Pinky's Brain's page

We all know now that 3e for a very long time had a faulty assumption of the way casters would be played, in that they would predominantly use blasting for offensive purposes ... even though they were given the tools to do significantly better than that.

I think in Pathfinder a similar assumption is now showing itself, but this time for martials. The assumption that martials will predominantly use walk and strike for offensive purposes ... even though they are given the tools to do significantly better than that.

I've always felt martial damage for full attackers was too high in PF and made making the martial classes a little more flexible impossible (because they were already too good at damage). Damage was the most boring way to balance higher level martials. With splat though the assumption of rare full attacks is just starting to make full attackers reach 3e levels of craziness ...

Just look at something like Litany of Righteousness. A swift action no save spell which doubles damage against one of the most common enemy alignments on a class with the highest burst damage against those enemies already ... that's one BBEG per full attack at level 11+ if he has to rely on AC as his only defence, it's insane.

Paizo needs to learn the reality of it's high level game, you full attack as a martial or you aren't really playing, and learn to not release content to significantly increase that full attack damage.

Instead of limiting gun use by cost why not do it by failure rate? Giving the gunslinger a free ride (zero failure rate from level 1). It's easy to explain the rarity of a class in fluff ... and with guns being unreliable to the point of uselessness for everyone else it explains why they aren't spreading like wildfire across the setting.

Then you can introduce high tech guns with low failure rates as an optional rule to allow more classes to benefit from them.

To make room to make the summoner actually a summoner the eidolon has to be nerfed. What are the major problems with the Eidolon at the moment?

- pounce, too powerful.
Solution : change so you can attack with 2 natural weapon attacks at the end of a charge.

- claws, they are the only weapons which can trigger rend and by getting as many as possible you can concentrate feats and other weapons specific boosts in one place.
Solution : can only be put on arms, together with the next one.

- limbs, having more than 2 arms is incredibly powerful, there is multiweapon fighting abuse, you can wield a two handed weapon and a shield, etc etc.
Solution : can only get arms 1 time (also makes the claws+rend combo a little less of a no brainer)

- pincers, underpowered with above changes.
Solution : become primary attacks

- slam, underpowered period.
Solution : you get two slam attacks, not one.

- tail slap, underpowered period.
Solution : roll tail and tail slap into one 1 point evolution.

- too bloody many primary natural attacks.
Solution : Only bite, claws, pincers, slams and rake remain primary.

What do you think?

I'm seeing a repetitive pattern in Pathfinder lately which annoys my power gaming optimizer sensibilities ... maybe I'm not the target audience, but still I thought a modicum of balance was design intent here ...

Quadraped Eidolon/Mobile Fighter/Beast Totem Barbarian/Lion Shaman

What do all of the above have in common? They all have in common that they are one of a set of choices, between effective and gimp (in the fighter's case this is only true for melee builds and in the Druid case for shaman summoning builds).

Fighters/Barbarians/Eidolons/Animal Companions/Summons ... all these things are meant first and foremost to do damage, it's not the only thing they should do but it's their primary aim. Things like crit riders, grappling, tripping etc. are nice abilities, but at the end of the day you should still be able to put the hurt on ... since you can put the hurt on anything, and those other abilities are situational. A choice that more than half the damage output available to you or your Eidolon/Animal Companion/Summons is a choice to gimp yourself, in a low power game this isn't necessarily a bad thing ... but still, having only one good choice available is never a good thing ... and that's quite simply where we are in a lot of areas of the game.

What do I suggest? Well first I personally don't really want huge erratas like 4e, so balancing should be best done with new/alternative content where possible (some call that power creep, I personally call it re-evaluating failed design decisions).

- Mobility enhancers to trade a swift action for a move action should be available as magic items for all (not extremely expensive either, belt of battle type costs ... except without the belt of battle's ability to work like a cheap metamagic rod). Saving gp and a slot and getting it unlimited times per day would still make it attractive to get it without items, but at least it wouldn't be the only viable build.

- The SNA/Animal Companion lists should be redone in some sort of unearthed arcana book. Especially the changes to bears are just ugh ... brown bear vs tiger is just no contest now that the bear was nerfed, yet they are still both SNA4/CR4? The bear animal companion is also just sad.

- The Eidolon, ohh that one is hard ... I just see no alternative to a 4e style errata here (mostly because damage needs nerfing). The mobility item will make non quadrapeds more interesting, but given slot contention it would still make it a non choice really ... I'd say make pounce available to any form with 4+ legs.