Ninten's page

I've never really enjoyed running or playing in games past level 20. I don't get what the draw is. Levels 1 though 6 or so are often fun. Levels 7 through 11 are almost always great fun. From then on there is a fair amount of drop off- have most people played in level 20 games? Often? Not one shots. Like who has met and played weekly for months as level twenty characters? Almost nobody. The basic 3.x math Pathfinder is based on totally crumples at that point. Numbers all sort of become meaningless, and so does the challenge. Gods don't have stats, but anything else can be killed. Its hard to think of what you could kill at 30 that you couldn't at 20.

Less levels is honestly better with a d20 system. The less variable you can make the math, the more balanced you can make the options, the better it runs. Pathfinder already breaks at high level play, adding another ten levels while balancing those would be a task nobody in the industry has managed with a 3.x system in what, nearly 20 years? Let alone making 21-30 not break 1-20.

Anyway, that's my answer to why not make an EDH. The actual answer, per Paizo, is that the Planar Handbook is the last Pathfinder hardcover rulebook they will be producing. This means that if, say, the transition to PF2 is as messy as the transition between 3.0 and 4.0 D&D was, and if there is enough interest in PF1 for third parties to continue to support it full time and if it seems like a good idea, somebody like Dreamscarred Press could do an epic book.

There are plenty of good things from 5E that Paizo can incoprporate into Pathfinder 2, but there is one thing 5E does that I absolutely hate!

I can't stand that 5E has eliminated "points of" and just says 'damage'
"You take 5 damage', instead of "You take 5 points od damage')

5 damage just sounds too much like a video game, and my skin actually crawls when I hear it ...

So, wise Paizo folks - PLEASE keep 'points of dame' (or some variation) and DO NOT dumb Pathfinder down by changing to just 'damage'

Thanks!

Counterpoint: this seems like an incredibly minor issue to have, and I actually feel the opposite way, with 'points of damage' sounding way more game-y than 'damage'. More importantly, its longer. By making it just 'damage' the designers save 10 characters of space, which should shorten the description of each printed trap by at least that much, and probably free up a page or two in each printed adventure.

I'd also actually argue it comes down to table variation semantics because isn't "he hits you for 5 damage" "he hits you for 5hp" "or a 'you take'" variation of the above the norm? I can't honestly recall verbalizing 'points' because its never unclear what I'm referrign to without it.

The Caster-Martial disparity is mainly an issue because everybody at the table wants to play, wants to matter, and wants to feel valued. Lord of the Rings is a bad example because while it fairly well defined the audience expectation for OD&D, we've come a really long time since then. Nobody wants to play Frodo. Legolas, Gimili, and Aragorn are all pretty valid. Gandalf should probably be NPCd out.

Playing a superheroes game? The Hulk, the Flash, Batman, etc all have value and can work well together. Superman can't. He's a solo sub-in for basically everybody else.

If I ask you to make the greatest comic squad possible, and I give you four spots, I'm pretty sure Hawkeye won't be one of them.

It's narrative control. Giving a Wizard a Spell that summons a psuedo-fighter that can work well enough to replace the fighter in 80% of situations is like giving the fighter a permanent genie buddy to magic away all his problems. It invalidates the other people playing.

You want to include everybody. You want a class to have features that other people can't easily override with a 1/15th of their daily features. You want narrative situations to occur commonly and without ridiculous hand waving contrivance where the Fighter or the Rogue or the Bard has the perfect solution and the Wizard just... doesn't.

Imagine the following: a huge army threatens the kingdom, and the heroes have only a month or so to remove the threat. It would be really nice if instead of casting half his daily spells and teleporting all the enemies into the sun, the 20th level wizard turns to the 20th level fighter and goes "Hey man, I sort of don't have a spell to stop the entire flipping Persian army, any chance we can get you to lead a badass multi-nation army of justice?"

Yeah not to play devil's advocate here, but this isn't really all that bad. I mean, when people talk about GMs making bad choices for their Characters, it is normally to the tune of a Paladin Character falling, or a Wizard losing his Spellbook or some other "we threw your guy under the buss for the plot cause you weren't there." What happened to your character is just a bit out of the ordinary, and I can think of three explanations:

1.) You GM misunderstands WHY you are such a grumpy cat right now, and thinks you'd come out of your funk for a suitable challenge, orc style.

2.) The GM is introducing a new NPC that is plot important, and hijacked your character's ennui to introduce them.

3.) The GM is tired of your Character's fatalistic homicide wish, and maybe the other Players are too. Ask around to see how everyone feels, and then explain to the GM that your Character wouldn't be this way if he could ever catch a damn break.

Of and 4.) That's actually an Avatar of Gorum or something suitably ridiculous here as an in-game nod towards whatever the GM wants.

This is a wish list for classes from Paizo, it has nothing to do with third party or old edition products.

Ok, hold up, look at it this way- if you, as a consumer, really want McDonalds to make pizza but they don't, and Burger King suddenly does, they should certainly be marketing their pizza to you.

I understand that people want official Paizo content for Pathfinder, but its not as though tons of companies haven't been making OGL compatible content for like fifteen years now. Or that making new classes for Pathfinder is extremely difficult.

It would be like somebody coming on here and requesting Pathfinder updates to the Expanded Psionics Handbook. We'd point them towards Ultimate Psionics in a heartbeat.

It isn't free but I have been using GoodReader for just over a year now and it has worked fine.

These threads, man. They always happen and I don't know why. Optimized Characters are supposed to one-round things. It's intended. I mean, how is a Gunslinger absolutely murdering a heavily armored enemy in one round different than a Witch using Sleep Hex--> Coup de Grace? How is it different than a Wizard with Hold Person or worse? How is it different than one of dozens of Pouncing Barbarians?

I'd actually consider any character who cannot solo a CR appropriate enemy to be underpowered. I mean, let's say you have an Evil Dragon, who is somehow about to be Full-Attacked by a Paladin. With a little luck and Litany of Righteousness, the Paladin will one-shot a monster designed to challenge a whole group, and he can do it even if the dragon is 3 or more CR higher.

The DMs who become upset when one character kills three enemies in two rounds, I'm not sure what they are hoping for. Pathfinder is called rocket tag for a reason.

As for how to handle the Gunslinger: Swarms. Incorporeal. Wizards who target Will and have twice to three times the Gunslinger's range. Illusions target Will and waste ammunition. Break the weapons. Threaten him so he can't fight without provoking. Knock him into the water. Fog. Fickle Winds stops every ranged character ever.

Just wondering: How can people think doing ANY amount of damage is overpowered when scry and die still works?

A Group of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue doesn't stop for the day when the Wizard runs out of Spells because of player etiquette. They do it because the Cleric has already run out of Spells and the martial characters would not survive another fight.

Past 8th Level or so it is completely reasonable to say that a Wizard has more staying power in a fight than a Fighter, because the former can defeat enemies more quickly and with substantially less risk to himself.

wraithstrike wrote:

He did say it cost a lot of gold. How much does the 3rd party tattoo cost?

The 3rd party book lists the cost as 2,500 GP. *Cringe*

Clearly, after using it in a game, it is very powerful. It is from the 3rd Party Inkantations book.

I don't think you ever properly gave us enough background for your campaign in order for us to make informed decisions here for instance:

* Approaching, or even beyond 20th level, the math behind the game really breaks down. Soon, if not already, you'll reach a point where the player character cannot make his poor saves and cannot fail his good saves. What are you doing to compensate for the numbers becoming so diverse?

* It seems likely there are only 1-2 players with primary characters at 20-21st level plus some followers or something. How long has this been the case? A team of 1-2 characters isn't the same EPL as a 4 person party, so certainly you buffed them/reduced encounters to compensate, right? For a solo 21st level character, probably CR22 would be "epically challenging". But again, the math breaks down.

* What Class is the character? I ask because by 21st level, I find it really hard to believe that anybody could get into melee with anybody else. Really, almost any spellcaster could defeat the vorpal sword-instant crit strategy with no chance of retaliation. By even 18th level a Wizard can easily scry the character and dump his entire spellbook worth of save-or-die effects unto him from complete safety. Daily. Get six of them to do that for CR 22.

Seriously, though- even if the player never missed with an attack and always instantly killed anything he attacked, he STILL would not be a threat to most things he should be fighting. The fact that once per day he can kill a target should not really reduce the impact the other five CR 22 encounters that day.

The question of why an Aquatic PC wouldn't just bail on the Wormwood at the first opportunity came up in my game (I have an Undine and an Aquatic Sorcerer), and the answer is actually the environment. There is no reason why somebody couldn't just jump ship and swim away, except that drowning is the least of your worries in the Fever Sea. Check out the low-level encounter table in the back of The Wormwood Mutiny- basically anything on there will annihilate a single 1st-2nd level PC in under twenty seconds. The ocean is just swimming with monsters, and the only safety for all those 1HD swabs and riggers is being on the same boat as the likes of a CR10 Sorcerer.
Islands aren't safe either, by the way. Bonewrack Island is pretty tame for the Shackles, all things considered.

Edit: Also, I realize the idea is to provide a substantial in-world reason why the player won't bail on the AP. The problem with stopping the Undine from breathing water is that with a Swim Speed (so, something like a +8 Racial Bonus to Swim and the ability to take 10) the Undine doesn't have to go underwater for very long at all to get away, he can just swim off.

You know, the ONLY thing remotely wrong about the other guy's playstyle is his lack of RP. Mentioning to him "hey, do you even know who you are?" is totally viable. But there is nothing whatsoever wrong with building the best possible character, every time.

It's a fallacy to suggest that 'roll playing' and 'role playing' are at the opposite ends of a continuum, and that optimizing your character somehow makes your personality deficient.

Honestly, as you look at his optimized but boring character with scorn, he could look back at your evidently compelling but comparatively weaker character with the same. I think this is a good opportunity for you two to sit down and help each other, especially since having a party full of characters with good interactions who also are all at about the same power level makes DMs very happy.

Also, last time I checked, Druids were Divine Casters, and thus had no Spell Failure Chance.

Honestly, what the Fighter-Wizard discrepancy reminds me of is the relationship in powers between Aquaman and Superman. Basically, most people would agree that Aquaman is one of the lamest Superheroes ever invented, while Superman is unfairly overpowered in comparison to everyone else. In fact, one of Aquaman’s powers is described as “the ability to swim as fast as Superman”.

In Pathfinder terms, Aquaman (the Fighter) is so limited in his ability to interact with the world compared to Superman (the Wizard) that he is only a viable choice in situations where:
1.) A minimum of two people are needed, no matter what
2.) The entire future of the world depends entirely on TALKING TO A FISH.
So what I’m saying is that in order to make the Fighter shine, I as a DM must either purposefully introduce enemies which cater to his specific Feats (lots of little guys for Great Cleave), which is hard because of the Wizard (lots of little guys for Fireball). Or else I have to construct a REALLY out there situation where only someone with Greater Grapple, Bleeding Critical and Ride-By-Attack can win the day.

The issue comes back to my original post: I had four obstacles (Climb, Stealth, Disable Device, Diplomacy) and three classes (Fighter, Rogue Wizard). Sadly, one class could do one objective, while the other two could do all four. Essentially, the Fighter’s limits constrain me as a DM if I want to keep him involved.
So let’s throw the Classes out the window. Ideally, for the above scenario, I don’t need a Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard. I need a strong Climber, a shadowy Sneak, a professional Locksmith, and a shrewd Negotiator. Ideally, those should all be DIFFERENT PLAYERS with the ability to HELP EACHOTHER so that when the princess says her piece, instead of just a smug Rogue or smugger Wizard, the whole party is there to hear.

That’s my preferred solution to the Class imbalance we’ve been talking about, but it involves Rogues not being able to use Climb and Diplomacy and Wizards knowing only two of the following: Fly, Invisibility, Knock and Charm Person. People seem very opposed to those sort of changes.

I think that the following provides for a pretty good explanation of how the stuff written on your character sheet informs role-play, as well as why not all classes are ‘balanced’ in this regard.

In this example of play, a Fighter, Rogue and Wizard have all discovered something fishy going on within the local castle, but they’ve been stonewalled in all their investigations and nobody seems to want to talk to them. The Wizard gets the bright idea of maybe talking to the princess, who seems nicer and more open than anybody else.

The group decides to quietly converse with the princess. But in order to do so, somebody is going to have to scale the castle walls, sneak through the tower, pick the lock on the princess’ door, and succeed in assuaging her fears that they are not there to kill her long enough to gain some useful information.

To recap, the ‘fun’ goal is to role-play an interaction with the princess, because everybody else gets to sit on the castle lawn and pick their nose. Not a great scenario by the DM, sure, but I think we’ve all seen this happen.

The Fighter is boned, here. He might be able to Climb the walls, provided that is one of his ~3 Skills. He also has to take off his heavy armor first, meaning that even the princess could stab his AC 11. He also might be able to Sneak though the tower, but quietly opening a lock provides an all but impossible challenge, let alone waking/talking to the princess before she takes one look at his 8 CHA and yells “stranger danger!”

The Rogue is in much better shape. Climb the walls? Probably! Sneak around? Heck yes! Disable Device? Done! Charm the pants off the princess? Sure, and he’ll probably strike up a forbidden romance and score some loot while he’s at it. In comparison to the Fighter, the Rogue has 100% more fun, because the situation favors his Class build.

The Wizard, having spent the day preparing for this secret meeting, needs not make a single roll. Fly, he says, and so Climbs the wall. Invisibility doesn’t make him silent, but a bit of caution surely does. Knock handles the door. Charm Person handles the princess, and the Wizard has enough Knowledge Skills to use that information. Compared to the Fighter, the Wizard has 100% more fun, and has the added benefit of overcoming challenges the Rogue also could not, so long as he knows about them ahead of time.