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Halek maybe they would do better in a more intrigue style of game? PF is about system mastery or at least having someone who has a solid understanding of the system helping people.
You may have to play to their strengths but if you are running and AP did they read the primer? Do they understand how the system works? Do they understand all the numbers in the game or have a basic understanding?
Is math hard for them, I know that sounds a bit mean but really PF is a game of math and if you don't have a solid understanding of basic math you will have a tough time. A simple +1 to your main stat is better than a negative.
Your Cleric didn't read the in put about their class well since to cast higher than 3rd level spells they will need a higher wisdom, even going with a 16 starting is enough because by the time your 12th level and casting 6th level spells you can have that 19 wisdom.
It is also reading comprehension, since really the class fluff does explain a lot about the class.
Magic items are a bonus, the classes are pretty self sufficient in themselves with their abilities if you don't try to do everything.
You could keep the "big 6" but get rid of the self buffing spells of the same nature. I know they don't stack but it would make crafting them harder or finding the belt of giant strength more interesting.
Or get rid of the big 6 and it makes the spells of similar nature more relevant and just shorten the duration of the spells to make it more dramatic. There will be less buffing before every fight, if they are rounds per level they will be used at clutch moments not minutes/level and being used before you walk through the door.
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@OP It's not that magic items have become useless, it's that they've become ubiquitous.
I remember growing up when cell phones and internet access were luxury items. Nowadays cell phones with internet, calculators, cameras, calendars, gps, games, and a million other apps are so commonplace people think you're weird if you don't have one. Same thing goes with magic items.
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The cleric has bought a headband of inspired wisdom. his buffed wisdom is 15 and they level to 4 last adventure so he should boost his wisdom from that. Might not but probably will.
We are running a sandbox game and balancing for them is hard. They know math but they say roleplaying is more important than rollplaying. I dont get it but they keep coming and having characters die. So there is just Joe the cleric of cayden cailen as a consistent character gathering up some people and watching his friends die.
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Balkoth I read your posts, I do agree, feel that you still want the stat boosting items, I am NOT calling you a min/maxer at all.
I mean if your Human fighter is balanced using a 20 point buy
Str 17 (+2 human)
Dex 13
Con 14
Int 13
Wis 12
Cha
He is suffering no negatives and at 4 (+1 str), 8th (+1 dex), 12 (+1 int) you are going to get bonus' at those levels PLUS those from ABP. I realize that it is not perfect for classes using a shield or 2 weapons but really unless you are using hero lab you can rule how you wish.
Magic items that are stat boosting are like a crutch that everyone thinks they need. A fighter with an 18 Str should be enough to take you all the way to 20th, you don't need 24 str because you got the +6 belt and put all your extras into Str. Now you have a 29 Str but cannot get that 30th point.
If a humans Str caps at 18 it would make more sense, it would keep those large beings more dangerous because they can have higher stat bonuses.
Might Items should add quirky abilities that you cannot normally get from your class, boots of flying for a fighter because they cannot fly. Fun stuff not flat + x Stat
I always felt Innate Item Bonuses existed as the sister version that still allows for more customization, but comes with the drawback of not being so intuitive and is much more game-able.
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We play without the big six as standard and the difficulty of written modules has to be increased dramatically pretty much from levels 5 onwards.
Actually, I found a pretty easy fix for the difficulty in most Paizo adventure paths.
Run using the Slow experience track.
The modules are written expecting Medium (and, occasionally, Fast), so using the slow track can balance things out for a more experienced group.
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I'm happily running Hell's Rebels with ABP currently. What I've found: players are getting more attached to things they find and aren't trying to hit up Ye Olde Magic Mart because the basics are covered. Some things are worthless still (how often do parties need to find 2 Phylactery of Positive Channeling?), but the benefit has been that players suddenly look at a Ring of Swimming and put it on, or, even better, take the armor from enemies and use it without feeling like they've reduced their character's effectiveness. It also makes disarm a lot funnier - I had rebuilt one of the encounters to have Greater Disarm and suddenly the players were scrambling because they were having difficulty getting to their gear, which meant they suddenly lacked magic weapons for lack of split attunement in their daily preparation. Suddenly, Horn of Blasting made an appearance from a backpack to make up for the missing weapon.
I think a lot of the item costs are partially derived from the idea that items you don't want should at least be worth a little money. It increases the perceived value of looting enemies and finding treasuries.
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Balkoth you are right about that but I wonder if they did it so that a High dex fighter would have a benefit to wearing the heavy armor and having high dex. A simple trade off for mobility.
It is one of those things that is so ingrained in our minds and the system that taking it out will cause people to have issues with it and rightfully so.
The Fighter shouldn't expand the dex mod in their armor it should have been a flat + dodge or DR since that makes more sense, at least to me it does.
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OK, we are all recognizing that this is mostly about different Valid playstyles. Yes, it is perfectly true that you can get through untweaked modules without the big six, and perfect builds. You can also have a wargame mastery GM who knows all the tricks turn that same module into a death trap, even within the PFS straightjacket. You have players who want adaptable, non Melee focused characters, and other players who are unhappy if anyone at the table isn't at the upper limit of tactical and damage effectiveness. On the less valid, but common approach, you have players who are driven to show everyone around that they can do it all solo, and they know so many sleazes that no one can approach their uberness. If your players feel that they must be at the theoretical limits to thrive, then they aren't going to be too interested in seeing how another approach works.
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Incidentally, here we are 10 years later, still playing a modified version of the basic 3.x rules. How has Mr. Collins' (and company) Magic Item Compendium held up? Still useful, if you can find a copy, or not worth hunting down if you already have Ultimate Equipment?
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Considering best items in UE have been nerfed to crap...and yes, MIC for sets definitely.
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I mean if your Human fighter is balanced using a 20 point buy
Str 17 (+2 human)
Dex 13
Con 14
Int 13
Wis 12
ChaHe is suffering no negatives and at 4 (+1 str), 8th (+1 dex), 12 (+1 int)
Have you ever looked at the Fighter special ability called Armor Training? At level 3, 7, 11, and 15 your Max Dex increases by 1 for your armor. This means if you're wearing a Full Plate at level 3 then you need 14 Dex to make use of your unique Fighter feature. And at level 15 (or shortly thereafter) you need 20 Dex. Which actually works out quite nicely with the +6 belt of Dex (coupled with your starting score of 14).
Again, this is the DEFAULT Fighter. No swapping out bonuses, no archetypes, no nothing. Default Fighter from Core Rule Book. Yet with ABP one of his only class features (higher AC from Dex than other classes) doesn't work and if you eliminate stat boosts all together it gets even worse.
Could you redesign the Fighter so he simply gets +1 Dodge AC at level 3/7/11/15 or something? Sure, but that's not how it's set up by default.
In other words, I'm not trying to min-max with crazy feats or races or whatever. I'm just trying to use the default Fighter right out of the box.
how about giving them a more workable pointbuy then
40 point buy should be the standard fantacy amount with 35 being low point buy and 50 being epic point buy this way the fighter can actually get the stats needed to make full use of the class abilities you want him to use
str 20(+2 human)
dex 16
con 14
int 12
wis 14
cha 11
I was just trying to work within the means of the game at present.
People would still complain the fighter/rogue/monk are weak with 40 point builds.
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Back to OP and the thread. Your players are resistant to new items, and, by inference, new strategies and tactics. Is this an appropriate response to the threat levels you maintain in the game? Experimenting guarantees the occasional failure. How costly are failures in your game?
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Our group just finished Iron Gods and I just started running Jade Regent this last weekend (I was a player in IG.)
One of the great disappointments for our group was that as fantastic an AP as Iron Gods was (we *loved* it), we got very, very little use out of the technological items. We kept a ton of them because we *wanted* to use them, but the fact was that basic magic items and our standard build strategies were just *so* much better. Not just a little bit, but enormously so.
Not only that, but we - as is typical for most groups, I think - ended up having maybe 8 or 9 sessions dedicated to selling, shopping, and re-gearing. We're so accustomed to these sessions as a matter of course, our group simply refers to them as "hump sessions." They're like the Wednesday of D&D.
With Jade Regent, I'm adopting Automatic Bonus Progression (with a few houserules) and hoping to change all that.
* One weapon and one piece of armor can benefit from your full, primary attunement bonus.
* When you gain access to split attunement bonuses, rather than being able to split your primary bonus between multiple items, the highest value of your split bonus instead applies to all other weapons and armor that you attune.
* You may attune yourself to one primary weapon and piece of armor each day and one secondary weapon and piece of armor each day. You may alternatively use your daily primary attunement as an additional secondary attunement, if desired.
* Attuning yourself to an item takes 10 minutes, which generally involves practicing with the item and fitting, honing, hemming, or cleaning it to suit your specific needs.
* Attunements don’t expire unless changed. If you use your primary attunement on a new item, the item that previously held your primary attunement is automatically attuned as a secondary item, if secondary attunements are available.
* Only one character can be attuned to an item at a time. Attuning yourself to an item overwrites any previous attunement.
Along with that, we've adopted the World is Square feat tax variant which, among other things, causes weapon feats to apply to weapon *groups* rather than one specific weapon. With these two changes, I'm anticipating that nearly every item the party finds will see some use, while simultaneously ending the shopping sessions (we also started an Obsidian Portal wiki and will be using the forums, so even if there is some minor bookkeeping to be done, I expect it will happen there and give us back our game time for gaming.)
I hope to have some positive feedback to report soon.
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One way to add other effects is to follow the magic item crafting rules. They let you add another effect to an item at 1.5 times the cost. Since most plus to stats are costing 1.5 time normal cost any ways, let players just add the stats to other items. So a +2 str base cost 1000*2^2=4000 times 1.5 is 6000 to add to a magi item. There are to down sides to this method. The first is it takes doing some math. The second is the DM needs to check all of the items to make sure the math is right and the item is balanced. You should not have any problems with stat boost it is other effect you need to watch out for.
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You need 20 Dexterity by level 15 (or shortly thereafter) to make full use of the class abilities. If you start with 16 Dexterity and remove Dexterity items, you haven't fixed the issue.how about giving them a more workable pointbuy then
40 point buy should be the standard fantacy amount with 35 being low point buy and 50 being epic point buy this way the fighter can actually get the stats needed to make full use of the class abilities you want him to use
str 20(+2 human)
dex 16
con 14
int 12
wis 14
cha 11
So we just proved that the Big 6 have to be baked in to get the full effect of class abilities. A fighter shouldn't have to forgo mental stats to get a 18 Str and start with a 16 Dex to dump the first 4 points of 5 bonus stat points to get the most of their class.
I could and probably am wrong and I know there are all sorts of ways to play a class, it should have been DR because it would be better and make more sense overall.
Question- big six?I know the question was already answered, but here's the first time the term was ever used, almost exactly ten years ago in an article on the WotC website by Andy Collins: BigHeroSix.That's a really good set of articles on magic item design. The different forms of item costs are a good guideline for why players pass over flavourful items, and cover points mentioned in this thread:
1) GP cost - is there something more useful I could buy with the gold?
2) Item slot cost - is there something more useful I could be wearing in the same slot?
3) Action cost - is there something more useful I could be doing with my actions in combat?
The problem is that it comes down to poor game design.
If you design a game where there is really only one logical choice then, by that extension, you make that the only choice.
What is weird is that we KNOW WotC is aware of this and we know Paizo is aware of this. In "Magic: The Gathering" (WotC) they'll ban cards when they start popping up in every single top tier deck. Paizo worked closely with WotC.
They have to be aware that this is a huge issue, and they keep making magic items aside from the big six that literally 99% of players *do not* use.
So what do you want them to do? This is D&D (even if you spell it PF). Things like magic armor & weapons are just a given....
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Actually the assumption is that you don't have to start with an 18 Strength. The idea is that not every Fighter should have the exact same stats. Some don't hit has hard, others are harder to hit. Many classes have abilities that rarely, if ever, see full use.You need 20 Dexterity by level 15 (or shortly thereafter) to make full use of the class abilities. If you start with 16 Dexterity and remove Dexterity items, you haven't fixed the issue.how about giving them a more workable pointbuy then
40 point buy should be the standard fantacy amount with 35 being low point buy and 50 being epic point buy this way the fighter can actually get the stats needed to make full use of the class abilities you want him to use
str 20(+2 human)
dex 16
con 14
int 12
wis 14
cha 11So we just proved that the Big 6 have to be baked in to get the full effect of class abilities. A fighter shouldn't have to forgo mental stats to get a 18 Str and start with a 16 Dex to dump the first 4 points of 5 bonus stat points to get the most of their class.
I could and probably am wrong and I know there are all sorts of ways to play a class, it should have been DR because it would be better and make more sense overall.
I didn't put it to a 20 Str and another pointed out that a fighter will need 18 or 20 Dex to get the benefit of their class ability. I know that most of the Archetypes get rid of Armor or Weapon training or both.
I know that a fighter doesn't need 18 Str it just seems to be the standard.
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There are a lot of interesting ideas and viewpoints put out here. Sadly, just about every reply picks out a playstyle it doesn't support and so declares it invalid. Barring PFS play, which actually allows more leeway than optimizers do, no one has to accept or reject any option out of hand. Many if not most people are not slaves to Build Guides, but a lot of posters here do pray at that altar. Many GMs do balance for optimally built parties, and some of those wonder why so much of the game has changed from back in the day (when very little optimization was available.)
I wish Paizo had focused feats to provide more interesting options and abilities, and less focus on more effectiveness, which puts me in the minority on this board.
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I wish Paizo had focused feats to provide more interesting options and abilities, and less focus on more effectiveness, which puts me in the minority on this board.
I'm happy with either so I don't want a focus on either. However I expect "interesting" options to have 'some' effectiveness. For instance, I don't want to see feats like Undersized Mount that 'fix' a problem that wasn't there before the feat...
Count me as someone who doesn't mind the IDEA of ABP, but strongly dislikes it as currently implemented.
We switched to ABP running our latest AP, and it has just made the game more fun for us, even though we like to build and play efficient characters. It brought back the fun and coolness of magic items from when we played 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, which we had missed a bit when we started up PF a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, before ABP, the lure to make the characters more powerful often won over coolness and theme.
What I suspect is the dividing point here, whether you'll like ABP or not, depends much on what player type you are, and what type of characters you like to build. If you really like to reach max values at every level, if getting every + as soon as possible is an important aspect of what makes playing PF fun for you, I can see why someone won't like it, since the "big six" coupled with the PF magic mart just is more flexible for maxing out your character number-wise. And will let you avoid power-chart hiccups (like Armor Training in your example) that ABP will introduce.
If you instead put the weight on more thematic characters, with thematic magic items, i.e. you think it's cooler having your rogue wear a cloak of the bat than a cloak of resistance +3, I believe it is more easy to swallow the added slight inflexibility that ABP introduces.
Of course, there's the possibility to make ABP more flexible and keep both aspects. The system improvements I've seen here in this thread and others does not really appeal to me through, being a little too fiddly and convoluted IMO. Having a chart is nice, instead of managing a point buying system with an additional currency. Maybe a more flexible chart would be the ticket.
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Personally I like the idea behind ABP but think it tries to solve the problem in entirely the wrong way.
I find it feels kind of hackish and clumsy, especially attunement and prowess, because it really feels like instead of doing away with magic items you're just getting invisible slotless ones for free. I know that's kind of the point, but it still doesn't feel right to me and is overtly limiting.
Instead of the awkwardness of attunement and the separate "prowess" buffs, I think it'd be better to just make the characters naturally more accurate and tougher and just doll out significantly more ASIs (perhaps with some sort of cap on how many you can invest in one stat).
Well, generally, the first thing I recommend is that Paizo not try to balance for 20th level. Most games, the vast majority, run between 1-15.
Doesn't that seem a little tautological, given that one of the main reasons cited for avoiding high level play is its poor balance?
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There are a lot of interesting ideas and viewpoints put out here. Sadly, just about every reply picks out a playstyle it doesn't support and so declares it invalid. Barring PFS play, which actually allows more leeway than optimizers do, no one has to accept or reject any option out of hand. Many if not most people are not slaves to Build Guides, but a lot of posters here do pray at that altar. Many GMs do balance for optimally built parties, and some of those wonder why so much of the game has changed from back in the day (when very little optimization was available.)
I wish Paizo had focused feats to provide more interesting options and abilities, and less focus on more effectiveness, which puts me in the minority on this board.
I used to play in Magic: The Gathering sealed deck tournaments. The goal is to build the best deck out of some random cards from freshly opened packets. An early article in The Duelist magazine pointed out that people who thought sealed deck was all luck tended to lose. The secret to sealed deck is to master many different playstyles. If the random cards don't favor your best playstyle, use a good playstyle that fits the cards. The skill in sealed deck is flexibility.
In Pathfinder, I also use many playstyles. I want to play a character who fits the adventure. I played a young gnome ranger who worshipped Desna in Rise of the Runelords, who fit well with the town of Sandpoint. I played a wilderness-survival gnome barbarian in Serpent's Skull, who fit with the many wilderness settings in that adventure path. As the GM I swapped out Ameiko Kaijitsu for her half-sister Amaya of Westcrown in Jade Regent, because low-level Amaya could fit in the party as an equal. My players invited NPC Val Baine along on their quest, so I had to develop a character sheet for her as a bloodrager, the best compromise between her background and the party's needs. (Val Baine is the bloodrager I mentioned above in comment #79.)
Against conventional wisdom, that makes a surprisingly effective character. That wilderness-survival barbarian? One time when she leveled up, I had to decide whether to take the Greater Beast Totem rage power or Night Vision rage power. The former is one of the strongest rage powers, the later fit her character as someone ready for the wilderness (enemies often jumped us while camped at night). I chose Night Vision. The next game session, the module threw the party against a foe who made supernatural darkness, so we had to fight in the dark. Darkvision from Night Vision won the battle.
Paizo offers interesting options and abilities. My NPCs and my player's PCs take many of them. My bloodrager's human and character level feats are Technologist (1st), Point-Blank Shot (1st), Precise Shot (3rd), Iron Will (5th), Improved Familiar (7th), Airy Step (9th), Wings of Air (11th), Improved Spell Sharing (13th). Her bloodline feats are Dodge (6th), Power Attack (9th), Great Fortitude (12th). She also gained Eschew Materials from a 4th-level ability and Exotic Weapon Proficient(firearms) from an archetype. Most are far from the feats suggested for optimized bloodragers. She is instead optimized to serve in her party. I had to fudge the racial requirement for Airy Step and Wings of Air, but being able to fly without raging (Elemental Air bloodline gives flight while raging) let her flying alongside her strix friend.
Let's bring this back to magic items. One unusual magic item Val Baine carries is a Bottle of Air. She learned the Burrow spell and the Bottle of Air complements that spell. Burrow is not an optimized spell for a bloodrager. However, Val believes that she has too few spells to waste them on combat, where swinging a sword or shooting a pistol works fine. Spells are for other things, such as conjuring horses or digging holes in the ground. Burrow is a good spell for Val. And in one encounter she let her friends surprised an enemy by burrowing in behind him while she was one of the distractions coming from the expected direction (a party rogue has spotted the enemy while scouting the cave).
I'm happy with either so I don't want a focus on either. However I expect "interesting" options to have 'some' effectiveness. For instance, I don't want to see feats like Undersized Mount that 'fix' a problem that wasn't there before the feat...
That is a risk with interesting feats or unusual magic items. The familiar so-called best feats and magic items have proven their worth. The more obscure ones might not work as intended due to a flaw in their wording or their balance.
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...
I wish Paizo had focused feats to provide more interesting options and abilities, and less focus on more effectiveness, which puts me in the minority on this board.
I wish Paizo had focused feats to provide more interesting options and abilities, and less focus on terrible trash, which probably puts me in the majority on this board.
Get off your high horse. If Paizo printed lots of things like Realistic Likeness or Sleeves of Many Garments (both of which are interesting and not merely "moar numbahs" orientated), then people would be a lot less negative about feat and item design. But that's not the world we live in. Instead, the vast majority of stuff sits between Galley Slave and Sneaky Vagabond. Y'know, stuff that rates abysmally in both "fun and interesting" and "powerful and effective".
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Barring my equestrian proclivities, I pretty much agree with a lot of what Snowblind wrote here. Tone, not so much.
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Pitt and Snowblind say it pretty well.
The problem isn't that people don't want interesting items. It's that somehow "interesting" and "effective" have become mutually exclusive terms for large swaths of the game.
Magic items that do strange or abnormal things tend to come at a premium to either cost, action economy or both in such a way that using them ends up becoming something you have to justify rather than something to be excited for.
So really it's quite the opposite. Interesting magic items are awesome. It's why magic items should exist! It just hurts every time I see something that catches my eye only to find out I can't afford it until five levels after it would have actually been useful or that it's got some abysmal restrictions on it that make actually getting any mileage out of it a chore at best.
I'd love it if Paizo took a little more liberal policy toward magic item design when it comes to cost and limitations.
And I'd really, really love more cheap magic items in general that aren't just consumables.
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It's that somehow "interesting" and "effective" have become mutually exclusive terms for large swaths of the game.
And when there IS an item that's "interesting" and "effective", it's not long until it get's 'fixed' to remove both. Look at the poor, poor Jingasa. Now it's a consumable priced as a constant item. One use and it's not an expensive chamber pot... :P
I like to give out flavorful items and not count them against WBL in my game.
Yep, it's worked well for me in the past. Fun items shouldn't have to fight for room with needed items.
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Someone mentioned above about the Cyphers from Moonte Cook games, they are cool one shots that are effective and you just use them.
Sometimes I feel like magic items are like Rocket rounds in video games, you horde them till the end and never use them because "there is always the BBEG" that needs this specific weapon. Cyphers are meant to be used.
Also about the cost, everything is over costed and WBL is a funny thing that makes no sense if you build beyond 1st level.
Not complaining about being 2% worse than ideal or something, talking very significant values here.
A system like ABP will not fit seamlessly, since the rest of the game was, of course, made with no concern for it. If you make such a large change in your game like introducing ABP is, you should be on the lookout for halo effects. and fix them if you think they are serious enough. So if we had someone playing a Fighter with ABP I might compensate their AC loss due to Armor Training's Dex dependency, if they felt that ABP really was affecting their character unfavorably. A little flexibility goes a long way here.
However, dismissing the system out of hand due to it not slipping into Pathfinder without some grease is a bit silly in my view - if you're opposed to the big six to start with, that is. We think the big six dominance is boring and dull, so we're OK to have to swerve for a few potholes (and maybe hitting one occasionally) in getting rid of it. YMMV.
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Someone mentioned above about the Cyphers from Moonte Cook games, they are cool one shots that are effective and you just use them.
Sometimes I feel like magic items are like Rocket rounds in video games, you horde them till the end and never use them because "there is always the BBEG" that needs this specific weapon. Cyphers are meant to be used.
Also about the cost, everything is over costed and WBL is a funny thing that makes no sense if you build beyond 1st level.
Yeah, Cyphers are excellent. Since playing Numenera, I've been treating consumables in Pathfinder like I would treat Cyphers in Numenera, and I've been enjoying the game more overall.
Also, just throwing a vote for Automated Bonus Progression. It's not perfect, but since using it I've found there's been an emphasis on using more interesting items. There's certainly some balance issues, but the benefits have outweighed the costs in my experience.
On Scrolls and Wands: I find the general rule of thumb that all Scrolls and Wands are the lowest CL they could be hurts their use. I prefer to give custom CLs and DCs to wands I drop, and even wands I scatter in the stores. I make sure to make this known to the players. This helps item usability.
We think the big six dominance is boring and dull, so we're OK to have to swerve for a few potholes (and maybe hitting one occasionally) in getting rid of it.
If it WAS just "a few potholes", I'd be using it now. I expect an official rule, even on optional one, to work fairly 'seemlessly'.
Weapon/armor attunement is more of a 'grand canyon' instead of a 'pothole' and the blog method is downright confusing. It heavily favors two handed fighting types and shafts two weapon fighters and sword and shield and doubly so if you TWF with a sword and shield. I mean 8th level to get 2000gp worth of enchants on armor and shield...
Then can I attune an unarmed attack? A kinetic blast? Ectoplasmic lashes? What do I do with natural attack builds with 3+ attacks? A build that relies on a magic deck of cards? [counts as a ranged weapon with 54 pieces of ammunition] I can keep going and those aren't the only features with issues. I'd have much preferred giving attack/defense/ect bonuses to the character and not items much the same way as you don't attune a ring for deflection or a cloak for resistance [it solves a lot of issues].
Tbh I think it'd be fine if they had taken the opportunity to add a separate material quality system for bonuses up to +2~3... they finally could have made non-magical crafts worth something by making another 2 levels above masterwork(either leaving masterwork as it is or making it +1/1 instead of just +1 accuracy)then players looking for early boosts could find them, but they wouldn't be game breaking or magic dependent.
That's just shifting magic items to 'magic' items though. At best it's a lateral move, if there is no difference between a magic weapon or a mastercraft one other than what you call it.