Flavor vs Gameplay


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Crossbows have several mechanical benefits over bows:

They are available for most classes (as mentioned before).
Their base damage is slightly higher.
Their crits are more reliable.
There are some interesting exotic versions like the hand crossbow or the repeating crossbow.
They can be fired while prone, making you a potential counter for archers. This can be improved with the Prone Shooter feat.

Sure bows have their own benefits and are easier to get working, but with enough feats at hand a crossbowman works pretty well.


In normal game situations this is not even close unless you go with the gunslinger archetype. Nobody said crossbows are worse in every way, but overall the bow is the superior weapon until you get into corner cases such as having to hide bow on your person. As far as going prone it is not a normal need. You can normally pincushion something to death before it can kill you if you get into ranged combat with it.

The repeating crossbow is worse than a normal bow. I would rather take a normal bow and just pretend it is a repeating crossbow since you can run the clip empty in one full round action.

Crits by themselves don't matter as much as overall damage, and a 3x weapon on average gets the same amount of damage from crits over several battle as a 19-20/x2 weapon.


If flavor establishes that there are such thing as weak and strong races, then are rules obligated to follow that through, even if it creates a weak race?

Of course, we could circumvent that by saying "Oh the pc race is a EXCEPTIONAL SPECIMEN OF THAT RACE!" Unless that is immersion breaking.

Same with crossbows. When is crossbow a "choice of fighting style" and when is it "the conscript weapon for the peasants"?


wraithstrike wrote:


The repeating crossbow is worse than a normal bow. I would rather take a normal bow and just pretend it is a repeating crossbow since you can run the clip empty in one full round action.

And that right there is proof that a character can be both flavorful and optimized. You pick the optimal option, but flavor it to fit the narrative-sense of the character. Boom! You've got yourself a flavorful and optimized character.


MendedWall12 wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


The repeating crossbow is worse than a normal bow. I would rather take a normal bow and just pretend it is a repeating crossbow since you can run the clip empty in one full round action.
And that right there is proof that a character can be both flavorful and optimized. You pick the optimal option, but flavor it to fit the narrative-sense of the character. Boom! You've got yourself a flavorful and optimized character.

I consider this "being good at the game"


wraithstrike wrote:
Nobody said crossbows are worse in every way, but overall the bow is the superior weapon until you get into corner cases such as having to hide bow on your person.

I agree here. But (there is always a but) you can actively make these corner cases happen more often. Hide this hand crossbow, pretend to meet a foe unarmed, shoot him into the face. Or drop prone in battle whenever the situation encourages it. It's not only a matter of effectivity, it's also a matter of variety - a player of a straight forward archer is more endangered to get bored ('full-attack, full-attack, full-att...' *falls asleep*) than one playing a tricky crossbowman.

More importantly, there is no need to go for the overall better weapon. A crossbowman gets the job done. Why should I corner myself with using a bow if I don't want to? Yes, going for optimized choices helps to narrow down the mountain of options to a handy amount of one or two 'best' ways. But for me, this has a lower priority than picking what I like.


Bandw2 wrote:
Rub-Eta wrote:
Actually, no.
I disagree

You actually seem to agree with me, or at least you're making the same point I'm trying to, except that I don't consider game design and usability (of the game material/books)to be the same thing.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

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CWheezy wrote:
I would like you to come up with an example of something meaningfully different and exact equal power.

I wasn't talking about "exact" or "perfectly" equal power, and I'm not interested in trying to find examples for things I didn't say.

Now, if you want to have an open and honest discussion about the actual content of my assertions, I'd be happy to listen to your thorough explanations of why I'm wrong and address your points with proper attention, using examples when relevant.

But "You're wrong unless you can find an example that I would agree is totally perfect" isn't very compelling, and doesn't really inspire me to put effort into engaging with you.

If/when you decide to switch gears into legitimate discussion, I'll be here, eager to discuss. :)


OK,
I am checking in on the Crossbow part only.

The reason Crossbows are RL superior to longbows is that it takes MUCH less training to be effective with one. They are also superior at close range against moving targets.

Pathfinder has nodded at this by making the crossbow a simple weapon.
It just doesn't really matter though, since history of the game has not been kind to bowmen. It goes back to Gary Gygax,(pontificating at length, often drunkenly) that bows did not fit his idea (which must be the one idea) of heroic fantasy.

Yes, you can be effective with a bow based character, eventually, but not without major specialization, which negates the value of a crossbow.

Reasonably, bows and all stabby weapons should be the highest crit chance attacks, but the sword is what gets people excited. RPG fanservice effectively. It is what it is.


Another Ashiel Cultist wrote:
Captain Battletoad wrote:


While that's definitely the case for people who mostly derive their enjoyment from min-maxing (not saying it's bad since I love to do it, just talking specifically about the sub-set of people who primarily enjoy that), it's not a property inherent to the game. Pathfinder is not (for the most part) a competition. Because it's not a competition, there's no major driving requirement that you do the utmost damage/CC/whatever possible with your character unless that's just what you desire. If you're content with doing a bit less damage with X weapon or spell because you reeeeeally like the thought of your character using X weapon or spell, then the game very much is rewarding you by having that option that you want available.
Here, let me make it really simple for thee: read this Post, and allow its glorious wisdom to seep into thine mortal mind. If'n thou doth still object to the notion that relative power betwixt Pathfinder characters ith significant, please respondeth further in light of the knowledge thou hast gained.

I mostly disagree with the linked post for the following reasons:

1) The comparison to WoW is pretty inaccurate, given that in WoW the enemy players (which will always be filthy Alliance) are always actually trying to kill my (and my party's) characters. In Pathfinder, that is seldom the case. If a GM really wanted to kill my character, it would only take them as long as they required to pull up Baphomet's stat block and then say "you're dead, kiddo". In WoW that's not in any way the case.

2) I think you misunderstood what I meant when I said that Pathfinder is not a competition. I didn't mean that you could just sit back on the couch and rely on your group to do everything, or that you could make any dumb build you wanted and succeed, I meant that so long as you have a relatively functioning build you can contribute in some meaningful mechanical way to the party. Anything beyond that is optimization. While I have no problem with optimization (like I said, I get more enjoyment out of that than I do RP), it's definitely not a necessity unless your GM is specifically ramping the encounter difficulty up to be challenging for the party's most min-maxed character.

3) The point about classes being imbalanced is a matter of perspective, use, and situation. At low levels, a fighter or rogue might be significantly more useful to the party than a wizard, who will most likely be more useful by the end of the campaign. That doesn't make the wizard imbalanced at high levels any more than it does the rogue or fighter at low levels.


Klara Meison wrote:
Now, those weapons obviously aren't useful in every circumstance. You can't shoot a pistol from 200m. You aren't going to break a door and storm a house with a sniper rifle in hands. Shotgun is worse in close quarters compared to a pistol.

Uhh... video. Those kinds of statements also remind me of people who say you can't rapid shot in real life. Also, going into a building with a long rifle isn't uncommon. What catches you with the sniper rifle is the bolt action, not the length of the barrel. Shotguns tend to be great home defense weapons as a scared, adrenaline filled, and likely not well trained home owner doesn't need to be accurate with buck shot. The point here is that each weapon, simply being what they are, has a baseline usefulness. Yes, there are particulars to each weapon. However, "ball/slug going fast" will do damage which is the entire point, a point that Pathfinder delivers on. I will touch upon this again later.

Klara Meison wrote:
However, they are all viable options. A good commander, noticing that one of his soldiers is really good with a rifle, isn't going to give him a grenade launcher for no reason. Instead, he will attempt to use the talents of this particular soldier by giving him a g&!+%@n rifle. Obviously there is some viggle room, but this principle holds up in general.

Actually, you're assigned a position on a fire team based on prior test marks and the needs of the mission. A commander making ad-hoc decisions like this wouldn't be a great leader unless another member of the fire team has fallen. They also cross train for such a scenario. Your point here is couched in a hyperbolic ideal.

Klara Meison wrote:
Point is that in real life weapons have strengths and weaknesses which make most of them viable choices in combat without making one choice strictly better than the other. This means that if you were playing a pen and paper RPG set in a modern army(vietnam war or whatever), your players could make characters who use completely different weapons, and those character concepts would actually be viable (I am assuming here that this hypothetical pen and paper RPG properly simulates combat).

I'm not seeing how Pathfinder fails in this regard with respect to bows and crossbows.

Klara Meison wrote:
On the other hand, if you are playing pathfinder and are trying to make an army, you are not going to make dedicated crossbowmen regiments. You really aren't. Because they are just worse than bows. At best you are going to give your frontline troops pre-loaded crossbows that they would fire once on the charging army, drop, and draw their melee weapons. This ultimately limits possible character concepts-if your character is the best marksman out there who knows everything about ranged weaponry, why is he using a crossbow? He would know bows are better, would he not?

Sure, you can. I totally would. I'd take your 1,000 strong professional bow army on with my 3,000 strong peasant army with crossbows which isn't far off from what you'd get and is why the crossbow is meaningfully different in the game. That crowssbows were used in WWI shows just how "war worthy" they are. Guns simply got so good and obsoleted archery as a class. That crossbows came after bows and gained huge adoption while still having bows shows they can be immensely useful.

Klara Meison wrote:
But turns out-crossbows were used along with bows for quite a while, so what's up with that? Well, as it just so happens, crossbows are better at dealing a lot of damage up close, while bows fire further. Bam. Impossible to replace one with another. And your master marksman doesn't have to be an idiot to use a crossbow instead of a bow.

The weight of a bolt or arrow projected with string under tension is going to accelerate that projectile at a knowable rate. At the ranges noted in the game, crossbows and bows are equally effective and can equally pierce armor. Doing a quick lookup, crossbows are effective at 100+ yards. Modern longbowmen can do about 300 or so yards. These are a far cry past the 120 and 110 feet, respectively, listed in the equipment section or what is used in combat during games. If you actually need those distances, sure, tweak as needed.


Captain Battletoad wrote:
1) The comparison to WoW is pretty inaccurate, given that in WoW the enemy players (which will always be filthy Alliance) are always actually trying to kill my (and my party's) characters. In Pathfinder, that is seldom the case. If a GM really wanted to kill my character, it would only take them as long as they required to pull up Baphomet's stat block and then say "you're dead, kiddo". In WoW that's not in any way the case.

In a fight, the enemies are trying to kill the players. Odds are stacked for the players, but the enemies are trying anyways. The enemy is a wizard, same as what the party wizard could be in a level or two.

If your party has the option to fight a wizard 3 levels higher or a fighter 3 levels higher which would you choose? The only people I know that choose the wizard are either thinking they can surprise the wizard and kill it in one round or are super anti-magic dwarfs. And even then they'd probably choose the fighter as it's an easier fight, especially as you progress in levels. or even compare against an equal level wizard or fighter. Which is harder 4v1 against a wizard or a fighter?

Captain Battletoad wrote:
3) The point about classes being imbalanced is a matter of perspective, use, and situation. At low levels, a fighter or rogue might be significantly more useful to the party than a wizard, who will most likely be more useful by the end of the campaign. That doesn't make the wizard imbalanced at high levels any more than it does the rogue or fighter at low levels.

This is so funny. First, wizards are fine and powerful at low levels and then scale into more power. And a rogue is always less useful than an Investigator/slayer/etc. And the fighter is also worse than his counterparts at early levels.

So this means that the wizards starts off good and gets better. While the rogue's best shot is early levels, where it loses out to any of the classes that do roguish things.


Chess Pwn wrote:
Captain Battletoad wrote:
1) The comparison to WoW is pretty inaccurate, given that in WoW the enemy players (which will always be filthy Alliance) are always actually trying to kill my (and my party's) characters. In Pathfinder, that is seldom the case. If a GM really wanted to kill my character, it would only take them as long as they required to pull up Baphomet's stat block and then say "you're dead, kiddo". In WoW that's not in any way the case.

In a fight, the enemies are trying to kill the players. Odds are stacked for the players, but the enemies are trying anyways. The enemy is a wizard, same as what the party wizard could be in a level or two.

If your party has the option to fight a wizard 3 levels higher or a fighter 3 levels higher which would you choose? The only people I know that choose the wizard are either thinking they can surprise the wizard and kill it in one round or are super anti-magic dwarfs. And even then they'd probably choose the fighter as it's an easier fight, especially as you progress in levels. or even compare against an equal level wizard or fighter. Which is harder 4v1 against a wizard or a fighter?

Captain Battletoad wrote:
3) The point about classes being imbalanced is a matter of perspective, use, and situation. At low levels, a fighter or rogue might be significantly more useful to the party than a wizard, who will most likely be more useful by the end of the campaign. That doesn't make the wizard imbalanced at high levels any more than it does the rogue or fighter at low levels.

This is so funny. First, wizards are fine and powerful at low levels and then scale into more power. And a rogue is always less useful than an Investigator/slayer/etc. And the fighter is also worse than his counterparts at early levels.

So this means that the wizards starts off good and gets better. While the rogue's best shot is early levels, where it loses out to any of the classes that do roguish things.

I disagree. The fighter is extremely more powerful than the wizard at low levels and while they do taper off at higher levels, their advantage is the sustained DPS that they can dish. Wizards, depending on how many encounters happen at lower levels, have to be very careful about "blowing their load" in any given fight, unless they are well aware that this is the "boss" character / end fight etc.


EvanHarpell wrote:
I disagree. The fighter is extremely more powerful than the wizard at low levels and while they do taper off at higher levels, their advantage is the sustained DPS that they can dish. Wizards, depending on how many encounters happen at lower levels, have to be very careful about "blowing their load" in any given fight, unless they are well aware that this is the "boss" character / end fight etc.

I bet you just haven't seen as many good wizards. Level 1 can have 5 spells a day from the get go. Each can be an encounter winning spells. That's 5 encounters or the normal 4 with 1 spell per encounter and 2 spells for the boss fight.

And still fighter < other beatsticks.
early levels the fighter has nothing that another class doesn't also have. 1 bonus combat feat isn't comparable to rage, or FE, or smite, or an animal companion, or studied targets, or etc. Later on it still doesn't surpass many of them in flat DPR.
All for the low low price of also being bad at skills too.


So this is the new martial vs. caster thread?!


MendedWall12 wrote:
So this is the new martial vs. caster thread?!

[not fully serious]Of course, it's the root of all game balance issues. The bow is better than the crossbow because martial/caster.

flavor is seen as bad options for a theme, well wizards don't have bad options. So it's a flavor V Mechanics to take a non-caster.
When People say that the GM can fix and make everyone shine in a game they are forgetting that the caster does the rogues job better, anything to make the rogue shine instead makes the wizard shine. [/not fully serious]


Chess Pwn wrote:


So it's a flavor V Mechanics to take a non-caster.

Right, so you take a caster but flavor it as a fighter. When the wizard casts a fireball you just change the narrative and say the "fighter" ran into the melee and layeth the smack downeth smiting all his enemies in a single vicious fury. Do you smeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll what the Doc is cooking?!


Buri Reborn wrote:
Klara Meison wrote:
Now, those weapons obviously aren't useful in every circumstance. You can't shoot a pistol from 200m. You aren't going to break a door and storm a house with a sniper rifle in hands. Shotgun is worse in close quarters compared to a pistol.

Uhh... video. Those kinds of statements also remind me of people who say you can't rapid shot in real life. Also, going into a building with a long rifle isn't uncommon. What catches you with the sniper rifle is the bolt action, not the length of the barrel. Shotguns tend to be great home defense weapons as a scared, adrenaline filled, and likely not well trained home owner doesn't need to be accurate with buck shot. The point here is that each weapon, simply being what they are, has a baseline usefulness. Yes, there are particulars to each weapon. However, "ball/slug going fast" will do damage which is the entire point, a point that Pathfinder delivers on. I will touch upon this again later.

Klara Meison wrote:
However, they are all viable options. A good commander, noticing that one of his soldiers is really good with a rifle, isn't going to give him a grenade launcher for no reason. Instead, he will attempt to use the talents of this particular soldier by giving him a g&!+%@n rifle. Obviously there is some viggle room, but this principle holds up in general.

Actually, you're assigned a position on a fire team based on prior test marks and the needs of the mission. A commander making ad-hoc decisions like this wouldn't be a great leader unless another member of the fire team has fallen. They also cross train for such a scenario. Your point here is couched in a hyperbolic ideal.

Klara Meison wrote:
Point is that in real life weapons have strengths and weaknesses which make most of them viable choices in combat without making one choice strictly better than the other. This means that if you were playing a
...

>100 yard pistol shot

First of all, that dude has some solid shooting skills.

Second, by golly, he was shooting a stationary target while not being high on adrenaline and having all the time in the world to aim, and it still took him two shots. That will certainly be useful in combat, which is what I was talking about.

>going into a building with a long rifle isn't uncommon

I would like to see your sources on that.

>Shotguns tend to be great home defense weapons as a scared, adrenaline filled, and likely not well trained home owner doesn't need to be accurate with buck shot.

Shotgun spread is greatly exaggerated in the media. At 10 meters it is barely the size of a dinner plate, which, since it is smaller than your target, effectively makes no difference to wherever you need to be accurate or not.

--

>Actually, you're assigned a position on a fire team based on prior test marks

So you are agreeing with me? Good to know.

--

> crowssbows were used in WWI

You mean this thing? Uh, I guess, if you want to call it a crossbow. Also, are you agreeing with me again?

--

>At the ranges noted in the game, crossbows and bows are equally effective and can equally pierce armor.

Considering that I was talking about real life in that paragraph, I don't see how that is relevant.


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Ugh, less real life physics in Pathfinder please. Let's find a different way to balance ranged warfare.

Liberty's Edge

On the general Topics:

-Flavor or Mechanics is a false dichotomy, for the most part anyway.

-Games being designed with options that are actually perfectly balanced is impossible...but it's still a good goal to strive for and we could sure come a lot closer than Pathfinder does. This doesn't mean Pathfinder is bad, just that it could be better.

-Crossbows are a Simple weapon and thus shouldn't be as good as bows even in a balanced game. That said, the difference is kinda too large and overly punitive for people who want to wield a crossbow. This is why I have a House Rule giving a very real advantage when using a crossbow as a Martial weapon.

Bandw2 wrote:
I disagree, it leads to traps, Like the game says here's the rogue class, so if you want to be effective at rogury, pick this class. Meanwhile, it's not, the best rogue classes are Fighter(the combat rogue), Investigator(the non-combat rogue), Slayer(the assassin), The Ranger(the scout), heck the ninja also is up there.

I agree in general that this kind of thing is a problem...that said, these examples are terribly inaccurate. Investigators are great in combat, nobody wanting to play a Rogue should ever play a Fighter, Slayers are way more than just assassins, etc.

That may just be my pedantic streak speaking, but it's true for all that.

Bandw2 wrote:
being designed poorly has little to do with the designer's intent, both the de facto and de jure designs can both end up being poor. That is the actual game system and the game system the designer intended to create can both be poorly designed.

This is true.


CWheezy wrote:
by definition there cannot be perfect balance and asymmetry.

You keep using those words...


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137ben wrote:
CWheezy wrote:
by definition there cannot be perfect balance and asymmetry.
You keep using those words...

Indeed. I think someone earlier mentioned a pound of cotton vs a pound of lead. Clearly not symmetrical. Clearly balanced. :)


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Deadmanwalking wrote:
nobody wanting to play a Rogue should ever play a Fighter

the "fighter" rogue is that guy who stands in dark alleys flipping knives and what not, that guy who can beat up a knight with 2 daggers because "he grew up on the streets". Weapon training can make almost any weapon decent, Armor training allows you to stealth, acrobatics, etc is much heavier gear (without trying to pay for mithral).

All those bonus combat feats mean they can probably do their crazy rogue combat in their head, much more effectively, and even maybe using their non-used non-combat feats on other things to shore up their faults.

Lore warden and I think tactician archetypes with their 4+ int skill points and bonuses for having int let them get some skills going as well.

All the while, you're not reliant on back stabbing people for decent damage and can simply hold your own in a fight.

there, now I've gone on a diatribe against rogues how their worse rogues than fighters... ;-; I'd just pitty them if I didn't like the current state of things. Also, yes, the rest was quick hyperbole


Remember that the fighter can shamelessly rip off grab the Warpriest's weapon damage alternator, making knives even more deadly in their hands.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
HyperMissingno wrote:
Remember that the fighter can shamelessly rip off grab the Warpriest's weapon damage alternator, making knives even more deadly in their hands.

I've been out of the mix for about a year, could you perhaps link the archetype that allows this. I already have a class I made personally that can do something close to this but first party stuff makes creating character's so much easier.


Bandw2 wrote:
HyperMissingno wrote:
Remember that the fighter can shamelessly rip off grab the Warpriest's weapon damage alternator, making knives even more deadly in their hands.
I've been out of the mix for about a year, could you perhaps link the archetype that allows this. I already have a class I made personally that can do something close to this but first party stuff makes creating character's so much easier.

It's not an archetype, advanced weapon training. After the first instance of weapon training you can trade out additional instances of weapon training for goodies like that, save bonuses, and other stuff.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

oh, i've never heard of this before. :P

thank you.

welp, i'm in the mood to make a fighter now...

edit: actually looks at some of the options... welp time to go finesse a greatsword or something.


Quote:


In a poorly-designed game, there are some builds that are more mechanically powerful than others. You personally don't care about that power gap and build what you want anyway, which is fine.

In a well-designed game, the gap is never there in the first place. You can still build whatever awesome idea you want, but instead of "I don't really care about if they're good mechanic-wise" there just isn't a question about it in the first place.

You said this right jiggy?

If there is no gap between builds, then the builds are symmetric.

Quote:

It seems that several folks are under the impression that for options to be different (and for the choice between them to be meaningful), one must be better than the other.

This is false.

I don't think this is false, I'm pretty sure its true. I've shown that every game that is asymmetric is going to have a best choice. It doesnt actually mean the game is poorly designed


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You are implying that pathfinder isn't poorly designed, to which I say bullshit.

C/MD and power gaps the size of Canada aside there's so many "glitches" in the core rules and some stuff isn't even fully fleshed out (mounted combat, looking at you.) This game is a broken mess. Sure it's a fun broken mess at times, but still a broken mess.

...Does this mean that Pathfinder is the tabletop equivalent of Super Smash Brothers Melee?

Liberty's Edge

Bandw2 wrote:

the "fighter" rogue is that guy who stands in dark alleys flipping knives and what not, that guy who can beat up a knight with 2 daggers because "he grew up on the streets". Weapon training can make almost any weapon decent, Armor training allows you to stealth, acrobatics, etc is much heavier gear (without trying to pay for mithral).

All those bonus combat feats mean they can probably do their crazy rogue combat in their head, much more effectively, and even maybe using their non-used non-combat feats on other things to shore up their faults.

Lore warden and I think tactician archetypes with their 4+ int skill points and bonuses for having int let them get some skills going as well.

All the while, you're not reliant on back stabbing people for decent damage and can simply hold your own in a fight.

there, now I've gone on a diatribe against rogues how their worse rogues than fighters... ;-; I'd just pitty them if I didn't like the current state of things. Also, yes, the rest was quick hyperbole

I'd argue you could do almost all of that better as a Slayer than as a Fighter, actually (though, admittedly, they do lack the scaling weapon die thing HyperMissingno mentions...though Sneak Attack makes up for that, IMO).

I'm not really saying you should play a Rogue (though Unchained combined with some recent archetypes make it a decent plan for certain builds, actually), just that there's almost universally a better class than Fighter to do a Rogue-style concept.

I could go into a whole spiel (especially about how nice Slayer and Vigilante are), but it's kinda off topic to get into a huge thing about it.

HyperMissingno wrote:

You are implying that pathfinder isn't poorly designed, to which I say b@#%~&+#.

C/MD and power gaps the size of Canada aside there's so many "glitches" in the core rules and some stuff isn't even fully fleshed out (mounted combat, looking at you.) This game is a broken mess. Sure it's a fun broken mess at times, but still a broken mess.

This seems kinda harsh. Pathfinder's not perfect by any means, but it's not nearly as bad as half a dozen games that leap to mind off the top of my head.

Additionally, most of Pathfinder's problems are not actually Pathfinder's problems...they're D&D 3.5's problems that, sadly, didn't get fixed in the changeover. Saying it's poorly designed implies a variety of untrue things about the nature of how the game wound up happening.

In particular, they did open playtests and wanted to change things a lot more than they did...but people didn't want that, they wanted things to stay more the same, so they went with what customers actually wanted.

So it's actually quite well designed from a business perspective. Possibly better designed in that respect than a more balanced game. Personally, I'd prefer a more balanced game, but I'm not necessarily in the majority there. People are weird and want weird things.


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CWheezy wrote:
Quote:


In a poorly-designed game, there are some builds that are more mechanically powerful than others. You personally don't care about that power gap and build what you want anyway, which is fine.

In a well-designed game, the gap is never there in the first place. You can still build whatever awesome idea you want, but instead of "I don't really care about if they're good mechanic-wise" there just isn't a question about it in the first place.

You said this right jiggy?

If there is no gap between builds, then the builds are symmetric.

Quote:

It seems that several folks are under the impression that for options to be different (and for the choice between them to be meaningful), one must be better than the other.

This is false.

I don't think this is false, I'm pretty sure its true. I've shown that every game that is asymmetric is going to have a best choice. It doesnt actually mean the game is poorly designed

I don't think you've shown that at all. The most you've shown is that some options are better than others in some situations. In a good asymmetric-but-balanced design, there'll be situations where that option is worse, and those should aim to be equally common situations. Asymmetric but balanced doesn't mean every option is equally useful in every situation, but that no option is superior all or even most of the time.

An example from an RPG with regard to bows and crossbows would be a game where the bow does 1d6 damage and can be loosed with every action, where the crossbow does 2d6 but takes an action to reload. Obviously this makes the bow superior all the time; except, armour is damage reduction, and there's a mix of armoured and unarmoured targets, and someone in a padded hauberk is going to laugh at an archer where a crossbowman is much more dangerous.


CWheezy wrote:
I've shown that every game that is asymmetric is going to have a best choice.

Best choice in what regard? And I find it hard to believe that you actually have "shown" anything close to this. Further research is needed to confirm your statement.


MendedWall12 wrote:
Chess Pwn wrote:


So it's a flavor V Mechanics to take a non-caster.
Right, so you take a caster but flavor it as a fighter. When the wizard casts a fireball you just change the narrative and say the "fighter" ran into the melee and layeth the smack downeth smiting all his enemies in a single vicious fury. Do you smeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll what the Doc is cooking?!

You think that's funny, but a friend of mine sketched up a wizard build who fought in melee as a fighter. He ended up with AC 41, bite +22 (2d8+13/19-20), 2 claws +22 (2d6+13), 2 wings +20 (1d8+6), tail slap +20 (2d6+6) combat monster by lv 15 if I remember correctly.


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Klara Meison wrote:
MendedWall12 wrote:
Chess Pwn wrote:


So it's a flavor V Mechanics to take a non-caster.
Right, so you take a caster but flavor it as a fighter. When the wizard casts a fireball you just change the narrative and say the "fighter" ran into the melee and layeth the smack downeth smiting all his enemies in a single vicious fury. Do you smeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllll what the Doc is cooking?!
You think that's funny, but a friend of mine sketched up a wizard build who fought in melee as a fighter. He ended up with AC 41, bite +22 (2d8+13/19-20), 2 claws +22 (2d6+13), 2 wings +20 (1d8+6), tail slap +20 (2d6+6) combat monster by lv 15 if I remember correctly.

Making casters good at martial combat is surprisingly not that complicated. So many spells don't give a turkey about your spell save DCs, especially buffs and stuff. I actually posted in a thread a while back about how beginning the game as a wizard with a 12-13 Int is a totally viable way of playing a wizard and you still end up as God in the long run except you can also be way less squishy since you can dump lots of extra points into Dex/Con/Wis.


MendedWall12 wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:


The repeating crossbow is worse than a normal bow. I would rather take a normal bow and just pretend it is a repeating crossbow since you can run the clip empty in one full round action.
And that right there is proof that a character can be both flavorful and optimized. You pick the optimal option, but flavor it to fit the narrative-sense of the character. Boom! You've got yourself a flavorful and optimized character.

I meant to say "worse than a normal crossbow" and "....rather take a normal crossbow..", but I think we agree that reflavoring item X is a good option. :)


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The biggest issue with reflavoring weapons and such, especially when you get into things like ranged weapons or fluffing spells as martial attacks, you have to iron out some of the details.

For example, if your "repeating crossbow" is actually a composite bow, you have to explain why you can't fire it while prone, or why it can't use crossbow bolts for ammunition. If your fireball is a leaping AoE attack or something with your sword, you have to explain why it deals non-physical fire damage that's subject to spell resistance.

Those types of little things can irritate some folks (I understand why honestly), especially if what you want to do is swing your sword around and slice peoples heads off. If you're playing some sort of sword-mage, that fluff would probably work pretty great though.


Ashiel wrote:

The biggest issue with reflavoring weapons and such, especially when you get into things like ranged weapons or fluffing spells as martial attacks, you have to iron out some of the details.

For example, if your "repeating crossbow" is actually a composite bow, you have to explain why you can't fire it while prone, or why it can't use crossbow bolts for ammunition. If your fireball is a leaping AoE attack or something with your sword, you have to explain why it deals non-physical fire damage that's subject to spell resistance.

Those types of little things can irritate some folks (I understand why honestly), especially if what you want to do is swing your sword around and slice peoples heads off. If you're playing some sort of sword-mage, that fluff would probably work pretty great though.

I agree which is why it is better to keep it in the same category. As an example if you are using a repeating light crossbow(flavor), mechanically the weapon is better if it is a light crossbow. That keeps in world consistency.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
CWheezy wrote:
Quote:


In a poorly-designed game, there are some builds that are more mechanically powerful than others. You personally don't care about that power gap and build what you want anyway, which is fine.

In a well-designed game, the gap is never there in the first place. You can still build whatever awesome idea you want, but instead of "I don't really care about if they're good mechanic-wise" there just isn't a question about it in the first place.

You said this right jiggy?

If there is no gap between builds, then the builds are symmetric.

ROCK

PAPER
SCISSORS

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Bandw2 wrote:
CWheezy wrote:
Quote:


In a poorly-designed game, there are some builds that are more mechanically powerful than others. You personally don't care about that power gap and build what you want anyway, which is fine.

In a well-designed game, the gap is never there in the first place. You can still build whatever awesome idea you want, but instead of "I don't really care about if they're good mechanic-wise" there just isn't a question about it in the first place.

You said this right jiggy?

If there is no gap between builds, then the builds are symmetric.

ROCK

PAPER
SCISSORS

Rock is clearly the superior option.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
KingOfAnything wrote:
Bandw2 wrote:
CWheezy wrote:
Quote:


In a poorly-designed game, there are some builds that are more mechanically powerful than others. You personally don't care about that power gap and build what you want anyway, which is fine.

In a well-designed game, the gap is never there in the first place. You can still build whatever awesome idea you want, but instead of "I don't really care about if they're good mechanic-wise" there just isn't a question about it in the first place.

You said this right jiggy?

If there is no gap between builds, then the builds are symmetric.

ROCK

PAPER
SCISSORS
Rock is clearly the superior option.

that's only the supposed meta, scissors is so much better right now.


Ahh, let me see if I understand.

Rogues are scissors.
Warriors are rock.
Hunters, Paladins, Priests, Druids, Mages, and Shamans are paper.
Warlocks are mushrooms.

Paper beats rock.
Scissors beat paper.
Scissors also happen to beat rock, until rock hits level 60 and becomes an unstoppable killing machine, in which case it also beats paper and would be scissors, except it can't find scissors because scissors is invisible.

So scissors beats paper and avoids rock and that is called "balance".


Silly, scissors can't hide. Only paper can do that.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

CWheezy wrote:
Quote:


In a poorly-designed game, there are some builds that are more mechanically powerful than others. You personally don't care about that power gap and build what you want anyway, which is fine.

In a well-designed game, the gap is never there in the first place. You can still build whatever awesome idea you want, but instead of "I don't really care about if they're good mechanic-wise" there just isn't a question about it in the first place.

You said this right jiggy?

Yep, sure did. You're good so far.

Quote:
If there is no gap between builds, then the builds are symmetric.

This is the part where you're wrong. It's as though the concept of two things being different along an axis other than overall power level is completely foreign to you.

Quote:
I've shown that every game that is asymmetric is going to have a best choice.

You've said it multiple times, but I must have missed the post where you've "shown" it. Link, please?

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Jiggy wrote:
CWheezy wrote:
I've shown that every game that is asymmetric is going to have a best choice.
You've said it multiple times, but I must have missed the post where you've "shown" it. Link, please?

Indeed. Asymmetry makes balance much more difficult (as does customization), but certainly not impossible, especially if you have a healthy R-S-P system in place.

As an example - look at a competitive video game like Overwatch. Now - video games have an inherent advantage in balance to tabletop because of the ability to make minor balance tweaks behind the scenes through patches etc. But I don't think that most people will claim that one Overwatch hero is the BEST, or another is the WORST. Their power levels are situational based upon the level, side you're on, allies you're teamed up with, & foes you're up against.

League of Legends is much the same. While there is some agreement of hero tiers. (Don't ask me - the toxic environment chased me away years ago.) No one can say that particular character roles are more/less important/powerful than others. They're just different.


Or sports.
Some football teams focus on throwing short vs throwing long vs running vs whatever.
yeah, some are better, hence they win. But upsets happen, or one team can't handle the other's playstyle.

Or look at members of a team. The QB is different from the linemen and the receivers and the linebackers and whatnot, all are needed to play well. Teams that have a distinct weak link, (like a core rogue), tend to lose more that teams that are overall balanced in their play.

And this is without personalities. You pick the 2nd best guy cause he's easier to work with than the best. So even though the best is better at it's role, they wont work with the team and thus the team is worse overall than if they picked the 2nd best that work help work together.

All of these are showing examples where you can compare two things, but there's not one where it's X vs X+, but it's X vs Y and X vs Z

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