playing with - what did they think about you soloing all these encounters?
How'd this guy do in role-playing encounters?
<<Speaking while waiting in line for Reincarnation>>
Last I heard, Arkalion was created by someone else and came into being at that level. He also wants to push Pharasma out of the way and collect all the dead souls. It's a long story, but if you search the forums for Arkalion you might find it enlightening.
<<Looks at number in his hand, looks at the sign. "Oh boy.">>
*Glances in*
The GM's number one job is to help everyone have fun, and a major way of doing this is helping structure the story and deciding which major narrative elements to include, with or without input from players. Sometimes "impossible" encounters are good. You can't always defeat Lord Deathbringer when he first burns down your village while you watch helplessly from outside. Sometimes you have to overcome other narrative challenges in order to successfully resolve your main goal.
The idea that the game is "broken" because the GM throws in something you're not meant to directly beat is very entertaining, though. *Lifts bucket of popcorn in mild salute* By all means, keep going. This is fun.
Insain Dragoon wrote: GM 1990 wrote: Assumed Normal party - that character sheet? If you're playing 20th level you're already beyond what I would consider normal, but it could probably still be fun with a group of friends I suppose.
But saying you can make a PC that can play by themselves and win 100% of the time isn't that same game, and no point in assuming "normal" - if you GM and someone comes in like that intending to break the game and make the rest of the players sit around, you'll only have a few options. Don't allow them to play it, ask them to leave, show them the absurdity of their assumption with the game mechanics, or just run enough role-playing encounters that they leave the group, or maybe the get into that part of the game too and everyone keeps having fun.
But it does show you don't need more expansions or Paizo to fix it if you want to handle it yourself at your table.
I don't quite understand why you're assuming he has broken the game? You don't need the "fuzzy, does it really work that way?" spells to win at Pathfinder with a Wizard or Cleric.
I also don't understand why you assume that a Wizard would want combats since Wizards are stronger outside of combat than inside combat.Martial and Caster disparity is most visible in non-combat encounters and situations.
The only thing you got right is that playing said character would ruin the fun of the other players. That's absolutely true unless you're playing a campaign where one person is the overlord and the other players are his lieutenants. So your experience is its the non-combat situations (others argue its both).
Do you have some in game examples from the games you've played where the wizard consistently just jumped the table every time, most of the time, or even just consistently more than their % of the party's time? (by % I mean like if there are 4 players, a decent balance would be each player getting roughly 25% of the spot-light/save the day/etc).
like for example: X happened at our table, and the fighters player was ready to quit because he didn't get to roll enough dice, or he didn't get to lift the portcullis since the wizard just cast a spell, or he didn't get to climb the wall, or he couldn't role-play with the NPC because the wizard cast a spell?
If you've got them - great chance to share how you, the other players, and the GM handled it, and see how others have handled a similar situation.
knightnday wrote: Jiggy wrote: Well, I won't defend that one guy who said "unplayable", but he's an outlier, not typical of folks talking about Pathfinder's balance issues.
As for the rest of your post... are you under the impression that the usual complaint is "Pathfinder's so broken I'm not having fun and can't seem to do anything to fix it"? Because my experience has been that it's usually "Pathfinder's broken enough that I don't have fun with the default assumptions so I have to do XYZ to fix it, but I wish that I didn't have to make all these adjustments and could just have fun by opening the Pathfinder CRB and saying 'let's play'."
I go by what people say on the boards. There are a few that turn up in every thread and say that the game is fun and that there are no problems. There are a few that preach that the game sucks and they have more fun with 4E/5E/Tunnels and Trolls/etc. There are a few that come on and say "I changed the game this way and have fun." I haven't found a consensus on the boards OTHER than posting on the threads.
As for the last line, I'll be truthful here: in too many years of playing, I've never just opened a book and played the game. No, I take that back. The very first time I ran something, I ran the example dungeon in the AD&D DMG. After that, I started thinking and changing things in order to make it what I wanted. I happen to enjoy modifying games. Some people tinker on cars, some people build Lego things. I tinker with games.
Would it be great that I didn't have to make as many changes? Heck yes. Would I probably change some of the things that got changed or put in? Probably. Just going by what is said on the threads, I cannot say I agree with everything. I might not care for my martials swinging two giant swords at the same time, or might think that the modifiers given for jumping suck and add 5 foot per level to fighter's jumps.
tl;dr: I don't think there is a common complaint. I think there are a lot of complaints, some of which directly disagree with the post... Ref your last line - have you taken a look at the Game Altering (or Game Breaking?) Spells: threads I started? Attempting some adult objective dialogue about actual game use of specific spells and options (or do nothing) for when those kind of situations come up in your game if you're the GM. Sounds like you've got lots of time behind the screen, would love to have your input on them as we work through the spell list.
I too read Jiggy's 7 Myths. Personally I thought it sounded more like a defense that magic itself the problem, not which class has or doesn't have it. Its well written, but I see a lot of circular logic and still little actual game examples except saying there are real examples such as implying that a caster ending combat on surprise round is a proof-case. So what does it prove when an archer or melee fighter does that? That's happened at my table - it was a blast and my daughter (who did it) still talks about it, but my sons and wife aren't saying we'll "we have a archer/melee or archer/caster disparity problem and if you can't see it you're lying to yourself." That particular battle and setup combined with lucky dice rolls ended it before others had a chance to do something fun, its not indicative of anything in the game system except the damage dealt by that player that time was more than the HP of the monster. I could have popped another wave of enemy and just as often if the fight is too easy I'll do that, they want a challenge not a cake walk. That night, that encounter, she got to hit the walk-off home-run.
They also still talk about when my wife's rogue snuck up a guard tower and silent killed the lookout. Happens it wasn't with magic, because it was low level, but if the party would have had invisible they wouldn't have sent the sorcerer, they would have sent the rogue who could also have used invisible to increase her inherently higher modifier in sneak/climb, had higher BAB, more damage producing weapon, and had sneak-attack damage - better choice than the sorcerer mechanically, and letting her character do what she built it to do. If the argument for C/MD is that casters are better at skill checks when buffed (or make them irrelevant if they can just fly, etc), its still just the same bonus/capability that a martial can do with magic devices/potions. Its not unique to casters - its magic itself that is giving the +XX to the check, whether by potion/device or spell. If there are all these real-world table examples where friends don't let other friends drink the potion they bought or use device they found just so their caster can be "first to the top" etc every time - its not a system flaw, that's just rude gaming. I'm sure it happens, just like people interrupting dialogue during roleplaying, or surfing facebook during other peoples turns. Paizo or 3pp can't publish new feats or limit casts per day to fix that.
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Rhedyn wrote: Kobold Cleaver wrote: 1. Casters shouldn't be able to conjure/craft/shapeshift into creatures that are better at martial combat than martials of the same level.
2. Martials need better skills and more interesting choices in combat.
3. Casters shouldn't be able to duplicate those skills, either.
4. Martials should be able to do things casters can't.
I love this game.
1. This not necessarily true. 5e's polymorph is like this, but it takes up the wizards coveted concentration resource and can be used on low HP fighters. It's a cool moment when this happens not game breaking. The concentration resource is really something I feel 5e did a lot better than PF did. There's very little in this game to stop you from loading on the buffs so "surprise screw-you arrow from nowhere" to interrupt that teleport has a 20%-50% miss chance before it even has to consider your magically buffed AC because you can just layer on all the good stuff in room 1 and then SWAT as many rooms as you can in a dungeon before you need to re-up. In 5e, you can't fly, be invisible, and have a horde of summoned monsters at the same time, you can only be doing one of those things, and if you get hit AT ALL you have to make a saving throw to keep the spell. And most 5e casters are much worse at CON saves than PF casters are at concentration checks.
The martials are also still usually better at attacking in 5e than casters are because they get the multi attack class feature while most casters don't, as opposed to PF where a wild-shaped tiger druid gets pounce and three attacks five levels earlier than the Barbarian can with zero investment required.
Quote: 2. Some people like simple, so no not #ALLmartials need more interesting choices. I disagree, personally. They do all need interesting choices, and the people that want it simple will choose the simple stuff. Right now people pick the fighter because it has basically no class features, so that seems simple.
Feat trees, however, are nightmarishly complicated for no good reason, and so leveling up a fighter frigging sucks for people that are new to the game and trying to navigate a feat chain. By comparison, the Ranger is far easier to level up while still having much more interesting abilities from its spells and tracking stuff.
Quote: 3. Sure they can. Just differently or to different extents and that would still be balanced. If a wizard can sword 5 times per day while the fighter doesn't have limits that doesn't invalidate the fighter but does establish magic as a pervasive force with limitless possibilities.
4. Some martials, but not all martials. If the basic simple martial exist then it will reliably do things that a caster could do less reliably and that is still fine.
That does create the problem that some people don't WANT magic to be everywhere and do everything. Just as some people WANT simplicity in their character, some people WANT there to be an answer to "what can't magic do?" besides "what the GM decides it can't that day." Magic SHOULDN'T be able to do everything, in my opinion. I don't care if it's only a couple times, the thing that makes a magic system interesting is its LIMITS. So yes, if there are going to be things only magic can do, and I feel there should be, there should ALSO be things you can't ever do with magic. Period.
If a rogue gains class features that make her the master of stealth, for example. With no magic involved, her skills advance through rigorous training to the point she can conceal her presence even from the most advanced senses. Scent doesn't pick her up. Her feet fall too lightly for tremorsense to pinpoint her. Her presence is so faint even blindsight can look right at her and not notice she's there unless the thing with blindsight makes its opposed perception check like anybody else would have to.
Magic doesn't get that. Magic gets invisibility, giving it a fast and limited way to improve its stealth, but it doesn't ever learn how to fool senses that aren't tricked by its glamours. The rogue mastered stealth, and elevated a skill to a level that surpasses a spell the hard way. You don't get to snap your fingers, sprinkle some fairy dust, and do that the easy way.
knightnday wrote: GM 1990 wrote: CWheezy wrote: Hi, you asked for a wizard who could, so I posted one. That is how the game is. Pathfinder is literally unplayable rules as written because of how broken it is.
Also I could solo encounters from 13 on. Don't feed me "the gm could use infinite enemies!!!" Or whatever garbage, if the gm has to literally cheat or use something impossible then it proves the game is broken.
So if its unplayable how, or why did you stay at your GM's table from 13th to 20th level with this character? That's a lot of encounters and wasted days/evenings doing something that's unplayable.
How many people were you playing with - what did they think about you soloing all these encounters?
How'd this guy do in role-playing encounters?
<<Speaking while waiting in line for Reincarnation>>
Last I heard, Arkalion was created by someone else and came into being at that level. He also wants to push Pharasma out of the way and collect all the dead souls. It's a long story, but if you search the forums for Arkalion you might find it enlightening.
<<Looks at number in his hand, looks at the sign. "Oh boy.">> Suspected it might not have been a situation of someone playing from level 1 to 20; or even 13-20 on a broke system. Gads...why would you do that to yourself...and who'd actually keep playing with you?
I had a player in my AD&D days ask to join our group, he then asked if he could bring in his character from his last game, "We killed Thor and Odin before I left that group, can I use that guy?" Seriously. We decided he might not be the best fit to our gaming group. But it sounds like they were having fun mosh-pitting through the Norse pantheon, so more power to them. In all seriousness - that is a lot of math if you're playing that level. I'm sure the first time you drop 30d6 on the table it is like making IRL fire with your bare-hands...but at some point...I guess that's why they invented dice-apps.
GM 1990 wrote: Insain Dragoon wrote: GM 1990 wrote: Assumed Normal party - that character sheet? If you're playing 20th level you're already beyond what I would consider normal, but it could probably still be fun with a group of friends I suppose.
But saying you can make a PC that can play by themselves and win 100% of the time isn't that same game, and no point in assuming "normal" - if you GM and someone comes in like that intending to break the game and make the rest of the players sit around, you'll only have a few options. Don't allow them to play it, ask them to leave, show them the absurdity of their assumption with the game mechanics, or just run enough role-playing encounters that they leave the group, or maybe the get into that part of the game too and everyone keeps having fun.
But it does show you don't need more expansions or Paizo to fix it if you want to handle it yourself at your table.
I don't quite understand why you're assuming he has broken the game? You don't need the "fuzzy, does it really work that way?" spells to win at Pathfinder with a Wizard or Cleric.
I also don't understand why you assume that a Wizard would want combats since Wizards are stronger outside of combat than inside combat.Martial and Caster disparity is most visible in non-combat encounters and situations.
The only thing you got right is that playing said character would ruin the fun of the other players. That's absolutely true unless you're playing a campaign where one person is the overlord and the other players are his lieutenants. So your experience is its the non-combat situations (others argue its both).
Do you have some in game examples from the games you've played where the wizard consistently just jumped the table every time, most of the time, or even just consistently more than their % of the party's time? (by % I mean like if there are 4 players, a decent balance would be each player getting roughly 25% of the spot-light/save the day/etc).
like for example: X happened at our... Just want you to know, I have not abandoned thread. I plan to eventually give a real response to your questions, but I cannot at the moment.
If you go into my post history and perform a word search for Diabolist you should see at least one post explaining my grievances with the class. It's not indicative of all full caster's, but I believe it shows a good example of someone deciding to put their own fun before the other players.
edit: just checked and the relevant posts are going to show up in my post history under the thread "do you actually care about Balance", so definitely search for Diabolist.
GM 1990 wrote: Ref your last line - have you taken a look at the Game Altering (or Game Breaking?) Spells: threads I started? Attempting some adult objective dialogue about actual game use of specific spells and options (or do nothing) for when those kind of situations come up in your game if you're the GM. Sounds like you've got lots of time behind the screen, would love to have your input on them as we work through the spell list.
I too read Jiggy's 7 Myths. Personally I thought it sounded more like a defense that magic itself the problem, not which class has or doesn't have it. Its well written, but I see a lot of circular logic and still little actual game examples except saying there are real examples such as implying that a caster ending combat on surprise round is a proof-case. So what does it prove when an archer or melee fighter does that? That's happened at my table - it was a blast and my daughter (who did it) still talks about it, but my sons and wife aren't saying we'll "we have a archer/melee or archer/caster disparity problem and if you can't see it you're lying to yourself." That particular battle and setup combined with lucky dice rolls ended it before others had a chance to do something fun, its not indicative of anything in the game system except the damage dealt by that player that time was more than the HP of the monster. I could have popped another wave of enemy and just as often if the fight is too easy I'll do that, they want a challenge not a cake walk. That night, that encounter, she got to hit the walk-off home-run.
They also still talk about when my wife's rogue snuck up a guard tower and silent killed the lookout. Happens it wasn't with magic, because it was low level, but if the party would have had invisible they wouldn't have sent the sorcerer, they would have sent the rogue who could also have used invisible to increase her inherently higher modifier in sneak/climb, had higher BAB, more damage producing weapon, and had sneak-attack damage - better choice than the sorcerer mechanically, and letting her character do what she built it to do. If the argument for C/MD is that casters are better at skill checks when buffed (or make them irrelevant if they can just fly, etc), its still just the same bonus/capability that a martial can do with magic devices/potions. Its not unique to casters - its magic itself that is giving the +XX to the check, whether by potion/device or spell. If there are all these real-world table examples where friends don't let other friends drink the potion they bought or use device they found just so their caster can be "first to the top" etc every time - its not a system flaw, that's just rude gaming. I'm sure it happens, just like people interrupting dialogue during roleplaying, or surfing facebook during other peoples turns. Paizo or 3pp can't publish new feats or limit casts per day to fix that.
I'm watching those threads, yes, and chiming in when I have something to say. I find it interesting to see the problems people have had and how they handle things. One of the main things I do on the boards is watch threads and make notes about problems and/or "the best" combinations and review and update any house rules and restrictions I have in place. It never hurts to learn from other people.
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Addressing the original question, classes as a whole should be approximately balanced, but it's fine if classes fill different roles. The problem comes when a class fills another class's role or roles just as well as or better than the original class, while maintaining their own advantages or lacking the first class's weaknesses. Core clerics can patch up their 3/4 BAB with spells as soon as 1st level, while core fighters cannot patch up their weak will saves with bravery until 9th level, and you still need to go outside of core to do so. Similarly, vivisectionist alchemists are miles ahead of the core rogue in terms of practically everything- self buffing, strong saves, pseudocasting, even poison use, you name it. Granted, the core rogue is not a very powerful class, but the point remains.
Additionally, parties should not be crippled by not having a certain class in their group. A mid-level party fighting undead is much weaker without a member who can remove negative levels, heal status effects, hide from undead, and probably channel positive energy. Similarly, a dragonslaying group almost literally cannot fight an adult white dragon without some way to fly or trap the dragon. It's not even a "this is hard, but we can make do without"- it's nigh-impossible to do so without GM fiat or an unnaturally lucky series of rolls.
So no, there does not need to be a 1:1, but there should be ways to "make do without" certain types of party members.
GM 1990 wrote: CWheezy wrote: Hi, you asked for a wizard who could, so I posted one. That is how the game is. Pathfinder is literally unplayable rules as written because of how broken it is.
Also I could solo encounters from 13 on. Don't feed me "the gm could use infinite enemies!!!" Or whatever garbage, if the gm has to literally cheat or use something impossible then it proves the game is broken.
So if its unplayable how, or why did you stay at your GM's table from 13th to 20th level with this character? That's a lot of encounters and wasted days/evenings doing something that's unplayable.
How many people were you playing with - what did they think about you soloing all these encounters?
How'd this guy do in role-playing encounters?
I mentioned already but I ban things like everyone else does so the game is playable.
CWheezy wrote: GM 1990 wrote: CWheezy wrote: Hi, you asked for a wizard who could, so I posted one. That is how the game is. Pathfinder is literally unplayable rules as written because of how broken it is.
Also I could solo encounters from 13 on. Don't feed me "the gm could use infinite enemies!!!" Or whatever garbage, if the gm has to literally cheat or use something impossible then it proves the game is broken.
So if its unplayable how, or why did you stay at your GM's table from 13th to 20th level with this character? That's a lot of encounters and wasted days/evenings doing something that's unplayable.
How many people were you playing with - what did they think about you soloing all these encounters?
How'd this guy do in role-playing encounters?
I mentioned already but I ban things like everyone else does so the game is playable. Personally I would replace the words "playable" with "enjoyable."
Rules as written, the game world and gameplay exist even if there is a very large disparity in power.
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