spaceLem's page

Yes, because PF is heir to the house that Gary and Dave built, not 4th edition.

We'll never know what they thought of 4e (Gary died before it came out, Dave shortly after, but I've never seen anything he had to say about it), so I don't think you can really say that.

We do know that Gary had no interest in 3e and nothing good to say about it (when asked his opinion he'd just say that it was WotC's game now), so I doubt he'd be that interested in Pathfinder either.

To answer the original question: no. If someone asked me what I was doing, if I'd just say roleplaying. If the exact game was important or interesting, I would say Pathfinder, and if I was playing D&D I refer to the edition.

Favored enemy is strong when you get to use it. I don't think making it stronger is a good idea. It can almost double damage over the course of a full round at times.

It is not really that much book keeping since you can't change the favored enemy bonus around once it is chosen. You get to the level such as 5,10,15 and so on. You make a decision, write it on the character sheet and that is it.
What I always do instead of trying to do the math on the fly is to precalculate all my bonuses and write them down.

Example (not actual math from a real character)
Long bow +8 1d8
FE +18 1d8+18
FE2 +16 1d8+16

Any chance it would be better if the bonus was still the same for all FEs but was +2 at level 1, +3 at level 10, and +4 at level 20? That would tone it down a bit.

The idea is to not have FE1, FE2 etc., but to have just FE.
longbow: +8 1d8+2 (FE: +3 1d8+5)
repeat for each weapon

Basically, I just find having loads of different FEs with a different bonus for each too much to bother with. One single bonus that applies to any FE seems good enough to me.

This is a change to Rangers' favoured enemies based on ease of book keeping, rather than for any balance issues. It's not original, having already been done in Neverwinter Nights, but I think it's better than either the old 3e/PF method.

Currently you get a +2 to any one favoured enemy, then later on you get a +2 to another second FE, plus a floating +2 that you can add to whichever you want. Each time you get a new FE, you get a +2 against that enemy, and another +2. This seems to me to be quite complicated, as you might have +2 vs FE1, +4 vs FE2, +4 vs FE3, or +2/+2/+6 etc.

Consider the alternative: at level 1 you get your 1st FE, and you get a +1 against it then at level 5 you get a 2nd FE, and your FE bonus goes up to +2. At level 10 you get your 3rd FE, and a +3 to all. Level 15 you get 4 FE and +4 to all.

Pros: less book keeping, you only need to keep track of which enemy types you favour.

Cons: it's weaker at low levels, stronger at high levels (see below). Gives less flexibility (if you want it).

Level: new method / old method
L01: 1x1 = 1 / 2x1 = 2
L05: 2x2 = 4 / 2x2 + 1x2 = 6
L10: 3x3 = 9 / 3x2 + 2x2 = 10
L15: 4x4 = 16 / 4x2 + 3x2 = 14
L15: 5x5 = 25 / 5x2 + 4x2 = 18
L20: 6x6 = 36 / 6x2 + 5x2 = 22
etc.

So, do people think this improves things at all? Any tweaking you think might make it better, or is the old system just better (if more work)? The same adjustment could work with favoured terrain too.

A fighter gets better at fighting by training to hit things well (reflected in attack bonus), use weapons effectively (weapon proficiencies), but mostly by being really fit (good str, con and dex), which means lots of physical exercise. And yet, thanks to the skill system, a wizard who chooses to focus on physical exercise can be almost as good as the fighter, but still be more versatile. Just because they are smarter.

This makes no sense -- a class whose abilities comes from being physical, being worse than an academic who trains in their spare time.

Solving this by giving the fighter more skill points is just plastering over the problem. I would simply remove the +int bonus, and assign more class skills in a manner reflecting what the class needs. Thieves live or die by their skills, so they get 10 skill points (compensating for the loss of int bonus), all others get between 4 and 6, depending on how much the class relies on skills. The class skill bonus makes a lot of sense, and I would also increase the class bonus by +1 every 5 or 10 levels, to encourage a broader skill selection.

I quite like the idea of rolling your hit dice every level. All of them, every level. The only catch is you can't lose hit points, so don't worry about rolling low.

Example: at level 1 you roll 1d6 and get 1HP. Well that sucks, but hopefully you'll make it through the level (I may even grant full HP at level 1). At level 2 you roll 2d6 and get 10 -- nice. At level 3 you roll 3d6 and get 14, at level 4 you roll 4d6 and get 11, so you keep the 14 and so on. Don't forget CON modifiers on top of that.

It does mean that you're rolling a lot of dice when you level up, so I'd recommend sticking to d6s because they tend to be plentiful and adding a modifier: wizards get d6-1 (sorry wizards, you get d4 hit dice in my game), clerics get d6+1, fighters get d6+2, barbarians get d6+3.

The result of all this is that you tend to stick around average, but you don't tend to go below average. Plus, you can totally remove the effects of a string of bad rolls, as the effects don't ride. Also, low variance helps the fighters and barbarians, especially at later levels. I don't like characters with too many HP, because what the players get the monsters get, and lots of HP means combat drags on.

If I didn't do that, then I'd give half hit die each level, i.e. wizards get +2, sorcerers +3, clerics +4, fighters +5, barbarians +6. It's very slightly below average but I'd be generous and give you +con score at 1st level.

This happened in a 3.5 game I was in (playing World's Largest Dungeon), and the GM had warned us that character level 6 was the cut-off point at which barbarians started dying (although to be fair, since the damage was going up and the margin got smaller, levels 4-5 were probably almost certain to kill a barbarian too).

Anyway, since the rules said nothing about stopping raging when unconscious (although I think the spirit of the rules would suggest that it does stop), I searched the WotC FAQ, and lo and behold they said something along the lines of "I hope for barbarians' sake that it does keep going, or there will be many more dead barbarians on the field". Our GM then said that the FAQ was irrelevant. Oh well, Jinty's barbarian was eaten by a barghest the following round, so whether he was dead at the time was a moot point.

Fast forward a few years, and I've come to realise that the problem is not that rage stops, but that you die at -10. You can't even say -(10+character level), because the rage gives up to +4*level by level 20, so a barbarian is going to lose 80 HP when they go unconscious.

If I ever run a game, one houserule is: you die at -1/4 of your regular HP, (a 4e rule that I quite like). Note: I believe one of Gary Gygax's own house rules was dead at -(1+level), which I like too. However, even with +3 CON bonus and extra HP at every level, your barbarian's average HP are going to be 215 at level 20 before rage, so that's dead at -53.

I guess the high level barbarian is just toast without some keep-going feat, HP granted as temporary HP (essentially giving you a grace period), or a change in the way dead is handled (e.g. fort save vs death, DC somehow depends on how many HP you've lost). I'd probably favour the last one, as it's less book-keeping all round.

A party of entirely wizards would fail the OP's requirements, since I'd probably get bored and leave the game before we got to level 3. Variety is important too.

mdt wrote:

Want an example of someone with a 6 str 6 dex but 18 int and wisdom? Steven Hawking comes to mind.

I think you're vastly overestimating his STR and DEX scores. And I doubt is WIS is really much above average.

I don't know about his WIS, but he is STR 0, DEX 0, considering that he can't move at all (STR may be higher, since the problem is that his nerves can't communicate to his muscles).

Also, I remember reading an essay somewhere (on the Alexandrian perhaps?) that discussed Einstein, and showed that it was quite possible that he was a only level 4 or 5 expert, since he could reach knowledge (physics) 8 (skill ranks) + 3 (skill focus) + 4 (ability mod) = 15, thus allowing him to answer difficult questions every time, and take 20 to produce groundbreaking research (DC 35?) Stephen Hawking is probably the same, and only has 5 HP due to his rubbish CON and some bad rolls. Surprising when you think about it.

This is why I'm trying to figure out how to eliminate ability score modifiers completely, and still have a great game. The modifier system seemed so logical and so awesome when 3.0 first came out, but it really does reward specialization more than need be.

I'm not sure how it would work, since d20 currently relies on a strong interaction between positive ability modifiers and class abilities, but you're unlikely to have all the +s you really want across the board.

I would aim for something along the lines of needing a 9 in a relevant ability to do class things, and a 13 (probably no more than that!) to do more interesting things, but the actual number of rounds or uses per day of anything being fixed. The whole thing suddenly becomes much simpler to keep track of, but less prone to abuse, and still maintains the flavour (perhaps even more so as it is less numerical).

I prefer dice rolling. I have several reasons: I think it's much quicker (although it can't be done at home), it's more varied and interesting, and I don't like character builds and similar characters with the same dump stats (low CHA etc.).

My ideal system would be players roll 3d6 (or 4d6h3) in order, then swap two stats around to suit the class you want to play. Unfortunately, this really doesn't work well with the d20 system, since the modifiers are reasonably large (-4 to +4) and you really need them in the range +1 to +3 for powering class abilities. If I was going to change the game, I'd change how the modifiers were used, rather than the way of generating them.

Early D&D didn't really use modifiers the same way, and you only got a minor bonus for having a good ability score; this meant that a STR 9 fighter and a STR 18 fighter were really pretty on par, and most of your actual power came from the class rather than the stats. Suddenly 3d6 in order doesn't really matter so much, and you don't have to panic if you didn't roll well. This didn't mean that having a high ability score was not worthwhile, just that it wasn't critical to your success.

As for character builds... the truth is that I'm just no good at it, and I spend ages stressing over whether I've made the right choice (same reason I don't like most feats). Rolling removes all the worrying, and helps to differentiate characters. If I wanted a high powered game then I'd go for 6+2d6, which would probably work well with PF's requirements.

Incidentally, if you want randomness and fairness with rolling, then you can do something like the following: roll 2d6, and then subtract that number from 14, giving you a pair of numbers between 2-12, that add up to 14. You can then add 6 to them to get something between 8-18. E.g. 2d6 gives 5, then 14-5=9, giving you 11 and 15. Repeat 3 times, and you have 6 randomly generated numbers that add up to an exact number, same as point buy.

Hey Everyone,

Why are people always arguing about how the discrepancy between Wizards (and sometimes casters in general) & Melee characters is still too great?

I would suggest that it's because they think there's still an issue, and hope that by discussing it they might be able to resolve the situation (or that they might influence the game designers when writing games). I don't see anything wrong with that as long as they're polite.

If you want complete balance why do people just not play 4th Edition D&D, they did a great job balancing the classes and the game is terrible.

That's debatable. Many people love 4e, and think that it is a great base for the types of games they like; others dislike it because of the direction it took. Some of the things I dislike most about D&D 4e are actually present in Pathfinder! 4e fixed many of the things that Pathfinder didn't, but then I think I probably prefer Pathfinder's style. Neither is my perfect game, but I wouldn't describe either as terrible.

Then the same people argue that role playing is becoming more like playing a video game (especially when it comes to character optimization) and video games strive for THE ULTIMATE BALANCE, especially those MMORPG's.

Some people argue this, others reject it. It should be asked what's wrong with looking at potential examples of good game design, and if something seems like a good idea, why not give it a try? I don't play any MMORPGs, so I don't know if D&D 4e resembles them or not, but the same criticisms were directed towards 3e. I think that it's good to consider balance, just so that you don't need to sacrifice flavour for power, but I don't think it's the most important factor in a game (unless it is highly competitive).

I suspect in the future they will make all Table Tops where every class is of equal power and equal balance. I play all of the classes and enjoy all of the classes but I wonder if eventually all games will head in the same direction.

-Yeah I know

Maybe games that heavily feature tactical combat may approach that balance, but If you mean all RPGs, then I highly doubt that.

Does this mean that a cleric is only supposed to use these buffs on themselves? Surely they should be boosting team mates, in which case Dex and Int seem perfectly reasonable.

Do you use Pythagorean calculations to find distances in 2d using the battlemap? That's not how the RAW defines it.

My calculations are based on game terms, using the rules for moving diagonally in another dimension.

It's the Euclidean distance (d2 norm), rather than the Pythagorean distance ;)

If you care about the exact distance, then it is sqrt(x^2 + y^2 + z^2), where x,y,z are the distance along each axis. We know that the ranger is sqrt(x^2+y^2) = 15 feet away from directly below the wizard, distance is sqrt(30^2+15^2) = sqrt(1125) = 33.5.

If you don't care about the exact distance, then just use the d-infinity norm, and count the distance as the largest component, which in this case is 30 (the relative error is only 12%). This happens to be the way 4e does it, and it is perfectly good enough. The worst case scenario, if the two people are exactly on the diagonals, you'll have a relative error of 42%, which I doubt is that important considering the ease of calculation.

Yes, I do maths for a living.