Christina Morris's page

We're seeing a lot of topics pop up with concerns about proficiency scaling issues for anyone trying to step even a little bit outside of what the class provides (Bards and Medium Armor, Wizards and a Martial Weapon, even things built into the class, such as a Dragon Sorcerer's prof with their claw attacks).

I've also noticed that since every class is so heavily tied to it's class feat options, you really can't adopt a playstyle that wasn't built specifically for the class. If you want to TWF as a Barbarian, for instance, you just can't as the feats that make it happen aren't available to you (yes, you can "technically" TWF with regular MAP attacks and two different weapons, but we aaaall know that's not what anyone means by TWF ;P ).

There is certainly a lot of new and interesting things with the new edition that are improvements over the old, but I'm getting the feeling that Classes specifically are essentially so rigid that you either play the way the rulebook tells you or you struggle to keep up, by design.

That seems anathema to D&D-esque gameplay.

How do others feel?

This is my biggest issue with the system on a personal level now that we have the final rules. Fighting style and weapon choice is a lot more rigidly attached to class in PF2 due to the shift from general combat feats to class-based combat feats, and it's already lead to stumbling blocks for me while trying to put together a few older characters to see how they'd feel in the new system.

There's a lot I like in PF2, but given the way I play and create characters, this is actually a big enough issue that I'm stuck either substantially house-ruling PF2's feat systems (to have general combat feats again) or trying to make the elements I do like (such as ancestries, heritages, and backgrounds) work for PF1. I've not yet decided which path I like better—I'd prefer not to have to make the choice at all!

So... yeah.

This feat somehow slipped through as an older version. It is supposed to only apply to the weapons that you can use with Weapon Finesse. That said, I am still a little worried about the balance on this one. Obliviating the need for Strength was not the intent, although even with this revision, assuming the right character build, that might still be an issue.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Please don't neuter the feat so DEX-based characters aren't left entirely shafted. It's true that DEX is more powerful than STR in terms of what it affects, but the system has very little support for characters that don't rely on Strength in melee. As is, the DEX-based melee has to spend two feats that the STR-based melee does not. As long as the feat is limited to weapons that can normally be used with Finesse, it shouldn't get to the point where it's an issue. Most such characters will also still need a moderate (i.e., 13+) STR to handle Power Attack, so they're actually wasting points, in a sense, that the entirely STR-based character doesn't necessarily need to worry about.

Even with the Agile weapon enchantment, it's often better to just go full STR anyway, since it frees up feats and enchantment resources you could use for other thing instead.

That's about how I feel right now. Jason has said there will be more path abilities in the full release, but the Trickster seems to be lacking for the playtest. This is problematic, because the Trickster's going to feel weaker than the rest of the paths, by and large, in the playtest, even if the abilities in the full book make them equal to everyone else.

I'm crossing my fingers for an updated playtest release with some more options for them.

Forgive me if this has been done before...for I have never seen it in published form. Ok, with the constant concern about class balance on these forums I have a new/old idea.

Back in 2nd edition in the DMG they had this little, simple table for dms to create new classes. I greatly expanded on that table and birthed a campaign world my group quite enjoyed for a couple years. The idea was to be able to "build" your perfect class, the one that best represents your ideas and playstyle. (I know other game systems have systems like this, but I'm talking dnd or pf here)

I have done a similiar system for 3.5 Dnd, but with our current campaign entering its 8th(?) year I did want to disrupt our group atm. We have done some playtesting, but thats about it.

I doubt Paizo would be interested in such a venture ( and I have no desire to publish my own work for the masses to ridicule) so how about ANYONE out there taking a stab at a point buy character creation system for Pathfinder? I know most novices need their role developed for them at first, but I think many advanced players would be interested in such an idea. And I am not talking about a Skills and Powers approach here, but a true pick your options thing.

I suppose that wouldnt end all player complaints as folks would probably be argueing over "why does ability A cost this much while ability B, etc" but perhaps it would finally bring some true game balance for those seeking it. Additionally, some people (myself included) would enjoy building truly (or mostly) unique pcs.

Just a thought. Anyone know of anything like this still in print and thats any good?

This would be incredibly difficult to do for Pathfinder. When it comes down to it, none of the classes are truly balanced with one another. This goes all the way back to 3.0 because that's not the type of balance the original design team strove for.

You can certainly start from the ground up and work out something--many of the chassis elements of the classes can be quantified, and that's where systems like BESM d20 worked everything out.

But if you want the system to work directly with Pathfinder, there's just too much gray. How many "points" would wizard-level casting be? What about cleric? What about the witch, who has a weaker spell list than the wizard does, but is still a 9th-level spells arcane class?

Spellcasting is going to be the biggest problem, obviously, but similar problems apply to all the various "talents." Are rage powers worth more than rogue talents which are worth more than hexes? What about discoveries? And so on. Even simple races have issues, as mentioned above (*grumbles something about artificial categorizations and point values*).

Balance in Pathfinder (and 3.x) comes down to a lot of instinct and gut feelings, and much of that is incredibly hard to quantify. That's why the system in Unearthed Arcana (3.5) started with a simpler three classes--and you couldn't even really build the core classes with it.

For something like this, it's really better to scrap all the existing classes and start fresh. I'll second BESM d20 for one of the better examples of something like this done in d20. They did update that to 3.5 in the "Stingy Gamer Edition" that lacks all the art. You can probably find them second-hand online.

Where I am coming from is... I see the bolded statements as contradictory. That is why it is coming off to me like you are confused. Either there is no reason or there are reasons you almost agree with.

I'm not confused, but I didn't choose my words well. What I meant, I suppose, is that I can understand that a lot of DMs would simply assume flight is too powerful, and Paizo probably does too, which is why the ability is "off-limits," but I don't agree with that. I don't think there's any good reason to declare the ability off-limits when you can use the point system to create the same general result while still letting a DM that cares to have a race with fewer abilities that can fly. It should be priced such that for a "typical" race, it's difficult to acquire it, but it should, in theory, be possible for a race to exist that has flight and has to give up a lot just to have it.

To illustrate what I mean: imagine that flight cost 8 RP. With the standard linguist array, a standard race would only have 1 RP to play with if they were Medium. Now, the race in my game happens to be small, and has a 20 ft. base speed. They also have penalties to both Strength and Constitution (and bonuses to Dexterity and Charimsa), which isn't an array specifically called out, but let's say it's worth -1 RP to be conservative. That leaves the race with a few points to gain a variant Gnome Magic (1 RP), and have room for a skill bonus or another pair of 1 RP abilities.

The Large size trait already works like this. It's available to races of all power levels for a huge cost of 7 points. There aren't going to be many races with that trait as a result, meaning that it's far from "standard," but a DM that wanted to could still build a Large race of the proper power level for his game, though they won't have as many individual bonuses as another race might.

So, in short, what I mean is that there's no good reason to classify abilities in tiers as Paizo's done when we already have a point system that can accomplish the same general purpose without also replacing our Legos with shoehorns.

Is that more clear?

But how is that possible? Anything I can think to compare flight to only illustrates how overpowered it is in comparison to the core races abilities. I’m not saying if I can’t find a way there isn’t a way. I’m no game designer either, but if I was going to demand something, I’d at least have some reasoning behind believing it was possible.

Flight's most powerful from about levels 1-7. After that point, it takes a sharp decline in power as flight becomes readily available to spellcasters, and thus to the rest of the party when necessary as well. My general reason for believing it was possible is that I've had this flying race in my game for about eight years now, and there have never been any grievous imbalances. I've played in other games with flying races as well and have found the experience to be the same.

That may only be the case for the tables I've played at, but it leads me to believe that flight should be available as a standard ability--this is why we have the points. Even if it costs 10 points to take, setting it at the "advanced" threshold, a race with weaker ability score modifiers, a xenophobic array for languages, or some weakness such as light blindness could have it and be on par with the core races. They're giving up a *lot* for the ability to fly (and they don't even get good maneuverability with it).

I think it is dangerous to compare racial abilities to class abilities in this context. What adventurers with character class levels can do is not balanced against what commoners can do. Do you really not see how a race where every bum off the street has the advantages of being a quadruped and super speed (I can only hope that is all they get. Tell me they don’t have claws too.) is not balanced with your average human or dwarf bum? I assume not, so I’m interested in hearing what disadvantages you implemented to bring them in line. Or maybe it doesn’t bother you which is fine too.

Races shouldn't be ultimately balanced according to NPC classes in the first place. Racial balance is important for the PCs relative to one another and relative to the challenges they will face as part of the campaign. Indeed, this could be said for balance across the entirety of the game.

I'll pull my litorians as an example (though this is judging by my previous attempts at balancing the races, without respect to the playtest rules). They have a standard +2/+2/-2 ability score array (0 RP); they're Medium (0 RP). They've got fast speed (1 RP, advanced); low-light vision (1 RP); +2 Perception/Survival (4 RP); variant stonecunning applying to runes like glyph of warding (1 RP); variant fiendish sorcery that applies to wizard/magus for their Intelligence (2 RP since it's broader than the base ability); and weapon familiarity (1 RP). They pay 1 RP for the standard languages array.

So, my litorians clock in at 11 points as an advanced race. Now granted, they have a couple abilities I'm pricing ad hoc since they aren't listed, but this is a race I wrote up a few years ago. Now, assuming, for instance, that the price of skill bonuses may change (it seems high), and the prices for languages may change (it's also inflated, to make sure humans hit that "magic" 10 point spot), this race would be about spot on if, say, fast speed was worth 2 RP instead of just 1 (if you doubled advanced ability costs, or something).

I've had one player play a Litorian (a ranger), and his higher base speed meant he was able to wear medium armor and keep up with the rest of the group. That's certainly a nice benefit, but it certainly didn't make him markedly better than say, a dwarf. Dwarves get a lot of racial traits (and most evaluations of them that don't attempt to shoehorn them into 10 points place them at 12 or 13 points), so I can't see how moving at 40 feet autmatically makes my litorians too good to play alongside dwarves.

Again I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. (Paizo was, but those guys are jerks. ;P) It seems to me you are a good homebrewer that, like I said before, doesn’t need or want to use the race guide, but wishes you did. That is part of what I didn’t get. It makes more sense now that you’ve explained how much of a fanboy (in the nerd-positive sense) you are.

Yeah, some of your races aren’t balanced with the established ‘standard’. Don’t feel bad about it. Paizo is most likely going to put out a book that isn’t targeted to you. Don’t feel bad about it. Really don’t let this make you reconsider playing the game. So your friend wants to use one of your advanced races? Just tell her you’ve found them balanced (except maybe the flying one :P) and let her group make their own judgment call.

My biggest problem is that there's no real reason I should need to feel bad about it. The standard/advanced/monstrous tiers as hard "don't cross this line" boundaries serve no real purpose that the point system cannot serve on its own.

Imagine instead a system that relied entirely on RP to determine a particular trait's power. That system would have a set of guidelines explaining that standard races range from 7 or 8 RP (the halfling) to 12 or 13 RP (the dwarf). Advanced races, by contrast, range from 12 or 13 RP to 20 RP (or some other number), and then monstrous races, things really outside the norm, tend to have 25 or more points (or again, whatever number, really, so long as the points take that number into account).

This gives DMs like myself the greatest freedom to design our races in such a way that fits our worlds, even if that might mean somebody has claws at 1st level (which, incidentally, is entirely possible for a 1st level natural weapon style ranger, which also means that there's no *good* reason claws should be worth more than the 4 RP cost of a human's bonus feat). It also allows DMs to decide that their races won't have claws because they don't feel it's appropriate to their world.

In both of those situations, each DM is working within the established framework of the system. In Paizo's system, the first DM has to essentially ignore the system to get what he wants, and that also means that the RP costs provided for the advanced/monstrous abilities are of no use to him when balancing his races. He is, in effect, relying on his own judgement, and this means that the system as a whole offers him no value.

Why is it wrong to want Paizo to produce a product that has value to both kinds of DMs? Removing the "do not pass" nature of the tiers does not prevent or make more difficult any attempts to create "standard" races, and it opens up the product to a whole range of potential customers that would find little use to it otherwise.

It sounds like the main complaint you have is Paizo’s idea of ‘relatively balanced’ is underpowered compared to yours at least as far as certain abilities are concerned. So you want to use a system to fine tune your homebrew races, but only if the fine tuning doesn’t involve nurfing your races – that is unless you agree it is overpowered but built it that way anyway and called it balanced. You are sure you’re not confused? ;)

There is absolutely no reason that they can't design a point system that gives a value for claws (or fast, or whatever else) assuming you're giving it to a standard race. If this means the average "advanced" ability doubles in cost, then they can simply increase the expected point values used for an advanced race.

It's not about "nerfing" my races. It's about being able to accurately represent them in a way that keeps them on level with the Core Races. My race with flight has fewer abilities than other races primarily because flight is so good. But I would appreciate a book from the designers that helped me see how much flight is really worth.

For a race balanced with the core races, in the current system, flight is currently "priceless." I can almost see the case for flight being locked out from standard races, but I certainly can't see that case for claws when a level 1 sorcerer can grow claws, and there are a number of feats and archetypes that grant natural weapons of some kind. A level 1 barbarian can have a 40 ft. land speed--why can't a race of lion-men?

Also keep in mind that most races who take claws are going to be looking at something like d4 damage, which no respectable fighter is going to use as his primary weapons when he can pick up kukris and have an expanded threat range to boot. Claws are not so good that they have to be limited to "special" races. They really aren't.

Any point system of this nature is going to have a certain amount of arbitration involved within it, but Paizo's simply gone too far toward enforcing their own vision of what you can do with a "standard" race. But I guess that's my fault for wanting to buck the trend and have a world where a number of the monstrous standards aren't monsters at all, but developed cultural members of a greater society.

For shame that my kobolds would dare to have claws and consider themselves no more powerful than an elf! And for shame for me for wanting to be sure that if someone liked what I did with my kobolds and wanted to introduce them to his or her game that they would be balanced with the other core races. Likewise for the litorians and the kenku, who outpace a human by 10 feet a round due to their natural celerity.

I've striven to balance these races with the other standard ones, and rarely have my players complained about the balance between them. (I can only think of one instance, which was simply due to synergies instead of actual abilities Paizo classifies as "advanced.") But, I'm no professional designer, and I look to Paizo for guidance as always when handling the mechanical aspects of my world.

In a way, they're telling me my races aren't appropriate for the standard game. For someone that likes to avoid house rules where possible and stay within established frameworks, the Race Builder had me very excited, as it would allow me to both keep the homebrew races I've grown to be very fond of *and* stick to that Pathfinder framework.

Except it doesn't do that at all because I stepped just the left of center with my race design. (Okay, flight might be one step further, but it's the outlier here.)

If Paizo truly has the "holier than thou" attitude that you seem to do in this instance, GoldenOpal, it's going to really bother me. Will it keep me from playing Pathfinder? I doubt it, but the Advanced Races Guide is the first book I've seriously considered not purchasing, and I'm the type of person that takes brand loyalty in his RPGs very seriously.

I’d like to see them make some of the ability options with type prerequisites have two tiers of cost where not being the ‘favored’ type costs more RP. It gives an incentive to stick with the established themes of the game while allowing for more variety and still balances for those prerequisites that cost RP.

Why does there need to be an incentive to stick with established themes? My setting isn't very much like Golarion at all. A DM that wants to have a world more like Pathfinder's default setting will stick with those themes when he decides what type of races he's building for his game. If he doesn't want to do that, his players shouldn't be, in effect, punished by having weaker race options available to them because of the setting their DM has created.

I have a race of elves with something a lot like the Gnome Magic trait, which gnomes get for 1 RP. To duplicate that for my elves (since they're too tall, I guess) it costs 4 RP. For a system that's supposed to let us get creative with our homebrews, that's very oddly limiting.

As said before, we need Legos instead of shoehorns.

Maybe I'm just special, but was I the only one who assumed that small size, slow(movement 20 ft), and a Str penalty would be linked before checking out the Creation Guide?

I thought that for a long time in 3.x, though eventually there was a small race that had 30 ft. base speed. I can't remember what it was anymore, though. A number of my small races have a 30 ft. base speed as a result of that epiphany.

I even have a small race with +2 to Strength now. :)

That is not what I am saying at all. I think we can have a system that has both, frankly, and if at the end, you disagree with some of the prerequisites we put on an ability, and choose to disregard them, I promise I'll never come to your house, point, and say, "you are doing it wrong!"

Other designers on these forums have a tendency to get really defensive of the decisions or design you guys produce sometimes, so I suppose I was maybe pinning some of my frustrations with that on you. I apologize for that.

I know you're not literally saying that. My point is that the prerequisites don't really foster the creation of "variant" races anymore than not having them does, and I generally try to avoid house rules wherever possible.

Every house rule I make makes me take that much longer to introduce my game to someone else, so I dislike that this system is at once attempting to be a free-range system encouraging creativity and at the same time trying to limit it by encouraging these variant races via the subtype rules.

I don't think it should be true that all elves or all gnomes are magical, or that elves or gnomes are more likely to be magical than other races. Flavor-based assumptions such as these should be left out of a system that's main purpose is to allow us to create our own visions of these races and brand new ones with as few limitations as possible.

If these "subtype" prerequisites aren't intended to be absolutes, then perhaps simply present the abilities as "recommended" for certain subtypes. This has the benefit of encouraging snow elves, while not making the rest of us "break a rule" if we want to have halflings with "elven" magic.

In a similar vein, a number of the advanced abilities, such as +10 movement speed, aren't for some reason so powerful that a standard race couldn't have that ability. As it stands, the races in my games all have to be built with the advanced rules, but I want them to be comparable to the core races, so that they can be used at other people's tables if they so desire.

I can't do that right now, because I don't know how valuable +10 land speed or natural weapons is to a standard race. I know how powerful it is for an advanced one, but that doesn't do me any good when the core races don't have "access" to these abilities.

While some of you seem against this, one of the things we want this system to do is to create different versions of existing races. We want people to make snow elves, half-dwarves, and goblins from Akiton and so on. Because of that some subtype requirements will probably stay, allowing specific iconic features to stay within their race. But we will have robust options for creating entirely new race abilities also.

This only matters if for some reason the elven magic trait (for instance) not requiring the elf subtype prevented people from making snow elves. Decoupling all such abilities allows greater flexibility when we build our homebrew races while still allowing variant races just as well.

What you're instead telling me is that, in some sense, I'm having "badwrongfun" because I want to have a race of halflings that have elven magic (or whatever other subtype-only ability).

As a DM, I have a strong desire to remain "official," in that I like to keep as close to the baselines presented in the game as possible, so that it's easier to explain my game to other players and DMs, and so far it seems I'm going to have to ignore a lot of stuff in this race builder (which was originally the main reason I wanted to buy the Advanced Races Guide).

I've already nearly abandoned custom races I've used for close to ten years now just because I actually think the Pathfinder races are actually much more interesting than the 3.5 ones, but the Advanced Race Guide offered a way for me to satisfy my desire to be "official" and still keep my custom races.

Now, I'm not so sure I'll buy it at all, since I don't use the core races, so the archetypes and other things the book has for them are of little use to me.

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

ProfessorCirno wrote:

Still waiting on that reason as to why certain characters "should" be mechanically inferior.

Still waiting on why you think all the options in the Core Rulebook are mechanically equal.

Did you just use "We were bad at developing" as an excuse for making a bad development choice?

That's pretty hilarious.

Protip: I don't think all the options in the Core Rolebook are mechanically equal.

Protip the second: I think this is a poor decision to make if made intentionally.

Protip the third: The guy that created your edition agrees with me.

Making mechanically inferior options shouldn't be a point of pride, no more then I pride myself when a lesson plan for the day doesn't work.

I don't think that's actually what Monte was getting at. In the article, he comes out against what he calls "Ivory Tower Game Design" and he's not referring to mechanically inferior options with that moniker. He's talking about not laying out things, such as the fact that Weapon Focus is a better feat for Fighters than it is for most Wizards. The current rules require that you read Weapon Focus and think about how it's intended to fit into the rest of the game--Monte, in that article, at least, isn't sure this was the best thing for the edition.

The example about "Timmy Cards" (or in this case, "Timmy options," I suppose) is just to illustrate one thing they borrowed from Magic: the Gathering (with the other being things like descriptors on spells and the like). Nobody uses that article to argue that Monte doesn't like the fire descriptor; it shouldn't be used to argue that he thinks mechanically inferior choices are bad for the system, either.

In the case of the Separatist, what Monte (way back when he wrote that article, anyway) would like to see was a note bene explaining that it's meant for games where clerics of philosophy aren't an option because you have to worship a deity to be a cleric.

I normally find your posts insightful, Cirno, even when I don't agree with you, but you've misread the article here. And in fact, I misread it when I first read it too in the same way.

Whatever you do, don't April Fools the party and tell them the game isn't happening. That tends to backfire.

In the vein of the monster manual idea, give the party a few potions of things they'd like to use. Stuff like haste, greater invisibility, greater heroism, oil of greater magic weapon. Then, lose your book. Get up with it, walk around, read it by the fridge and leave it there "by accident." When someone drinks the potion, ask them to give you their book-- wait, nevermind, can you just look up the poisons section for me?

When they try to continue, insist the poison section is important. What's the DC of Hemlock? Oh, yeah. I know the onset time, just checking. By the way, what's your con score?

And then never bring it up again.

+1. I wish I ran a tabletop game to make this more fun. You don't get to see the looks on their faces for an online game. :(