anlashok's page

If "dex to damage" is allowed, especially if power attack is allowed on a dex build, the str build become a joke.

Dex to damage already exists though and Strength is still king, so this is empirically wrong.

Basically, the main appeal of 5E right now is how easy it is to fix relative to PF. This is huge though.
1. Make advantage and disadvantage "stack" (so two causes of disadvantage cause you to roll 3 dice and choose lowest, etc)
2. Give a feat at 1st level in addition to the normal feats every 4 levels (and maybe go ahead and give ability bumps too on top of that).
There, you're basically done. For Pathfinder you need like 10 pages of tweaks.

I'd say it's got a bit more systemic problems to that. You've got binary skills, the abysmally slow feat progression (which, yeah, 2 fixes a bit, but doesn't entirely solve) all lead to a big lack of granularity which makes a lot of characters look like "race+class" and not a lot more.

Then you have the flatlined character progression which makes martial characters often seem like they ... don't really get better at anything.

I guess the last one isn't a big deal if you like playing a really gritty game, but if you're into epic fantasy (which third, fourth and pathfinder all are) it ends up looking a bit silly.

In the end I think 5e looks like it could really suffer from having too much of that being built into the engine itself, which makes it harder to improve later.

and things like gunslingers and techno babble are anatema for me in D&D.

You'd hate regular D&D then.

Seeing how 1e and 2e were crammed full of sci-fi shit. And Eberron was one of the biggest settings in 3e and 4e. And they're reprinting Spelljammer in 5e.

I've definitely considered this myself, along with Spellcraft. Spellcraft is pretty much a skill point tax for every 6 or 9 level caster.

Just smash Spellcraft and Knowledge Arcana together.

And while you're at it swim+jump+climb into one skill.

It's a tradeoff...a bit of customization is sacrificed in exchange for playing in a world full of believable people.

I'm still not getting how it's particularly more believable though.

If anything I'd wager the Wizard who just happens to have 14 strength because lucky roll even though he's a shut in with no real athleticism is the weird one.

At that point I'd rather just let my player's point buy a more believable and accurate character than some stat-rolled monstrosity =P.

But I'll tell you what is gained: verisimilitude and rarity.

I'm just not seeing how restricting someone from playing a character archetype they'd prefer does anything to improve verisimilitude.

The PCs are believable characters in a way that point-buy characters very rarely are

Or how a physically weak, socially awkward wizard is somehow an unbelievable archetype.

and characters who differentiate themselves from the pack feel special.

Or how any of the above connect to this.

You ever write poetry, a? Maybe you don't, but I do (don't worry...I'll spare you in this thread). In my experience, there are two kinds of poets: those who write in forms (verse, rhyme, etc.), and those who do not. Verse is actually a pretty strong constraint on content. We can't choose just any word to communicate our meaning; we have to choose a set of words that fit together because we need them all to fit inside of a certain number of syllables and maybe rhyme at intervals.

The difference here is that you're choosing to apply those constraints to yourself, not having them imposed on you by an outside force.

Everybody thinks he's a font of creativity when he starts writing, and yet most poets still prefer to write in verse.

Well, there are many other reasons verse and patterns are used, but that's not really relevant here.

"Blank page" creativity is not as good as we're often taught to think.

Completely true. Going from Point A to Point B through an empty room gives you the most freedom, but will rarely lead to interesting results, but you can impose the obstacles later on in the process too, and probably in a less adversarial way.

Starting with a structure around which to build a concept can lead to some very interesting things if you try it.

Possibly, but you should still be able to pick which structure you want to build around.

The fact of the matter is, while I might be willing to play whatever and whenever (in fact that's been one of my bigger problems as a D&D player), not everyone will and I just can't see how it's a good thing to have a player walk up to you, tell you he really is in the mood to play a sorcerer, only for you to say "Nope, only giving you 5 charisma today" and sending him off.

You suck it up and play the character as best you can.

This I can't fathom. How is forcing a player to play something they don't want to do good for anyone involved? What does the other player gain by being told "Nope, you're playing that, deal with it". What do you gain other than getting a chance to flex your DM-muscles and lord over someone a bit?

Not getting exactly what you want is no real objection. You probably want a vorpal sword, too (I certainly do), but the game's no fun if everything is just handed to you.

That's a pretty gigantic man of straw you got there. Seriously there's a huge amount of empty space between "giving you everything for free" and "can't even play the character I want".

You could fit the grand canyon between the two. Twice.

First of all: Technology Guide is a Campaign Setting Guide. Don't use it if you don't want to play with that campaign setting. Just as in 3.5 I wouldn't use Eberron material if I didn't want Eberron stuff.

Then came the Advanced Classes or Hybrids.............

talk about OP and Unbalanced!!!

LOL

I hope you're joking.

The new setting reeks of a vile ripoff of Borderlands, come on!, lasers, bazookas, aliens and motherships??

Those are indeed all things unique to Borderlands.

I changed to 5th because everything became balanced there

And more hilarity.

Spent an hour trying to find that comic where hawkeye wrecks the dark avengers, no luck though.

They did kinda piss all over him in the movie though.

Even as someone who thinks the class is a complete waste of space and not worth the paper it's printed on I have to admit that asking for "fixes" seems a bit sketchy.

It's a solidly effective class and I'd probably like it if it weren't in such a crowded design space. It's more effective than the paladin (unless the paladin can smite constantly, and even then it has vastly better... everything that's not damage) and while I think the Inquisitor is overall a better class, it isn't significantly so.

I do agree that a specialized spell list would be nice, it's always nice to give a 6th level caster some early access and high level stuff rather than a pure 6th level list. At the very least you could give it a hybrid list like the Hunter.

Inquisitor list doesn't help much though. Plus the inquisitor gets a lot of social stuff and tracking stuff, neither really make sense on a warpriest.

Very very unlikely but I hope they say something about Feral Hunter still gaining bonus tricks for a pet they don't have and Bolt Ace still gaining Gunsmiting as a bonus feat. Super unlikely but it's messy and both archetypes could use an extra feature.

Pummeling Style is not a big deal because the RAI is pretty obvious.

Tricks and Plume and the Mastermind and Animal Domain Inquisitors is important though.

Why should the mere mortals get to use the stat they want?

Meanwhile orc witches can cast with con...

Well there's your problem. Stop comparing NPC classes and PC classes.

Clustered Shots is "too good" only from the perspective of feat balance (insofar as every archer has absolutely no reason to not take it)... but if that's the point we're arguing from there's a dozen other archery feats that are just as bad (and a big chunk of them would be better off baseline).

As it stands though even with clustered shots archers are mostly just pretty good. Melee hits harder and has better utility at their disposal and neither can compare to full casters. So I don't see what the big deal is.

Archers killing things too easily is a problem of rocket tag, and if you try to make archery terrible so that it can't, the Barbarian will just be the one doing it instead (and so on).

Frankly - the feat that bugs me the most about archers isn't clustered shot, manyshot, or any of the other feats that let them do extra damage.

It's point blank master.

If archers were just the machine-guns that they are, but weren't able to get rid of their Achilles Heel, it wouldn't bother me.

Sure - that archer did the most damage. But he'd have been hosed if he didn't have his sword & board buddy out front keeping him from being charged & boxed in. Nope! With point blank master - he doesn't really care much.

Or the archer could just five foot step...

The issue is that it the Warpriest isn't significantly better at combat the Inquisitor

I'd say the biggest issue is that the Warpriest isn't significantly better at combat than the non-war Priest. Giving up ninth level spells for only a marginal increase in martial power isn't a very compelling trade.

Paizo sort of wrote themselves into a corner. With Arcane casters, full casters get half bad, 6th level casters get three quarters BAB, and 4th level casters get full BAB.

But with Divine, the ninth level casters get 3/4ths BAB. And you can't give the 6th level caster full BAB or they make the paladins look even lamer.

So silly stuff happens.

Maybe there's some big drawback I missed though.

Well, the big drawback is that the swashbuckler is fighting Einhander, probably the worst combat style in the game. Adding level to damage every round is more the fighting style playing catchup with THF than a true advantage.

Action economy issues suck too.

The biggest thing I see though is less that the swashbuckler is terrible and more that people are disappointed by it. I see a lot of posters that were clearly looking for a mobile, dynamic martial character rather than another full-attack turret.

And I see a few posters who feel like they were sort of spit on by Paizo when they were told that Charmed Life as a passive +cha to saves would be overpowered right before Paizo turns around and hands Oracles Divine Protection.

So it's equal parts class issues and bitterness. If you're just comparing it to other martial characters it's not particularly bad though.

I find it funny when people on the messageboards say things like:

"The devs hate the monk."
"They ignore their customers completely."
"The devs don't want martials to have nice things."

Do you listen to yourselves? Do you really belive what you are saying?

When all the evidence points toward something being true...

If you want to boost the rogue make more dynamic trap encounters.

Also make sure that your adventures reduce rocket tag. If a party has a 15 minute work day. The caster using spells to deal with traps is no big deal. Make them miss that wasted spell slot on something the rogue can do for free.

This post is based on two false suppositions.

First, that trapfinding is both unique to rogues and the only aspect of a rogue that matters: Many other classes can gain access to it in some form or another, there's a trait for it too. Beyond that, even if we did ignore those other options, this solution only creates needless tokenism, where you have to bring the rogue along to deal with the thing, rather than having a rogue because of some meaningful value he actually has (also creates the issue of forcing you to have a rogue if you're in a campaign that relies on those mechanics).

Second, that a caster can only invalidate the rogue with a 15 minute workday. I'm not really sure where the "15 minute day" meme started around here, but it's largely silliness.

I think the rogue talent "Convincing Lie" sort of sums up the class' issues overall.

In terms of capabilities you overlap very heavily with the bard (without having any clear cut advantages over him but plenty of holes). That's the big one I can see comparatively.

The class itself isn't completely unsalvageable, it just doesn't really have anything particularly shiny or eye popping in its repertoire but doesn't have the strength of versatility of some of their competitors.

Where did this house-rule where you roll diplomacy to speak come from? I see it everywhere and it's pretty strange. Diplomacy has four uses outlined in the rules and "I'm speaking so I roll diplomacy to see how good I spoke" isn't one of them... and never has been.

In any case, the OP's statement is misdirection and therefore bluff.

I do agree it's better than most feat choices you could make. I just don't see that as a problem in this particular case, because as mentioned, everyone can take leadership.

That makes it pretty fair, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's good.

It's still significantly distorted in power compared to basically every other feat in the game and snaps normal balance in half.

Sure, you can homebrew a lot of fixes for it like you and others have suggested, but that's more highlighting the problem than dismissing it.

Yeah, not seeing how you can really argue that lying to your players about core gameplay information and intentionally sabotaging their build choices behind their back is anything approaching good or fair or reasonable.

Imagine this type of problem applied evenly between players and monsters across all the levels, if it isn't an obvious problem to you then you may want to increase your understanding of how pathfinder is balanced.

Your problem is with the druid, not dex to damage (indeed your problem has very little to do with it at all. Like, literally nothing).

The fact of the matter is that dex-based combat styles are strictly inferior to strength based ones in melee combat. The fact of the matter is that, mathematically, easy access to dex-damage conversions still do not leave that option with a clear edge in any fashion over basleine.

And really the most hilarious fact here is that dex to damage already exists in numerous forms yet is never an optimal choice. The entire premise that dex-to-damage breaks balance in half when it already exists and doesn't is just silly.

Seriously, let's repeat that. It's already in the game, and does not do the thing you say it does. The premise falls apart under any logical scrutiny or math.

I've played in games where people think that Dex should be added to damage, some adding it as a bonus of weapon finesse some as a separate feat that requires WF. Both ways are horrible in game, it creates so many situations that are unbelievable or cause balance issues.

What situation is that? Be specific. Vague nonsense like "it created a ton of issues" does nothing at all, especially when it's already been demonstrably proven that even with dex to damage strength based characters still win more often than not.

Seriously you're going to need something much better than "It's really bad trust me guys" as an argument.

Sure they are. Look up the spell " enchantment (compulsion) [mind-affecting]"

We're talking about a piece of metamagic. Which has none of those descriptors tied to it.

It's trivial to trade the rogues for ninjas and ditch the street performer for either a third ninja or an archaeologist and have a strictly superior stealth party in which the sneak attackers don't need a specific ally next to them to handle the invisibility.

Are you really talking about optimizing right before suggesting they replace the bard with a ninja?

Any class feat that (directly) depends on any ability score would be useless. Casters is a no-go.

Not sure why you say that. Starting 12 is annoying, but as long as you avoid stuff that relies on a save you're dandy. items that increase your primary attribute are key, but you're still mostly fine, at least considering the limitations. Realistically a caster of some sort is probably your best pick for the role.

Scratching my head at the mentions of fighter or barbarian though.

Frankly I've always seen gnomes as the tinker gnomes or arcanists etc.. But I read a lot of dragonlance and played a lot of Warcraft, so that might be why. But gnome bards sound scary and like something I want to kick.

Oversight?

Also kinda weird in general. Warhorns are very Skald-y even without the archetype.

There seems to be a general opinion on this board that defeating opponents by any methods other than hit point attrition is overpowered and must be prevented at all costs.

I love these absurd and intentionally duplicitous logical leaps people like to make here. Somehow "I think this metamagic is too strong" turns into "anything other than damage is cheating". Come off it.

Seriously. You accomplish absolutely nothing by trying to mock people like that.

My vote is for intentional. Most likely, the devs realize that the moment they release an Int/Con race, unless it is godawful beyond the stat bonuses, it will become the optimizer's go-to option for most arcane caster builds.

That explains the lack of a con/int race. Doesn't explain why the str/int races are so esoteric.

Str/con is pretty rare too. Think that's only lizardmen and gnolls.

Basically every Investigator archetype, since all but one replace swift alchemy.

The Dazing build is a one-trick pony, just like the others. Any one-trick pony is annoying. But they have their weaknesses that should not be discounted. Usually it's doing anything that doesn't involve blasting. Try taking them through a dinner party or a wedding, or just trying to capture somebody alive. Their metamagic rod won't be able to help them much there.

Calling a build that only needs one feat/one magic item to function a "one trick pony" seems a bit hyperbolic.

That's a ton of extra resources left over to do... everything else. Even a sorcerer is going to have a lot of extra spells known after they get some dazing fuel.

So I'm the only person who thinks this is weird?

Discovered this while looking for good races for a Slayer and Cyber Warrior.

Pretty much every race with a dual bonus seems to be dex/int or int+another mental stat.

There are no regular races with both str/int or con/int. Instead we have two variant races (Jiang-Shi Dhampir and Scaleheart Skinwalkers) and one gender specific extra race (male lashunta) for str/int. Two of those are splat races.

Then on the other side.. there's absolutely nothing that gives constitution and intelligence.

Just unexplored design space or an intentional gap?

Again, every character has a weakness. I'd find it much more immersion-breaking for a character to not have an Achilles' heel of some sort. Invincible heroes are as unbelievable as they are boring.

Good thing the person you were arguing with said literally nothing of the sort.

Seriously that's an absurdly disingenuous statement to make.

Can anyone give me a good reason as to why this feat chain needs to be slayer only?

On the surface it's a pretty cool way to flavor up an intimidate based character but... It requires slayer levels and I simply can't figure out why.

Granted, the idea is very fitting of a Slayer, it's thematic as hell... but it's just as apropos for a barbarian, inquisitor, antipaladin, several flavors of fighter and so on.

And I'm just not sure why Paizo made the decision to block the option off from the rest of those classes.

Is there something I'm missing here?

I think the problem in the example is actually a mismatch between real world appropriate behaviour and mechanics appropriate behaviour.

That's more a problem of you trying to apply real-world constraints and rationalizations to a character in an explicitly fantastical setting who is explicitly superhuman.

You know what gets me more than anything else in this book?

The Killing Flourish feat chain being Slayer only.

Why? Just why? I literally cannot fathom a single reason as to why this class requires Slayer levels.

Ok. Kill someone in a frightening way to demoralize their allies. Cool. Very fitting for a slayer. But it's also something I've seen the Evil Bad Guy Monk in kung-fu movies do when he kills the protagonist's master. And it's something I've seen the evil monstrous overlord do to someone the hero knows in books and video games and a movie or two. And so on and so on.

So why can't a Barbarian or Inquisitor or Rogue or Fighter or Monk or a friggin' Antipaladin do that?

Why?

I seriously want to fly down to Paizo HQ and angrily ask why you need Slayer levels to do that.

It's worse than Divine Protection. Worse than the Swashbuckler.

yeti1069 wrote:

Also, any feat that essentially just modifies an attack action (Vital Strike, for example), but is listed as a standard action, should be changed to simply be an attack action, so these feats can combine with stuff like Spring Attack.

The reason Vital Strike and the like are not attack actions are to prevent them from being used in a full attack. That said, there is no reason not to put in a line saying that such feats can be used with Spring Attack other than martials can't have nice things.

Not quite, attack-actions and attacks are separate things.

Also, vital strike is an attack-action.

Restricting it to unarmed strike doesn't fix Pummeling Style, reverting the damage addition back to the Dead shot standard from which it was generated fixes it.

The problem with this argument is that Dead Shot is generally considered to be kind of terrible unless your DM is fiating away your ability to full attack with a firearm.

So saying "The best way to fix it is to make it like that ability that's really bad" doesn't sound like a fix.

I mean. I get why they're in the heavy blade weapon group. They're basically greatswords (in fact the name is literally greatsword). Cool.

But why are they also polearms? Like. I don't see why they're in a group of weapons with Glaives and Halberds. At all.

I fail to see how a single feat, which only works for Unarmed Strikes and is effectively the equivalent of the Vital Strike feat tree

To be fair, Pounce (beast totem) is the better comparison point here.

It's really pounce, clustered shots and dead shot all rolled into one.

It's a nice trick for a pair of classes that aren't very good in the first place, so eh.

i have no problems with people who play bards as commanders or skald-like battlers, but if you try to RL bard with a pathfinder bard, i lose a lot of my fun right there.

I think the mention of real life bards is just to dismiss the idea that bards are "sissy" or "unrealistic".

Honestly you shouldn't be conflating real life anything with Pathfinder anything. Wizard literally means "wise man" and yet wisdom is a viable dump stat for one. Druids were wandering holy men, advisors, storytellers and so on, tree-huggers that can turn into bears aren't even on the radar. The Pathfinder Inquisitor is more derivative of Warhammer than anything in actual history. etc. etc.

With the benefit of hindsight I see all you clowns for what you are. Go, all of you, pile back into your tiny car and crash it into a balloon factory.

Weren't you the one talking about "contemptible weaklings" only two lines above this statement?

I mean... those were your words, but it seems like a fairly accurate descriptor of someone who would, say, start sniveling about a few people on the internet not being nice to him and disagreeing with him. Someone who'd, for instance, tell people he wants to see them go get hurt rather than actually put forth any effort to discuss the topic or defend his position in any meaningful way.

I mean come on man.

And there are manyways to get to the caster without going through thr meat shield.

Missile weapons are good just to start. And giving the bad guy a caster of their own is nice, not to mention mobs tnat fly or burrow. A barbarian or monk can often get to a caster on an open map because of tneir skills and abilities. One of the people I play with has a monk design just to take out casters and just slide past or around enemy meat shields

No I meant in reference to targeting Drizzt first.

That's what you were getting at, right? Because that's who I'd kill first.

Lets say a party comes across 4 drow. One is wearing plate and carrying a two handed sword, another has mace, is wearing chain and has a holy symbol on her shield, the third has two scimitars and is wearing leather and the last has a staff, a bat on his shoulder and is wearing everyday cloth.

Now who is the party going to try to turn into a pink cloud on turn one?
So should not the drow try the same thing if they get the drop on the party?

But what if our party doesn't have a Ranger?

The AoO is always the lesser of two evils from level 5 on.

So if we're taking the assumption that eating a single (or two) attack from an AoO isn't a particularly big deal, why then are we assuming that the single attack from the monster is going to completely win the day against the wizard?

It seems honestly likely that the enemy reaches the wizard, makes a single attack and then the next turn the enemy finds himself completely cut off from his allies surrounded by extremely well armed, extremely displeased martials and an even more displeased spellcaster. At which point he dies miserably and team monster is down a member with no meaningful gains.

Do you make it a rule to only throw beast totem barbarians and pummeling style monks at your party?

Which works if you can actually pull it off. But if the Barbarian if the melee guys are doing their job right separating the caster is going to mean jumping into a blender of blades.

Yeah. I don't think anyone was suggesting that if the caster is open you shouldn't go for it. Only disagreeing with the premise that it's somehow always a winning strategy when A) Not every enemy is going to necessarily identify the caster as primary threat and B) A caster may be very well protected.

Suck? No. The Cleric is still a definitive T1 monster and the Oracle isn't that much behind. Both classes are amazing and have quite a few awesome spells.

What you can complain about is that a lot of their spells are pretty bland and that while there's enough good options for a cleric to take, there aren't enough good options for two or three clerics to take.

That is to say, if I'm a wizard I can take XYZ if I'm looking to do battlefield control but if I'm looking to blast I might only take X and take AB instead and a buffer might take CDE instead of any of those.

For a cleric, there's far fewer extremely good options, so chances are even something as wildly different in goals as a control cleric, blaster cleric, and melee cleric are only going to have a couple different spells in their arsenal.

I've run into that problem a lot with my oracles too. Barring Mystery and Curse stuff, my melee oracle even by level 15 or 16 is only going to have four or five spells that my caster oracle doesn't and vice versa.

Granted, every class has that issue where there are must have spells and "Who thought this was a good idea?" Spells, it just feels more pronounced with the cleric list.

So basically if the martial doesn't have combat reflexes and if the martial doesn't have a good AoO and if the martial isn't within 10 feet (15 feet with a reach weapon, heaven forbid they're enlarged) of the caster and if the caster doesn't have any defensive buffs or features ready the tactic is flawless.

Eh, maybe.

Flavor matters. A bonus to hit and a penalty to AC might end up producing the same end result, but they are not the same thing.

That's not flavor

If a player can show me OOC how a comedy performance during combat would work in a deadly serious story, I'll consider it. But I'm not going to try to mix Lord of the Rings with Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Spiderman taunting and mocking his enemies is occasionally played for laughs, but not always.

Lord of the Rings you said? In the film edition Gimli and Legolas jeer and joke back and forth with one another about their own prowess and abilities and fight harder because of it. Not quite comedy, but in a similar vein.

Only way I can see this not working is if by "deadly serious" you mean "grimmy grim dark grim dark".

A dead caster is no threat at all.

You're clearly not familiar with clone and contingent resurrections then.