Oni_Sloth's page

The rule has already been clarified but I will add something about the spirit of the rule. That is, is it to powerful to give a player that many options on spells.

In my games the players never have long lengths of time doing nothing, they might get a day of two but never a week as is the minimum for a level 1 spell. If they ever did spend a week doing nothing then the campaign and world would keep moving without them, with all the consequences that would bring.

The other thing, and this comes down to how far you are willing to deviate from the book, is money. If you do not give out lots of money, but give out the items the money would buy, like a master work flaming sword instead of giving the player 1500 gold. If the wizard has no money to pay for the research or doing so would put them in serious debt or left with no cash then it balances out. While the wizard might get 1 extra spell, the other classes just bought a kickass item that may be better than the spell, or they used that money to bribe their way into positions of power or whatever you want really.

so to sum up, I would allow it if they had the time and money to do it but they never do in my games. I do not see it as to powerful as their are ways around it depending upon your play style and how far you are willing to deviate from the book.

I have run split up groups, its not impossible. Its just like running a normal round of combat. you jump from person to person like normal, just one person is somewhere else, doing something different.
I have found a timer is great for speeding up combat and rounds. I sometimes use a 30 second hour glass where a player needs to say what they are doing before it reaches 0 or they get skipped. This is not done often at my table, and i always ask everyone at the table before i bring it out.

This guy is awesome, I now want to see how many arrows he can put into robes and wizard hat before he gets his spells off lol.

As to this not exactly following RAW or being high level or low level or whatever. Stop thinking about the game as RAW and think about it more as concepts you and the DM can make or do by talking about it. You may notice that pathfinder becomes really fun when people allow for more creativity without redistricting it to RAW and instead think of the rules as guidelines. You just need to have the DM adjudicate actions that are not in the rules or such that the game makes sense when the rules do not.

Example: suppose A player wanted to do some of things Lars did, like say run while firing his weapon. He may not have Shot on the Run but he still thinks that at 6th level he should be able to do it anyway without dumping 3 feats to get it and the DM agrees. The DM says he can do it but he will take a -4 for each shot fired this way and he cant use Rapid shot or many shot. The player agrees and he can now run, while firing off a number of shots given by his base attack at -4. The DM writes down what they decided and in the future he or somebody else can do this but at -4.

I am usually a DM but I have been a player a few times. One of the times I was a player I made a swashbuckler/fighter with 10 strength. I did things to overcome my self inflicted handicap. One thing I did was I would buy glass bottles of wine and crush them up into a powder after drinking it. Then during combat I would throw crushed glass in my opponents eyes. The first time I did this the DM had no idea how to react. I said that if it was me I would be so freaked out I may try to rub my eyes, rubbing the crushed glass deeper into my eyes. I basically created instant, permanent blindness, I did many things like this. One of the more infamous was a bag of fecal matter shoved into the mouth for instant nauseated.

The funny story I have happened a bit later in the game. I was without my weapons, I had an oil lantern. I get attacked by an assassin, he missed his initial attack and we roll initiative. I go first and I have improved grapple and run forward and grapple him. Next round I maintain control and ask if I can pour the oil from my lamp on him. The DM gives me an very high roll I need to roll to not get oil on my self. I roll a 20, I say I am dumping the oil on his crotch. The next round I maintain control in the grapple and say I am going to set fire to the oil, I have to roll again and get a 20. So in 3 rounds I set my attackers dick on fire. Safe to say I had the table laughing and my DM face palming as his assassin ran away screaming smacking his dick to put it out.

I am a forever DM so I can’t speak from a player’s perspective. I give every kind of magic item to my players but on a very controlled basis. I have no real preference, I just think about how powerful this will make the player and give them something that fits that level. I do not really follow the WBL and I avoid giving large sums of cash but that is more for fluff reasons and my economics background. I ask the players what they want to find in advance, write it down and work it into the game somehow in a slightly variant form.

Example: one player wanted the ability to fly, they were low level so I did not want to give it him permanently yet. Later on during the game they fought several people, these people were flying. When they searched their bodies they found a wand of fly with a few charges left, the player took it and got the flying he wanted but it was limited. This limitation meant he could not spam it and he used it sparingly until he was strong enough to get a magic item that give him fly a certain number of times per day, in much the same fashion. He had to kill a person to take it from them, this person was the bad guy for that adventure. Finally at higher levels he was given a set of magical wings that granted him a permanent fly as a boon from the king for all his service.

I prefer items that give more options like fly, burrow, a new kind of ranged attack, etc rather than flat stat boosts. For example I once gave a fighter a sword that let him make ranged attacks as if they were melee out to 30ft, this gave him more options in combat. I do give stat boosting items but those are sparingly given out, or are worked into the item that gives them fly or burrow. Another thing I do is give items that just do more damage. Like a great sword that does 3d6, 4d6 or even 5d6 damage rather than 2d6 at a certain level, this bonus does not come from precision or fire or something. This is a direct increase in base damage that can be multiplied by a critical. I almost never let players make magic items, mostly because the story does not allow them. They never really have weeks to spend doing nothing.

As to items that have a story, I actually like items to have a history. Sometimes this is a quick cute story about how this item ended up here from seemingly nowhere and it can spark a few interesting things in the game. Like a bandit, took a ring from a women he met in a tavern before she woke up the next day, he did not realize that this women had taken the ring from its creator, a wizard who had slept with her a few days prior. If the players go to that tavern and see that women or see the wizard they will recognize the ring, sparking a conversation.

Other times I write a few pages of back story, for items that are like artifacts they find a crypt. For these items I generally mix up what the effects do. I might add pre made effects like keen, flaming, etc. Other times I use homemade effects the players need to research and look into. It gives the items some mystery and makes them feel different from other items. So like the example you gave, this artifact they found would be a +3 vorpal sword, but it would also have an ability called ‘stone cleave’ where a certain number of times per day they can ignore hardness of an item for the purpose of sunder.

An advantage exists only if the dm allow it. I give feats to my players through hard work without leveling and I have not noticed a problem, so giving the players free team work feats would not be a bad idea.

You can make your players work together by designing encounters such that they require teamwork. Example, maybe there is a monster who is immune to most damage and spell effects, the monster can only be hurt if they called shot his soft underbelly. One of the players could elect to try and flip the monster over and hold it there while the other players attack it meaning they don’t need to called shot anymore and have a high chance of hitting it. Making harder fights can also work. Encounters where the players need the flank bonus to hit or where staying in a formation is important make teamwork a must. Note here, don’t get hung up on RAW for this purpose. If the players want to work together and do something that the rules do not cover or they normally can’t do, don’t stop them. Find a way to make it work, because if the players feel like they can’t work together mechanically or that it does not matter if they do then they won’t. Doing this is encouraging teamwork through mechanical means.

Although you can also sit down with your players, and make sure the characters have a reason to work together. If none of the characters have any reason to be there and work with the other characters then they won’t feel like they need to. Giving the players a common goal other than the adventure they are currently on is a great way to get them to work together, so is encouraging the players to know each other before hand. For example, Inigo Montoya and Fezzik from the princess bride knew each other before the story started, they were good friends and during the story they worked together because of this shared history, and friendship. Focusing on common goals is a great way to make the party stay together and work together. Doing this is encouraging teamwork through narrative means.

It would be best if you did both of these things, have common goals and hard fights that require team work. These are just a few is ways I have found to get players to work together.

Yeah we noticed the wizard player did cast a lot more spells, we also noticed he ran of spells in the second encounter of a five encounter dungeon. We mostly saw it as, you get more options but because most resources are limited, if you blew everything being awesome in the first fight, you were screwed for the rest of the game.

I did not think about just how much a person is moving. we may make a limit on the amount you can move per round. Good catch, thanks!

We did say it at the table and I should have noted it in the rule description (may bad) but you cant count allies as enemies and switch back and forth as is convenient. The wizard tried that once and everyone just gave him a really bad look, we agreed it was gaming the system and we said you cant do that. So my bad, i should have noted that in the rule description.

We are planning a high level test (level 16) this weekend, I will report how it went after.

I love house rules, and I love play testing new ideas. I always suggest to people looking to get into game design is to change the rules of a simple game and see how it changes the overall game. It’s a great exercise and it is a lot of fun.
So recently I changed a pretty big rule in pathfinder, I changed how attack of opportunity works. As it stands right now the rule is you may make a single attack once per round at your highest attack bonus against a foe in your threatened square when they provoke it. One of my players asked how come they can only attack, I was only left with one answer, because the rules said so. So after talking it over we decided to try and change the rule, here is how the rule read for our play test
“A player may make an Action of Opportunity (AoO) if a person within a threatened square provokes one, only 1 of AoO may normally be taken a round”

We had to change how certain actions worked but that was it. This meant a person got a single standard or move action when a person provoked one. So what happened was people would get up close, fight and when someone did something that provoked an AoO they got to do more actions. People would use it to grapple, use it to use special attacks. Other times people would use their AoO to follow people as they tried to run away. We found that it lead to a lot of chain events.

For example in one fight our wizard was attacked by a bandit. The wizard used their move action to run away and then cast a spell as the bandit had a weapon with reach and would hit them if they stayed close and cast a spell and the wizard was not comfortable eating the attacking or casting defensively. The wizard moved and provoked an AoO so the bandit followed him instead of attacking him. The wizard was able to get behind friendlies but he brought a friend over. This caused the bandit to run through and out of the fighter’s threat square who used his AoO to grapple the bandit as he ran by, this caused the fighter to provoke an AoO. The bandit had combat reflexes which meant he got more AoO per round. The bandit used this opportunity to use improve dirty trick on the fighter and blinded him. The now blinded fighter failed his grapple and the wizard and bandit moved right along next to the friendly ranger.

This was just one example of these chain events, it seems like it could get complicated kind of quickly but we had a blast with it. We noticed people would use their AoO in different ways, and we are sure we did not find all the strange ways the game could change with this. We did notice spell casters using a lot more spells but also taking a lot more damage. So I put this house rule change out there. What do you think of this house rule change? What changes could you see happen as a result of this rule change?

Oni_Sloth wrote:

Perhaps you give brace to a weapon without brace but at a drawback, say -4 to attack. So you could turn your bayonet into a brace weapon if you were willing to take -4 to attack. Just an idea.

A lot of people seem to have the idea that you can't brace a weapon without the brace property.

"Bracing" a weapon is simply "readying an action to attack a charging foe," which you can do with any weapon, including a sling. The only advantage that having the brace descriptor gives you is a damage bonus.

yep it doubles damage on a successful hit. I just suggest that people can either house rule weapons that do not have brace to have brace if it makes sense. Or people can house rule it such that a weapon can be given brace or perhaps another property if the person is willing to take a draw back.

Doing stuff like that means that people do not need to worry when their weapon of choice does not have some quality. If it makes sense then make it so or do it with a negative. Seems fair to me.

Why get so caught up on reality? just house rule it and have fun. The most fun I ever had with pathfinder was when we were playing with a mix of house rules and official rules.
Giving dependent bonuses is actually not a bad idea, giving a great sword user reach vs daggers can actually be fun, if everyone understands the rules. It opens up new avenues and tactics people would not have thought of under the older, rigid rules.
Perhaps you give brace to a weapon without brace but at a drawback, say -4 to attack. So you could turn your bayonet into a brace weapon if you were willing to take -4 to attack. Just an idea.

A gm can do what they want, they can house rule it if everybody agrees to the rules. It really comes down to what you and your players are looking for.

Different game systems go into different levels of abstraction for combat and whatnot and not every game is going to fit the levels you want. This should not discourage you from playing these games. Just make a change you want, make sure everyone understands and continue to play that way. This is a great exercise for understanding mechanics and how they influence narrative and decisions.

As to your problems with those actions, I have heard this said before. That if a person did x then person y should be able to do z in the real world. The only thing I can say is try to change the rules and test them. Let us know the results and how it changed the game for you and your group.

I would allow this in my game, it would be funny to see and its not that powerful. I would make the craft DC probably 20ish as its not that hard.

In my games i have a home made baddies that are like bane, people with hoses going into their skin and mouth with potions attached, this is not to far off. Players have made similar things and i okay-ed them so i see this as more funny version of that.

I see this being used by alchemists or maybe a fighter could go college frat boy and fill his with really powerful beer to drink during combat.

I really do not know why bayonets do not have brace, i did what you are doing and just house ruling that they do. If i had to guess its because paizo do not want one weapon to do to many things. I am devils advocating here, you could use your musket with bayonet as a good ranged weapon, an anti charging weapon, and a good melee weapon. That would mean you really only need one weapon thus you do not need to worry about lots of gear to carry like other people do. just a thought, but like i said i house rule it the same as you do. because its awesome to see players reenact the thin red line of the battle of balaclava on a large group of goblins.

I am stealing this because this is awesome. I just imagine the Duergar play knife hand without any fear because the knife would just bounce off their skin.

This is hilarious, I do not care if it follows the rules exactly, if you brought this my table I would accept it. I am just imagining a person jumping on a wizards back and yelling piggy back. Good on you mate, you are doing great work!

I have seen it used, it is a ton of fun. The player made a vampire-esq character, they used a great sword with vicious and then they put vampiric touch on it. We ruled that they healed the 2d6 from the great sword but not the 2d6 from the vicious. So they would deal 4d6 + 1.5 strength + etc and healing 2d6 a hit and then take 1d6 damage. They loved it, and I had fun playing up the idea that his hands looks scratched and scared to hell, as if a hell beast had bitten his hands many times. It played into his character and he adopted the idea of high risk, high reward by doing things that would hurt him if it gave him a gain or bonus. So yeah, vicious is fun from a crunch and fluff perspective. I cant speak much to summoned monsters or whatnot with it, but that character played a barbarian and he seemed to enjoy it.

I feel your pain, OP. It has already been said but having more monsters rather then fewer is preferable. If you do not want to have that, and just want one really big monster there are a few things you can do. You can give the monster more actions be round. The dragon could get three initiative roles and not one and thus can act multiple times per round. You could throw in terrain actions, like the terrain gets a turn that works against the players. Perhaps this dragon is near a volcano, every round the volcano gets to try and hurt them with lava, or poison gas or whatnot. You could cap the amount of damage the monster can receive from any one attack, you offset this by giving a bonus to any player who reaches the cap (hammer game). You could have the monster have various stages like they unlock a new ability, their stats go, etc when their hit points drop. This means that the same tactics cant work past a certain point. Go god of war or shadow of colossus and make normal attacks meaningless. The players need to climb up or jump on the dragon and make called shots at various places or the dragon is immune until he does some kind of attack, thus buying the dragon a few more turns as the players get into position.
These are just a few things I do when I want to have one really big tough monster. I do not always use all of them all at once, but a few of these abilities thrown onto the boss monster can really make a difference.

@dracoknight: I am aware, its just in all my posts you focus on those words and not the many other. I made lengthy posts talking about and clarifying my stance yet you still focus on those words. That is why i find it so funny, because you can be the most eloquent person ever but if you say 2 words someone does not like then it does not matter what you were trying to say.

wow people are really stuck on those words 'shut down' huh? That is very funny.
@dracoknight: I made a very simple example in that giant block of text to highlight a point I said it was a simple example in my post. I will recap it for you as you seemed to have missed it. You should make some encounters that a hard, some are easy and some that are average. I did not say all the things that you should have in encounters, and adventures. Yes many encounters that drain on the players resources is one of those aspects, but there are many of them that you can use for many reasons.

@wraithstrike: It actually does, because the DM makes the game and makes the challenges. that power only exists in the game, a game made and controlled by the DM. Without a DM you are just talking about numbers on a website or in a book, nothing real. you cant remove the one DM's main aspects just because it helps your argument.

Oni_Sloth wrote:

@ wraithstrike: Yes it does, give me an example of a class ability that cannot be challenged or made useless by the DM designing an encounter against it. Because right now, this cleric does nothing I could not design against. A problem only exists if the DM lets it exist.

You are the GM/GOD(for the PF universe. There is no such thing as something you can not design against. There may be tactics you may not wish to use, but that is different from "incapable of countering".

So once again, the GM being able to fix it is a poor excuse because as the person who controls the universe there is nothing you can not counter.

I still do not think you get it. If you say you have an ability that could end an encounter in 1 round as some people like to say the wizard has. I look at that ability or spell or whatever, i look at everything you can do. Then i design the adventure and encounters for the game such that those powers mean nothing sometimes. I also design encounters such that they might not be the best answer and other times i make the best answer. It all depends upon the story and many other narrative aspects. I do this for everything and everyone in the game. I do not get what you are trying to say here. You know I can design against you thus meaning nothing is overpowered. Yet you seem to think that because I can tailor my encounters this some how invalidates my answer. I think you are looking at rpg's and pathfinder wrong. You seem to be looking at this like some kinda of video game. Where, if the game maker needs to 'patch' the game to make a character or thing not as strong it was a sign of a problem. To this you are sorely wrong, pathfinder is an rpg where everything can be made by the DM. Just because I can design against you and prove you are so very wrong, does not mean my argument counts for nothing. Let me give you an example of how I look at 1 common spell that most players bring out in the caster vs martial debate. This way you can see how I think when it comes to encounter design. Just note that this is a very simple example.

Example: You are a wizard with color spray, the go to spell for people at low levels. That spell has 15 cone burst range, they get a will save vs mind affecting, they get spell resistance, and it takes 1 standard action to cast. I have 4 things, right there to build against. I am going to assume nothing has changed and this spell exists as is.
1. the range is only 15ft, meaning you need to get really close or hope the bad guys are close together. So what if I make an encounter where the baddies are far away, say 90 feet apart. They have weak saves and the spell would work great on them, but you would only get 1 person with the spell. Say there are 5 baddies, you really want to waste all your spell slots on these guys when there are perhaps 5 or 6 more encounters after this one? So right here, the spell is an answer but not the best answer, the player could really hurt the monsters but it would not be his best option.
2.They get a will save vs mind affecting. If I wanted to be really mean I could make all the bad guys immune to mind affecting, like undead or constructs. But I do not want to, maybe the encounter has both undead and living humans. If I mix them up, then color spray would only work against the living people and not the undead. Perhaps I make an encounter where everyone is a living human and I bunch them up for you. In this fight the wizard would be great, assuming all the humans failed there will saves. So knowing your DC I just have to write the will saves of these humans such that it is common to fail (I need to roll a 15 or higher) average to fail (I need to roll 10 a or higher) or not likely (I need to roll a 5 or higher). Suppose I want the wizard to feel powerful in this fight, I make the humans weak and make their saves such that they need 15s or higher. I put the fight in a small room, and I give the bad guys poor initiative, the players get the drop on them and they have no spell resistance. In this case, because I designed it that way, the wizard would be great. But you see, all the ways I could just use the will save to challenge the wizard.
3.Spell resistance of how I love spell resistance. This is just like a saving throw, I just need to make the number high enough such that it fits what I want. Suppose I have a humanoid who has a really high spell resistance, well then more than likely shut down that spell. If I want to be really safe, I give them a high save and high spell resistance. If I make a fight with fast moving, hard hitting high spell resistance high save undead monsters. The wizard is going to be feeling the pain. The monsters will run up and hurt hit there low ac so hard the wizard will have no option but to run away. If the wizard tried to color spray the monsters then it would fail. So I made a hard fight for the wizard, if I do this only once or twice in the adventure while still including fights like I made above, The player does not feel weak. They get to be strong and they get to feel weak and other times they get to feel average.
4.Final one here, you have to spend 1 standard action to cast this spell. Suppose I put a copy wizard on the bad guys team. A wizard who has almost the exact same spell load out, I mean if you pick the 'best spells' why would the bad guys not pick the exact same 'best spells'? Suppose I pick only a few of your best spells, and I give the wizard high initiative. There entire job is to counter you, just sit there, holding back and holding actions till you make your move where upon, if they can, they counter you. I could also throw in some high damage ranged attackers who will force very hard concentration checks on you. If I throw in 1 or 2 of these, you really cant cast a spell, but your fighter friend could run up and cut them to pieces. Thus freeing you to cast your spells, which by that point could still be nice but they could also be not as effective because its several rounds into combat and most monsters are weak or dead.
I hope my little example above shows you how you can design against something. How I let my players feel weak, strong or average and not just weak all the time. If I strung this together with a story I would place these fights where the plot needed them to be. So there you go, just because I can design against you does not make you god and it does not invalidate my answer. It works, and every DM should be doing this.

Yeah, I am very luck to find players who like my DMing style. Before I ever let a player in I sit down and see if our gaming styles match, if they do not seem keen on the idea then they do not join. I hold no ill will towards those that do not join. Different people like different things. It really works out great as everyone who sits down to play will know exactly what to expect.

If you wanted me to make an encounter I would need the stats, items, abilities, etc of the characters who would be in this game. I would also need to know all the things associated with the characters in this game like their short term and long term goals. Next i would need to know the themes and other story line aspects associated with this game. Just throwing out classes is not enough.

@ anzyr: No I know people have ways to do things that dont rely on rolls. I was giving an example. Let me try to be crystal clear as possible here, because I think you do not get it. In the game as it is now, where everything is imagination and the rules can change, where the dm has complete control over what the players face and the rules, there is nothing the players can do that cannot be countered. The dm can create an encounter that can challenge any player, no matter what. You seem to have this strange idea in you head, that people of 'high system mastery' are immune to the rules of the game, you are wrong.

@uwotm8: I do let my players feel powerful, I also let my players have a little challenge sometimes and a lot of challenge sometimes. It depends on the story being told and what the situation calls for. I have had some players for years over several games. These are not new players either, I have had some players who have been playing longer than I have, want to keep coming back to my games.

Oni_Sloth wrote:

Anzyr wrote:

Oni_Sloth wrote:

I am going to agree with senko, You do not need to do anything to fighters or rogues to make them better. The martial vs caster problem is just a thing on forums and found only in really poorly made games. Next time you are DMing a game, sit down with the players character sheets and design a fight around them such that it challenges everybody. If you do this you find the martial vs caster problem does not really exist.

The more system mastery a caster has the less likely the GM is able to create challenge at high level that both martials and caster can participate in. This isn't a theory. It's something that happens in play.

Maybe in your play, in my experience i have never noticed a problem. I have seen players bring master summoners and specd out wizards to the table right along side sword and board fighters. I made encounters such that they challenged everybody and every player contributed in some meaningful way. So I will say again, the problem of casters vs martials only exists in poorly made encounters, if your DM knows what they are doing it does not matter.

The more accurate conclusion to draw is that your Master Summoners and Wizards do not possess very high levels of system mastery. Because there is no "well-made" encounter where a caster with high system mastery and a martial can contribute. That martial is going to be Mazed out of the Fight on the first round. Guaranteed.

I have made encounters that say cannot exist. The problem of casters vs martials only exists if you let it.

Oni_Sloth wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

A challenging encounter and an encounter tailor-made to disable PCs are two very different things. The former is seen as good encounter design, the latter terrible design unless done very, very carefully.

Who said anything about disabling PC's? I am just talking about challenging them. I would also say add that they are the same thing, i create challenge by knowing what players can do and design around it. I don't need to rely on a module or high CR monster to make a hard fight, I make a hard fight by forcing players to think and adapt.

The more effort you make to challenge casters the harder it becomes for martials to participate. If this is not the case, then I know for a fact that the GM is soft balling high CR monsters.

Or they could just be making their own monsters. See you are assuming i am using pre made monsters, i do not. I tailor everything to the players such that they feel challenged. So we have monsters with high saves but perhaps low AC. Thus fighters can attack them but wizard spells often fail. If you say the wizard can cast a summoned monsters i say that the team has another wizard to counter it or cast protection from good/evil, or they have people who will interrupt your casting.

Oni_Sloth wrote:

I am going to agree with senko, You do not need to do anything to fighters or rogues to make them better. The martial vs caster problem is just a thing on forums and found only in really poorly made games. Next time you are DMing a game, sit down with the players character sheets and design a fight around them such that it challenges everybody. If you do this you find the martial vs caster problem does not really exist.

The more system mastery a caster has the less likely the GM is able to create challenge at high level that both martials and caster can participate in. This isn't a theory. It's something that happens in play.

Maybe in your play, in my experience i have never noticed a problem. I have seen players bring master summoners and specd out wizards to the table right along side sword and board fighters. I made encounters such that they challenged everybody and every player contributed in some meaningful way. So I will say again, the problem of casters vs martials only exists in poorly made encounters, if your DM knows what they are doing it does not matter.

A challenging encounter and an encounter tailor-made to disable PCs are two very different things. The former is seen as good encounter design, the latter terrible design unless done very, very carefully.

Who said anything about disabling PC's? I am just talking about challenging them. I would also say add that they are the same thing, i create challenge by knowing what players can do and design around it. I don't need to rely on a module or high CR monster to make a hard fight, I make a hard fight by forcing players to think and adapt.

@ wraithstrike: Yes it does, give me an example of a class ability that cannot be challenged or made useless by the DM designing an encounter against it. Because right now, this cleric does nothing I could not design against. A problem only exists if the DM lets it exist.

I am going to agree with senko, You do not need to do anything to fighters or rogues to make them better. The martial vs caster problem is just a thing on forums and found only in really poorly made games. Next time you are DMing a game, sit down with the players character sheets and design a fight around them such that it challenges everybody. If you do this you find the martial vs caster problem does not really exist.

Oni_Sloth wrote:

Not really getting on board with the hype train here. So you get some more powers and spells, big deal. You are still a cleric and bound to follow your god. The DM still has plenty of ways to make you pay for your power.

The DM can also build against you pretty easily, so i am really not seeing how this is so 'terrifying'.

If the DM has to design things specifically to 'shut you down', then something is terribly wrong.

If the urge to 'shut you down' ever even HAPPENS, something is terribly wrong.

I am sorry, I have to call you out on this. When a DM sits down to write an encounter they should take into consideration all the things the players can do. If I sit down and see that you can do xyz thing all i have to do is make or find something that counters it.

You might say I am unfair for doing this. You might say this shows a clear problem, that I need to find something that counters a player. I say to you that every dm can and should design his encounters to his players. If the goal is to create a challenging game, one where the players need to earn their victory then you actually want to counter your players slightly. Not at every turn, just when the story calls for it. You want to remove their first order strategies. This means that if the players go to plan is to cast this spell then do this action, I just design against that. It forces the player to think and I do this for every player not just the wizard, or cleric or rogue or whatever. I am sorry to burst your bubble, that designing your encounters to your players is somehow evidence of a problem.

So when someone says this thing is broken or cheese or whatever I just laugh. This cleric does not in anyway prevent the DM from designing an encounter to challenge it. When you sit down to write an encounter next time (If you are the DM) sit with the players character sheet in front of you. Know everything your players can do and find ways to counter them. I promise the players will feel challenged and when they win they will feel better because they earned a victory though careful thought and skill.

Go dig through the domains and Deific Obedience boons.

I just did, and the only thing i can say is so what. Explain how this thing in any way prevents the dm from designing an encounter that shuts you down. I cant see how this makes you an instant god.

Yeah invisibility is a thing, but so is true sight. I really like Marroar's idea, who cares about the supposed 'optimal' things. Just throw something silly and strange out there to try and break the meta that seems to have locked everyone down.

I am a forever DM so I have only experience from making npcs, and from that I have no complaints about the swashbuckler, or daring champion or free hand fighter. They all kind of do the same thing and it really just comes down to personal taste when making npcs.
As for my players, they have tried swashbuckler and loved it. Charmed life became a group favorite. As for daring champion or free hand fighter, I have never noticed a player not having fun playing those archetypes. I asked one of my players before posting this why she went swashbuckler over free hand fighter and she said because it sounded cooler.
To people poo pooing on this class, I really have to ask why? What is so bad about these classes, I have never had a problem. Our current group even has a master summoner and a wizard (using treatmonks guide). The swashbuckler has still contributed in every encounter both social and combat.

Not really getting on board with the hype train here. So you get some more powers and spells, big deal. You are still a cleric and bound to follow your god. The DM still has plenty of ways to make you pay for your power.
The DM can also build against you pretty easily, so i am really not seeing how this is so 'terrifying'.

Hello, new to posting on the boards and this is my first post. So I was lurking for a bit and I have a question for the community from my loitering. Do you prefer to use premade dungeons and monsters, or do you prefer to use homemade dungeons and monsters, and why?

I can start this off by giving my preference. I have always preferred home made to premade. This probably comes from my upbringing, raised on homemade monsters and dungeons. It also comes from seeing so many players crack open the monsters handbook mid battle. I think this is a great loss to everyone because it removes all mystery from the game, and now it just becomes executing strategy 7A from some random person’s guide. I understand though that each group is different, this is just something I have noticed in my experience.

So which do you prefer?