Le Petite Mort's page

I feel like the ring of seven lovely colors should get a mention alongside the ring of deflection, given the size and dex bonuses to AC it can provide

I'll consider it, but I intended the article to be fairly class/build agnostic, and the ring isn't viable for combat for most characters. Those it benefits it also tends to benefit in a cheesy manner that I don't really want to popularize.

This is an article I wrote because one question I see all the time from newer players is basically, "what should I buy to be tankier?"

This answers that questions fairly thoroughly without being so exhaustive as to dive into every niche item that happens to work for a tiefling paladin with the X archetype and trait Z.

Just the staples, not a lot of frills.

I agree with Lau about performing the debate with a smile on your face. It can help people have fun.

That said, I do want to vent a little spleen on here at least about this BS. You want to introduce a new mechanic? Fine, go for it. What I'm not as fond of is introducing the rule-set with an additional and scenario-specific rule-set (having to use your best skills, no conceding, etc.) on top. On top of this is the reversal of intent (trying to lose) making this even more unnecessarily confusing, and then another scenario specific mechanic (the masks) just to make the GM want to kill themselves.

It's deeply, deeply idiotic to introduce a new mechanic-set this way, particularly given the verbal duel's default complexity.

If I never run this scenario again, it will be too soon. I'm going to try my damnedest to make sure my players walk away smiling, thinking it was a great scenario. It will be a considerable test of my progress as a GM.

interesting theory - def worth putting spoiler tags on the RoW bit though

I thought about it, but nothing I said is information beyond what can be found in the Product Description on this website. It in fact contains, "... the Dancing Hut travels to Baba Yaga’s homeland of Russia on the planet Earth. The year is 1918, and the First World War rages throughout Europe. The heroes find themselves in the wilds of Siberia..."

Using some inferential reasoning and semi-recent events, I think I can say with some confidence that I know which star Golarion orbits. Below I will outline my reasoning.

In the 5th book of Reign of Winter (Rasputin Must Die!) the PCs are transported from Golarion to Earth, specifically in 1918 Russia. This seemed odd to my GM, as the events of Reign of Winter take place in 4713 AR, reflecting their 2013 publication date. Why, then, are the player's thrust approximately 95 years in the past? It couldn't be intentional time travel; there is too much urgency in resolving the events for them to have awaited the players for nearly a century.

It dawned on us, however, that there is no particular reason magic should obey Einsteinian relativity, especially where the teleportation sub-school of conjuration is concerned. Had we instantaneously accelerated to c and traveled to Earth, we would have arrived in 2013. Having simply 'popped' over, we went back in time. This implies that Golarion is around 95 light-years from Earth.

We had a good chuckle, and kept playing.

My roommate then remembered those odd signals coming from a star known by the designation HD 164595 from a couple of years back. HD 164595, strangely enough, is of the exact same star class as our own, a G2V. It is also 94.4 light years away.

The only thing I can think of that would be sending out a radio signal would be the Silver Mount, blasting an endlessly looping distress signal.

Paizo developers are actually Pathfinder field agents establishing their first interplanetary lodge after Aram Zey finally got to 17th level and could cast interplanetary teleport. This is my canon now.

I felt that a few sections were a bit laconic, and could use some more extensive prose descriptions. I wrote some, and put them up on pfsprep as prose addenda. The specific sections I wrote were the party's arrival in Rosehaven, Armeline's "harrowing escape", Bertinard's speech to commence Mercylight, and the corpse of Druid Elm.

I have a feeling Palmer ran into page limitations. That's a shame, because the speeches in particular would be a challenge to improvise in a way that really gives a sense of atmosphere. I hope that my addenda will help other GMs to establish a sense of atmosphere, that Rosehaven is a village of people rather than NPCs waiting for the Pathfinders to show up.

Sven descends the knotted rope 10 feet as a move action. Since we're not really in combat, I'll take 10 for a total of 6, just enough to descend at half movement instead of 1/4 (by beating the DC 0 for climbing a knotted rope braced against a wall by 5). I will then let go of the rope as a free action and fall the remaining 30 feet.

I'll also attempt Acrobatics to soften the fall:

Acrobatics to soften fall DC 15: 1d20 - 2 ⇒ (19) - 2 = 17

Sven lands as well as he can, but the rough rubble cracks cruelly on impact.

20 feet of fall damage: 2d6 ⇒ (6, 5) = 11

Sven lies gasping for breath, barely clinging to consciousness. He turns his head slowly, and sees his colleague bleeding out only a few feet away. "Roesch enuff." he says, with a knowing smile. He puts his all into a brilliant white orb of healing energies.

Channel heal on myself, Taaskar, and Rashid: 1d6 ⇒ 6

Sven gets out his wand of CLW from his wrist sheathe as a swift, re-opens the door as a move action, and moves towards the bitty critter while shouting to try and get its attention.

Sveeeeeeen Sveeeeensooooonnn!

I don't really see what we can do to prep defensively, so I'll just try to absorb the shock so folks can get at it, and heal myself when I need. The lizard did get a turn between Fulgrim and I, so if my movement needs to change, let me know. I'm thinking it probably just held though.

Hello!

Le Petite Mort, when Andy, our GM at Paizo Con, explained this to us, it took about 5-10 minutes, tops. Shouldnt be too bad.

I can see that now. It's really complicated from the GM's perspective, but there really isn't all that much of the system that needs to be related to the players.

I'd like to make sure I understand how the bidding section works, as there are a lot of conditional modifiers to things, information to be hidden or revealed, and checks to make. I would appreciate anyone willing to read the below synopsis of the section, and corrections to any misapprehensions I might have.

Before each event (or maybe just once before Passad's event?): Each PC can make a Knowledge (nobility or local) check at a -5 penalty as a discovery for any of the five NPCs. The +4 bonus for 'particularly prominent NPCs' isn't mentioned within the scenario, but I feel it would be appropriate at least for the Lord-Councillor lady.

At each event, each PC can first attempt the Recognize check to get the background information on a given NPC, and grant a +4 bonus to the party's future discovery checks against that NPC. This check is not considered as that PC's influence/discovery check for the event. Additionally, Passad will tell the players the contents of the Introduction section for whatever NPC they wish to speak to.

After that, each PC can attempt either to discover information about one of the NPCs or to influence them. Each PC gets to make 1 such check in any given event, unless noted otherwise within the event. For example, at Passad's event each PC can attempt a discovery check AND an influence check or additional discovery check. Notably, Discovery checks made at the events themselves can use Sense Motive in addition to Knowledge (local or nobility), and no longer suffer from the -5 penalty.

Discovery checks can reveal a single skill that can be used to influence a given NPC (in ascending order of DC), their Weaknesses, or their Strengths. The Biases and Impressing the Host sections are not revealed by discovery checks.

I am unclear on how information within those sections should be disseminated to players. My thought is that it should occur organically through room descriptions and dialogue. For example, I would take great care to describe Passad's lush gardens, and describe him looking at various rare orchids with pride when the PC's enter the event. If a PC from the Exchange faction failed an influence check against Passad, I might have him say something along the lines of, "Your words have reason, but I can't know your motives. I know you are loyal to that conniving Trade Prince, and can't be sure this isn't one of his ploys for a greater stake in Druma's mercantile industries."

Influence can be made with a set of skills that varies from one NPC to another. Furthermore, different skills have varying DCs within any given NPC's influence section. Beyond this, a variety of factors provide circumstance modifiers to influence checks, namely: biases, strengths, weaknesses, Event Adjustments, and if they have been impressed as a host.

It is therefore important to note exactly what a given PC is saying and doing when influencing a given NPC.

Example: A PC at the Petronax Gala attempts to influence Passad again, after having already garnered one success during Passad's own event. This PC says, "What a lovely masquerade! Though, I do prefer the shaded boughs of your own beautiful garden. Trade Prince Hakam would surely benefit from the advice of such an accomplished botanist as yourself when investing in agricultural futures. I'm sure he'd make it more than worth your time, though helping us to keep the Courts of Abstinence out of the Consotrium's hands would go a long way towards improving potential consultation fees."

This PC is using Bluff, as Hakam has no interest in working with Passad. The PC gets a +2 bonus for mentioning the gardens, a +2 bonus from Passad's bias towards those spending a lot of time with him, a +2 bonus to Bluff from the masquerade's event adjustment, and a -4 penalty from openly flaunting association with the Exchange faction. Therefore this PC has a net circumstance modifier of +2. The PC rolls a total of 29 in the 4-5 tier, and the +2 circumstance modifier takes it to 31. He therefore succeeds despite being loyal to Al-Hakam, and by 10. The PC decides to use the second success (granted by exceeding the influence DC by 10) towards convincing Passad to invest in the Luminous Docks district in addition to the Courts of Abstinence.

I feel that the influence system truly requires that PCs roleplay their influence attempts fully, rather than just report the total die roll. Given how brief this scenario is outside of the bidding process, I feel it is doubly important here. I am considering levying significant circumstance penalties (like, -5) against PCs that do not roleplay, and potential bonuses beyond those specified in the scenario for truly well thought out dialogue.

In short, the GM does the following:
1) Have PC's roll -5 penalized Knowledge based Discovery checks against an NPC before the event.
2) Have PC's each choose an NPC, and whether they will be attempting a Discovery or Influence check.
3) Read the Introduction section for the NPC, and allow the PC to roll the Recognize check.
4) Have the PC roll the influence or discovery check, applying the copious cirucmstance modifiers as appropriate.
5) Tally successes, noting what occurs if PCs fail or succeed by 5+ or 10+.
6) Repeat this entire process for the remaining PCs at the table before moving on to the next Event.

Is that the gist?

You need to account for the fact that you're stuck in bird form for all of these benefits. There are significant downsides to not having an opposable thumb.

That is not a counter-argument. It still gets characters past a wealth of challenges when out of combat, and once past the obstacles the duration can be waited out trivially. With seven usages daily, that is a lot of non-combat utility to add.

For scouting its not +to stealth that gets you spotted, its the stealth rules breaking and lack of cover/concealment. Lowlight vision is good, but your chances of running into something that doesnt have it in the dark are pretty low.

Is your argument here really that Stealth modifier isn't important for stealth reconnaissance? Seriously? I'm not even going to address that. That's like saying your Perception modifier isn't important for finding things, as you usually can't find it because you're in the wrong building.

And yeah, you need to find concealment...for a bird. Not exactly tough to find an out of the way nook for a bird to hide in, and you still haven't addressed the fact that if someone spotted the bird, their likely reaction would be, "Oh hey, a bird."

The damage is awesome... on a full attack. On paper its amazing. In practice, you wind up moving to an opponent, hitting them once, your party takes him out, you need to move again.

So now your argument is that martials don't get full attacks, so martials shouldn't concern themselves with how much damage they can do on full attacks? Well, I guess I'll stop ever taking two weapon fighting, rapid shot, fast bombs, pummeling strike, or absolutely any character option to increase a character's damage.

Yes, the ring enables crazy multiclass shennanigans... that are pretty much the same as the other multiclass monstrocity shennanigans we see.

Did I black out and present a crazy multiclass monstrosity? I certainly don't remember doing that. In fact, I think I made a pretty bare-bones monk without any archetype, about half the feats missing, 4000-8000 gp unspent, no traits, and an un-optimized Dex.

Yes, its underpriced. But SO under priced it needs to be banned and effectively kill peoples characters? No.

If taking away this single wondrous item can, in your own words, 'effectively kill peoples characters' then you have articulated my own point admirably. If a single item worth 4k is SO OVERWHELMINGLY GOOD that characters entirely fall apart without it, then that is a pretty good indicator that it is poorly designed. I can't think of any other item at that price point this powerful, as you yourself just unwittingly admitted.

If it were my campaign, I'd absolutely allow for cosmetic changes. If, for example, your statues were made to look elven, people would treat you as an elf upon your re-corporation. However, you would not suddenly become proficient in elven weapons, have a +2 racial bonus to INT and Dex, etc.

Any change made in this manner would be cosmetic. If you were given angel wings, they would look real upon re-corporation, and you might even be able to move them slightly. However, they won't give you so much as a damage reduction when falling unless you do something more to magic them up.

Mechanically speaking, I think this solution allows for creative players to get some limited mileage out of the technique (basically, a pseudo alter self with no duration limit) without becoming unbalanced.

In terms of flavor, you can think of flesh to stone as instant fossilization. The cells of the body have the same shape, all the veins are hooked up, the muscles still meet in all the same ways...just made of stone instead of living material. When stone to flesh reverts this process, all the pieces work together still.

Using something like stone shape to add wings onto a creature-cum-statue could make visually elegant features, but upon reversion the wings would have no vasculature, no muscles, no vitality. They may look like wings, but without internal anatomy they would be useless.

If players REALLY wanted to pursue this, I would regard it as 'invention' within the world as well as meta-game. For example, if a wizard really wanted to be able to alter creatures' anatomies in this manner, he might need to put a lot of ranks into Heal, Knowledge (nature), Knowledge (arcana), and Craft (stonecutter). Once he had, say, 6 ranks in each I might make a feat that allows them to permanently give things analogous to some eidolon evolutions to other creatures. It would be a crafting feat, and work along similar restrictions.

It's basically about letting players get creative without overbalancing everything.

Also, a half-orc has orc in the name.

All half-orcs get Improved Unarmed Strike as a free bonus feat at level 1.

QED.

@Bigrig07 - I agree with pretty much everything you just said. However, I've played a few times with folks with 9th level characters that have 37k unspent (75% or so of their overall wealth) because 'I don't really need anything.'

These are the same people who then whine to me halfway through the mission that my Cleric 'should be healing them' rather than doing whatever I have deemed more useful to the party. PC wealth vs. NPC wealth is one of the big reasons NPCs have a CR-1 adjustment (As in, an NPC 5th level rogue is CR 4, not 5). Spending almost none of your gp essentially raises the APL of the party more than it should, putting everyone in danger.

Now, saving for a little while is a bit different. Sometimes you want some super fancy bling. I just think going for 0 gp spent for more than four sequential scenarios is when you're starting to drag down overall party efficacy unduly most of the time. That means if you want the maul, saving from level 5 all the way until 9 is going to really pain both you and the party. However, saving from 9 to 10.1 nets the same amount of gold (roughly) without really being much a burden.

Just my 2 cp.

EDIT: To the original question of this thread, I'll re-iterate what I said above (and seems to be a well regarded suggestion): untriple the spillover damage. It makes the build strategy remain effective/competitive without overbalancing everything completely. Basically, this says that your maul wielder gets to have fun doing his thing, and everyone else will still get to do their thing and be effective too.

It's really amazing for encounters vs. Martial NPCs, but it won't fare any better than a +3 club against a dragon.

Arguably, you could say damage doesn't triple against the wearer. Example: Maul wielder does 30 damage against a suit of armor, which becomes 90. The armor's hardness+HP=45, so 45 would go through. This damage isn't against an inanimate object though, so it should be divided by 3 to do 15 instead.

Kind of a gray area.

I wonder. Do gladiators in the arena, or soldiers in the field, or adventurers in the dungeon, do these calculations in their heads in the middle of combat? :-)

The good ones.

I suddenly want to make a genetic algorithm that plays rogue-likes.

I might do that crit stuff.

You will never convince me that mirror image is anything but incredible.

Think Tank is a mathematical methodology for determining how long a character can take a beating before death, incorporating not only AC, but more esoteric defensive measures as well.

This is the link.

That is correct. I would expect 70-95% success against lower mooks and 50-65% success against the BBEG. That isn't what your guide advocates in practice. As I have just illustrated in the above section of Adventure path, your 'viability' guide green tier means I am 70-95% successful against the BBEG (or more with buffs and spells) and everything else is in the blue.

Weighting the guide to take account of AP +3 challenges that are described as 'epic' in the rules is a mistake. They occur very rarely - and usually at much higher levels By that point players can dramatically increase their effectiveness given preparation.

I think when you're writing a viability guide and therefore laying out what you need in order to be successful you should consider setting the bar lower lest players think anything less than overwhelming odds of success is to be feared.

No. The guide is against an AMCREL. That is neither a challenging nor trivial encounter. It assumes unbuffed, or buff=debuff conditions.

That is the most numerically controlled conditions I can imagine to construct benchmarks around.

Furthermore, I have repeatedly demonstrated that the benchmarks fairly accurately represent combat efficacy with the various builds that have been written in this thread.

When I discuss tough encounters, I'm not saying we should expect 70%+ efficacy. We should expect that level of competence in 'average' encounters, so that we're still at least somewhat effective during tougher encounters.

I'm done belaboring these points. If you don't want to use the guide, you don't have to.

@BretI - I just paid lip-service to skills, because honestly that is a HUGE topic that I could talk about pretty much indefinitely. My benchmarks were purely to say where you're really freaking good at something for your level, good at it, okay, and well...you can try.

@Elder Basilisk: Orange is supposed to represent the benchmark for a secondary combat strategy. I had a paragraph about it, but I guess I must not have saved it in. Fixing that now.

@Weirdo, and pretty much everyone who keeps harping on my not making Blue into Purple and subdividing green into green and blue:

I'm not going to do that, and here's why: the upper range of a given category is inconsequential. Benchmarks, by definition, are meant to consider themselves with the point at which a category begins.

We need to know where 'passable' is, so we know what secondary combat strategies should look like numerically, what our minimum defenses should be, etc. We need to know what 'good' looks like so we can evaluate if our characters are within a range where they are effective with their primary strategies. We need to know where Blue is to know the point beyond which increased resource investment is largely pointless.

I can't think of a meaningful benchmark between the minimum of green and the minimum of blue. Green is good enough for a primary strategy, Blue is as high as we should really ever bother going. Anywhere in that range is a good place for a character.

If anything, dividing it into smaller ranges would encourage min-maxing in a way I think inconsistent with the tone of the article. Now instead of hitting 15 EDV at lvl 5 and seeing yourself nice and Green, you see only that to be a REAL combatant you should be getting to 21 or so.

I understand that my benchmark colors do not correspond semantically with the definitions most optimization guides use. That is because this is not an optimization guide, as it states. It is a viability guide. The next paragraph in this comment I may actually copy into the introduction to the guide.

To be viable, a character generally needs to fit the following criteria: (A) The character should be good (not passable, nor necessarily excellent) in their primary combat tactic. (Their combat tactic meets the green criteria.)
(B) The character should have no defensive measure that fails more than half of the time. (No defense should hit red. Common buffs count.)
(C) The character should have a secondary combat strategy at a passable level of efficacy (Orange) for when their primary will be ineffectual (ie, immunity to mind-affecting vs. an enchanter character, swarm traits vs. weapon damage characters) and/or a method of ensuring that their primary strategy works even in those unusual circumstances (such as a swarmbane clasp).
(D) The character should serve some function for the party when not in combat.

Any character that meets these criteria is a viable character. Whether they are 'good', 'optimal', 'broken', etc. is entirely beyond the scope of this guide.

EDIT: I've reworked the introduction section to define the purpose of the guide more rigorously. I've also put in a bit more info on secondary combat strategies. I also revamped the EDV formula to go from 'mostly accurate quick calculation' to 'the actual mathematically rigorous definition' a few days ago.

80% chance of ending an encounter with one spell is pretty good odds to my mind.

APL+3 is described as an epic fight. A challenging fight is described as APL +1 which as often as not will involve multiple lower CR creatures. I just DM'd the second book of an Adventure Path and the first encounter was against 3x lvl3 rogues. by the rules that is a challenging encounter for that level 5 party.

Note: 3 level 3 rogues is basically a CR=APL encounter. It is in no way challenging.

Assuming they are just straight NPC rogues with normal races, they are worth 600 EXP each (1800 total) and dividing by 4 players means each player is expected to contribute '450 EXP' worth of combat efficacy.

That is just above the amount a level 5 PC is expected to earn in a run-of-the-mill (CR=APL) fight.

Building for that isn't a fair assessment of character, because fights get much harder than that. I used AMCREL stats because while representative of an easy fight, I expect contributions to combat stats from other party members to generally keep pace (if not exceed) the difference between the easy fights and the tough ones.

I'm really less worried about my build than I am the baseline in the guide. I know how to play mine to make it work to a point I'm satisfied, without boosting anything. I will boost to-hit when I can afford it, so that I don't have to jump through the buffing hoops every time, but I understand the character and what he's good at.

A newish player might be able to understand calculating EDV, but a to-hit number is a lot easier for them to look at. It's very easy for someone to see the +7 on their character sheet and the +11 (now) in the benchmarks and think they need to boost their to-hit considerably.

Your character is far from optimal, but it is viable. It falls within the benchmarks I have outlined as green when using it's primary combat strategy, and orange as a minimum in its defensive metrics.

In other words, it isn't that I don't see your point, its that you don't have one. A character built non-optimally but with still mostly sensible resource allocations winds up exactly where I said they should.

Your magus example likely has a damage of roughly 6d6+3 (assuming shocking grasp) or so, yes? So average damage is 24, crit range is 18-20, so we're looking at a 15.6

Which is green. EDIT: Okay, I did my crit adjustment wrong. It's actually 13.8, which is just barely within our green. But that's with just a masterwork weapon, +3 stat modifier, and BAB going into our attack modifer. Weapon Focus alone takes us to 15.18 EDV, which feels a lot more comfortable for a front line damage dealer. Also note that Strength is the only source of damage beyond shocking grasp. So yeah, not optimal, but good enough.

Honestly, 50-65% success rate is passable, not good. Now, buffs will be flying around that'll help, but if your purpose is to be a front-line martial and you're squeaking by with a 50% hit rate, you better be hitting for a LOT of damage when you do to be good at your job.

It's not that I don't understand you think my standards are high, it's that I think yours are low.

I changed attack roll, saves and AC to match 70%. Are the DCs and EDV unchanged?

Yes, DCs and EDV are unchanged.

I made a table.

@Deadmanwalking: We don't have the Paladin's full stats, but +7 to hit at level 5 is really, really low. BAB alone is +5, that means he has either 14 strength and not even a masterwork weapon or even less srength.

@EDV: Yes, having both to-hit and EDV is redundant. The to-hit statistic can still be useful to identify the reason for a low EDV, though.

Holy Salad Bar of Abadar, that is a mighty fine table!

Oh, brother, I'm gonna link that table so good. Mmm.

I've made a few adjustments to incorporate feedback:

Green benchmarks have been lowered to a 70% success rate.

There is a note that EDV benchmarks are better indicators of success than attack roll benchmarks as a combat metric, and note a few examples of things one should consider with EDV.

I also made a note about support characters, and how they contribute.

I don't think I'm being very clear explaining. The green benchmark may be 18 but there is also the space between green and blue which is still presumable considered green. 19, 20 etc. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Yes, I just don't think it matters. I'm pretty sure anyone can figure out that the higher you go, the better you are even if the numbers still technically fall within one of my color categories.

@The sword: My save-or-X benchmarks do need adjusting for AoE effects. I'm thinking of getting into that. However, your math is off. The Green benchmark of DC 18 means that an AMCREL's weak save being targeted still gives it a 35% of succeeding against the effect. I was considering single target spells (such as Bestow Curse), meaning that where I draw the line of 'passable' as opposed to 'good' is a 40% chance of wasting your round.

Now, for AoE effects, things change. I'll need to get into that.

@Ferious: Simply by assuming that you get an AoO on 1/2 of rounds and that you are enlarged, your EDV goes to green.

So you've got green in your primary combat strategy, green Fort, at least orange in all other defensive measures.

Your character made quite a few non-optimal choices without going completely wonky, and the benchmarks reflect that he is a viable, but not optimal character.

Your character is practically the perfect demonstration of the benchmarks I've laid out working perfectly for a martial character.

Also, Orange is NOT considered 'poor'. That would be red. Orange is considered 'passable', so it is perfectly fine for a secondary combat strategy. You would want to benchmark whatever your primary combat strategy actually is to be Green in that case.

Okay, I'm just going to go through why the benchmarks are where they are, because every poster on here seems to think I want every character to be Blue rated at everything.

"Having a Blue rated statistic is generally impossible until high level, and really should not be the goal of character building. One would have to pull some pretty serious shenanigans and min/max to achieve a blue rating (at least until level 10 or so). If you do have a Blue rated combat statistic, you might consider re-allocating resources to get some of your other stats higher. Generally well-balanced characters are more satisfying to play, and the character will be more useful overall."

The only purpose in having a Blue statistic was to have a 'cap' beyond which we don't even think about. It represents a 95% success rate, which is as high as the system goes.

Green represents a 75-90 success rate. This means that whatever the thing you are doing, you do a clear majority of the time against an AMCREL. If your schtick is to demoralize enemies and you fail half the time, you're a less than effectual ally. If your thing is doing damage, and you can't hit an AMCREL with greater than chance accuracy, there's an issue there.
Keep in mind that an AMCREL is pretty weak. A dangerous encounter has 4 of them for a party of 4.

I'm not encouraging min/max here. I'm saying the thing that you want to do the most in combat, you should be effective at. That means 'it works most of the time.' The things that keep you alive shouldn't go completely by the wayside or you'll die.

The Sword wrote:

Are we saying that 70% to 90% success on save or suck spells is only green?

Similarly 70% to 90% of enemy attacks missing is only green.

APs frequently have one Enemy equal to APL against 4+ PCs. I can't see there is any kind of threat when the enemy is only 10 - 30% successful and then outnumbered 4 to 1.

The benchmark thresholds are definitely too powerful as i see it.

Having read over the guide, I do like it. I didn't at first until I really got into it, but I realize the value of it.

But I do actually agree with The Sword here, I think blue being 'impossible to fail' is too high of a benchmark. I would probably have 5 ratings, with the highest being where blue is now, as at least in my guides, the fifth rating (purple) is reserved for character defining, and I think having something be an auto success would be pretty damn character defining to me.

Something more like
0-25 = Red,
26-50 = Orange
51-75 = Green
75-99 = Blue
100+ = Purple
Would be more fair in my estimation, as the way this guide is now, it feels like it's pushing characters to optimize a bit too much, which will mean if everyone's shooting for blue/green, they'll be buzz sawing through most ECL encounters. This way red is something you don't rely on still with absolute certainty, orange is a long shot but possible, green is an ideal, and blue is a well tuned character, while purple is probably overspecializing a bit.

Just my opinion here, the guide is quite interesting and well formatted, and the math all seems sound.

Y'all are getting too focused on the color Blue. The guide explicitly states that Blue benchmarks are nearly unattainable, generally should not be strived for, and serve only as the 'point beyond which further investment is functionally useless'.

Green is actually the goal.

Also, Ferious: the guide also states that if you have certain abilities that increase your stats temporarily, those should be factored into your calculations. Once smite/Enlarge is factored in, you're well off as a character.

I have changed my EDV benchmarks after rethinking how combats work in practice.

@Ferious: I've got a few things to say here.

I think you've just fallen into a really common pitfall of the Pathfinder rules system. The concept of tanks.

You see, tanking isn't really MEANT to work in Pathfinder, like in-combat healing. The system devalues it in terms of opposed action economy for good reason: turns in a non-simulated rules system (ie, tabletop as opposed to computers doing the math) take a long time. So a character that serves to make combat take more turns ultimately slows down gameplay in an unsatisfying way.

Scaling AC is generally difficult to do in respect to enemy attacks rolls, especially if you use the (intuitive, but ultimately less effectual) Heavy Armor approach. Shields can hugely mitigate this, but unless you're two weapon fighting with your shield, your EDV takes a massive hit.

No, the real reason tanking doesn't work in Pathfinder is the inability to draw aggro. There's the compel hostility spell, Antagonize, and...I dunno, a couple of class abilities here and there.

Outside of that, you've gotta be threat on board or use positioning to absorb attacks. This means that if your EDV drops too low, you better have some other ability that pisses the enemy off but-good.

Your attack bonus is suffering because of you're starting at 16 STR, lacking Weapon Focus, and that you're 1 away from having an iterative. You've also seemingly not taken your human bonus feat, and some of your item choices seem...odd.

I have noticed that my EDV benchmarks are too high, and I think I've figured out why. I'll address that shortly. But honestly? Your character seems pretty meh. Self-healing does mitigate your low AC issue, and your high CHA helps your lack of cloak...but I just don't really see what you're going to accomplish in combat.

Except when you smite. Your character gets gud real quick in a pinch, and that's not to be discounted.

There's no one thing in particular that crashes the whole thing, your build choices just don't really seem to be heading anywhere.

Liked the guide - I do something similar though usually comparing to actual monsters rather than standardised CR monsters. That way you pick up on things like DR and SR which become more significant at higher levels but aren't seen in the basic standardised CR monster.

Also I feel that the measurement of AC for defense is quite misleading as a low con wizard with a high AC could get false sense security till one shotted by lucky shot or totally under estimates barbarian with high HP and DR.

To counter this I think measuring survival time in rounds is better and more helpful estimate of defense as takes into account hitpoint; AC; DR etc.

I don't disagree with you, but the explanation of how to estimate 'survivability' in a more holistic sense I felt was beyond the scope of this article. It may actually be the follow-up article.

Jiggy, you're right there is at least one GM locally who every time I play against him, all the monsters consistently save... I've upped my DCs to 21 in conjuration now in an attempt to quell this.

And yes, I plan to pick up Persistent Metamagic feat at Ninth.

Hmm

It really depends on the monster type, it's CR relative to your level, and what its strong save is. For example, a CR 6 Girallon would save against a DC 19 Fort save 55% of the time.

One of my favorite questions to ask when I'm a Knowledge guy and want to hit with spells, "What's their weakest save?"

Absolutely love it. Added to the Guide to the Guides. Fantastic stuff.

I was about to suggest you add my Intimimancy guide, but seemingly you've already done that at some point since the last time I looked at your page.

To the OP:

I might have missed this somewhere, but I had a question.

For determining if you meet the benchmarks, would you include limited use per day class abilities and/or spells the character can use for self-buffing? Or, do you only consider those basic aspects of the character that are pretty much always on?

That depends. If it's a 2/day standard action activation? No, I wouldn't include it. If it's a 6/day swift action? Yeah, I'd say that goes in.

It really just depends on how consistently it will be active during combat.

For those who are afraid of math I made this :

Pathfinder benchmark
You just have to select a CR and fill the blank and it compute everything and show the colors.

I need to add an option for iterative attack ...

I'm gonna take a closer look at this later today. If you don't mind, I may well link it in my guide.

Also, Blue is a range. It's just that the range is X+ where X is the number you need to succeed on a 2. Anything above that is in the Blue range.

It just so happens that if you're continuing to put resources in beyond that point, you'd likely be better served allocating resources towards some other aspect of your character.

I think, the maths gives me a headache, and it really takes the fun out of character generation as it all boils down to a numbers game. You don't have to do things a certain way, you know?

Repent your heresies, false Mort!

No, I take your point, but this process isn't really meant to be the Golden Gospel method of character creation, more a way of making sure your characters can accomplish the goals you set for them consistently.

I've created a GM cheat sheet for the non-combat portions of this scenario. It can be found on pfsprep here.

Le Petite Mort wrote:

I link directly to the table you're talking about.

Yes, and I'm asking you to include it. Why would you require readers to open another document to get the info they need?

A) Tables of beyond a few columns don't work terribly well within Wordpress.

B) All of the information is already around, it's simply a matter of opening a link in a new tab. Why would I repeat a bunch of info already available elsewhere when just linking it is sufficient?

C) It would take up a crap-load of room in an article that is already longer than I would like.

D) Having the table within the article would make people scroll up to read it, then back down to the info they want, and back and forth etc. Having the table open in a new tab is more effective.

E) I am unclear on the legality of directly copying a big table like that from paizo.

This guide contains a lot of good thoughts, but new players and less number-affine players will still need some help from others. As a new player, you can figure out potential problems with the guide, but likely you don't know the options to solve them. On the other hand, for someone not much into numbers it will be a chore to work their way through table and numbers.

And if someone wants to use the fluff or muse origin, he sometimes doesn't want to water down the concept just to battle Achilles heels.

That said, I will try this benchmark myself and probably recommend it to my players (and assist some to use it). In particular I like that the guide emphasises the importance of flexibility and the four levels of effectivity (blue to red) feel like a good model. Excellent work!

Yeah, diving into the various character options to address any given benchmarked stat was outside the scope of this article. It's basically meant to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of a character so you know what to look for.

I've run into a lot of difficulty fluctuation in PFS scenarios. The average to-hit in one scenario could be 5-10 more than in another scenario of the same tier.

In addition, I'm not sure those bestiary benchmarks are adhered to very strictly. There are quite a few monsters known to be under- or over-CRed for their level.

Average monster stats see a lot of fluctuation in any individual stat, but usually when taken together it makes sense. Like, a super high AC monster will have quite low damage, or something.

In PFS scenarios, monsters that are designed by scenario authors are absolutely HORRENDOUS at staying near the average for CR. Fortress of the Nail's high-tier final battle compares most closely to a CR 16 monster and has home-turf advantage, despite being called a CR 12 encounter.

It would be great to include a table of average monster stats per CR. The guide assumes you know that info (to base your benchmarks on) but the values aren't there, other than CR 5.

Also, I think your topmost rating ("hit every monster on a 2+" is absolute overkill. If a character hits on a 4+, I'd still call that excellent. Guides like these encourage readers to go for the highest rating, so that rating should be something attainable for most builds.

I link directly to the table you're talking about.

Blue rating is not meant to be the goal, it simply represents the point at which there isn't much point in improving. Green is really the goal, as is explicitly stated multiple times. Furthermore, AMCRELs are not usually the opponents PCs face, APL+2 is more common, which puts my benchmarks around what you're talking about.

I enjoyed your guide, and I hope you will continue developing it. I'll share a few thoughts for improvement, just my opinions of course.

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It's OK to have a weakness!
I don't think you should lower your various requirements, but I do think you should recognize that after identifying weak areas, one option is to leave one of your weak areas as a legitimate weakness.

It's true that a high level fighter should do something to shore up their will save, but not every fighter needs a 12+ Wisdom, a trait, and a feat dedicated to plugging that hole, especially not by level five. Some will want to, some won't, and both are reasonable choices.

The Party
To me, any advice on how to make characters is incomplete without mentioning other party members. Somewhere after your "3 character origins" I'd love to see a bit about filling basic roles within a party, and not stepping on other characters' shticks. I know this isn't the emphasis of your guide, so a single paragraph seems sufficient.

Keep up the good blogging!

Honestly I'm thinking about excising the three origin story schtick in this one and expanding it in it's own post. I like the idea still, but it doesn't tonally fit with an otherwise Math/Logic oriented benchmarking article.

Party composition is another excellent prompt for a post. Finding where you fit in a given campaign is a very common challenge. I don't think I should dilute the focus of this post, but it would be an interesting topic to take on in the future.

That would be a good way to compare dissimilar methods of protection (HP, miss chance, AC etc).

If mapped to a graph, it could also show the EHP value of the next point of AC, and how much EHP 1 more hit point is worth. Would help to determine if toughness is better value than dodge for a given character.

You know, that would be a good article in and of itself.

Working title: Wear Protection - Playing it Safe

P.S I've incorporated a lotta ya'll's input into my guide. I don't give a lot more than lip-service to skills, because that could be a three-part series of posts in and of itself. There is simply too vast a variety of game mechanics packed into skills that benchmarking all of them to my satisfaction would be quite time consuming.

For example, here's my 38 page document on the Intimidate skill.

Le Petite Mort wrote:

@ElSilverWind: I think having an HP benchmark is an okay idea, but I don't really know where I'd draw the lines on those benchmarks. I'm open to suggestions.

I think if you did 3 rounds of survivability with being hit with a full attack.

So <1 would be red, 2 would be yellow, 3 green, 4 or 5 blue.

I actually started thinking of something similar, except using the opponent's EDV. So if you're a hugely AC dumped Barbarian, your HP benchmarks will be higher than Tanky McTankerson with his AC of 32.

Some response to criticisms: Blue is meant to be overkill, and isn't as high as you think when you consider that players generally face creatures above their AMCREL. I used AMCREL because it is a simple method for finding appropriate benchmarks.

@Ascaphalus: I should include a skills section, and will look into making it later today.

I also really should have included the EDV formula.

I may mention saves priority (Will>Fort>>>Reflex) but I'm not sure.

@Dekalinder: This guide was not meant to delve into Fluff, merely to say that Fluff is a possible starting point for getting a character concept. Muffins and Bagels are certainly not mechanically optimized, though Bagels isn't far from it. Muffins isn't a character I personally would even consider playing, though he is certainly playable if basic 'hit with stick' characters are your bag.

@DeadManWalking: A chart of benchmarks based off the Average Monster Statistics Table is a pretty good idea. I may just do that for levels 1-11 at least.

@ElSilverWind: I think having an HP benchmark is an okay idea, but I don't really know where I'd draw the lines on those benchmarks. I'm open to suggestions.

This is basically a method of finding consistent and meaningful benchmarks for character creation and maintenance, with some advice on addressing weaknesses peppered throughout. While mostly intended for new players, I feel even veterans may get some value from viewing character mechanics through the lens of their opposition's capabilities.

Here is the link.

So, which part of the series does Hats show up in? He is coming, right?

We need more haberdashery.