Hi, all! I'm building a character for an upcoming Iron Gods campaign, and the build that I'm considering is a Barbarian(Numerian Liberator) with either Eldritch Heritage(Stormborn) or the VCM(Sorcerer) for the same bloodline, if the DM allows. I probably won't actually have him be Ulfen, as I don't want an exact lookalike, but this was my question: how reliant do characters in Iron Gods get on technology? I kind of thought it would be cool if this character was a follower of Erastil or Gozreh and came to Numeria to try and convince people of the evils of technology. It would be nice if there were options aside from technology so I could keep that theme for a while. Am I going to be shafted trying to RP a tech-hater in Iron Gods?
Testing a 6th level Warrior against 5 orcs in a tavern. Testing normal rules first (no maneuvers), then variant 1 (maneuvers only on iterative attacks), then variant 2 (maneuvers with every attack).
So, here's my thing: I've never run or played combat against a creature larger than Huge. But, as far as I can tell from the RAW, combat against larger creatures ends up being kind of anti-climactic. I imagine four humans fighting a Great Red Wyrm and it just seems kinda silly. They're either all hacking at its ankles or flying around it like sparrows pecking at a tiger.
BUT, like I said, I've never actually played or run combat against something like that before, so I'm looking for advice and suggestions. How do you run combat against massive monsters?
This thread discusses radical alterations of the Hit Point mechanic and the overall combat system of Pathfinder.
From Ultimate Combat:
Hit points are an abstraction. When a fighter gains a level, his body does not suddenly become more resistant to damage. A sword’s strike does not suddenly do proportionately less damage. Rather, hit points suggest that the fighter has undergone more training, and while he may have improved his ability to deal with wounds to a small degree, the hit points gained at higher levels reflect less his capacity for physical punishment and more his skill at avoiding hits, his ability to dodge and twist and turn. Each loss of hit points, in this case, suggests that he is becoming progressively less nimble over the course of combat—in other words, that the decreasing hit points are a marker for his overall endurance and condition. It’s not quite as satisfying, however, to roll a critical hit and then tell a player that his opponent ducked out of the way, but that the sword’s slash made the enemy a little less lucky.
TL;DR Hit Points (and, by extension, Vigor Points) are abstractions that imply ducking and dodging and getting lucky enough to not get hit. You get more of them as you level up because you get better and ducking and dodging and being lucky. So . . . What if we had mechanics for ducking and dodging and being lucky? Would it be acceptable to do away with Hit Points?
For instance (and this is a very rough "for instance"), suppose that a character begins play with two pools of Points. For familiarity's sake, we'll say we have Vigor Points and Wound Points. He has Wound Points equal to twice his Constitution score, and Vigor Points equal to 10 + Constitution score + rolled Class HD. So far, pretty similar to Wounds and Vigor from Ultimate Combat.
In combat, if an attack roll beats a character's AC, they are hit. Damage goes straight to Wound Points. If you are using the Armor as DR mechanic, damage is reduced by armor and the remainder goes straight to Wound Points.
"But, doesn't that mean that an orc can kill a low-level character with just a few regular hits?"
Yes, it does, but that's not anything new. A fighter with Constitution 12 can only take 4 minimum damage hits from an orc's falchion, 5 if he has Toughness.
"But, doesn't it also mean that a lot of enemies can kill a high-level character with a single hit?"
YES. YES, IT DOES.
Let's get real for a minute. If a thirty-foot-long dragon bites you, you are dead. If it steps on you, you are dead. If it cuts you with its foot-long claws, you are dead. Mountain lions can kill people, sharks can kill people, medium-sized dogs can kill people. A thirty-foot-long dragon or a thirty-foot-tall giant will kill you if it hits you.
"But I'm playing a fantasy game! I want to fight dragons and giants and do crazy things that are obviously impossible in real life!"
Sweet! So do I! So let's talk about Vigor Points.
What I'm suggesting Vigor Points do, rather than being an abstract pool that soaks up damage, is that they allow characters to take defensive options during someone else's turn. Parry, Dodge, Get Lucky, whatever. They let you raise your AC so that you avoid getting hit at all. A character should plan on burning through lots of Vigor Points--much like they already expect that they will, at some point, take Hit Point damage in the current system.
"But if your Vigor Points go up as you level, won't you be able to just burn your Vigor Points all day long and never get hit?"
You would if your Vigor Points increased, but they don't. This is the part where I think most people will dig in their heels. You don't get a massive pool of 200-400 VP at 20th level. Rather than having Vigor Points increase every level, their effects improve. Spending a single Vigor Points to dodge an attack might give you +2 to AC at level 1, but +10 to AC at level 20.
"Your model doesn't have any math to show how it compares to the existing model, and it doesn't address critical hits/sneak attack/barbarians/undead/constructs/any-number-of-a-thousand-other-things."
Well, no. I'm just throwing thoughts out into the void to see what comes back. I don't have a model for those other things because I don't even know if anyone else would be interested in playing with rules like these.
So--would anyone be interested in rules with a similar concept to what I've posted?
TL;DR Would you be willing to give up the sacred cow of scaling Hit Points with your level if you had working dodge/parry mechanics to mitigate damage with instead?
So, I'd really love to build a Catfolk that works around Claw Pounce and the Scout archetype, but with at least one style involved. My current thought is to start with Master of Many Styles or Unarmed Fighter for the ability to bypass feat requirements and gain IUS, then start leveling rogue (or ninja, depending on whether or not the DM says ninjas can take rogue archetypes).
So something like this:
STR 16 DEX 16 CON 10 INT 14 CHA 14 WIS 6
Feats:
Monk (MoMS/MoSM) 1st - Improved Unarmed Strike (Monk)
1st - Panther Style (Monk)
1st - Dodge
1st - Stunning Fist (Monk)
2nd - Panther Claw (Monk)
Rogue/Ninja 3rd - Mobility
4th - Weapon Training - Claws (Rogue Talent/Ninja Trick)
5th - Feral Combat Training
6th - Vicious Claws (Rogue Talent/Ninja Trick)
7th - Catfolk Exemplar - Sprinter
8th - Vanishing Trick (If Ninja, if Rogue then Offensive Defense)
9th - Dragon Style (mostly for the ability to charge over difficult terrain)
10th - Invisible Blade (If Ninja, if Rogue then Deadly Scratch)
11th - Nimble Striker
12th - Forgotten Trick (If Ninja, if Rogue then Feat for something else)
13th - Improved Natural Attacks - Claws
14th - Combat Trick - Claw Pounce
This is the first time I've ever tried to build any kind of Natural Weapon Character ever. It's based off of a similar build, the addition of Panther Style was my idea. At level 6, he should be able to charge at an opponent, purposefully passing other opponents along the way and (if he's moved at least 10 feet before the first opponent) gaining sneak attack claw damage against all of them, then hitting his actual target. Repeat back and forth across the battlefield. At level 9 he'll ignore difficult terrain for those charges, at level 11 he'll ignore the AC penalty for charging, and at level 14 he'll be able to do all the stuff from before with an additional charging claw attack at the end of his movement.
I'm absolutely certain that there are either blatantly obvious feat/talent choices that I'm missing that would improve the build, as well as better feat placement over the level progression. I'm also aware that DR becomes an issue for this character, who will either needs a set of +3 Claw Blades for one paw (making his attack progression at level 14 +17/+12/+12, with two of those being the Claw Blades and one being the natural claws) or an Amulet of Mighty Fists, which is painfully expensive for two natural attacks. Or I could go Claw Blades on both paws, but that changes the whole build to TWF and I think it might obviate Vicious Claws and Feral Combat Training and make him unable to use Panther Style. I'd like to keep the basic concept, including using a Catfolk. What I really wish was that Unarmed Fighters could take Style feats as bonus feats without meeting prerequisites after level 1, in that case I'd dump monk and take Unarmed Fighter for Panther Style.
A madman is on the loose, a lunatic who revels in mass murder and terror. Known as The Collector, his standard modus operandi is to break into a house while the family is away and lie in wait until the family returns. When they do, he stalks them through their own home until they fall into his clutches or trigger one of his vicious traps. He leaves no one alive, always takes a single prisoner, and to date there are only two people who have met him and lived.
Now, The Collector has upped the stakes. At a coming-out party for the daughter of New California Republic president Aradesh Romany, The Collector set his traps and slaughtered over sixty people, taking the president’s daughter as his captive.
Four specialists, along with a team of the president’s personal army, have been tasked with tracking down and exterminating The Collector and, if possible, bringing back the president’s daughter.
I've been poking around lately, and there seems to be a feeling around fighters that fighter archetypes aren't very good. So what fighter archetypes do you feel are the worst, and how would you go about fixing them?
One of the comparisons that I've noted myself is the Archer versus the Crossbowman. The Archer gains Safe Shot four levels before the Crossbowman, the Archer gains the Trick Shot ability 14 levels before the Crossbowman gains the (much less versatile) Meteor Shot ability, the Crossbowman's Deadshot ability works only with readied actions (and Dex bonus to damage simply doesn't make up for losing full-attacks), and the Crossbowman's replacement for Armor Mastery is strictly worse than a feat, while the Archer gains a feat AND damage reduction.
A few ideas to balance these might be:
a) Match up the Safe Shot and Trick Shot abilities, so their gained at similar levels;
b) Make Deadshot either more powerful (increase threat range, double weapon damage, something like that) or more versatile (works with all attacks, not just readied actions);
c) Penetrating Shot functions as a ranged version of cleave.
Penetrating Shot:
As a standard action, make a single attack at your full base attack bonus against a foe within the first range increment of your crossbow. If you hit, you deal damage normally and can make an additional attack (using your full base attack bonus) against a foe that is behind the first and also within reach. You must be able to trace a line starting at your space and passing through both targets to make this additional attack. You can only make one additional attack per round with this feat. When you use this ability, you take a –2 penalty to your Armor Class until your next turn.)
And possibly also grants damage reduction against ranged attacks.
So, what are the worst Fighter archetypes, and how would you fix them?
A recurring theme I've seen whenever I read about the rogue is that their talents are sub-par when compared to feats or to those of other classes. The two that get mentioned most often are Powerful Sneak and Deadly Sneak. What are other rogue talents that fail to do whatever it is that they're meant to do?
And, more importantly, how would you fix them?
For instance, with the talents mentioned above, a fix might be to remove the attack penalty, or allow the rogue to simply re-roll 1s (2s with Deadly Sneak), or both.
In all of the games that I've played and run since Pathfinder came out, combat maneuvers tend to fall by the wayside pretty quickly. Our players just don't bother with them, preferring to simply deal damage rather than spend feats on abilities that they find suffer greatly against anything that's not their size or smaller and standing right in front of them. My old DM and I have been discussing a few ideas to pull our players back to combat maneuvers, as we feel they make combat much more cinematic and interesting, but I wanted to ask the community and see what other players and DMs think of combat maneuvers before I decide to "fix" them.
So, do your players use combat maneuvers? Is there a point where they stop bothering? Which maneuvers get used, and which get ignored?
Ok. The stance of this thread is that high-level casters are more powerful than high-level martial characters. Yes, I know that martial classes are totally capable of outclassing (ba-dum, ch!) casters in DPR. But the wizard can do a pretty good job of damage, too. While flying. Invisible. With eight mirror images and blur just in case the fighter actually manages to swing at him through the army of summoned monsters. Without any magic items whatsoever. There's a darn good reason that the big bosses of most adventure paths are casters, and the reason is that they're a whole lot more impressive than a guy with a goatee and a rapier.
If you want to argue whether they are or not casters are more powerful than martial classes, move along. That's not what this thread is for.
That said, here's what I'm looking for:
Suggestions to both RAISE the power of martial characters, for high-fantasy games, and suggestions to LOWER the power of casting classes, for low-fantasy games.
here's what I'm NOT looking for:
Comparisons to 4th Edition. I know that whenever people bring up class balance somebody feels the need to say, "They already tried that, it's called 4e!" No crap. Obviously, I'm looking for something a little less like that.
Here are a few things that I've already considered:
BOOSTING MARTIALS: Allow access to the Tome of Battle for Pathfinder base classes. I'd like to playtest this sometime in the future, because I think that simply granting the Pathfinder martial classes the maneuver selection of a warblade, with altered discipline lists based on class, would boost martial classes without actually infringing on caster versatility.
NERFING CASTERS: Less spells per day at high levels, and altered casting times. For example, 0-level spells may be cast as swift actions, 1st level spells are cast at their listed casting times, and casting times increase by step from there.
swift action->move action->standard action->full-round action->1 round->3 rounds->5 rounds->1 minute, etc. Quicken spell allows you to shorten the casting time to a spell x levels lower in exchange for a spell slot x levels higher. I like this idea because it reinforces the image of a caster brewing up a powerful spell to change the tide of a battle while his allies work to keep him safe and contribute in their own way.
Discuss?
I haven't done any number crunching on this idea yet, and I'm fairly new to homebrew, so please be gentle!
Also, before anyone suggests, I've already read Kirthfinder and I like some of his ideas on this topic, but I want thoughts on these options specifically.
I have always felt that feinting really got the shaft in 3.5 and Pathfinder. In reality, feinting is not only a valid combat option, it is downright essential to swordplay. In 3.5/PF, however, feinting at it's absolute best (using Core) allows you to make one attack that is slightly more likely to hit and makes the target susceptible to sneak attack (or Deadly Stroke) for that one attack. The only class that would use an option is the rogue, and even then it's not a very good option. However, the rogue creates another problem: if we improve feint, for example allowing feint as a swift action, the damage per round of a rogue skyrockets. If this option was made as a followup to Greater Feint (which causes the opponent to lose his dex bonus for the entire round), perhaps at BAB +11, it means that a standard rogue could deal an average of 84 (8d6*3) damage to one enemy in one round, double that with a TWF rogue. So, my first questions are: Would it be a horrible, horrible thing to allow feinting as a swift action? What if the effects of a feint only affected the next attack for the feinter? So a rogue could feint as a swift, get SA on his first attack and finish out his full attack normally.
My second issue is that feint works in a weird way against many opponents. Feinting an incredibly skilled, high dex opponent renders them incredibly susceptible to attack, while feinting a dragon yields exactly no benefits whatsoever. My second set of questions: What if the requirements for the Feint chain relied on Bluff, not BAB, and rather than causing an opponent to lose their Dex bonus to AC, the feinter gains +1 to attack, plus an additional +1 per 4 ranks in Bluff (ala Power Attack). A character with 16 ranks in Bluff gains +5 to attack, which is the same as causing a Dex 20 character to lose their bonus and significantly better than causing a lumbering oaf monster to lose their Dex bonus.
I offer these thoughts because I really feel that Feint is a TERRIBLE option in 3.5/PF, an option so bad that most character don't even consider it without extensive homebrew or prestige classing (ala invisible blade), and I'd like to find an appropriate fix for that.
