Wraythblade's page

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.

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?