One thing to consider is the roc is an available animal companion but it comes at a reduced size. You could also just read the flight rules.
Well yeah they can just take off if they have a fly speed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
if you want a roc you just walk into nature and ask for a roc and it comes to you. You don't buy a roc egg.
|
Considering that flying familiars are A-OK at 1st level, the real question here is less having a flying companion and more whether this means the PC will be able to fly mounted on the roc.
Flight typically becomes available at these levels:
1: flying familiars
5-6: Fly for minutes/day via spells or abilities
9: Overland flight spell for hours/day flight
The big concern here for me would be a small character essentially getting overland flight via riding their roc. Many early encounters could easily be broken by a flying archer. Some foes will have ranged attacks, but few will have anywhere near the range of a halfling soaring above them raining down arrows via longbow. If most of your adventures take place inside, this might be manageable, but if your adventure features lots of open spaces, you'd have to include something to foul up the airspace - perhaps ornery giant eagles that have a D%% chance of showing up every time the roc takes to the air.
Now, note that classes that gain an animal companion AND which are suited for archery, e.g. Rangers, wouldn't get the companion until 4th level, but nonetheless it's a reasonable concern. If I were you, I would allow the roc, but ban or severely restrict the PC from riding it until its 7th-level advancement, even if the PC is small. Perhaps the PC has to use an action to hold on, or risk a DC 15 ride check every round to stay on the flapping bird.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
The real "problem" character is the gnome/halflin sylvan sorcerer, gets an animal companion level 1, thus can be flying on the roc casting spells from lv1.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
1, As long as the character is following the animal companion rules for a Roc there should be no outstanding problems. Since it IS an animal companion you do not need to buy an egg, you just need to be in the proper part of the world when you do your ritual to summon your companion. It this is being done at level 1 then you could probably hand wave it and say that the AC was attained before play starts.
2, See answer for #1. If they are obeying the Animal Companion rules then there should not be any large issues to worry about.
3. All the rules for handling flying are under the movement rules for flight and the fly skill section (although they are horribly laid out IMO). There are no penalties for taking off or landing. That is already factored into a creatures maneuverability rating and fly speed and does not need to be hyper detailed into it's own subsection.
Follow the animal companion rules... don't just give him a full sized one from the Bestiary, and you'll be fine.
Other thing to remember is for any enocunter, the local environment should be playing a role. If it's a cave, keep the space properly crowded and twisty. If it's a forest... remember the trees, and so on.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Follow the animal companion rules... don't just give him a full sized one from the Bestiary, and you'll be fine.What's your reasoning on that?
You're asking me to explain following the rules? If that's too strange, try this one, I don't believe a first level character should be given a bird the size of an average house.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Animal companions start off strong and fall off. The animal is lv2 at character level 1. Of course it's going to seem really good. Yes the roc is a good choice, but there are a handful of other really good animal companions. You need to compare the top tier to the other top tier to see if it's really better than the other options. Showing how it's better than some of the bad options isn't that convincing.
I see you're factoring weapon finesse, I will do likewise for those it's providing a large boost for
Ankylosaurus ac 21, attack +3 for 1d6
Stegosaurus ac 20, attack +5 for 2d6
Spinosaurus ac 15, attacks +5 for 1d6+4, +5 for 1d4+4 and +5 for 1d4+4 no finesse
Deinonychus ac 15, attacks +5 for 1d6, +5 for 1d6 and +2 for 1d4
Allosaurus ac 17, attacks +3 for 1d6+2, -2 for 1d4+1, and -2 for 1d4+1 no finesse
Warcat ac 16, attacks +3 for 1d6+2, +3 for 1d4+2, and +3 for 1d4+2 no finesse
Cat, Big ac 14, attacks +4 for 1d6+1, +4 for 1d4+1, and +4 for 1d4+1
So the Roc, while up here, isn't a clear winner.
EDIT: forgot to list the cats
| 21 people marked this as a favorite. |
| 19 people marked this as a favorite. |
| 19 people marked this as a favorite. |
|
|
The roc is certainly one of the best animal companions, but it's still limited;
- Although its AC is good, it doesn't have a lot of HP. It starts with a Con of 9, so 7 HP at level 1. So for any enemy doing damage via another route, it's in trouble. For example: evil cleric channeling negative energy, or sorcerer casting magic missiles. Or any time someone does manage to hit its AC.
- While Weapon Finesse makes its attacks fairly accurate, they still don't do a lot of damage. 1d6+1 is not a lot even at level 1; compare it to the fighter doing the most common thing, showing up with a strength of 18 post-race and wielding a 2H sword for 2d6+6.
- It's ridiculously fast and fairly maneuverable, but indoors, that really doesn't count for all that much. 40 or 80 speed doesn't make all that much difference in the typical dungeon, it's all about if the corridors are wide enough to get around enemies without provoking AoOs.
Apart from all that, yes, it's one of the best ACs.
The Fly rules do give you rules for taking off and landing. Basically, you can move at your fly speed if you were on the ground, and land if you fly to the ground. Going up at 45 degree angle or steeper requires fly checks and extra movement costs.
A fighter wearing full plate has the same AC, a fighter with 12 dex has more.
A big cat has rake and gets pounce eventually it also has more hit points and is always fast. A roc is quick in the open, but a medium bird can't always be flying around and when it isn't its slow. The big cat also has scent.
EDIT: also if you ban everything better than it, it will be the best thing, thats always going to be the case.
I have a player with a gnome druid with a Roc in one of my campaigns. There have been no balance issues. They are tough, but theres no reason to not let them have one.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you're worried about the player being able to ride the Roc, don't forget that flying creatures can only fly when carrying a light load or less. In the case of the Roc, that's 43 lbs (until level 7, when it jumps up considerably) which would include the characters weight as well as all the gear they are carrying. Halfling weight is 32-38lbs for males, 27-33lbs for females, which doesn't leave much left over for gear.
as to the Animal companion, you are leaving out HP which is a pretty nice deal.
Your roc has 7hp, the big cat has 11. Meaning your roc is for sure out if 1 hit lands from our fighter and the big cat can possibly survive for another turn. And the warcat has 13 hp at lv1 and a free feat. So it could take dodge or toughness to up it's survivability. Plus you're using weapon finesse, which wont be useful when you grow up, while the warcat is not taking a feat that will become useless. So personally I'd prefer the warcat, seems like the better combatant overall.
But yes, cutting out dinosaurs mean it's now just the top 3, and the Roc is in the top 3 of combat animals.
fighter lv1 in full-plate has at least 20ac lets say 21 using a feat, 12 or 13hp but lets take toughness for 15 or 16, and his attack does ~13 damage a hit. The bird if all his attacks hit is doing ~11.5. The fighter can have a +6 to hit with weapon focus to the birds +5s. So the fighter vs roc kills the roc in round 2 using average damage per round. The roc doesn't have a 45% chance to hit but 25% chance of hitting, so lower damage, like 2.5 damage per round to the fighter.
Plus lv1 and 2 are the levels when animal companions are their strongest because they are a full level ahead of the players.
yes, if there's no complicated maneuvers it can be stopped, and then fly 80ft away and land as a move action.
- Although its AC is good, it doesn't have a lot of HP. It starts with a Con of 9, so 7 HP at level 1.Animal companions get 2 HD at level 1.
..Which is where 7HP comes from. Animal Companions don't get Max HP at first level like PCs. So 2d8 (a 4 and a 5, for 9) -2 (for Con) is 7HP
yeah, no full HP for animal companions.
Fighters that want full-plate will have it at lv1, start of lv2 at the latest.
And the rhino and the elephant are pretty good options too.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Where is a fighter getting 1,500 gp for full plate at level 1?
By looting the bodies of the player's two other characters who started the game with Rich Parents, kept all their wealth in gold coins, and promptly threw themselves off a cliff.
by going on adventures and finding the loots
Where is a fighter getting 1,500 gp for full plate at level 1?
Or the fighter isn't a fighter but a Battle Host Occultist and gets his Hellknight plate for free.
EDIT: On topic. It all depends on what kind of campaign you will be running. If it's more of a dungeoncrawl then open world I'd say the roc is actually a bad option. That is assuming there aren't that many large open structures within the dungeon of course (though that wouldn't be much of a dungeon anyway).
Similarly, in an urban game I think the roc would be a less than ideal choice. City guards will not be happy with that giant chicken.
|
|
I see other people already made my points (7hp, one 2d6+6 hit from the fighter downs it). Just wanted to point out that the fighter in this example doesn't even have feats yet.
Also, any ranger with a strength-adapted bow has a fair chance of shooting the roc out of the sky, it takes a wizard only two magic missiles, etcetera etcetera.
The roc has limits. But if you remove the dinosaurs it's probably the #1 companion. But if you remove it then another thing is the #1 companion. Probably cats or constrictor snakes (few enemies are really ready for grab/constrict).
Or a sorc with 3D4+6 burning hands if it makes its save the average damage is like 6.5 on a failed save they're dead.
Moral of the story, Rocs are easy to kill or like color spray lol.
most of the time in pathfinder, if you have a choice between LOTS of choices, (lots is probably like 15 or 20 or more), then most of the choices will be really bad compared to the good choices.
Look at feats, people say what something like, 60% of feats never see play and 20% are niche?
If you take rich parents or similar traits makes it possible to get lv1, since you're starting level 2 with at least 1000gp if following WBL. And PFS gives ~1650 gold by the time you reach lv2, though in there rich parents isn't allowed.
But even if that, banded mail is cheap and drops the AC by 2, back to 19, so same AC as the Roc at the very least. Still giving the roc a 35% chance to hit and still lowering average damage under 5.
|
I GM'd skull and shackles with a archery ranger with a roc. It wasn't a real problem as long as I kept him in mind when altering encounters. If you keep encounters standard, ya he'll kill everything. You have to duo a bit if editing and everything is fine. I liked to grease his saddle at early levels. :)
|
|
But if you remove the dinosaurs it's probably the #1 companion. But if you remove it then another thing is the #1 companion. Probably cats or constrictor snakes (few enemies are really ready for grab/constrict).Being #1 by 0.23% isn't my concern, it's being #1 by 25% or something. "Ideally" everything from a cat to a boar to a wolf to a bear and beyond should be roughly equally viable. But going by lists like this one (http://www.geekindustrialcomplex.com/articles/animal-companion-comparisons ) a level 1 Druid's roc is apparently a CR 2.55 while a constrictor is a 1.2. That's a hell of a gap...
Those CRs should be taken with a couple of grains of salt;
- He seems to have drawn them from the "monster stats vs. CR" table in the Bestiary which is notorious for how little Paizo actually abides by it.- He doesn't really explain how he actually gets those numbers.
- CR is a measure of how hard a creature would be to beat for PCs, not for how effective a creature is against other creatures. PCs are basically the alpha predators of the monster world, able to handle monster abilities that very few other monsters can handle out of the box.
- You're staring only at the L1 roc vs. the L1 constrictor; the constrictor jumps in quality at level 4, the roc takes a lot longer before it makes the jump.
- You're making a questionable comparison by picking the constrictor as comparison. Look instead at the highest-rated ACs that you could never in good conscience remove, like the mount choices for level 1 cavaliers (small and medium PCs). That gets you horses, camels and wolves, which the writer rates at 2.35, 2.05 and 1.55 vs. the roc's 2.55; and you gotta wonder how he rated the wolf's trip ability. Especially with a party ready to take advantage if the wolf trips someone, I think the wolf is underrated in that list.
---
You came here asking us if there's a balance concern about the roc. Now you're spending a lot of effort trying to convince us there's a balance concern.
I'm not convinced. I've played with a roc. They're good, but not as good as you seem to think. High AC with low HP is a very chancy game. Because there's so many ways to get around AC, including that on average one in every twenty attacks gets through just by being a natural 20, and the roc has trouble surviving even a single hit from any kind of plausible first level attacker. So you have to play quite cautiously.
|
|
I GM'd skull and shackles with a archery ranger with a roc. It wasn't a real problem as long as I kept him in mind when altering encounters. If you keep encounters standard, ya he'll kill everything. You have to duo a bit if editing and everything is fine. I liked to grease his saddle at early levels. :)
Wouldn't that be the same with a giant vulture, dire bat or giant wasp? An archer safe from melee is always scary.
|
If you take rich parents or similar traits makes it possible to get lv1, since you're starting level 2 with at least 1000gp if following WBL. And PFS gives ~1650 gold by the time you reach lv2, though in there rich parents isn't allowed.
Ah, so when you said "at level 1" you meant "before reaching level 2" rather than "at character creation."
Sure, it's possible if you're really invested in full plate, but banded mail is a better assumption (and even then at 250gp it's a bit pricey to start with).
In any case I agree with the general assessment that the roc is pretty strong but the low Con (with 7 HP to start) is a big limitation and the potential difficulty in indoor areas with less than 10ft ceilings is also worth keeping in mind. I also don't believe they keep up with the big cat in terms of damage after level 7, though I haven't done a direct comparison.
I do agree that the animal companions could use some rebalancing. It's true that game content is often not well balanced and many choices are situational, but the choice of animal companion is such a powerful piece of flavour that it bugs me when bears and boars are so much weaker than wolves and cats.
Where is a fighter getting 1,500 gp for full plate at level 1?Or the fighter isn't a fighter but a Battle Host Occultist and gets his Hellknight plate for free.
There is a reason I specified fighter.
|
|
I GM'd skull and shackles with a archery ranger with a roc. It wasn't a real problem as long as I kept him in mind when altering encounters. If you keep encounters standard, ya he'll kill everything. You have to duo a bit if editing and everything is fine. I liked to grease his saddle at early levels. :)Wouldn't that be the same with a giant vulture, dire bat or giant wasp? An archer safe from melee is always scary.
Especially when the flagbearer bard got going.
Yes, a flying archery is always scary. Your job as a GM is to put on your design glasses and alter the encounters to compensate. And not just to kill or shut down the threat. Make having a roc in the party cool and dramatic. Especially if the player is taking an unorthodox direction with it.Worrying about a thing being OP is a good and legitimate question. I'm not saying it's not. A roc isn't that OP, however. Especially if you have the foes react accordingly. Readied actions to attack when it comes sweeping in should make it think strategically instead of becoming a flying death machine.
What the player really should ask for is a Roc with the giant and celestial templates :D
Well, looks like you've convinced yourself. The Roc is TOO GOOD. Congrats. Nerf as you deem appropriate and then don't be surprised if they jump to a different companion since you've nerfed the Roc that many are saying is fine.
So this thread is about trying to justify your decision to deny your player something. No one agrees with you OP. Next time just admit you're trying to justify your decisions and not waste everyone's time.
1. The DM always has the right to tell NO to his players. It shouldn't be for petty reasons but if the GM thinks something will ruin the campaign or make it harder to run than it should he's more than justified in disallowing some options.
2. Flight at lvl 1 can be problematic but there are ways to deal with it without making the flying character impossible to deal with. For example consider increasing the amount of ranged opponents. It stands to reason they will try to bring down the roc as soon as they realize it carries a spellcaster raining spells down on them. This will make the player more cautious (or dead).
I have a player with a gnome druid with a Roc in one of my campaigns. There have been no balance issues. They are tough, but theres no reason to not let them have one.
/thread
Everyone see this? I guess there are no issues.
--------------
As a GM my players spend much of their game time (and by extension, much of the combat) in open areas while traveling. A level 1 character with flying is a perfectly legitimate topic for GM concern; they can trivialize landscape challenges, can have unparalleled scouting potential compared to non-flyers, and can move at lightning speed. All of those change the dynamics of a game in pretty heavy ways, especially for me because I emphasize those types of challenges to my low level players. Without even looking at the combat stats of the animal I would already have a reason to raise an eyebrow to the notion of a flying level 1 character.
This thread seems to be wholly focused on combat stats comparisons which I actually find surprising. The benefits of flying are better illustrated outside of the combat arena.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This thread seems to be wholly focused on combat stats comparisons which I actually find surprising. The benefits of flying are better illustrated outside of the combat arena.Think of it this way -- the roc gets those high combat stats...and then ALSO gets the flying part. On top of the good combat stats, not instead of good combat stats.
How many sessions will your players be at level 1? Animal companions get less useful in comparison to the party over time except at their advancing level when they get a sudden boost.
If you plan on having the game never leave level 1... I can see a legitimate gripe. But it evens out eventually if you keep the levels increasing. And I have experience playing with a griffon animal companion with a paladin.
How many sessions will your players be at level 1? Animal companions get less useful in comparison to the party over time except at their advancing level when they get a sudden boost.
This is the most important consideration about animal companions. They seem very powerful when compared to 1st level PCs and their typical adversaries, but the power shift drops off significantly as you advance in level.
It's still very powerful, sure. But if the player involved thinks it's really cool and the other players don't get their knickers in a twist with envy, it's not really a major problem for the DM.
Players *should* have cool stuff. This baby Roc companion will be very cool for that one player, and all the DM has to make sure of is that the other players also have their own cool thing.
Let your player have his fun. Just keep that pile of d6s warm for the day when his ride gets shot out from under him. <g>