slade867's page

Doors? Why would you enter through a door? It's obvious the enemies are going to expect you to go through the door so they're defenses will be assuming that. Blast through the wall so you're on the other side of those makeshift barricades!

You make life complicated for your GM, don't you?

A mind controlled Paladin isn't falling because of they're actions, they're falling because Sarenrae isn't going to let you Dine Weapon Flaming onto your sword so you can burn orphans while you cut them to pieces.

Deities would, very logically, stop granting you their favor while you commit evil acts.

Remember:

Many abilities and spells can cloud the minds of characters and monsters, leaving them unable to tell friend from foe—or worse yet, deceiving them into thinking that their former friends are now their worst enemies. Two general types of enchantments affect characters and creatures: charms and compulsions.

Charming another creature gives the charming character the ability to befriend and suggest courses of action to his minion, but the servitude is not absolute or mindless. Charms of this type include the various charm spells and some monster abilities. Essentially, a charmed character retains free will but makes choices according to a skewed view of the world.
•A charmed creature doesn't gain any magical ability to understand his new friend's language.
•A charmed character retains his original alignment and allegiances, generally with the exception that he now regards the charming creature as a dear friend and will give great weight to his suggestions and directions.
•A charmed character fights his former allies only if they threaten his new friend, and even then he uses the least lethal means at his disposal as long as these tactics show any possibility of success (just as he would in a fight with an actual friend).
•A charmed character is entitled to an opposed Charisma check against his master in order to resist instructions or commands that would make him do something he wouldn't normally do even for a close friend. If he succeeds, he decides not to go along with that order but remains charmed.
•A charmed character never obeys a command that is obviously suicidal or grievously harmful to him.
•If the charming creature commands his minion to do something that the influenced character would be violently opposed to, the subject may attempt a new saving throw to break free of the influence altogether.
•A charmed character who is openly attacked by the creature who charmed him or by that creature's apparent allies is automatically freed of the spell or effect.

Compulsion is a different matter altogether. A compulsion overrides the subject's free will in some way or simply changes the way the subject's mind works. A charm makes the subject a friend of the caster; a compulsion makes the subject obey the caster.

Regardless of whether a character is charmed or compelled, he does not volunteer information or tactics that his master doesn't ask for.

An INT of 7 is a -2. They are only 10% dumber than the average person. We are NOT in "Hulk smash puny human" territory.

A -7 CHA, even if we assume controls your physical appearance, is only 10% uglier than "average". So, not being able to even make the Diplomacy check is suspect, to me.

Spending half an hour trying to work out how to open what appeared to be some kind of a door to a mountain complex.

...until the GM asked if we realised it had a knob.

He managed a whole half hour before he said something?

Fiiine. I suppose it's not that bad. Something about it irks me, but you're all right, it should be fine.

Which completely misses the point? Movement speed is something else entirely. Are you really going to tell someone they can't play a dwarf its too slow? The dwarf wizards disagrees anyway. His teleport spell really sped things up. At first a level a wizard who throws out a color spray has a chance to end the encounter in a single action. Not slowing anyone down. Haste speeds things up usually! Besides, at later levels by the time you run totally out the adventuring day is already over.

Its not the fault of the players that their classes have few ways to recharge their abilities. That sort of lies on the system and those who made it. x/day is horrendously balanced and forces the DM to plan around it, rather than doing their own gig. Never made me happy.

The Dwarf is awesome and I never said no one should play him. His slow speed is a fault when walking. It's ok to acknowledge this. It doesn't mean he doesn't have other positive attributes. That doesn't mean he's not slow.

A Wizard who novas and is empty by encounter 2 of the day looked great for 2 encounters and is now dead weight. To me, that's a bug not a feature. A better Wizard would pace himself. He wouldn't look as good in combat, but he'd have more staying power.

Marthkus wrote:

Hmm encounter where I can't prebuff spells that are not 10min/lvl or 1hour/level

Hmmmmm, I believe all of them. I may have had a handful of encounter EVER that I could precast a 1 round/lvl buff.

Do you realize that this is extremely a-typical? I can count on one hand the number of times I didn't have at least a round's worth of warning about an upcoming fight.

Is your game just an endless string of ambushes? Does nobody in your party scout or use divination magic or even just have decent perception scores?

Combine this with you talking in another thread about how you have 6 or 8 or some other high number of encounters every day, and I think it's clear that you are playing a very different game than the one that is written in the books, and that is why your perception of power here are skewed.

Keep in mind, I also play a game very different from the one in the books, but I still understand what the game I'm not playing is like (in fact, it is that understanding that led me to deviate so greatly), so when I discuss things on the forum, I use the common ground of the books, not my personal game with all my houserules and stylistic changes.

In ALL the games I play, you see an enemy, they see you, roll initiative. Not you see an enemy, they see you, both sides have a free round, roll initiative.

You really seem to lack a bit of understanding of the system. How can they buff? Easy. Quicken metamagic/rod. Divination spells mean that most of the time a well played caster knows exactly when he needs to be buffed so getting the mid to long duration buffs up is easy.

I do fail to understand how the caster always has just the right item for the job. Or just the right feat. Or just the right spell. A spell which the player.

A "well played caster" apparently Scrys every room he goes into before entering. This somehow does not decrease his spells/day. He then buff himself before every battle. This somehow does not decrease his spells/day. Thus he can use this strategy and still have a full adventuring day because he's just that awesome.

OR he buffs during battle where the enemies don't walk up and make him pay for it. Is it because the martials are in front of him, blocking (and killing) so that he has that time? Nope, he's so awesome the enemies wait til he's done. I really don't understand that system, you're right.

Why do they have money to burn? Because they are casters and thus can function on minimal gear. How many cast of stone skin does the cost of a +2 sword get you? A bunch.

A second ago the caster had a metamagic rod. One of the most expensive ones too. But now he has "minimal gear". It seems that casters simultaneously have "the right item for the right job" and "no items because they're casters and have spells for that".

Since when is a full round cast such a massively long time? In that time the melee's are just getting into full attack position if they are lucky.

All this leaves out time stop that flat gives all the time a caster could want.

Full attack position INFRONT of the caster so the enemies don't swarm and kill him. That's a job worth lauding don't you think?

Because in many cases it really IS janitor work for the martial guys.

They're just mopping up the sleeping/immobile/heavily debuffed enemies the casters made a non-threat with their spells.

Which I find to be very BORING. Most of the fun I've had in this game as a martial character has involved either no casters or ones that don't pull tricks like that.

I don't enjoy "janitor work". However "invaluable" my coup de grace on the sleeping giant was, it doesn't change the fact that I had little to do with winning that encounter. It was won when the caster pulled a Sleep spell out of his ass.

That's why people use the phrase. Not as a jab at martial characters so much as a statement of disgust at the way casters can sometimes trivialize encounters.

If the caster makes the fight easy for the martial, he should say "Thank you" not "Dammit, I wanted him to hit me a few times first." I'll say it again. It's a TEAM game. You're not fighting for individual glory. It's not about how many enemies you specifically "took down".

Because literally everyone can do what martials do (deal damage, use skills, take feats), while martials absolutely can't do what the others do.

I don't want to get into the so called "casters beat martials out of combat argument". Besides it's crap anyway. Let's keep it to in combat.

So who is this hypothetical magic guy who has both a slew of control spells AND a slew of damaging spells AND has them both all day long?

Any witch worth their salt carries a scythe to coup de grace the guys they sleep. Clerics, Druids, Oracles, Inquisitors, Bards, Magi, Summoners, and even some rare few Sorcerers/Wizards can deal respectable damage. It doesn't have to be as high as a Fighter or Barbarian when the enemy is crippled.

Is that Witch going to eat all the AOs that walking to that one sleeping enemy is going to provoke from all of his friends? As for the "crippled enemies", I've played lots of Pathfinder. I'm sure you have too. And the truth is enemies MAKE their saves. They make them all the time. Slowing 2 out of 4 enemies still leaves two normal and two NOT dead. Take too long to kill the fresh ones because you can't hit crap and do mediocre damage and the Slow guys go back to normal.

DPS is just not that important. Even MMOs know that--they had to invent Rage Timers and things of that nature to give DPS responsibility, rather than the junk job the unskilled masses do.

So, yeah, it is a lesser job. It's not unique, it's not important or impressive--it's easy, and it actually means less in the long run than the spell that enabled them in the first place.

Melees often don't NEED the magic user. They'd win regardless even if it cost more health. Casters NEED someone to block when that Dire Tiger charges. It's even worse if it's an ambush attack they didn't have time to prebuff for.

There are plenty of other caster vs martial topics on this board and I'm not interested in this being one. Reading those though, I did notice something that I thought needed a new discussion.

Martial work, that is dealing HP damage to things so that they actually die, is called “janitor work” or “clean up”. This is meant to imply that it’s somehow lesser to the caster who cast a spell to make that job easier. Where did this idea come from?

It makes no sense to me. You’ve heard the phrase “You set them up, I’ll knock them down.”? Well that’s a team effort. This is a team game. And it takes both sides of the equation. I’ve been in a party that was all magic set up with no melee knock down. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t pretty at all.

Eventually the Wall comes down, the Pit comes up, or the Hold wears off. Someone needs to kill the enemy before that happens. It’s an essential part of the puzzle otherwise all the magic user has done is delayed his own death.

So why is there no love for the Fighter? His role was invaluable. It was certainly no less valuable than the Wizards. So how about we give some credit where credit is due. Both roles have their place. Both roles are needed. And no role deserves to be crapped on over the other.

"Dropping an item in your space or into an adjacent square is a free action."

This implies an item in your hand, methinks.

When our characters talk to any semi-important NPC, somebody asks if they are lying or holding something back. We roll sense motive and if it low the GM usually says "You can't tell"

Now it could be because people aren't lying to use as much as not telling us everything.
But if your are worried about your player metagaming hidden rolls plus and/or asking for random rolls are your best bets

I'm not worried about metagaming hidden rolls, I'm worried about PC ignoring the roll results completely. I don't want my players assuming someone is lying even after I tell them they see no signs of deception.

A PC makes a Sense Motive check vs an NPC and fails it, now what?

In the past I've required that the character behave as if he believed that NPC, but lately I'm wondering if that's too heavy-handed. I'm thinking of dropping that down to simply sensing no deception.

My problem is that I feel like this leads to metagaming. If you sense no deception from someone, why wouldn't you believe them? How do you fine GMs handle this situation?

Should he have healed up the morlock, given it a weapon, and then slew it in combat? Why? The morlock likely has absolutely no chance winning, in which case you are setting up a farce combat in order to create a facade of honor. This almost seems evil to me, as you are deliberately setting up the morlock to suffer more.

So tell me, what is intrinsically and indelibly honorable about giving a creature false hope and prolonging its suffering?

Certain paladins may believe strongly that every creature should be given a trial-by-combat, in which case they might believe killing a helpless creature is dishonorable. Others may be more in the lines of thinking that the creature should have a merciful end.

Again, I posit that it can depend a lot on deity:
Torag - probably doesn't care much
Sarenrae - definitely falling from her grace if you kill the creature in any way but a swift execution
Iomedae - probably favors a trial-by-combat

The nurse the morlock plan is even funnier than that. What if it DOES win? Then you've nursed evil back from the brink and unleashed it upon the world, with one less Paladin to defend it.

Good job breaking it, hero!

slade867 wrote:

The Shaman wrote:

I don't expect paladins to always be nice, but I do expect them to be honorable. Murdering defenseless prisoners does not strike me as honorable. Were they actively endangering the paladin or anything worth protecting, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

What was the right thing to do with these (presumably) irredeemable prisoners?

Oh hell I don't know, maybe ignore that murderous itch and walk away?

Just leave them alive in the cell where they'll either die a slow death or get free to spread evil again?

Is the problem the actions, or that "a paladin" did these actions?

If this character weren't a Paladin, how would you handle the situation?

It's the GMs job to provide any house rules BEFORE the game starts.

You can't create female characters, no Arcane magic, no Paladins, you MUST play a Cleric, etc, are not things players expect by default and if you don't mention them then they are assumed to not exist.

I don't see why anything should be "run by" the players.

You: I want to play a Vanilla Rogue.
Players: No.

Now what? Do you have to change your character concept? I've never seen a table do that. In my games I have one player who refuses to reveal details about his characters beforehand, because he wants to reveal them in game to us. In another game, I have a player who is bursting to tell me everything about his character even if I won't meet him anytime soon. In neither game, can the the players say "You can't build that."

GM: You can do whatever you like as long as you don't do A.

Player: Cool, I do B.

GM: What? No, you can't do B.

Are you being too uptight about wanting your players to KNOW things? No.

Tell them anyone who can't be bothered to learn class abilities must play a Fighter. It's what they're playing anyway, it'll make everyone happier.

slade867 wrote:

Conman the Bardbarian wrote:

I'd go CN Catfolk (whatever class you like) with the 2 in CHA. Since you say you roleplay what you get you could play it like, well, a cat. This is my world, who let you in, where's my food? Play it kind of bipolar - I want to be petted, who said you could stroke me four times, three strokes is enough, claw, claw, bite.

How annoying would this character be, to everyone involved, after 2 sessions? Why would a party not fire this person and hire someone else?

Why wouldn't they fire a character with the base 2 in any stat? She says she roleplays what she has, so wherever the 2 goes it would be annoying.

I would adventure with a frail old man who's a powerful wizard. I wouldn't adventure with someone who can't understand the phrase "Don't eat that, it's poison.".

Wait I think I see the disconnect. I am not judging the cohort but his boss...the party member to be a mercenary. He hired help of his own volition and than refuses to use it for the betterment of the party without extra pay....he is a mercenary.

So, to follow your logic, if a player takes Weapon Focus, which only directly benefits him, A-OK.

If a player takes a Cohort which only directly benefits him, jerkwad?

I don't follow that. The Cohort still soaks up hits for the party. The Cohort still directly benefits his Leader which indirectly benefits the party. Sounds to me like your getting all the help you deserve. If you want more and it costs that player money (vis-a-vis gear) then you need to chip in to get the same benefits the Leader gets beyond the benefits everyone gets.

If my GM made me a crappy 3 Fighter, 2 Expert and told me this was my cohort, I'd look that character in the eye and say "You're fired." The I'd go find someone USEFUL.

Default is fair because everyone sings from the same hymm sheet.

The OP made it sound like others might have gotten MORE than the default, but not him.

Even one person, getting more than another is not fair. So, either everyone should get the default, or everyone should get more than the default.

He dropped all his gear, turned his back to the enemy, and is running full speed away from them.

If my GM said I was "meta-gaming" because my character divined there was something wrong from these actions, I would punch him in his stupid face.

Could you use this on a door or a wall? What about a bridge?

In a game, there was a paladin who came across 3 orc knights trying to rape a village washer-woman(orc knights I know, lol). He told them to get off her and they leapt at him. He ended up killing them, barely. So close to incapacitation. The character knew there was a "nearby" guard outpost. The result of that was the DM forced the character to lose all his divine powers since he felt the lawful thing to do was to arrest them and take them to the guard-post. Problem here is that it was two hours ride away. There and back to get help would take about 4 hours. Furthermore, they hit him so hard that he was on single digit hp after the encounter. Imagine taking -4 to all attacks to try and subdue them. He'd probably get killed and then they would still rape her anyway. Its already been acknowledged that castrating them is going a bit far for lawful good, not too much for CG or even NG in specific circumstances. Problem paladins face is that they uphold the law but are also good aligned. Sometimes tht can clash. However, the reason they enforce the law is that they believe it to be a tool of justice, that laws are there to help the people and overall the community. Choosing good over law isn't necessarily an immediate deal-breaker. DMs should be careful about stripping divine class characters of their juice unless the character really did something drastically opposite to their alignment. A warning or two maybe should be given before the hammer of judgement comes down.

That DM was an idiot. There's nothing wrong with killing in self defense.