LogicNinja's page

Wait, I think I get it. I think you completely misunderstood what I wrote.

I'm saying that as you are building your NPC's you should - within the boundaries of ranks allowed by the NPC's level - adjust the ranks to their proper place. I'm saying you shouldn't raise the skill with levels if you don't want it to raise.

I am not saying that you should assign extra skill points to NPC's, or that you should assign more skill ranks to the profession skill than the NPC's level allows.

Yes, you're saying that if the NPC's job indicates that he makes more money, he should have a higher Profession bonus (by having more skill ranks in Profession).

According to you, if a lawyer makes 40 gp a week (which would be reasonable, for a guy who works for the nobility, say)... then he needs to have a +70 Profession bonus. So he needs to be level 40. Or, rather, he can't make 40 gp a week, because... because everyone's income needs to be capped at levels a low-mid level character taking Profession ranks can reasonably achieve. Because otherwise, using the Profession skill for NPC income might not make sense. God forbid.

According to you, everyone in a low-income trade has a low Profession skill. Which means a common laborer who's been working constructions for 20 years can't answer basic questions about working construction (DC 10, he has like a +1 bonus so that he doesn't make as much as a lawyer).

According to you, merchants can't make a profit, because how much money they make literally has no connection whatsoever to what they trade in or how good a deal they can get.

You are claiming that the weekly pay of every single person in the world playing a trade should be modelled on a scale that goes from 5 gp to 15 gp or so.[/i] Because the rules say so. And nothing is important as adhering to the rules, even if you're using them in ways they were never intended to be used.
(Oh, wait, I forget--you literally think the designers intended the Profession skill to limit how much money merchants could make.)

And I've already explained to you, in precise detail, exactly why these rules are not just intended for PC's. Because it doesn't say that the profession skill is only for PC's. The profession skill tells us how much someone makes practicing a profession. That's what it is designed for. Whether you like the results of that design is moot.

"The rules say this stupid thing, so it's totally intentional" is pretty bad reasoning. The 3.x rules used to say that you could drown someone at negative hit points to 0--that doesn't mean that it was a good idea. The combat rules say various things, but it'd still be stupid to use the combat rules to model a serial killer killing other NPCs in their homes.

Not that that's even relevant, because you haven't shown why those rules are intended to. Those rules are intended to address the question in a quick, abstract, and handwavey manner, not in a detailed manner that actually makes any sense. You can tell because the rules are quick, abstract, handwavey, and don't make any sense.

NPC's are built with the profession skill. You house rule that they are not tied to the results of their skill checks, which is somewhat like giving them free skill points elsewhere because there's no reason to put points in profession.

NPCs are built with the profession skill to make you feel like that NPC "really" has that profession.

Giving NPCs "free skill points" doesn't matter, because they're NPCs, and often giving them free skill points, breaking skill caps, etc makes more sense. It's eminently reasonable for the court vizier to have a huge Sense Motive score while still being low level.

And if you do keep putting points in the profession skill, well, there has to be a quantifiable result.

*Why*? How does it improve the game *in any way* if you give the NPC 3 more gold coins because he has more ranks in Profession or a higher WIS? Will anyone even know why he has 3 more gold coins?

Somewhat. I don't agree with you that a butcher should make more than a barrister. I think that is setting specific; frankly, I don't care what professions you personally believe should make more money than other professions. That's your choice.

But I do agree that some professions inevitably make more than others. To handle that you need only assign the profession level to the point it needs to be. You want porters to make peanuts? Don't give them a profession skill. Don't give them the skill if they're first level, and don't give them the skill if they're twentieth level....

In other words, you think architects and engineers should make more than butchers... but that this should be resolved by making them wiser and higher-level. All architects are wise and

I've already shown you that, say, the difference between Profession +2 and Profession +12, when taking 10, is (10+2)/2 vs (10+12)/2 = 6 vs 11 = 5 gp a week.
So, yes, the guy with Profession +12 will make more than the guy with Profession +1, but by 5 gold a week.

You think that 4 gp a week--1/3 of his salary--is the amount of a good architect or engineer (i.e. someone working with the affluent nobility, and being paid by them, on an entirely different scale than the common laborer works at) should make more than a common laborer? Really?

You're arguing that I should make up appropriate income values, and *then* tweak NPCs until their Profession ranks. And that no professional NPC should have an income beyond what his. A lawyer that works for rich courtiers? Nope, he only makes 20 gp a week, which is only twice the 10 gp a week than what the freaking butcher makes.
And, of course, then there's the question of--if I'm picking appropriate GP values for these NPCs' incomes myself--why I'm bothering the Profession rules at all. We're doing the same thing--eyeballing how much they should make--only after, you're making the NPC higher level because otherwise he couldn't make that much because Profession says so. The way you are using the rules is actively counterproductive. It makes the game make less sense, not more.

Why?
Why are you so attached to the idea that the Profession rules MUST determine how much an NPC makes? How do merchants exist in your world? How does trade exist? It literally doesn't matter what a merchant trades in or does, he still makes the same 1d20+1 to 10 gp a week!

The basic difference we have here is understanding what a lot of money is. Money has a relative value no matter how many zeros you add to the end. 1 gp can be a fortune, 1 gp can be discarded change. It depends upon the setting.

Pathfinder has been kind enough to provide us with a profession skill that gives us glimpse into how valuable the coins are, along with a generic pricing table. Determining that 20 gp a week is monumental compared to 10 gp a week is a matter of perspective. After all, $100,000 a year is a heck of a lot more than $50,000 a year. If you doubt that, just ask a fellow making $50,000 a year.

It's not a matter of perspective, because if a guy making 10 gp a week can't afford to own a home at all, or can afford only a ramshackle tiny house, then a guy making 20 gp a week certainly can't afford a house in a nice part of town. And the thing is, according to you, a guy making 50 gp a week? Doesn't exist. Because the rules say he can't--he'd need too many profession ranks!

Your view of money is sophomoric, and provincial, and your desire to give someone 100 gp a week is arbitrary at best.

Excuse me? My view of money is based on things like supply and demand existing, which they apparently don't in your mind.

My desire to give someone 100 gp a week--or 1000 gp a week, for that matter--is based on the fact that people in some careers make orders of magnitude--not "1/3 more", not "double", but orders of magnitude--more than people in other careers, and that this was at least as true historically as it is today.

My view of money is based on the blatantly obvious fact that being good at a low-income job won't get you more money than someone being mediocre at a high-income job.

Money is relative. It doesn't matter if 1 gp buys a horse or a meal--the point is, a merchant who's making a lot of money should have orders of magnitude more money than a porter or cooper or waiter who's good at his job.
But if you use the Profession rules, he won't be. He'll be making half again as much, maybe.
If you use the profession rules, the merchant is incapable of turning more than the tiniest of profits.

Note that I say "hatchet" rather than "hand axe" as they're different things.

It's critical that the game accurately model this distinction!

Round two: the tree casts tree shape.

With something like 20-50 limbs and easily enough hit dice to have Multiattack and Improved Natural Attack, you don't want to be caught by that thing, it'd be nasty.

You are right -- I see absolutely no reason not to use the rules as they actually are. The rules as such work. They work for NPCs too.

Now you keep asking about craftmen but we've already pointed out that craftsmen do things differently.

The really funny thing is the people that focus more in their job tend to make...

The Profession list includes people who can command an exorbitant salary, like Architects. It also includes people who can make large amounts of profit, like Merchants.

The rules don't "work for NPCs". The rules "work" for their intended purpose--players rolling a die to see how much money they get--but they were never intended to simulate an economy (that's why even a level 20 Profession God can't make more than 50 gp a week) or to actually calculate NPC earnings. For some kind of middling-income tradesman, the rules vaguely make sense, if you handwave away the fact that any trade, by the rules, has the exact same income potential (i.e. by the rules your career literally has zero effect on your income, and if you handwave away supply and demand, and if you handwave away all of the other things actually affect actual economies.

But trying to apply these rules to calculate NPC wages for architects or lawyers or merchants who are good at their job is actively harmful, as you will then have to twist your world in order to fit the nonsensical results. You can twist yourself into knots trying to explain why it's impossible for a merchant to make more than 50 gp a week (even if he's level 20!), no matter what he trades in or how high his profit margin is. You can twist yourself into knots trying to explain why the existence of two more blacksmiths in a small town has no effects on the profits of a third blacksmith.
Or, you can just eyeball their approximate wages, and have a game world that actually works better as a result.

You'd rather believe that the designers are such complete idiots that they don't understand how supply and demand works, that they don't understand that the field you work in has a huge effect on your earning potential... than accept that maybe, just maybe, it's a bad idea to use this rule to figure out what various NPCs make.

Just because this actually sounds fun to set up lets see the maximum we can do:

Starting with a wisdom of 20 add in all appropriate level modifiers and equipment and we'll hit a 36. Take it to venerable age for an additional +3 puts wisdom up to a 39.

Now we'll go for a full 20 ranks, and human with heart of the fields.

For feats we'll want:
Skill Focus (+6)
Master Craftsman (+2)
Master of the Ledger (+2)
Racial Heritage(elf) (+0)
Breadth of Experience (+2)

And a Trait that gives +1 to the profession skill.

So we have +13 from feats and traits, +13 from wisdom +23 from ranks and class bonus with an extra +10 from the heart of the fields bonus for human for a total of +59, finally some magical tools for a +10 competence bonus would put us up to a +69 on your own.

Rolling a 1 would give a 70 or 35gp a week. Rolling a 20 would give a 89 or 44.5gp a week.

Don't you think it's stupid that an NPC merchant or lawyer would have to be level 20, with various feats and such investment, to make a mere 44.5 gp a week?

Don't you think it's stupid that supply and demand apparently don't exist?

Geez, buddy. Relax.

If figuring out the math behind where to set the profession skill ranks in your game is too much for you then by all means ignore it.
You are certainly free to house rule your game however you like. No one's judging here.
But the profession skill does tell us how much money is made practicing a profession.
If you need proof that what I just said is true I refer you to the profession skill. A good reading of it should bring you up to speed on what it does -- and what it does is tell you how much someone makes practicing a profession.

I've already explained to you, in great detail, exactly why these rules are intended for PCs and why it would be not only useless but actively counterproductive to try to apply them to figuring out how much NPCs make.

You wound up basically agreeing with me--you acknowledged that it's kind of dumb that a butcher can make more money than a lawyer--but then you suggested that instead of this being a problem with the Profession skill itself, or with applying it to NPCs, that the skill is perfect and instead the DM should first figure out and then peg the NPC's Profession skill to his income. Which, incidentally, means no one who has a Profession can even make 100 gp a week.

As far as 100 gp/week being reasonable . . . well, maybe in your house ruled universe. In mine, a guy would have to be like, what, level 40? That's ridiculous.

Jo, you just told me that a merchant or lawyer (for example) making a lot of money is impossible, because the rules don't allow it.

This is a thing you literally just said.

In your game world, MERCHANTS CAN'T MAKE MORE MONEY THAN THEIR PROFESSION CHECK ALLOWS. Trade just happens on its own, magically, without any merchant making even as much as 100 gp/week.

This can't honestly be what you actually believe, can it?

Really, that was all to demonstrate my point. That while the simulation is not perfect the game is designed to accommodate NPCs of first level doing all the things that other NPCs need--well things that aren't kill dragons.

Not really. The game is designed to accommodate *PCs* of 1st level doing these things. We've already gone over how the game breaks down.

For one thing, we're talking about a magical economy in which how much money other people have to spend has no effect on how much money other people make.

Meanwhile, a merchant who buys a +1 sword from a PC (who just got a +1 Flaming sword or w/e) for 1000 gp and re-sells it to a different group of adventurers for 1200 just made a 200 gp profit. (Let alone the 1000 gp profit he'd make from selling the +1 sword for the full 2000.) I guess he has a +190 Profession bonus. (+990?)

The point is, Profession is there as a quick handwavey answer to "how much do I make?" and to make players feel like their character is really a chef 'cause they paid SP to be a chef. It's not meant to simulate an economy and it doesn't.

The idea that Profession = low-income menial labor, Craft = skilled labor, isn't a bad one, but it's also a pure invention of yours--barristers and engineers, for example, are on the explicit list of professions, and they would have *vastly* higher income that scribes and such, much less freakin' porters and farmers.

But we're not.

What you're failing to understand is that you, as the GM, design and build the NPC's. If you want to build an NPC with a high profession skill you likely have a reason for doing that.
These NPC's don't come prepackaged with ranks in profession skills. It's your choice as the GM to place their skill ranks where you want and imagine them to be.
Just as it is your place to assign their levels.
You want a porter that makes a lot? Great. Give the porter a high level with a high skill rank. Want porters to make next to nothing? Great, don't give them a profession skill, or maybe limit that skill to one. You decide as the GM.

Christ.

Look, Jo, at this point, we're down to you arguing that characters who make more money should have higher profession bonuses as assigned by the DM, *because* they make more money. But that's not how it works. According to the rules, if you apply them to NPCs, a lawyer with Profession +6 makes the same amount of money as a butcher with Profession +6.

In other words, I *first* need to figure out how much money an NPC makes a week. Then, I need to figure out what their Profession modifier needs to be. *Then*, I have to figure out how they got that modifier (skill ranks, Wisdom, feats), and this might include making them level 6ish or 10ish if they make a lot of money (to get the required profession modifier).
Or... I could just figure out how much money the NPC makes a week... and *leave it at that*.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The skill just *wasn't designed* for this stuff. The skill exists for the exact situation I described--a player character wants to make money by plying his trade. That's it.

(Also, doing it your way, we end up in a world in which a lawyer or merchant or something making a very reasonable 100 gp/week has to be level, like, 40 (to get ~+90 Profession).)

The pay results are divided by two. So your rank 1 guy is making at most 11.5 gp a week. Taking a 10 he is making 5.5 gp a week. Your GoP is making up to 35 gp a week and making 30 a week by taking 10.

He is making about 5.5 times what the level 1 guy is making. If you look at income distribution in developed nations that seems about appropriate. But it goes to your point that to do that you need a profession god.

You're right, I forgot to divide by 2--thanks.

So, yes, the Profession God is making 5.5 times what the level 1 guy is making.

Meanwhile, in the real world, my couple-of-years-out-of-college standard-issue programmer friend is making 5.5 times what my actor friend is.
And, in the real world, a "Profession God" (professional athlete at the highest level, let's say) is making many orders of magnitude more. "A-Rod" (the highest-paid baseball player, apparently) is making $32 million a year.
Compare that to Joe Retail, who's making $32 *thousand* as a manager somewhere. A-Rod is making literally a thousand times more than he is.

(And in, oh, say, the 1400s, the difference between someone working for the nobility (like a Master of Horse) and someone working for working people (like the cook at your typical inn), would've been *way* bigger than that between my programmer friend and my artist friend, for example.)

---

You know, I still can't believe that people are trying to pretend that your career having no effect on your salary doesn't actually matter and that Profession is perfectly verisimilitudinous/realistic/whatever.

We're talking about a system where the average porter gets paid just as much as the average jeweler, FFS.

Really?

Lets consider this because you are extremely wrong:

Statistically speaking the d20 is going to average 10.5 +4 would be 14.5 and +12 would be 22.5 which means 7.25gp a week or 11.25gp a week.

52 weeks to a year means 377gp a year for the +4 and 585 a year for the +12 that is 208gp difference a year.

That's a rather large difference.

No, it's not--not really. The +12 guy isn't even making double what the +4 guy is.

I have a friend who's a programmer. He stopped being "entry-level" a few years ago. He's pretty fair at his job, but not super great or anything. He's making 90,000 a year.

I have another friend who works in a warehouse--packaging things, lifting things, and so on. He's actually really good at his job. He's the only one there who's been there for 4 years, everyone else who started when he did has been laid off. He's making 20k a year tops. That's a difference of *4.5* times.

Meanwhile, my father's social circle (that is, people well into their career) includes people making 300,000 a year. That's *15* times what the 20k guy makes.

And of course, all of this ignores the fact that how much you make has far more to do with what type of job you do than with how well you do it, barring extreme edge cases.

You are confusing the random modifier for something of value, when statistically speaking it's over all effect is much less than the additive we already have.

No, it's not. The d20 is worth about as much as a +11 modifier.

Look, in order for Bob to *consistently* make more than Joe--as in, no matter how well they roll, Bob's bonus has to be 21 higher than Joe's. (Imagine if your salary was 1d20 + 5 thousand dollars a year, BTW--some years you'd be OK, some years you'd be too poor to pay rent. d20 is a LOT of randomness when you're dealing with modifiers like "+5" or "+10".)

This is why people get worried over sneak attack and completely ignore the raw damage output the fighter has (which is much higher than what any rogue is going to do) simply because 'there's more dice!'

I agree that people who worry about Rogue sneak attack damage output are bad at analyzing the game.

First let me congratulate LogicNinja on keeping arguments going with so many people.

Thanks!

Being a better blacksmith does not make you harder to kill. Extra levels do. A 20th level blacksmith would be hard to kill but so would a 20th level anything. But for NPCs that is not needed. You can make most items at level 1 by taking 10.

If I'm a really "good" cook, I'm harder to kill than a mediocre cook--I have to be. I have a Profession score that can't really be achieved without class levels. If I'm level 6, I have waaaaay more hitpoints than that level 1 cook. I have a BAB of +3. I can probably take a level 1 soldier in a fight.

This problem, as you noted, arises from tying skill ranks to levels, which makes sense for adventuring skills but not trade skills.

The equalization of income shows that this game was created by communists. But obviously some humans use that extra bonus feat to get traits to help with that.

I was actually considering making a "the PF devs are obviously commies" joke, so thanks for doing it for me.

(And yes, with their bonus feat, humans can take Skill Focus and be better at any profession than equivalent-level elves, despite how long the elves have been at it.)

It has its purposes. Sometimes a DM wants to use the rules to determine how much certain hirelings must be paid. That old lawyer guy with tons of experience looks better than that new kid who just started. Hmmm, old guy is expensive, lets go with the young guy. Sometimes the restriction of the narrative space requires knowing what is going on with NPCs.

Sure, but the Profession skill doesn't make much sense in these cirucmstances. The difference in cost between old guy and young guy will be trivial. I agree it would be fun to say "you guys can higher the Bright-Eyed Inexperienced Lawyer for [small amount of money], or the Canny Old Beardy Lawyer for [significantly larger amount of money], which do you wanna go with?" but the Profession skill isn't going to help you there--making up values that sound appropriate will do you far better.

In general though discussions about NPCs who don't contribute to the narrative are like talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They generally don't add to the game as played but are fun to discuss. Sometimes new revelations about the game arise from trying to determine the answer....

You mentioned this before but I do think the designers of 3.x and Pathfinder intended the game to simulate the NPC world to a certain extent. But only in ways that the PCs could also use. An NPC can make a living & support a family using the game as written.

I don't think talking about NPCs who don't contribute to the narrative can provide revelations about the game, since the game is focused on the PCs, and so are the game rules.

An NPC can make a living and support a family using the game as written, depending on how you look at it... with enough DM handwaving (you don't really have a game world where the price of everything never changes, regardless of region, supply, or demand, do you? Do the farmers have no trouble eating when there's a drought?) but that's pretty much a side effect, and if you start figuring things out for each NPC, you'll end up with a city where the butchers, the bakers, and the candlestick makers make as much (sometimes less, sometimes *more*) as the lawyers, the barristers, and the jewelers.

And everybody's wages will be tiny compared to how much gold adventurers inject into the economy so it doesn't matter anyway.

"The profession skill isn't about everything it's about!"

Sorry you lose at that point.

The profession skill is exactly that.

It's all it claims to be and it's the only example check given for it.

I don't think you actually understand what I'm saying.

When you have a player who took Profession(cook), and the party gets to a city, and the player declares, "I want to spend the week working as a chef," you have the player roll a Profession check and tell them how much money they make. If there's a question about cooking that needs to be answered, the player can roll against DC 10 or 15 to see if his character can answer it. This is the purpose of the skill--this, and to make the player feel that his character is "really" a cook.
This is what the Profession skill does as per the rules, and this is exactly what it's for.

When you--the DM--are creating a town for the players to get to, you do not create an NPC, then look at his Profession score to see how much money he makes. That is not what the skill is for, and it makes no sense for you to use the skill that way--the results will make no sense and you will derive no benefit from doing so; on the contrary, this *creates* work for you, as you have to make up reasons for the bizarre results that tell you that a beggar makes almost as much as a merchant. Remember: you, the DM, decide what happens in the world. You're not "breaking the rules" if you assign each townsperson an arbitrary income, or handwave it, any more than if you roll for them based on the profession skill you gave them, or if you roll on a homebrewed table.

If you *want* to figure out what each townsperson's Profession skill would be, because that is your own bizarre way of having fun, that's fine. But determining the incomes of NPCs isn't what the Profession skill is for.

Remember, the rules we're talking about are rules in a roleplaying game. They're in a book meant for players and DMs. They exist to serve the players and DMs.

It depends: What level, what skill rank, what feats, what tools, and what abilities do each of the people have?

Honestly there is a lot that plays into the skill check -- those that dedicate more to it will do better at it.

Yes, you're right--but this is the case regardless in their profession. Do you honestly think it makes sense for the best butcher in London to make more money than a mediocre jeweler, for a really good porter to make more money than a mediocre architect?

And the range is incredibly narrow.

Look, someone with 1 rank in a Profession and no bonuses is rolling d20+1 and making 2 to 21 gold a week, 11.5 average.

Now let's take a level 20 character. He has 20 ranks, +3, +6 from feats, +10 from maxing out his Wisdom. He even has a magic tool that gives him another +10, and let's throw in another +1. This guy has +50. He is better at his profession than anyone has ever, ever been. He is a living god of [profession].

He's rolling 1d20+50, and making 51 - 71 gold a week, 61.5 average

These numbers are incredibly close together in terms of salary. Someone working an upper-class trade would be *orders of magnitude* wealthier than a porter--no matter how good the porter is.

The difference between "really bad" and "the best that there could ever possibly be in the world".

But hey if you want to only try to point out the extremes and call it the norm have fun -- but such doesn't actually hold up.

If you have someone with a 13 wisdom, 3 ranks (at level 5) that has it as a class skill, spent 3 feats in getting better at it and a trait along with masterwork tools of the trade he's going to do better than someone with just 3 ranks in the skill and a 13 wisdom.

You act as if there is only one factor in play when there isn't.

There's only one real factor that matters and that's the d20. The difference between d20+4 and d20+12 is pretty minor.

But that's not even the real problem.
The biggest problem is that it's only how good you are at your job that matters, not what your job *is*.

That's like saying that a mediocre corporate lawyer makes less money than a great Wal-Mart employee.

LogicNinja it's fun how you are trying.

First off not everyone in the world will make the same amount of money:

Spell casters will make more as they can also sell spells which are (for them) a renewable resource.

Great, spellcasters, a tiny minority of people, can make money selling spells. I'm not sure how this is relevant. Everyone who is *plying a trade* still makes pretty much the same amount of money.

Also some people will have better stats, or better tools or both.

A few points of wisdom and some masterwork tools are a handful of points. When you're rolling a d20, having a +3 or +6 bonus doesn't actually impact your wages all that much.

"You can earn half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work."
So someone rolling d20+5 (+1 stat, 1 rank, +3) gets an average of 16.5 gp a week, while someone rolling a whopping d20+11 (18 stat, 4 ranks, +3) gets an average of... 22.5 gp a week.

If a mediocre butcher (Mr. +5) is making 16.5 a week, don't you think a highly competent goldsmith (Mr. +11) should be making way, WAY more than 22.5 gp a week? And it's worse the other way around--what if the butcher is the one with the +11? Then he's actually making *more* money than the goldsmith! But if he rolls a 15 and the goldsmith rolls a 4, that's a week in which the mediocre butcher makes more money than the excellent goldsmith.
Who knew being a butcher was so lucrative?

Others won't have all the time needed each week to make the check.

Some people won't bother.

That's called "people who are not actually plying their trade". According to the rules, if you apply them to NPCs, a barrister and a butcher who are equally good at their trade make the same amount of money.

I actually went over a large part of this already because I had the time and it comes up so often.

The problem is -- you are expecting something other than what is actually modeled. If you look at what is modeled and not trying to expect it to be what you want you'll see the system works -- it's just not what you expected.

The Profession skill isn't modelling much at all beyond "you get some money for plying a trade". It's not intended to model that. If it was, then it would have, for example, distinctions for types of trades (so that high-paying, 'white-collar' jobs like jeweler, barrister, etc make more than menial labor jobs like 'farmer').

You've gone to great lengths to try to turn it into something that makes sense, but the same amount of effort could have created a neat little subsystem that makes far more sense.

The Profession skill literally models every single profession in the exact same way. It makes zero attempts to distinguish between them. If that doesn't tell you "high-level abstraction meant for handwaving things and influencing players, not used for any kind of detailed simulation", what *would* tell you that?

If you want a game that actually takes some amount of economics and such into account, I'm pretty sure GURPS has a splatbook for that. But the Profession skill does nothing of the sort, because the Profession skill isn't there to tell you how much each person in a village makes (the results will be nonsensical)--it's there so the player feels like their character is "really" a cook.

LogicNinja wrote:

The base assumption of the Profession skill is that you are not using it to simulate laborers engaging in labor.

Ahem,

Professions example list for the profession skill out of the core rulebook:

Quote:

The most common Profession skills are architect, baker, barrister, brewer, butcher, clerk, cook, courtesan, driver, engineer, farmer, fisherman, gambler, gardener, herbalist, innkeeper, librarian, merchant, midwife, miller, miner, porter, sailor, scribe, shepherd, stable master, soldier, tanner, trapper, and woodcutter.

I think you are wrong.

What? No, that's just a list of common Professions. The purpose of the profession skill remains what I propose, i.e. to let players feel their character is *really* a merchant, gambler, gardener, whatever, and to handwave the actual merchanting, gambling, gardening, whatever to play it out.

Unless you, too, are telling me that the designers of Pathfinder *really do* think that engineers and butchers, clerks and shepherds, barristers and trappers, architects and tanners, make the same amount of money.

So. You're guessing as to the intent of the design regarding the profession skill. The skill that tells us how much is made via dice rolls in the respective professions.

And the reasoning for your guess is that you don't like the way the skill functions as it violates your suspension of disbelief.

That's cool.

But you're sort of beating it to death. We get it. You don't like letting NPC's use the profession skill. Check. Got it. Moving on.

Just don't force feed your guesses as to intent down everyone's throat. Some folks believe the skill that references how to make money via professions is one that should come into play when designing NPC's.

Wait, so, you're telling me that you DO think that the designers *intended* ever tradesman NPC in the world to make the same amount of money? Why do you think this? Such a completely ridiculous (and, frankly, insulting to the designers) proposition needs support.

If you want to give an NPC some ranks in a profession because it makes you feel like the NPC is "really" a baker, that's an extension of the "the skill exists to help players feel their character is really a [professional]" purpose (although it's a pretty weird limitation for a GM).
The problems arise when you try to use it to actually calculate how much money they have--and those problems are definitely there.

That's what this is boiling down to. You're not saying "well, this is my arbitrary and irrational preference and I like it that way", which would be fine. We all have arbitrary and irrational preferences.
You're flat-out saying that you think that the designers *intended* every NPC in the game world to make the same amount of money. Why would the designers intend that?

If you really love rolling profession, go for it. Just don't pretend that's the original purpose of the skill, or that the skill is in any way good for figuring out how much tradesmen should make.

Clearly you've never had a 17th level adventure come down to a dressmaking contest with the demon that holds your character's family's souls hostage.

No, I never have. That seems pretty weird, and it seems even weirder to settle a contest like that with a single craft roll, or a series of craft rolls.

I'm also not sure what this has to do with the purpose of the Profession rules.

I'd never before seen a group so excited that someone rolled a 51 on a Craft check.

Was it a contest to see who could make the dress faster? Because Craft doesn't actually tell you how *good* what you're making is (it's either Masterwork or it isn't), it just tells you how fast you make it. How nice a dress is isn't even objective, it's entirely a matter of taste! Some people love big froofy dresses and some people hate'em.

You can houserule that the higher your Craft roll, the more objectively high-quality your item is, I guess, but you could also just do that for an ability check or something (I'd make it a DEX check, since that makes way more sense than INT--being a genius won't help you make an awesome dress, being good with a needle and thread will).

I can't remember where it was from but I seem to recall there used to be something where weapon damage varied by damage type vs target. Like Slashing weapons would do better damage against one type of target but piercing would be more effective against another.

In 3.x some monsters had damage reduction that could be overcome by slashing, bludgeoning, etc. Skeletons had DR 5/bludgeoning, IIRC, for example.

In early D&D, there was an optional matrix that gave certain weapons bonuses against certain armor, e.g. piercing weapons were better against chainmail.

As for mining, Power Attack and a big two-handed weapon lets fighter types cut through solid rock with a non-adamantine weapon pretty easily.

You've got two basic options when it comes to handling this:
(1) Just let them do it and say that badass warriors can carve through stone pretty decently. Certainly the mages have no problem using Stone Shape or whatever.

(2) Don't use the hardness/damage/HP rules to handle cutting through solid stone. There's really not much to commend using the rule besides "it's there"--it's pretty simple to come up with something that makes more sense, because even eyeballing it and going "Yeah, that would take about... ten hours" makes more sense.

*reads LogicNinja's next-to-last post*

Oh, okay, that makes sense, and I apologize for categorizing you. While I still disagree with you, and your earlier posts seemed rude and dismissive, it seems you have more considera-

*reads LogicNinja's last post*

... nevermind. See my post you've responded to once.

I'm not sure what your problem is, exactly. I have a point to make, and I'm making it and supporting it. I'm not insulting anyone, or making snide comments about how "wow, you totally made me not want to read any of your other posts".

Do you have a problem with me pointing out exactly how nonsensical a world where NPC wages are calculated using the profession rules is? Would you like me to use more softening phrases like "IMO" and "seems like" and "but that's just my opinion do what you want"?

You speak with such authority. Where did you come across this knowledge?

Or do you mean to say, "I use the rule for PC's, but not for NPC's."

Which is like saying something different.

I think it's pretty obvious that the designers never intended the rule to be used to simulate the economy.

Unless you think the designers either
(a) actually *wanted* to create a world where nothing matters as to how much money you make except what level you are and how wise you are, and where everyone makes roughly the same amount of money--lawyers, coopers, guardsmen, jewelers, whatever
or (b) wanted to create a rule that would actually give a reasonable number when you're figuring out how much money some NPC makes, but are so utterly bad at game design that they ended up with "everyone with a profession, makes the same small amount of money, being wise makes you make a little more".

The rule is so broad, general, and abstract that it's pretty clear that it's intended as a rough handwave rather than as a serious attempt to model something. And if you do apply it to NPCs, you get absolutely nonsensical results.

I guess you could argue "the rule is meant to actually tell you how much money every tradesman NPC makes, but is really poorly designed". I'd rather not think the designers are that incompetent. Certainly the rest of the game is better designed than that.

But they are not terrible at it. NPCs can make a living wage, the equipment costs make sense for the money NPCs can earn, even poor untrained characters can buy food and clothing. I don't care about NPCs making a living and hand wave it in my games. However, I enjoy discussions like these because I often find the rules are more robust than I thought they were.

They are absolutely terrible at it. We are talking about a world where being a better blacksmith makes you much more dangerous and harder to kill, where wizards make better blacksmiths than warriors, where getting feeble and senile makes you better.

We are talking about rules that mean you make the same amount of money as a scribe, a goldsmith, a lawyer, a brick-layer, a woodcutter, and a waiter.
If we're using Profession rules for NPCs, every NPC of the same level makes about the same amount of money regardless of their status or profession. This is obviously ludicrous.

As far as rationalization, that is what the whole game is about. Roll a bad stealth check? Well why did that happen? Maybe you were distracted because AM Barbarian called you weak. Maybe the floor is strewn with extra crunchy leaves.

Miss a to hit roll? How did that work for your character? The nimble goblin ducks under your massive blow, you can see the hair on his head move from the whoosh of your massive hammer....

The purpose of game rules is, essentially, to restrict the narrative space. I certainly agree, a single attack roll or skill check is an abstraction. But in the case of attack rolls or stealth checks, you are getting something out of that rationalization--you're getting a narrative. Explaining why this guy makes X gp even though it doesn't make any sense is just an exercise in rationalization, it doesn't contribute to the narrative.

When a rule is giving you a weird narrative restriction, you have two options: bend the narrative to the rule, or bend the rule to the narrative. I don't know why you feel that bending the narrative to the rule is better in the case of Old STR 2 to 6 Guy Working As A Woodcutter/Blacksmith/Whatever.

profession Check

You can earn half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession's daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems.

seems like they are using it EXACTLY for the purpose it was written

The rule is there so players can feel like their character is "really" a [profession], and as a quick way to handwave, in a highly abstract and non-simulationist way, how much money the PC gets for going "I work as [profession] when we're in town."

The rule is not there to tell you how much money an NPC performing trade X would really make.

Unless, of course, you think that the game designers *wanted* to create a world where nothing matters as to how much money you make except what level you are and how wise you are, and where everyone makes roughly the same amount of money--lawyers, coopers, guardsmen, jewelers.

You know, I started out looking to respond to each of MendedWall12's and LogicNinja's, but really, your arguments boil down to: "This is stupid and you should all feel bad for playing the game in a way that I don't care for and using rules, so I'll mock you." Allow me a rebuttal with an equal amount of logic: "No, and both of you should feel bad for telling people they are having bad/wrong fun."

No, my arguments boil down to this is not what the profession (or attack/damage) rules are *for*, and using them for this does not confer any real advantage over making something up or making an arbitrary roll.

If what really makes the game fun for you is rolling to see how much the Profession skill says an NPC makes, then go ahead--I'm not going to tell you it's bad, wrong fun.

Fun is fun. It's the question, "how can anyone in the game world chop wood if the rules say they can't beat a tree's Hardness?", that's bad.

LogicNinja wrote:

The rules have a hard enough time working when used for their intended purpose.

Sorry, you just made me not want to read any of your other posts right there. Good job.

That's not a dig at PF, that's true of RPG rules in general. Any rules-heavy RPG has a ton of unforeseen rules interaction, abstractions that you have to work with, etc.

Even if it was a dig at PF, though, man, that'd be getting pretty huffy over a slight to your favorite pretend elfgame.

That being said, I am left with another question:

If the Profession skill rules are not intended to tell us how much money folks makes then, uhm, what are they intended for?

The Profession rules have two basic purposes.

One is to let players feel like their character is "really" a woodcutter, chef, etc. Yes, you could just write it down on the character sheet, but some players don't feel like it's "real" if they haven't spent any character points on it. (I personally find this view pretty limiting, but YMMV.)
These players can feel like their character is a chef because it says "Profession(Chef) - 10" on the sheet, they can say "I make money by being a chef!" when the PCs are in town, and there's a connection between the size of insignificant sum of money they make and how much they sunk into the skill, which makes them feel like putting ranks in the skill makes the character a "better" chef, even though Profession has nothing to do with how good you are at doing something, just how much money you make.

The other purpose is to provide an easy, handwaved answer when a player asks "I work as a chef while we're in town, how much money do I make?" You handwave the entire affair and get a number, instead of delving into detail. The purpose of the rule is to *skip over* the working-as-a-chef.
Note that I said "player" here. The rule is there to handwave a player action ("I make money as a chef") and to make the player feel like the character is "really" a chef.
The rule is *not* there to simulate an economy or tell you how good an NPC is at something. If it was, the rule would look pretty different.

EDIT: And I'm not trying to say it simulates it perfectly.

You seem to be saying (and I'm sorry if this is wrong, then please correct me - I'm not deliberately trying to misrepresent you) that it's unrealistic that you can get more money from it when you're old and wrinkly, but that it's okay since the skill isn't there for economic simulation of a society. I'm saying that I agree that the skill isn't there, but that it IS logical that an experienced craftsman earns more, and that the gains in wisdom, intelligence and charisma at old age are meant to represent that kind of "general" experience. Craft being based on INT (whether it's delicate goldsmithing that requires fine manual dexterity, writing plays, or doing something that requires a lot of strength like blacksmithing) doesn't make sense, either.
It doesn't make sense because the skill isn't actually simulating the process of making stuff, and people should stop treating it like it is.

EDIT: And if he's got Str 2, thus having been born weak and being weak all his life, then apparently he's gotta be good at something since he DOES earn more money. If he's got a strength of two, perhaps he is a tutor in woodcutting. And I don't see...

It is absolutely not logical that how much money a craftsman earns is based on his wisdom. If two guys have the same skill ranks, and one has a high wisdom but is physically completely unfit for the job, he will make more money than the guy who is in superb physical shape.

This is the problem: "apparently he's gotta be good at something since he DOES make more money." You are accepting a nonsensical result and then inventing justifications for it. But why?
Why not just accept that this is not what the Profession skill is for, any more than this is what attack rolls and damage calculations are for, and not have to come up with ridiculous justifications?

Yes, just like how a sailer can make his full wage in a desert or there's no penalty for an acrobat for lacking both legs. Those aren't the base assumptions though. The base assumptions of the profession skill is that it includes use of a lot of different skills and activities, including planning, haggling, and doing anything else related to it.

The base assumption of the Profession skill is that you are not using it to simulate laborers engaging in labor.

It is also assumed that you use your skill in the most effective way. A sailor doesn't use his profession roll to just say "argh matey", however good he is at that. If a player wants to just say argh matey they won't get money from that. When rolling profession (sailor) checks, you assume that the character does his best at earning as much money as possible. The same goes with lumberjack - if you're Str 5 but have a skill modifier of +8, your best bet at making money is educating people about it, or doing fine detail work, not going of just to chop down a tree, and then hope it'll magically transform into silver pieces.

So our STR 2 old guy with Profession (woodcutter)... or Profession(rikshaw cart driver), or Profession(guy who carries heavy things for you)... is "educating people". Great.

What you're doing is taking what is essentially a purely arbitrary result--how much money this guy makes based on his Profession skill ranks + Wisdom score--and then trying to alter the narrative and make up justifications and handwave until the result somehow fits closely enough for you to accept.

Why are you doing that?
Why not just, I dunno, stop trying to use the Profession skill for things it was never intended for... like calculating how much money an elderly, enfeebled man who just took up woodcutting makes?

Using Profession to figure out how much an NPC makes doesn't make any more sense than using attack rolls and weapon damage to figure out how much he makes, because neither rule is intended or designed for this purpose. What you're doing gives you results no less arbitrary than, say, rolling a d20 and adding the guy's strength modifier to see how many sp he makes.

Yes, because getting money as a lumberjack is more than just the physical act of chopping down the tree. That extra 5-10% is gained because he either gets better deals on his wood due to being experienced enough to find just the right pieces and knowing just who to sell what to (he chops down less giant pines and more choice birches that he can physically manage and that's higher quality), or because his employer give him a bonus since he uses his experience to help the younger lads with his knowledge.

Except for the part where this applies even if he's self-employed and doesn't have anyone but him working there, even if he just started being a woodcutter a year ago.

This applies regardless of any factors other than WIS and skill ranks, because the Profession rules don't take into account any factors besides WIS or skill ranks.

Because you're still trying to justify a rule that doesn't work as a detailed simulation, because it's not intended to be a detailed simulation. He gets more money because Profession is WIS based and you get WIS as you age. The same reason that he sees and hears better (Perception is WIS based) as he ages. That's it. Not "because he's more experienced, so he gets more money even though he can't cut a tree down." Not "because his employer gives him a bonus".
Once again: you don't need to invent justifications for why the Profession rules actually do simulate how a laborer receives wages, because that is not what the Profession rules are for. If you stop using the rules for something they were neither intended nor designed for, you will stop running into these problems.
The rule isn't there to figure out how much money a specific NPC woodcutter will make. It's there so that you can feel like your PC was "really" a woodcutter because you spent points on Profession(Woodcutter).

(Also, I like the part where he's so feeble he can barely walk (8 STR, -6 from age), but he still makes more money than the young woodcutters.)

That's because the old man's profession check reflect the profit of his decades building up a business.

No, it's because by the rules, you gain +3 INT/WIS/CHA (and lose 6 STR/DEX/CON) as you become "very old", and only your skill ranks and Wisdom stat have any impact whatsoever on how high your Profession check is, which is the only thing that has any impact whatsoever on how much money you make.

It's just like how being very old makes you better at seeing and hearing things, helps you recall facts better, and makes you more intimidating and more socially adept.

It's not because "the old man's profession check reflect the profit of his decades building up a business". That's an attempt at rationalizing the results of the Profession skill, and not a particularly good one at that, which stems from using the rule in a way it was never intended to be used (in this case, to try to simulate how much money a woodcutter wood "really" make given X Y and Z).

You shouldn't feel the need to engage in these attempts at rationalization. It's OK for the Profession rules to not be an economy simulator. That's not what they're for, so it doesn't matter that they're terrible at it.

if this is purely focused on RAW, couldn't the farmer simply touch the tree and instantly turn it into quarterstaffs or clubs? I remember that was the case in 3.5 with the craft rules. No axe needed!

Pathfinder seems to have replaced "DC based on value" with "table of DCs", so a quarterstaff no longer has a DC of 0 to craft.

However, "making checks by the day" means that you can't craft more than one very simple item (e.g. a wooden spoon) per day.

On the contrary... I'm thoroughly enjoying watching as people dissect the various mechanics of the game to determine that "yes" an NPC can chop wood, and if they did in fact want to make money chopping wood, here's how much the rules say they would make.

My favorite part is the part where priests make better woodcutters than burly young men, and a woodcutter who has one foot in the grave from old age actually makes *more* money than a strapping, healthy young lad.

The thread wasn't about 'Obviously the GM can just say the woodchopper chops the wood...'.

If you're not enjoying the discussion about using (and only using) strict RAW rules, maybe this isn't the thread for you.

Sorry, but "the premise of this thread is bad and you should feel bad" is still on-topic. The idea that the game rules should be used to determine everything that happens to everyone in the game world--that a woodcutter can't cut wood if he can't beat the hardness of the wood with an axe's damage, or that you should build an NPC with points in a Profession skill to determine how much money a woodcutter makes--is actively bad for gaming.

Tangentially, this is a very interesting article on the topic of realism and "what those numbers really mean" in D&D/3.5/Pathfinder.

That article is hilariously bad.

My favorite part is the part where he insists that because the average person has a 1 in 10 chance of kicking down a heavy wooden door with a single kick, the rules are somehow realistic. Or that an average infantryman has "STR 13".

Basically, what he's doing in that article is arbitrarily inventing numbers (stats, DCs, etc) and then going "the probability looks about right to me! Therefore, 3.5 is pretty realistic."

I don't follow the complaint.

The complaint is that people think that the "RAW" is somehow supposed to be able to be used to determine what a random peasant makes, or if he can chop wood. It's not. This is quite literally not the purpose of the rules. The rules have a hard enough time working when used for their intended purpose; trying to use them to figure out what a woodcutter can and can't cut down is asking them to do something they're neither intended nor built to do, and for no good reason.

Are you saying that using combat rules IS a more appropriate ruleset for a woodcutter's mundane activity than profession skill check? O.o

I'm saying neither is at all appropriate, and that the desire to use either of them to determine how much the woodcutter makes is bad and makes gaming worse, not better. Using a "Profession skill" to determine this isn't any better than using the combat rules, and can even be worse. The Profession skill isn't actually there to simulate an economy or determine how much random NPCs make. It's an extremely abstract skill that doesn't actually make much sense if you try to use it for anything other than its intended purpose.

Happler has won the thread. Move along, nothing more to see here.

if you're not convinced:
The PRD doesn't put a price on cords of wood, but by any measure of reasonableness it's going to be in the fews of copper peices range. If not fews of cords of wood per 1 cp, for that matter. Let's be outrageously conservative and assume 1 cord of wood = 5 cp.

Our example woodcutter is going to be either a commoner or expert, either way profession:woodcutter can be a class skill. Assuming a no penalty to wisdom (knowing which wood is economical for harvest) and 1 skill rank in profession, his average income for a week's worth of woodchopping is 7.25gp, or just over 1gp worth of profit per day.

Using the prior price assumption, he's generating at least 20 cords of wood per day, or 2 and a half cords of wood per hour of work.

Or you can stop trying to use the vague and nonsensical Profession rules to try to determine what any given peasant NPC can and can't afford, because it should be blatantly obvious that a simplistic rule like "gp based on profession check" isn't going to model anything in the same *country* as a realistic economy.

Jo, the game rules are not the physics of the game world. They are not the absolute arbiter of everything that happens or can happen. This is not a super-detailed simulation run by a computer, these are highly, highly abstract RPG rules.

There is no conceivable circumstance in which you should be using the game rules to determine if and how an NPC woodcutter chops wood, because this is simply not what those rules are *for*.

What I'm trying to say is, your question is bad and you should feel bad.

You will, the first time you get ambushed by shadows.

No, his spells will help with that. If the party gets ambushed by shadows, frankly the first people going down will be the melee guys. Even if STR drain (a terrible, cumbersome mechanic you should hate yourself for recommending or having used) was a weakness for Arcane Elf Wizards, it would be one highly situational, very minor weakness (6 STR vs 8 STR, big difference, huh?), in exchange for a bonus to the standard things the character will do session in, session out.

Trying to pretend that giving +4 INT/-2 X Y Z to wizards is balanced because you can ambush them with shadows reveals not only a willful ignorance of game mechanics and how games are run, but deep-seated personal flaws that would lead to insanity, murder, or a dramatic suicide if this were a tragic play rather than an internet forum.

What I'm trying to say is that your post is bad and you should feel bad for having posted it.

You have points for the *DM* to facilitate relatively quick and easy adjustment to make new player races.

You do Not have points for the *player* to try and figure out how uber he can be, this time.

And Paizo assumes the DM's have the backbone to prevent players from making their own, speciality, class specific munchkin races.

-S

So why not provide the DM with accurate point values? Why give +2/+2/-2 a lower point cost than +4/-2/-2/-2, when the latter is flat-out better for every character type that relies on 1 stat above all (like, say, wizards, or some rogues, or etc)?

Why not have a much looser system (e.g. "to create a standard race, pick two abilities from this Minor list, one from this Moderate list, and then one from this Major list or two more from this Moderate list, plus either this or this stat adjustment pattern. Careful, this isn't balanced)?

When you create a GURPS-like point buy system and assign things point values, you're saying, as a designer, "X is more valuable than Y". If, for example, a skill bonus is worth 2 points, and so is, e.g., spell resistance, what you're saying is that you, as a designer, think these things are equally valuable to a character.
If that's not what you mean to do, then you shouldn't do it.

In many ways, a system with what are essentially arbitrary point costs is worse than a system with no point costs at all.

LogicNinja wrote:

Edit: anyone who uses Magic Jar in a real game should never play tabletop RPGs again.

Even if they confused the GM (the first time) and went on to trivialize multiple encounters with it?

Especially then.

Other people who should never play tabletop RPGs again:
-People who can't tell the difference between "abusing game mechanics" or "powerful spells" and "player agency".
-People who can't comprehend that game rules might not be game world physics.
-People who prefer wanking over continuity to actually playing the game.
-Paul. You know why, Paul. You know what you did.

You resumed posting after a three year absence just to say that?

;-)

Clearly.

Honestly, guys--it's been over ten years since 3E first came out. Shouldn't we be over this "only the most top-tier of top-tier spells for my wizard-god" crap by now?

I wanted a second opinion though. I know every campaign is different, and I kind of miss having second opinions like Echodork and Dictum Mortuum and especially LogicNinja.

Today's your lucky day!

Here's my second opinion: you're playing a f#&~ing Wizard in a version of D&D 3.5. Suck up not being *quite* as game-wreckingly powerful as, stop complaining about how there are fewer completely unbalanced spells, and start having fun with spells that don't auto-win the encounter for you.

As a bonus, you might even want to avoid stocking up on all the entire-type-of-problem nullifying utility spells, to give the rest of your party a chance to do stuff!

Christ, dude, that post says something about you, and what it says (that you can't have fun if you think that what you're playing isn't totally optimal) isn't good. You're already a 3.5 Wizard. That should be more than enough for you.

Edit: anyone who uses Magic Jar in a real game should never play tabletop RPGs again.

I know for a fact that PFRPG fighter and wizard can and do compete in actual play. I've seen it happen for weeks on end.

And yet, you STILL can't give us any concrete examples. "A FIGHTER TOTALLY KILLED SOME STUFF I SWEAR!" Oh, a fighter KILLED some stuff, you say--clearly everything is balancd.

Maybe your DM is sending waves of 1-HD goblins against a level 12 fighter, while the wizard prepared nothing but Detect Undead and Hold Portal.
Or maybe this "playtesting" you're doing exists only in your imagination. I'll wait for you to make up some examples, if you like.

Since you're not actually playtesting Pathfinder, I have no further need to discuss it with you and I suggest that you close your eyes and lay down in combat because you and every IRC DM you've ever played with agree that laying down in front of someONE that is clearly going to kill you is not the same as laying down in front of someTHING that's clearly going to kill you such as say.....

Maybe you don't understand what DIRECT means.

Suggestion is supposed to be able to make you easy to kill or take you out of the fight (leaving you defending yourself but not attacking, for example). Deep Slumber can effectively kill you and your buddy. Slow can neuter a whole group of enemies and works against everything except golems.
Hell, Hideous Laughter can take a single target out of the fight and let the party beat on them. It's more restricted, but then, it's lower level.

PROTIP: my Red Hand of Doom experience post is not for your benefit, or about Pathfinder changes. It's for the poster who wanted to hear about it, and about 3.5 wizards.

But I'm sure you'll be happy to know my group should be running some Pathfinder tests this weekend. Since, you know, the Pathfinder Fighter isn't at all just the 3.5 core Fighter with a couple of new feats and a couple of points of AB/AC/damage, and the Pathfinder wizard is DEFINITELY not the 3.5 core wizard with extra abilities and a few spells nerfed. It'll give you another chance to sneer about how ONLY YOU are playing D&D right and everybody else's experience doesn't count because you say so.

trolling

Are you STILL at it? Seriously? This isn't 4chan, and posting things like

herp derp if I say that barbarians in my game tear through enemies people I don't need to prove anything I say, I'm the only one who plays D&D properly

won't really get you anywhere.

---

your DM ruled Suggestion wrong!

Suggestion has to be *worded* reasonably, not *be* reasonable. The course of action also can't be DIRECTLY harmful. Having someone kill you because you're doing what was Suggested is indirectly harmful. "Directly harmful" would be, say, throwing yourself into lava.

As I and the DMs I've played with interpret it, Suggestion is balanced against Deep Slumber (multiple targets, no language/phrasing restrictions), Slow (even more targets, not mind-affecting, cripples instead of being indirectly fatal).

Well, LogicNinja, apparently your time constraints allow you to post on several other threads, but not this one? Well, everyone has their priorities.

Perhaps I allowed my suspicion that yourself and Crusader of Logic are the same person to influence my estimation of your time constraints.

Please note that after my comment, there was a ":)", to indicate that that comment was humor. This was an attempt to keep the thread in a lighter, friendly tone, so that it did not degenerate into name calling. Seems that it was a less than successful attempt.

As I was considerate enough to list the equipment that the 10th level fighter/crossbowman was carrying, perhaps you would return the favor and list the equipment that the the 10th level wizard would be carrying.

There's a geared-up level 11 wizard here, hastily-ish built.

I'm not CoL (you can check who a poster is by clicking on their name).I responded to some posts because they're the ones I saw when I logged on (I'd forgotten all about yours). I'll get to yours, but maybe not until Friday--I've got classes and work scheduled Tues-Thurs this week.

Stuff

I think you're forgetting that this is a fantasy game, with giant bugs and dragons and stuff. Why are we even discussing the physics of flying humanoids?

ok now this is just getting upsetting. seems unless you have some street cred or whatever passes for that around here, your post where you tried your best to make a well reasoned well thought out post gets ignored. or better yet if your not agreeing with the general mindset of these "regulars" you once again get the glazed over.

but know what, i can live with that, but here i am asking for some help and i still get nothing. while same six people argue the same thing in four different threads.

whatever

Personally, I skip over your posts because you don't bother to capitalize spell, or punctuate properly. It makes them hard to read and it makes me not want to bother.

Or should I take your silence as a capitulation?

Or should I take your silence as a capitulation?

No, you should take it as indication that I'm working, taking classes, and have other time constraints and priorities. I'll get to your post.

"Silence = capitulation" is a very juvenile attitude.

The original poster's experiences with save-or-die are of course on one end of a spectrum and far from absolute. I will add that in my own D&D experiences, save-or-dies work around levels 9-12, then stop working after that, as saves scale much, much faster than DCs do. Just look at the number of save-increasing items and buff spells... then look at the number of DC-increasing ones.

Also, take a look at the monster advancement rules in the Monster Manual, particularly page 294.

Notice how quickly HD and class levels scale compared to CR. With each HD or class level increase, that monster's base saves (and ability scores) are going up, enough that for each CR increase, a monster's saves can go up by +1 each or more. Save DCs, on the other hand, go up by +1 per 2 levels, which is how often a character gains a new level of spells. Thus, each time a PC's save DCs go up by 1, the monsters' saves have gone up by more than 1.

Between items, buff spells, ability score increases, class levels, and HD increases, save modifiers go up way faster than DCs do, thus making save-or-dies less and less viable with every level progressed.

And at a gaming table where they are viable, the DM must, at the very least, be using multiple-monster encounters. Which means that the original poster's baseline encounter of four party members vs. one monster is entirely invalid.

-Matt

Sorry, but this ignores, for example, the casters' ability score.

If you look at the saving throws of creatures with moderate to high Hit Dice and all-good Saving Throw progression. A CR 10 red dragon has a +12 Will save... which is nice and all, but he's still got a 40-50% chance of failing a save vs. a caster's high-level spells.

Meanwhile, an animal or a giant or whatever can have as many hit dice as he likes, and it still won't make his poor save (like Will) any good.

This statement really, really makes me wonder if you've actually played a PFRPG fighter or barbarian. The melee classes are not, and have never been useless, and are doubly not so using the PFRPG rules. After the beta came out, there were a lot of cries of "ITS THE SAME!!!!" from people who haven't actually sat down and made a "boring fighter" (as they're so fond of saying) and seen the numbers add up or tried playing one and experiencing the actual stereotypical "adventure" situations that make them so absolutely necessary.

And yet, you're magically made incapable of relating these situations to us.

I've seen it in action many times, and I'm pleased with how paizo has worked up the melee classes. Fighter can and does truly become the "master of fighting" in PFRPG and it's great fun to watch. Fighter gets to the point where it's a pleasure to take a nice weapon from an enemy and use it a little bit, instead of selling everything that isn't his s~~#ty favored weapon, and gets the chance to really be prepared for situational happenstance without feeling like he "wasted" any of his feats.

Why don't you show us one of these fighters, since you know them so well? Then tell us about how he was totally awesome in his campaign because every fight, he'd lose his weapon, grab an improvised weapon, and keep hitting people.

Of course, if this thread were about how Ranger could use a little love ala Barbarian, I'd be singing a little bit of a different tune. But Fighter.. He's the master of fighting and PFRPG has definitely nailed that down for him.

Disarmed: No problem

Blind: No problem
Underwater: No problem
Weapon Broken: No problem
Armor Broken: No problem
Caster's Dead: No problem

"I'm here with half HP, my backpack, my bedroll and an improvised weapon made out of an oversized switch that I used to lower a door, then tore from the floor. I'm the PFRPG fighter, and when I get back to town, I'll buy you a @#$%ing drink."

I must've missed the feat that lets you do all of that. Taking a feat to use improvised weapons lets you fight blind, underwater, with no armor, and without caster support? That's new.

My current D&D is 4E, although I'll be running some Pathfinder playtests. I was going to keep playing 3.5, but running a one-shot recently made me rethink that.

DeadDMWalking--"disregarded your feelings"? You're an individual. No company cares about your feelings. They have to make decisions that appeal broadly, not to you specifically.

I think it makes you a lucky guy with enough time/groups to play as much "systems" as you want.

If I had to only play one game at a time, it would definitely not be any kind of D&D. There are tons of good games out there; D&D's main appeal is really that it's so widespread.

LN: Thank you for your reply! I'd never thought of it that way before. Everyone generally expects me to be the blaster, so this will be a very much needed (and welcomed, for me at least) change.

Enjoy. I find well-placed disabling and controlling spells to be more satisfying than blasting, myself, effectiveness aside (and tended towards them even in a 2E game).

Here's a guide to that kind of wizard I wrote a few years back. A bit outdated, and written for 3.5 not 3.P (so keep track of the changes--Glitterdust stops being useful earlier, for example), but it might still help.

You can still target people with a gaze attack while hiding, you just use the gaze actively. She took a -20 to hide while doing so, so it came down to a roll off to detect her. She eventually revealed herself in the second round after 2 characters had turned to stone (one in the surprise round and one in the first round, it's been a few months).

Basically, the Medusa hid, sniped in the first few rounds (one person failing each round), and on round 2 it sniped again and then revealed itself, forcing everyone to save again on their turn (this is when the Worg hid), allowing the Barbarian to charge in. If this conflicts with what I described earlier, it is because I was not remembering it accurately.

You can't do that. If you're hidden so that someone can't track you, you're invisible to them. Invisible creatures can't use gaze attacks. Besides, think about it--if averting your eyes lets you have a chance to avoid the gaze (active or not), how would not being able to see the gazer not prevent it?

Basically, the medusa should have been able to hide *or* use its Gaze, not both.

BTW, the sniping rules apply to ranged attacks, not (Su) ability use.

(Also, a party with no one with any Spotting ability? Ouch.)

This is precisely the point I was making before. The game isn't too complicated. It's as uncomplicated, or as management-intensive as a player wants it to be.

But if everybody's having to track a bunch of things, the game does get bogged down.

We have in this thread been told that the noncore classes are weaker than the core. When I posted that the swashbuckler is different, not weaker, we were told "so, what? the fighter is a weak class, too!"

No, you were told "no, it's not different--it's actually weaker. It's bad at the thing it's supposed to be good at."

I feel the system is such that I can make anything I want, and I'm not gonna end up with a weak character. Grant, I am a big multiclasser, and I'll dip for more skill points at first level sometimes, but that's the rules of the game.

That's just not true. Your monk/wizard isn't gonna be good, no matter how you slice it. Furthermore, now that the classes get new abilities, multiclassing can hurt you even with classes like the barbarian.

My prior testimony about not having character sheets wasn't that we circumvented the rules. It was that we played a totally basic set of characters with no flash, and no splat books, and had a great, uncomplicated time. And earlier, without breaking any rules, I outdamaged the centaur with summoning spells. If I had played almost any other wizard, I might have done the same thing. The game can be as complicated as I need it to be to compete, or get my powergame on, or survive and epic campaign. It can be as simple as I need it to be to joke with friends, explore great scenes, and enjoy the company of my friends as much as I enjoy the performance of my character.

Being able to outdamage the dedicated top-of-the-line melee character with your summon spells is not a feature. It's a bug. Especially because you still have all your OTHER spells.

Furtermore, the "as complicated or as simple as you like" thing applies from group to group. If I make a character that rolls a bunch of attacks both on his turn and on everyone else's, and turns each attack into a trip check and another attack or etc, I'm going to slow down the game for everyone in my group, not just myself.

I haven't played it yet..but so far I kind of like the new barbarian.

I'm going to pretend that a "real" party never fights enemies with +8 and lower Will saves at level 6, that a wizard can never drop back and cast from range, and that it's impossible for a wizrd to make his spell slots last over three or four encounters a day. Then I'm going to pretend that I scored a point of some kind.

This still isn't 4chan. If you feel that you're up to the enormous task of actually making some points like a reasonable person, rather than making something up that sounds vaguely kind of almost like what I posted and then setting that straw man on fire, I'll be here to talk to you.

Until then, keep on making these posts. I'm sure I'm not the only one getting a head-shake and a chuckle out of them.

Or actually, he played a caster well, used the ground to his advantage, had prepared spells appropriate (by using a good selection of multi situation spells) to the encounters, and had enough spell slots and materials to last an adventuring day.

And in 3.p warriors have no other role that they can do in a sustained manner other than...

Exactly. "Low will save"? Warrior types have a low will save. If groups of warrior types aren't a viable challenge for a party because of that, that's a problem--they're supposed to be a threat. A number of enemies (like the dragon) had a good Will save--but with a good Will save progression, the green dragon still had +8 with its WIS (+10 total--the DM gave it Iron Will).

It's not like I just stood there and the DM politely didn't send any enemies after me--that's what all those disabling and battlefield control spells are for. That, and the fact that a wizard can cast, then move.

Maybe Authority thinks a "normal" game is one where all the enemies have +12 Will saves at level 6, and ignore the enemies right in front of them, instead rushing through Greases and Webs right to the wizard who is always totally chargeable, and there are six encounters per day no matter what anyone does. Somehow, I don't think that's standard.

The fly skill in PFRPG has encouraged me enough to take another look at introducing a favored race of mine that can fly, but balancing a flying race can be a bit of a problem. Especially when you don't want to introduce a race with a Lv penalty.

Look at what was done with Raptorans (Races of the Wild) and Dragonborn (Races of the Dragon) in 3.5. They basically can't actually *fly*, just jump or glide, until they get a certain number of hit dice, and they can't fly all day until high levels.

Wow. Good job on the 'rope trick' fix, Paizo. It seem that I really need to brush up on my Beta Changes. That spell fix and others tells me that Paizo is trying pretty hard to fix some problems. Keep it up Paizo.

I don't think they're doing it right. The "fix" castrates the spell for *any* purpose, not just safe resting. Rope Trick was originally intended to be used for spying purposes.

Giving it a 10 minutes/level duration would be a better fix.

As for p.366, it only talks about Bags of Holding put in Portable Holes and vice-versa (which is another one of those AD&D carryovers that does nothing good for the game). So does p.62 of the Web Enhancement.

Portable Holes and Bags of Holding are NONdimensional spaces, not EXTRAdimensional spaces. They can safely go into rope tricks. The only things they can't go into are each other (which, again, is a minor rules quirk which does nothing for the game except (a) makes it more bloated and (b) causes problems whenever someone gets the bright idea to use the tactic offensively.

Edit: also, Read Magic does nothing for your Fighter, since all it does is let you identify what a scroll says... and is a Personal spell that therefore can't be read into a potion.
Are you really suggesting a Fighter UMDing scrolls, including Permanency, in an elaborate attempt to get himself See Invisible... at a low CL, which will be dispelled the first time an AoE dispel hits the party?

I'll get into the rest later.

I have to disagree that the mage owns the game after 5th level.

Sure, me too. He doesn't own it after 5th level, but he starts getting closer and closer to it, becoming more and more the cornerstone of the party's effectiveness.

Control of the battlefield is important, but not the only aspect of the game.

Control, and disabling, and buffing... anyone can fill the "do some damage" role, just about.

From some of the descriptions of mages, scrolls, wands and such, I am gathering that the mages are carrying a lot of gear. Most of it has to be handy, otherwise it will take a round to get it out (and possibly cause an AoO) before you can cast it. Rogues can acquire that accessible gear that is hanging off the of the mage. Fighters can sunder that wand of X.

This is not even addressing what can happen in town, between adventures, with all that gear hanging off of you.

In town? Who the hell is dumb enough to try and pickpocket a bunch of heavily armed adventurers in town?

The mage carries his scrolls in a scrollcase, his wands in wrist sheaths (or, as of Dungeonscape, in wand chambers in his staff). He keeps miscellaneous gear like rods and other (utility) scrolls in his Handy Haversack, which--after the very first time the DM pulls some trite "and some thieves take your stuff, go get it back!" move on them--he keeps a Fire Trap or something on.
Rogues can't acquire the gear in the Handy Haversack, and the Haversack itself is not a small object you can filch with Sleight of Hand.
Any Fighter who's located a wizard and is close enough to sunder his wand is a fool if he tries to sunder the wand instead of trying to kill the wizard as quickly as possible.

Rope Trick: Now, the rope stays in place, marking where the pesky adventurers disappeared.

If you are using rope trick, you can't be using any kind of bag of holding, belt of many pouches, handy haversack, etc.. as if you bring any of them into the rope trick, bad things happen. So limiting what the mage can carry.

1) No, you can pull the rope up after you. There is absolutely no sign of where you cast it.

Edit: okay, the Beta changed that. Still, all this means is that the party needs to (a) get somewhere out-of-the-way first and (b) set a watch. Maybe cast Alarm. Why would they do that to the spell, instead of just setting the duration to AD&D's more reasonable 10 minutes/level? That would let a party hide from patrols and such, or go into a room and spy on the people who come in after them, but wouldn't let them sleep.
2) No, you can be using any bag of holding, handy haversack, etc. First of all, the line about how it's dangerous to bring extradimensional spaces into a Rope Trick is an AD&D holdover with absolutely no rules behind it. It just says "it is hazardous". WotC has said to ignore it, because it's a holdover that doesn't add anything to the game...
...and of course, Bags of Holding and Handy Haversacks are nondimensional spaces not extradimensional spaces. So you can take them in anyway!

If the enemy, whom you just handed them them hats recently, just before you retired to the rope trick to refresh yourself, doesn't take advantage of knowing where you will show up at, they deserve to whatever happens to them. Personally, I would hang a blanket and/or a sheet of lead just under the "window", blocking view of those inside to what is happening outside. Acid vat, elaborate traps, water filled area, etc...

If the enemy just got handed their hats, they're probably dead.

Also, they have no idea of where the rope trick is, and it's not like you don't post a watch inside the rope trick and jump out and kill them if it looks like they've found you.

Ray of Enfeeblement can hurt a fighter, but not all fighters. A dex fighter will not be as affected, nor will a Crossbowman.

A Dex fighter is so unthreatening he doesn't need to be debuffed. Crossbowmen are rare because bows are superior. Also, the spell will hurt many, many other things. Finding one specific thing unaffected by Ray of Enfeeblement is not significant.

Overland flight: As mentioned by others, of limited use inside and/or underground. Sure, there will be rooms with high ceilings, but most will not be. Still useful in not setting off any ground level traps.

And as I've mentioned, a wizard has his own advantages underground (Wall of Stone suddenly looks really good, as does the rest of the wizard's crowd control.

And it does help everywhere that ISN'T a 10-foot-high room. Trying to argue that Overland Flight is fine, honest, because you can just put all the encounters in 10-foot-high rooms is disingenuous.

Summon X spells: short duration, and while you are casting those, you aren't doing other things (controlling the battlefield, damaging opponents, etc..). Still useful, but you cannot have a lot of them active at the same time.

"while you're casting those, you aren't doing other things"? Well, no. The mage can only cast one spell per round (two if he Quickens) all the time. Yes, they have a short duration; I'm aware. You can still summon monsters with various useful abilities. Summon Monster really shines when you hit SMVII and can call in Bone Devils (with a fear aura, teleportation... and Wall of Ice at will).

Wall of Stone: for a 10th level mage (the example level that LogicNinja was/is using for his examples, so figured it would be appropriate here) is 10' x 25', needing rock to attach to. Good for temporarily controlling an area, but can be broken thru by the denigrated fighters in fairly short order. Less useful outside, as for the most part they can go around or over.

Unless they have adamantine weapons, hacking through stone is not that easy--Hardness makes it, well, hard.

LogicNinja has a talent for making spellcasters, but maybe less so for making fighters.

Here is an example of a fighter that I believe can be pretty competent at all levels of play.

I think you meant "here is an example of a Fighter whom I've set up specifically for trying to kill a wizard, who is in turn set up for a generic adventuring day."

Feats at 10th level for a human: Weapon Focus (heavy crossbow), Point Blank, Far Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Reload (heavy crossbow), Rapid Shot, Weapon Specialization (heavy crossbow), deadly aim, heavy crossbow mastery (no more AoO for reloading), crossbow sniper, greater weapon focus (heavy crossbow), improved critical (heavy crossbow)

Are we really getting noncore here? I stuck with a core wizard. Against a noncore one, you have absolutely no chance, thanks to things like Nerveskitter and Celerity.

Furthermore, bows are inherently superior to crossbows.

Pathfinder fighters do make good archers (thanks to all the AB/damage bonuses, Vital Strike, etc)

Gear 62k for 10th level: Heavy Crossbow +1 (distance, seeking, magebane)(32k), boots of speed (12k), belt of dexterity +2 (4k), cloak of resistance +3 (9k), ring of see invisibility (4k), misc gear for 1k.

-You can't afford the crossbow. It's more than half of your wealth; you're not allowed to do that.

-Ring of See Invisibility? That's not in any book. Custom items are not something you want to bring in--the guidelines are terribly broken. They don't tend to be accepted by DMs, they're not balanced... they're a very, very vague guideline at best. And considering the price of items that let you see invisibility *with an action to activate, temporarily* in the MIC, a continuous See Invisible item would cost you far more than 4k.
Also, your fighter's gear expenditure is totally, completely unreasonable for an adventurer. He has no AC bonuses, none of the usual necessary stuff. It's almost like he's designed specifically to take on this wizard, what with his Magebane crossbow and all.

Dex now at 22. Range increment is at 240', with -1 per increase. Miss chance at 0 (blur, displacement, etc.. buffs no longer effective).

Greater invisibility remains quite effective, because you can't actually get that item of See Invisible you just made up.

Against mages, this character would see the mage with improved invisibility, reach them at range. With deadly aim, boots of speed and rapid shot, this fighter will be at +15/+15/+15/+10 to hit, with 1d10+18+2d6 damage, crits on 17-20. Average damage would be 31 per hit.

With deadly aim, boots of speed: +17/+17/+12 to attack.

As the mage described by LogicNinja has high int (22+ with magic), and a dex of 16, that doesn't leave much for other stats, so if the con is calculated to be at 12 (guess on my part), total HP for 10th level would be 50. Two hits from the crossbowman above would take that mage out, dead.

Too bad he can't count on winning initiate, can't find the wizard once the wizard goes (there's no such thing as a ring of see invisible, much less so cheaply), can't shoot past a Wind Wall, etc.

Besides which--celerity, teleport, scry on you, kill you in your sleep.

There are viable options for mage and for fighters. It depends on play style, character choices, what is happening in the game world around you, etc... Yes, fighters need a little more love, but are useful and productive, even if they don't get any more love.

"Archer" is about the only viable option for fighters at high levels, and it still has big weaknesses. For all that you talk about "useful and productive", your crossbowman is set up for wizard-hunting and wouldn't be too useful to a party--in fact, given that he spent more than half his money on that crossbow, he'd die prety quickly.

Melee fighters need the kind of love that helps patch their crippling Will save, makes them more able to go toe-to-toe, and most importantly removes the reliance on the Full Attack.

Finally, and this is the biggest point, the Medusa was hiding. With a +20 modifier. Nobody knew where she was even after they knew there was a Medusa. Even if the party threw up a wall, the Medusa could have taken a minute to leave the tower and re-enter from a lower level.

If the medusa was hiding, how did it turn people to stone? And how did the barbarian find it?