An epic monk in 3.0 could start a mile away, punch someone, and move another mile away, in a single round. I believe he could also jump this distance, coming to a height of half a mile.
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An epic monk in 3.0 could start a mile away, punch someone, and move another mile away, in a single round. I believe he could also jump this distance, coming to a height of half a mile.Cool. How did they handle the fall damage?
This reminds me of a certain scroll you find in the Elder Scrolls:Morrowind RPG.
"Leap to the tops of the highest towers...and then fall to your death"
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[/b]Original point: High jumping DCs are silly high[/b]
This is 100% just because skill ranks range from 0-20 and DCs are set to that number. It also means that until like level 10 you better have a great ability score or trait to meet the harder DCs like acrobatics. Sure, the actual act is very difficult - but the world record jump is DC 32 which would require more than an Expert with no magical items (a level 12 Expert focusing on acrobatics has like a 50% shot at the jump).
I think it's fair to expect a world record would be set with a nat 20, or at least a very high roll, not just taking 10. A 5th level expert focusing in Acrobatics could comfortably have +15 (5 ranks + 3 class skill + 3 skill focus + 4 Dex), which is enough for them to hit the DC 32 world record on a very good day (roll of 17+, 20% chance).
Falling to your death. Also having enemies that don't fly and aren't monks fall to their deaths.
Environmental damage is not in line with the HP as partial evasion and abstraction that the system is based on.
As I am sure plenty of people can tell you, the only way "partial evasion" can be consistent with 90% of the system is if you read them with your eyes shut and fill in the blanks.
Falling is just one of the most egregious examples in a health abstraction that only makes sense if you think about it as a form of meat points. That way, at least it is internally consistent for the most part, unlike the "you aren't actually getting hit seriously despite all these other rules behaving as if you got hit, and got hit good" alternative.
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However, in a foot race across flat land a Pathfinder character moves about as fast a mildly athletic human being on Earth. Just gaining a PC level means these are supposed to be the top few percent in athletic ability and there is almost nothing to reflect that in the rules aside from acrobatics giving some mild boosts in some narrow circumstances.
This bolded part right here? It's factually untrue. Which is where a lot of your arguments fall apart. No, really, it isn't stated anywhere and goes against several base assumptions of the game.
PCs tend to be above average in some capacity, but not necessarily physically, and even those above average physically aren't necessarily speed walkers. Now, at high levels, they're very likely physically absurd...but again, not necessarily in ground speed.
The base movement speed of a character is a slow walking pace. I walk at 35ft without a second though pretty much whatever I'm carrying. It's not a hard pace to maintain, making the speed of a dwarf hilarious. They literally walk at a pace that is almost impossible to keep because it is so slow. At least small races are supposed to be the size of children.
Well, the average human walking pace is 3.1 miles per hour. At 300 feet a minute (standard Pathfinder walking speed), you walk a mile in less than 18 minutes, and 3 in less than 54. So we're talking 3.4 mph or so.
So, above average but not hugely. How is this a problem?
Maybe you, the real person, would have Fleet if converted to Pathfinder.
This is 100% just because skill ranks range from 0-20 and DCs are set to that number. It also means that until like level 10 you better have a great ability score or trait to meet the harder DCs like acrobatics. Sure, the actual act is very difficult - but the world record jump is DC 32 which would require more than an Expert with no magical items (a level 12 Expert focusing on acrobatics has like a 50% shot at the jump).
As others note, the world record is not someone taking 10, or something they can do reliably. It's the result of a high roll, which makes this make a lot more sense.
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There's an issue with that complaint. Why should an adventurer that hasn't specifically trained for running match or beat an olympic runner? A top weight lifter isn't going to match a top runner simply on the virtue of being a top athlete and vice versa. It's not much of an issue when special training beats the lack of special training.Special training should make you faster, but so should training in general. Yeah, a weight lifter won't be faster than a sprinter, but should a master thief really be no faster than an overweight noble who's never had to exert himself in his entire life?
An archetype defined entirely by swiftness and agility. Fat guy who's literally never even gone for a jog in his entire life. No difference in speed whatsoever.
That goes to another issue where characters like rogues and swashbucklers are horrible at battlefield movement despite having that be a core part of the imagery associated with them too. It's kind of hilarious how bad they are at fighting while moving.
So I'd add mobile combat to the list of things that are unnecessarily hard too.
How does this sound as a fix.
A) full attack on standard action
B) spring attack as a mechanic
C)you can move before, after and between attacks.
Well?
Maybe a way for the rogue to use her swift action to get a bonus move action?
;-)
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The game assumes:
1) Class levels are rare, though how rare is never assumed
Depends on what you mean by rare. Per the spellcasting services availability in the Settlement rules, it's at least 1 in 20 people with a PC class.
But you said 'Just gaining a PC level means these are supposed to be the top few percent in athletic ability'
That's not true of...well, any non-physically focused Class. Like Wizard.
And even among physically focused Classes, having a 17 instead of a 15 is not a vast increase in athletic ability, and around what the difference between PC Class and NPC Class characters.
2) Average people as NPCs have a max stat of 13
Nope. 15, because of the Human racial modifier. And 16 if they hit 4th level, which isn't super rare. Assuming we're talking NPC Class people only.
PC class characters average usually max only two points higher, with a 17 (15 before racial modifier) as typical.
3) PCs are more capable than NPCs
At the stuff they focus on? Sure.
A typical PC starts with 16-20 in their main ability score in 14 in the other important ones. A fighter has a much greater strength, stamina, and agility than the average person - even if that person is focused on physical ability.
Eh. Somewhat. Certainly a high level Fighter does.
Of course, if that main stat is Strength, he's probably built like a professional heavyweight boxer or weightlifter or something, rather than a runner.
Considering that speed directly correlates to strength and agility, with endurance being how long they can move at a given speed - there is no rule that reflects that. If a fighter has 26 Strength, 14 Dexterity, and 20 Constitution he would never, ever have the same speed and stamina as a person with 13 Strength, 12 Dexterity, and 10 Constitution. There's no "build for running" aspect to it whatsoever, movement is just an abstraction that is entirely independent from any measure of physical ability in Pathfinder.
When walking? Actually, height/leg length is probably a bigger factor in this than stats. If your legs are half as long, you have real trouble keeping up with the tall guy even if you're in much better shape.
Reflecting that mechanically is a bit finer grained than the rules are really intended to be, though.
And those stats you list are almost certainly from a magic item that aids specific physical endeavors. Why would they necessarily aid walking speed as well? There are other magic items for that.
Even if you throw away the PC's level of potential versus the average - there is no part of the rules to reflect why someone who should be obviously slower than another isn't. You can get faster and go further with training in the real world, you absolutely cannot in Pathfinder.
Uh...what do you think Fleet is? Or the Run Feat?
Dexterity is reaction time and gymnastic ability, plus manual dexterity. Nowhere is it stated to be running speed in any meaningful sense. In real life, those abilities are unrelated, or all runners would be great gymnasts and vice versa.
Strength is physical might. But again, if that directly effected speed, power lifters would all be great runners...which is often the opposite of true.
Constitution does indeed have something to do with walking/running, but not speed, only endurance (which it actually does effect in the forced march rules and the like).
Really, what you're arguing for is a fourth physical stat of 'speed' or for speed to be rolled into one of the other physical stats for convenience...but that's unnecessary. It's not that big a deal, and the basic speed of characters is a reasonable walking speed for most people.
Speed is less relevant to the lives of adventurers than their physical strength or endurance, and is thus less focused on by the rules, but being fast is actually really simple and easy mechanically. It just has high opportunity costs.
The rules make even less sense from that perspective!
If a world record is not taking 10 on a skill check, then why is an issue that a level 20 rogue can arbitrarily meet it but actual athletes in the world (Experts) wouldn't? There is absolutely no correlation between the real world and what the acrobatics skill represents, so why should magic or dedicated feats - again the thing you only get a few of and can never change - be required to make a difference in a pinch?
Uh...huh? A Rogue and Expert of equal level can jump exactly as high. What are you even talking about here?
The real problem with jumping is the massive variation you get with the d20. As the long-jump DC is equal to the distance in feet, the distance you jump can randomly vary by up to 19 feet between jumps. In other words, with a +6 bonus, you'll go 1d20+6 feet. Which is daft. And likewise it's (1d20+6)/4 feet for a high jump.
I doubt that anyone's [non-fumble] long jump varies by more than about 3 feet from one to another in RL. Obviously I've house-ruled this away to something a bit more sane.
The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.
Or if you accept that fantastical heroes can take superhuman amounts of punishment, especially at high levels.
Or if you accept that fantastical heroes can take superhuman amounts of punishment, especially at high levels.
The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.
Reference:
DBZ or any other Shounen.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The thread is "harder than it should be" and if you say it's not bad if you focus feats into it, it's probably harder than it should be.
I can outrun an unarmored rogue in a foot race easily. A top athelete can move twice as fast.
An unarmored Rogue can move up to 120' every 6 seconds with no feats using the Run action, giving an average speed of 20' per second. Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, runs about twice as fast. You need a base movement speed of 60 to match him, or 50' with Run, which is pretty doable with investment. And before anyone says "if you have to invest in it then it's too hard", consider that this man trains daily to achieve this speed and really hones his skills to even get to that point. It makes sense that a character would also have to put time and effort into reaching that level, right?
(Or you could just be a wizard and cast Expeditious Retreat. Stupid magic.)
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Usain Bolt couldnt keep up that pace past 200 meters I bet.
I used to be a track and field athlete and if you really put in effort then by the end of those 100 meters you don't feel strong or capable of fighting.
A Pathfinder character can take multiple run actions in a row then wrestle a bear to the ground or make a stealth check to hide.
A real person would have trouble fending off a small dog and would be panting too loud to hide from anything with ears.
Or if you accept that fantastical heroes can take superhuman amounts of punishment, especially at high levels.
The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.Reference:
DBZ or any other Shounen.
In 5th or 6th grade, I fell off a 30 foot cliff onto solid granite, and the only injuries I sustained were a twisted ankle and a cut knee.
So the D&D hit point system might not actually match reality.
The d10 system (Vampire, Werewolf, etc.) has a Soak system, which might more accurately represent real life injuries.
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Or if you accept that fantastical heroes can take superhuman amounts of punishment, especially at high levels.
The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.Reference:
DBZ or any other Shounen.In 5th or 6th grade, I fell off a 30 foot cliff onto solid granite, and the only injuries I sustained were a twisted ankle and a cut knee.
So the D&D hit point system might not actually match reality.
You mean the hit point system where one can very explicitly be caught in a cone of fire, fail their save and shrug it off? Surely you jest.
Of course it isn't 100% realistic. If it was, it would need its own 400 page rulebook to sort out properly, and fights would be even more plagued with rocket tag. What it is is simple. Also for relevancy:
Dying. Most ways of dying take wayyy longer than normal if you even have like, 3 levels and a con of 12.
Would the running issue be improved if Fleet scaled rather than stacked?
It would be better than the way Fleet is now, but the issue is that small increases to move speed aren't that valuable. Fleet still wouldn't get taken much if it gave 30ft of speed, and by that point you would start to see degenerate uses of it crop up. I don't think there is any reasonable number for the speed increase that is worth a feat slot.
I would personally consider merging it with dodge, or another "ok, not great" feat. Maybe even merging it with dodge and making it scale.
The d10 system (Vampire, Werewolf, etc.) has a Soak system, which might more accurately represent real life injuries.I dunno if I'd go THAT far. Storyteller system has its own problems.
To be fair to both systems, it's probably impossible to make a game system for simulating injuries that's both highly accurate/realistic and simple enough to make for easy gameplay. At some point you have to accept that some aspects of it are going to be handled abstractly.
I kinda like the idea of tying your speed to a physical stat - for instance, base speed starts at 30' (20' for Slow characters) and increases by 5' for every +1 modifier you have / decreases for every -1 modifier in Strength. Then have your STR bonus cap out at your CON bonus when you aren't in combat. For example, a Fighter with 18 STR and 14 CON would have a base speed of 50' in combat but 40' in combat, while a character with the opposite would have a base speed of 40' in combat and 40' out of Combat with a cap of 50' if they could somehow boost their Strength in the field. That would make Strength worth more overall. Also, you could allow an additional 5' step for every 5 BAB, which mostly helps melee characters get into range and still contribute.
But that's off topic. Thoughts for another thread I guess.
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1) high jumping is incredibly hard. The men's record is 8 ft. The woman's record is 6 ft. Levitation is a magic spell. It should break the rules. If you want to break rules, multi-class into a mage to get jump/levitate or get a magic item that does that. I cannot fly in real life without aid. I don't see that as being a problem IRL or a game either.
3)Surviving cold weather can be done with appropriate cold weather gear and feats. Most people in cold weather have adapted and wear appropriate clothing and have cold feather feats like endurance. Take a warm weather person and stick them in Minnesota during winter or take a Minnesotan and stick them in the desert. The person may adapt but they will not perform optimally like an adventurer would.
1) So you are saying it's OK for an adventurer to shrug off falls from any height at higher levels, but not jump higher than they could IRL? At no point is a PC in Pathfinder a normal human in any way, they are slower than an athelete, stronger than the strongest animals on Earth, have perfect recall, and can withstand impossible conditions unharmed from level 1.
3) Cold weather gear is a +2 to the save which is already staggeringly high. There is literally 0% chance for an Inuit people to exist by RAW with any combination of feats unless they give infants some sort of magical item.
1) No, I never said any person should survive falls from insanely high, HALO like parachute drops. That should be DM narrative at that point because you should be dead. Even Conan should not survive those types of falls.
2) Wrong, you can take endurance and have cold weather gear. Even with cold weather gear made for this century you do not want to be exposed to the winter elements all night. You will experience hypothermia and frostbite and die if you are in negative temperatures without appropriate shelter.
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By RAW anyone outside in -20F or lower is dealt 1d6 damage per minute with no save. There are hours long expositions into those temperatures without death.
By RAW below people in 38F need to make fortitude checks per hour that gets harder each time. It's not hard to be in this temperature in a light jacket for hours but it's a legit danger to 1st level characters.
Igloos MAX interior temperature is 61F in summer with multiple people. Typically the shelter is below 40F and people have had generations of people living through it.
Actually, it specifies 'unprotected' characters as taking that damage. It's perfectly within the RAW to consider an igloo protection and thus make that not happen regardless of internal temperature.
The rules at -20 Fahrenheit or below do not make this distinction, and that has potential issues with realism in its own right, but living in an igloo seems very much within the rules.
Or if you accept that fantastical heroes can take superhuman amounts of punishment, especially at high levels.
The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.Reference:
DBZ or any other Shounen.
Also: Monty Python
"Just a flesh wound"
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1) No, I never said any person should survive falls from insanely high, HALO like parachute drops. That should be DM narrative at that point because you should be dead. Even Conan should not survive those types of falls.
Well, you are in for a surprise real life level 1 humans on earth have survived.
Sure, they broke their legs but they lived.
Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic fell 33,000 feet this way in 1972 and lived to tell her tale—once she woke up from her coma.
We know for certain a person can survive a fall of at least 20,000 feet. That’s how far up World War II pilot Alan Magee was when he had to abandon his plane without a parachute
The most important thing is the “flying squirrel” position, body splayed out, is preferred over falling feet or head first.
Shayna Richardson was an amateur skydiver taking a free-fall course taught by her boyfriend, Rick West. Her parachute failed to deploy (reserve failed too). She slammed face first into the asphalt. 3 kilometers or about 10K feet fallen. Plus pregnant and the baby was okay.
Felix Baumgartner’s fall (39 Kilometers about 128,000 Ft) so amazing isn’t the landing (he had a parachute), but rather what happened to his body during the drop. In 2012, he became the first person to break the sound barrier, unprotected and under his own power. His 39-kilometer adrenaline rush crushed the previous record set by Joe Kittinger and reached speeds of up to 1,342 kph (834 mph).
Steve Fossett is mostly known for being the first person to navigate non-stop around the world in a hot air balloon. However, he also survived a 6.7-kilometer (22,000 ft) fall without injury. In 1998, he set out to circle the globe nonstop for the fourth time in his hot air balloon the Solo Spirit. He had completed about 60 percent of his journey when he decided to travel through a rough storm over the Coral Sea. Hail ripped through his balloon and his basket began a rapid descent toward the rough waters. Bracing for impact and expecting the worst, Fossett hit the ocean only to find himself completely uninjured with his capsule on fire. He grabbed a life raft to escape the burning basket and was forced to spend 10 hours in the open ocean surrounded by sharks until he was rescued.
So yeah, Conan shouldn't be dead if these normal humans lived.
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1) No, I never said any person should survive falls from insanely high, HALO like parachute drops. That should be DM narrative at that point because you should be dead. Even Conan should not survive those types of falls.
Well, you are in for a surprise real life level 1 humans on earth have survived.
Sure, they broke their legs but they lived.
Serbian flight attendant Vesna Vulovic fell 33,000 feet this way in 1972 and lived to tell her tale—once she woke up from her coma.We know for certain a person can survive a fall of at least 20,000 feet. That’s how far up World War II pilot Alan Magee was when he had to abandon his plane without a parachute
The most important thing is the “flying squirrel” position, body splayed out, is preferred over falling feet or head first.
Shayna Richardson was an amateur skydiver taking a free-fall course taught by her boyfriend, Rick West. Her parachute failed to deploy (reserve failed too). She slammed face first into the asphalt. 3 kilometers or about 10K feet fallen. Plus pregnant and the baby was okay.
Felix Baumgartner’s fall (39 Kilometers about 128,000 Ft) so amazing isn’t the landing (he had a parachute), but rather what happened to his body during the drop. In 2012, he became the first person to break the sound barrier, unprotected and under his own power. His 39-kilometer adrenaline rush crushed the previous record set by Joe Kittinger and reached speeds of up to 1,342 kph (834 mph).
Steve Fossett is mostly known for being the first person to navigate non-stop around the world in a hot air balloon. However, he also survived a 6.7-kilometer (22,000 ft) fall without injury. In 1998, he set out to circle the globe nonstop for the fourth time in his hot air balloon the Solo Spirit. He had completed about 60 percent of his journey when he decided to travel through a rough storm over the Coral Sea. Hail ripped through his balloon and his basket began a rapid descent toward the rough waters. Bracing for impact and...
Level 1 expert has d8 hitpoints and 12 con It is conceivable to have some people with 9 hp. The maximum falling damage is 20d6, thus if you are very very lucky you could get all 1s on that roll and get left alive and dying at -11. Then if you are a little more lucky, you would roll a 20 to stabilize.
Its even possible to wake up and walk to the hospital with a few more 20s.
If you don't wake up naturally, it would take you 4 days of bed-rest while being tended to by a doctor to recover consciousness.
Seems pretty reasonable.
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Golarion also assumes most people as 2nd or 3rd level. The default farmer has 10 HP and Con 12, for example. That's very much within the typical range.
So surviving high falls, or being shot several times (even advanced guns are what, 1d12 a shot?) is possible, if unlikely, assuming low rolls.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.As I am sure plenty of people can tell you, the only way "partial evasion" can be consistent with 90% of the system is if you read them with your eyes shut and fill in the blanks.Falling to your death. Also having enemies that don't fly and aren't monks fall to their deaths.
Environmental damage is not in line with the HP as partial evasion and abstraction that the system is based on.
I am saving a link to this post forever. Seriously made me smile. :)
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I am saving a link to this post forever. Seriously made me smile. :)The only way meat points make sense is if you have never experienced or even seen anyone injured and have absolutely no grasp of what humans are or are not capable of.As I am sure plenty of people can tell you, the only way "partial evasion" can be consistent with 90% of the system is if you read them with your eyes shut and fill in the blanks.Falling to your death. Also having enemies that don't fly and aren't monks fall to their deaths.
Environmental damage is not in line with the HP as partial evasion and abstraction that the system is based on.
No one ever said that meat points were consistent with the real world--though as we've seen, people do tend to overestimate how immediately and definitively lethal things are IRL--but meat points is the only interpretation that is internally consistent with the system. Poison, disease, falling damage, stun, bleed, Hamatula Style, the very fact that hit points are restored by spells called 'Cure Wounds'--absolutely nothing suggests that HP are intended to be ablative plot armor, and absolutely everything suggests they absolutely represent tanking actual hits.
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I still think that in most situations it's assumed that your character "narrowly dodged", "rolled with it" or somehow mitigated the blow until the point where he is too exhausted to effectively defend himself effectively, actually takes a nasty hit, and keels over.
In special cases, such as poison being used, it's safe to say there was a nick or something worse happening in order to transfer the poison.
The only time that explanation doesn't work is when players routinely have their characters jumping off of castle walls or swimming in lava simply because they know they have the hit points to withstand it (which should generally be discouraged I think).
In any case, hit points are abstracted, so players and GMs can assume whatever the hell they want. That's part of the beauty of it.
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The speed issue used to be even worse: Many years ago, I remember calculating the air speed of a White Dragon under 1st Edition AD&D rules, and it was about 1 mph.
The 1e white dragon's speed was 12"/30", so it could walk 60 ft./round or fly 150 ft./round, and a round was 1 minute. 60 ft./min = 0.68 mph; 150 ft./min = 1.7 mph.
But those were underground speeds; remember that all ranges and speeds outdoors were tripled (an artifact of the game's scale-model wargaming roots). So the white dragon could walk overland at 2 mph, or fly at 5 mph. And remember those are mean overland speeds, and 1e MM specifically said critters could move faster in short bursts, although that wasn't quantified.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Are you talking about AD&D or D&D? One has 10 second rounds, the other has minute long rounds. It's not hard to mix the two up.
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If you read page 50 of the 1E DMG, you will see that the white dragon's speed of 12 inches translates to 4 mph for land speed and 30 inches translates to 10 mph for the flight speed. That's just their basic speed. That doesn't include "sprints" and "running."
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Did anyone mention drowning?
I just put one the players of one of my games in an underwater combat, and revising the swim rules, it's noted that it's possible to hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to twice your Con score.
That means even a sickly child with Con 7 can hold their breath for nearly 90 seconds... And your ordinary, untrained average joe can do it for 2 whole minutes without effort!
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That means even a sickly child with Con 7 can hold their breath for nearly 90 seconds... And your ordinary, untrained average joe can do it for 2 whole minutes without effort!
Your bloodstream contains enough oxygen for 5 minutes before any real problems occur.
You can attempt to breath water for 3 minutes and get resuscitated in 2 minutes and be just fine.
Meanwhile the world record is 19 minutes and 30 seconds, which is impossible for any Pathfinder character.
Con score required equals x
195 rounds = 2x + while(floor((x-10)/2)+d20 >> 10+r){r++};
Assume he rolls 10 everytime for world record luck
195 = 2x + floor((x-10)/2)
x = 83 constitution