Moon-Hawk's page

I'll add some thoughts...

High-Level Barbarians should be able to:
- weild weapons too big for them
- improvise weapons
- hurl boulders like giants
- count as a step larger for CMB purposes
- jump higher, climb faster, and swim longer
- Ignore (or reduce) inconveniences such as hunger, thirst, extreme heat/cold/altitude, underwater pressure...
- improve on the effects of Diehard and Endurance feats
- receive an ability like "Mettle" where he shrugs off partial Fort/Will effects
- Cause damage to things not normally susceptible to damage (force effects, black tentacles, etc.)

Sooo, basically what you're saying is, high level barbarians should be He-Man, with Saturday-morning cartoon levels of unrealistic badassery.

It's flat-out too early to say. When the "complete" beta rules are out, I'll give them a serious long look, and some playtesting. I'll also have 4e in my hands by then, so I'll really know what I'm comparing. Beta is close enough to the final product that I can compare product to product and decide. Right now I'm comparing speculation to speculation, and it's all far too changeable for me to make any decisions.

As it looks right now, this very instant, I would say "probably will not buy Pathfinder RPG", but that's based on what the alpha rules are, not what the final rules will be.

...you want to have the odds of getting one hit stay about the same no matter how many attacks you do.

You do? I'm not so sure. If all the options result in the same chance of getting a hit, what's the point of the options?

I think there will always be a viable middle section where you don't want to do all 4 attacks at -8 each. -8 is a pretty stiff penalty.

Indeed. And that middle section is when your regular BAB will hit on a roll of 11 to 16 (inclusive) Outside of that range you're statistically better off taking the 4 at -8. Or if there are other feats in play, as you mention. Or if, y'know, I botched my math. :-)

I don't mean this as criticism, I just wanted to make sure your goals matched the effect.

Wow. I thought the whole feat chaining nonsense was an editing mistake. You know, some foreign intern misunderstood the word "prerequisite" and instead created feat chains, with hilariously disastrous consequences.

I didn't think it could actually be on purpose.

Hmm, I havent actually played in the upper levels in a very long time so i'll just take what you say at face value, BUT, i'm having a hard time seeing this happen:

Moon-Hawk wrote:

In fact, in some cases, if experience is awarded when the wizard is just below leveling up but the rest of the party is already at the next level, the larger award actually catapults him past their experience.

And if it did get to that point I would have to use DM fiat to just tell the Wizard he's tied with the rest of the party again

Upper levels has nothing to do with it.

They fight a CR 8 creature. Certainly not unreasonable for what should be a party of 6th level characters. I could use a higher CR or a series of multiple fights (since I don't know about you, but I don't award XP after every single fight) but I'm trying to stay far from the realm of hyperbole and just show a simple example of how it happens, and you can imagine there are situations where it can be a lot worse than this. So a party of 4 fighting a CR 8 creature yields, let's see, consulting the table: a quarter of 3600XP for sixth level characters, so they each get 900XP, putting them at 15,900. The 5th level guy gets a quarter of 4500, so he gets 1125, putting him at 16,025.

As you say, this can be fixed with fiat, but there it is. We could run into the same problem at 3rd-4th level if it were a potion instead of a wand, but since the experience table flattens around levels 1-3 I wanted to stay away from there, for simplicity.

I always looked at the XP for Magic Item Creation as a balancing factor to slow down the wizards a little bit; so a wizard loaded down with magic items he created would potentially be a level behind the rest of the party.

Which means he earns more experience per encounter until he catches back up to them (which really doesn't take that long) and after a level or so he's right back where he started, plus his toys.

In fact, in some cases, if experience is awarded when the wizard is just below leveling up but the rest of the party is already at the next level, the larger award actually catapults him past their experience.

K. David Ladage wrote:

Interesting. In an effort to keep things more compatable with 3.x, I would suggest making this:

1 att. = Full BAB
2 att. = -5/-5
3 att. = -10/-10/-10
4 att. = -15/-15/-15/-15

The Reason I picked -4/-6/-8 as the progression is because of statistics:

Odds of rolling 11 or better on:
1 atk, Full Bab = 50%
2 atk -4/-4 = 51%
3 atk -6/-6/-6 = 49%
4 atk -8/-8/-8/-8 = 36%

So really, the -8 option isn't that great either, but its still useful if you have an easy to hit opponent.

...Or if you have a really difficult to hit opponent. The fact that hits and misses have a ceiling/floor effect at 20 and 1 really screws with this strategy. Your analysis works because you started assuming you needed an 11 to hit, but if you move your starting point significantly above or below that point things get weird. Think about it, if you need to roll a 20 to hit your enemy, wouldn't you rather take a -8 penalty to attack 4 times with the exact same chance to hit?

In fact, four chances to roll a 20 will give you 0.2 expected hits, and you'll get at least one hit (possibly more) roughly 20% of the time. (18.55%) Meaning if you need a 17 or better to hit you're actually better off flailing as wildly as possible; you'll probably do just as well, and if you're lucky you might even hit 4 times, but you won't do any worse.

Meanwhile, say an attack at standard BAB will hit on a 2. Why your 15th level character is butchering crippled baby kobolds is not the point, let's just assume. Odds are (95%) you'll get one hit. If you go all out ("all out" being four hits at -8 each) each one will hit 55% of the time. 2.2 expected hits.

So we have a situation where for any easy OR difficult situation one should make as many attacks as possible, and only in an increasingly narrow middle scenario should one even consider making fewer attacks.

Was that the goal?

Does that work for orders not yet shipped? I forgot about the discount and ordered Guide to Korvosa and the Harrow deck last Thursday. They're still pending... (Order #906146)

Thanks,
David

I ordered the Harrow Deck last week too! (Order #906174) And mine hasn't shipped yet either, so I'm also very interested in the answer to this question.

Watcher wrote:

My mistake gentlemen.. I didn't read closely enough. Please proceed.

Sigh. It wasn't working correctly. Gary has fixed it now.

We'll hunt down any orders placed since midnight and retroactively apply the discount.

Awesome. Thank you.

skinnyfat wrote:

Yeah I went through checkout all the way and placed my order even, and neither do I see any mention of the Subscriber discount. Not even in the confirmation email... What's the deal?

That doesn't actually take effect until March the 10th. Today. So if it shipped prior to that you won't see it. That was part of the original announcement, but many folks didn't catch it.

Well I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm talking about today.

I'm checking the math, and I'm not getting the discount.
I understand the 15% is NOT on top of any existing discount, but it's just not showing up at all. I don't get it, I'm logged in, it's March 10th, I thought we were supposed to get 15% off stuff. What have I missed?

This is really the brilliance of Pathfinder.
This is the first time in probably fifteen years that I'm excited about goblins. Not some crazy new monster with a bizarre description. It doesn't have crazy powers, or new rules. It's just a goblin, and I can't wait! That is something special. Great work guys!
"Stupid little freaks." Classic. :-D