Wraythblade's page

To the OP: Many of us who GM have been where you find yourself. My game group are all 45+ and have been gaming for a minimum of 25+ years each.

We moved to PF from 3.5 because of the enhanced variety and flexibility to create whatever type of character someone could want to play. That being said, we each are almost unconscious min-maxers and as GMs, we each have been in the place you find yourself. It got to the point where the players didn't want really to even play anymore since the room/monster/treasure crawl was boring and the "yikes, it's a dragon! Run!" encounters took 3 rounds to complete - again...boring. I found that arranging an encounter meant I was putting multiple mobs of at least 5CRs over the party against them...they still easy-moded them.

Each of us GMs and we all discussed the issues. We came to the a decision that we would consciously try not to min-max, but to expand our characters feat, skill, spell and item choices. Character weaknesses were easily identified, but were accepted as additional challenges. We've found this approach really enhances the role-playing aspect of the game as well. And, at the end of the day, each player still gets to play the character they conceived initially.

That brings me to PF2. As others have stated, my group find the flexibility has vanished - with character development fenced into narrow feat/skill lanes, variety and choice really don't exist. We've decided we will stick with PF1 for the foreseeable future.

I and my friends have a combined 120 years of gaming experience amongst us. We changed to Pathfinder several years ago just before D&D 4e launched. We did so because, in our opinion, PF improved on many of the issues we had with 3/3.5.

Due to our experience, each of us is somewhat an unconscious min-maxer and PF offered us excellent opportunities to make any character we wanted to play really. Many of the optional rules work really well for us too (e.g. Wound thresholds, Hero Points, etc). Each of us GMs and PF allowed us to run any type of game/campaign we wanted - low magic to high fantasy.

PF offered detailed character development through traits, the wide array of feats and skills, class abilities and the optional rules. All-in-all, a system wide of scope and deep.

This is not to say it's perfect and our expectations with 2e were that the strengths of 1e would be built on and it's failings eliminated.

I like that the actions have been streamlined and simplified: this will make combat or encounters flow more smoothly. The concepts of backgrounds and ancestries are easily extensions of what was present in 1e with various feats, traits, race choices, etc.

But that is really where my appreciation of 2e ends thus far. The 2e rules seem to me too similar to 4e/5e D&D. I see them as limiting character development and choice due to the fences around class ability progressions. I also feel they are oversimplified with too much "leading by the nose" to them.

Paizo, you have ten years worth of forum comments, questions, answers, suggestions and ideas to plumb. Make improvements and enhancements to your existing product instead of this D&D 5e variant please.

The player mistakenly thought Precision Critical would apply to the Swashbuckler's Precise Strike damage. But in any event, damage from Precise Strike is not included in the calculated damage for any of the 9 attacks in the OP.

The damage was recalculated without considering any of the Mythic components; so normal damage for a 20th level character. It worked out to >1000 maximum on 7 attacks, so while still high, it seems far more manageable.

Ultimately, I'm guessing the simple answer is simply to remove the Mythic component from the campaigns.

The Swashbuckler's damage is coming from:
Mythic Power Attack, Mythic Weapon Specialization, Mythic Bleeding Critical, Elemental Fury, Mythic Two Weapon Rend, Mythic Improved Critical, Precision Critical.

The Character was built with Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting and Greater Two Weapon Fighting.

The damage noted is without the Swashbuckler's Precise Strike damage; though if it were to be included on only 7 primary attacks, the maximum damage is still ~3054.

But if I understand correctly, it seems it's pretty much a "whomsoever gets the initiative wins" situation with Mythic characters then. :(

I’m posting this to ask the community and Paizo’s opinions. My gaming group is a group of mature (over age 40) players with a large amount of gaming experience. Thus, we each of us unconsciously min/max our characters in whatever role/niche we want to play.

We are currently playing through two separate PF Mythic campaigns, under two different GMs. In one of these, we have a dexterity based Swashbuckler (currently 7th level). Its player has done some theorycrafting and character planning to 20th level (Mythic Tier 10) and has determined this character’s MAXIMUM damage output in one round @ 20th level will be 3,726 with a +1 wounding rapier and a +1 short sword.

Even at a 25% crit rate, the projected damage of this character will be > 1100 per round. This character will make 9 attacks in one round. These are: 4 primary hand, 3 off hand, plus 1 primary hand from Surprise Strike, plus 1 primary hand from the standard action granted by Amazing Initiative. The character will have a minimum attack bonus of +37

Our conundrum is how to deal with damage of this magnitude, since a CR 30 Demon Lord, such as Nocticula has only 976 hit points with a reasonably hitable armour class of 48. Realistically, this mob will be obliterated by one character in one round of combat versus this Swashbuckler.

We have looked through all the feats/Mythic abilities/magic items/armour properties/spells but are unable to come up with reasonable combinations of these that would offset such outrageously high amounts of damage.

So, I would ask for the community’s input as to how to deal with this situation? What would you recommend to alleviate mobs being one-shot?
I would ask Paizo if such high damage output levels were intended and if so, how it was expected to be balanced in comparison to monster or npc hit point totals and defensive capabilities?