Kyoni's page

I just want the monsters. and PCs for that matter, to have a fair chance against a sleep effect which will likely result in their death.

Why is the touch attack part not chance enough? why do you need to double the chances of failure? if you double it nobody will bother with it any more.

Regarding our "lonely BBEG" comment, many encounters published by Paizo and other companies only feature one monster. Most DMs I know run mostly published adventures and want them to be as "ready to run" as possible right out of the box.

Unfortunately this is often close to impossible... whether it's Gentle Rest or another combo, some players will come up with something that works really well and make part of the published encounters a push-over when they shouldn't be. That is not a problem with Gentle Rest, it's a problem about the general balance that does not and will probably never exist... it's up to the DM to balance encounters. And yes that takes quite a bit of work and time.

What happens to single foes is important. I’d also like to point out that they’re not always BBEGs. Not every monster should need a supporting cast of mooks. Anyhow, even if a fight has 2-4 foes it would often be pretty efficient to take out 1 per round with a coup de grace combo.

The last one... because while an enemy is standing nearby, coup de grace provokes AoO from all of them... taking 3 solid hits from 3 enemies while performing the coup de grace, could seriously hurt the fighter, especially at lower levels. Or one of the enemies could, instead of hitting for damage do a maneuver to trip the fighter: no coup de grace until the fighter gets back up.

Round1 - Encounter starts at some distance, PC-Sorcerer casts Spectral Hand while PC-Cleric, PC-Magus, and PC-Fighter move towards melee range. The Witch does...something...

Round2 - Either the Sorcerer or Magus hits the victim with Frigid Touch. Cleric hits monster with Gentle Rest, Fighter performs coup de grace. Fight Over.

the witch uses her slumber hex on the first round: sleeping foe, the fighter coup de grace's, while the cleric, magus and sorcerer are watching

but then I'm not sure why the sleep + coup de grace would be any better then everybody just whacking the lone monster good? between the magus and sorcerer and fighter they should have enough damage to kill your monster on the first round anyways?
Magus with shocking grasp (no save)
Sorcerer with one of the many damage spells (burning hands / magic missile / ??? )
Fighter with power attack
your lone monster would survive three solid hits?
Make the cleric an evangelist archetype and he can add +1 atk and dmg to the magus and figther with bardic performance.

@Kyoni: So you are basically saying that a 2nd level spell is better than a first lvl domain power? Shouldn't it be? And I'd even argue that Hold Person works on far fewer targets than the 1st lvl domain power.

A domain power should be usable throughout an entire PCs career... if it becomes worthless (ie: never used) at level 3 then I'd rather pick a different domain that stays useful even at levels 7, 12, 18...

@Kyoni: I agree with you that putting a save on the entire thing is going to far!

Would you really say that a save on the secondary effect would hamper the domain power so much that you would never choose it?

It would be the same thing as just houseruling the entire sleeping part away.

some people already pointed out that this touching has roughly a 50%-70% to land... let's make it simply a 60%, ok?
first hit chance 60% to stagger
second hit chance 60% * 60% -> 36% to sleep
which is already rather low

now if we assume the save has a 70% chance (most probably less due to MAD cleric) to still affect the target we are down to 25% chance (most probably less then 20%) of actually having everything go as smoothly as you'd like...

As I said: a lot of other classes can do this with a single standard action (spells, hexes, whatever)... so it's already unlikely the cleric will do this because others will be quicker, as they don't need two melee-rounds to set it up. Spellcasters can do this before the monster even reaches melee.
So this ability is already weaker then spells, make it even more weak, and it's not even worth considering.

I'd really like to see some numbers from the "needs a save" crowd, because some numbers are off if you feel that the chance of success is more like 70%+ and not 40%- for the sleeping going as smoothly.
So what are the str/con/wis/cha stat of your clerics, what level are they and against what CR of monsters do they succeed so easily?

Why don't you GM? Then you can act on all of your "suggestions," and maybe not be so angry about it all.

I already do... and it's not a gripe with the fellow DMs at my two tables, we all enjoy the games we have and learn from each other on occasion.

It's a gripe about DMs coming to this forum and complaining how their players beat the lonely BBEG because power X from class X is "broken/OP/whathaveyou"... these powers are not overpowered or broken.
But maybe these DMs need to learn how to do encounters right? And get a new point of view on how you can ramp up difficulty other then HP-slugfests... hence this thread to collect opinions and ideas.

Have a look at the last few pages of this forum concerning overpowered class features and what people suggest to correct this: 9/10 it's, why is that BBEG alone? where are his minions?

Easy fix for attributes under 10... have the player in question tell you what makes his attribute that low:

8 charisma?
characters is sweaty/smelly/shy/...?
this does not hamper his diplomacy/... ranks in the least (it will also not change the range of detection vs scent monsters) but it means that before being able to speak to that king with his hard-trained silver tongue, he might earn some chuckles from bystanders at his expense. It's about roleplay... not rollplay.

8 intelligence? 8 wisdom?
sure, just tell me how you intend to roleplay that first?

And, no, you cannot say charisma=6 and be bad at talking to people and then put ranks in diplomacy... charisma is more then just diplomacy... so you have to explain why a sorcerer with diplomacy=10 is different from charisma-dumper with diplomacy=10...

Standard NPC Nobles would first approach the guy with the highest charisma... and switch talking to the highest diplomacy person after being asked to. That's not punishing the players... they still get to do their diplomacy just the same, it just takes a wee longer if your are not the natural magnet of the group (charismatic) to grab the attention.

8 int doesn't necessarily mean bad tactician if he's a fighter (such a fighter would not live long)...
But I'd expect that player to roleplay how his character asks silly questions or points out obvious things, drawing a smirk from bystanders.

I don't like people dumping stats and then ignoring them because they put points into the necessary skill to make up for it... in that case you would not need those stats to begin with.
I like those stats to mean something beyond the bonus/malus they might give to some skills.

If you are not willing or capable of roleplaying those lower stats, I won't allow you to dump stats at my table.

low constitution?
you catch a cold easily... does that hamper you in any way? no... does that mean you sneeze every now and then? yes

wonder what recurring hiccups would be for a low stats... hmm? :-)

I know the discussion already strayed from cleric domain modifications, but I still wanted to relink the great work somebody did
here
categorizing spells into spheres as they used to be in AD&D2... I loved AD&D2 clerics as a nature-cleric would have very few things in common with a war-cleric or scoundrel-cleric, making clerics very different every time you made a cleric of a different deity.

Depending on the deity these clerics would also get appropriate weapon and armor proficiencies. A war-cleric would often have similar proficiencies to fighters, a nature-cleric would have those of a druid (but no wildshaping) and a scoundrel-cleric would get extra "skill points" (used to be percentages for thief-stuff back then) but be limited to thief weapons/armor. The favored weapons of a deity used to be a list, but they were also only-these-are-allowed.

Changing channeling from cha to wis is a bad idea imho, because clerics would then only ever really need wis and be even more cookie-cutter.
I like the idea for characters to choose which path they want to take (martial cleric, caster cleric, face cleric, ...) and not have them be identical to all other clerics out there.
What I would probably be more comfortable with is for clerics to have a feat they can take to sub charisma channeling with str channeling. (Maybe make intimidating prowess a requirement, but that might be too much?) That way melee-focussed clerics can improve their channeling if they dumped charisma, but at the cost of a feat, making sure they don't step too much on melee-class-toes. A caster/face-cleric wouldn't care about that feat and just have high charisma right from the start...

I hate Pathfinder cleric domains and want the good old AD&D2 spheres back.

I hate 4th edition. (but that'll olny get me hated by half the forum, right? hihi)

Every time I build a PC for myself, I can't help but multiclass/cross-class-dip. (though I never do that when helping others or building npcs I DM?)

Hello, Armchair Theorists. How's that chair rockin' tonight?

I love this comparison:

Ever seen the guys claiming that wizards render rogues obsolete because knock replaces the Open Locks skill? That’s a spherical cow. (In a real game it would be completely foolish to waste limited resources in order to accomplish something that the rogue can do without expending any resources at all. It’s as if you decided to open your wallet and start burning $10 bills as kindling when there’s a box of twigs sitting right next to the fireplace.)

<3

Those people claiming that spells are not a limited resource, how about increasing the price of scrolls and pearls of power x4 to make casters spend more of their wealth on it, thus limiting them through WBL. All of this without hindering martials (fair sharing of loot is something every party should work out somehow).

If you willingly leave the target's line of sight or become unconscious or dead, the spell creature suffers no ill effects.

As in: he needs to be able to see you. If you are hidden, he can't see you. Thus the effect stops as soon as the player hides.

Imho spells like blurr would work, but hiding definitely does not.

I love to roleplay depending on the rolls made. :-D

3.5 Loyalist wrote:

Are you playing a game or are you in a competitive league?

Depends on the game and GM. PFS has a certain level of expectations, and most people aren't too keen on having their characters killed off because they had a character who wasn't up to snuff. Not that I'm saying anyone in this thread has that, just noting it.

(not really a reply to MrSin, more a given context)

Some of you people argue: "I want to ROLE-play, so I don't want the competitive league!"

But isn't that contrary to logic?
I mean... if you put yourself in your character's place, would you be ok taking along somebody who is a lot weaker (and borderline liability), when "you" face LIFE-THREATENING situations ~ three times per day?
Knowing that no matter how hard he trains, he'll never be able to catch up with your expertise.

Would a band of RL Rebells of some Government (not talking about political stuff here! it's just an analogy for many adventurer RP groups) who are good at commando-stuff, take along a computer specialist, who's a cousin? maybe, if he could bring something to a team. Would they take the librarian/secretary sister? I highly doubt it. If these rebell care the least bit about that sister, they will not put her into danger by taking her with them on commando missions.

That is IN-character thinking: Adventuring is not for amateurs, you can get killed, the less you are skilled the more likely you are to die and get your comrades killed along with you, thus failing the mission. Usually character don't want to die right? Or are all adventurers notoriously suicidal?

So when people say: "I want to ROLE-play, and I want to be the weak little tag-along." I wonder why these people expect their group to meta-game about why the group takes the weak guy along.

In special settings, sure it can be "rescue that guy", but after you are done rescuing, either that guy has proven himself to be a good and useful addition to the group, or they'd ask him to stay in a safe place while the group goes to saving the world. (or something like that)
______________________

If it's just a temporary thing and we know that "weak link" will catch up later in time... hey sure, but there's a difference in taking along a librarian and an athlete/martial artist/amateur sharpshooter/....

It's like discussing which class is more powerful at what levels: comparing Fighters and Wizards at level 1 and 10, yes we know they are not perfectly balanced: they don't need to be.

Sure an athlete won't have any immediate use in a commando, but everybody can obviously see that he has some raw skills that might develop into something useful down the road.

And don't tell me: "oh just give him more items to compensate for his weakness". Why would the commandos agree to run around with handguns and give the machine gun to the librarian??? Not realistic and not roleplaying-y at all, imho.
______________________

DMs can adjust a bit to make weak characters shine from time to time, but when the strong-weak difference becomes too big, no DM can fix that (even less with standard APs, and not at all with PFS).
______________________

So my questions to the OP would be:
If the Paladin or Cleric misses out on a session, how is that session going to turn out?
Are you sure you can bring something to the group and stay on a near equivalent "power"-level down the road?
So you can replace two guys for skills, can you replace others in combat? Do you add something unique in combat?

Just because you have some skills, doesn't mean you get to wait and sit around in combat.

Buffs are tricky: many boni don't stack, and if your cleric buffs the entire group anyways, your self-buffing capability is a waste. (Mostly thinking about the Mass-Spells and group-wide spells, here)
And if you say "oh, then he doesn't need to buff me"... sure but he needs to buff the others because that is his contribution to the fight.

What good is "Divine Favor" if your party Cleric does a "Prayer" (both are luck typed bonus)? Spells with morale bonus are even worse, they are all over the spell lists.

I like the new classes, they allow various things:

- DMs can rule to do no-arcane-caster or no-divine-caster campaigns without rewriting existing core classes. (Because Mages or Worshippers are hunted down in that country.)

- Players get more options to individualize: I like the change of pace from flashy bard to infiltrating inquisitor, or from University-School-Wizard to Hedge-Magician-Witches. Sure you can rewrite the background, but feats and skills don't make enough of a difference to actually FEEL the difference between two wizards or two rogues or two bards. especially when your group gets hung up on class names and force you back to stereotype playing:

no sneaky bard
because bards have to sing loudly, I tried "oratory" to inspire through dogmatic talk or dancing to inspire all who can see me instead of hear me -> they would not have it:
"can you do your bard SONG?"
... "I don't sing, I dance"
... "yes, you do... use your bard song, dancing is crap because we might not see it"
... "there are no facing rules" *hate/desperation*

charismatic sorcerers
I can't even begin to count the amount of uncharismatic sorcerers, who are abysmal at diplomacy, I've seen. Usually these players get a high charsima for the casting because they want that cool dragon-blood spontaneous caster and then simply forget everything else about that attribute.

rogues
you've got the sneaky flanker or the feinting swashbuckler... and that's about it for playstyles, everything else is just numbers or fluff (like weapon choice)

fighters
you choose the weapon, which only changes the damage dice, but not much else

I could go on like this... what I like about the new classes is: CHOICE, something NEW and DIFFERENT.
I've played the old/classic classes since AD&D2 back in 1996... I'm tired of them and have tried pretty much any background/fluff there is, I don't want to recycle the old just changing names/origin/minor details, I want something new and fresh and different.

It's wrong to assume the new classes are copied from MMOs, imho.
Most MMOs (except GuildWars2, which was the first to get rid of it, to an extend) uphold the old-fashioned holy trinity of tank/heal/damage...
Make this a Fighter/Cleric/Arcane + Rogue(Skillmonkey) Quartet.
This is as close as it could possibly get!
The new classes actually go away from this:
Witch is about debuffing and is as bit of Damage as well as Healer.
Inquisitor is a mix of Cleric and Ranger(Fighter).
Magus is Arcanist+Fighter.
Alchemist is an odd-one-out.
Summoner is again odd-one-out.
and the list goes on like this, the new classes either being mixes of existing concepts or totally new ideas/flavors.

If you have less attributes you'll have to re-balance the point buy system.

I must admit I like the current system with 6 attributes, which each represent different aspects of a person:
I'm not a big fan of mixing str with con, it makes most melee-ish classes have very similar stats, which is a bummer because it means you end up with even more cookie-cutter builds, when these are already hard to customize as it is.
While mixing wis with cha seems to solve the dump-stat problem, it also means that characters won't have the possibility to have flaws, as in being a bit dense (low int) or annoying (low cha) or reckless (low wis) ... (those are just examples, there's plenty more possible explanations for a low attribute).

I actually remember an old system from AD&D2 supplement "Skills and Powers" that separated the 6 attributes into 2 each:
Strength: Stamina/Muscle
Dexterity: Aim/Balance
Constitution: Health/Fitness
Intelligence: Reason/Knowledge
Wisdom: Intuition/Willpower
Charisma: Leadership/Appearance
If I remember correctly you could increase one side at the expense of the other.
It's a neat idea, that individualizes characters even more, while keeping the old 6-attribute habits. However the system can't be applied to Pathfinder as each attribute doesn't represent as many things as they used to, back in AD&D2, which is both a blessing (less bookkeeping) and a curse (less individualization).

you would piss off people that wanted cute and innocent, just like a pony in a grimdark campaign would irk the ones that want that.

You mean like the my-little-pony-cow-level in diablo 3? ^^

@meibolite

could you talk him into playing a support character?

I found that "powergamers" can be great in groups when they are playing the guy who buffs the rest of the party. Because of him everybody would be performing waaaay better. :-)

Maybe a cleric evangelist or something like that? :D

Now, this is just rude. Just because a character isn't _optimized to the full extent_ does not mean it's weak, and certainly it does NOT mean the CAMPAIGN is weak.

I think your definition and mine what is "optimized" and what is "weak" differ... a lot.

for me:
optimized = somebody capable to do his job well (the one he annouced, when he joined the adventure, like "guard", "scout", "me-bash", "spell-savy") at a CR suggested in the books/rules.

if he fails >50% of the time at his claimed job vs a CR that's appropriate for the level (per the book guidelines), then he is _weak_

weak = somebody who tries to claim a "title/job" but fails at it more often then not vs a CR appropriate encounter, what would his fellow teammates call him if it weren't for their inGame friendship?

I don't care about encounters that are way beyond your typical CR because some people want bigger challenges. This is usually something happening in groups that have played together for years. If you are the new guy at such a table you try to fit in or find another you like better.

It's rude to tell people that your way is the "right way".

Imho all ways are acceptable as long as _everybody_ agrees on the way chosen. Coming to this forum and saying "ugh my party sucks because they min-max", that is rude. Not because these people complain, but because these people do it behind their friend's back!

Also, I don't think anyone is arguing that their CHARACTERS treat adventuring seriously - it's that you might want to play a character that hasn't the best prerequisites to be the optimal adventurer.

What disturbs me is _not_ the fact that they are weaker but that they ask for special treatment from the DM and/or party because they had made a willing choice to be non-optimal.

Calling other people's campaigns "weak" because you don't agree with the core assumptions on difficulty and their play style is no less than rude. Stop it.

What's wrong with playing a campaign that is "weak"? If that's what people want? It's not an insult. It's a valid wish to play something like this, if that's fun for you. But remember that everybody at a table should have fun: the DM, the players with weird wished, the players with no clue, the veteran players, the [placeholder] players,... everybody.

The word "weak" in that context was a word to describe "struggling with equal CR encounters".
Just as I would use the word "strong" for "steamrolling impossible encounters".
If you have better words for this, without having to type a 3-line explanation, please tell me. I'm always glad to enhance my english vocabulary.

I'll try to put it in a different way:

some people want to play vs easy encounters
many people are happy with standard encounters (equal CR)
some people want their skills tested to the max

(maybe the word "other" was badly chosen... I should have said "some other")

now the "many" group seems trouble-free to me, hence why I didn't mention them
the two "some" groups are the ones I believe are arguing here?

While I somewhat agree, this in itself is a bit oversimplified. It's true that if you WANT to roleplay that character it will work great. But what if you want to roleplay the old veteran that's lost an arm but still adventures because the only thing it knows is fighting? What if you want to roleplay the clumsy and frail wizard? These will both be "unoptimal" and in an otherwise optimized party might have issues, because optimized parties usually face optimized (or higher-CR) encounters.

If that player doesn't mind if his one-armed veteran or clumsy wizard is unlikely to survive very long. After all that's how it works in real life too... Fantasy gaming is no excuse to throw realism out the window.

Saying that you can't optimize and roleplay is false, but saying that there is no conflict between them is also false. The higher requirement on optimization a group has, the lesser the amount of different characters can be role-played.

There's probably few groups that requires everyone to be either AM BARBARIAN, a god wizard, or an over-optimized Master Summoner, and likewise there are probably few groups that have no issues playing with a lame fighter that puts all feats into Skill Focus and different weapon focuses.

So you want to RP somebody who is handicapped (missing arms, lame, ...) and then complain that

A player that puts all his feats into Skill Focus and Weapon focus is actively trying to make a character that's as useless as possible. The right choice for that character would have been to take some ranger variant that gives him what he wants, maybe guide + ???
- plenty of skill-point for skills
- wide weapon choices (rangers are good switch-hitters) and no need to take weapon focus, just because the feat happens to have the vocabulary "focus" in it

Stop obsessing on the arbitrary names the devs gave to mechanics! They are just that: arbitrary names!

To me, not optimizing generally means you're doing stuff that is eating your resources with little to no returns on your investment, or doing things that are just plain bad ideas.

[...]
For me, if you are optimized, then it means that the mechanics are helping you achieve your goals while remaining effective, and you can be optimized for different things

I have noticed that many "roleplaying" people go not only with a background and then choose accordingly... they find additional ways to limit themselves for no reason?

The biggest problem is they either don't want to bother (often a time thingy) using additional books and stick with the 2 base books. Or they allow everything but have no clue (same lack of time) what's in these books and ignore them.

That's why I usually like it if there's 1-2 well read people around who can give advice... my group now actually come and aks me what options in other books are worth reading. I'll just point them to feats, classes and such and then send them reading guides on this forum. Usually this works great.

Often they choose a background AND a class, restricting their choices and then wonder why it doesn't work out. (at least that's where two of the groups I play with, usually fail).
I now always show them a bunch of different classes/archetypes that can do what they wanted for their background in the same way. I try to give them an alternative... a new perspective.

To take the unarmed bard example:
the person wants a "bard" with unarmed fighting... but why a "bard"? why restrict yourself to a single class? I'd guess the bard represents songs and tavern-kinda stuff?
So how about an Evangelist of Caiden Caylean with a dip of drunken master. Maybe see if the DM will allow the Enlightened Fist PRC from 3.5? (Not sure that's fully optimized, but at least it reduces MAD a bit)

Similar with that person who asked for a white mage with no armor... first was adamant about cleric/oracle, a lot of people had to say "Witch" again and again and the person was still not really confinced at first.

My biggest advice to people who feel optimizing cuts down on RP, should stop focussing on the name of some class, feat, trait or ability and start looking at what those do. Only take the ones that better whatever your background is about. Does your character run around with their ability names printed on their forehead?

Also, while there is usually a lot of possibilities to RP-talk with high charisma and such, characters are ADVENTURERS as such they will always inevitably get into some kind of fight. It's their job.
So Adventurers will usually know how to fight. If you want a character that never fights, then your GM and groupmates need to know that you want a campaign with close to zero fighting and will actively try to find non-combat solutions to anything that could become a fight.
So when you decide your character is a blacksmith who's going out into the world, that's cool. Give him training in a wide variety of weapons and give him crafting feats... why should a party not want somebody who can make weapons/armors for them? Make sure you take the Master Crafter feat.
Now if that guy is a dwarf, you are heavily into clichés. ;-)

Tired of your standard healer, tank, nuker, skillmonkey? here's the answer (or at least my attempt at it):

Why those 4 roles?
It's been proven times and again that one cannot master everything. Those so-called Jack-of-all-Trades are reputed to be weak at everything they attempt:
you only get a fixed pool of ressources (feats, skillpoints, ...) and spreading these over various things means you're more likely to fail each time you try (remember that a +1 equals 5% for many things).

So what do these 4 roles cover:
The healer obviously protects the party, while healing hitpoints and ailings is one aspect, boosting the party's abilities is another of his specialties.
The nuker is obviously about big damage against one or many targets.
The tank is good at keeping the targets busy by having them hit him.
The skillmonkey is the one taking care of all those skill needs of a group (face, traps&locks, scouting).

so if we divide those 4 roles into smaller categories, what do we get?

What jobs need to be taken care of?
Skillpoint-related:
- the face (cha), this guy is capable of talking people into everything or out of everything, ideally he has some spell to help "turn heads"
- the scout (wis, darkvision), this guy will rarely miss anything worth noticing and should get all the tools to not be seen
- the mechanic (dex), he knows everything there is to know about traps, locks, devices, and maybe even engineering and architecture: leonardo da vinci
- the library (int), he knows all creatures that roam the lands and anything beyond these lands(planes)... he's a breathing and moving library, who'll devour more knowledge at amazing speed

Feat-related:
- the tactician (crowd control/debuff), this guy will keep targets busy by messing them up, this can be with spells as well as maneuvers
- the tower, this guy is capable of taking it all: fireballs or a balor swinging greatswords, this guy is the tough nut to crack and should be the last man standing
- the enabler (buffer), this guy has various means to make his friends better then usually, this could be though teamwork feats and/or buffing spells and/or class abilities (~bard song, ...)
- the ranged damage guy, great at damage from big distances (more then charge distance) he's the one who can reach flying foes as well as enemy spellcasters protected by a line of defense
- the melee damage guy, can be an AoE whirlwind of destruction or an assassin or a spellcaster (~magus, ...), either way, foes should actively flee from this guy's melee range out of fear
- the medic, of course capable of boosting the party's hit-points he's also taking care of other medical problems like diseases, poisons, curses, ...

(did I miss any?)

While the skillpoint-related jobs can be broken up some more and distributed some other way, the feat related ones are more tricky. Here's some combinations (quick&dirty):

tactician + ranged-dmg = toppling magic missle as well as precise called shots or just some simple fogs and walls of fire/sound/...

tactician + melee-dmg = maneuveur-heavy (strength) or intimidating with Whirlwind Attack makes for somebody who'll have foes fleeing from his deadly reach

medic + tactician = could be a witch as reach spell is available as well as Spectral Hand and clerics don't get the latter, the must-have familiar can be improved to learn the use of wands for even more healing options while the witch cackles the hell out of her misfortunate foes

tower + enabler = can buff his allies' defense (shield other, various bless', ...) and boost their offense as well, an Evangelist could be great for that

(more later...)

The very idea of a party prefering to kill enemies before healing teammates and putting enemy erradication as top strategic priority strikes me as a very "Diablo 2" way of playing.

To counter that statement:

My issue about the entire healing debate is not if a player wants to play a healer... but rather that some people react in ways that make me sad if I want to play a cleric/oracle/witch/... and NOT be the healer.
That same MMO-thinking tends to default to cookie-cutter builds/specs as well, i.e.: wizards are only there for blasting and fighters are the best tanks (which they are not, imho) and only rogues can take care of locks and traps...
that is not true in Pathfinder.

If nobody in such groups feels like playing a healer, these groups tend to force one person to be the healer nonetheless, because they think is mandatory (=compulsory, obligatory).

The goal here is to explain that healers are not "must-have", they are "nice-to-have": If you like playing one, that's cool, but if you don't you shouldn't be forced to, because others refuse to try different tactics.

Imho the one screaming for a healer as necessary, should be the one who has to play it (if nobody else volunteered). :-p

So if you are roleplaying your character, you could easily assume that a "not so brilliant / not so wise" fighter might charge the enemy more times than not, even when the cleric / wizard is telling him not to, and more importantly even when the player thinks the better strategy, all things considered, would be to hit, run, regroup, come back.

My group has a tendency not to overlook the "what would my character do in this situation?" aspect of the game.

TBH, if that Fighter charged in, though my caster told him not to, my caster is likely to let that fighter bite dust and teach him that tactics lesson rather quickly... :-) I guess he wont do it a second time, let alone a third. ;-)

After all my caster doesn't consider herself the babysitter of that mentally disadvantaged show-off bully. (opinion my character would have about such a fighter behavior)

And he might end up getting a fox cunning and owls wisdom buff, instead of a bulls strength and bears endurance. :-p

My clerics heal in combat all the time - that's what clerics do.

That's what clercis can do... they don't have to.

- party (what else is there)
- level
- many enemies vs few nasty enemies
- more enemies around the corner or not
- terrain and tactical options
- cleric's build (focussed on melee? archery? spells? healing? anything else?)

What I fail to understand from the have-to-heal-in-combat faction:

some say it is a necessity to have a healer because of bad dice, however when you are rolling poorly you could well roll only 1-2 on your cure critical dices. Even with healing-optimization a poor roll will screw everything, whether used for offense or used for defense/healing.

What I notice is quite a bunch of pro-healing people say, they can't get their crown control spells to stick:

- did they specialize to push their spell DC to make SoD's more likely to stick? (on top of specializing for healing at char-level ~7)
- are their DMs tweaking dice because they don't want their BBEG to suck so quickly?

All calculations about good combat-healers I see are dedicated 1-trick-pony-healers with selective channeling, quick channeling and healing domains and even metamagic feats to pump healing.
If these people enjoy playing such characters, I bow to them: I could not, I would be bored to hell, the same way I am bored playing a healer in any MMO, pushing two buttons over and over.

To those must-combat-heal-people: how come your BBEG are too stupid to go after the healer of your party? who is making sure the evil guys keep hitting the tank who get's healed for 5 rounds in a row?
in our games mobs would figure out after the 2-3 round latest that they should focus on the real problem: the healer.

I'm less fascinated by the fact that your healer is capable of keeping the tank alive... I am really fascinated by the fact that all those evil guys feel like it's best to go pound the tank with high hitpoints and gets healed to heaven instead of 1-shooting the rogue or mage or go take out the cleric...what makes your tank such a nightmare for your enemies to make sure all monsters want to pound just that guy and never anybody else?

In our current Jade Regent campaign, our cleric is also one of our frontline people (we have 3). Thus he has high defense and hitpoints and enemies will be hard pressed focussing on him. Especially since this means the other characters get to do what they want (bad idea). So usually our enemies have to figure out who is the biggest immediate danger, because each of us is a headache in his own way.

Edit:
Somehow this discussion reminds me of MMO forums where people say you can only raid efficiently if you have build X because otherwise you are incapable of facing some hard-core mode thingy.
I always enjoyed coming up with alternate solutions to a problem because I like diversity and new things and as a RL CG person I dislike "rules" (= you must do X). :-)

+1 druid bow and axe

as some said: druids or nature wardens are often in charge of preventing driving species to extinction. That includes thinning out predators of that species to give the population a chance to regenerate...

Hunting with a sling in any forest seems silly to me, it would get entangles in underbrush and dense vegetation.
For temperate forests bows seem logical.
However a blowgun with poison might be a nice jungle-druid archetype weapon. (sleeping poison, like modern wardens do in wildlife parks)

Imho the scythe doesn't make any sense as that's a farmer's tool, not a forest one.

Rogues should get the net, bola or lasso imho (but not the whip). For highwaymen it makes sense to be able to trip horses and in cities it could be used to get rid of pursuers. Many rogue archetypes are flavored to be very skilled with ropes (traps, climbing, escape artist) so it would make sense for them to know how to use rope-related weapons.

Whips are more Indiana Jones flavored imho and make more sense with equally flavored classes, so you could give it to rangers?

sounds like a Warforged to me...

first showed up in Eberron

adamantine vs door: feet > fists
instead of just adamantine gauntlets get the full adamantine chainmail...
what, your chainmail bikini doesn't come with high-heel boots? it's great for diggin' ;-D
(normal adamantine heels should work just fine, hehe)

flour+oil+water+yeast = bread for bbq
apart none of these perish, together you can eat it every day
(larp tested ;-p )

create water spell: stop your enemy from putting things on fire (golbins... fireworks... ahem), beware rampaging dm's if you foil their favorite pyrotechnics

Decanter of Endless Water + metamagicked bless water = holy water cannon
your dm should allow this just for giggles :o)

potions, oils and wands... here's another: Versatile Weapon (if you want to avoid the 9-iron encumbrance... you'll only need the adamatine weapon, though you might want a mithral backup weapon)

weapon cord:
for 1 sp you just made that disarming enemy a lot less effective
recover weapon = swift action
mages and cleric might like it too, to cast spells without worrying about sheathing weapons (depends on the weapons/shields you use, of course)

other prestidigitation uses:
- great addition to have running with your invisibility spell, mask your scent trail with cayenne pepper :o)
- that old dwarf drinking too much? make his ale taste like water
- offer someone you want to get drunk vodka-water, he might become talky (put ranks in bluff&diplomacy), works well vs "i'm on duty" too

question you should ask your dm, he might say yes:
can you find an old mage seeling half-empty wands? wands are a lot cheaper in cost-per-use and getting 20-odd charges is usually plenty for low levels

PS:
i'm so gonna get me a ghost touch net :D brilliant
also love the war-oxens 8-)

In other words spells that go off on the ethereal plane do not have effects that extend across the planar boundary. If you could get line of effect across the boundary, this wouldn't happen in the majority of cases. Therefore the logical implication is that line of effect simply does not extend across the boundary.

If I understood the line of effect thingy correctly, you cannot target somebody or something if you don't have line of effect.

Thus you wouldn't even be able to cast that spell in the first place, thus not waste/loose the spell in the first place.

Ashiel compared it to shooting a bow, imho she is right... you cannot aim an arrow at somebody behind a wall of stone because you cannot see/detect/... him.
You might try to pinpoint him, but pinpointing him is not enough to target/aim the person, you could only target/aim the rough location.
When that wall is made out of glass you can see the target clearly, thus you can aim at the person even though there is an obstacle in between.

Animals are known to have big problems with glass because they cannot see/detect it:
Have you ever seen birds headbutt right into a window because they could not see the window and were trying to fly through the "opening"?
A bird will never be able to fly through but they will try unless dissuaded (bird-shapes glued on big windows). If the window is tainted/colored/foggy/... no bird will even attempt to fly through.