Oh, and Valiard will get a shortbow too...normal arrows though.
+3 beats all DR apart from Adamadium I believe but we are in a low magic environment. Not sure how we stack up on wealth by level.
Oh and are you keeping that short sword +1 I handed to you during Carrion Hill? It makes sense if you keep it.
Correct.
I will be mostly out of touch this weekend.
Zeta, I think Valiard's Will save should be +2. I believe he got a cloak of resistance here that doesn't seem to be on his character sheet.
EDIT: Actually, I take that back about having the worst saves in the party; Valiard's are pretty bad. ;) I'm getting Mireza confused with my other witch who had to roll her stats and ended with 13 Dex, 10 Con, and 8 Wis. (Her Dex and Con as rolled were actually originally worse than that; the DM gave her a few bumps to get her closer to the power level of the rest of the party.)
I love Izoef...his deconstruction of 3 idiots walking into a trap is great!
;p
Valiard is wearing the cloak now...little good that it does him.
I love Izoef...his deconstruction of 3 idiots walking into a trap is great!
;p
LOL!
Valiard is going to give Grigor a chance to act before he does something.
Does anyone else think that Grigor might be a bit...suicidal after we took away his drink?
Lol. this is going to be crazy.
I like to try stuff... and have a thing for Abberations
Man I'm sooooo not use to playing a pc who can truly do nothing. I'm a power gamer at heart so this is outside the box for me. It's a fantastic different perspective though, I gotta admit. But I also gotta admit that it's difficult, 'cause my power gaming self says, 'Let's kill it!'. That's what I REALLY want to do.
But I just gotta remember I'm playing a dude that would have a hard time killing weeds with Round-Up. :)
And yes, I think Grigor has lost his mind. Take a man's alcohol from him is like taking candy from a baby. The end results just ain't pretty. :)
Hey Zeta, I totally love your Attack posts:
Stabby
Stab! (The exclamation point is greatness).
Funny stuff.
I may steal your idea and run with it in some other threads of mine. Iozef isn't that entertaining. :)
Thanks!
I was trying to find a way to keep it interesting when all Valiard really can do is attack with his puny little daggers.
You've gained a new level! Please update your sheets and let me know what's new and interesting about them.
saaaay whut?
Cool beans!
saaaay whut?
It's a pity level. ;)
I'm not going to complain ;-).
saaaay whut?It's a pity level. ;)
Ahhh - like pity sex? cool, I'll take it.
You don't have to take it...
Pity sex? Oh yes I do.
Oh, you mean the level?
I'm going fighter 1 (weapon master)
Feats - TBD and dodge.
Skills is 2 + 1 for Int and +1 human.
1 stealth
1 perception
1 Diplomacy
1 Inimidate
Valiard grabbed his final level of Shadowdancer
Darkvision (60')
And a whole bunch of skills
power attack for my other feat though its not a good combo to have 2 weap fighting and power attack... that said, ASSUMING I live to level 8, my dex will come up at the same time as BAB and I'll get +2 attack at that point which will help, level 9 is good for weapons training and that gives me another +2 to hit, and at that point I should be on par with being able to hit stuff equal to the CR we'll be at AND power attack.
It's a pity level. ;)
Okay, this caught my attention.
A couple of thoughts here, if I may.
There were two encounters that both equaled us not having to combat, in a roundabout way. The last thing I want to do is have to run from every fight. Do I feel like it was the proper action? Absolutely. But I'm afraid that might be our every proper action. That's no fun.
If you look at this group... we ain't tough. We are going to have a hard time defeating anything. I don't want to keep running and I don't want you, DW, to keep having to find ways for us to live. That's no fun for you or us. Because then it if you think about it, nothing really gets accomplished.
And not only are we lacking in combat, we are also way underpowered. If this is a low magic campaign, this is the wrong crew for that. It's just too weak of a party. Besides, even if we were up to wealth by level standards, a part of me thinks it still wouldn't be enough. Obviously I could be wrong, but looking at what I see now makes it hard to think otherwise.
This is a great group. I like the chemistry of everyone. But I feel like this crew won't be able to handle what's to come. If we can't take a couple of random(I'm guessing they were random) encounters, how are we gonna handle a "real" encounter?
It's odd because when I compare this group to our Kingmaker group, it's night and day. In our Kingmaker game, we have only 4 pc's but I feel like we can hang with anything. My character gets his butt rocked constantly, and I do mean all the time too, but he is the frontliner, so it's expected. And it's fun!
I will say we are built on a 25 point buy and we are right around wealth by level. But regardless of what we come up against, I feel like we at least got a shot. Of course there's still the fear that Kriger's gonna get dropped one time too many and that'll be that. But that's what makes it fun! I don't feel like we have to run all the time and I have yet to feel like we are just gonna waltz in and snap our fingers and kill everybody either. That's what makes this game fun, the uncertainty of it.
With this group, I feel like running is the only thing we really can do.
I guess what my biggest concern is, you having to constantly "bail us out" so to speak.
Just my 2 pennies, nothing more. Give the change to charity, I don't need it. :)
I see your point, but to be fair, it is a tough encounter, perhaps best avoided, and the group is supposed to be level 7 at the start of the AP.
That being said, the penny trick really backfired... All in all, I haven't really bailed you out, just prolonged the torment...
I like the PCs, but I don't feel like we have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a Paizo AP. Iozef and Mireza have no offensive options, so we're basically a party of three with 2 sentient wands of cure light wounds. The last encounter I felt like we were on an even footing in was the ghouls under Slipper Market. Doesn't help that I didn't max Mireza's casting stat so she keeps throwing away her highest-level spell slots to no effect.
That said, Mireza was smart enough to want to avoid the obvious trap -- but as players we also realize that if we keep avoiding encounters, we're never going to get XPs or treasure. A party this weak should avoid every encounter we possibly can, but then we just stay weak and have no chance against the encounters we can't avoid.
I'll throw something in here.
We are the RIGHT stat point buy for the Carrion Crown AP. WBL up until we levelled, for my own part, I'm about right on (actually a bit higher that WBL thanks to the Bane weapon but then again Bane is an expense - albeit situationally welcome adjustment). The other characters are a bit lacking. Carrion Crown was built for 4 characters, we're 5. Technically five 15pt buys should be up to the task.
I think part of the issue is we built ourselves as a Call of Cthulhu party - our concepts are meaty and meaningful but its about flavour, not crunch... and as group our synergy is pretty low.
And thats where we are in trouble.
The bow inquisitor is fine, the rogue is fine too.
A typical AP Cleric would not be as 'domesticated' as Iozef, a witch needs to be built a certain way to be combat ready either as an all round debuffer or adding a touch of blaster (based on Patron etc) - Mizera was built for RP and social work (correct me if I am wrong Joanna). I am NOT saying those characters suck - they do not for the purpose they were created. Both are deep characters with great flavour.
Grigor was built for skills and flavor rather than combat, and while two weapon Melee characters do work as a combat concept they're not the most effective - I am working on correcting that and, again, if he survives the next level he should be approx par for the course.
I think we could either use a 6th player of the same concept/power level as the rest of us - someone who can fight but has a healthy investment in fluff and flavour or maybe allow some degree of rebuild - either equipment as WBL and/or build - Given 23k to redo his equipment Grigor would be in Mithral Medium or possibly mithral heavy (if the budget would stretch) and I REALLY wanted silversheen short swords when making the character but I couldn't afford it. That said rebuild is a strange way to take and a very personal one as we are ALL pretty invested as a characters as they are written. The final route maybe to start us off again as a new party with some or all new characters for this story arc.
I'll throw something in here.
We are the RIGHT stat point buy for the Carrion Crown AP. WBL up until we levelled, for my own part, I'm about right on (actually a bit higher that WBL thanks to the Bane weapon but then again Bane is an expense - albeit situationally welcome adjustment). The other characters are a bit lacking. Carrion Crown was built for 4 characters, we're 5. Technically five 15pt buys should be up to the task.
I haven't got through the rest of your post, but as far as I'm concerned, what I've bolded is a crock of crap. I know that Paizo technically claims that's all it takes, but that's just talk.
Now, if you're around 15th level or higher and purchase items accordingly, then yes, a 15 point buy pc works fine. I know because I played an 18th level monk on these boards and he was brutal. THAT is why they say a 15 point buy character works, because the END result is what it is.
But that doesn't make a 15 point buy up to the task. Not by a longshot.
Someone recently posited that Paizo APs don't assume optimized PCs but that they assume optimized players. I think there's a lot of truth in that. People who are experienced players, who know how to engage in tactical shopping and spell selection and how many different kinds of weapons to carry and what scrolls a party should always have on hand, could probably swing through an AP on a fairly low point buy and be fine. I never know what the heck I should be spending my gold on and pick spells for flavor rather than utility.
I mean, one of Mireza's three hexes literally does nothing. I picked Blight to make her backstory make sense, but it has no game effect whatsoever due to the fact that whoever wrote it forgot that ability damage heals naturally at one point a day and it's never been errataed. I picked first-level spells that would have made her useful in the role she filled before the adventure started: hedge witch and fortune teller. But when in an AP is youthful appearance or vocal alteration ever going to be useful?
It drives me crazy that a PC "has to be built a certain way to be combat ready." At a certain level, one might as well be picking from among pregens -- "Okay, you play Buffer Cleric, and I'll play Blasty Witch; the other guys are playing Fighty McGreatsword and Archery Ranger." There just doesn't seem to be any gray area for unusual builds to operate. You either max your casting stat, or you're wasting the party's time by casting spells that allow saves.
You know when you mention a "typical" AP... if AP's were built toward 15 point buy PC's, any type of class should work, correct? Wrong. And since they are obviously not built as such, that would mean you are REQUIRED to play the "proper" class or you will lose. What's that about?
I don't understand why Paizo just don't tell it like it is. Why they want us to think, "Oh, all you need is five, 15 point buy pc's." Riiiiight.
Honestly, I don't think there should be anything less than 25 point buy. That's perfect in my opinion. They call that, "High Fantasy"? HA! That's baby stuff. Back during my table top days, we were rolling with 70 point buys on average. It was insane.
Folks on these boards think 25 point buy is too powerful. Trust me, it ain't. Not even close. It's enough to where a pc can pull at least ONE good ability score, while at the same time not having to kill 2 or 3 others.
A lot of other good stuff in there, though. About the only thing I don't think I would be a fan of is recruiting a 6th player. I like this group as is and would hate to take a chance on messing up the chemistry.
Edit: Joana posted before me. Totally agree. She spells it out better than me.
Mizera was built for RP and social work (correct me if I am wrong Joanna).
Not wrong at all. She's built for city intrigue and manipulating NPCs. When it comes to monster-fighting, she's far out of her element. Heck, when it comes to fighting anything, she's out of her element. She'd rather blackmail someone or ruin their romance or make them look foolish at some social event.
My bad - seems we are on 20pt buys... I think that generally gets the job done. Its how we designed PCs based on a RP heavy approach to character design for play on Carrion Hill.
What then? I hear strong concerns regarding survivability, but also great joy at the social dynamics of the party.
Do we wish to try it out further? Characters evolve as they face the world. If the world turn to madness and danger on every corner, shouldn't they change a few things in response? The characters didn't choose to go out, but instead felt a duty to do so or a desire for revenge...
I think the near death experience can be a catalyst for the characters.
Let me know what you wish for the future.
I am for a small rebuild chance for characters who feel they need it - for instance, Mizera has a useless hex and some purely RP spell choices... if she wants, a small rebuild could get some additional milage from the character without changing the WHO of the character?
Not sure on Iozef.
Typically we'd have a front liner and a back up front liner for combat... but the thief and the cleric are too squishy and to be fair, Grigor is no tank.
The archer component of the party is fine as is.
Hey! Valiard isn't squishy. When someone chews on him he makes crunching noises just like everyone else.
Anyways: I like Valiard's build. I need to get his will save up to avoid the mind effecting area effects, then he will be good at getting the information that the group needs to prep a fight. That and get in position to sneak up on baddies.
As for rebuilds, I say if people are really unhappy, then its time to do the rebuild/rewrite. Simply put, we have good players, we can write new characters if necessary and then we can all get back to having fun...which is the most important part, in my opinion.
I think this is where you and I differ in play style and flavour - and thats cool by me. I play in one 25pt build game (ironically Carrion Crown, still in Pt 1) and its worked out ok as no one has built any super tricked out characters - heck, I have a charismatic very hard hitting fighter.
I got no problem with 25 point builds at all. And 20 is fine also. I just think to have a "complete" pc, 25 should be standard. Well, as complete as you can get with 25 point buy.
That said while I enjoy 20pt PFS games and don't think that is overpowered, I am one of those guys who loves low powered 15pt/low magic games. Its a difference in play styles - then again, I love E6/E7, just to give you some insight into me as a player.
Yep, this would be absolutely no fun for me. There's just no way you can be awesome with a pc at such a low point build. The 15 point that is. At 20 you can be marginally decent enough.
I will say one thing for higher point buy's - managed right it does allow for greater character diversity and still be able to meet certain game mechanics assumptions (I am not sure if they are actual or not but I've always seemed to see them) regarding casting stat at certain levels and so on. I tried for an all rounder finese combatant - a tough ask on 15pts but I had an internal expectation set up that 'wow - 16 should be a pretty strong/fast/intelligent etc dude', because I like E6 low build games.
Bolded. This is what I'm talking about. This is all I'm saying. You can't do that at 15 point buy, and at 20 points, there's something that still is just missing. There's this feeling that lingers that it's just not quite right. With Iozef though, I'm actually not sure what I would do with 5 more points though. There's not a whole lot to him for that to make any kind of real difference mechanics wise. He's probably my one exception. Five points won't make any difference for him.
I'm a power gamer at heart, so obviously that does put us on different planets, seeing how you like the low powered stuff.
But like you said, it's all good! Different strokes for different folks and all that. :)
And as far as Mireza is concerned, yeah that Blight hex business stinks. How did they miss that? It turns out to be a complete waste of space of information. Unbelievable.
@Zeta: Having fun is truly the point of this game, and this is a fun group. I just don't wanna spend an entire AP running from stuff. Because then it would be no fun. For me anyway.
Of course, having said that, when some undead Dragon rolls into town, I sure as heck don't wanna charge into battle just because I'm tired of running either. ;)
It's a slippery slope. ;)
|
(Sorry I haven't posted before this; meetings most of the day at work, and I'm fighting a cold.)
This discussion has been interesting and enlightening to read. One minor comment regarding the blight hex--Joanna, according to the PRD
Hit point and ability score damage caused by an affliction cannot be healed naturally while the affliction persists.
That is, as long as the blight is still in effect they won't get the CON point back. That's it for nitpicking.
Granted, Windle's stats and feat selection make him a pretty decent archer, particularly in combination with bane and judgments; his spell and skill selection, though, I built around the concept of a generally solo investigator/undead hunter. So for spells he's got one combat buff, some healing, and a whole lot of divinations. He is, as Helaman said, a CoC character, but with Iozef and Grigor in the party a lot of his skills and spells are redundant. I suppose what it comes down to is that we're all essentially support characters.
Agreed that 15-point characters have to be played really well, and party mix becomes critically important. I'm running a Kingmaker game on the boards right now with six 15-pt characters, and they are kicking ass and taking names. Now, they've got a wizard, a cleric, and a bard, but they lead with a cavalier, a paladin, and a ranger. The latter two fight with two-handed swords, so between that and lance charges from the cavalier the party punches well above its weight.
IMHO, the thing that higher point buys really get you is not just diversity, but the wherewithal to change your character's core competency as you progress. Frex, 20-pt Windle will never be a melee monster. 25-pt Windle might have STR 14/CON 14--not great, but good enough that he wouldn't have to restrict himself to CR-4 creatures to beat in a fight (the image of him carving his way very, very slowly through the zombies with a dagger because everyone else was out of the fight was amusing). Lower point buys have to be pointy-headed, and playing catchup if you want to switch things around really doesn't work.
Which is what we're faced with now. There are things that we could do to become more competitive; Grigor's working on that, Windle has his niche, and Valiard is pretty good, but I'm not sure what would help Mireza (besides a headband of vast intelligence and a bunch more spells) or Iozef.
Which is what we're faced with now. There are things that we could do to become more competitive; Grigor's working on that, Windle has his niche, and Valiard is pretty good, but I'm not sure what would help Mireza (besides a headband of vast intelligence and a bunch more spells) or Iozef.
Man this is spot on!
Grigor is going fighter, that's gonna help him.
Windle is an inquisitor, which those dudes can do everything. It's pretty amazing the way they can, 'become useful no matter the situation'. I'm not really keen on them, but with those judgements they have, man that's just handy.
Valiard is exactly what he's suppose to be, which is working quite well.
As far as Mireza goes, well, you summed that one up perfectly.
And as far as Iozef, I'm not so sure either.
With what they've been through, Iozef will be looking at more offensive type spells. He's learning that the spells he's memorized back home aren't getting it done out here.
The problem with this archetype, it rips you of 1 spell per level in addition to being useless. Well, outside of knowledge checks.
But I'm up to 4d6 channeling though! :P
You know, like I said in my previous post, I'm a power gamer at heart. So playing a guy like Iozef goes against every fiber of my being. I like to smash things. But I've always wanted to play a character who would be awesome at every knowledge skill, just to see what it's like.
And I've enjoyed the heck out of it! But man is it tough not being able to do anything in combat.
It's been a true challenge. :)
Still working on leveling up Iozef. It's gonna be tomorrow. These past couple days have been just too dang busy.
I'm in deep as well. No worries.
One minor comment regarding the blight hex--Joanna, according to the PRD
Hit point and ability score damage caused by an affliction cannot be healed naturally while the affliction persists.That is, as long as the blight is still in effect they won't get the CON point back. That's it for nitpicking.
Hey, look at that! There was a whole big thread back when the Witch came out complaining about the Blight hex, and no one ever pointed that out. So her method of blackmailing her way into freedom actually would have worked without handwaving.
It's still not something likely ever to be used in your average AP, where bad-guy NPCs have life expectancies of "the encounter you meet them in" and aren't likely to be to worried about losing 1 point of Con per day vs. being dead in the next 2 minutes.
She's really built for a low-combat, high-intrigue adventure where we stay in one place and have recurring NPCs: uncovering secrets, blackmailing and manipulating people, good times. Wilderness monster combat just isn't her thing. Like, at all.
I suppose what it comes down to is that we're all essentially support characters.
This. We're a rotation of fifth starters without an ace in the bunch. Mireza's useless in combat without the usual balance of being a sure thing with spells. Iozef's got the healing of a cleric without the normal at-least-average combat ability. Between Iozef and Windle, we're probably over-Knowledged, which is a benefitless surplus. (Having more than one PC who can do damage is fine because damage stacks; they can all hit the same or different monsters and the damage is cumulative. Knowledge characters just overlap; only the highest roll has any value, and the others are redundant.)
I'm not sure what would help Mireza (besides a headband of vast intelligence and a bunch more spells)
Yeah, it's possible she just won't fit in the campaign. There's a limit to how much I can change up her spells without her becoming an entirely different character. And honestly I like playing her because she's not a typical build: not just another Slumber - Evil Eye - Fortune - Cackle - Rinse - Repeat. But there's a reason everyone plays those witches: because they work.
Another issue, as Helaman mentioned, is group synergy. Some of the best witch spells without saves are AoEs, and there's no point in her casting black tentacles (or rain of frogs, for that matter) when Grigor and Valiard need to get in melee to do their thing; the best stuff she can do to the bad guys doesn't discriminate between enemy and ally.
Right now it feels like the best thing she can do is just stay in the wagon whenever it looks like we might be having an encounter. As the last three encounters we've had have indicated (Crove, spawn & spider-thing), the party does just as well without her contributing at all; she sat out every single one of them.
Not entirely true on the Spawn - those frogs didnt work EVERY turn but they did work from time to time. Its possible you did as much damage as Grigor given he was missing 90% of the time while only single wielding.
Nope, that thing had DR 10/magic. The frogs never did more than 9 points of damage a round, so they were irrelevant.
That's three consecutive encounters she made zero contribution to. I don't think she even healed anybody afterwards; Iozef had that covered.
Well at least you weren't trying to flip over the silly thing. I couldn't even come close to flanking it. I think Valiard's biggest contribution was assassinating the summoners before big and slimy ate them.
Well at least that is what I tell myself. Who knows if he even did that much.
Certainly had fun doing it though!
So you're saying I shouldn't worry about not pulling my weight since nobody else is either? ;)