Mannimark's page

This is an awesome question and a great topic! Since you asked...

I'd probably make a nice three story Arabian style fortress villa with an inner courtyard and wrap-around covered porch. Maybe a nice fountain with a huge water elemental bound into it to keep it running and lash out at intruders who got too close. An iron golem or two in the entryway. Greater glyphs of warding on all the major entrances. Permanent unseen servants to clean and tend the place, separate rooms for my parties needs...alchemy lab, library, crafting hall, temple, training room, kitchens, etc. Definitely an infirmary with healing potions and scrolls on hand in case I needed to haul a stricken companion in for treatment. I'd probably make several simulacrums of myself and stow them behind illusory walls to come out and cast low-to-mid level spells whenever there's a need, and order them to obey my companions too just in case they need help and I'm not there. I'd use greater planar ally to summon and bind a few outsiders of agreeable alignment there to act as staff...maybe a lillendi as an entertainer and healer...a few genies to do chores, thug people, and transport visitors in and out using their plane shift ability. There are plenty of favors an immortal genie noble would loan some of his kin to an uppity mortal wizard or cleric for. Mortals don't live terribly long by an outsiders reckoning but, funny thing, our lack of racial hit dice means we often get access to high level spells more quickly and more often than they do. Here's how that would go;

PC: "I will trade you this size large +3 adamantine evil outsider bane falchion of speed I made for you, in recognition of your awesomeness, for some genie thugs to Geas and keep in my house to do my bidding for what will be, to you, a pathetically short amount of time."
Genie Noble: "Deal mortal. Now get out of my crazy floating island of earth on the plane of air palace before I sic these two female young adult silver dragon foreign exchange students on you."

I'd also keep a prison of some sort...maybe a room with a modified dimensional lock and permanent symbols of pain inscribed on all the surfaces that auto-fire whenever an 'unauthorized' creature shows up. Then I'd use teleport trap to re-route intruding magicians and magical creatures into the room. I like the movie Hook so I'd call it the "Boo Box". If some evil outsider made me mad I'd cast dimensional anchor on it, Geas it to be unable to leave the room until it said "I'm sorry" one hundred thousand times in Celestial, and then throw its ass in.

Which...may or may not be an ethos violation...but I'd cross that bridge when I got to it.

There's a reason why old school D&D *never* allowed Hold Person to affect giants, and that reason is it makes them pathetically easy to kill.

Giants now need to roam around in large groups and stone the cleric to death as their first act at the onset of every battle.

Is the "targeting" ability gained by gunslingers at level 7 actually intended to allow automatic knock down, disarm, and confusion with no CMB check, or was this ability meant to imply that the gunslinger could roll CMB to do these things with ranged touch attacks? I fear small groups of mid level gunslingers wiping out whole parties of high level opponents by keeping them confused, unarmed, or on their backs every round.

If this class is balanced how does one compensate for this ability? Do climactic 'boss' battles become impossible? I feel bad that Karzoug the Claimer of Xin-Shalast has to die such a sad death because some low level guy can keep shooting him in the head each round.

Before anyone calls me a 'noob', yes I'm aware of time stop and blink and similar spells that can give ole Karzoug a bit of protection. All the same, I am filled with fear. What if there are two gunslingers?

Please help. =(

Do we hate narrativist GM's? Are they bad or taboo? If the goal is for all the players to leave the table satisfied then one overpowered character wrecking everything doesn't really make a problem for just the GM, he makes a problem for the whole table. Just a thought.

Jack your intelligence up really high, take spell focus and spell perfection feats, and cast weird on a group of 'character' types with class levels. Unless they are purposefully built to have the highest saves possible using obscure rules from multiple books, etc, you'll be impressed with the results. Statistically speaking many of them will probably die.

A level 7 gunslinger using 'Targeting' can automatically confuse, disarm, or knock a target prone on a successful ranged touch attack. There is no limit on how large the opponent can be (Storm Giant) and no CMB roll against the targets CMD. It just happens. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't know of any other ability in the game that bypasses CMD like that. A 7th level gunslinger and one or two friends can kill a 20th level fighter by consistently shooting the weapon out of his hand every round with no difficulty at all. Big bad fights with 'boss' type enemies are disgustingly anticlimactic.

Here's what you can do;

Any time an adventure requires the party to battle 'fighters', replace them with gunslingers of the same level. Have the gunslingers spread out to avoid area of effect spells and target one person each round. If your players complain remind them that all the classes are balanced and that this is fair. I'm sure they'll agree.

At the onset of every combat with intelligent enemies who are able to communicate have them all attack the gunslinger and kill him before moving on to any other member of the party. This includes spells, arrows, etc. If the player is that dangerous then tactically speaking he has to die first. If your players complain remind them that firearms are scary and guaranteed to cause massive amounts of damage every round with little to no effort, so logically the answer is to kill the one using them.

Are you talking about weapon combat only? If not, I'm afraid there simply is no 'hard and fast' in PF, mainly because of spellcasting. How do you rebalance these rules against spellcasting? Also, if you have only one attack per round, how does full-attack work? How do monsters with multiple natural attacks work?

Initially I would say that monsters with multiple attacks would make their primary attack and gain a damage bonus the same as a PC would (BAB, etc). Multiple attacks could be treated as multiple sets of weapon dice a la vital strike. So an owlbear with a claw/claw/bite routine would do its bite 'weapon' damage x3 (3d6) plus its strength bonus and BAB. It does favor monsters with multiple attacks, but I feel that on some level this could work out okay. It worked in 2nd edition.

This gives a relative benefit to those not using two-handed fighting, which is nice. Keep it in mind when balancing two-weapon combat etc.

I'm thinking two-weapon combat would allow two attacks, one with each hand, but both attacks would suffer the two-weapon penalty to hit and the damage bonus to each blow would only be 1/2 of BAB. If we retain the rules for power attack 'as is' (-1 for +3 damage on 2-handed weapons) it may work out. Thoughts?

This however nerfs non-two-handed fighting. If I were you I'd figure out a way to let sneak attack work differently.

Perhaps sneak attack is automatic on the first round if 'surprise' is achieved (stealth vs. perception DC) and the rogue adds sneak attack damage to her attacks if she and a team mate are both attacking the same monster that round (this implies she is automatically trying to do the 'I use acrobatics to get behind and flank' thing all rogues who aren't archers do).

I normally hate '1 is a fumble' on attack rolls because it punishes the best combatants more than the worst. Since there is only one attack roll this is less of a problem. However, auto-hitting and auto-missing is, I think, going to be a problem for your design philosophy more than a solution. It rewards good melee combatants less. Also, unless you remove multiple attacks alltogether (monsters with natural attacks) this is going to skew balance towards those with multiple attacks.

You're right about this one. Perhaps the auto hit auto miss rules should only apply to monsters then? My goal is to prevent characters from getting their armor classes so high that combat becomes boring because only super powerful monsters have any chance of hitting them. It sort of puts an element of risk back into combat. Also, if the dragon tries to nom poor Ragnar and rolls a 3 perhaps Ragnar will then appreciate the rule more.

May I suggest using swarm rules or something similar for large mobs of mooks?

How would such swarm rules realistically function?

I see your point about strength influencing alchemy items. Perhaps a better option is to make the saving throw against these items a straight 10+BAB of the user? Batman makes far better use of his smoke pellets than Joe the garbage man who lives down the street.

Over the years I've run into a number of 'problems' with high level combat which slow the game down significantly and make it difficult for me to challenge my players. To adapt to these challenges I'm coming up with a set of house rules for combat which I thought I'd post here to see what people think of them. This is a work in progress so bear with me. The overarching objective is to create a simple set of hard and fast rules which can be used to run fast combats without miniatures which don't grossly favor one class or ability set over another.

A. Each character gets 1 attack per round at their best value. Add each characters BAB score to the damage dealt and add extra damage dice to the attack as though the character was using the vital strike feat (and its higher level variants). Thus a 13th level warrior with three potential attacks per round, a strength of 21, a +2 greatsword, and no other relevant feats would look like this;

BAB +13; Str 21 (+5, +7 with a two-handed weapon); +2 weapon; etc
Greatsword +20 (6d6+22/19-20 x2)

Obviously feats like two-weapon combat and cleave would need to be addressed, but it's a work in progress.

B. Extra damage dice from things like enchantments (flaming, shock, etc), sneak attack, etc are applied to the attack once and not multiplied.

C. A roll of 18 or higher is always a hit, a roll of 3 or lower is always a miss, and a natural 1 prompts an immediate attack of opportunity from the creature being attacked.

D. Using special alchemy items like blinding powder, tanglefoot bags and thunderstone is a straight CMB roll against the enemies CMD. This represents 'skillful' use of these items and makes them useful to higher level characters. Otherwise the low saving throws they require makes them obsolete almost immediately.

These rules are meant to reward high level fighter types with the ability to deal more damage while avoiding multiple rolls and separate calculations eating up lots of time. The auto hit auto miss rules are intended to moderate the effects of armor class creep and make high level players wary of (and thus capable of being challenged by) encounters with large numbers of low level opponents. These rules are also intended to make fights last multiple rounds and avoid the 'whoever loses initiative gets samurai zinged' phenomenon which I see a lot of in high level play.

Questions and comments to improve on this idea and develop a fast-but-fair set of rules are greatly appreciated.