Erick Wilson's page

Erick Wilson wrote:

The bottom line is that the CR system needs an update. It was designed to provide balance to sub-optimal characters in the first place, and that was before power creep. It just has not kept up.

I disagree.

CR should be balanced around sub-optimal characters. Otherwise people new to the system will become frustrated when their (obviously to veterans sub-optimal) character can't take things on. The new GM doesn't know that since they're all new, he needs to make encounters easier.

On the other hand - if the whole group are veterans who enjoy making more potent characters - then the GM can, rather easily, ramp up encounters with tougher and/or more numerous foes without much trouble.

Yes, as long as they're willing to do that. But many GMs and players, like Malag, feel it's "unfair" to go outside of CR, and then you have a problem.

I didn't say CR should be set at the level of veteran, optimized characters, and I don't think that. I think CR needs to be more flexible in some way. Currently it's tied to level, and this in some ways makes no sense, since level in PF is actually not a very good indication of character power, since as I said you can have one X level character that is like 5 times better than another character of the same level.

This next post I'm putting both here and under Storm Veiled Spires, for reasons which will momentarily become obvious:

With all due respect to Chris Wasko, I don't think Beneath the Storm-Veiled Spires is quite the slam dunk he thinks it is. That said, and with all due respect as well to the other fine contestants, from where I'm standing this is a two horse race: It's Storm Veiled Spires vs. The Starpearl Tower. Both are strong entries. Nick Wasko is a muscular writer with a lot of good ideas, and his presentation was clearly the most polished. That said, I still think Starpearl Tower is the winner here, and I'll tell you why.

In many ways, these two entries are like diametric opposites. They use a lot of the same villains and environments, but where Storm-Veiled Spires is hard, loud, raucous and in your face, Starpearl is soft, quiet, elegant and enigmatic. This is not a critique of either of them; these are matters of taste. Comparing the two is like asking whether Fury Road is a better action movie than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. They're simply trying to do different things. For instance, it's my habit to prep a lot of music as a GM, and If I'm running Storm-Veiled I see myself prepping a lot of this kind of thing. For Starpearl, it's a lot more of this. But, de gustibus non est disputandum.

The point is, I think you have to consider the best and worst case scenarios here. Either one of these could be a wreck if developed poorly. Storm-Veiled Spires would be a chaotic and arbitrary-seeming mess culminating in a "cinematic" boss fight that feels forced and/or falls flat completely. Starpearl would be a plodding cakewalk through trivial (if pretty) environments. Fine, either one could go wrong. Personally I'd rather be mildly bored by a bad Starpearl than confused and frustrated by a bad Storm-Veiled, but that's neither here nor there because what we really need to consider are the best case scenarios.

Storm Veiled Spires could be an action packed, exciting, fun game that approximated an experience like God of War or Skyrim. But at the end of the day, as much fun as you've had, I think it winds up being a forgettable pastiche, an entertaining summer blockbuster. Empty calories. But Starpearl might just be downright poignant. The best case scenario there? Neil already said it best: "For old school gamers, The Starpearl Tower could become as iconic as The Ghost Tower of Inverness if you play your cards right." Read that again if it hasn't quite hit you what a significant thing that is for a judge to say. Ghost Tower of Inverness was rated by Dungeon Magazine as one of the top 30 adventures of all time. Forgive the hyperbole in this next bit, but even if I'm wrong about its limitations, a well developed Storm-Veiled Spires has the potential to be a full on Skyrim type of experience. But a well developed Starpearl Tower? Man, you might just get the Legend of Zelda. In other words, The Starpearl Tower is the only entry this year that might, just might, have the potential to be an honest to goodness classic. Let's give it the chance.

1. In the Land of Time and Other Tales by Lord Dunsany

2. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

3. The Well-Built City by Jeffrey Ford

Ford is a highly underrated fantasist. Check out "The Manticore Spell" for starters: https://books.google.com/books?id=tv0oEKjewxcC&pg=PT367&lpg=PT367&a mp;dq=jeffrey+ford+the+manticore&source=bl&ots=FYseRpYaJE&sig=R lY-Vm-NTaPaIeq_lOCqaJVCAc0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEcQ6AEwB2oVChMIg-ey ydvUxwIVihg-Ch2SVQvN#v=onepage&q=jeffrey%20ford%20the%20manticore&f =false

Gene Wolfe is probably the greatest living fantasist, but don't take my word for it. Quoth Neil Gaiman: "He's the finest living male American writer of SF and fantasy – possibly the finest living American writer. Most people haven't heard of him."

Lord Dunsany is probably the greatest fantasist of all time, and he is arguably the most influential. The very term "fantasy literature" was coined in reference to his work. He basically invented this thing that we love. Now he is all but forgotten.

I have to say I have no idea what items will appear, because some of the most amazingly pedestrian (and indeed a few entirely questionable) items seemed to have survived whereas other, way more (or even extremely) interesting items did not. I'm not seein an increase in excellence or a tight competition - I'm seeing the results of letting a section of the fans crucify a lot of creativity on the pillar of hum-drum. Which is how democracy works. Bring back enlightened despotism.

I don't totally disagree. A few things made it through that unquestionably should have been culled, while a few items with promise were inexplicably culled early. Still, I think you're overstating the case. Most of the really quality stuff is still in the running, while most of the chaff was eliminated.

And I have to say, I absolutely love the rolling culls and the opportunity they gave us to track how well individual items were doing. I think they were a great improvement to the process.

Just keep in mind that the winner of this contest writes a module - Would you prefer your new author to have rich, innovative ideas with cool themes? or one who can nail the mechanics?

Editors can help with mechanics. Give me the good writer anyday. My preference is to vote for the good idea, execution being far less important (but not something to ignore)

Totally disagree. To be honest, the idea behind a module is not that important, much like the plot of a kung fu movie is not that important. It just needs to be strong enough to do its job and enable adventuring.

A workmanlike module with well constructed encounters, wherein the writer has clearly visualized how things are going to play out pragmatically, is very much preferable to some high concept mess with neat ideas but boring/easy encounters and/or baffling mechanics. In my opinion, Paizo currently has far too many of the latter type of mod, due to the predominance of opinions like the one papasteve just related.

Edit: I submit, as examples of what I am talking about, Quest for Perfection Part I (which I thought was excellent) vs. Quest for Perfection Part III (a high concept mess where the mechanics hadn't been tightened up enough).

Edit 2: In other words, when in doubt I favor solid mechanics in an item over a vivid idea. The solid mechanical item would have to be very humdrum, and the poorly designed item extremely evocative, for me to go the other way.

Kirth Gersen wrote:

TL;DR: "A good DM can fix this mess" is not a reason for people to pay $50 for a rulebook.

It isn't a reason not to buy one either. You have to approach the game like you do Champions. It's a very broad game in the things it includes, but the GM is encouraged to make it work for his group and his style of running the game. Far too many people take the assumption that if it's in the game it has to work for everybody and everybody's style. That is not true and never has been in any form of D&D.

There are three major flaws with your argument.

1. Champions/Hero System has a portion of the rule book that explains its philosophy towards game balance. In this section it says explicitly that the system can easily be broken, explains how to do so, explains why not to do so, and gives guidelines rather than hard rules on how to determine if the character you've designed is reasonable. Pathfinder allows for similar excesses, but has no equivalent section explaining its philosophy.

2. Champions/HS does not have nearly as extensive an organized play setup, and if it did I feel certain it would approach organized play rather differently than PFS does.

3. If you're talking about aesthetic preferences then I would agree with you that not every game will be for everyone. Hero System, again, markets itself as a generic system so that there is an assumption that GMs will be determining allowed aesthetic elements within each campaign. Pathfinder and D&D need to stop positioning themselves as the "big tent" game system for all lovers of fantasy, and start making design and marketing decisions that actually plant a flag in some aesthetic soil. 5E has actually done this to a degree. Pathfinder is still all over the place, and refuses to take responsibility for their own schizophrenia. They do not seem sensitive to the obvious argument that the simulation of certain fantasy genres requires one to leave out numerous game elements that PF includes and even emphasizes. You could even make the argument that something as fundamental as wizards as PCs violates the inherent aesthetic laws of the Sword and Sorcery genre. Since D&D was initially conceptualized as a Sword and Sorcery engine, this is a rather serious critique that I don't think anyone has fully dealt with to this day.

Yes, you are free to spend your money on whatever you want. But your subjective experience of enjoying the book does not mean that the money was, in any objective sense, "well spent."

I really wish we didn't even have to have discussions like this. "Samurai" is just the name that happens to have been given to that particular grouping of game statistics. Reskinning/reflavoring is an important if not essential aspect of playing RPGs. It's a major part of what makes the hobby creative and enjoyable. When I actually have to walk my GM through the very concept of reskinning just to initiate the conversation about my character concept, I feel like I'm back in 1989.

Paizo needs to sell their products and PFS is supposed to help them do that, largely via the rule that each player has to possess, either on pdf or hardcopy, every book that their characters' draw rules from.

This rule is understandable, but increasingly impractical as the proliferation of books marches on. If you like using pdfs of everything anyway, maybe its fine for you. But if you're someone (like me) who likes having hardcopies, it's annoying having to face the choice of either buying everything twice or else carting around a truly unwieldy pack of books to every game. It's especially frustrating since it is entirely unnecessary: The truth is that at this point the pfsrd site is actually a better resource than the pdfs, since they update based on errata and even thread commentary from devs.

So I say get rid of the "must own/present the books" rule in PFS. Now, "that's all well and good," Paizo may respond, "but then how do we use PFS to sell product?" Well, I have an idea for that, too: Boons.

The way it works is this: Each Paizo product, whether purchased hardcopy or on pdf, will come with a code that can be redeemed in the PFS section of the website. The code will then randomly select three possible boons that the player can choose from. The player chooses his boon and then prints it out. The boon sheet has his PFS number included on it, so he can not simply make a bunch of copies and give them out; the boon only works for one specific character.

The boons available will be stuff people really want. Some ideas:

1. Races- There would be boons allowing players to build characters of various races. PFS would stop allowing non-core races altogether, except via these boons. Thus the approximate number of weird races could be controlled, and you wouldn't get the phenomenon of an inexplicable influx of X race each season. You could even have a few ultra-rare race boons floating around that allowed play as a centaur or an ogre mage or something.

2. Companions and Familiars- There would be boons allowing the selection of cool familiars and animal companions, like the faerie dragon, owlbear, hippogriff etc.

3. "Cameo Characters"- These boons would allow the creation of a level (randomly generated from 4-11) character that would not earn XP or level up, but which could be played (randomly generated from 1-6) times before being permanently retired. This would let players play around with interesting character and build concepts that they like, but which they might not be interested in committing a lot of time to.

4. NPC Codex Pregens- These boons would allow the player to use a specific character from the NPC codex in place of the usual pregens of a specific level. For instance, you might receive a boon that allowed you to play Meliski Traundor the Gambler (pg. 30) anytime you would normally have the option of using a level 7 pregen.

5. Unique/Sentient Magic Items- These boons would make interesting magic items available to the character for purchase.

6. Misc- All kinds of other stuff.

Note that none of these boons actually increase the power of the characters played; they just provide interesting options. Releasing these sorts of options in this way would make them feel special to the players that have them, would make unique-option proliferation more controllable (since the number of X option available could be set by the computer program that gives out boons), and would push product very effectively assuming people were excited about the boons available. Anyway, that's the idea.

If I do play any Core games, I will be glad not to see (in addition to everything everyone else has named)-

1. oppressive boredom (the spell, anyway)
2. jingasa of the fortunate soldier
3. Ricochet Shot (though I suppose that's assumed in the general happiness at not seeing gun stuff)

Sebastian Hirsch wrote:

To be blunt, that particular option is so good, that some summoner players kinda resent having it. If they don't cast haste... well apparently they are doing something wrong :(

This is a more general problem. "What? A wizard without Enlarge Person prepared?" Etc. There are a few options that are so good (or, at least, so useful to the rest of the party) that everybody else assumes that you're playing your character wrong if you aren't spamming them. (The CLW wand is in the same category, only that's become de rigeur for everybody because it's such a great value. It's like having pants on.)

What's odd is that we have these social expectations to be playing your character maximally efficiently... and, then, at the same time, we have GMs complaining about parties that stomp scenarios without much challenge, and parties complaining about most scenarios being too easy (with some exceptions, like (say) Bonekeep). Given the latter, you'd think that at least as a community we'd realize that it's OK not to have perfectly optimized characters, and to have a bit of fun with character concepts, and to stop talking about how everybody must "carry their weight in combat". Sure, you want your character to be effective, but that's different from doing the absolute best thing at all times.

This is so right on, and it's the reason I have a big problem with the creation of Core Campaign. It sends the wrong message. In a way, it's a huge capitulation. How can the correct approach to power creep be for Paizo to say, implicitly, as they have now done, "Sorry, we were wrong to create 90% of our products in the first place and by buying them you wasted your money getting ever more involved in a game that was becoming gradually unplayable in a way we knew would happen and chose to do nothing about"? This is crazy.

The solution is and has always been some kind of elastic system of challenge determination. To Paizo's credit they have slightly touched on this with the reluctant addition of "hard modes" in some of the PFS mods. But it's absolutely wild to me that it's been like pulling teeth getting them to make even that small concession to common sense. It's this glaring obvious problem that people have been talking about forever, and when Paizo finally decides to deal with it, their solution is to graciously allow us to not use most of the stuff we bought from them.

And in the process we lose any hope of seeing a widespread adoption within PFS of the simple formula that rknop has just articulated, which should have been SOP all along. To paraphrase: "Stop optimizing past the point of basic effectiveness and have a bit of fun with character concepts."

Edit: I should say that I theoretically don't have any problem with Core Campaign and in fact heartily support it, if and only if it's not going to be their only solution to this issue. But it seems like they've just kind of thrown up their hands and taken a hammer to the problem rather than a much called-for scalpel.

Erick Wilson wrote:

The main things I'll be happy not to see anymore are haste and dominate person! Oh, wait...no, those are still there.

Well with summoners gone, that removes the level 2 haste, that is something.

True!

Because they're big anti-climaxes.

"And then the villain died. The end."

I think you're missing the OP's point. Both SoS and massive damage one-round melee/gun/archery kills are equally anti-climactic. So why is it that the same people who hate on SoS spells so often have no problem with a Magus walking up and one-shotting the BBEG with his scimitar? Or the Gunslinger Ricochet Shotting it to death before anyone else has acted? Or the optimized evoc sorcerer intensified shocking grasping it to death with his Empower rod and his Spell Specialization?

I think it's a really good question, because to me both outcomes are equally annoying, and most RAW, optimization heavy games feature almost nothing but these kinds of anti-climaxes. The so called "rocket tag" syndrome. Why doesn't this bother the crap out of more people? And, more specifically, why does rocket tag bother the crap out of many people when it happens because of a SoS but not when it happens because of ridiculously massive damage?

The main things I'll be happy not to see anymore are haste and dominate person! Oh, wait...no, those are still there.

I don't need more confidence in banning things I think are overpowered or not a good fit for OP. A few years ago, the VOs and I went through a process of determining what existing things should be removed from the campaign, including synthesist summoner and the like. I don't anticipate having to do another rebalance in the foreseeable future.

For all future releases, we have teams of VOs that go through all released products. They complete a summation form and forward to me. I then receive John's input on what he thinks of the recommendations, speak to other Paizo staff as needed, and I then make a final ruling on whether something is included in PFS or not. Once I have made my final decision based on the totality of feedback, I update Additional Resources accordingly.

In other words, the answer to the OP's question, sadly, is no.

Instead of having Core Campaigns which drastically limit character customization (the main reason to play Pathfinder in the first place), I wish they would just ban everything that was featured prominently in this thread (plus a few other things) and then carry on as they have been.

I heard it a little but I'm surprised more people didn't mention Inquisitor. I played a Monk (Sensei) 2/Inquisitor 9 in PFS and she was great (well, she was sort of meh until level 7, but after that she was great). Her 28 Wisdom plus Extended Bane meant she was basically using bane on every attack. That plus Spell Bane made spells like hold person still a valid option for her at level 11 with a will DC of 23. Forget MAD when you're a sensei; all her other stats were like 10 or 12.

Although I basically agree that Monks are best for 1-5 levels of dip, I don't think they're useless as a single class, and especially not (as has been suggested) when they have MoMS. I had an extremely successful PFS career as a MoMS 8/Duelist 3 with panther, snake and crane styles. She inflicted decent damage and was impossible to kill. I took 0 damage while playing her in Waking Rune on hard mode. Of course, Crane has been nerfed since those days, but she's still pretty unkillable.

Speaking of which, it's a complete myth that you need armor to get the best ACs. I made a level 4 halfling Monk/Slayer with an AC that was around 32. My Monk/Fighter/Magus is already a decent tank, and will grow into a great one. Getting AC from Dex, Int and Wisdom is always nice.

My dhampir Monk/Witch is mostly for fun, but it's still nice to charge through difficult terrain and allies and kick someone for 6d6+6 damage while also delivering a Punishing Kick, an evil eye hex and a frostbite spell. Her best attack definitely does not require her to stand still.

Edit: And yes, she was intentionally contrived to be a Witch doing 6d6+6 damage.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I appreciate Owen's post, but it has left me just as confused as before about the central issue here: I still have no idea of the elevation from which this map we're designing is supposed to be viewed.

"A full-page map, of a previously unmapped fantasy-themed location in Golarion" makes me think it's supposed to be a map of a large-ish region, like the area around the Shimmerglens that players spend so much time in during Rise of the Runelords.

On the other hand, bothering to say "no one needs a map of a 20-foot by 20-foot room with a door centered in the north and west walls" makes it sound like it's going to be a much more zoomed-in encounter style map with 5' squares. But then again, the next sentence dispels that notion with: "...or of a forest that's six miles long and three miles deep with a single road and one town in the middle."

Or maybe contestants will be able to choose a zoomed-in (encounter style) or zoomed out (regional) map, but it seems like those two styles would be difficult to judge against each other. And then of course, there's also the middle ground possibility of a sort of location/dungeon map.

So, Owen, you probably intended to keep this issue vague, but on the off chance that you didn't...could you help me out and clarify this one thing?

Are there any players out there who do not plan out their characters level progression?

I've grown tired of players who have every skill and feat planned to 20th level. It leaves no scope for the character to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face.

A common example is the "I must wield one type of weapon and commit all my feats to it!" then a nice piece of gear is found and they PCs just sell it...

Thoughts?

Yes. Play a different game. There are lots of them out there. Play Savage Worlds or Hero System or any of a million other things you could be playing.

In 3.5, you basically have to plan your progression up to level X, or else there are a million traps that ruin your character. Don't hate the players; hate the game.

Incidentally, even if you do run some other system, I would make it very clear to your players before starting that you view experience increases in the way you do. Many players do not. See, another view is that the character already has, at level 1, all the basic training and resources to become whatever he's going to become at level 20. By levelling up, he's not learning new random things that are completely off his career track. He's growing and developing within the path of skills that he already knows.

I would love a game that allowed for both approaches to experience simultaneously, but 3.5 is just not that game, and I think you'll be employing frustrating pretzel logic if you try to somehow house-rule it into being that.

I openly admit to being incredibly hostile towards HeroLab. I do not allow it at my tables in PFS. Hearing "I don't know, that's what HeroLab says" is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

That said, few ppl in my area see any reason to use HeroLab, since you effectively have to pay double for any material you use for your characters.

HeroLab is a crutch that contributes to rules atrophy. I've seen new and experienced players fall victim to it. If you feel some unholy need to use it, don't go beyond using it as a character sheet generator.

Other than that, it's really best to be avoided for Society play.

Total, unmitigated disagreement.

You cannot be banned for using HeroLab.

You are more likely to have an accurate character sheet by using HeroLab than if you don't use it.

HeroLab is a good product and en effective tool. I wish everyone used it. I find far more math mistakes from players that don't use it than those that do.

Let's bear in mind that Pathfinder is at this point ridiculously complicated, as CWheezy pointed out above.

Honestly, the whole situation with PFS has gotten totally out of hand. There are so many books now! If I was actually going to bring every book with me that I use for my characters to every convention (or even to local games since I live in New York and have to take the subway and walk several blocks, often through snow or crappy conditions, to get to the games), I would be carting around this huge, heavy bag everywhere and it would get old real fast. Often I don't even know for sure which character I'm playing until I get to the table and talk to the GM.

Look, I get that Paizo is a company and they have a right to do things to push their product. But frankly they have to find a better way where PFS is concerned. Make every product come with some kind of PFS voucher in the back; I don't know. Anything. But I have only so many resources I can allocate to Paizo, and I already spend the maximum, which is a lot. If I have to buy every book for every character, sometimes in multiple forms, that just means I'd spend less on maps and minis (both of which I have a lot of) and books like the Game Mastery Guide (which I also own, along with the NPC Codex, Ultimate Campaign, etc). In short, I'd scrimp on things that make the play experience better when I GM. This is not good for anyone. Bear in mind that GMing in Society currently brings no rewards whatsoever. It's essentially free labor for Paizo, on top of the money that you have to (well, ok, you don't have to but it helps) spend on the aforementioned books and supplies in order to do it.

So forget about crazy stuff like Nefreet banning me from a table for having a HeroLab sheet. If a GM asks me to see my copy of Blood of Angels (which, yes, I own a hard copy of, and which I never bring to games, and which I will not buy on pdf since I own the actual book already) before he'll let me play my garuda blooded character, I'm just going to walk away from that table and do something else. It's not worth the hassle at a certain point.

So please Paizo, I honestly respect your need to sell product. But maybe there's a better way at this point?

P.S. EDIT: It would at least be nice if buying GMing-related products in some way exempted you from a certain amount of the restrictions regarding this kind of issue. As a player, I would also personally be willing to pay a low monthly or yearly membership fee in order to be exempted from the "must have the books present" requirements. I don't know, I'm just spitballing. I just feel like there have to be some kind of other solutions in this uber complex, post-advanced-class-guide world we live in now. It just doesn't seem right that I feel like a GM is being a little bit of a jerk if he just follows the basic rules, and at the moment I do kind of feel like that where this rule is concerned.

I've seen a lot of angry people on these boards expressing some version of the following sentiment: "If you're going to have pages of house rules and/or restrictions on what I can and can't use, then don't lie and say that you're running a Pathfinder game just because you think that's all people will actually play. When you do that, you're misadvertising and wasting both of our time." Similarly, I've seen several threads devoted specifically to discussions over the degree to which magic and the casting classes can or should be restricted in different types of games.

All of this begs the question that I ask in the title of this thread. I think the Paizo powers-that-be have been spectacularly bad at addressing this issue, and it's a thorny one. See, the folks that say "It's not Pathfinder if you're not playing it exactly (or at least pretty close to exactly) as written" have a valid and understandable argument. The problem is, when you play Pathfinder exactly as written, you get a very specific sort of experience that is simply not what many people are looking for out of the game, for a variety of reasons.

What is that experience? Well, broadly speaking it's a sort of madcap pastiche that makes Final Fantasy VII look staid in comparison, wherein kitsune ninjas battle against or alongside robots and knights and samurai and elves. Wuxia monks run up walls while being shot at by half-angelic steampunk gunslingers. Oh, and now there are psychics. Everything plays out rather predictably if you're familiar with the system. Indeed, it must, since the entire thing is geared around "combat as sport" encounter based play. Everything (including, paradoxically, magic) works very literally, mathematically and unromantically. And typically, it's mostly all about kicking in doors and looting treasure.

Exploration based play is very difficult to achieve meaningfully. Interesting social scenarios, though possible with skilled players, are not emphasized. Indeed, the system works against such play in many ways. It works against aesthetics oriented play as well, since the most optimized options for character creation are almost invariably the least interesting. And all of this is not to mention caster/martial disparity, which is very real. Even if the latter problem can be bridged, doing so requires a whole other set of conventions/assumptions that many find distasteful.

And finally, it is virtually impossible to challenge experienced players without departing from the RAW challenge rating system. Internal balance between party members can also be thrown off quite easily and quite dramatically.

If you have a problem with any of that, you have only one option (assuming you still want to play Pathfinder): make house rules and/or restrict the scope of available options. Yet this leads to an undesirable situation. As a GM you have to field (sometimes quite vehement) discontent over the restrictions you place, and as a player you can never be sure what you are or aren't allowed to do when creating your character. I've seen this issue cause quite a lot of arguments and frustration, and if nothing else it is certainly impractical.

I'd like to hear the community's feedback about these issues, and how we (or Paizo) might be able to address them. If possible, try to avoid rehashing the usual arguments or restating the complaints I already enumerated here. And please, those of you who feel that none of this is a problem: you're welcome to your opinion; I'm just asking you not to voice it here. I know, I know. It's all in the social contract and just don't be a jerk and yada, yada, yada. I've heard it all before and it really doesn't help the situation. In a way, you could say that this post is specifically an attempt to facilitate dialogue that will help players and GMs more easily arrive at a social contract.

A Closing Thought:
As an example of what I'm talking about, Paizo's confusion regarding these issues is illustrated particularly well by the Advanced Race Guide. What on earth does it mean to have "featured" and "uncommon" races? That the GM gets to decide whether those races are allowed in play or not? Isn't that always the case? What is the point or the value of telling players that a given race is "uncommon?" In what setting (since they don't seem to mean in Golarion)? According to whom? My campaign might focus on the longstanding total war between the world's two dominant races: the Samsarans and the Strix (this might look a lot like the comic Saga). In my Westeros inspired setting, the grippli aren't "uncommon" at all, because they're completely, non-negotiably non-existent. But then, in that world elves, gnomes, dwarves, halflings and half orcs might be too, despite their inclusion in the Core.

I am not an actor and certainly don’t require others to be. To be honest, I don’t like it when the player and/or GM gets too far into the acting. It feels creepy to me.

I have to say, I have a little bit of a problem with this post. It's called a "role playing" game because you're supposed to play a role. It's in the title. This post is a bit like going to an acting class and then calling the people there liars or psychopaths for pretending to be someone they're not.

To those who read ElterAgo's post: Please don't be discouraged or worry that other people at the table are judging you this way if you're role playing your character, even if you're not very good at it. You're doing it right and doing what you're supposed to do. Keep at it!

I think someone said it already, but I agree that Rogue can be great for dipping. 2-4 levels of Rogue can be fantastic, depending on what you're going for. If you're a martial build that plays off feat trees, 4 levels of Rogue can be much more lucrative than 4 levels of Fighter (assuming that your build needs Weapon Focus, Weapon Finesse and/or any style feat). You get two feats you need, same as you would have from Fighter, plus then you get Sneak Attack (+2d6), evasion, uncanny dodge and a bunch of skill points. That's pretty sweet when all you're giving up for it is 1 point of BAB and 4 hp.

So, a few things.

1. LazarX, it's not about theorycrafting. I used pre-nerf Crane Style/Wing/Riposte in PFS from 2nd level all the way up to 11th with my MoMS, and it was incredibly powerful. I like to brag that I played Waking Rune with that character on hard mode and took 0 damage the whole time (while dishing out plenty). If you're someone who likes to make defensive builds (as I do), it truly became an inevitable feat choice the way it was before. I had to consciously force myself not to take it for my characters after that first MoMS, despite the fact that it was always more optimal. After that Monk, I stopped making optimal characters because it's not fun to play the mods with them.

2. Defensive builds are, in general, not considered as effective because the design of most scenarios and most of the other classes does not incentivize them; rather they incentivize aggressive, offensive play. That is changing, however, now that mods are becoming more challenging and featuring more intricate encounters with broader types of threat and more terrain features. All of this favors defensive builds since it makes it more difficult to end combats absurdly quickly (unless you're a Gunslinger/Paladin or an optimized full caster, but honestly those things shouldn't exist at all and everybody knows they're too good so there's no use talking about them).

3. I am about to bring my MoMS out of retirement to play the 12th level scenario, so I am in fact in the position right now of having to decide whether to keep Crane Wing/Riposte or to throw down some prestige and swap them for Snake Sidewind and Snake Fang. The Snake feats dramatically increase my offensive output and the Crane feats marginally increase my defensive capabilities. The thing is, I'm a defensive build, so a marginal defensive boost might put me over that limit break, and therefore ultimately be better in some ways than a significant offensive boost. In many cases that +4 from Crane Wing is still going to put my AC into the "only hits me on a 20" territory. So I'm conflicted, even though I recognize that the Snake feats are probably ultimately more optimal for me to take.

4. Ultimately, I am a slightly different category than the options the OP listed. I used to never take Crane Wing (after that first Monk) because it was too good. Now I don't take it because it's a bit weak, and just generally unexciting. I definitely think they missed the Goldilocks zone on this feat both before and after the errata.

5. It might be worth re-doing the poll as DevilKiller said, since the issue really is with Crane Wing (and sort of Riposte) rather than Crane Style. Crane Style itself is still a perfectly good, viable feat choice, even if you don't intend to take the rest of the feat tree.

Insain Dragoon wrote:

In terms of that.

What's the functional difference between a Charisma 5 character with 3 ranks in diplo/bluff/intimidate and a charisma 10 character with no ranks in said skils?

There are two player groups I know of in terms of how they consider stats/skills and how they make up a character.

Group one: Your Base stats are how the world sees you and how they respond to you.
ex: Low charisma- ugly, or low presence.

Group two: Your base stats are simply your aptitude for learning and the way the world sees you and responds to you is based on your skills (which are helped or hindered by your aptitude)
ex: low charisma: Is not as good at talking to people as he could be, but by perseverance and working on his faults he can become good at it...

I can see where you're coming from. How does it work when stats are used for things other than skill rolls? Charisma, for example, in addition to a bunch of class abilities, is used to make opposed Charisma checks to resist or reinforce domination effects. Strength determines carrying capacity and the ability to use brute force to break objects. Intelligence is used to resist "brain drain" when using contact other plane. Some things really do depend on the base statistic.

I prefer "group one" because I do not think a character should be good at everything...

I absolutely prefer group two, for one reason in particular: I believe players should have as much freedom and control as possible over bringing their concept for a character to life. The ability score system simply makes this impossible, in many cases, by tying scores to classes in the way they do. If a GM is bound and determined to enforce the idea that, for instance, "you must have a high Charisma score in order to be physically attractive," then you are screwed if you want to play, for instance, an attractive fighter (like, say, Kitiara from the Dragonlance novels). The price you pay in terms of effectiveness is simply too high if you must spend 5 ability buy points earning a 14 Cha (or whatever) when you could have gained 3 points by dumping the stat to 7. That's a net cost of 8 ability buy points, which is a huge chunk of your total. And for what? Just so you can describe your character as attractive? And get a paltry +2 to a few skill checks for things that aren't the focus of your build? It's madness.

As far as your objection (that characters shouldn't be good at everything), I would agree with it if I thought it was actually an issue. The practice of not interpreting ability scores doesn't actually make anyone better at anything. It just keeps GMs from adding some extra, totally arbitrary interpretive layer to the roleplay based on some numbers that are completely ill defined from an objective standpoint. And that is as it should be.

EDIT: And yes, you're correct that some things depend on the raw score. But the number of cases where this comes up is small enough that it can be ignored for the greater good. It's only a big issue if you force it to be. Not to mention that you already get stupid situations where the stupid Int 7 Barbarian rolls a 20 on his Int check and solves the puzzle before the genius Int 22 Wizard, who rolled a 10. Honestly, it's best just not to think about it.

There is absolutely no reason to punish them, or anything resembling it. There are many ways to look at ability scores, and if you ask me they should not actually be regarded as very important. They certainly should not dictate everything about how a given character looks, acts, etc. A few alternative ways to look at the situation:

#1: Ability scores do not actually tell you anything about the character. What they do is signal you as a GM regarding what aspects of the character the player in question feels are important, or wants to explore. Low Charisma does not necessarily mean "this character is ugly/unlikeable/unfriendly." It means, instead, "this character may or may not be friendly or attractive, but regardless the player is not very interested in exploring or highlighting his/her social exploits."

#2: Ability scores give relatively minor incremental bonuses or penalties to certain endeavors, full stop. There is no need to "interpret" what they mean. The game system does this for you. A character with a 5 Charisma has a -3 penalty when making Diplomacy checks, and therefore is likely to fail them, which will have the result of people not being especially nice to him. On the other hand, if he maxes out his Diplomacy (and other social skill) ranks and takes Skill Focus: Diplomacy, etc, then people will probably tend to treat him very well despite his low Charisma. Such a player may call such a character "charismatic" and be correct regardless of his Charisma score. The system will bear out his assertion.

#3: If you absolutely must assign some "meaning" to the abilities, then think of them merely as rough indicators of potential rather than of actual capability. They indicate, you might say, nature instead of nurture. The character is, in the end, whatever he has made himself into. Plenty of ugly ducklings have become rockstars and plenty of wimps have turned into jocks, etc.

You yourself might not realize what the standard level of expected performance is. Without examples, we cannot tell if the player is power gaming, which is not actually wrong, or if you just don't understand the math the game expects for PCs to survive and achieve the goal.

Do you not understand that adventures are somewhat written to be easy so players can survive and accomplish the objective? How many people do you think would have stuck around this hobby if they routinely got killed and always had to start brand new ? No xp, no gold, no progress saved at all. At least in a video game, you get save points...

This is something I've written a lot about here. It took me a long time and kind of a needlessly dramatic moment to realize how strongly many people feel about really not wanting the mods to be very dangerous/challenging. I suppose for a long time, I just thought people didn't really understand how much more punishment their characters could take than what the mods typically have to offer. I now realize this is not the case. People DO know the the mods are (relatively) easy, and they like it and want it this way. At least, a lot of people do, or anyway a lot of the people who are left playing organized play do.

On the other hand, I have heard several people complain about this too. But here's the tricky part- most of them just stopped participating in organized play. Because the people who want it easy are the majority, and because they feel very strongly about it (like Ray expresses in his comments on this thread), I think it's difficult to know how many players would potentially want a harder game: most of them just leave.

People sometimes get a bit self righteous with players/DMs that want the game to be harder, but it's worth bearing in mind that the only thing keeping the game easy is the "tyranny of the majority." There's no real logical argument behind why it should be that way. And Ray's comparison to video games isn't really apt, either. Afterall, PFS has resurrection, for a relatively cheap resource expenditure. And if you'll recall, back in the good old days of Nintendo, "getting killed and having to start brand new" was the default mode, not save points.

Anyway, there are always going to be GMs who want to challenge players more than the current settings do, and there will always be players who want more of a challenge. My point is the same as it has always been: there should be some kind of variable settings and options to allow GMs the possibility of more control and/or increased difficulty. The GM running the table could announce on the muster what variant he was using. Then people simply wouldn't have to signup if they weren't looking for increased difficulty. Any problems that resulted from this would be self correcting, as it ever was in gaming. That is to say, people who didn't want difficult mods would simply stop signing up for games being run by the GMs who used the difficult settings.

I still say this is the way to go, and that GMs and players who want this kind of thing should keep up the pressure and express their discontent. In the meantime, play by the rules as long as you can, and if you can't anymore then just quit. It's apparently the reaction the devs are looking for. This is not snark, by the way. I'm not sure how else to interpret their oft-expressed response to criticism: "organized play isn't for everyone."

Again, though, it's hard to tell how many players would actually prefer some kind of options along the lines of what I'm suggesting. I myself, afterall, fall distinctly into the category that Ron Edwards called "the bitterest gamers in the world." I like high simulation, high challenge, low competition play. This means I get labelled as a min-maxer by most sim-focused players, and then kicked in the nuts by actual min-maxers. Very frustrating, but so it goes. Anyhow, between the players who just leave organized play when they realize it's never going to get harder and those who don't know they'd enjoy a harder game simply because they've never experienced it, the actual demographics are very hard to estimate. So by all means, you have the right to express your preference for an easy game. But I don't think you need to suppress the opposite viewpoint in order to do that.

Just like its weird if you describe your charisma seven fighter as Don Juan and Lothario rolled into one.

No, not like that. It's completely different, and a couple of people have tried to explain why already.

With all due respect a character with a cha of 7 should not be as good as one with a cha of 18 at the table. There is a reason why you get a negative value for taking attributes less than 10...

If my Diplomacy bonus is better than yours despite my 7 Cha and your 18, then I guess I'm more likable than you, eh? And this can easily happen in the system in a number of ways.

Want to roleplay a cha 14 or more when the value on the character sheet is a 7. Go right ahead. Anyone caught cheating like that at my table when I'm a DM will suddenly find his character doing less damage and being less graceful.

I suggest to you that it is senseless to enforce this kind of thinking at your table, and that you might as well save yourself the headache and abandon it. What do you gain by doing this? Nothing at all. So let it go. It's ok to just let it go.

andreww wrote:

Aragon fought off all nine ring wraiths including the Witch King of Angmar on his own, resisted Dominate Person from Sauron and took control of an entire army of ghosts. Sounds like book characters don't neatly fit into rpg rules more than anything else.

Wraiths are CR5. The King of the Wraiths is easily nothing more than just the original. Sauron only had charm person and Aragon got a +4 to save.

Aragon was maybe 6, making CR 5 monster a fomable but manageable threat.

The ghost army control was a plot device, nothing more. Does not indicate ability on Aragon's part aside from being sired from the right loins.

You see why I didn't want to start talking about Record of Lodoss War?

Nerfing spells is harder to do, because generally, individual spells are fairly consistent and well-balanced (with a few obvious exceptions which can't be easily addressed, like Wish). The problem is that individual spells constitute only the tiniest part of a total casters capability. A caster isn't powerful because he can teleport, or turn invisible, or throw fireballs, he's powerful because he can do all three. It's much easier to ask that martial characters be allowed a performance baseline that's closer to casters than to ask that the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of pages covering spells and spell-casting be re-evaluated and re-written to make them more in line with martial characters, particularly since the real solution there would be to re-work the entire casting system. Generally, people aren't asking for casters to be made more powerful; they're asking for martial classes to be able to match some of the narrative capability that casters enjoy, or at least be allowed some supremacy in the areas they're theoretically supposed to excel in.

But here's the problem. The bar set by the current magic system is too high. There is simply no way to bring martials up to it without making the game totally WoW-like. And I think that many of us do not really want it to become that.

No argument, btw, with your assessment of the reason behind the casters' power being what it is. That's the reason that magic missile, for instance is too powerful. But say something like that and you receive massive scorn, because the spell doesn't seem, on it's own, to cause any problems, and because many people don't have the insight that you do about why casters are such a serious issue.

At the same time, I don't disagree that martials need more flexibility and options. I would love to see more systems like the talents and ki options that are available to ninjas and the tricks available to the skirmisher Ranger archetype (though both of these, especially the latter, are examples of the devs still not going far enough with this kind of stuff).

Why is the old man frail?

Why is the old man not the paladin?

Flavor has nothing to do with mechanics. Anytime you try to tie mechanics to RPing you're wrong.

The is no RP element that has a fixed mechanic.

"But what if I want to play a wizard/rogue/fighter who specializes in enchantments?" That's not RPing. That's wanting to play with particular mechanics instead of playing a bard.

Okay. Couple things. First, yes, Tolkein is High Fantasy. The genre is practically defined by him. That there might be a few elements in his work from other sub genres does not mean his work is not still, all things considered, definitively high fantasy. But I don't even want to discuss that anymore and derail the conversation entirely. I rely upon the good judgement of our readers to decide it for themselves at this point.

Now as far as, "anytime you tie mechanics to RP, you're wrong" goes... While true in the broadest, most general sense, this still must be taken as utter hyperbole, as there are clearly more dimensions to the issue than that, and more exceptions than even a reasonable rule of thumb permits. But again, I rely upon the good sense of our readers and would like to leave that, too, aside.

One of the things we continue to have a problem with is the difference between RP and aesthetics/style. What I, Oenar and others have been talking about is really more the latter. The trouble is that the two ideas are related in a way that is very difficult to define. But basically, I would say to Markthus and others, as I have already suggested though it was ignored, that we can abandon talk of "RP" if you like, but we will still be left with this issue of aesthetics and style. I.e. sometimes you play the Wizard/Rogue/Fighter rather than the Bard, because for whatever reason the concept/build is just cooler that way, even if it is perhaps less effective. I for one would far rather be cool than be excessively useful.

You should not make blatantly sub-optimal choices when fulfilling your concept. But you should not choose what concept you want to play based on what is most optimal, and you should be as fussy as you need to be about which choices do or don't faithfully represent the aesthetics of the concept you want to play assuming you are effective enough to deal with CR.

I'm going to give an example now, and please let's not get bogged down talking about the specifics of that example. Just take my assertions about the example as given please, for the purpose of argument. In other words, impugn the argument all you want, but not the example on which it is based, which is being given purely for illustrative purposes in order to facilitate discussion.

I am currently playing a character based on Deedlit from Record of Lodoss War. Her current build is Bard 1/Ninja 5. For a variety of reasons, this wound up being the best build for representing the array of abilities I wanted the character to have in order to simulate the way she operates in the show. This is obviously, however, not "optimal." Right off the bat, she uses a single sword rather than TWF. You can tell me until you're blue in the face that I'd get more DPS from TWF, and I will not care. Deedlit fights with a single blade, so that's what I'm doing. Now, obviously I have taken Dervish Dance, and in this regard I have "optimized." I suppose I probably would not play the concept if I had no way to do even a slightly respectable amount of damage when not flanking. That probably would be irresponsible. But I do not consider it irresponsible to have chosen to stick to my guns and use a single blade rather than choosing to use two, when the latter does not aesthetically fit the concept I want to play.

I once played in a 15th level game in a group of mega optimizers during the bad old 3.5 days. It was very instructive. Some examples from the trenches of optimization madness:

1. In their group, one simply did not play a grappler. No matter how high you got your check and your damage, you didn't do it. They had done the math, and the toll inflicted on you in terms of action economy was too steep.

2. There effectively was no Spring Attack feat. You were being irresponsible if you took it, since it was always more optimal to just pick up a fly speed somewhere and then get Fly by Attack. Nevermind that this then left you with a character that could fly, which you might not want. They did not understand such thinking.

3. Everyone was a caster. If you weren't playing a caster (or a Warblade or Crusader, the only exceptions), then the group was at worst angry at and at best bemused by you. I barely managed to get away with a Swordsage 7/Lurk 8 who, as a standard action, could do an 18d6+34 damage melee attack that ignored concealment, incorporeality and most forms of DR. He also had 15 or more skills at +20 or better, and a decent suite of psychic powers and martial maneuvers for utility. He was noticeably the weakest link.

4. One did not under any circumstances invest in skills or abilities to find or disarm traps, since it was always more efficient to use magic to do these things, or just summon creatures to set the traps off.

And so on and so on. I could go on all day. This is the kind of play that optimization reduces us to, when it is allowed free reign.

DM: Okay guys, we're going for a high-fantasy adventure, with dragon-slaying, plane-hopping, the works. Have you picked your characters?

Player: Yeah, I'm going to play a frail old man with a sword.

If that example seems problematic to you, I think you might want to expand your genre-sensitivity a little bit. First of all, who says we're playing high fantasy? What about weird fiction? Steampunk? Wu Xia? Sword and Sorcery? The last of these, by the way, specifically defines itself as distinct from high fantasy in that its protagonists are more human and its scope is less grand. Oh, and just fyi, Gygax hated Tolkein. So maybe we shouldn't make so many assumptions about the style of game this is supposed to be.

Some people tie flavor to mechanics, and no amount of discussion is going to change their mind.

To these players, slapping a higher number on their age means taking age penalties, for example.

The thing about the Fighter not working in this case is actually a problem with the Fighter class though. If Fighter had 4+Int skills per level then 12 Int would be sufficient to be an elderly scribe turned mercenary.

This reminds me of that bit of dialogue from Angel-

Angel: People who don't care about anything will never understand people who do.

Hamilton: But be won't care...

Look, Oenar tried to explain it to you guys, and you just jumped all over him. As usual, you lunged like jackals and tried to rip apart his specific example while ignoring his larger point, which is entirely valid. Do you actually want to understand, or don't you? If you don't, we can stop having the discussion right now.

Listen, no we don't all believe, for instance, that you have to take the specific age penalties when your character is the indicated age. We understand about reskinning and fluff. We have no problem with these concepts, and in fact I, at least, am a big proponent of them. But there's a line at which mechanics and aesthetics must coincide with one another in order to be satisfying to a person who is aesthetically sensitive.

It's fine if that line is in a slightly different place from person to person. But many optimizers I know put the line way, way beyond a point that I, personally, am okay with. Why? Because the first thing on their mind is not aesthetics (I'll use that term since "RP" seems to bother Markthus) or style, it is efficiency. And that's just not why I play the game.

There is no such thing as an RP build. RPing is just something you do. Mechanics are things you are good at. Wanting to pick mechanically inferior options has NOTHING to do with RPing...

My mechanical choices have nothing to do with my Role Playing. The mechanics I prefer (even if sometimes weaker) have nothing to do with Role playing...

This is a drastic oversimplification of the issue, but I can't explain why because brunch now.

Here is the simple truth--> 99.9999% of the time "______ is OP/broken" is false. For that to be true _____ has to cause a problem at most tables. The only problem is that the OP of such statements does not like ____, and wants to use their playstyle as the baseline of what should be. Once they realize their style of play is nothing more than their style of play, they can just adjust _____ for their group and keep it moving.

You(general statement) don't like _____. Well that is fine, but don't think what you don't like is "wrong".

On the recent sub-topic, the system is not perfect, but having players together with highly different levels of optimization and ability to play the game can(not will) cause a problem so the fault does not lie 100% with the system or the players. The problem is a result mechanics and players to include the GM at time.

Sure. If you're playing at a table where every single player is an optimizing, build-fu, system mastery genius, then knock yourselves out. You want to take your 9th level characters through the 20th level of the APs? Go for it! Why would I care how you are playing at your home table somewhere?

But don't bring that crap to my table and think it's ok, or expect me to have to (rise/sink, depending on how you look at it) to your level with my builds. This is especially relevant with regards to organized play. If you bring some optimized monster to the table and crush all the encounters while I am trying to play my quirky, corner-concept, RP build, then you are ruining my fun and it is your fault, not mine.

EDIT: Why can I make this last statement with confidence? Because the system is not mute regarding how powerful characters are supposed to be. It tells you. It's called CR. An APL+1 CR encounter is supposed to be "challenging" to a group of four PCs. So there you go. If that's not true, you're optimizing too much. Now, that said, my major gripe with the system is that CR is set too low. It is way too easy to exceed that bar with even the most minimal optimization, and in the case of some classes, with none. So that IS a major systemic problem that I think needs to be addressed. The CR bar needs to be raised, absolutely.

Not necesarily unequal system mastery. A good portion of system mastery is to obtain the best from the worst. Like how to make the best non-TWF shield and sword barbarian or something.

The good thing of system mastery is that in groups withlow optimization you can play and somewhat optimize the bad options.

Heavy umbalance in power amons diferent party members is a problem though.

Exactly. The main benefit of system mastery, in my mind, is that it allows you to make outsider concepts function on a level with competently made normal concepts. But when system mastery is applied to standard roles and classes, the result is overwhelming both in terms of destructiveness and banality.

RPGs lose some appeal in the same way. When your janky, hobbled together mess gets out shown in every regard because your buddy knows how to make a more solid character, you start losing some fun.

But the fault in that lies in you. You just gotta learn what you can from the guy who knows what he is doing and do better...

This is dangerous thinking. This leads to "you are being irresponsible if you make a ninja without vanishing trick" talk. Kitty is right, but only to a point. The goal of "getting better" at the game simply cannot be to make your character more and more powerful, infinitely. We cannot have a game, ultimately, if we think this way. Because eventually somebody will invent a computer program that can crunch all the numbers and it will definitively arrive at the Ultimate Build (or maybe 3 or 4 of them to suit different roles) and then those will basically be the only characters that you can play in the game.

Now obviously, that's probably not going to actually happen. But that's where this thinking leads if you follow the logic to its conclusion. So while I do urge beginning players to learn how to make their builds compete with CR and do what they want them to do, beyond that I suggest that they absolutely reject Kitty's advice here.

EDIT: I would also like to point out that you cannot draw a perfect parallel between Magic and Pathfinder. It's worth mentioning that there are no explicit "win" conditions in Pathfinder, whereas there obviously are in Magic. That's why "learn and get better or you suck" advice taken from Magic culture becomes inappropriate when applied to Pathfinder. And to be honest, that kind of thinking is even a bit annoying in Magic at times. My experience with that game, too, has been that you have to find a group of like minded people who can agree on a level you all want to play at, assuming you're not going all out and entering the tournament scene.

Say you have three concepts you want to play - a dual-bastard sword-wielding druid/wizard, a thuggish half-orc rogue and a human diviner wizard.

In a game with a really low floor of optimization, you can play any of these you wish.
In a game with more of a "standard" floor of optimization - say an AP - the first of them won't work, but the second two will.
In a really difficult game with a high optimization requirement, only the diviner wizard will really be useful.

You know, you might actually be able to make the dual bastard sword wielding druid wizard work...anyway, it's exactly the kind of challenge I enjoy! Time to get to work!

You are blaming optimisation for the flaws inherent in the system. Maybe if the system were more balanced there wouldn't be any need to take into account those issues.

We're going in circles here. Optimization is the problem. The system is only unbalanced when some people are optimizing more than others. The bar set by the system (CR) is really quite easily achieved. You really don't have to do super optimized things in order to compete with the APs and the typical CR of encounters. My argument about some of the classes (Alchemists, Paladins, most of the full casters, etc) being too powerful is that they exceed CR competency even when you don't really optimize them very much.

EDIT: Rather, you can say that the flaw with the system is that it allows some people to optimize more than others to such a dramatic degree. But anyway, this is still not a problem as long as no one actually does it. On the other hand, it can be very hard to make the argument for why they shouldn't. So don't get me wrong; I'm not denying deep systemic problems. But given their existence, we have to fix them ourselves. And we do that by not optimizing.

EDIT II: Incidentally there's optimizing and then there's optimizing. There's a lot of space between a truly weak or incompetent character and a highly optimized one. I'm not suggesting everybody make crummy characters that can't compete with CR. But on the other hand, when we're to the point of accusing people of foolishness for making, for instance, a ninja without vanishing trick, then there is clearly a problem.

I'm with andrew on this one. We're stuck in a system (alongside a great many players/gms) that really doesn't like Multi-classing.

I don't think multiclassing is really the issue. Some of the most powerful characters I've seen have been multiclassed.

You know what game I find ideal for capturing the essence of AD&D?

AD&D

You do have a point... I think the main problem people have with this is that AD&D is not all that good for character customization, which is a very big deal to a lot of people. I would guess that if it felt like you could meaningfully build a really broad array on concepts in AD&D, a lot more people would probably play it.

Basically, in AD&D GMs had all the power, and by 3rd and 4th edition, players had it. Both groups proved that they cannot be trusted. GMs need to show flexibility and not abuse fiat, and players need to show flexibility and not abuse RAW. If everyone does that, then in theory having these kinds of intricate 3rd edition rule systems around can be a very good thing.

I think D&D has unfortunately spawned 2 very different types of play for TRPGs:

1) The "open" play (AD&D): limited rules, much more weight on the GM, much less consistency for the players. BUT requiring more creativity, more improvisation. Good for groups who trust their GM to be fair, and dont mind the inconsistency.

2) The "simulationist" play (3.X): plenty of rules, less openness, considerably more options to consider. BUT much more consistent (90% of the time, no need to invent rules), much more vast in options.

I might be off my rocker. But I think pathfinder is simply too steeped in the simulationist perspective to become an open-play game. I will admit I prefer the simulationist (I prefer removing rules than having to invent new ones) if only because there is more choice to the player (and the GM).

TLDR: Too many rules only stifles creativity if you let it. AD&D & Pathfinder are dissimilar enough that I dont think they can be brought together.

I think you're right on the money here, but I'm less pessimistic than you. I still hold out hope that the community can eventually evolve a sort of enlightened consensus that bridges these two styles. I myself had drifted fully into style 2, only to more recently be moving back pretty dramatically in the direction of style 1.

I think that the ideal situation is probably one where we basically treat style 2 as the default, but nonetheless simultaneously accept that at the end of the day GM trust and fiat are what the game is all about, and the GM has the right to change or create any rules he wants for whatever reason he wants to change or create them. He should be extremely conversant in the rules so that he's not relying on this power, but it should be there when he needs it. I think this is roughly what Jiggy was (I think very sensibly) advocating above.

Ultimately, the GM is the one doing the heavy lifting of creating the game and story, and it's mostly his show. He needs the freedom to make it what he wants. On the other hand, I find many, many GMs too inflexible about their vision or their style of play, particularly with regard to character creation (for instance, the OP's suggestion to limit creation to the Core and one additional book seems excessively restrictive to me). The game is still a collaborative process, and players need a lot of freedom too when it comes to their characters.

It's a very tenuous balance, I'll admit... Okay, maybe I'm not so optimistic. But anyway, discussions like this one certainly seem like a step in the right direction.

EDIT: A lot of GMs also seem to really abuse their fiat power too, which is what leads to RAW fetishism. I joined a campaign through meetup once where the GM had literally about 40 or 50 pages of houserules, and on top of that would decide on a case by case basis things like whether a given monster got an AoO against you when you moved away from it, based on which way it was facing or how distracted he thought it was at the time by other factors. That was really aggravating, and made both character creation and combat take an unnecessarily ridiculous amount of time.

They are APL7, a CR7 or 8 encounter should be a speed bump for them.

Okay, a couple of things. First, it's barely even that, to the point that, really, even playing out such an encounter seems a little bit trivial. And second, no, it's not supposed to be that. In theory, a CR 7 encounter should drain 1/4 of their resources. Four consecutive CR 7 encounters should leave them feeling pretty drained and challenged, according to the tenets of the CR system. But in reality, they could probably face more like 20 such challenges before having to stop and rest. An equal APL encounter is supposed to be the "average" and APL+1 is supposed to be "challenging." Believe me, 2 redcaps do not "challenge" these guys.

And again, bear in mind that I am talking about a relatively non-optimized party here, which is my real point. Even if we agreed that they're being challenged appropriately by encounters, it would still show that any degree of real optimization pushes you over the edge in this regard.

They're pretty deadly, especially after they both dipped Cavalier so they could give everyone Paired Opportunists. Their best module ever was the one where they were given a drug that dealt Cha damage.

Them: "What!? It lowers our Cha-based checks and doesn't prevent us from casting spells. Must have MORE!"

Concentration->Fail->Everyone gets a swing at +4

They also always say "This is our most powerful magic, our 1st-level spell. It's more powerful than the cantrip because it has a 10% higher chance to fail to be cast defensively."

Or "Damn it! I actually cast shield! Oh well, I guess I do get +4 AC..."

Oh, shenanigans. How I lovehate thee.

Erick Wilson wrote:

Marthkus wrote:

A ninja not taking vanishing trick is just being irresponsible. That's like playing a barbar with 14 strength or a sorcerer with 9 cha. You're just being silly.

This attitude is a big problem for me, and I think it's a very good example of exactly why you see a backlash against optimization.

Would you be against people playing as commoners?

Funny you should mention this, because it actually came up in a discussion I was having in another thread. Someone wanted to be able to play a Commoner is PFS. My response was that while I understand the person's reason for wanting this, there's not a lot of point in it. You can already basically do this by making a Fighter with a weird feat allotment or a caster with nothing but random, crappy spells, and the resultant character will be a lot more interesting than the Commoner.

But basically, no, I don't care if someone plays a Commoner, as long as they can keep up with CR (up to level 12, anyway). I basically don't care what anyone does with their character as long as they satisfy two reqiuirements:

1. Keep up with CR

2. Do not exceed CR

It is annoying when people break either of these rules. The thing is, it is so ridiculously easy to meet CR that I always find it weird that optimizers feel it's at all necessary to go to the lengths they go to. I think the same thing whenever I see these lists people post of, like, must-have equipment for beating PFS scenarios and making sure you have something for every situation; it's just excessive.

I am running a campaign right now. The PCs are a Monk 1/Cleric 6, a Sorcerer 7, a Fighter 2/Magus 5 and a Barbarian 1/Rogue 6. APL 7. They have not made any outright stupid choices for their characters, but there are no funky tricks going on. No real optimization to speak of. I find I have to routinely put them up against CR 9 or 10 encounters to challenge them. In other words, they're just a very adequately built set of 7th level characters and I have to treat them as though they are about APL 9.5.

EDIT: I suppose I'm exaggerating a little bit. CR 12 encounters are still about their limit, depending on the encounter. So at the upper end of the appropriate challenge scale things are still functioning almost correctly (you'd expect them to cap out at around CR 11). But putting them against CR 7 or even 8 challenges? Laughable.

A ninja not taking vanishing trick is just being irresponsible. That's like playing a barbar with 14 strength or a sorcerer with 9 cha. You're just being silly.

This attitude is a big problem for me, and I think it's a very good example of exactly why you see a backlash against optimization.

EDIT: And incidentally, I played a Barbarian with a 7 Strength, and was perfectly effective.