Squirrelloid's page

seekerofshadowlight wrote:

well there not as powerful but they don't have to be, pure balance and you get 4e. Once you balance it like that you lost me as a customer.

I don't like 4e, but I hardly think that it's the inevitable conclusion of going for balance.

In any case, I don't see how balance is going to be achieved whilst maintaining backwards compatibility with 3.5, although it seems to me that buffing the weaker classes is going to be more workable/popular than weakening the stronger ones (or rather, than weakening their spell-sourced ability).

The problem is that no one seems to want to buff the non-casters enough to bring them up to the level where the casters are. At which point the casters have to be brought down.

I don't want 4E, I want different and equally relevant. 4E is everyone plays the same - and that's boring.

ummm why are they losing something again?

Because they are ridiculously overpowered at present?

Don't worry, I'll argue that wizards get theirs when they come up. They need a serious nerfing as well. (I honestly haven't read the cleric spell list closely enough to see how much they've been nerfed in paizo, or I'd be posting more about them as well).

If Paladins can't end up with a dragon as a mount by high levels, there's something wrong. It should be written in as a class feature.

*yawn*

Here we go again. Another "eliminate the Animal Companion thread".
You guys need to drink less Haterade.

I mean, you guys know that Clerics, Sorcerers, and Wizards have access to better Animal Companions then what the Druid has, right? And that anyone can take a Cohort with the Leadership feat?

The wizard/sorceror familiar is only awesome under really constrained circumtances - many of them made possible by WotC's failed attempt to remove polymorph in SC with specific polymorph spells. Turning your familiar into a functional beholder is defined as awesome. And when the familiar is awesome its overpowered - but we aren't talking about wizards yet.

And everyone can take leadership - including the druid. Why stop with one pet?

Oh, and your list describes the list of classes that needs to be nerfed. Why am I not surprised.

Uncommon situations are reasons I love spells like Arcane Lock. The thing is, Arcane Lock eats up a low level spell slot, of which the wizard by 15th level has more 1-3rd level slots than the fighter will ever have feats. We're asking a fighter to possibly burn a feat on Bullrush to be competent at it, which is a major relatively permanent investment. It had better be useful more often than uncommon situations, and the effect of the feat had better be noticeably good when it does come up if that feat is going to be worth spending.

I'm sorry, I'm an idiot. I don't even think this came up on this thread yet. What about choosing between wildshape and animal companion? Personally, I'm ok with it (if AC gets a few extra hit die and stat boosts at the highest levels to compensate for the difference in various ACs) because I've never been that into wildshape. Is this too much for players to give up? not enough? I know a lot of people have proposed this, but I don't know how much it screws with people's concepts.

Now that's a proposal I can at least support.

Tarren Dei wrote:

These are all positive suggestions that made me glad I started this thread. Did I miss any positive suggestions?

I suggested that you could remove the AoO for situations where the attacker is "better" (e.g. higher BAB or something) than the defender, then have a single feat that improves all maneuvers. But that's a bit of a stretch for compatibility.

Anything which ends up giving you more stuff is more backwards compatible than the barbarian rage changes. I wouldn't say this causes backwards compatibility changes at all.

Now, what they should do is make a web enhancement pdf which tells you what got changed and gives you some idea where to look. That would be the single most useful thing Paizo could do with this.

*hands sneaksy the fire extinguisher*

You might need this.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Most relevantly, if you are going to spend a feat to get better at one combat maneuver with few to no side benefits that increases the frequency of its meaningfullness, how often should using said combat maneuver be a good idea? Because when its not useful its a wasted feat, and that feat is a spent resource which isn't helping you.

I agree that Improved Overrun, Improved Sunder, Improved Bull Rush, etc. are pretty much wasted feats. But I'd rather get rid of them than make them so good that they're just begging to be used ("If I overrun that enemy, I have a chance of stepping on his jugular and killing him!").

A good suggestion I saw (I don't know if it was K/Frank Trollman or Monte Cook) was the idea of "Combat Advantage". Basically, if your BAB is better than your opponent's, you don't provoke an AoO for disarming, sundering, bull rushing, etc. No feats required. (There was more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.) Then maybe you could have a generic feat that gives a bonus to all combat maneuvers.

It's a neat idea (although it doesn't sound very "backward compatible").

That's pure Frank Trollman. I think its in the Tome series.

Its only non-backwards compatible in the 'you can exchange those now non-feats for good stuff', which is about as backwards compatible as any changes to classes which add things.

Your statement 'you're always better off hitting' is exactly the binary thinking I was referring to.. CMs lead to alternatives to simply killing the enemy, while still contributing to defeating the opponent. They are meaningful things to do in combat. A trip for example forces an enemy to either take a standard action to stand up, take a penalty to hit, and can lead to an attack of opportunity. Disarm can lead to non-lethal victory, which is handy against opponents like town guards, who you might not want to kill outright.

I know your post was directed at CoL, but there's a good point here that needs some rephrasing and thought.

CMs *should* lead to alternatives to simply killing the enemy. They should be meaningful things to do in combat. The first question is 'how meaningful?'.

Most relevantly, if you are going to spend a feat to get better at one combat maneuver with few to no side benefits that increases the frequency of its meaningfullness, how often should using said combat maneuver be a good idea? Because when its not useful its a wasted feat, and that feat is a spent resource which isn't helping you.

Weapon Specialization is a bad feat - its a pitiful 2 damage per successful attack. However, attacks do happen with large frequency, so at least you get a measurable benefit from having taken it. If the fighter gets an average of 6 successful attacks per combat (+12 total damage), and a particular maneuver is useful 1/5 combats, it better be at least equivalent in goodness to +60 damage. Hopefully better, actually, because Weap Spec is a *bad* feat.

Effectively, maneuvers, on their own, aren't advantageous very often. I don't know what the exact frequency is because obviously many of them are campaign dependent, but I'm guessing its around 1/level in the best of circumstances. The feats which improve these maneuvers need to also increase the frequency in which it is beneficial to take said maneuvers or otherwise it won't come up often enough to have been worth spending a feat for the pathetically tiny bonus the feat hands out. Highly situational feats with marginal benefits help no one. Ideally you want a feat to come up once or twice per combat at a minimum.

I'd say the old Improved Trip was maybe a little too good, because it could come up quite a bit more than once or twice in a combat. However, at least it came up frequently. This may have been caused by the lack of other meaningful actions a fighter was capable of taking, however - when your only good options are 'smash in the face' and 'take him out at the knees' then you're going to spam those two options.

Split from another thread:

Quandary wrote:

If I may suggest, if people's base assumptions are not compatable, than working on solutions from your own assumptions in separate threads would probably be most productive for all involved... /shrug

The proper course of action would be to discuss assumptions.

For example:

Velderan wrote:

Druid is pretty good without AC, It's not exactly awe-inspiring now that wild shape has been nerfed. And AC, if used properly (as per the fixes suggested) doesn't really overly tip the scales much.

Assumption: the wild-shape nerf majorly toned down the power of the druid.

As it did go a little way to toning down the druid, its certainly not a completely wrong assumption. What's flawed here is the assumption about the degree of the nerf. No, druids don't just get handed free physical attributes anymore - this just means they aren't SAD. Instead, good druid attribute builds will look like good cleric builds - since the cleric was already powerful despite needing to invest in attributes like strength in addition to his wisdom, this isn't the major nerf everyone seems to think it is. The druid can still take on a good appropriate form at the virtual drop of the hat and go to town.

Furthermore, the following all remain true:
(1) The Druid is still a full spellcaster with some amazingly good spells. Quick highlights: Entangle, Wall of Thorns, Shapechange. There's lots of other good stuff in there too, but I want to keep this post at a reasonable length.
(2) The wild enchantment is still poorly worded (get the benefits of armor and none of the penalties while melded leads to stupid stuff like Monk AC bonus stacking with Wild Armor + Wild Shield for a druid). While monk's 'belt' (robe?) doesn't give the full wisdom to AC anymore, dipping a level of Monk seems quite plausible, especially as you'll want IUS anyway to get iterative attacks + natural attacks (natural attacks get added on as secondary attacks after your iterative attack routine, so long as you didn't use the limb which grants the natural attack already - as monks can use any part of their body for an IUS attack...).
(3) Natural Spell still exists. Druids get the equivalent of Still and Silent for free useable on every spell.
(4) The Druid gets a bunch of other extras, some of which are amazing like *Poison Immunity*. Poison Immunity basically means you get to use Black Lotus poison with impunity (or whatever the new Paizo gold standard of poison is).

Most people would think that's more than enough for one class. Comparatively, the Bard is a 2/3 caster with a similar number of extra abilities. And we haven't even talked about the Animal Companion yet.

So, either the above makes for a weak class (If you think so, I'd love to hear your reasoning) or if we add an animal companion on top of that the animal companion has to be a non-ability, by which I mean it has no relevant effects on overcoming challenges (ie, doesn't contribute to power). At which point there's no reason to have an Animal Companion at all.

---------

So why don't the fixes work. Ok, either the AC is a relevant class feature (and is capable of doing *something*) or its not and shouldn't be a class feature at all. The Druid is capable of tracking as well or better than any AC he has (including acquiring scent via wildshape), so that's not a relevant niche. The Druid can speak with animals more effectively than his AC can. The Druid will have a better perception roll (higher wisdom score). Which leaves the only possible role for the AC as combat buddy.

To be a combat buddy, you have to be able to survive combat *at every level*. In 3.x (and 3.P is no exception) offense starts trumping defense around 5th level (and arguably true starting earlier than that). Thus, since the AC is ultimately derived from that system via the monster manual, any AC capable of surviving a level N combat is capable of contributing to that combat in a meaningful way. Which means the only 'combat buddy' possible is a relevant class ability - you can't build a creature which can survive combat at all levels and not contribute significantly to combat at any level.

Thus the AC has to either be useless or a major power boost for the Druid (who doesn't need it). The ranger otoh needs all the help he can get.

The above makes a strong case for getting rid of the AC, but the real conclusion is you have to eject something. The AC is not the only option - we could make the druid a non-caster or half-caster. Wildshape + animal companion is actually pretty potent, possibly increasing him to full BAB to reflect his role as a melee combatant. That's seriously a full class's worth of awesome without the spellcasting.

Of course, for backwards compatibility its easier to eliminate the animal companion. Druids have the ability to diplomacize animals - any NPC druids can have the animal simply befriended rather than a class feature - as the Druid's nominal CR is now level-2 instead of level, getting to count the AC's CR towards the EL may make those encounters still near the same difficulty under the encounter rules. Just count the AC as an advanced animal of the appropriate type and don't change anything. That should work just fine for adventures as is.

From an archetype standpoint, making the druid not a caster is actually the way to go. Nature spellcaster - the cleric can actually cover that. I mean, what else are those Animal and Plant domains for?

In the final analysis, the Druid just has too many good abilities, and most of those are abilities that are might as well not exist if you can't do something level-appropriate with them (notably wild shape and animal companion can't realistically be made significantly weaker than they are at present without compromising any usefulness those abilities possess - ie, reducing their value to zero and thus making them non-abilities. And as the Druid class needs to become significantly weaker, that means we have to remove one major ability).

Crusader of Logic wrote:

Tgdmb = The Gamer's Den. It's a place where people extremely knowledgeable about the game hang out. A lot of people here don't like it because they don't dance around with political correctness, they get to the point. And when someone tries to insinuate they are wrong when they clearly are right it's open season with the firestorms time. If they actually are wrong though they can deal with that, because they're actually quite cool as long as you don't set them off.

It's very unfortunate that what amounts to a culture clash and a failure of diplomacy is effectively eliminating good ideas before they can even be seriously considered. Based on what I've seen from your posters so far, you seem to have a laundry list of suggestions on how to improve the game. I'm especially interested in your specific ideas regarding how to balance Tier 1s downwards and balance Tier 3s upwards - this seems to be the core controversy that causes the most arguments on the Paizo Forums right now.

You know, I was going to stop threadjacking this thread... but as long as this discussion is happening here it might as well happen.

The first problem with communicating what needs to be done with the game is convincing people of what the actual problems are.

Problem 1: Not everybody is comfortable with optimization. However, as that's where the cutting edge of balance needs to be, that's where the discussion has to occur. Example: Assuming non-optimized things like Wizards casting direct damage on a regular basis is a poor starting point, because that's the weakest possible option and as soon as you have a wizard who does *anything else*, the game breaks down, especially at mid-high levels.

Problem 2: Not everyone is familiar with the totality of the game (levels 1-20). That's fine, I rarely play levels 1-3 at all, preferences are different. However, its important to realize that the nature of the game changes drastically from level 5 to level 10, and again from level 10 to level 15. Example: Many people who think the martial classes are fine spend most of their time playing 1-5 or so, and rarely (if ever) get higher than 10th level. To all those people who want the fighter to be the guy with a sword and no supernatural powers, I say to you 'fine, enjoy playing levels 1-8, and let the rest of us have a mid-high level game where people can actually play something other than a full caster'. Unfortunately, most people with that opinion want it to be true 1-20 even if they've never played a game above 10th level in their life. (I'm sure some have, but I know there are others who haven't).

Problem 3: Not everyone understands why casters outclass non-casters. Its not the ability to get bigger numbers (although sometimes they can *also* do that), its the range of options (often powerful options) that allow casters to shine. Until people understand and accept that just adding bigger numbers doesn't fix anything, then we'll continue to have stupid discussions about classes like the fighter where someone thinks the answer is adding more damage/AC/etc.... I'm holding judgement for the moment on the 3.P fighter until I see Jason's new and improved feats.

Problem 4: Not everyone understands economy of actions. Its the basic tenant of the game - you have limited actions in a combat scenario, you shouldn't be expected to waste actions on abilities that aren't worth your time.

Problem 5: Not everyone understands that spending resources should reward you. Whenever you spend a resource to gain access to an ability, that ability should frequently be better than abilities which required no resources to be able to perform. (Ie, any feat-enabled ability needs to be better than a comparable 'free' action like an attack (if the ability uses an attack action)).

Problem 6: More paizo specific, but if the desired balance point is below the power level of some current classes, those classes need to be *reduced in power*, which means removing abilities from the classes, and backwards compatibility be damned. You can't have a class keep all its abilities and reduce its power significantly at the same time. Example: Druid - something has to go. Choose one of AC, Wildshape, full spellcasting. I vote for not wildshape, as that ability is at least unique and a valid fantasy archetype, but I'd be fine making druids into non-casters, half-casters, or without an AC. *Something* has to go.

Problem 7: No problem can be fixed by houserules for all games - if there's a problem in the rules it needs to be fixed in the rules. IMHO, new DMs shouldn't be penalized because they didn't realize that certain abilities were far too powerful when used *exactly as written*. A RAW standard needs to be held to the entire ruleset.

Problem 8: DMs often coddle players. Example - creatures attacking the martial characters when they could easily get to and attack the dangerous casters. Sure, it lets the fighter/barbarian/monk/whatever do something for a couple rounds, but there's really no reason for team monster to waste actions on those characters most of the time. This behavior is basically pretending there is a 'draw aggro' ability built into frontline classes which they don't actually possess, and that monsters with sometimes incredible intelligence can't figure out that the guy throwing dangerous spells around should be its first priority.

Basically, those of us whom I'm sure are getting grouped into the /tgd/ crowd are familiar with optimization, and have been discussing D+D online in places like the old CO boards at WotC and the like for quite a while. We've seen all the crazy that is possible in the rules, and we've seen what the various classes are capable of. And now we've got to convince people with very different impressions of the game that there is a world beyond what they're used to, stripped of all their houserules and run strictly as written. We have to convince people who've never seen level 10 that the game changes remarkably at a certain point and can't be played in the same way anymore. And so forth. Many of the changes we advocate only matter and/or become significant at relatively high levels of play, but that doesn't stop the 1-10 crowd from screaming bloody murder when we give the fighter something which might smell a little of magic at level 11.

Honestly, if you don't make a deliberate effort to break the game you are not playtesting the system. That's what playtesting does, pushes the edges and sees where something fails. The last thing you do during a playtest is do exactly what they expect you to do - they've already done that. They know it works there.

So how do you balance Tier 1 down and Tier 5 up to try to hit a tier 3 median? First you convince people that yes, those tiers actually exist, and that the classes really are that badly imbalanced. Which requires surmounting all 8 problems above. If you can't convince people the problem exists, they don't believe you and it never gets fixed. Of course, the moment you provide proof you hear a never-ending wave of 'no sane DM would allow that' and other nonsense. Meet me at 12 years old - had played once, started DMing in early 2nd edition. Like I had a clue how to run a game in a way that was 'sane' and 'reasonable'. I only knew what the rulebook told me. (Fortunately, 2nd edition was a lot more forgiving of mistakes than 3.x, because the benefits of system mastery were smaller - especially pre-kits and other class-enhancement products).

If I may suggest, if people's base assumptions are not compatable, than working on solutions from your own assumptions in separate threads would probably be most productive for all involved... /shrug

The proper course of action would be to discuss assumptions.

For example:

Druid is pretty good without AC, It's not exactly awe-inspiring now that wild shape has been nerfed. And AC, if used properly (as per the fixes suggested) doesn't really overly tip the scales much.

Assumption: the wild-shape nerf majorly toned down the power of the druid.

As it did go a little way to toning down the druid, its certainly not a completely wrong assumption. What's flawed here is the assumption about the degree of the nerf. No, druids don't just get handed free physical attributes anymore - this just means they aren't SAD. Instead, good druid attribute builds will look like good cleric builds - since the cleric was already powerful despite needing to invest in attributes like strength in addition to his wisdom, this isn't the major nerf everyone seems to think it is. The druid can still take on a good appropriate form at the virtual drop of the hat and go to town.

Furthermore, the following all remain true:
(1) The Druid is still a full spellcaster with some amazingly good spells. Quick highlights: Entangle, Wall of Thorns, Shapechange. There's lots of other good stuff in there too, but I want to keep this post at a reasonable length.
(2) The wild enchantment is still poorly worded (get the benefits of armor and none of the penalties while melded leads to stupid stuff like Monk AC bonus stacking with Wild Armor + Wild Shield for a druid). While monk's 'belt' (robe?) doesn't give the full wisdom to AC anymore, dipping a level of Monk seems quite plausible, especially as you'll want IUS anyway to get iterative attacks + natural attacks (natural attacks get added on as secondary attacks after your iterative attack routine, so long as you didn't use the limb which grants the natural attack already - as monks can use any part of their body for an IUS attack...).
(3) Natural Spell still exists. Druids get the equivalent of Still and Silent for free useable on every spell.
(4) The Druid gets a bunch of other extras, some of which are amazing like *Poison Immunity*. Poison Immunity basically means you get to use Black Lotus poison with impunity (or whatever the new Paizo gold standard of poison is).

Most people would think that's more than enough for one class. Comparatively, the Bard is a 2/3 caster with a similar number of extra abilities. And we haven't even talked about the Animal Companion yet.

So, either the above makes for a weak class (If you think so, I'd love to hear your reasoning) or if we add an animal companion on top of that the animal companion has to be a non-ability, by which I mean it has no relevant effects on overcoming challenges (ie, doesn't contribute to power). At which point there's no reason to have an Animal Companion at all.

---------

So why don't the fixes work. Ok, either the AC is a relevant class feature (and is capable of doing *something*) or its not and shouldn't be a class feature at all. The Druid is capable of tracking as well or better than any AC he has (including acquiring scent via wildshape), so that's not a relevant niche. The Druid can speak with animals more effectively than his AC can. The Druid will have a better perception roll (higher wisdom score). Which leaves the only possible role for the AC as combat buddy.

To be a combat buddy, you have to be able to survive combat *at every level*. In 3.x (and 3.P is no exception) offense starts trumping defense around 5th level (and arguably true starting earlier than that). Thus, since the AC is ultimately derived from that system via the monster manual, any AC capable of surviving a level N combat is capable of contributing to that combat in a meaningful way. Which means the only 'combat buddy' possible is a relevant class ability - you can't build a creature which can survive combat at all levels and not contribute significantly to combat at any level.

Thus the AC has to either be useless or a major power boost for the Druid (who doesn't need it). The ranger otoh needs all the help he can get.

Squirrelloid wrote:

There is no fix for Druid ACs which involves the Druid keeping the AC and the AC being at all relevant to anything. The Druid is a tier 1 class *without* the AC. Adding power on top of that is stupid.

Give the ranger the druid's AC buffing spells. That way the 'person who plays a buffed pet' can exist without overpowering virtually everyone.

A: you're wrong

B: given the title, you probably shouldn't post here

If Druids are one of the best classes ignoring the AC, how can adding a relevant AC on top of that possibly be balanced?

The premise of this thread is what's wrong.

I really like the Touch of Chaos power - but that may just be because the it makes Monk worthwhile at higher levels. (Monk 11/Cleric 3/Sacred Fist 6 in not quite that order, Domains Chaos and Madness - yeah, you have an alignment change if Monks are required to be Lawful, but that's ok as far as I'm concerned and could be great fun to roleplay - talk with your DM about a 'descent into madness' beforehand) Remember that Touch attacks are (1) attack actions and (2) can be discharged during an unarmed strike.

Make sure you have Stunning Fist and Medusa's Wrath
First attack - Touch of Chaos
Second attack - drop the stun on him - now on worst of 2 d20 rolls
Phase 3 is profit.

(You can add the madness touch attack to penalize his saves in at 2nd and drop the stun on the third attack if you really want to).

IIRC, at 20th level you're casting as a cleric 8, dealing damage as a level 17 monk (which can be improved with a monk's robe if its relevant), and have a really good stun routine into Medusa's Wrath. That's actually viable as a level 20 meleer.

Squirrelloid wrote:

What the Paladin really needs:

Smite Evil (Su): Whenever you attack an evil creature, add 1d6 holy damage on a successful hit. This damage increases by an additional 1d6 for every odd level after 1st.

Some fighter bonus feats aren't a bad idea either, but the above at least makes his damage relevant.

ummm 10d6 is a bit much. 1D6/4 LEVELS is good balance. that's 5d6 at 20th

Wait, Rogues get 10d6 against virtually everything assuming they can flank. But 10d6 against evil creatures is too much? Seriously? Its 35 damage per hit on average, and you should be expecting 2 hits, so that's 70 + base damage ~= 130ish/round, which is appropriate for 20th level.

What the Paladin really needs:

Smite Evil (Su): Whenever you attack an evil creature, add 1d6 holy damage on a successful hit. This damage increases by an additional 1d6 for every odd level after 1st.

Some fighter bonus feats aren't a bad idea either, but the above at least makes his damage relevant.

There is no fix for Druid ACs which involves the Druid keeping the AC and the AC being at all relevant to anything. The Druid is a tier 1 class *without* the AC. Adding power on top of that is stupid.

Give the ranger the druid's AC buffing spells. That way the 'person who plays a buffed pet' can exist without overpowering virtually everyone.

Sinfire Titan wrote:

made of fail.

Wow... another 1-post wonder spouting the favorite code phrase. Do you suppose they're self-replicating?

Seriously, the fighter needs a boost. We get it. But to echo the wise Suezo, can someone other than me PLEASE make some mechanical recommendations other than "use Bo9S or you suck"?

I already made my recommendation back during alpha 3 on the new rules board. Its still there. Its probably in the ballpark of tier 3. It has been totally ignored by anyone on the Paizo design staff as best I can determine. In fact, Jason has explicitly stated that he doesn't want to give the fighter class features beyond those already present.

I consider something approximating that (total capability/power, not necessarily exact abilities) to be the minimum necessary to make the fighter viable and not a mook class.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Not that I'm necessarily agreeing with the premise of buying ACs, but it depends on how much it costs. Remember, a 10th level character is supposed to have 49kgp. If he has to spend 5k of that on his AC, that's 5k he's not spending on gear.

I don't particularly like the idea of "you can hire an NPC who's way more powerful than your party, but it's balanced because he'll only work for a lot of money". If your party is hiring a storm giant to beat up orcs (say), then who needs any fancy equipment? You take the money you earned from beating up the orcs and then hire a solar to beat up ogres next time, and so on. (I'm exaggerating, of course.)

Either a creature is appropriate to adventure with a level X party or it isn't.

Ultimately, that's about where the price-point is. Maybe a Storm Giant costs 50k to hire - no 10th level party would even consider it. In fact, by the time most players would be ok with dumping 50k on a temporary ally the Storm Giant isn't that impressive.

But the point of the AC is that its effectively long-term 'gear'. Price it appropriately, and it will compete with other long term gear for limited cash resources. Not that I think this is _the_ solution, but it is _a_ solution.

Squirreloid wrote:

I still think Druids shouldn't have the option of an AC. Let it be a Ranger signature class ability.

Well, we can't jump in a time machine and remove the spell "Animal Friendship" from the AD&D druid spell list, so that genie's out of the bottle already.

Personally, I'd rather see all "pets" (and I include Leadership under that banner) unified in a followers table like in AD&D (e.g. fighters who establish a keep can get soldiers to follow them, wizards get apprentices, rangers get bears or other outdoorsy kinds of followers, etc.). But that's not going to happen.

We can just ignore AD+D, because its a different game.

Don't Druids have Wild Empathy - that's sort of like Animal Friendship as a class ability. More seriously, the current AC has very little to do with the Animal Friendship spell, which was never useful for getting a combat buddy. I remember my AD+D Druid having a bunch of squirrels.

For back compatibility, insert a sidebar that says 'in adventures with Druid adversaries, assume the animal companion is instead a free-willed animal assisting the druid. Don't change its stats, and add its CR to determine the actual EL'.

The followers table is an ok idea, I'm not convinced its necessarily any more or less balanced than other pet acquisition methods offhand. The AC/Cohort/etc... are (trying to) replicate the AD+D Henchman rules, with varying degrees of success. Whether such a thing is appropriate is anyone's guess.

i really hate having to post just to see messages...

wait, if this is 1-50 of 53, where are the other 3 posts?

Dennis da Ogre wrote:

Then why not just make a druid purchase or acquire an animal like everyone else would? Instead of giving him a free companion at first level and when it's killed or needs to be upgraded he would have to acquire it like any other acquired animal?

I don't particularly care whether animal companions cost money or not, but maybe I'm misinterpreting your original point. I thought you were complaining that a megaraptor was an inappropriate animal companion for a 10th level druid. Wouldn't it still be inappropriate if it cost money to obtain?

Not that I'm necessarily agreeing with the premise of buying ACs, but it depends on how much it costs. Remember, a 10th level character is supposed to have 49kgp. If he has to spend 5k of that on his AC, that's 5k he's not spending on gear.

I still think Druids shouldn't have the option of an AC. Let it be a Ranger signature class ability. (And Quandary, I'm really sorry about the 'a boy and his dog' thing - I had meant it dismissively).

Also, a way to make low level ACs worth keeping would be to have to the bonuses scale quadratically. Ie, +1,+2,+4,+8 - so the lower level your pet was available, the more signficant the bonuses it gets. I'd have to go play with exact numbers to see what the proper progression would be, but at least 1-20 that's the right kind of function. (Epic would require a redefinition, because otherwise it starts growing too fast - for PCs pre-epic is exponential power growth, epic is linear power growth).

The Dungeoncrasher variants were too much... Awesome Blow only did 1d6 points of damage for a standard action. 4d6 and 8d6 is way too much for pushing someone into a wall... Ever play hockey? Slamming into the boards doesn't do that much damage in pads, let alone armor and you can skate a helluva lot faster than you can run!!!

I'd at most find 1d6 non-lethal damage acceptable for a standard Bull Rush into an unyielding object.

--Vrockey Player

Gameplay > Realism. A feat worth 1d6 damage is useless. Its why fighters suck.

And 4d6 might be worth a feat. (8d6 certainly would be worth 1 feat, possibly make it a feat that scales - 4d6 when you get it and 8d6 when you reach 11th level).

Has anyone else noticed that, in this board, the only pets that have been demonstrated to 'break' or even come close to the usefulness of a fighter are the high-end options? And, in fact, the stuff you can get early in the game gets too weak to be useful later on?

It sounds to me like the solution is relatively clear.

A druid with a riding dog AC has basically a 1st level fighter worth of melee fighter that acts in addition to whatever he does. That's pretty awesome.

Do you need an example for every level?

Dennis da Ogre wrote:

Squirrelloid wrote:

Iconic how? Because they had it in 2nd edition? What's our iconic source for 'spellcaster with a non-familiar animal buddy'?

Iconic because 3.5 has been around for the last 7 years giving druid players a sense of entitlement.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Proposal:

Strip Druids of their AC. Give the Ranger a real AC ability - it might make him relevant (give him some buff spells for it as well).

Works for me. Druid with WildShape plus casting is a nice class, probably wouldn't be as popular as the monster that was the druid under 3.5 but the people who play it will be more likely to play because they want to RP a druid not because of the uber power from the class.

Again, you just seem to dislike players having pets, and it seems you actively dislike druids, which might explain your completely irrational urge to overnerf them and screw players who DON'T break them. So don't allow them or ask your DM to disallow them, don't play one, and call it a day. But maybe you should stop posting on a forum for people who actually want to fix the druid.

Um, how is this overnerfing? Would you actually provide some reasoning? The Druid is still over-the-top compared to just about everything else, even with the wildshape nerfing. He's got a great spell list including gems like Entangle and Wall of Thorns, and wildshape can still allow a well-built druid to claw people in the face with style. Removing the AC is logical and reduces the class to a set of abilities that is at least plausibly balanceable - the druid doesn't need a 3rd powerful ability on top of the wildshape and spellcasting - heck, wizards are getting by just fine on spellcasting alone.

Set wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

In various playtest-by-post games, I've set up encounters that just call for combat maneuvers ... Just beg for them.

I really wanted the Trip and Grapple ideas to work in that Monk playtest, but they just didn't.

There's no substitute to punching people in the face, it seems, and as levels increase, I expect that monster Str + size benefits will add up to CMBs that I won't even want to waste my time doing the math to realize how depressingly useless these actions have become.

The 'Irish boxing' tradition of just standing there punching each other in the face until someone falls down appears to be the pinnacle of melee combat science.

'Combat maneuver' so far seems to be French for 'wasted action.'

Sadly, there is a place they work. black tentacles is so powerful now as to deserve a higher level spell slot. Multiple opponents, damaging grapple, bonus on subsequent checks, just deadly. In my playtest a single spell took out 4 4th level fighters (and then only because that was all the caster could fit in the area due to spacing - it could have taken out 30).

Who cares how many 4th level fighters a 7+th level wizard can kill? Those are CR2 mooks (in pathfinder), they're meant to die in large numbers and not pose much of a challenge. At 22hp each (probably plus a small con mod) a 7th level mage almost expects to kill them with a *fireball*. And as fireball is a bad 3rd level spell instead of a good 4th level spell...

Under the old grapple rules, Black Tentacles also kills arbitrarily many 4th level fighters. In fact, it has a 25% better chance of doing so, because the expected roll of d20 is 10.5, not 15.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Because looking at a wall doesn't constitute interaction with a wall. Unless you're claiming the rules aren't written in English.

Also, because Silent Image specifically makes something that looks exactly like "X", so looking at it will only tell you that its an "X". You make a spot check - 'yup, still looks like a wall'. Because it does look like a wall, that's entirely the point.

Honestly, Ghost Sound allowing a save is stupid. You're right, listening to it shouldn't really qualify as interacting with it - it really does sound like whatever sound you're making. At which point there is no way to interact with it so the save should never come up.

Yes, but looking at silent image gets a save precisely because it is what the name implies - an image that is silent. Hmm. Wonder why that guy standing over there is making absolutely no noise?

Um, that's a really bad example if you want 'looking' to give you a save - you're getting a save because it should make sound and doesn't. This is usually known as 'listening', not looking.

As for ghost sound, as a musician I can attest that there is a fundamental difference between a sound and a reproduction. Despite the mages best efforts there will be flaws in the sound - maybe it doesn't follow the acoustics, maybe it is obviously coming from a place where no sound should be coming, etc. Hearing is interaction.

What you're talking about here is the problem with non-analog recording and/or digital attempts to emulate sounds. The second has even more problems than the first, and I could go into excessive technical detail as to why both of them are inferior to the real thing or an analog recording. However, magic isn't bound by any of these technological restrictions, so why should the sound quality suffer. Analog recording is as good as the real thing - magic should be capable of that.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Interact with means a relevant sense receives (or fails to, really) sensory data from it other than sight (seeing something is not interacting with it). Silent Image requires you at least touch it to get a save at all, because no other senses will contribute (unless you do something stupid like make a silent image of something which should make sound. Ok, I suppose you could try to taste it as well... (Smell may also work in certain circumstances - but probably not against an illusory wall in a dungeon).

Ghost Sound requires attentive listening (just hearing it isn't 'interacting').

Basically, allowing 'looking at it' to generate a save is a stealth nerf of illusions which makes them unplayably bad. Interacting is clearly more involved than just standing there, and presumably means *doing* something to facilitate interaction with the illusion. The whole point...

I said close examination (which would be attentive spotting or whatever).

How is this any different from requiring attentive listening to detect ghost sound? Smell, taste, touch, and sound are the only ways to interact? How were you able to separate sight from that list? Which rule?

Because looking at a wall doesn't constitute interaction with a wall. Unless you're claiming the rules aren't written in English.

Also, because Silent Image specifically makes something that looks exactly like "X", so looking at it will only tell you that its an "X". You make a spot check - 'yup, still looks like a wall'. Because it does look like a wall, that's entirely the point.

Honestly, Ghost Sound allowing a save is stupid. You're right, listening to it shouldn't really qualify as interacting with it - it really does sound like whatever sound you're making. At which point there is no way to interact with it so the save should never come up.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Part of it is about level of play as well. A guy with a sword from levels 1-5 is fine. He has to be a superhero to play the 10-15 game, otherwise he can't do anything relevant.

I think we will have to agree to disagree at this particular point. I'm keen to see what happens with the higher level feats. If that turns out to be a damp squib, I will be forced to agree.

I'm curious what you think fighters are doing at level 10, or 15, or 20 that is at all productive. Use the SRD for appropriate monsters to encounter as a benchmark.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Edit: Re: Golems

The problem is that the golem isn't capable of reasoning, so if you create an illusionary wall either he (1) treats it as a real wall and never interacts with it or (2) Runs into every wall he sees to determine if its an illusion or not. While golem creators are probably quite familiar with the 'silent image to make an apparent wall block the golem's way' trick, having your golem frequently run into walls is going to be loud and possibly damaging to your creation. And 99.9% of walls it sees will not be illusions. As such, it really is unreasonable to expect the golem to interact with the illusion of a wall. ...

I do for some reason remember some clarification, response, or something similar that interaction could include any close examination, (spot checks, search checks) which, if ruled that way, would mean there are more than those two options.

If you limit interact with to touching the visual part of the illusion then there would be very little reason for ghost sound to have "Will disbelief (if interacted with)" since would be never be able touch it.

Interact with means a relevant sense receives (or fails to, really) sensory data from it other than sight (seeing something is not interacting with it). Silent Image requires you at least touch it to get a save at all, because no other senses will contribute (unless you do something stupid like make a silent image of something which should make sound. Ok, I suppose you could try to taste it as well... (Smell may also work in certain circumstances - but probably not against an illusory wall in a dungeon).

Ghost Sound requires attentive listening (just hearing it isn't 'interacting').

Basically, allowing 'looking at it' to generate a save is a stealth nerf of illusions which makes them unplayably bad. Interacting is clearly more involved than just standing there, and presumably means *doing* something to facilitate interaction with the illusion. The whole point of illusions is they 'look like' the thing you've chosen perfectly. They just obviously don't have material, and thus won't generate other properties that objects will (possibly smell and/or sound).

This has been a concern of mine for a while as I have seen it abused a number of times over the past 8 years. Although I think a number of these abuses were due to splat book items, spells, and Animal Growth (which has already been toned back a bit).

That said, it is an iconic ability and we must walk a very fine line to avoid making this feature worthless.

Thoughts?

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Iconic how? Because they had it in 2nd edition? What's our iconic source for 'spellcaster with a non-familiar animal buddy'?

Now, I can see an animal companion being 'iconic' for the ranger (if anything can be considered iconic for a class which has mutated from Fighter/Mage to Nature Guy with Swords) - in the 'a boy and his dog' sort of way. But druid? I can't think of any relevant source material here - even the D+D book Druid I can think of has no real animal companion (from RA Salvatore's Cleric Quintet - Pikel iirc).

Proposal:
Strip Druids of their AC. Give the Ranger a real AC ability - it might make him relevant (give him some buff spells for it as well).

Snorter wrote:

Is this part of the problem? That everyone is approaching the game from a different genre of fantasy?

It seems, in the older Sword & Sorcery tradition of the pulps, that most wizards and sorcerors were almost invariably villainous cowards, who had sold their souls to Dark Powers, through perverted rituals, and whose purpose in the story, was to make bold threats, before dying, screaming, under the blade of the hero.

I think there are issues with style of play that are related. Squirreloid made a comment about how fighters should be able to trip giant scorpions and so on. That is uber-heroic, almost comic-book style. Nothing wrong with that, but it strikes me that it colours a lot of the issues with the fighter that he has. For me, and others, the fighter is a guy with a sword, not a superhero. A lot of stuff about "balance" seems to me to be more about aesthetics and expectations. These are valid criticisms but it is debatable to what extent D&D can accommodate all of these styles of play - Golarion, for example, seems to be a fairly downbeat sort of place and PF would likely reflect that more than maybe a pulpy sort of setting.

Part of it is about level of play as well. A guy with a sword from levels 1-5 is fine. He has to be a superhero to play the 10-15 game, otherwise he can't do anything relevant.

Edit: Re: Golems
The problem is that the golem isn't capable of reasoning, so if you create an illusionary wall either he (1) treats it as a real wall and never interacts with it or (2) Runs into every wall he sees to determine if its an illusion or not. While golem creators are probably quite familiar with the 'silent image to make an apparent wall block the golem's way' trick, having your golem frequently run into walls is going to be loud and possibly damaging to your creation. And 99.9% of walls it sees will not be illusions. As such, it really is unreasonable to expect the golem to interact with the illusion of a wall. (I'm willing to be convinced on the illusion of a pit trap - pit traps being rarer anyway).

I think we need to consider what the payout for some of these maneuvers are as well. (I'm in complete agreement the success rate is too low - I think DCs should be 10+CMB, as if someone rolled a d20 against you).

Disarm - you remove the weapon. Possibly useful.

Bullrush - You move the foe - situationally useful.

Trip - You trip them. They suffer a minor penalty to attacks and an ok penalty to AC. Bring back the free attack with improved trip - that was enough payout to make the action worthwhile.

Grapple - no payout. No seriously, you don't stop them from making attacks with larger than light weapons anymore, where's the payout?

I also don't understand why the natural modifiers (ie, CMB) became bigger on average (d20+x, x became bigger because CMB is bigger than str + size mod), while the bonus from the feats became smaller (+4->+2). Restore these to +4 if you want to see anyone care about them. Small numeric bonuses against a d20 roll and a large basic modifier aren't noticeable.

Edit: For some reason I cannot see this or subsequent posts in this thread. There are plenty of stable code bases for forums available, why does Paizo insist on using one that breaks frequently.

@Wrath:
I'm curious, what level were the characters, specifically the wizard?

Not to mention that the pet is actually worse at tracking because the ranger gets more ranks in skills than the pet does.

While its the thought that counts, I'm not convinced these go far enough. Certainly not enough to warrant a second feat.

Jason (Buhlman)'s thought to make them extensions of the basic feat is a good one. I'm not convinced its enough.

Part of the problem I have with the current CMB feats is not only did the bonus from them get reduced to +2 (from +4), but the difficulty of performing the maneuvers in general got increased (15+appropriate defense vs. expected 10.5+appropriate defense). And its not like the offense got markedly better relative to the monsters. I don't know about the rest of you, but I want fighters wrestling fire giants to the ground and tripping monstrous scorpions. That's heroic. If anything, the fighter's chances got much much worse with the CMB rules. 10+x is like a d20 being rolled against you, which is what it should be - why is the defender getting an automatic 5 point advantage?

The other part of the problem is that fighters only have 6 more feats than a wizard. Six! Compared to some 30 spell slots/day, that's not much. Combat feats have to be really awesome to put the fighter anywhere near the same ballpark. I wrote some sample TWFing feats in another thread - that's seriously a minimum standard for just how awesome feats have to be.

Squirrelloid wrote:

If you have a rules complaint about the way things were handled, articulate it.

Oh, I think that the other posters who articulated their complaints about permissive DMing and overly convenient happenstance in your favor covered it fairly well.

I was simply talking about (since you asked) the fact that you appear to have taken a pdf and spent half an hour writing down "the best" solution to each problem and then posting it. And despite this, you still felt the need to twist (and break) the rules, not to mention that when questioned about some blatantly abusive practices, the justification was "Well it wouldn't have mattered anyway."

You know, information advantage is part of the wizard's bag of tricks. Nothing in the adventure stops me from spending a day scrying the enemy. That's sort of like reading the adventure for 1/2 an hour, because its site-based. No scry defense + site-based adventure shouldn't happen at 10th level, much less 15th - that's just asking the party to destroy it.

Not a single rule was twisted or broken. Cohorts very clearly gain experience. He was taken at a particular level, the amount of experience he earns is determinable from that based on how cohorts work. That means he's going to be level 13 when the wizard is level 15.

Its not nearly as clear how much gear a cohort receives, but they receive PC-level gear during actual play once they're a cohort - its certainly not twisting the complete lack of rules on the matter to extrapolate backwards and assume they had been collecting PC-level gear prior to being a cohort.

And line of effect through a ring gate? The ring gate specifically says you can cast spells through it, which is the definition of line of effect. That's pure RAW. The only possible interpretation of rules with the ring gate was whether sound passes through it, and its not clear one way or another given the necessary passing of noticeable mass through the ring gate which would accompany such a property. I was very up-front about this issue and how it was ruled - and gave a reason for that ruling (barring a specific magical exception, we assume real world physics otherwise holds and has the appropriate logical consequences, because anything else leads to magic tea party, which is not a game either of us has been interested in playing since we were five).

Of course it wouldn't have mattered anyway! You could have built a tree stand and fireballed the village while whistling Dixie and they would have drank an invisibility potion and stood around (as far as I can tell). You've got a person who's supposedly experienced enough to have survived thus far leading a group of baddies who definitely was alerted to "something going on" at the very, very, very least, who then decides "Hmmm.. Bad times abrewin'... Hows about I stand here some more?"

The BBEG had one round to figure out that something bad was going down. He had no way of knowing the mercenaries in the barracks rooms were already dying. Heck, that only started about 24 seconds before anything noticeable happened in the BBEG room. (2 rounds to cast Cloudkills, 1 round to position for BBEG, 1 round for the Mass Charm spell, making it 4 rounds before the heightened Undeath to Death spell did something noticeable). Technically, he's surprised, and doesn't expect to win initiative (he didn't in-game either). And then he's controlled and its over. What was he supposed to have done, other than hope the adventure was written better?

...dare I suggest avoiding the sitting down with your DM and telling him "this is how things are going to go, you react this way." or whatever you like to call your pregame tete a tete that generates this type of shameful display.

Both the person DMing and I have abundant DMing experience. We also tend to DM somewhat differently. We both agreed that DMing style was not what was being playtested here - the rules were.

And by necessity the adventure as it was written was also being playtested (there being no standard adventure for a 15th level character that I'm aware of). The adventure was chosen at random from an internet search - it happens to suck, badly. But the DM had no idea until he read it (after the character was generated, mind you), and I had no idea until I played it. Neither of us being in the habit of using published adventures, we have no idea how typical it is (I gather from some of the comments that its worse than average, which is probably a good sign).

Tell me, what would you have done differently as the DM and *why*, remembering we're sticking to strict RAW (to the best of our ability during a game played in real time) and using the adventure exactly as written.

Squirrelloid wrote:

hogarth wrote:

Squirrelloid wrote:

Assuming he's using a spiked chain, every enemy he could AoO is within a 5' step of him. Oops.

Actually, the OP mentions he's enlarged ("his enlarged self"), so he's presumably got 20' reach.

Gotta work on that reading comprehension, man... :-)

Edit: Ok, I found the general reach description - it isn't clear what reach that cleric would have (15 or 20'?)

Regardless, that requires that the wizard cast enlarge before the cleric ported off, meaning chances are the monsters are already in the party's face. So sometimes the party gets lucky and the monsters all go last.

How is this much different than having to charge into the cleric's reach anyway? Or having the cleric just walk into range?

nope str domain gives him enlarge so 1st round enlarges himself and hops with fighter 15 reach with fighter having 10, port within 15 feet of foes u got them all in your sights.

And the enemies watch the cleric get bigger while carrying a spiked chain and stay grouped together? Really? Why aren't they wailing on weak members of the party while the fighter hangs out by the cleric instead of doing something useful? Why are they still somewhere where they'll need to provoke an AoO to do anything?

By assumption they're within 30' (+threat range) of the party (15' if you've been counting large creatures as 2 creatures each), which means they should be in melee if they're melee monsters, and shouldn't be within that range if they're ranged monsters. (Casters might be - and they can cast defensively if nothing else). I mean, you gave the enemy a whole round before doing this - what did they do, twiddle their thumbs?

Of course, assuming such a sweet spot to teleport to exists, they could just walk there - its well within their movement range. So why is it a big deal they teleported. You're also talking about a 1/day type event - its ok if they dominate an encounter 1/day.

I'm seriously not seeing the problem here. I don't understand why the enemies are all clustered in a radius smaller than a fireball and why the teleport is that important to the enlarge person + spiked chain combo in the first place.

Why is the T-Rex such a concern? Its just a big creature with one attack. Whatever. Its not even optimal (that would be the Megaraptor, which has multiple attacks and pounce).

Lets talk about the realities of 3e combat. That 'flanker/scout/etc...' that you're all so keen on is known by a culinary term to the monsters - "appetizer", possibly pre-fixed by 'bite-sized'. It seriously goes down to one attack at mid-high levels. That's a crappy pet. Its useless, because it doesn't actually get to flank at all, it just dies. If we're going to have a pet, it should be able to survive being at all near the combat to be useful. The reality is that offense > defense in D+D 3e, and thus any pet which can survive being in the proximity of combat can dish out some decent damage.

I don't know why you're so worried about a T-Rex companion, anyway. A level 10 cleric can *animate* one, and a skeletal T-Rex is about as good as a real one, anyway. Certainly skeletal megaraptors are better than real ones, and the 10th level cleric can have 40HD worth of them from animate dead spells alone - ie, 5 of them.

In the final analysis, anything less than the druid's animal companion is useless at mid levels, and at high levels even the druid's animal companion doesn't matter anymore. And as the Ranger is weaker than the druid otherwise, anything less than parity for the Ranger is insulting.

Squirrelloid wrote:

Assuming he's using a spiked chain, every enemy he could AoO is within a 5' step of him. Oops.

Actually, the OP mentions he's enlarged ("his enlarged self"), so he's presumably got 20' reach.

Gotta work on that reading comprehension, man... :-)

Edit: Ok, I found the general reach description - it isn't clear what reach that cleric would have (15 or 20'?)

Regardless, that requires that the wizard cast enlarge before the cleric ported off, meaning chances are the monsters are already in the party's face. So sometimes the party gets lucky and the monsters all go last.

How is this much different than having to charge into the cleric's reach anyway? Or having the cleric just walk into range?

Ok, regardless of other possible 'problems' the ability may have, the OPs complaint is not one of them. I'm serious.

The Cleric teleports himself amongst a bunch of enemies - the enemies know they'll provoke AoOs by moving away - so why move away? Maul the cleric for teleporting there. I mean, when you make yourself an easy target, expect to take hits. Assuming he's using a spiked chain, every enemy he could AoO is within a 5' step of him. Oops.

I'd have to say make it at least a Move action [leaning towards Standard myself] and Line-of-site.

The other issue you may want to consider is whether you want this 1st level ability to be able to by-pass Wall of Force or Force Cage

I would add that it can not be used to by-pass Force effects. I have had the same situation with Anklets of Translocation (MIC 1400gp 2/day teleport 10ft.). Having a cheap, low-level item negate a Force Cage is crazy and possible broken!

See, I would have said 'necessary for game balance' instead of 'crazy and possibly broken'. Non-wizards need ways of reliably getting past Walls of Force and out of Forcecages. Especially player characters who will be absolutely useless if they get stuck behind such a barrier - which is no fun for the player. Now, monsters won't always have such gear/abilities, and when they don't those tactics work for the party. And that's fine - its ok for the party to be that awesome. But no player should have to sit out for a 3 hour combat because they got stuck on the wrong side of a WoF.

Crusader of Logic wrote:

He was never, or almost never hit. It wouldn't have made any difference. The Ring Gate is just to rub it in. If he had gone himself it would have went just as well.

Of course. If he had walked in naked with no spells prepared it would have gone the same way too with that DM running the show. The player would have simply needed to mumble some abstraction about the wording of how HP works and been invincible.

I have to agree with CoL here. What are you talking about? If you have a rules complaint about the way things were handled, articulate it. If you don't, why bother posting in the first place?

On another note, there will be more playtesting with this character, but both myself and the DM haven't had the freetime we've wanted to sit down and run another one yet.

While I like giving them the human 'choose a favored class' option, because it makes a lot of sense, if we were going to specifically go about choosing favored classes for the half-orc my money is on Rogue as one of them. I mean, lets think about this, a race which is forced to live in the fringes of society and is accepted nowhere. Yup, that screams Rogue to me. Barbarian makes no sense whatsoever - that's sort of assuming there are societies of half-orcs, which would imply they are a race and not a cross-breed. And druid doesn't make sense as the favored class of any race except maybe some interpretations of elves or gnomes. (Ie, fae who shun contact with other races and live amongst nature). Basically, their favored classes aren't appropriate at all, especially druid. Fighter is probably the best second favored class, but if it must be a spellcaster then I have to go with Cleric. The downtrodden often turn towards religion as offering them an escape from the horror of their daily lives - and half-orcs are universally downtrodden.

Squirrelloid wrote:

I also agree with the penalty moving away from intelligence. In the original literary tradition for half-orcs (ie, Tolkien), they are intelligent and cunning, more so than full-blooded orcs and on par with humans. They obviously have trouble relating or interacting with humans, however.

I wouldn't compare the DnD half-orc to Tolkien's Uruk Hai.

Essentialy there is a lot of difference between them. Not at least that Uruk-Hai are the result of genetic engineering, Saruman has bred them for the purpose of being smarter than full-blood orcs, he probably "dismissed" every creature that would have gotten their mental capacity from the orc side of their genetic tree.
Also giving half-orcs a penalty to charisma instead of intelligence moves them a lot closer to dwarves. They only make difference in one of their bonuses anymore.

The only reason D+D has half-orcs is because of the Uruk-Hai (which are referred to as half-orcs multiple times). As such, they are the *only source material* we have. (No other fantasy setting even has half-orcs, at least not that I'm aware of).

Tolkien's true Half-Elves where given the choice to be either Elves or Humans, such as Elrond and Arwen. The D&D race would be better applied to the descendants of Elros who choose humankind. Aragorn would thus be a half-elf...

Well, technically only Elrond and Elros are half-elves (and Beren and Luthien's child Dior). They each get to choose which heritage they adhere to, after which they are treated as that race entirely (so Elros's descendants are entirely human - well, Dunadain, but that's not half-elf, that's 'human and special'. Arwen is an elf, not a half-elf. Etc...).

Half-Orcs more distant from humans than half-elves... um... huh? In which world? That's entirely a matter of fluff, and the OP's desire to make half-breeds inherit the same characteristic from the human race makes a lot of sense. One could argue that the Uruk-Hai are closer to humans (relative to orcs) than Elrond is (relative to elves) in LotR, which is actually the only relevant comparison I can think of. (D+D stories are derivative of the rules that existed when the stories were written, and thus cannot be used prescriptively.)

I also agree with the penalty moving away from intelligence. In the original literary tradition for half-orcs (ie, Tolkien), they are intelligent and cunning, more so than full-blooded orcs and on par with humans. They obviously have trouble relating or interacting with humans, however.

I can't agree with a faster dwarf movement speed though - that agrees with none of the source material.

Having race grant particular favored saves is interesting... I'm not sure how I feel about it.

For most of the weapon proficiencies, the bonus to classes which had martial already was the weapon familiarity rules (treating weapons with the race name as martial instead of exotic) - rules which don't help classes which do not receive martial proficiency. Making the human WP rule useful to classes which receive martial proficiencies is a good idea.

Here's how I would want poisons to be used, ideally.

(1) Differentiate by type (ingested vs. others especially).

(a) Ingested receives a perception check (vs. skill roll by poisoner). Failing to beat the perception DC means you eat/drink some of the poison bearing item. You get a perception check each round, and you consume an amount of the applied poison equal to the amount of poison bearing food/drink you consumed. (Defining solubilities of poisons would also be nice... but that might be too much detail).

(b) Injected poisons deliver a defined dose size every time they hit.

(c) contact poisons also deliver a defined dose every time they hit - limited by capillary action, ability to be absorbed by the skin, and so forth. It may be worthwhile to vary the delivered amount by the quality of the hit, but that's probably too complicated.

(2) Each poison has a defined MTD (maximum tolerable dose - for a medium creature, it'd be easy to explain how to find the right number for different body sizes, may vary by Con mod). If you ingest or otherwise receive more than that amount of a particular poison, you die. Its just a question of time/magic. Receiving less than or equal to the MTD, you suffer an increasingly debilitating penalty based on the amount of poison in your system.

(3) Each poison has a time it stays in the body. Some poisons would have infinite duration (like arsenic, which gets absorbed by tissue and just sits there), and others get flushed within relatively short amounts of time (eg, cyanide). As the poison gets flushed, the effects of the poison are appropriately decreased.

This accurately mimics real poison behavior, and isn't really that complicated mechanically.

Jason, I think Paizo is going about this backwards. Why are we starting with some of the weakest classes - we have no idea what standard the more powerful classes will ultimately be held to. We have no idea where the 'bar' is that classes have to measure up to. This is really problematic for providing useful feedback, because we have to start making assumptions about 'assuming nothing else changes with Wizards/Clerics/Druids' when in fact things are probably going to change with Wizards/Clerics/Druids.

Ideally, the proper way to do this would be to review aspects in this order:
(1) Spells - as they set the power of spellcasters, they need to be finished being tweaked before the spellcasting classes can be considered in any detail. If we don't know how good the spells are, we have no rational basis for making design decisions regarding the classes that cast them.
(2) Primary Spellcaster classes - Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Sorceror. With Spells dealt with, we'll have a good idea what will be acceptable for the classes themselves.
(3) Feats - Just like we couldn't deal with the spellcasters without dealing with spells first, we really can't meaningfully discuss classes like the Fighter or the Ranger unless we know how good the feats are.
(4) Combat Options/Mechanics. We'll need to talk about these in close proximity to feats.
(5) Primary Martial Characters (Fighter/Barbarian/Ranger/Paladin). Without knowing exactly how combat options are going to work, and without a good idea what feats can do, no truly meaningful discussion can be had here.
(6) Skills - not quite as critical, but it will help with the assessment of the skillful classes. (We'll also need to know about feats for them - which is why they're the third group we're dealing with)
(7) Skillful Classes (Rogue/Monk/Bard)

This ordering would start with the highest power abilities and classes first, establish a benchmark by which the rest of the game can/should be measured, and then go about making sure the other classes/systems do indeed measure up. Starting with the melee classes is like firing at a target 500' away while wearing a blindfold - you know there's an appropriate target out there somewhere, but you have no idea where and hitting it will be pure luck.

Alignment pre-requisites are bad for the game because all they do is limit character concepts. Why is LG the only alignment that can have crusading Fighter/Cleric wannabes? Why must Monks be Lawful? (Seriously, we have great real-world examples of chaotic disciplines, like Drunken Masters. I could go on.) And why can't we have the Noble Savage (LG/N Barbarian)? A classic archetype if ever there was one.

Every alignment pre-requisite demonstrates a lack of imagination on the part of some writer. They should all be abolished unilaterally and without remorse.

Guys, the thing you're missing about feat trees is that they often take a very limited resource (feats) and set them on fire to perform just one trick. This is not acceptable when the other class paradigm involves gaining *multiple spells per level*, each of which is a viable trick, and that's in addition to a lesser but still substantial number of feats.

Example:
The TWFing feat tree is completely unacceptable - it should not take 3 feats (4 with Supreme TWF from non-core) to do the trick of fighting with two weapons marginally well (you need additional feats to even be *good* at it). It should take one. And that's still not a great feat because it makes you only marginal at fighting with two weapons.

At most a fighter should be spending two feats per trick if he wants to be at all effective, which means the basic TWFing feat should probably include all of the following:

Two-Weapon Fighting [Combat]:
Pre-Requisites: BAB+1, Dex 15
*1 off-hand attack per on-hand attack
*no penalties for using a non-light off-hand weapon (suffers only -2/-2)
*full str bonus with off-hand weapon
*a Shield bonus to AC equal to 1 +1/off-hand attack

(so it starts at 2 and goes up to 5, mostly competitive with having used a shield, except you obviously don't have a shield which can hold other enchantments)

That's just one feat. There should be a second feat, probably a tactical feat, which includes abilities like TW Rend. Say something like the following:

Two-Weapon Mastery [Combat] [Tactical]
Pre-Requisites: BAB +6, Dex 17
The TWM feat contains a number of benefits that trigger when certain conditions are met:
(A) Whenever you hit a creature with an attack from two or more different weapons you are attacking with, you may rend for 2x highest base weapon damage dice + 1.5x str mod.
(B) Whenever you are wielding two or more weapons and do one of the following - use Combat Expertise, fight defensively, or take a full defense action - double the defensive benefits from doing so.
(C) Whenever you are wielding two weapons and make a disarm or trip attempt, you may sacrifice additional attacks from the opposite hand (starting with the highest attack bonus remaining) to aid in the attempt. Each sacrificed attack nets you a +6 bonus on the trip or disarm attempt.

Feats seriously need to be that good for the fighter as it stands to be worth the paper its printed on. (And as my copy is digital, that's not worth very much). Because the fighter really should be good at 5 things by 10th level, and he can't be if every trick requires 6 feats to do well.

tergiver wrote:

Rip His Arm Off (Ex) - After bringing an opponent to zero hit points, the barbarian can tear off an appropriately sized chunk of the fallen foe and bash another opponent with it as an immediate action. If the melee attack succeeds, the target takes 1d6+strength bludgeoning damage and must make a will save (at some DC) or be dazed for a round. Barbarians must have a free hand or be wielding a two-handed weapon to use this rage ability.

I love it... should probably be a move action though.

Then it would never get used. Why use it instead of continuing a full attack action?