the secret fire's page

Later, before I fall asleep more. ;D

Good night!

I like you, lion, but I'm not going to make it through all that.

I would add that a fantasy universe with a "high god" who determines morality and adjudicates the questions posed in this thread would at least be a sensible solution to the problem. I believe the Hickman/Weiss cosmology of the Dragonlance setting includes such a being. Pathfinder/Golarion, however, does not, and there is a fundamental incoherence to the notion that the "evil" gods would subject themselves to the morality of the "good" ones without a very clear reason for doing so.

@Weirdo: that is a very interesting possibility. Honestly, in a world as diverse as Golarion, why wouldn't we expect radically differing moralities all competing for status as "the good"? Even if we accept that morality is in some way a physical thing (which, I admit, is strongly suggested by the existence of good/evil descriptor spells), why would it be the case that the specifics of "good" and "evil" would be immutable or conform in any way to our own beliefs?

Though again...a "high god" would resolve these questions.

I just want to bask in the afterglow of what has been a hot, sweaty, and very RAW debate. Mmmmm...so RAW.

the secret fire wrote:

Talk of "objective morality" makes me want to kick a puppy.

Then get to kicking because Pathfinder doesn't use Subjective Morality ever.

Oh, don't worry; I already have. Got two of them, actually.

A person, under subjective morality, could slaughter all small children that he comes across and justify that as good if they believe that the world is a horrible place and the children's existence in it is a cruel punishment forced on them. He could argue that he was healing them, in a way, and he could justify this which, under subjective morality, he would be correct he could still be Good under his own perceptions.

People can do those things. The fact that the Aztecs cut out someone's heart every day and played football with severed heads didn't make them evil in their own eyes. Alexander the Great didn't think "gosh, I'm so evil" when he ordered his army to raze Persepolis.

The entire universe doesn't turn on your moral compass, Walsh.

I'm more of a plank wizard, myself, so I can't help you, brother.

the secret fire wrote:

Magic Denialist Stuff

It feels a bit odd to be on the opposite side of this discussion when we have agreed on so much elsewhere Secret Fire, but everybody has different views and perspectives so really this was bound to happen sooner or later.

The first question I must ask you, is What is Leveling to you?

We don't actually disagree, kyrt. Like you, I see leveling in D&D/PF as a slow process of evolution into a "higher form". For magic users, this manifests as greater skill and power in the use of magic, and for martials, it manifests as greater "martial badassery".

Sure thing...but this "badassery" is not normal. You mention Thor as a model for a high level martial, and while I might not go that far (I'm happy with Achilles), I would point out that Thor is a god, full stop, and gods are magical. One way or another, you can't get around the fact that high level martials are either magical creatures or they are, as you said, dust.

Once we admit that they are explicitly magical creatures then giving them explicitly magical abilities (and I don't mean throwing hadoukens around) becomes a lot easier to justify, and the hideous zombie of martial realism can finally be put down.

Yes, of course they do. The thing is...the game already has many of the tools necessary to make martials much more interesting. They just need to be consolidated and codified in a sensible way, and the onerous restrictions on their use (whether it's feat trees or being hidden away in archetypes) need to be removed. A few random ideas:

1) Make potions a lot cheaper. This is good for martials because it gives them cheap, "non spell" access to many of the buffs they need to get by at mid-high levels (up to and including flight), but it is also good for casters (especially Sorcerers and healers) because it frees up their resources for other things.

2) Reform the poison system. This guy has some great suggestions. A poison system that is actually useful could offer martials who were willing to use them a whole range of interesting possibilities.

3) Make skills useful again. Things like the Distraction ability of the Burglar archetype and Darkstalker from 3.5 make having the Stealth skill actually good. Unchain them! Make martials (...cough...Rogue...cough...) the masters of the best skill in the game, Perception. Make Heal more useful. And so on...

3.5) I would argue that the social skills are already quite useful, and that many people grossly overrate the power of "social magic", or rather, underrate its potential drawbacks, likely because they are accustomed to play styles in which social interactions are not very important to begin with. Casting Charm Person is already far less useful and more risky than getting someone to like you (or convincing them of something) through the use of skills.

4) Reform the skill points system to not grant bonus points only based off of Int.

5) Give the martials cool non-magical abilities which are actually possible...like trap-building and hypnotism. To wit: a couple of abilities from my game:

Legio_MCMLXXXVII wrote:

So, what visible effect is created by Charm Person? Or Sleep?

Swirly eyes.

Hypnotoad style, obviously.

If it's ruled spells themselves are visible (glowing runes) that means invisible spellcasters will give their position away if they cast. That has huge consequences.

A middle path is also possible. Maybe spells with no "obvious" physical effects (like, say, Charm Person) nevertheless create some sort of a distortion - a brief warping of space or whatnot between caster and target - which is difficult to perceive, but can be noticed by the very attentive. This would be consistent with the idea that removing components imposes penalties on Spellcraft checks (which seems to be Paizo's position) without simply rendering componentless spells with no physical manifestations de facto invisible. I would think that spells without components under this paradigm would first require an opposed Perception check to notice, rather than being automatically noticed and simply requiring a Spellcraft check to identify.

I think this would be an acceptable solution. If each component removed imposes a -5 penalty (I believe this was Jason's original mechanical suggestion) to the Perception roll, then a Sorcerer casting a Stilled, Silent spell could still have a reasonable expectation of stealth without it being simply a "lol you can't see it" scenario.

Whatever the case, this is an area of the game that clearly needs to be fleshed out more, not only as a matter of mechanics, but in terms of what the developers actual intent is regarding the baseline manifestation of magic in the world. I'm hoping this doesn't mean loltastic swirling cartoon runes, but if it does, I will simply ignore the ruling at my table and proceed as I see fit.

Diffan wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

'Easy' being two feats, skill investment, and whatever Hurtful is.

As opposed to just having that be something all martial character do.

That's pretty much the crux of the situation, a Fighter/Martial character needs to delve into system mastery to do something that, frankly, should be fine with the system already. Has anyone tried just eliminating Full-Attack action altogether? Seems like an easy thing to do and one of the "fixes" I did for our E6 games. Works great IMO.

This is actually crippling to the game balance.

You are aware that any martial who gets a full attack off with any amount of decent optimization at ant level above 10 will, I don't mean might, but will, obliterate any opponent of even relative CR?

Nyet. Non. No.

It is not, at all, crippling to game balance. I know because I've been allowing characters (to include monsters) to mix attack and move actions however they choose for years (ie. move, attack, move, attack, move...and so on, up to their full movement and full iterative attacks).

As a DM, you do need to adjust your CRs upwards a bit to account for the greater effectiveness of the martial classes, but it cripples nothing, and it adds tactical options that weren't there before. When adjusting the CR upwards, it's important not to simply pick bigger boss monsters with even MOAR AWESOME SLAs!, but rather to add more depth to encounters, with additional lieutenants (not mooks, but not bosses), environmental hazards, maybe adding mobility to the mooks, etc.

It does take some experimentation and experience as a DM to "unchain" martials in this way, but the game is still perfectly playable (and, in fact, more fun) once one gets the balance worked out.

Basically, I see a Wizard do this, and I figure he is casting a spell.

I picture it more like this.

This is actually pretty simple:

1. Every spell can potentially be counterspelled. *

2. If you want to counterspell (which is a rule, even though we all hate it and never use it, but let's pretend the rule exists so that somebody somewhere might use it), you need to use Spellcraft to identify the spell being cast.

3. Spellcraft (to identify a spell as it is being cast) states that you must see the spell to identify it. It even says normal perception penalties can apply.

4. In order for points 1, 2, & 3 to be consistent, there must be something that CAN BE SEEN. This must be true for every spell. **

Yeah...the components.

Again, people trying to parse what is a clear oversight on the part of the developers as RAW. If there are no rules written to address a given issue, then there are no "rules-as-written" to which we might appeal. If your ruling requires a bloody seven point "interpretation" (your words), there clearly there is no rule-as-written, as much as you'd like to impose your interpretation on the rest of us as being somehow definitive.

I'll go right on not neutering the entire illusion and enchantment schools, k thanks bye.

the secret fire wrote:

I not sure about that.

There is an important difference between role-playing games and games of all other types. RPGs are inherently meant to simulate life in an alternate world, and however strange and magical that world may be, there is a basic expectation of cause and effect.

Uh, what? That is an expectation of anything, not RPGs in specific. And 4e was not any worse at that then Pathfinder.

You really don't get it, do you? "Cause and effect" in a video game or a game of monopoly is nothing more than another term for "the rules". There is no expectation that the rules reflect any underlying reality which is internally consistent. The rules are simply an arbitrary system, and no one looks too deeply into them. Ever consider why Mario can kill koopas by butt bombing them, but gets killed by them when he just runs into them? Of course not, because Super Mario Brothers is not a role-playing game. But make Mario a fighter in an RPG, and you'd better be able to explain why the rules for how Mario interacts with koopas are what they are.

The rules in RPGs are merely the surface on a deeper system, not the system, itself. They are also not discrete, and are meant to describe most but not all of the possible things one can do in the game. This is why there is "room for interpretation" in RPGs, and a DM who runs the world is necessary. In other sorts of games, going "outside the rules" is either nearly unthinkable, or in the case of video games, simply a contradiction in terms.

Quote:

I imagine my hero achieving X by doing Y. If there is no causal connection between X and Y, then even the generous suspension of disbelief necessary to play a fantasy RPG eventually breaks down. 4th ed. had archers moving people 5' in any direction by hitting them with non-magical arrows. How, pray tell? Because reasons.

And yet Pathfinder lets you shoot like three arrows off your bow Legolas style

This is actually possible. Shooting in this way with any accuracy is highly unlikely, but it can be physically done. Moving people in arbitrary directions with arrows...not so much. It is a question of degree: how much suspension of disbelief can we maintain? 4th ed. simply demanded more slack-jawed credulity than many people had to offer.

...reload a musket 3-4 times in 6 seconds (oh and shoot said gun), and do all KINDS of crazy stuff.

Pathfinder's firearms rules are an embarrassment, and I will not defend them any more than I use them.

Hell even spell slots are as dumb as "daily" powers from AEDU and don't make any sense.

Now we're getting to the crux of the problem...the internal consistency of magic in RPGs is entirely too easy to justify because magic can, by definition, pretty much do or be anything. So you end up in a scenario where the developers cannot justify martials having powers A, B and C because they don't make sense in the context of "what a martial is", but powers X, Y, Z, AB, AC, DFG, GFHSFGH, and TRTXG#'ADF GADFG!!! can be justified for magic users because magic.

The fact that RPGs are "deep" systems of cause and effect is ultimately the main reason for the martial/caster disparity. MARTIAL REALISM is the demon that cannot be exorcised. Short of simply nerfing the crap out of magic users, fixing the problem involves going pretty "deep", and mucking around with some of the basic assumptions about how things work in the world. This can be accomplished in homebrews if one makes the effort to mold a setting around a set of assumptions which leads to greater balance, but in kitchen sink Golarion...I'm not sure if balance is possible.

the secret fire wrote:

Rub-Eta wrote:

the secret fire wrote:

I think 4th ed. is a perfect example of designers taking the easy way out in terms of game balance. Balancing limited-use magic with at-will martial abilities is hard, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done.

Yes it's hard. From some approaches it's even impossible, as the entire idea from certain angles is that limited-use magic is more powerful than at-will martial abilities (SKR explains it very good here).

It's interesting that he specifically states that getting rid of Vancian magic is the way to get out of the nova-wizard-now-we-rest paradigm. I pretty much agree, and have long since instituted changes in my game which take that tack.

I like the idea that casting spells deals nonlethal damage which some RPG systems use. Shadowrun has it but with the ability to reduce the damage to 0 (and a high chance for that) its not enough of a drawback/a limit to spells cast per day. I like it best when combined with the fact that magic can not heal nonlethal damage.

Midgard, a german RPG, uses a variation of spellcasting = nonlethal damage.

HERO games more or less uses this system, as well, with standard attacks doing limited killing damage and killing attacks being much more expensive and easy to repel with decent armor. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it's really what is needed to address the imbalances in the system, as unconscious enemies may as well be dead in most cases, and are often more useful than corpses because they can be woken up and pumped for information.

My take on the best Pathfinder-internal way to fix the Vancian magic problem is to simply only allow the spontaneous casting classes (though you can certainly call a dude with Sorcerer mechanics a Wizard, if you like), and have them cast off of a single magic pool, rather than off of several broken up by spell level as they do now. Oh, and make scrolls weird one-shot items that can be found, but never bought.

This way, the main problem of the prepared casters (their ludicrous versatility) vanishes, and the casting classes have less of a 15 minute workday problem because their magic pools are more flexible. In the end, it is not so much the Wizard's length but rather his girth that is the problem.

After that comes the super-easy task of buffing the martials up to the level of a sorcerer with at-will abilities only...

Quote:

If 4e was as good as people seem to think it was WotC wouldn't have ditched it, after numerous attempts to rewind it back to 3.5, until they eventually released 5th which is a whole different animal.

They already tried 1:1 balance. They made MMO: The Game (aka 4th Edition) and guess what? People didn't like it. People don't play Pathfinder because of 3PP either, as some suggest. 9/10 GMs that I know don't even allow 3PP at their table, so that can't be the driving factor.

I think people play Pathfinder because it is good, offers many options, and is fun.

I don't think you understand.

4e is by far and away a much more superior tabletop game. Emphasis game. How many threads have there been (and that's just the people who care enough to complain) about the utterly byzantine rules this game often employs?

I not sure about that.

There is an important difference between role-playing games and games of all other types. RPGs are inherently meant to simulate life in an alternate world, and however strange and magical that world may be, there is a basic expectation of cause and effect.

I imagine my hero achieving X by doing Y. If there is no causal connection between X and Y, then even the generous suspension of disbelief necessary to play a fantasy RPG eventually breaks down. 4th ed. had archers moving people 5' in any direction by hitting them with non-magical arrows. How, pray tell? Because reasons.

4th edition failed the most basic test of cause and effect, most specifically when dealing with martial characters. It asked us to accept things that didn't make any damn sense, and didn't attempt to paper over the gap with even the thinnest of explanations. 4th ed. is not unique in this sense. The breakdown in cause and effect started mainly in 3rd edition, and we still have some of it in Pathfinder. The Rogue can perform his non-magical defensive roll once per day because reasons. Ok.

But 4th ed. took what was essentially a flaw in 3rd ed. and made it the central design principal of the game. It became extremely difficult for people to imagine their heroes doing heroic things because they couldn't understand the underlying rules of a world in which archers toss people around with their arrows. The game demanded a suspension of disbelief that is normally reserved for other types of games, like monopoly and video games.

So in that sense, you may be right. Maybe 4th ed. was a better game than 3.5/Pathfinder. I dunno. What I do know is that it was a vastly inferior role-playing game.

TarkXT wrote:

Otherwise optimization, or really even the rules have no good place.

They don't. That is why rule 0 exists.

I think this is a dangerous view to take. Rule 0 must exist because the show must go on and nothing is less fun than arguing about rules. That being said, every time rule 0 is invoked, whether openly or in secret, what is happening at the table becomes less a game and more a bedtime story.

I used to be more of a narrative guy than I am today. Eventually, I guess I realized that my favorite narratives were the ones that the players wrote themselves. I think this is why clear and coherent rules (of the non-zero variety) are so important. The rules are the ways in which the players interact with the game world. The better the rules, the more empowered the players, and the bigger the role they play in telling the story.

LazarX wrote:

lemeres wrote:

Would anyone willing to do the things that create a lich be looking to make a magical girl? Geb's excuse is pretty normal for the kind of circumstances associated with #7.

With raise spells at a MUCH lower price, you can't even get the 'I will not allow my daughter/sister/childhood friend stay dead' excuse really. Buying resurrections are still cheaper, and it generally covers a century or two of death.

Geb wasn't using an excuse. he did what he did specifically for spiteful revenge against the Knights of Ozem.

ok...so what motivations would there be for someone to raise a lich which would not involve something evil?

To keep a soul from falling into the hands of something that would do terrible, terrible evil with it. There are certain scenarios where this might make sense. For example: Girl X is the last of her kind. Prophecy foretells that only when the X's are all gone may a great evil arise/the gate to Gdyr'xax be opened/coke turn into pepsi/etc. Making Girl X into a lich might end up being a desperate and amusing way of "fighting evil". I mean...imagine the scenario: you have to keep the bloody thing "alive" while it is busy plotting your eternal damnation. Good times.

Otherwhere wrote:

^That was sort of my impression of it as well.

These are all attempts at addressing the underlying issue: straight martial classes are lacking the expansiveness and options of caster classes at higher levels.

That's fine! That's where creativity gets engaged!

I see no problem with home-brewing solutions, or 3PP, in order to have a more enjoyable gaming experience.

In regards to Path of War, I've found that Stamina+Book of Martial action works better for the fighters in terms of not feeling like a vancian martial.

I prefer always-on feats and abilities for martials, and greatly dislike the move towards giving every damn class in Pathfinder some sort of expendable pool on which its strongest abilities depend. Not having to "prepare stances" (bleeargh!) is a step in the right direction, but basing everything off of a pool still leaves me wanting more.

BackHandOfFate wrote:

Okay.. getting close to 600 posts not counting the 200 deleted posts... Waiting for the next thread titled "What Kind of Better Things Do Martials Need?"

I just discovered Path of War not too long ago. This stuff is the bomb.

I also started using Path of war not too long ago and I can't like the system, the whole idea of preparing maneuvers kills it for me.

Yeah, unfortunately, while the book's heart is in the right place, the actual execution feels corny and contrived.

the secret fire wrote:

This little feat chain has been a nice boon for the Rogues. Feinting fails often enough and enough critters are immune that I don't feel the ability to do it as a swift action is overpowered.

Or you could use actual rules to do the same with Moonlight Stalker Feint without throwing in house-rules to clutter up the game. (It's not that hard to get concealment between magic and/or smoke pellets.) Or use two-weapon feint and give up a single attack.

Not to be dismissive - but it sounds like your game is so chock full of house-rules that your weighing in on actual rules using your game as the baseline is mostly worthless. (There's nothing wrong with house-rules, but at a certain point it's no longer the same game.)

One of the biggest problems martials face in Pathfinder is not that certain effects cannot be achieved, but that they are too often hidden behind onerous prerequisites, in archetypes, or in long feat chains full of feat taxes. The feats you cite are a perfect illustration of this problem, actually, so thanks.

My opinion that feinting is "too slow" in Pathfinder has nothing to do with how I specifically fix the problem in my game. If you think the feats you cited are sufficient, then by all means, use them as-is.

I agree with whoever said that the feinting action economy is screwed up, and should be one step faster. I invented a couple of combat feats to make that work:

- Iaijutsu: one mental stat bonus [INT, WIS or CHA] is added to Initiative (combat)
- prereq: Fighter or Rogue 3rd, Quick Draw*

- Dancing Blade: you may feint in melee combat as a swift action (combat)
- prereq: Iaijutsu, Improved Feint

*I should add that Rogues in my game get Quick Draw as a bonus feat at 3rd level (and Fighters get a pile of bonus feats), and there are no dumb restrictions on what can be drawn (meaning it also works for wands, potions, etc.).

----------

This little feat chain has been a nice boon for the Rogues. Feinting fails often enough and enough critters are immune that I don't feel the ability to do it as a swift action is overpowered.

I use the "stronghold" idea in my own games in a more scaling fashion to give the martial classes more narrative power (wall of text incoming). Please note that this is setting-specific stuff. There are no prepared casters in my game world (which is a sort of Roman/Greek mythology setting), and sorcerers and oracles are rare and isolated creatures who exist outside of the power structure of normal society. I should also note that there are limits on the availability for purchase of magic items beyond standard +X arms/armor and +X [Stuff]_of_Resistance.

Here it is:

INFLUENCE:

- Characters from the martial classes (Fighter and Rogue) grow in social power as they progress in level. This can move along one of three tracks: political, commercial and criminal.

POLITICAL:

Spoiler:

- 4th level: you are most likely a member of a patrician family. You are either a bureaucrat of considerable power within a specific sphere (the courts, tax collection, etc.) in a major city, or a knight of some renown in charge of large personal holdings covering approximately 100 sq. km. If a knight, you can occasionally call up and command small forces of well-disciplined troops (approximately 80 - or a Roman century). You receive diplomatic advantages when dealing with other nobles/aristocrats, and may gain access to areas and audience with people that are otherwise closed to "commoners".

- 8th level: in a republican government, you have the power of a Roman senator (one of 300). In a feudal government, you have the power of a local lord or count, with executive control over territory covering approximately 800 sq. km. Your influence is such now that you are accorded considerable public respect, and you have virtually unimpeded access to the halls of power, both at home and abroad. You may occasionally call up and command considerable forces of well-disciplined troops (approximately 800 - or a Roman "first cohort"). If a republican, you will have to justify this call-up to the Senate. If a feudal lord, these troops constitute your own local soldiers, and cannot be easily replaced if they are lost in battle. Local lords may find it difficult to deploy troops in foreign territory, depending on the specifics of the situation.

- 12th level: in a republican government, you have the power of a tribune (one of 3), a consul (one of 2), or proconsul. In a feudal government, you are a baron, with control of territory covering approximately 3,000 sq. km. On account of your position, no door is closed to you. You may occasionally call up and command large forces of well-disciplined troops (approximately 5,000 - or about a Roman legion). If a republican, you will have to justify this call-up to the Senate. If a feudal lord, these troops constitute your own local soldiers, and cannot be easily replaced if they are lost in battle. Local lords may find it difficult to deploy troops in foreign territory, depending on the specifics of the situation.

- 16th level: in a republican government, you are emperor, sole consul or dictator for life. In a feudal government, you are king. Simply put, you rule. You may call up and command massive forces of well-disciplined troops (approximately 100,000 - 20 legions, or rather, an entire army). These troops are yours to do with as you please, though defeat in the field can have serious consequences for the commander.

COMMERCIAL:

Spoiler:

- 4th level: you are either the owner of a successful small business (a blacksmith's shop, importer/exporter, hotel/tavern, etc.), or a mid-level lieutenant in a major trading organization. You have either substantial contacts within a single city/region or limited contacts in a province. Your contacts give you a source of general information, and the potential to acquire rare materials, secure transport, and find an audience with NPCs who are in some way related to the business in question. You can marshal liquid resources totaling approximately your WBL x 3, which may be used to acquire equipment, buy services, hire mercenaries, etc. If you are sole owner, this represents the entire savings of your firm, so blowing it all is foolish (and can result in bankruptcy) without a plan to recoup your money (recouping money does not require simply finding piles of gold - profit can be made in a variety of ways). If you are part of an organization, this is company cash, items will belong to the corporation (essentially, you take them out on loan), and wasting resources for personal use may result in loss of status or expulsion from the organization. **you may never have company accounts in excess of WBL x 3 open at any given time. Company money will be tracked as a separate form of wealth. For most purposes, your WBL is essentially quadrupled, provided that you attend to the needs of the firm.**

- 8th level: you are either the owner of a medium-sized local business or an important player in a major trading organization. The quality of your contacts and ability to secure resources improves. You may bid on magic items at auction in neighboring cities (three times as many randomly generated items at auction). You can marshal liquid resources totaling approximately your WBL x 3, with the same restrictions as above.

- 12th level: you are either the owner of a major local business (one of the largest in a given city) or joint partner in a major trading organization. The quality of your contacts and ability to secure resources improves. You can bid on items up for auction anywhere in the known world (ten times as many randomly generated items at auction). If local, you may have the power to monopolize a given trade good in a city/region, and exert limited political pressure in this way. If part of a trading organization, you have the executive power to start new ventures on your own, and move vast quantities of material and men. You can marshal liquid resources totaling approximately your WBL x 3. You can no longer be punished/expelled from a major trading organization, but you can still drive it into bankruptcy through mismanagement.

- 16th level: you are the head of a commercial empire, with substantial contacts throughout the known world. You can secure nearly any magic item found in the wild without having to go through the auction process (you get first dibs). You can shut off or re-route major supply chains, threaten states/regions with famine, and generally wield substantial, although indirect political power. You can marshal liquid resources totaling approximately your WBL x 3.

CRIMINAL:

Spoiler:

- 4th level: you are a captain in a local mafia (in charge of one region in a city), or a lieutenant in a major criminal syndicate. You can contract for the theft of articles of minor value (your WBL -2) within your sphere of influence, and temporarily raise small forces of irregular troops (up to 15 troops). Your access to information and ability to plant rumors is either at a moderate level (~50%) within your city, or at a low level (~25%) all over the known world.

- 8th level: you are either commander of a city-level mafia, or an important player in a major criminal syndicate. You can put out hits on local businessmen and low-level bureaucrats (4th level characters and below), contract for the theft of articles of moderate value (your WBL -2) within your sphere of influence, and temporarily raise moderate forces of irregular troops (up to 50 troops). Your access to information and ability to plant rumors is either at a high level (~75%) within your city, or at a moderate level (~50%) all over the known world.

- 12th level: you are either don of a regional criminal enterprise (covering an entire province), or part of the inner circle of a major criminal syndicate. You can arrange assassinations of mid-level targets (8th level or below), contract for the theft of articles of considerable value/rarity (your WBL -2) within your sphere of influence, and temporarily raise considerable forces of irregular troops (up to 200 troops). Your access to information and ability to plant rumors is either nearly perfect (~95%) within your province, or at a high level (~75%) all over the known world.

- 16th level: you are the head of a major criminal syndicate. You can arrange assassinations of major targets (12th level or below), contract for the theft of articles of great value (your WBL -2) anywhere in the known world, and temporarily raise substantial forces of irregular troops (up to 1,000 troops). Your access to information and ability to plant rumors is nearly perfect (~95%) everywhere in the known world.

This stuff obviously requires a good deal of DM adjudication in terms of determining precisely what each influence track can accomplish, but it has generally worked out (at least in my setting) as a method for giving the martial classes more narrative power.

the secret fire wrote:

Now show me the magic user from mythology who regularly calls forth dinosaurs and crocodiles to be his "beatsticks" or "meat shields" and you win the prize. Yeah, that's what I thought...he doesn't exist.

Keep in mind the Summon Nature's Ally stuff is there to support the nature theme of the druid.

As for the Summon Monster spells calling up outsider animals? That's just designers taking a shortcut rather than either designing a flexible spirit summon similar to Astral Construct or designing actual spirits relevant to each summon monster level.

The problem is summon monster spells calling up anything with a solid, physical form which proceeds to beat things up on the summoner's behalf and then conveniently disappears after a few minutes. Not only is this sort of summoning utterly unprecedented by actual mythology and quite corny if you think about it, but it is also one of the worst and most unbalancing systems in the game - the source of a big part of the caster/martial imbalance (or, put another way, the growing irrelevance of martials).

I have no problem with magic users summoning spirits/angels/demons in relatively involved ceremonies, and setting those beings to task, but Summon Monster_X is not that.

the secret fire wrote:

This is also true of "clerics" and "summon" spells, to name a couple of other quite obvious Gygaxian inventions.

Umm... No. Holymen being able to perform miracles was not made up by D&D. And summons... so many religions have things like summoning spirits, I mean look at things like the Lesser Keys of Solomon.

I was obviously talking about the D&D "Mighty, Fighty Cleric" who tromps around in armor and thwacks dudes with a mace while asking for divine intervention. He does not exist in pre-Gygaxian literature or myth, and was basically born into D&D to fill the healbot role and bridge the gap between fighter and wizard.

Yes, there is some vague stuff in mythology about summoning angels, demons and spirits, generally to provide information or perform tasks which are not entirely straightforward...something like what the Planar Binding spell does. Now show me the magic user from mythology who regularly calls forth dinosaurs and crocodiles to be his "beatsticks" or "meat shields" and you win the prize. Yeah, that's what I thought...he doesn't exist.

"Summon Monster_X" is a Gygaxian fabrication which has very little to do with anything that precedes 1st Ed. D&D.

Granted, death spirals also necessitate a combat healer... so if no one wants to play the walking bandaid... then yeah...

That's where maybe you allow somebody to take Leadership, and if the healbot slave...erm...cohort dies, you just replace him like the Spinal Tap drummer and rock on.

Snowblind wrote:

Why does all this even matter? The acts of gods are thinly veiled GM fiat that have practically no rules basis beyond rule 0. Debating what the RAW powers of gods are is just a stupid conversation to be having.

It's highlighting the fundamental difference between a game and a story hour.

If the gods can do anything the DM says, including override everything else, then all cause and effect in the game ultimately devolve to DM fiat. The rules hold if and only if the DM doesn't decide to suspend them on a whim. Some would argue that, at that point, they might as well be abandoned altogether.

You just described, possibly ironically, the entire problem with reconciling a belief in miracles with belief in systems of rules/extra-personal order, like, I dunno...physics.

Just "doing stuff" with "miracles" because god does feel terribly arbitrary. On the other hand, giving your god a stat block will inevitably lead to some rules lawyer "figuring out" how to kill him with a fat wad of explosive runes, so maybe we're just better off embracing the mystery.

A lot of setting-specific things can be done to adjust the martial/caster disparity...but that's just the problem: they are setting-specific and thus do not work as general solutions in kitchen sink Golarion.

I'll make one small point about martial/caster disparity: the most unbalancing power of the magic-using classes is their versatility, and it is really only the prepared full casting classes that are able to wholly exploit the magic system. When the wizard, cleric and druid disappear...the greater part of the problems with Pathfinder's magic system go with them.

The banality of this thread goes to eleven.

Snowblind wrote:

Degoon Squad wrote:

I hate that despite a gazillion pages of rules, there no facing in Pathfinder. We have house rules for facing and it makes the rogue class very dangerous and improves the monk quiet a bit.

Does your house rule take into account the fact that in PF a round is 6 seconds, so without a way to change orientation repeatedly between turns you end up with this ridiculous situation where extremely nimble highly trained monster hunters turn around on the spot slower than a 300 pound tubby does in real life?

I actually use facing rules. The rule is: Before you are aware of combat or not specifically alert, etc., you have a facing. Once alert/aware of combat, you now see 360.

Deals with this, but makes rogueing still significantly better. I use this in conjunction with a custom perception system that separates out vision, hearing, and smell, too.

I use something similar, in the sense that I do not give enemies auto-detect against stealthy characters the instant they leave concealment. Instead, I give them a +2 bonus to their opposed Perception checks for every 5' covered without concealment, and remaining hidden requires, at a minimum, that a character's move both begins and ends in an area with concealment.

I don't attempt anything like facing in combat. I love to tinker with Pathfinder rules, but I've never come up with anything resembling a reasonable facing rule for combat.

the secret fire wrote:

Generally speaking, action economy/tactical movement (with the exception of the full attack, which I simply don't use) is probably the strongest area of the Pathfinder chassis, and the main reason I haven't abandoned the system.

... how? The d20 OGL combat system is one of it's worst aspects specifically because the action economy/tactical movement. What games are you even comparing it to?

And how are you not using full attacks?

I simply let characters (PCs and NPCs) mix standard and move actions as they choose. However many attacks you get, you can take them all in a turn regardless as to how you choose to move (essentially, you always get a "full attack"). This means, for example, that a fighter can move 10', take an attack, move another 10', attack again, etc. He'll still provoke AoOs (provided the things that would threaten him are still standing), but I don't restrict melee to only one attack if you take more than a frikkin 5 foot step (or cheese your way into pounce...yawn). This somewhat benefits casters, as well, as they can now move, cast, and move. If a character is restricted to just one or the other (for example, he is staggered), then I revert to the old rules (ie. full attack or move + one attack).

It's an easy change that makes melee much more useful, and balances it nicely with archers. Spring Attack is obviously obsolete in my games, and I make Mobility add 2 + Dex mod to AC vs. AoOs. Melee combat in my games ends up being relatively fluid, and it is also easier for well-trained enemies to get behind the meatshields and hack at the casters. I like it that way, and I think it's also more realistic. Movement and action in real combat don't occur in some sort of weird, fixed sequence, but simultaneously, jumbled up...all at once.

Distraction (Ex)

A creature with this ability can nauseate the creatures that it damages. Any living creature that takes damage from a creature with the distraction ability is nauseated for 1 round; a Fortitude save (DC 10 + 1/2 creature's HD + creature's Con modifier) negates the effect.

Good God! It seems like a wererat kin, alchemist would just wreck the game with its mutiple saves per bomb per attack (with tanglefoot, frost, or force bombs). A frost bomb or two per round and your target(s) will never do anything again. ever.

I love alchemists and rangers, but damn! Has this really been play tested? This seems way more powerful than Crane Wing......

I, for one, welcome our new wererat overlords.

Man...that's just about as splatty as splat gets.

I'm Hiding In Your Closet wrote:

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what it means, but I find attacks on "special snowflakism" far more worrisome than the "snowflakism" itself, which I'm not sure I've ever even seen, at least not in a way I see anything terribly wrong with. It's okay to be special - more than okay. This "snowflake"-bashing I see from time to time just sounds to me like a way of picking on made-up people instead of real ones at best, and overt fascism at worst.

Maybe I should ask: What does it mean?

It means, "a character that wasn't seamlessly tailored for my special snowscape."

The special snowflake is the guy who comes to a party and complains about the kind of alcohol being served.

I'm only going to touch on UnRogue because Rogue is the class that is dearest to my heart, and the one that needed the most help. Generally, I think the changes are basically putting lipstick on a pig, and the class is still bland and woefully underpowered. Ah well.

The good:

- Finesse training: this needed to happen.

- Some of the Talents: Minor and Major Magic got much-needed fixes and are now usable; the talents to upgrade sneak attack damage are welcome; the small upgrade to Surprise Attack is good.

The meh:

- Unchained Skills: mostly, the benefits range between minor and useless. Making Rogue skills actually powerful and sometimes better than magic through things like the Distraction ability (Chained Burglar Archetype) and the old Darkstalker feat would have been preferable. Unchained "skill unlocks" are a band-aid on a gushing wound, and they make the Diplomacy skill even more broken, which is just dumb.

- Danger Sense: a good step to de-couple the Rogue from the trapmonkey niche and give it a flat Perception bonus, but it didn't go nearly far enough. 1/3 levels on a class that is supposed to fill the "scout" role is pitiful, and the Rogue will still be outclassed in Perception by many other classes, and even many familiars, animal companions, and so on. Perception is the most powerful skill in the game, and the Rogue is one of the weakest classes. Making the Rogue the unquestioned master of Perception (like straight class level bonus to the skill) would be one good way to go about addressing the issues with the class. But no...the UnRogue gets 1/3 because balance.

The bad:

- Debilitating Injury: what the hell is this?! In what world does this ability make any sense? I can understand a Rogue inflicting status effects on sneak attacks...but for only one round?! How, exactly, is the fluff for this supposed to work out? The Rogue is somehow good at...not actually injuring people (because that would be totally unbalanced), but at "bewildering" or "disorienting" people by, you know...stabbing them...in a "special stabby way" that normal stabbing doesn't accomplish. What the crap?! This is a nonsense 4th Ed. type of power, and the devs should be ashamed of themselves for putting it in the game. Booooo!

They should have just made it function like caltrops where it's permanent until the victim rests or gets a single point of healing. That would have been both powerful and flavorful without being unbalanced, because at higher levels tons of things either have fast healing or are immune to precision damage, anyway.

The sad thing about Debilitating Injury is that it was a good idea...yeah, let the Rogue do real damage to people (rather than generic HP damage) when he hits them with a sneak attack...but in the name of "balancing" one of the weakest classes in the game, it was instead turned into a one round video game "debuff" which has nothing to do with anything remotely resembling "martial realism". This just grinds my gears. "Realism" is often cited by the devs as a reason why martials can't have nice things. And yet...when "realism" would call for martials to actually have nice things (like persistent status effects from "debilitating" precision damage), they get temporary "magical debuffs" instead because balance. Incredibly lame.

Stormwind called, he wants his fallacy back.

Try reading for content next time rather than posting tired one-liners. I never said that optimization and roleplaying are mutually exclusive; they clearly are not. What I said is that a bit of de-optimization can be a good thing for roleplaying - can spur players to try concepts they otherwise wouldn't have played.

I think one problem in this conversation is that younger players are often accustomed to building statistically optimal characters, and then completely ignoring those statistics and just playing the PCs however they want. People coming from this paradigm probably don't see any real connection between PC stats and roleplaying, whereas it was just the opposite in OD&D, where the dice were tyrants, and the little numbers they popped out for stats left a deep imprint on character identity before the player had any input, at all.

I am not suggesting anyone go back to the bad old days of straight 3d6, drive on soldier...but I do think there was something good in that style of play which has been lost in the era of "as you wish"-style gaming.

I don't know, I thought vampires and werewolves have always been a subtle euphemism for sex?

Neck biting is pretty intimate, plus the focus of blood, then there are werewolves and the whole "once-a-full-moon" aggression and whatever else have
...

I dunno about werewolves, but the modern revival of the vampire myth definitely has something to do with repressed Victorian-era sexuality, yeah. Bram Stoker's Dracula is a highly sensual book with sex bubbling naughtily just under the surface from an era when it was not considered decorous to talk about such things openly, even in a novel.

Anne Rice fired that engine back up, and it's pretty much been picking up steam ever since. Now, the vampire has become a cheap pop icon - the sparkly subject of "abstinence porn" (cough...Twilight...cough), and the trite embodiment of teenage sexual fantasy.

There's nothing inherently wrong with stat-dumping... IME, it's more often than not butthurt GMs who complain about it.

The inherent problem with stat-dumping is that it engenders an environment in which PCs of any given class all tend to look the same, which undermines immersion over time. This is the great irony of point-buy systems: in theory, increased player agency should lead to greater diversity, but in practice, they lead to just the opposite.

The d20 sanity rules:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/sanity.htm

They actually work quite well in pathfinder, though I skip "indefinite insanity" (takes the PCs out for too long without just ending them), throw out the junky alchemical treatment/drug/mental disorder rules at the bottom of the document, and only dock PCs sanity on spellcasting if they do silly crap like polymorph into an aberration or reanimate loved ones.

I still don't get why you think "Pathfinder PCs" (whatever the hell that means) are expected to do or be anything, in particular. If what you mean is that a few screws need to be turned here and there to make default Pathfinder truly horrifying (like upping encounter CRs, adding sanity rules, etc.), then I agree with you, but it is not at all the case that Pathfinder is ill-suited to a wide variety of possible genres. Genre is, at any rate, much more about narrative and mood than it is a question of game mechanics.

Stereofm wrote:

Well, I part agree and part disagree with you.

A really bloated amount of material has been written for D&D / Pathfinder over the years, yes. And you can now have a custom made character that covers just about any possible concept.

So that means that if you have a thematic adventure (SF, Pirates, Wild West ...) there IS something out there to run it. If everyone at the table agrees to avoid the kitchen sink approach and limit the options offered to stay true to the genre, than you CAN play about everything without having to learn another RPG system.

...Pathfinder needs to stay in the fantasy super hero arena with splashes of sci-fi or modern equipment (Rasputin Must Die is very fun, and Iron Gods is one of my favorite APs), and have a heavy dose of 80s B-movie poured on...

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

I generally run Pathfinder games that are a sort of mashup of Greek mythology and Cthulhian horror, and the system works just fine for my purposes. That you cannot imagine how Pathfinder could support anything other than goofy-ass Golarion doesn't mean that nobody can.

Example of a metagaming conversation I had with a player (paraphrased):

It was 3.5. We were using miniatures, hex map instead of squares, and had 3-D dioramas for walls. This player had plastic meter sticks designed to work with the hex map scale to measure his spell ranges, and area effect templates he could hold over the battle map to determine exactly which spaces would be affected, and exactly who would or would not receive cover based on where an area effect was centered.

Me: "You know, technically, it is metagaming. You are taking advantage of your top-down view of the battle map. Your character is in the world; he can't count out hexes from above. You also can't see those guys behind that wall, even if you know they are there.You should just tell me where you intend center that fireball, then we figure out if your target space is in range and who is going to be affected."

He: "You know, technically, my character has a 24 Int, 15 ranks in Knowledge (Engineering), and four metamagic feats that alter spell range, area, and shape, and to extend spells into other dimensions. My counting out hexes is just a way to simulate someone who can process quadratic equations in his head faster than any of use can do it with a calculator and who has spatial skill we could barely comprehend."

To be honest, possible douchiness aside, I kind of agree with your player. Any wizard experienced enough to be rocking a 24 Int is going to be damned good at his schtick - like uncannily good. If chucking fireballs is his thing, I'd expect him to have a remarkably good sense of where to aim them, even under duress.

Extremely well-trained people are capable of some shocking things. Ever watched Stephen Curry shoot a basketball? Read a Stephen Hawking book (ok, maybe it's just guys named Stephen)? I tend to let my players metagame a bit in their area of specialty, whatever that may be, as a way of simulating the sort of hyper-competence one would expect out of someone who had survived for any length of time living the life of an adventurer.

This can obviously be taken too far, but in isolation I don't see it as a problem.

Archetypes.

I hate the fact that so many of the best options for martials are hidden in the straight jacket Paizo calls archetypes. The first thing I did when putting together my house rules was strip all the best abilities out of the martial archetypes and make them available as either Rogue talents or Fighter-only feats.

I'd hardly call the tiny list Ocultists have daunting. But maybe that's because I'm used to playing full casters.

Anyway, I know mechanically they tried to keep things simple. And I understand why they did it.

I mean flavourwise, it's odd.

Something else I find strange is how some schools of theirs have so few spells at a particular level while other schools have so many. I'd think it was because they couldn't think of ones to fit the occultist theme, but I can think of several that I would have included as appropriately thematic.

D&D design often gets sort of caught between the rigidity of OD&D (Druids are humans, dammit; they all belong to the same weird secretive order and they all have to fight their way up the ladder like some kind of hippie Kung-Fu masters) and the freedom of more open-ended games like HERO, where the "special effects" of a given power are explicitly left up to the player to decide.

Being caught in the middle sometimes leads to silliness or rigidity where none needs to exist. When in doubt, I think it is best to just hand-wave flavor and let the player decide how he wants things to be presented - to include re-skinning things like traits, the species of familiars, etc. If it looks like a duck and it can sort of approximate a quacking sound, just let the player call it a duck.

Eirikrautha wrote:

This thread is a perfect example of the reason the Stormwind fallacy exists. What happened to "mechanics and roleplaying are two unconnected things"? Yet here we are, privileging the mechanical rolls over the story aspects of the game.

There are different expectations in different groups. Some groups want to play battle chess, where every dice roll is sacred and the Rules must never be breached. That's ok. Some groups want to make an adventure story together, with the rules being quite flexible when story requires it. That's ok.

Uh, no the "rules are sacred" crowd is not privileging rolls over story. The two are mutually exclusive. A game (like mine) where the rules are sacred still has a story, it's just one that actually takes into account the rules. In fact, if your game doesn't take into account the abilities and rolls of the players in a consistent manner, you aren't playing a game, the GM is just telling you a story. And I came to play a game, not listen to a story.

That being said the GM told everyone up front "I'm going to be telling you a story, while you listen and occasionally make input subject to my approval." and the "players" are fine with that, then more power to that group.

This is pretty much where I'm at on the issue, as well. A good DM should know the capabilities of the PCs in his party, and design his encounters appropriately. PCs who are really good in one area should be allowed to dominate that particular aspect of play without being walking auto-win buttons. It's really not that hard to do without fudging, but it does require forethought on the DM's part.

It's also important to set ground-rules from the beginning so that players can design characters who do not get retroactively nerfed. As a DM, you need to be pretty detail-oriented, and clearly communicate your hang-ups and expectations. Players in my games know, for example, that I'll smite anyone with a Diplomacy bonus higher than 10 with a lightning bolt, so they don't waste energy investing in the skill. It's fine for the DM to make executive decisions about how his world will run, but there needs to be transparency. Anything not expressly banned or altered from the first session of play should be allowed, and the DM has got to be a big boy and live with the consequences of his own oversights, even if it forces him to think on his feet. I find that fudging is almost always a product of poor preparation, laziness, plot-rigidity, or some combination of the above. Really not my cup of tea.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on old school

It is definately an asethetic and a play style.

Yeah, that's not a bad summation of old school gaming, with all of its warts. Older versions of D&D (and I say D&D because it was arguably the only "old school" roleplaying game) tended to be much more open-ended in terms of rules, and the interpretations thereof. This could work out well if the DM and players worked well together, but it also often led to arbitrariness on the part of the DM and the railroading of players along the tracks of a certain preordained plotline.

This is where new school gaming gets it right, with systems which are much more like contracts between DM and players rather than DM-controlled autocracies, and an aesthetic which favors sandbox style gaming over dungeon slogs and body counts. But of course, new school gaming has its excesses, as well, with 3.5 probably representing the nadir.

In my experience, striking a balance between the styles leads to the most engaging play.

I thought that old school was the meat grinder sort of play, where PCs dropped every session from unspeakably horrific deaths, Wizards died from a stiff breeze and had to track their bat poop on stone tablets, traps had none of this silly "take X damage" frivolity but just "save or die, b****". The sort of game where you didn't bother naming your PC for their first three levels, because it is a bad idea to form attachments to dead characters walking. The sort of play where looking into a statue's mouth puts your head into a sphere of annihilation, no save, and where getting off the cart at the tavern results in several broken bones because you need to stop the cart first, dumb***. You know, the way Gyngax intended*. None of this nonsense about "choice" or "point buys" or "Role-Playing". That gets in the way of the players learning the meaning of suffering and loss and getting crushed in hilariously unfair ways.

I guess that just goes to show that "Old School" means whatever the hell the person saying it wants it to mean, either as a pejorative or as a badge of supposed superiority.

When taken to extremes, any ethos becomes decadent. The opposite extreme (ie. incessant stat-dumping, special snowflakism, magic item emporiums, and rampant player entitlement) isn't any better. Both ideologies have something to offer.

It's a style of play, though there is certainly a correlation with how long someone has been gaming. Old school D&D was generally more lethal and less customizeable (to include stats, races, magic items, etc.). People who prefer this style of play (to include myself), I would describe as "old school" regardless of their age.

If your point is generally that encounters are much more satisfying when the "bad guys" behave as though they are actually living things which want to go on living, I agree completely. Using perception and knowledge checks does not, however, get in the way of this. The crux of the problem is not the mechanics, but rather the creature's behavior. Does it charge the party suicidally like a video game monster, or does it behave with a certain level of intelligence or, barring that, cunning? Getting this aspect of the game right is on the DM, not the designers.

I think there's a guy with a sack full of scrolls who follows adventuring parties around from village to village hoping they'll buy something.

Actually, there's this little hobbit/leprechaun thing that follows you around with a big sack of potions slung across his back. Occasionally, the little freak appears at the left edge of the screen, and you've got to...like...kick him and punch him and whack him with your sword and stuff as fast as you can before he exits stage right. For every blow you land, he drops a potion. Thing of beauty. High magic for the win.

So far the NPC has run away when angry, gotten in trouble for stealing things from random strangers when she got bored in town, and viciously attacked anybody who insulted her barbarian crush. She is ruthless and is more than willing to kill anybody who annoys her, but she is trying to restrain those impulses for the Barbarian's sake.

Unless this character has committed a number of selfless acts which have gone unmentioned, what you are describing is not a neutral character, but an evil one. I don't care how you play your game, but if you think a character who "is ruthless and is more than willing to kill anybody who annoys her" is neutral, I think your perception of the good/evil axis is seriously warped. Now, maybe she realizes that her actions are wrong and goes out of her way to save puppies to make up for the "vicious attacks" that you describe...but based only on what you've written, this is a chaotic evil character, and quite likely a psychopath.

Hard to offer you PG-13 actions for such a person. I would suggest that if you really want a neutral character, what she needs to start doing is a few good deeds.

Matthew Downie wrote:

"All the other people" in this context should probably be taken to mean "all those other people" and not "all other people". If it causes problems for a significant number of people, then it is a real problem.

I'm playing a level 5 Sorcerer. If I make it to level 6, I'll take Haste as my one level 3 spell - it would feel like sabotaging the party to do anything else. I don't really mind - I'm happy to help out my melee-heavy party - but it's not great game balance if the decision is so easy.

Do you feel this way about Power Attack?

I do, at least insofar as it is clearly better than TWF or sword-n-board, which it is. I also feel this way about the initiative-boosting traits. Dominant options are the result of poor game design; they kill diversity and they kill immersion. Yes, 3.x haste is a problem.