strumbleduck's page

By far the biggest problem with Pathfinder is how much effort it takes for GMs to make NPCs. This was a problem in 3.x also, but Pathfinder makes it so much worse by adding fiddly bits to all of the character classes.

For example, in 3.5 you could make an NPC sorcerer just by choosing spells, feats, and equipment, most of which you would already know. You could do the whole thing from memory, and it was simple enough that you could make up a sorcerer off the top of your head during play if the PCs happen to encounter one. In Pathfinder, you also have to choose a bloodline and then record all of the associated bloodline spells, powers, and feats. This needs to be looked up every time, even if you always go with the arcane bloodline, and it involves a bunch of extra powers that you don't want to keep track of.

This happens with most character classes. Every barbarian needs rage powers, every rogue needs rogue talents, every wizard gets extra powers from their specialty school, etc. Smart GMs might just ignore these things, but you shouldn't have to consistently ignore the rules just to play the game.

I understand that having so many options makes things fun for players--or at least experienced players--but for a GM making all of these choices every time is a huge pain.

Liberating command is available at 1st level and is a huge game-changer. Never worry about grapples again!

Stone shield is fantastic even at high levels. Having one or two of these memorized is almost as good as having a permanent +4 bonus to AC and a +2 bonus to Reflex saves. Note that the bonus is untyped, so it stacks with carrying a shield.

Wartrain mount lets you train any friendly or indifferent animal for combat instantly. A druid can combine this with call animal to raise an army of animals for combat.

Rogar Stonebow wrote:

LazarX wrote:

felinoel wrote:

LazarX wrote:

strumbleduck wrote:

Dave Justus wrote:

It is well known that high level Paladins are just in it for the money.

In my campaign world, most large paladin orders are funded almost exclusively by selling wands, potions, and scrolls of lesser restoration to magic item shops. Of course, you don't need to be so high level to make those.

If that's the kind of story you wish to tell, more power to you. In my world Paladins who survive to that level, are so rare, they don't have time for such nonsense.

Saving a church of your deity is not nonsense to a paladin.

Cthulhudrew wrote:

felinoel wrote:

Then not FLOODING the market but the summoners would definitely be flooding the market like crazy nonstop.

To what end? The market for wands in general, much less specific wands like these, would be extremely limited in most fantasy worlds.

The ones where you can't throw a stone and hit a mid- to high-level adventurer.

To the end that they are as common as the others of the same level really.

_Ozy_ wrote:

Yeah, summoners have an insane list. Maybe there's a secret cabal of wizards who go around and threaten summoners to keep them out of the market. ;)

You jest but that is the only possible thing that could happen for the worlds run by the above people who don't permit summoner-made magic stuffs.

So your Paladins save their churches.... by wielding wands of plane shift???

No silly! Not wielding, but selling!

Like I said, if that's the kind of Paladin stories you want to tell, fine. To me, that's like Green Lantern saving the Corps and the universe, by opening up a Haberdashery.

That's a perfectly reasonable viewpoint, and I agree that it depends on what kind of stories you want to tell.

But I would like to point out that there's something of a tradition in comic-book-type fiction of heroes using their powers to pay the bills. Some examples:

1. In the Men in Black film franchise, the titular organization is funded by patents they own on certain technology (e.g. velcro) of an alien origin.

2. Tony Stark certainly uses his powers of invention to make money, which is required to fund his superpowers. Indeed, of all of the comic book superheroes, he seems to be the only one whose power is based almost entirely on crafting feats.

3. Peter Parker and Clark Kent both use their status as superheroes surreptitiously to get ahead in their mundane careers.

I'm sure there are other good examples. The point is that I think a clever and resourceful group of paladins would use all means at their disposal to increase their power. It doesn't fit into the classic heroic conception of paladins, but as you said, it depends on what type of stories you want to tell.

It is well known that high level Paladins are just in it for the money.

In my campaign world, most large paladin orders are funded almost exclusively by selling wands, potions, and scrolls of lesser restoration to magic item shops. Of course, you don't need to be so high level to make those.

The game works by assuming each fight will take its toll on your resources. Healing is the major resource of the game, requiring either expending precious daily abilities or items that cost you money and required you to prepare ahead of time. The gameplay of D&D/PF centers around mitigating the healing cost. If you play smart and work as a team, you lower the damage party members take and lower the healing cost of the fight.

Sorry, but this just isn't the way that Pathfinder works. The math doesn't support your argument.

Let's consider a 4-person party of 8th-level PC's fighting against a CR 8 encounter. Between the four characters, the party probably has something like 300 hit points. Depending on how they "manage" the battle, there are two extreme possibilities:

1. They take almost no damage.

2. They take an enormous amount of damage, requiring close to 300 hit points worth of healing.

In the second case, the party will use up essentially a whole wand of cure light wounds after the battle, costing 750 gp.

So how much does this difference matter?

Well, according to the Treasure Values per Encounter Table, the PC's are likely to net 3,350 gp worth of treasure for the encounter, which is more than four times the cost of the wand.

And in reality, it's very unlikely that different tactics or player choices would swing an encounter between "no damage" and "almost all dead". Realistically speaking, how efficiently the players dispatch the encounter is very unlikely to make more than 250 gp worth of difference, which is less than 10% of the expected income. So a party that consistently requires lots of healing ends up at most 10% poorer, which will hardly be noticeable given how fast wealth increases. Hit points and healing just aren't a significant long-term resource in this game.

Overall, Pathfinder just isn't a resource-management game -- it's a risk mitigation game. The danger in a Pathfinder campaign isn't that the PC's will spend too much on healing and end up bankrupt. The danger in Pathfinder is that the PC's will make poor choices in a tough encounter and end up with a character death or even a TPK. The danger is that they won't be able to make it through the dungeon in time to stop the BBEG's plan to destroy the world. You lose in Pathfinder because the bad guys kick your ass, not because you run out of money.

There is nothing game changing at all about fast healing for a PC party.

Any Pathfinder party above level 3 or so should have enough wands of cure light wounds to heal up completely after every battle. Such wands are extremely cheap and are available for sale in most campaigns. They're so cheap that there's very little reason for a cleric to ever cast healing spells between combats, except perhaps for very low-level spells that the cleric wouldn't otherwise make use of.

The daily resource that Pathfinder characters run out of is spells. Adventuring parties don't decide to rest because they're out of healing -- they decide to rest because the casters are running out of good spells. Fast healing doesn't help with this at all, which means that it doesn't extend the adventuring day one bit.

The only effect that fast healing has it that it will let the party spend less gold on wands of curing. A typical party spends maybe 5% of its money on such wands, so this effect isn't really that big. Out-of-combat healing was an important resource to be managed in original D&D, but starting in 3rd edition it became a cheap commodity, and it remains so in Pathfinder.

But, if PF was written without iteratives, would anyone miss them?

Yes. There are a few good reasons that iterative attacks were included in D&D 3.0 (and, by extension, Pathfinder). They solve three different problems:

1. The Damage Problem: Some mechanic is needed to significantly increase the damage that martial characters can do at higher levels.

2. The Mooks Problem: Some mechanic is needed to make it possible for high-level martial characters to kill multiple weak foes in a round.

3. The Attack Bonus Problem: Some mechanic is needed to make attack bonus continue to matter at higher levels, particularly in the case where your attack bonus is high enough that you automatically hit.

Getting multiple attacks solves the damage problem and the mooks problem, and having the attack bonus decrease for later attacks solves the attack bonus problem.

That being said, there's not really any good reason that iterative attacks were tied to full-round actions. I suppose the designers thought that it would be interesting for martial characters to have to choose each round between attacking at full strength and moving. It also gives an important advantage to archers, since archers can full attack every round without moving. But if you want to get rid of this and simply let characters pounce, it wouldn't particularly break the game. (Note: Be careful with giving monsters the pounce ability. This significantly increases the power of certain monsters.)

So what stops someone giving themselves 1,000,000 HP and +20 to all saves at level 1 if nobody is reviewing the sheets?

Uh, a desire not to cheat?

If you're playing with people who would cheat at the game without GM oversight then you need to find a new group.

I'd say my main rule is:

Figure out what kind of campaign your players want to play, and provide it.

There are many different ways to play Pathfinder, and the only way to be a good DM is to figure out what kind of game your players want to play. Are they looking for a "beer & pretzels" game? Immersive storytelling? Character-driven improvisation? Interesting tactical combats? High adventure? Comedy? Horror?

99% of the time that a game doesn't work it's because the players and the DM aren't on the same page. For example, a DM will try to play a city-based campaign based on interactions with NPC's, when the players really just want a hack-and-slash dungeon crawl. Or the DM will run a lighthearted campaign when the players would respond better to something dark and epic.

Along these lines, you might want to take a look at The Same Page Tool.