nonrelent's page

Also, does this damage reduction apply to spells? engulfing a tiny sized fae in a 5 foot burning sphere seems much worse than rolling the same sphere through the collosal giants square containing his foot. yet the proposed rules change just took away the giant's constition bonus, so he is now taking a greater proportion of his life than it used to, while the fae lost her penalty so she is taking a much smaller proportion than it used to

The old system he had 2 more hit points per hit dice, she had 2 less, resulting for 15 hit dice monsters in him having 60 more hit points. For arguement give them both 80 base hit points (average for 15). If you maximized fireballed both for 60 damage, he could take 1 more fireball than her under the old system (he had 110, she had 50). under your system, they both have 80, he took 4 less damage (54), she took 4 more (66). Old system she was dead, he had 50 HP left. new system he's got 26 remaining, she has 18.

The +2 or +4 damage also gets worse with a greater number of attacks, since each bonus damage gets multiplied across all attacks. This means that the balance in the new system favors large creatures for multiple light attacks, and favors small creatures for large, heavy damage attacks. I'm not saying it's better or worse, just that it is VERY different, and will dramatically change the balance of most of the game

The +/- 2 is VERY different than changing the dice.

1d8-2 is NOT the same as 1d6, it is far weaker. Take the extreme example 1d8-4 vs 1d4. Average damage on 1d4 is 2.5. Average damage on 1d8-4 is 1.75. Median on 1d8-4 is 1. With 1d8-4, you need to roll at least a 6 to get 2 damage. While the minimum and maximum are the same, the median/average are vastly different.

The reverse is even worse: 1d8+4 vs 1d12. minimum of 5 instead of 1, average of 8.5 instead of 7, median of 8.5 instead of 6.5.

The damage reduction rules favor the large creatures even more. The math looks just like the above examples: hitting a huge creature with your medium sword now averages 1.75 instead of the old system of him having 4 more con. for a 100 hit point original creature 10 hit dice, he just lost his +4 con, so he is now an 80 hit point creature, but instead of doing 4.5 damage to him with your 1d8 sword, you now do 1.75 (statistical averages, not actual damage). This means that instead of 22.2 hits to fell him, you now need 45.7 hits to kill him. He lost 15% of his hit points, you lost 60% of your damage.

The reason die changes are used instead of flat +/- is that the average distribtion remains evenly spread across the min-max range, instead of being heavily weighted. 1d8-6 will result in a 1 for any roll 1-7, and only result in a two 1/8 of the time. 1d2 results in a two 50% of the time.

Essentially this system greatly favors large creatures dramatically increasing their damage and survivability at a greater rate than small creatures. It also means min/maxed players can almost ignore the benefits and penalties of both as your stats become more statistically significant than your base weapon/damage. This dramatically changes the balancing of the game and a lot of playtesting would be needed to balance it out.

If your DM wants to house rule using the elite array, or rolling stats or any other option that is them being nice, but by the book (as we are in the rules forum), generic critters are what you get to choose from.

I suggested neither elite array nor rolling stats. The question was wether the standard array (suggested in the Bestiary, page already referenced) was appropriate for companions/familiars/etc.

Most of the posts seem to favor that your companion is a carbon copy of the animal entry in the Bestiary, yet the bestiary itself suggests that NPCs are allowed to assign the standard array, and that the entries are what the animal would have with straight 10s. That would mean that one of the animals stats should be +3, one is +2, one is +1, one is -1, and one is -2. That appears to be the rules straight from the book, 6, bottom left corner

since the Bestiary says pretty much any creature gets a 13 stat, paying five times the price to have someone give me a bird with a +1 con seems a bit harsh. And I believe most druids aren't going to a bird seller or mount seller, they tend to grab their beasts from the wild.

I'm not suggesting they find a paragon of the species (elite stat array) but certainly the standard array allows that if someone has 2 birds, they aren't precisely identical.

I'm also thinking that having a 13 in a single stat on your companion isn't precisely gamebreaking. Familiars who can do 1d3-2 instead of 1d3-3 doesn't seem to be a balance issue

Unless otherwise indicated, a creature’s ability scores

represent the baseline of its racial modifiers applied to
scores of 10 or 11. Creatures with NPC class levels have stats
in the standard array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8), while creatures
with character class levels have the elite array (15, 14, 12, 11,

This *seems* to mean that the book entry means "if you rolled straight 10/11s, these are it's stats, and NPCs get the standard array of stats". That quote is from page 6 of the PF Bestiary (Hope i can get away with quiting it here). Based on that it would seem familiars, animal companions, etc get some choice on what stats go where.

From an RP point of view, if i'm picking an animal companion/familiar/etc and the first one i find is the most generic ball of generic i've ever seen, i'm gonna tell it to go away, and then walk up to the alpha wolf and tame him instead. It would make sense that your druid, ranger, wizard, etc is going to intentionally pick a superior example of the species.