What that means, IMHO, is that each of us comes to these boards with a perspective that is informed by our own experiences, which can be amazingly different without invalidating any of the others. Failure of anyone to recognize that they have a unique perspective, or worse, to represent their own perspective as the only possible or the best one, is where most of the ridiculous little spats on these boards originate.
+1, I don't really get the "Rules as written" approach: even the interpretation on what a PB set is intended for varies wildly according to the table.
I did witness the unsurmountable caster/noncaster divide only once in tabletop, it was my character's fault, we were level 15 and I still had the most unoptimized spell load ever (if I still had the sheet I'd show you). On the contrary, I can't seem to be able to play on the internet because there's a very different game type that uses the same rules, and the different sorts are usually either private or I just happen to miss them.
I'm pretty sure anyone that cared to post about it would have several tales about campaigns working even when they were actually played "wrong". I could go on forever about my 4e one but it would miss the point and get me sad because RL kind of shanked it.
As Carrith and Matthew Morris put it a few posts ago, the actual differences in PB construction are minimal, whether this minimal would work well with your group or not depends on how you like to play and how your players like to build their characters. Discussions about eventual problems and such should stem from there, otherwise we might all be talking about our own pants for what good it could do.
as long as its not taken too far and turned into 4th ed.
It certainly would make no sense to imitate 4e with PF, since it's designed to be different, but since I'm a 4e fanboy, I have troubles seeing what you mean with "too far".
It's a honest question, I just don't understand, can you expand on what you would consider "taken too far" with per encounter powers? I believe it would help make great improvements for fighters and casters alike, but I don't know what other people here think when they say "per encounter powers".
Or that such encounters be plot devices, where the party knows what they may need to fight, and can quest for ingredients to ointments of magic weapon or whatever for when the big fight arrives.
I prefer this, myself.
Whenever people ask me if they can have this or that magic item or want to create something, I try to make up with some kind of quest that is, possibly, more interesting than the ordinary MMO fetch quest, or ask for something different than the trite and typical 20 bear asses.
Marshall Jansen wrote:
Just as an aside, I pulled out a character sheet from the last 1st edition campaign I played (in the 1980s, yes. I keep my characters, yes.)
He was an Unearthed Arcana Wood Elf Multi-class character, Fighter 11/Assassin 13 when he died permanently. (I don't recall if that was within the legal range for Wood Elves, or if my DM just hand-waved the maximum levels for demi-humans.)
His magic items were:
Shortsword +1, +4 vs Reptiles
Shortsword +1
Dagger +4
Plate Mail +1
Boots of Elvenkind
He had the following items 'marked out' which means I'd failed a save against something fairly recently, and those items had been destroyed:
Ring of Protection +2
Cloak of Elvenkind
That was it. A Character with something along the lines of 1,700,000 XP that I'd played for four years, and that was his gear. And I never felt like I was under-geared, or being punished, or that other characters had 'better stuff' than me.
This.
I wish we could go back there, where magic items were great and fun and in no way "required", except when you had to quest for them because otherwise, the Evil Demon Lord of Kszba'bbsadhk would conquer the kingdom, his unholy skin able to turn sword, arrow and spear aside with no harm to his body. Or, at least, that's how I read "you need a +1 or better weapon to hurt this monster".
As much as I like 4e and the way it streamlined rules and made the arms race a game anyone can play, at any level, it still has "mandatory" magical equipment, albeit yeah, three mandatory items are better than a christmas tree.
Don't get me wrong, I know people have tried to fix this problem with various houserules, some of which quite encyclopedic, but I just wish there was a simpler fix rather than "turn magic items into inherent bonuses" which kind of takes away the magic from magic items.
Just to be clear, it's not my intention to dismiss or discredit anyone. When I said "CoDzilla's games aren't typical" I don't mean it as a way to counter, let alone ridicule, his points, I'm just saying that he's taking RAW very seriously while, in my admittedly anecdotal experience, there's people that only take RAW as a guideline that refers to a hypothetical utopia that may or may not be what someone has in mind.
I've seen plenty of stupid houserules and fixes that broke everything (like add flat Int bonus to all spells per day per level, or allow weapon finesse to be used with everything and anything, or allow 1:1 point buy without a base cap of 18), but people still had fun playing that. And I've witnessed a wizard with, like, 20 spells per day at level 6, was a completely useless character because all she did was shoot with her crossbow and cast "darkness" when we were surrounded by barbarians with nets and no escape route. Yeah. And she also waited to be in a position to take at least 3 AoOs before doing so.
To avoid further digressing: people tinker with their games and rules, and while it's right that RAW should be examined as-is when discussing balance issues, it is only really useful during playtesting or when tinkering for official or unofficial fixes. If one has to think up a fix for his gaming table he should approach community suggestions much like he does with the rules: take what he needs, ignore all that's irrelevant, so those that say "In my game nobody needs a 20" are probably very much okay with a 15 PB for all classes and a 14-15 in the main stat, and consider PB 25 a very high-powered scenario. Those that feel a 20 is mandatory to their gaming style might feel differently. It's not just about the game, the game doesn't exist in a featureless void, the game happens around a table with people that have a variety of ideas and things they like and don't like, so that's what matters most.
That's about it, really. As I said, I prefer high-powered variants for the ability to mess around and still be able to do something, but then I'm a type I and half player, so yeah, take what I say with a grain of salt.
In 3.5 and now in PF every book that comes out will have feats for martials and spells for casters. The more options a caster has the more powerful and versatile he gets and many of these casters can swap their spells out day by day (wiz/cler/dru) whereas feats serve to narrow the gap between the two parties, and yet they are a finite resource that remain forever once chosen.
+1 and a slow clap. I hope someone is listening.
Oh, indeed, he's very right. No matter how many feats any supplement or any third-party product will throw in the mixer, it won't solve anything: you take a feat from there? Fine, one less feat you take from anywhere else, the situation is unchanged, the power level is the same. Meanwhile, if you add a cleric spell in any supplement or even adventure path, every cleric ever of any deity in every part of the whole world automatically has it available. At no cost.
This is why I don't like PF's fighter, it's all manners of wrong: 20 feats aren't going to do anything even if they are turned into the equivalent of spells, and that's because casters, of all types, get spells as class features without any sort of further investment, while everyone else needs limited resources, like feats, to catch up, but feats alone aren't enough.
Plus, casters get them too, so more powerful feats don't just benefit noncasters, quite the contrary: 3.5 got all sorts of crazy when people started throwing in supplemental metamagic stuff, a couple feats and an item or two did more to widen the gap than a hundred feats and magic items combined did to narrow it.
Actually, you're so right that I have realized there is a 3rd problem I haven't addressed in my previous post: back when 3e was something "new", feats were supposed to be things you add to baseline, fixed classes to further customize your character's abilities, along with skill points that should have provided better customization than NWPs. You could now have greatsword-swinging wizards, strong-willed fighters and rogues in heavy armour!
... Except no, you couldn't; it became clear after a very short while that feats were no good unless they were used to empower what you already had instead of trying to "customize" or add unusual stuff: greatsword-swinging wizard isn't so pretty when you realize that not having a -4 nonproficiency to hit doesn't help you not dying in melee, which means a wasted feat. +2 to a will save doesn't really change much when you need an 18 instead of a 20 to succeed in most rolls anyways, if you're that lucky. Heavy armour isn't good when you're sort of forced by the rules to have a high dexterity score, and ACP hurts you more than it should considering the feat investment you took.
At this point, however, there's no "fix" that doesn't involve a quite thorough rewrite of the system. Casters are always ahead by virtue of having quadratic power instead of linear, and having multiplying options that you can switch depending on how you feel like with additional resources, such as feats, to do whatever you want. Noncasters are always behind by virtue of having linear power instead of quadratic, having nothing but small numerical advantages to rolls that, alone, won't help much, and get none of the options and versatility casters have, not to mention that they are forced to gain what tiny little options they need just to not be a complete waste of character sheet by using a limited resource that is supposed to work as customization, instead of basic class design that is missing for no good reason.
I know there is a certain hatred on the board for the Book of nine swords, but it does mitigate the disparity by giving plenty of resources to noncasters that follow a quadratic power scheme, like those of casters, are selectable and can be switched albeit with limits, and thus end up giving you a "complete" class that doesn't have to rely on a dozen feats just to do something better than "I attack with my longsword with a +40 bonus for 1d8+20 damage" at level 20. Even in nonoptimization land, level 20 deserves better than that.
If you don't want to give this sort of options to noncasters, fine, but someone will have to come up with an alternative because the martial classes, as written, don't get even close in the amount, versatility and sheer power of built-in options that casters have, and saying they have feats to compensate is nonsense: that's not the role of feats.
Mind you, the core game assumes that having a 14-15 starting ability is just fine. It doesn't require a lot of optimization. CoDzilla plays a very specific style of D&D which leaves very little room for anything but the absolute best in a given field. Much of what he says won't apply to everyone or their games, but it does hold many grains of truth in its foundation.
I don't know about Pathfinder as I had very limited experience with it, but 4e D&D, which I know better, assumes a 16 in the main attack stat, which is pretty much automatic with the standard array. Having more isn't necessarily a universally good thing as versatility, in my opinion, pays a lot more in that game.
But editions aside, I think most of the problems stem from the gaming style of various groups. Ashiel's right, CoDzilla's games aren't what I would consider "typical" and certainly not ones I'd want to play in, but in there the caster/noncaster attribute dependency is true: PB 15 is enough for a caster while it heavily shanks everyone else. Don't hope to play a monk with 15 PB, for example, unless you like being subpar and forgettable at everything you do.
I still don't know what is the "intended" balance of the game. I've browsed through Age of Worms and, to my uneducated, non-optimizer eyes, some encounters look quite mean and bordering on luck-based missions to a 4-character party, but that's 3.5, I haven't had the chance to browse through, let alone play, a PF adventure.
Well... I had one, but it was a con game and... It was bad. I'll leave it at that.
At any rate, I understand that 15 PB and 4-person party is what people at Paizo envisioned as their "standard", base game, so yeah, 14-15 in the main stat and a dumpstat of 8 somewhere else are more or less expected, with everything else in the middle depending on class and personal preference; this means that if you increase the PB value, like at 25 or so, you usually end up with characters that aren't glaringly more powerful, but they usually have a little less exploitable weaknesses and a little more flair.
In the end, the difference in point buy construction is that less points means less versatile and more straightforward characters that are, at best, mediocre outside their field of expertise; higher PB can mitigate that and allow for less optimal concepts without sacrificing so much as to render the character dead weight.
I personally prefer higher point buys, but then, if you give me 25 points, I'll put everything at 12 and increase from there, so I may be a borderline case.
From my PoV, the disparity is not that martial- & skill- focused characters can't do enough, it's that spellcasters can do too dang much. And that's not an issue of class build, it's an issue of the magic/spell system itself.
...
One player put it this way. Flying on a magic broom or magic carpet = cool. Flying around like Superman in anything other than a Supers game = lame.
+1, but I don't think the solution is making such spells a higher level, this simply delays the problem, or makes some spells useless instead of not broken.
Problem #1
magic:
The magic system is broken, because even when it's not a player problem (and I consider optimizing when nobody else does a player problem), even when a caster has the "wrong" spells readied, he still has a decent chance of autowinning a situation or autoscrewing with people.
No one else has options like that, even the most uberoptimized martial class cannot automatically decide that "X happens" or "Y stops doing anything", not even a limited number of times per day, at best the formula goes like this:
Roll to hit, then actually hit or it goes to waste (also applies with limited uses per day).
Apply a very specific condition that can usually be removed with a standard action or voided with a minimum of preparation.
Point 1 applies to SoS or SoDs too, you might say, albeit I believe the chances are actually higher, but the big problem is point 2: spells are a lot meaner, in no way cloudkill compares to trip, sunder, bull rush or any of the combat maneuvers, and this is in favour of spells, of course. Also, a lot of spells do their job even if point 1 fails.
Problem #2
combat:
Combat is boring. Either you go out of your way or know the one true way to keep ahead with monster HP inflation or you're out. I know CoDzilla and his opinions aren't very liked here, but when he mentions critical existence failure he has a point: damage to hit points beneath 100% is useless if the monster can kill you back in one full attack.
I'm not going to address how easy it is to inflate attacks with magic and how AC cannot keep up, or do so at heavy expenses that do nothing to mitigate actual threats, like spells, I'll just say I like the expected per-level to hit and AC benchmarks in PF and think they just need to be enforced somehow.
Anyhow, we all have to admit that the only way to contribute to a fight without magic is HP damage, because combat maneuvers are ridiculous: either no one ever tries them because they get hit in the face first and for free and then, assuming they hit, something trivial happens, or a one-trick pony always does his pet maneuver that costs him zero risk and has added effect... When it isn't voided automatically due to the monster being immune to it, period.
There's also the problem that most combat maneuver feats are parts of chains, and yes, PF fighters get lots of feats but I think there are more speedbump feats than 3.5 in this sense, which kind of mitigates the advantage, plus having more only compensates the fact that if you have a monster that, say, is immune to trip, you have 3 feats you can't use. Also, since feats are unlike spells and they can't be changed around depending on who you think you're going to fight or how you feel like fighting today, it's even worse.
Solution #1
magic:
Magic shouldn't be this easy or this automatic. It should still be worth the fact that you get a limited number of slots per day, but it should be kept in check where it allows players to manipulate the world too easily.
I'm not talking about grease or colour spray, actually, I'm talking about things like rope trick, teleport, fabricate, planar binding, gate and ridiculously long-lasting buffs, or way to turn them permanent or almost.
2e has a lot of lessons to teach in this sense: magic was way less predictable: scry and teleport was a less sound tactic considering teleport had a non-dismissable chance of screwing with you if you weren't absolutely, positively familiar with your destination (and even then, the chance of error was there), taking any damage would disrupt a spell automatically, and so on.
I don't think the part about autodisrupting spells is necessary, but rope trick shouldn't last that long, it should be what it says: a trick, not "I automatically am safe unless the DM decides I'm dead anyways and wants to screw with me", invisibility has already been nerfed a bit, but improved invisibility should still turn you partially visible when you attack or cast a spell to prevent the arms race that says "you either have true sight or are useless" from level X on.
Flight shouldn't last that long either, there shouldn't be a level point where walking on solid ground means you fail as a player. Wish and miracle should still be very positive spells, but way less predictable in their effects.
The intrinsic problem in this is that you need to really browse through the whole spell list and nitpick every single one, which is a lot of work. Then you should do the same to magic items, which I believe have too many persistent effects that are just there to serve as compensation because noncasters don't cast spells, which is a kick in the groin of any pretense of "balance".
I may put more on this in another post, for it's really a lot of work.
Solution #2
combat:
I know video game examples aren't good, but let me tell you about Monster Hunter.
It's a game where you're a dude or dudette that runs around killing dinosaurs and carving their stuffs out of their carcasses, then uses the collected loot and various other resources to build better armour and ridiculously oversized weapons. Does this remind you of anything?
Anyways, one thing I like about this game is that no matter how cool your equipment is, you still have a base of 100 HPs and 100 endurance that never improves on its own, you only get better loot. And monsters are huge and hurt. This means that if you charge headfirst and just swing your weapon around you're gonna get stomped to the ground by any monster that isn't a mook. It may work if you have uber gear and go against a weak one, but the biggest threats can still annihilate you if you're not smart, even with top-notch equipment.
This doesn't happen in D&D. Not in 3.X/PF at least. There, you either built "correctly" and have a higher statistical chance of doing HP damage that is irrelevant until it brings the total to 0 or you built "incorrectly" and have a lower statistical chance. Optimization can easily turn this into "autowin" and "autofail", or close to that. Actually, "autofail" is a much easier and most likely result of failing to optimize in a campaign where you're meant to if we speak of noncasters.
So what do we do? Well, we have to first make sure that you can do other things than dealing HP damage, and at the same time allow you to both try them to a potentially good result even if you're not optimized for that, and prevent an optimized tripper from being either god of battlefield control or useless, depending on whether the monster is flat-out immune or not.
Here's some practical examples of what I mean: If they look like 4e powers, it's because I like 4e and its powers format, but I'm using it here just for practical reasons and ease of understanding
Shield bash:
Action: Attack (any)
Requirement: You must attack with a shield
Hit: You deal damage normally, and the opponent must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + your BAB + your Strength modifier) or take a -2 penalty to AC and all attack rolls for one round.
Miss: You lose your shield bonus to AC until the beginning of your next round, and your target gains an Attack of Opportunity against you.
Note: Attacking with a shield to deal HP damage does not make you lose your shield bonus to AC, not even on a miss.
Shield bash (reactive):
Action: Immediate reaction (are they there in PF? I forgot)
Requirement: You must be fighting defensively with a shield equipped
Trigger: You are missed by an attack
Attack: Make an attack roll with your equipped shield.
Hit: You deal damage normally, and the opponent must make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + your BAB + your Strength modifier) or be dazed for one round.
Miss: The opponent's attack hits you instead.
Shield push:
Action: Attack (any)
Requirement: You must attack with a shield
Hit: You deal damage normally, and the opponent must make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your BAB + your Strength modifier) or be pushed back one square and fall prone.
Special: Creatures larger than you gain a +2 bonus to their Reflex save for each size category. Creatures with more than two legs or extraordinary stability gain an additional +4 bonus to their Reflex save. Attacking with a light shield does not cause the creature to fall prone unless it is smaller than you.
Miss: You lose your shield bonus to AC until the beginning of your next round, and your target gains an Attack of Opportunity against you and can move you one square in a direction of his choice.
Note: Attacking with a shield to deal HP damage does not make you lose your shield bonus to AC, not even on a miss.
Tackle:
Action: Attack (any)
Hit: You deal unarmed damage normally, and the opponent is considered grappled and must make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your BAB + your Strength modifier) or fall prone and be considered prone. You end prone as well in the same square.
Special: Creatures larger than you gain a +2 bonus to their Reflex save for each size category. Creatures with more than two legs or extraordinary stability gain an additional +4 bonus to their Reflex save.
Miss: You fall prone in a square adjacent of your opponent of his choice.
Reckless attack:
Action: Free
Requirement: You must be either charging or in a Rage
Trigger: You hit with an attack
Effect: You can decide to give your opponent an Attack of Opportunity against you. If you do so, you can afterwards make another attack with an equipped weapon of your choice.
Fade slash:
Action: Attack (any)
Hit: You deal damage normally, and afterwards move one square without provoking Attacks of Opportunity.
Special: If you are wielding a slashing weapon, you can instead move a number of squares up to your Dexterity modifier or half your movement speed, whichever is lower, without provoking Attacks of Opportunity.
Miss: You are flat-footed against your opponent. You can still move after attacking as per a hit, but you provoke Attacks of Opportunity while doing so.
Sunder armour:
Action: Attack (any)
Hit: You deal damage normally, which is applied both to your target and its armour. Your opponent must then make a Fortitude save (DC 10 + your BAB + your Strength modifier) or the next weapon attack he receives before the end of your next round will inflict an additional weapon damage dice.
Miss: Your opponent gains an Attack of Opportunity against you. In addition to that, you roll damage as if you hit your own weapon with this attack, and deal half that result to it; if you are attacking unarmed, you deal that damage to yourself.
Sunder weapon:
Action: Attack (any)
Hit: You deal damage normally, which is applied both to your target and any of its equipped weapons. Your opponent must then make a Reflex save (DC 10 + your BAB + your Strength modifier) or the targeted equipped weapon will deal half damage for one round. You can target natural weapons as well, but they do not take additional damage.
Miss: Your opponent gains an Attack of Opportunity against you. In addition to that, you are disarmed of the weapon you have been using to attack
These are just very basic ideas, can expand more on them later if need be.[/spoiler]
On the 'Levels' game, I wouldn't call it that although I had an idea that they were style-types.
Thanks for explaining the levels to me.
I think I'm II and II, but I lean heavily towards I. That would explain why I run from games at the single mention of "builds"; yeah, I got to the point I don't wait for "optimization" to spring up anymore.
I like using rules and mechanics to good effect, but not to the point where I'm supposed to play a game within a game or give precedence to crunch instead of fluff and rule of cool.
Savage Tide AP, they get to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Trip Fighter (I thought this was a fighter with a drug use problem btw) states "I trip the T-Rex". I laugh thinking he's joking - this was followed by him spouting modifiers and rules and pages and clarifications from the web. After the group and I respectfully sit quietly until he's finished and rolled a dice declaring "And the T-Rex is DOWN! HA!". I tell him, sorry pal, I care little for what you think the rules say, your mass couldn't never ever trip a freak'n 30ft T-Rex, it's 3 tons! Yelling ensured. Ending with me challenging him to jump in the rhino pen at the zoo. If he could tackle a rhino I would give him the T-Rex went down to his trip attack*.
I'm sorely disappointed that he didn't actually jump in the rhino pen to prove his point, you did well to kick him out.
I personally would've allowed it, because I'm the sort of DM that allows this kind of stupid stuff, but what annoys me is that this result didn't come out of a creative ploy or even a nice description or a cool move or some posing and manly shouting and large hamming and stuff... It all came from math.
As I said several posts ago, the problem with noncaster combat options is that they're really, really boring, and you either never ever do them because they make you actively worse by getting you beaten up for, most often, no good reason, or you do them every time because you've spent several of your extremely limited reserve of feats to be able to do that, and not using that option would be like playing a wizard with int 3 and spending all feats to specialize in fighting with the greatclub.
That's why noncasters need some other way to accomplish stuff than by saying "my bonus is so bigger than yours I automatically succeed into using this extremely specific and situational trick", if anything because it's boring and there's no real way to stop it except just frustrating the player by repeating a "No" that should've come before he started playing.
What do you need a DM for? I can go to any kindergarten and get story hour. And players know as much about the rules as DMs any more, so you don't need one to adjudicate anything. In fact, any time a DM does something logical in the world, it seems a player will go to some forum and b##** about it. And all of the other players will tell him the DM is a dick.
So, what do you need us for again?
Maybe I'm just jaded because of the internet or something, but I don't see people behaving as douchebags as an indication of the state of the hobby as a whole. It's just douchebags that whine, big deal, they've always been around, in all fields and all ages of mankind.
I'm definitely not as old school as you are, but I don't think being a DM means knowing more than the players, it's mostly a matter of roles, really. It's okay if a player knows the rules better or even more, he can even help out if it's important, the rules are just there to make the game go along.
DM calls are for when it's more awesome to go with the flow than the rules as written, heck I even encourage my players to come up with stuff and surprise me. A most common rule in my last 4e game was that you could use any skill you could convince me into letting you use, and it worked fine. PF's list isn't as open-ended but the same principle can easily apply.
In the end this is a matter of personal maturity, it has nothing to do with the game system except when people are dishonest about themselves and blame a rule or lack thereof for their inability to communicate properly.
Sometimes unclear rules can make the situation a bit trickier, like the above examples about CR: what's printed is, after a certain level, not all there is and just "assumes" a lot of things, which can therefore bring to noticeable disagreement even amongst the playerbase. Check back and read the discussion about AC 60 being just "okay" for level 20 despite the printed attack bonuses for that CR are about +30something, now imagine a DM that gives for granted that you have to uberbuff and optimize things properly, and a player that gives for granted that CR 20 means the numbers printed and increasing them means increasing the CR.
Imagine them at the same table. Yeah, you'd have a whiny player writing on a board some hours later. But really, you can't blame it all on the system, albeit I am still convinced it's not very clear, not at all times, on how it wants to work and present itself, the heart of the matter is proper communication around the table in cases like this.
CR doesnt include treasure being used because YOU as the DM decide what treasure they have and some of that may or may not have will be usable by the creature, so adjust the CR based on what you give them to use.
The game works fine, the treasure works fine, CR is a number gauged to difficulty.
I can cope with the treasure, but what about CR variations from monster features, such as spells?
A dragon has, let's say, +20 attack and AC 30, base values. However, when buffed with spells at his disposal that are part of his being a dragon, he goes to +30 attack and AC 40 and an increase in damage that we're not going to oddball because it's just an example and I suck at this kind of math.
It's the same monster, the very same monster, but with very different stats depending on whether he actually does something he always had the possibility of doing. How do I handle this? Is he, say, CR 10 but 20 when buffed? Do my players get less xp if they catch him pants down and unbuffed because he's so much easier? Do they get less loot as well?
What about other situational features? A level 10 NPC ranger with terrain mastery in something that isn't the encounter's location and where the PCs don't fall within any of his favoured enemy types, would still count as CR 10? Would a divination wizard fought randomly in a featureless plain be worth less xp and loot than if he had a chance to actually use his arsenal to its full extent?
I understand CR not being perfect and needing to be adjusted depending on the situation, but since the assignment of both xp and loot depends on that number, it could easily get confusing. I might be wrong, for example, but from what I gather, a higher CR monster should have more treasure: so a CR 6 something with items that appropriately buff would be, say, CR 8... And therefore have even more items due to his inflated CR?
Yes, this is pushing it, I realize, but the more I think of it, the less CR makes sense to me.
Screw it, maybe if I come out with Databases and Spreadsheets it'll sell like hot cakes. It already does with the right fluff added, apparently.
I've kind of given up trying to play 3.5/PF online, since it appears the only viable way to play on the forums I know is a parallel game of math, spreadsheets and competitive deckbuilding.
Call me names all you want, I find the idea that a creature with a printed attack roll of +31 of CR 20 means having an AC of 40 by that level means it's okay to go toe to toe, since iterative attacks are bound to have lower bonuses anyways. But if this +31 actually becomes a +60 thanks to hidden factors, I wonder how much it's me being stupid and how much are the mechanics losing focus and getting more and more out of control.
Don't take it as an attempt for an edition war, but I love how I managed to run a 4e game for one year without ever referencing the monster manual, only using the guidelines for making monsters on the fly in the DM book. And it worked. As I read, there seem to be similar indications on Pathfinder books as well, but does it take into account only the base bonus? Because let's admit it: in 3.x/PF it's way easier to add +10 or even +20 to an attack roll than it is in 4e, so how do we use the CR system to take this kind of sudden or not so sudden changes into account?
I appreciate having surprises and complications, but when this means a CR 20 monster is actually CR 30 "If played right with no holds barred", there's something wrong, and it can get frustrating if not everyone in the game is on the same line on this, as it's happening this very moment in the forum.
It's like everyone is playing a game with the same name, but it's actually several different games that kind of punch each other in the face.
Yeah, but now they're arguing about how to interpret CR.
I never liked CR, it's always been a frustrating, arbitrary, confusing and ill-defined nonsense that should supposedly help me determine the difficulty of an encounter.
Pity it gets skewered fast past the first levels due to a plethora of hidden factors, such as monsters using equipments they possess as treasure and me having to adjust the CR depending on what they have, with little indication as to how I'm supposed to decide what they have or how to modify the CR proper.
But that's beyond the point. I'm still sad you can only accomplish most great stuff only through the use of spells, and even mundane achievements are surpassed with ease by the use of magic.
I think it's too late to get the thread back on track, but I wonder how much work it would be to adjust PF's spells to make most of the awesome magic not pullable with a snap of fingers every damn time I want, regardless of everything.
I liked the idea behind 4e's rituals, but not the execution. For one, I think that allowing some kind of save against every spell and balancing the growth of saves a bit, along with making it not so automatic to change a whole battlefield with a snap of fingers or cast 3 spells per round (is it still possible in PF without hassle? I'm not sure) would be a great step forward.
Then we'd need to find a way to make ordinary skills and nonmagical options more awesome and not strictly dependant on a feat build that either makes you do the same trick all the time or never try it ever, but that's quite a bit more challenging...
I was rather upset when my epic level monk came up against a monster she couldn't damage enough and which could hit her on a 2, and I realized I had no other options besides continuing to stab it in the face.
If we take away pure damage dealing, the combat options are already over, and that's already a lot considering how limited damage dealing is: you need to be wielding a weapon, your opponents needs to be within range, you must see it and all. This applies to everyone, of course, but all it takes is an invisible enemy (a 2nd level spell) and a non-caster already needs to have ridiculous perception to have a chance at telling there's something to fight at all.
Even the other combat options are kind of lame. Last time I played tabletop D&D I was with a friend that is kind of a n00b (he believes the monk is the ultimate class, for crying out loud) and he had just discovered "improved trip" via virtue of 6th level bonus feat. This was back in 3.5.
He used trip all the time, because doing so granted him an extra attack, a +4 to hit with consecutive ones and free attacks of opportunity to anyone nearby. He hardly ever lost anything by not trying to do so, it was so convenient with the appropriate feat that it was a no-brainer.
I was playing a charisma paladin with improved grapple and, myself, was too trying to grapple most of the time, for considering the critters we usually found it was quite convenient to neutralize their main form of attack.
No one ever tried to disarm, bluff, bull rush or overrun. Ever. For one thing because the first thing that happens if you do without having the feat is "You get beaten up. Then...", which is not really an incentive with the meaner critters, also known as those you would want to neutralize more, for another thing because they get progressively useless.
Aside from the fact that all restrictions on noncaster combat apply to these options as well, such as needing to be in range and all.
Improved trip? Each size category is +4. More than two legs is +4. Most monsters have ridiculous strengths anyways. Either you're an optimized trip build or you're not going to do much after a certain point, which is more or less when spells take the game anyways. Also, it does nothing while flying or underwater or against things that slither.
Improved grapple? Aside that grapple was a convulsed mess and I swore I'd never try to play another character with improved grapple in 3.x ever, it automatically fails against opponents that are more than one size category larger than you, which means you either get size increased (via spells), in which case the benefits of the feat itself are almost irrelevant, or you have just spent a feat for something you'll never get to use.
Improved disarm? Yeah, count the number of critters that don't need weapons. Casters included.
Improved overrun? Extremely situational, and a waste of time in most cases.
Improved bull rush? Even more situational than overrun, and like the previous option you either get ludicrous size increases or you won't budge anything after a certain point. Not anything that's worth pushing around, at least.
And this is just combat. I agree the problem isn't (just) combat itself, as much as the fact that there's little else to do, in general, speaking of options. Most of the blunt of the matter comes from non-combat options actually, as the last tabletop 3.5 game I played showed me: the one when I played the noncasting 15th level wizard, we had a grand total of one fight and it was just a distraction. I still was the only one doing anything relevant. Except when another guy went for a grand style sabotage... Using soul jar. So yeah. Assassin guy did... Nothing. I honestly can't remember him doing anything at all.
I'm not gonna touch roleplaying because I feel that has nothing to do with class balance, but it certainly feels better, at least to me, to play a character type I like and still have a way to contribute to the game.
I had very little chances to play Pathfinder and my few experiences weren't... Great, so I don't think I'm really qualified to bring mechanical answers to these problems. I agree with Fergie: the answer should never be "make the fighter's bonuses so high that no one has a chance to fight him on his own conditions" because the real heart of the matter is that his conditions are extremely narrow and voided with little effort. His and those of every noncaster.
It's great to be the master of a keep and have servants and cohorts and all, I agree, but nowadays that's leadership, it's a feat, and it has no prerequisites, so it doesn't count anymore.
I don't know what this ToZ you are talking about is, but from what I gathered on the previous posts, the idea of AP doesn't really work in my opinion. It's not a bad idea per se, but it appears all it does is "stop" or "mitigate" some negative effects. This should already be built-in, that's what saves are for, if there's many spells that allow no save or that set DCs so high that you need a 20 regardless of how high you try to get your bonus, that's another problem entirely.
And again: even if you give the fighter a limited-times-per-day mean of saying "no" to some "I win" buttons, that doesn't really let him do anything, if he couldn't contribute to a situation before, he still can't.
I always had problems with casters vs noncasters in 3e, and am quite disappointed that Pathfinder didn't fix them. But wait, let me explain.
I don't like playing a roleplaying game like you would prepare your deck for a Magic: the Gathering tournament, all this CharOp stuff and talk of optimization and "hey wait there's this combo of options in this, that and that other source that totally proves my point" just confuses me.
What I know is: by playing with people that did not optimize, I have once made a wizard character that had probably one of the worst spell selections ever (don't ask me the details because I don't remember, honestly), but being 15th level, she had access to stuff like scry, detect location, teleport, phantom steed, fabricate, wall of iron and such.
The campaign was actually pretty "relaxed", in a way: to put it simply we were bad guys that got a castle by force of arms and the king just decided to play along and let us keep it.
At one point, I have stopped using divination spells, even though I was supposedly a specialist in the field, simply because it became clear after a while that my GM wasn't ready for that and I felt like a jerk for spoiling her investigation plots like that. I still did something here and there but it was minor. Arcane sight and prying eyes, mostly.
At another point, I had used wall of iron and move earth to rebuild way better fortifications than the place ever had, in about a week or so. Moat included, of course.
Even when I had the wrong spells, all it took was a bit of creativity: at one point we were chasing someone who could pass through walls more or less at will, and how did we enter a sanctum walled on all sides without opening and the right spell? Why, by casting "stone to flesh" and digging the flesh away. I never expected I'd use that spell that way.
tl;dr The problem is options. I might be a wizard with the wrong spell load, that has the wrong spells prepared, that doesn't have many of them, and those I have may not work for one reason or another. But by simple virtue of being a full spellcaster I have so many options that the higher we go in level, the lower the chances I can't do anything helpful in one way or the other.
I also keep seeing this "yeah but you can shank the wizard or he may have the wrong spells or run out of them" argument as something, if not positive, at least balancing. It's not balancing, it simply makes everything even more random: He may not have the right spell prepared, but what if he does? He may not one-shot an encounter way higher than his level, but what if he does? He may not be able to survive if he is caught pants down, but what if he does?
Non-spellcasters don't have anything like this, and that's the problem. I'm all fine with a fighter not casting spells, but his only option is "beating things with a stick", and if that isn't viable he has no way of doing anything.
Compare the chances a caster has to sit out of a situation because there's nothing he can contribute with those of a non-caster doing the same. Non casters have either skills or beating things with a stick, or a pointy thing thrown with a string at best: if that's not enough they're not only screwed, but there has never been anything they could have done about it at any time. That's worse than "you prepared the wrong spells" or "you ran out of them": even the latter means he did something earlier, or tried to at least.
That's the problem I have with the caster/noncaster divide: even taking out PvP and CharOp situations, it's still blatantly unfair.
Instead, each Sorcerer gets 3 spells known preselected for the levels that they can cast. And at levels 2-20 they can learn a single additional spell of any level they can cast. This is a compromise between the Warmage/Dread Necromancer/Beguiler and the basic Sorcerer. They get many less spells known than the full specialist classes, but they eventually get 2 spells known of every level that they can cast that are selected by the player from the Sorcerer/Wizard list. This gives them better access to splat books and makes the class more customizable and interesting.
I very much like.
The idea that sorcerers should cast a little very little bit more and spontaneously but have the drawback of being able to have only an extremely limited number of choices rather than "Well, everything" other classes have is... Really, it just doesn't work.
Having a fixed list of known spells based on a theme (like Beguilers, Dread Necromancers and Warmages have, all of which are way more interesting than the sorcerer) works very well as a starting ground on which the player could then add spells to customize his spell list more.
I agree that the Heritage stuff is nice but in no way balances with the wizards' free spells in addition to their "I can cast potentially everything". Maybe, to really give Sorcerers a bit of an edge, we could have some heritage spell lists draw the occasional spell from outside of the Wiz/Sor list. Maybe.
The only drawback I could see with this solution is having to make several spell lists for each heritage, but well, it's just boring, it's not really difficult. Plus, the heritage stuff we have now can very well be recycled, nobody said it should be done with, just that it's not enough alone.
I was wondering... Wizards get a ton of spell-like abilities that mimick spells from their chosen school (or generic vanilla spells for universalists) which is not bad, since it gives them some endurance firepower which is good vibes for groups that don't want to deal with the bother of going either rope trick or wand dependent or use other tricks that would be "cheesy" to the "casual" gamer.
I wonder if we shouldn't have something more like reserve feats (Complete Mage) rather than spell-like abilities or the mimicking of already existing spells in general.
Basically, reserve feats are supernatural abilites that produce an effect which is a kind of watered-down spell; like a burst of fire dealing 1d6 damage per spell level or short-distance teleportation, except they can be used at-will.
This allows a wizard to have some mean to contribute even when firing off a proper spell would be "overkill", thus giving technically unlimited endurance while not raising the power level in general (reserve feats aren't really scary at all, that's why they're at will).
It would make them look like better class features too, since extra spells are very nice but kind of "meh" on the variety.
I believe they should have a high will save (that wouldn´t brake the game at all) and there should exist a feat that would grant pounce. Maybe with pre-requisite Improved Initiative and BAB +11.
A feat that requires another feat and a minimum level of 11 whose sole purpose is not to suck when something isn't adjacent to you doesn't sound like a huge thing.
My fix would be to take away iterative attacks, they're mostly a waste of time that forces combat to be a stationary attrition slugfest that's pretty hard to pull off against someone who just doesn't hold still.
A high-level fighter should somehow be able to do anything that it can't do at the moment, that is he should be able to:
- Hit people that tend to be out of reach; a flying/teleporting/invisible opponent is fighter-proof, since there's no damn way in hell somebody with a 20' walking-only movement rate can catch up with opponents that can fly and teleport around, or even just burrow or climb, they're going to be out of range unless the fighter is going ranged, at which point a mere Wind Wall makes him utterly useless anyways, no matter how many pluses he has to hit.
- Hit people that tend to be unhittable; and it's not a matter of reach this time: Ironguard, Mirror Image, Mislead, Gaseous stuff, Incorporeal opponents... There should be a way a fighter can somehow hit or interact with somebody that would usually make him, yet again, useless. Unless he has a caster to help him out, but at this point the caster might as well take care of the threat by himself.
- Force people to not ignore him; let's be honest, even an uber-tripper AoO machine with a Spiked Chain can't do much to prevent a Gargantuan creature from just trampling him and eating the squishies (assuming such squishies need a meatshield in the first place, but we're digressing...), also let's consider that there is no reason for which an ordinary opponent shouldn't just decide to take an AoO and eat the squishies anyways and then gang up on the fighter when everyone else's dead. As things stand now, people keep attacking the fighter for sheer GM fiat.
This needs to change.
If fighters have to be the "hold the front lines" character type, they can't be unable to stop people from just running past them, they can't do their job if they can't hit anything with access to 2nd level spells. In short, they can't be fighters if their fighting can't be of any use.
A good fix would be to give the fighters a particular threat area that prevents people from charging across (like the Knight's class feature that makes the threatened area difficult terrain), they should also eventually develop some kind of "sixth sense" that allows them to detect hostiles within a certain range, some kind of blindsense, so that a 2nd level invisibility doesn't bypass a 20th level fighter on the spot. They should also be able to move better than others in armor, so that they can catch up, somehow, with flying/fast/teleporting opponents.
Heck, I think it'd be cool if they could intercept teleporting opponents, even if this would require magicing-up what has always been a non-magic class until now.
Also, after a few levels Paladins suck. As a class, they stop getting nice things, and the nice things they got at low level don't keep pace with the needs of higher level characters.
They are actually a prime example of why nothing in D&D should work like that.
I agree, past level 4 paladins get a poké-horse and... To cure disease more than once per week, and maybe smite more than once a day.
Oh, and let's not forget some menial spell maybe every other level, at half caster level, up to level 4 tops, from a reduced list.
On the topic of minor/major magic, I think it's incredibly lame even if it were at full level. I mean: a rogue class feature to be able to do less than what a 1-level dip in wizard does?
It's so lame that multiclassing looks good. That takes effort.
I don't like combat feats, they're kind of like maneuvers, except they're weaker and never get spent, it's like non-spellcasters only copying the spellcasters' ability to do 0-level cantrips at will, except they can only ever do one per round, ever. And they're not as useful.
This said, 3.5 PHB dodge is lame. I'm not saying there's no way in hell it would ever be useful in any campaign, ever, but at this point, I'd like to say that if I picked toughness and found myself down at 1 or 2 hp, I'd be very well allowed to say "Wow, if I didn't have that feat, I'd be toast". This doesn't make Toughness a good feat, thought, it makes me a very very lucky man that encountered a very particular circumstance.
Also on the topic of later, better feats being a reason for previously tiered feats to suck: they're like speedbump charms from 1e Exalted, especially if they're combat feats. Exalted has a rule of "You can only use one charm per turn" which is like combat feats as it is now in Pathfinder: Even if you have Dodge, Mobility and Spring Attack, you can only use one of them at a time. In Exalted you could eventually build a combo and use more than one, which you can't do in Pathfinder, making combat feats even worse. As a matter of fact, 2e Exalted has done away with speedbump charms from the previous edition.
"Speedbump" means the sole reason of a feat is to prevent you from picking better ones from the beginning, which I agree is bad design choice; a feat should always be useful, and all feats cost 1 feat slot, so they, in theory, should all be "equal". Yes, even high-tiered or high-requisite ones.
Now let's take a look at Dodge: +1 AC that always stacks in all circumstances is not really that bad, it has the disadvantage that it can be negated by flat-footing or denying Dex bonus to AC so any limitation that stacks upon the fact that it's really just a +1 bonus makes it automatically lame.
This said, a +1 to AC is always useful at all levels, it won't give you a good AC alone out of the blue, but the same can be said of Weapon Focus: It won't make you good at hitting people out of the blue if you weren't already half-decent yourself.
... All this stuff and all I wanted to say is just a "me too" to those that say it shouldn't be a combat feat.
Will this cause all players to take their 1 level in rogue?
Considering they may not really need all the class skills the rogue might give them, and considering that they may get important class features later, there's no real reason for them to do this.
... Unless they already decided they want to be skill monkeys anyways, but there's usually better options around if you're not really interested in the rogue anyways. Ranger, for example.
But casters and people who don't really need more class skills than they already have usually won't need to do such. This will only benefit people that want to multiclass for a specific purpose, which is good in my book considering how multiclassing is bad for your health anyways.
I think this is a good idea. Whether it should be used for fighters only or for any class is a good question, but it would benefit fighters most nonetheless since they are the most likely to pick numerous feats including some weapon (group) specific feats.
It actually doesn't really benefit anyone in particular in my opinion... It just makes a certain kind of play more viable.
Fighters being able to pull out their best tricks with more than one weapon is just fluff, really: how many will they be using at one time? One or two at most, hence they don't really get much mechanical benefit.
Other classes will probably gain more versatility or, at most, more proficiencies, but they won't really gain much of an advantage... I mean: What good does it really do for a sorcerer to be able to use a greatsword without penalty?
I think it's fine to make it available for everyone, I doubt it really does anything to game balance.
Most of the "long-running" issues is when the melee fighters start playing "patty-cake" and It ends up being a turtle race to see who can count up to the others HP first
I had that problem too.
I was thinking: Maybe I should add the whole CON score as HPs at first level (since PCs tend to die/drop down too fast down there) and then not count Con Mod to HPs every level, since that brings the issue of ridiculous CON scores granting ridiculous amounts of HPs at high levels (and ridiculous drops in HPs once the Con score takes damage).
Since the game system doesn't seem to be geared for that kind of HP/damage scaling, however, I was wondering if I didn't just nerf con bonuses too much this way.
I agree with the weapon groups idea, we could borrow them from UA like it has already been said.
I actually like how they work alot, especially since it makes the Exotic weapon proficiency depend on what other kind of weapons you can normally use, which is good for coherence.
Of course, we'd need to rework the base classes a bit so that we have a number of group proficiency points to distribute.
One important part, thought, is that I feel we still need a "simple" weapons group that possibly everyone can use, if nothing to group those really simple weapons (quarterstaff, dagger, dart, sling, thrown rocks and the like) that don't really have a reason to go anywhere else, or are simply too little or too minor to have a separate group.
Course, this doesn't stop the spring attack rogues from running in, sneak attacking, then dashing behind the fighter ;) Then again, in that situation he's not sneak attacking more than once anyway.
See, I actually would like sneak attack to be more like this than just another way to stand and full attack but different from a fighter's.
I agree with the cap of one sneak attack per round, but I also want to get rid of iterative attacks so, to me, it doesn't really change much.
I also agree with the idea of not making virtually everything immune to sneak attack, it's already boring enough to have one and just one combat ability, it becomes a joke if I can't really use it.
I'm for the d6, nobody should deserve the d4 in the same way nobody should deserve 2 skill points per level (thought it's different in Pathfinder's case).
I understand the need to "balance" roles and stuff, but really... Creating too much difference in basic stats that everyone uses (BAB and HP, for example) makes for silly "I always succeed and everyone else always fails" situations that I'd rather avoid.
Plus, the HP gain from switching from d4 to d6 are minimal and added to a class that didn't really have many anyways in the first place.
Sword sweeps, special hammer or spear techniques that cause bleeding, knock shields down, or create advantages when fighting in a formation. Something akin to the fighter powers from 4e, but in feat format. Making these feat choices does not build complexity into the class, it just creates more choice. It's also easier to balance than sweeping changes to the core character class.
Thoughts?
I like it. Thought I'd rather them be more like tactical feats. That is: feats that give more (usually 3) options that require some minimal setup.
I would also like to see "standard" combat options (trip, disarm, bull rush) a bit expanded and maybe powered by feats in a way that isn't just a plain and boring "+2 here and there", thought I understand it's a perfectly legitimate choice for a feat, both as design choice and as character choice.
I strongly support the idea of a fighter that doesn't just charge and full attack all day, rolling dice until wrist sprains. I understand the idea of "keep it simple", but if this means that new guy has to get bored and keep rolling dice after dice without really doing anything particular, it's not the way of keeping it simple that I'm looking forward to.
I won't agree with all the ADD stuff, but I have to say that in those cases where I witnessed the phenomenon of the 15MAD, it was by people who just kept blasting away, killing mooks with meteor swarms.
A little forethought, and the casters can last all day.
That's a given. My problem with spell slots is that it forced me to either use incredible cosmic powers or do nothing.
It sort of went away with Reserve Feats thought so it's no longer really an issue for me
Jason Bulhman wrote:
As an aside, vancian magic is not going anywhere. I am fully versed in the benefits of moving to a point based system, but we will not be going in that direction for the Pathfinder RPG.
It's actually fine, especially if the product is meant to be backwards compatible.
I was just wondering why it's not being applied to everything at this point, but I guess I just answered my own question.
If Jason replaces the current magic system with Spell Points for all the spellcasting classes
He'll be burned at the stick for the needless slaughter of a Sacred Cow. Vancian magic is one of the things D&D should never lose. It's one of the things that makes D&D unique.
And it's being thrown away with 4e.
What I mean is: If we're going to go for a points-per-day variant instead of class-feature-per-day as it has been said in another topic, we might as well do it for everything, assuming this works well.
If it works well, it's not unnecessary slaughter of a Sacred Cow, it's barbecue.
It's going to be hard to scrounge up some players to do a nice playtest, but I'll try my best. Anyways...
I'm wondering how multiclassing is supposed to work in regard to the skill training system. If I am trained in a skill I'm supposed to add Level+3 to my check if it's a class skill, or 1/2Level+3 if it's a cross-class skill.
... What happens if I have 4 levels in a class and 4 in another and am trained in a skill that is cross-class for one of the two? Do I have a total bonus of +9 to the check?
Also, if all classes get more abilities and features each level, but all such features are based on class level, won't this make multiclassing without PrCs even lamer than before?
Well, 'Unearthed Arcana' *already* has a variant system that utilizes Spell Points. And, in my experience (after several "all psionics"-campaigns) it is actually far easier to track PSPs than any "psionic slots". You do keep track of your HPs, right? How is it any different from it?
It's not really different, it's just yet another pool to keep track of. Maybe I'm jut too used to slots.
Asgetrion wrote:
EDIT: Besides, how many times have you (either as the DM or a player) despaired over how the party wizard preparing all too few "utility" spells? Or Dispel Magic? How many times have rested behind a magically-locked door, waiting for the next morning to that the wizards can cast that Knock? Or the cleric can cast that Restoration?
Sadly, almost always, but that's not really the issue here. I play with weird people and all.
Psionics had it right by the means that it was actually a very well-balanced system, and not really broken at all (well, ok, aside from a couple powers).
I personally prefer class feature per day thought, simply because it's easier. I don't have extra pools of points to keep track of, and variable points expenditure to deal with, things just fire off the way I (supposedly) want them to without much hassle.
My real problem with points per day is that it doesn't really solve the issue I have with everything being "per day" and actually requires one to rewrite everything, every spell, power and class feature to work on a per-point basis.
... If someone else does it in my place and presents me a nifty rulebook with a points system already worked out for me, however, I might reconsider. It just... Somehow doesn't feel right to play D&D like it was HERO or GURPS.
Also, I think that it should either be all points-based or feature-per-day based, the two things don't seem to mix well in my humble opinion.
If it were around 20, it would actually be noticeable.
Assuming things remain as they have been in 3.5, the problem isn't really the size of the DR per se, rather the fact that even a DR 50/- at level 20 is not enough to keep the pace with reality-altering powers casters get, especially since they seem to be getting more of them. Also: DR doesn't protect against magic or elemental damage, nor against ability damage, and it does absolutely nothing to make it easier for you to hit monsters that have three times your reach, your attacks and can fly/teleport around at will.
DR 5/- is a joke, yes, I personally wouldn't make it go past 15/- even at level 20 thought, for the simple fact that past a certain point, all this is just a pointless arms race. Fighters are not going to get anywhere near interesting (or useful) if all they do is just get huge passive boosts on d20 rolls and have to go charge and full attack all the time.
No matter how huge these numbers are, +1000 to hit and damage and DR 1000/- are absolutely worthless if you don't have a straight line to charge or are fighting someone beyond reach. Besides, it's pretty boring.
I like the idea behind the new combat feats, but I don't really like the fact they have to be used in a particular order, it makes the tactics factor predictable and pretty boring (but this has been changed in the new release, right?).
