Trikk's page

That is what turned me off right from the git-go. I suppose in a way that is shallow of me, the game-play should have been a priority, and player interaction should have been at the top of the list, but visual style immediately suggested a juvenile theme that was about as attractive and interesting as Candy-Land and I never got close enough to find out first hand whether it was just the overwrapping of a good game. I figured I would hear good things about it if it were worth my time, especially since my guild had a sizeable contingent in its beta.

Presentation is actually important to the gameplay experience. I don't follow Epic Games assertion that "eyecandy = gameplay", but the artistic style of a game definitely affects the experience. It's not about texture resolution or fancy lighting effects, but the basic character design, environments, etc.

For example, TF2 would still be playable without the iconic characters, but far less so. I don't think WoW would have exploded as it did without the recognizable setting and notable locations from the strategy game series. If PFO fails to find an enjoyable artistic style and just looks like any old fantasy MMORPG from the 00s, it won't ruin the game but it will be hard to gain mainstream traction.

WildStar had a style that felt like "calculated whackiness". It was hard to feel a connection to your own character, which is so very important in the MMORPG genre. It was hard to make your character stand out and everything was the same flavor of unicorn poop. I'm sure there are some people that enjoy the aesthetic, but those people are probably not in the PC MMORPG subscriber demographic.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

The stuff people often think is meaningful is really just visual effects and has no relationship to the underlying combat mechanic or the heartbeat. It's an illusion.

Would you say that this illusion is important to the player experience?

For some players it's crucial to the experience. Some players still play UO.

This post about combat ?

Is QTE = Quick Time Event (combat)?

Are you saying you'd prefer more actiony, manual aiming combat?

=

I've decided I like actiony combat too but in mmorpgs if I can't get that then I like much slower and thoughtful approach of action counter-action, predict action, force action, make the most of a bad scenario etc type of combat. I think that could be up there with actiony combat but for different reasons.

Not saying the above is anywhere near that, yet, but I like the slower pace the slow strikes - it just needs more reaction to actions as cosmetics to the skills visual cue of success vs failure of your character skill chosen.

The other thing is as with graphics finessing towards a style again for tons of players on screen and for tons of different systems as well as combat, I think I'm happy with combat being abstracted. For games where I'm in the sound and fury of combat, I don't know that mmorpgs are my top option for that experience.

Tbh, I like the sound of what Ryan mentions above there. I have no idea if it's related to QTE however; it does sound related to the 6-second turn that's been described to make your moves to gain condition advantages. I don't think it necessarily falls into the longer you play more uber you...

Yes, that post and yes, Quick Time Events. QTEs don't require facing or positioning, they are simply one keypress during a certain time window to get an effect. It's widely regarded as bad game design, because the player is more immersed and entertained by the experience if they get to directly control their character instead of just making a simple A, B or C choice (where one is wrong, one is sub-optimal and one is optimal).

I personally prefer manual aiming combat, but just making it directly controlled by the player doesn't make it fun and interesting. There's plenty of awful action-oriented MMORPGs out there. I've had fun with auto-aim MMORPGs, but I feel that they've basically been done as well as they can be. In its core, it's a very distant and unexciting way of doing things. Action combat has still not achieved the same level of polish of the potential that exists.

When it comes to truly massive scale combat, it'll never feel responsive and fun when it comes to the combat, those fights are more about politics and large-scale tactics than the individuals enjoyment. At least until we achieve ludicrous computing power and network communications.

This game will be very silly if the maximum rendering distance is 120ft, or even 100 yards.

"Stealth" (aka what any rational person would call invisibility) is extremely powerful in sandbox PvP games.

It's an offensive and a defensive ability. It allows you to pick your fights, to scout, to position yourself, to time your attack, to lure people away from safety, to ambush, to steal, etc, etc.

In DotA and HoN you spend gold that could be used to deal more damage, take less damage, control the enemy heroes, get more mana, etc, only to detect invisible enemy heroes.

Invisibility is literally so powerful that Tolkien wrote a trilogy about a ring that granted it.

In games with invisibility and PvP, people always max out the counter-stealth ability, if there is one. They grab talents, feats or put skill points into detecting invisible players because it's so extremely powerful to become invisible.

Invisibility is the kind of ability that needs severe limitations and a plethora of counters to remain optional rather than mandatory.

A game is about making easy things hard. But simple things should be simple.

Workflow is about making complex tasks easy.

A game is not about a hard task, but it may have complexity.

o R

lam

Yes, putting on a pair of pants should be a simple click while defeating a dragon should require knowledge, tactics and skill.

I think Ultima Online among other MMORPGs have shown that players do not know what they want. Players think they want easy, safe, fast but when games adapt features to make it easier, safer and faster the players get bored and leave.

WoW is another good example. Dungeons and raids are too hard! World PvP is dangerous! Traveling takes too long! Now the players are bored out of their minds because they clear all content in no time, there's never any sense of danger or drama or urgency and the world feels tiny.

Look at Diablo 3 vs Path of Exile. Diablo 3 is a straight up smoother experience than Diablo 2. There's no risk of PvP, there's no permanent choices for your character, anyone can beat the game if they put the time in. Path of Exile instead embraced the difficulties and challenges of D2 and it's been able to maintain and grow their player population continuously.

Games should be considered art. An artist doesn't ask the public what they want to hear, see, smell, taste or touch. They create a work of art and then the players experience it. Crowdforging should be considered critique rather than dictation; we are telling them how we feel but they have the responsibility of turning our thoughts into a great game.

I don't think any MMORPG has had a good combat system. I've never played an MMORPG because of its sweet combat, and most people I've known who played MMORPGs with me have had other games they switch to for actual entertaining fighting mechanics.

Tab-targeting and homing attacks don't make for very exciting combat. A few games have tried getting away from that, but have never had as polished systems as you find in non-MMORPGs or have simply failed in being good at the actual MMORPG part.

For good combat I would look at games like War of the Roses, Pirates, Vikings and Knights 2, Chivalry, and any other titles that rely solely on combat to draw players in and maintain their interest. People don't play WoW for 5 years because it's amazingly fun to press [TAB][1][1][1][2][1][3].

Maybe it's just me, but I like when games are a bit mysterious and everything isn't delivered on a platter for you. I prefer an RPG like Nethack over an RPG like Diablo 3, and an FPS like Quake over an FPS like Borderlands 2. Games that don't show you exact, scientific data over every possible equipment choice makes it much more fun to try different things.

Eve Online is called Spreadsheets in Space by many, because that's mostly how you play it. You look at spreadsheets, determine dps and there's very little mystique to playing it. There's an optimal way to play and very many bad ways of playing. If you come to a fleet with a ship that has a unique fitting, people will mostly ridicule you because it's not the mathematically most efficient way of doing what you are doing.

I think this is unavoidable if you add all the stats easily accessible to the player. It's like allowing your players to read the Bestiary and Gamemaster Guide in pen and paper. If someone decides to use sub-optimal weaponry and such, everyone will immediately trash him and there will be no point in making characters that are not optimized. This issue is only exacerbated in a hardcore PvP ruleset MMO like this will be.

All players should have paper character sheets. Tablets and laptops are great for many things, but the paper character sheet has yet to be bested. It never has to load, it suffers no slowdowns, it never runs out of battery, it can't lose your information. You can have a fiddly copy on a tablet if you like, but keep a paper copy there in front of you as well.

You should have all of their attacks noted, as well as common modifiers that you might use. Your power attacks, your rapid shots, your common buffs. Even if it just says "Bless +1 toHit" it will speed things up when people don't have to recall everything. Also, roll dice together when they make sense but don't roll everything at once. Sorting through the dice can waste more time than it saves.

There will always be bots and people trying to hack the game in some way. You simply cannot eliminate it. What you can do is:

1) Reduce incentive for your character being awake and active 24/7.
2) Make gathering, crafting and fighting dynamic enough that a simple script can't be as effective as a thinking human being.
3) Less static elements: mobs don't respawn in the exact same spot, trees don't grow back instantly in place of a previous tree, etc.

And if someone still manages to code a bot that acts just like a human and can deal with all of this... it won't be nearly as jarring as the naked people running back and forth in other games. Imagine if there are bots but they are almost undetectable to you unless you try to talk to them. I think that would make it seamless enough that it wouldn't matter if they are there.

Also, please don't buy anything in-game from a third-party site. Many bots are simply run to make a profit. Don't give them money and the problem goes away.

Late to the thread, but I agree with Andius. I was disappointed to see that crowdforging poll.

I think we need more information from GW. If the poll is for content at the EE release, pets are the logical choice, there's no point in a mount or fast travel until there are places to go. Pets add more to do, and increase diversity, which I think is the most important thing early on.

It's obvious to me why most people chose mounts. The majority of people here have played MMORPGs before, and in almost every MMORPG your mount (or collection of mounts) is central to your character. You spend almost as much time on it as you do running around on foot, not counting combat situations.

Pets on the other hand are usually the business of a small subset of classes, of which many players aren't interested in playing. Pets are also usually very robotic in behavior and you have to micromanage everything they do or they will go off and find random enemies to pull to your group while you're busy fighting something else.

Slightly off topic...

I hate crossbows just as much as you do OP, that's why I have a deity in my setting called Bowus (LN) who swoops down and pecks the eyes out of any PC that buys a crossbow instead of a bow. Any advantage a crossbow has over a bow is unrealistic and as a houserule I ban anything that's not like in real life from my games. This is not a kindergarten where people can just make stuff up, people pay us to play this game so we should take it seriously.

Can't wait for the Ultimate Skinning playtest.

First off yes, I admit it. I'm the kind of guy who don't like change.

This is really where the OP should have ended. The whole sentiment is identical to any "old man rants about new things and hates change" sentiment that's ever been presented:

1. There's nothing wrong with what we have.
2. The things that are wrong with what we have are hard/impossible to fix.
3. If we fix what's wrong with what we have, some new issues are bound to creep up.
4. I have to get the new thing because everyone else is stupid and doesn't use the old thing.
5. I don't like change.

Conclusion: it's never worth developing or improving anything because that means we might have to change or learn something new. Also new things cost money and I hate to pay for stuff, especially in this economy/with these prices/a can of coke cost 2 cents when I was a kid.

The thing is, this argument always comes up whenever there's anything new. Some people just hate change, even though they eventually, just like the OP, come to accept it.

Why would I want a vinyl player when there's perfectly good music on the radio?
Why would I want a HDTV, I can already see everything on my old CRT?
Why would I want the new Windows when my old version can handle 16 megs of RAM perfectly?

Compare Diablo 3 with Diablo 2. I think it's obvious that easy respecs kill any replayability that a game has. In D3, there is absolutely no reason to ever re-experience the early levels of your class, and very few people ever do. D2 survived more than a decade because people strive to create the perfect character.

I think people ask for respecs for the same reason that the UO community asked for Trammel. They see it as an easy fix to an annoying part of the game, not realizing that the struggle is what makes the game engaging to play. Chewing through content is so ridiculously fast in video games compared to tabletops - making it less replayable than the tabletop version sounds insane to me.

On top of this, if the skill system works like in EVE then there is literally no reason to respec. Just start training the other stuff you want to do. You're not punished for picking up new skills.

Wow, that's rich. Using your own abilities and equipment to your advantage means a +1 CR. Look dude, I don't think you're the one who needs to be poking fun at other peoples' encounters here. Have you actually looked at the example they use for "favorable conditions"?

Gamemastering wrote:

Favorable Terrain for the PCs: An encounter against a monster that's out of its favored element (like a yeti encountered in a sweltering cave with lava, or an enormous dragon encountered in a tiny room) gives the PCs an advantage. Build the encounter as normal, but when you award experience for the encounter, do so as if the encounter were one CR lower than its actual CR.

Unfavorable Terrain for the PCs: Monsters are designed with the assumption that they are encountered in their favored terrain—encountering a water-breathing aboleth in an underwater area does not increase the CR for that encounter, even though none of the PCs breathe water. If, on the other hand, the terrain impacts the encounter

...

But you are stacking the deck against the orcs unfavorably when you throw an ambush at them like that with traps and all. None of those examples in the text are based on rules (a yeti isn't any worse off in a hot cave with lava than the PCs, nor is he any worse off than in any cave with environmental hazards - the dragon is of unspecified size and a tiny room would be bad for the PCs too) besides the example with light, which is easily countered with the very common Darkvision racial trait, or simple spells. It's their fault for not having those tools, right?

Saying that kobolds are better than orcs, because if you throw the orcs into an unfavorable circumstance they lose, is proving my point that the CR should be increased because the kobolds are effectively more of a challenge than they would be under neutral conditions.

Checkmate.

My money would be on the kobolds, honestly. Mostly since the kobolds would not play fairly. Due to the orcs' pathetic AC, I'm pretty sure the kobolds would dismantle them pretty hard.

For example, the encounter would go like this...

Kobolds lurking in wait (Perception DC 20, 15 base, +5 for distance)
Orcs wander within the desired range. Kobolds take their surprise round. The kobolds fire their crossbows at orc #1. Once they've dealt enough damage to drop him to 0 HP, they shoot at the next guy.

Next turn, the kobolds flee. The orcs give chase, but end up stepping on the caltrops that the kobolds set behind them. The orcs suffer damage and end up at 1/2 movement speed. The battle is now over, because the kobolds will kite the orcs and focus fire them down.

Uhm, you do realize that the CR increases for the side with favorable conditions, right? All your post proves is that some people still don't understand how to make encounters and put a proper CR on them.

Myself and my group found the 3.5 Turning to be spot on and easy. Not really sure how weird comes into the picture.

In other words "I completely and utterly disagree".

Maybe you should take your time and read those articles instead of simply refuting the title of one of them with a childish "nuh-uh"? I mean, if that doesn't interfere with your double and triple posting activities too much.

The only advantage of 3.5 Turn Undead is that it's much slower, so you have time to go get your old 3.5 books and throw them at the GM when he forces you to use poorly designed mechanics in your Pathfinder game.

I have the same amount of experience in medieval battle as you do.

None.

My knowledge comes from history, which I did major in if we are throwing out credentials rather than discussing "facts".

Your link only makes me think your armor is even less effective than I thought. Compare the armor you linked to an actual picture of the armor in the wikipedia link.

You will notice A LOT more plates on the one used in actual combat as compared to the one made for show.

As you point out, this is worn under a hauberk. Why? Because it isn't very good at preventing death without a Hauberk because it doesn't protect you very well.

So at this point you are wearing your "mobile" armor which isn't particularly practical unless you are also wearing, basically, a chain shirt.

That won't impede you at all...

Wait, so you are arguing from a "historical" view point with someone who has actual hands-on experience? I just want to clear this up for people who were actually attributing any weight to your arguments.

It's been proven time and time again just how mobile armors are and how the pop culture interpretation of them are nothing but modern myths (knights being winched down into their saddles, unable to stand up if knocked on their back, etc).

If you really did study history, I find it odd that you would not at least have gone to some historical society's reenactment where they could show you all of this in person.

Of course, it is more physically exhausting to wear extra weight on your body, but that's not what ACP is asserting. ACP tells us that a person who is perfectly capable of performing an action will fail if he wears armor. According to ACP, you not only lose speed while wearing armor, but you lose the fundamental capacity to even do the task at hand.

magnuskn wrote:

It will be immensely appealing to some people, I can tell you that. Depending on how feat starved your build is, it can actually be a hindrance, but for classes which don't depend as much on feats to be good, it's a boon.

No class is feat starved. This is one of the silliest myths of forums.

The idea that no class is feat starved is a myth.

Did you actually read my post? I only forgot twice.

Please stop nitpicking. Forgetting, not bringing money, same thing. Forgetting is actually a more reasonable excuse.

And if you were seriously concerned about me mooching, would you not say something about it? Like, "Hey you owe me money for the last game?"

I would, but many people wouldn't. You seem to completely lack any sort of empathy or understanding of social situations, so I'll clue you in:

People don't want to nag. The nagging wife is an especially negative stereotype that many women hate to act as, so it's absolutely understandable that they didn't pester you about the money that you should have brought with you 3 times.

Why should they have to take upon themselves to act negatively in a situation where you are the offending party? And if you act in real life like you act here, you probably would have argued with them if you should even pay them or not. It's not a conflict that they should have to take, you should be excusing yourself to them in front of the others.

Please, like that hasn't happened to you every once in awhile, where you thought you had cash on you only to open your wallet and see it empty, or with only half the amount you thought you had?

The difference here is that I repay my debt the next day, or in worst case whenever I get money for it. I might even loan from a closer friend if a more distant friend had to loan me money on the spot. I would absolutely go out of my way to get money if I forgot to bring money again, and I would feel very bad about putting someone else in the same situation again. Simply going "whatevs" and ignoring your supposed friends is violating social norms.

One slip up is enough to get me labeled as a mil-moocher? Wow, if I'm being overly defensive, you must be being overly offensive.

Again, you are lacking even the most rudimentary social understanding. From your post I took it that you asked once if you could have some milk, and then drank of their milk every session from then on. Not only that, but you were expressly told not to drink the milk and you did it anyway. This is just a "WTF?" moment for me as a fellow human being. If I tell you that you cannot have something of mine and you simply take it and consume it against my will, that is simply stealing.

Now, take this together with your past history of just not caring about others money, food and even the game itself, I see little reason to keep you around. Your behavior is extremely anti-social. If you were a young child, say 10 or below, it would at least be understandable (even if it wouldn't be acceptable).

Stop attacking a strawman and actually read the OP.

I'm making an analogy to attempt to explain why these social norms exist and why what you did was wrong. Now, you had plenty of time to put this down to Asperger's or some similar condition, but as it stands so far you are just a jerk with no excuse for your behavior.

Edit:

Well, if there's one thing I got out of this thread, it's that it helped me decide that I was indeed not guilty, since I know the internet has a penchant for giving people the freedom to act overly viscous when tearing into other people.

I was looking for a "Well, it was X because of Y" and to be fair, some people gave me that. Other people blasted me for being "Overly defensive"

Wow. Just, wow. You decided that you were not guilty. After admitting that you did everything, you decide that you were not guilty.

You broke the most basic of social norms numerous times, without regret and without ever attempting to fix anything.

The only way you'll be able to stay in any of the other groups is if they are as socially oblivious as you are.

No. I just think they were overreacting. Is there some kind of 3 strikes law? 3 times you don't pay = getting booted?

My list of offenses that can be directly attributed to me are...

-Didn't pay 3 times (2 if you don't count the first)
-Drank the host's milk without permission once
-An occasional swear word

You're either being hyper-defensive about this or you're completely socially inept.

Not paying for a meal and still eating your share of it is acceptable once with the "forgot" excuse. The second time you're taking advantage of me and being rude. Eating less than your share is expected, if I even let you have any of my food. The third time I would take it as a direct insult and assume that you would never pay for your meal again as long as I'm there.

How exactly did you expect to get something to eat if you didn't bring any money? Do you often leave your house, planning on staying away for an extended period of time, with no means of sustenance? I mean, you are an adult right? You take care of yourself and make sure you don't starve or dehydrate on a daily basis?

This has nothing to do with the actual cost of the food and whether or not I can pay for it, but rather the fact that you have decided without asking me that I should treat you to things that you want. This is the same reason as the milk-mooching by the way. It doesn't matter how much it costs or how much work it is to replace it, but the fact that you don't respect other people's property.

Picture it the other way around: what if you had paid for pizza 3 times and they forgot to order it 3 times in a row? What if you pitched in for milk and snacks and they just kept the money because they "forgot" to buy it every time?

This is of course not to say that me and my group hasn't paid for people before. There's always certain kinds of people who, despite making as much or more than everyone else, never has any money. You pay for their food, with the understanding between you that it is what you're doing. It's not a loan and you're not paying me back. I'm simply treating you out of my own free will because you are a good player and a good friend (and you suck with money).

Not allowing swearing is simply foreign to me, so I won't comment on that. I doubt I could get along with people who can't handle normal everyday speech and would require me to put on a professional face at a social gathering with friends like that. Nobody I've met, besides religious fundamentalists, has an aversion to swearing in a casual environment.

Bad art won't make me ignore a good game, but good art will make me pay attention to a bad game. I think it's mostly good to pull people in with, but then again some people refuse to play certain races or classes simply because of the art associated with it.

So... you want a social conventions RAW vs RAI thread?

It seems that you admit that they were right in all of their reasons and you just want us to discuss whether the reasons were bad enough to kick you out.

Second: Now I'll probably get some flak for this one. But a certain player with levels of druid who is pretty damn bad at not following rules (took a while before he started rolling handle animal with out me telling him) would often have his AC 5ft into a flank, without any orders, and I'd stop him

"Why is your AC doing that?"
"For a flank"
"Do you really think an AC with 2 int understands what a flank is?"
"....."
If the AC in question was a wolf, I might have let it slide. That being said, I don't mind ACs being used as flank buddies, it's just that they aren't smart enough to step into a flank, the player is going to have to do that.

This is role playing game mechanics, nothing more and nothing less. Flank is a mechanic that abstractly describes something that happens in combat. It is not something you have to understand the benefits of to use, any more than you need to understand the benefits of running to move somewhere faster than double moving.

It's on the same level of stupidity as saying that an animal is too stupid to understand what attacks of opportunity are, for example. If something can take actions and has even the most rudimentary survival instincts, it will be able to use most if not all combat actions.

Of course, you can certainly role play mechanics, play as if the grid exists across the whole game world, have characters roll Int checks when they are selecting feats at level up to see if they can make a good choice or if they have to select a feat that's bad for their character, etc. It might be fun for certain groups but it will not work if you suddenly implement it in a normal campaign.

Technically: humans.

This item is a very special case and is not supposed to be UMD'd. It already works for non-Monks, so there is no need to emulate a monk (not that it's possible to emulate a class anyway, as I correctly stated before I was told I was wrong).

Penultimate Combat, with classes such as the Half-Ninja and Semi-Samurai.

Another successful MacAilbert troll thread.

Whatever they do, it should address the weak mounted combat and stealth rules.

Well low magic also means less headbands of intellect, rings of protection, cloaks of resistance and other items spellcasters love to load up on to protect themselves.

Spell casters have a much easier time crafting than martial characters. Less skill point investment and at least one feat less needed (might need Skill Focus depending on stats and class).

Yeah, and just because something has an evil alignment doesn't mean it's dangerous. A nasty old woman who is racist and hates children may certaintly be evil, but not dangerous, so you shouldn't kill her. An evil mayor that uses deception and intimidation may be evil, but not necessarily dangerous. Heck, the lawful ruler might be ambitious and cruel, but a paladin would still need to follow the law he lays down.

That's why there are unarmed strikes and saps and that feat that let's you cause non-lethal damage with bludgeoning weapons and the merciful weapon special quality.

You are confusing our western ideals of good with the in-game version of good. You can be completely racist and hate children while still being Lawful Good. Deception is chaotic, but intimidation can be fine for any alignment depending on who you do it against. Cruelty is the only inherently evil act you mention.

I think you are a little confused OP. That's not the definition of a balanced game, that's the definition of an addicting game.

Blizzard quickly figured out that when you nerf a class, players of that class leave the game in greater numbers than other players come back. The vast majority of players, PvPers excluded, could not care less if the game was tilted in their class' favor.

There were long periods for pretty much every single class where that class was so easy to play that anyone could be great at it. That kept people playing. What you have to realize is that a lot, probably most, of WoW's players are not gamers. Therefore balance is not a goal in itself.

It doesn't set out to be a competitive game. It's a social experience first, it's a highly rewarding game and least of all it is challenging. As long as players get invited to groups so that they can socialize and improve their character, they will stay subscribed and WoW makes money.

The problem with a P&P RPGs (and PvP in WoW) is the human factor. You are no longer playing against a machine but a real life person. That person must also feel rewarded or he will lose interest. In PvP this means that people quit if there's a class that completely dominated. In P&P this means that the GM gets bored and doesn't feel any joy in playing as he's simply an XP and loot dispenser to the overpowered PCs.

My wife allowed our friend's half-orc fighter to dual wield bastard swords at normal TWF penalties due to the character having 20+ Str and Dex. It was pretty awesome.

Pfeh, a real munchkin wouldn't rest until she could dual wield (duel weld) bastard swords without penalty. While firing a bow at the same time.

As a free action.

Through a wall.

Under water.

This doesn't work.

I've GMed for this player and have killed his characters a total of 11 times in the same campaign. Without going out of my way to do so.

Eleven times.

I hope he had at least one Catfolk character.

You should be happy that someone who's playing narcissistic know-it-alls is bad at making mechanically competent characters. Imagine if he had the power to back up his nonsense when push comes to shove? If he's inferior to equal level PCs then he's much easier to keep in line.

I suppose it depends on what it means to be "similar to 4e." In my mind it means that the casters and non-casters will have to have similar, if not identical, mechanics, just as they do in 4e. Otherwise the sheer difference in mechanics alone will compel people to say one or the other is "unbalanced."

That's the lazy fix of 4e. If everyone has to use the same mechanic then the game isn't balanced, it's just lacking in variation. You're just removing the choice from the player and any options he does get is simple recoloring. A well-balanced game would have unique flavor to every character without making anyone feel like they are lacking or behind on the power curve.

A rogue/assassin disguised as AM BATTY. Barbarian mounts and tries to take off, giving you enough time to study for 3 rounds and Death Attack him.

The real question is if I can take one sword and use it as raw material to craft three swords.

i love haste. and i beleive it's a little overrated. much like fly, invisibility and black tentacles. there are dozens of counters to invisibility, flight can be stopped by lower indoor ceilings or other flying creatures, and black tentacles fails to discriminate between friend and foe.

This is just wrong. First of all, and this is something that everyone forgets all the time, players have no control over the environment. In a specific case, your party might be able to take the fight where they'd like to, but in the vast majority of cases you will fight in a place where the GM dictates.

Second, before Invisibility there are no counters to Invisibility. Detect Magic helps you discover that there are invisible creatures (in case of magically invisible creatures) but it doesn't prevent them from exploiting the spell's effects. Scent (and in theory Perception) helps you find the target but likewise does not counter the effect.

Even in a 5 foot high tunnel, flight is an advantage. Flight is an advantage as long as you gain no benefit from having your feet planted on the ground. Flying is not only of great use in combat but helps you avoid a great many number of traps and environmental hazards. It simply removes a lot of possibilities from the game. It limits the GM and it forces party members to always have a means of ranged attack.

Black Tentacles attacking friends is not any more of a problem than Fireball damaging friends. It's a non-issue, because you know the effects before you use it. Haste is overrated, but it does have some issues like affecting too many targets too early.

Wow, I never realized that people role play classes. It's just a mechanic, treating the classes (or any other mechanic really) as something that actually exists in the world breaks all immersion for me.

I don't think you're an RPer at heart, you seem mostly concerned with game balance. Some people will call you an a##&$~$ for it but it's your game = your rules.

I think we need some math to settle this.

Compare the paladin to other non-blasty classes vs non-evil and vs evil targets.

If Smite Evil is overpowered, then the paladin should be on par with the other classes or close enough that his boost against evil targets puts him well ahead of the pack.

Smite Evil would of course be a balanced class feature if the paladin is below par against non-evil targets and on par or slightly ahead of other classes against evil targets.

Any takers?

This is only from Core and APG, feel free to add more from other sources.

Specific: grants a bonus specifically to ranged weapons
Versatile: grants a bonus that can be applied to ranged weapons
Hard fit: impractical with ranged weapons

Classes

Specific

Archetypes

Specific

The number of classes, archetypes and combinations thereof is getting a bit overwhelming due to the amount of content in this game. That's why I decided to kind of categorize it so that it would be easier to find your options for certain character concepts. I plan to add prestige classes and maybe feats and traits later, as well as take suggestions on how to improve this reference system and ways to apply it to other concepts than ranged weapons.

Finger of death is only the most weakest example really.

SR? That is just Armor Class for spells. Paladins still have to hit, never saw where smite makes paladin's attack a magic missile.

Not everything has SR anyways.. Everything has AC though.

Fort saves? Sure.. but If fort don't work, I use will saves. Or reflex. Or hell, I just use spells that give them no saves and bypass SR.. Like rays of acid for example.

A wizard though isn't concerned with damage. His power out succeeds that.
He just eliminates the target all together.

Whenever there's a martial class balance discussion, I picture the wizard sitting quietly in a dark corner, smiling and rubbing his hands.

I think if you are an optimizer type of person then I can definitely see where one would have an issue with it. One of our new saturday players is an optimizer and was over last night flipping through the manual thinking about his character with a 10 point buy and discussing it (in a constructive way).

I don't think you've ever played with a munchkin. They absolutely love low-powered campaigns and challenging content as that makes their optimization stand out more above the rest. They play to "win" and if you make it harder to "win" their efforts will make it all the more worth it.

Meanwhile the players who enjoy making diverse and unique characters will be harshly punished for their efforts to do so in a low point buy game. Not only will they simply be worse at everything, they will probably die so often as to make character development largely pointless.

As a side note, saying that you're The Best GM Alive and that your players love you and have no problems ever is not giving you any bonus points in this discussion as there is nothing to base that on. I've played with plenty of GMs who thought their campaigns were great while the players had no fun at all.

Some people will dump stats no matter what option you give them unless you have a house rule at the table that says "thou shalt not dump stats".

It depends on the power level of the game you want to run. I dislike 20 point and higher buys because the players start getting to hit a level of power that puts them at a place where to challenge them, I need to bump up encounter difficulty in one fashion or the other.

15 points is not bad. 10 point buy allows a character to be good at one thing, and average at everything else.

The lower the stats the more the party depends on each other I find. The higher the stats, the more lone-wolf a character can be and the easier it is for that character to take on multiple roles. 15 points is a happy middle ground.

It is again subject to the style of game that you wish to run. One of the reasons I disliked 4e was that I thought and still think that stats are relatively meaningless. The PCs tend to be super-good at many things, and the fact that defense scores tied into two abilities meant that a character could jack up the three stats that mattered and walk away with high attack bonuses and defense scores, to the point where you could just drop the six traditional attributes and make a "physical" score and a "mental" score and just go off of that. (again... IMO)

I seriously question the balance of a 15 point buy no dump stats party. We always allowed dump stats but usually the limit was 8. The SAD spell caster will walk away happy with an almost maxed stat while the rest of the party will struggle tremendously.

The rogue will be a non-factor in fights. Monks especially, but a lot of other heavily MAD classes might as well be banned. As always in 3.x, people keep limiting physical damage classes when they are almost never the problem or the dominant force.

At level 5+, the arcane spell caster is taking out dozens of enemies at a time in the surprise round. The divine spell caster, with a few rounds of prep easily surpass the fighting-oriented characters. The pet classes can go back to camp to craft while their pet handles things just as good as the rogue can.

I have never seen a campaign where the GM went: "damn, this rogue (or paladin or cavalier, etc) is really breaking stuff for me! I need to come up with a way to challenge him without killing the rest of the party in the process."

Neither have I as a player experienced that one of the warrior-types have made my character irrelevant. While higher point buy certainly is welcome for a spell caster, I find that they can always rely on one stat to do the job for them while other classes need different stats for dealing damage and survival.

I don't see how stat-dependent 3rd is compared to 2nd and 1st.

And...

15 point buy has a couple of effects:

- More min-maxing and munchkinism
- More GM fudging to avoid TPK in every other encounter
- Less role playing as everyone has to focus on survival
- More reliance on the GM leading you around
- Less opportunity for sandbox play and player initiatives

Sure you can have fun with 15 point buy, but it becomes more of a 4E style game that is entirely focused on the board game aspect than a traditional D&D experience. Since people came to PF because they didn't enjoy playing board games like 4E it's no wonder that most people don't like playing it the way that you do.

20 point buy is a lot more relaxed since players have versatility to handle things in more ways than simply fighting it out. You can role play more because your character has means to back up their own words and the GM is not playing your characters for you.

A lot of players dislike fudging and would rather know that they aren't being kept alive at every turn by the will of the GM, but the unfortunate effect of 15 point buy is that you get smashed a lot harder a lot more often so that control ends up firmly in the court of the GM in every fight.

Of course, a lot of GMs enjoy that power over life and death which is why some still use 15 point buy. Some GMs get off on having total control over the party at all times and directing what they do, basically having the players as slaves that must do whatever you say.

15 point buy is simply inferior if you don't want to play a board game.