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Playtest data can be very difficult to evaluate, especially in a complex system like D&D. So here's a rubric for determining how effective things actually are in an objective fashion. A character of level X is defined as being equally capable as a random encounter of the same level.
That means that if I take a level 7 character against a random CR 7 monster, there should be a 50% chance of each combatant emerging victorious. So here's how it works: if you can take your 7th level character and run test combats against a crap tonne of different CR 7 enemies, and have the character come out victorious half the time overall, your character is balanced by definition. If your character wins substantially more than that, he's probably over powered. If he wins substantially less than that, he is probably underpowered.
Teamwork Dependent Characters: Some characters are especially reliant on teamwork. Low level Rogues and Bards often fall into this category. So if you find such characters really underperforming, yo may wish to test out the same encounters with 2 characters who are two levels lower than the levels of the encounters - that's supposed to come out 50/50 as well.
Guidelines: Characters are only supposed to even survive about half the time, so obviously each encounter is going to be handled fresh. Assume that your characters have "level appropriate" gear and haven't been pulling planar binding shenanigans to have armies of demons or tonnes of gold worth of equipment. As far as buffing magic goes, assume that you can run around with any spells that you can keep up during your entire adventuring day (if you want to test characters doing the 15 minute adventuring day, go ahead - that's a useful data point).
Challenges for a 5th level (or two 3rd level) characters:
- A huge Animated iron statue.
- A Basilisk.
- A Large Fire Elemental.
- A Manticore on the wing.
- A Mummy.
- A Phase Spider.
- A Troll.
- A chasm.
- A moat filled with acid.
- A locked door behind a number of pit traps.
- A couple of Centaur Archers in the woods.
- A Howler/Allip tag team.
- A pit filled with medium monstrous scorpions.
- A Grimlock assault team.
- A Cleric of Asmodeus (with his zombies).
Challenges for a 10th level (or two 8th level) characters:
- A hallway filled with magical runes.
- A Fire Giant.
- A Young Blue Dragon.
- A Bebilith.
- A Vrock.
- A tag team of Mind Flayers.
- An Evil Necromancer.
- 6 Trolls.
- A horde of Shadows.
Challenges for a 15th level (or two 13th level) characters:
- A Marut.
- A Hullathoin (with its army of skeletons and bloodfiend locusts).
- A Nightmare Beast deep in a hedge maze.
- A Windghost in the sky.
- A Yakfolk cleric with a party of Dao.
- A Drow Priestess with an army of ghouls.
- A warparty of Cloud Giants.
- A Mature Adult White Dragon.
- A Death Slaad riding a Titanic Toad.
- A Cornugon.
- A Gelugon and his Iron Golem bodyguard.
- A Rube Goldberg series of contingent weirds triggered to a set of symbols of pain surrounding the artifact.
- A pair of Glabrezus
- A harem of Succubi.
- Twenty Dire Bears.
- A dozen Medusa mounted archers on Hellcats.
- A forest made out of lava and infested with hostile fire-element dire badgers.
- A pair of Beholders.
So take your character (or pair of characters) against these challenges. If it's a balanced character (or team), it should win half the time and lose half the time. It doesn't matter if some of these challenges are really bad for a specific character if another challenge happens to be really easy for them. The goal of over all balance is that the character should win half the time against challenges of his level, not necessarily win half the time against any specific challenge.
-Frank
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This srategy doesn't work. You still are under the fallacy that the CR system can be put up against the CR system. A CR 7 monster would kill a single level 7 PC more than 50% of the time. As a way to fix this, run a playtest group of characters, a fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric, through a module. Modules are designed with four characters in mind and for each to use his abilities somewhere. But since most people are already doing this with their groups, there is no need to do "one on one" playtest. The game is not designed to work like that.
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This srategy doesn't work. You still are under the fallacy that the CR system can be put up against the CR system.
Wait, taking the DMG at its word as to what the game is supposed to be balanced at is a fallacy? Has the world gone mad? Have you?
-Frank
Director of Games
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Although I like the methodology here, it should be noted that the mechanics are slightly tilted in the player's favor. I also feel the need to point out that the game assumes a party of four and that four fights against a creature of a CR equal to the APL is designed to drain most of a party's resources. Determining whether or not a straight on fight is evenly matched is useful, but that data does not necessarily correlate to balance in the overall system.
That said, test away. I am interested in the results.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
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I also feel the need to point out that the game assumes a party of four and that four fights against a creature of a CR equal to the APL is designed to drain most of a party's resources.
This is really really important for game balance concerns: no it does not. The game assumptions are that a party of 4 against will use up just 20% of their "disposable resources" against an enemy with a CR equal to the APL. It says that a Party of Four going up against a monster with a CR of APL + 4 is considered so deadly that it has a 50% chance of killing the party (that is: it is of roughly equal power to the entire party).
It also says that a party which is twice the size counts as a party of four of APL + 2 for purposes of encounter design, and a party which is half the size counts as a party of four of APL - 2 for purposes of encounter design. So a "party" of one level 8 character is considered to be a party of APL 4, and a monster of CR 8 is therefore an encounter of APL + 4 which has a 50% chance of killing the party.
Before any person seriously makes any major balance statement they should read the 3.5 Dungeon Master's Guide pages 36-40 (especially page 39) several times.
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Regardless, in my time working as a professional playtester for 3DO, I became quite good at the whole playtesting approach. You don't just play Heroes of Might and Magic 3 all day if you want to get anything actually done. You need to be exhaustive and systematic. And that means breaking down larger problems into smaller problems. You arrange situations where you can test all the micro events and then you generalize. Working from a general state and hoping to cover all the micro states is a fool's errand.
Attempting to play "standard encounters" of four players against CR appropriate opposition is inherently futile. With four PCs on the table it is incredibly difficult to see if individual characters are balanced - if one character is underpowered and another character is overpowered you may erroneously see a balanced party when you look back at the overall results and report no problem when you actually have two problems. Worse, figuring out whether your party has used 20% of its disposable resources on a given encounter is extremely difficult. No one has ever given a really coherent definition of what that even means.
The basic concept of the disposable resources model is that if a party of four gang-tackles monsters who are roughly as powerful as a single character in the party, one at a time, that they should be able to do this four times in a row and still come out battered but triumphant. In short, that if your party takes on a party of monsters, but only one at a time and with a chance to take some zots off the cure light wounds wand in between, that victory should go to the players.
But such testing is inherently problematic on many levels. After all, if the party is actually extremely over powered, then the PCs would also be expected to find themselves triumphant over each of the four sub-encounters. Further, if the party is underpowered by less than 20%, they will continue to win all four encounters one after another (though by margins that the game ideal would repudiate). The standard campaign is actually incapable of demonstrating a clear difference between parties who are collective 15% under performing, parties who are hitting benchmarks exactly, and parties who are 50% better than they are "supposed" to be. And we'd only be measuring the collective strength, so to actually spot imbalanced character archetypes we'd have to notice a power discrepancy (which as noted is already problematic) between different class conformations of a 4 person party - and the 11 classes can (and thus would have to) generate three hundred and thirty different collections of 4 different classes.
In order to get meaningful results we have to chop D&D down to the minimal elements where we can actually see the differences between over powered and underpowered. We need to push things to the point where we have narrow enough margins where we can legitimately expect to be able to draw a line between over performing and under performing. And that's why we set things at APL +4. If we set things at APL + 4 we are supposed to see player characters lose half the time. So characters underperforming entails them losing more than half the time. Characters over performing merely requires them winning most of the time. We can determine ahead of time how close we want things to come to that point, and we can objectively determine if individual characters are within the range of what we are willing to go with.
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To that goal, let's consider a 15th level Halfling Rogue. As per standard rules, he is allowed a formiddable 200,000 gp worth of swag. He gets 4 basic Rogue Talents, 3 Advanced Talents, 8 Feats, 15 + Int Skills, 3 Ability bumbs, +8d6 Sneak attack per hit, Evasion, Improved Uncanny Dodge, Trap Sense +5, and all the Halfling Perks.
That's a lot to consider. But before I even get that far into it I noticed something right off: Halfling Rogues kick ass. I mean sure, we've got the basics covered for high level equipment (+6 Gloves of Dexterity, +5 Cloak of Resistance, Ring of Spell Storing, Mithril Breastplate of Speed, Trackless Boots), but there's more than enough to get a decent schtick on the side. In this case we have a Heward's Handy Haversack, a Ring of Blink and a tremendous pile of flasks of acid, alchemist fire, and alchemist frost. With 8 feats on the table it is child's play to get all the cool basic Rogue throwing feats (Improved Intit, Quick Draw, PBS, Rapid Shot, Precise Shot), and there's still stuff left over for some crazy hook up skill feats or Pathfinder specials like Agile Maneuvers.
The long and the short of it is that our boy throws 5 flasks a turn with attack bonuses of +21/+21/+21/+16/+11, and targets enemies flat footed touch AC unless they both see invisible and touch ethereal. Each attack does 9d6+1 of acid, cold, or fire, and causes lingering damage until removed by one of a series of ways (so among other things it counts against Concentration checks, shutting down Spell-like abilities dead for most creatures).
The Rogue Talents are interesting here, as they strictly add to his sneak attack in the form of a bonus 8 damage/turn against any opponent who has been sneak attacked by him, 2 points of strength damage per successful sneak attack, and maybe even a targeted dispel magic for every attack (although I have no idea if this is actually any good, since it doesn't say whether the level cap of 10 applies to this ability that can only be taken after 10th level). I mean technically Rogue Advanced Talents still come with the ability to select any bonus feat (I'm fond of selecting Perfect Multiweapon Fighting or Permanent Emanation: Antimagic Field), but we seriously don't have to go there since that's almost certainly going to be ironed out in rewrites at some point.
On to the battlefield:
Marut: this fight is short, brutal, and insanely one sided. Our Rogue here has a Stealth check of +32. The Marut has a Perception bonus of +16. The Rogue gets the drop on him all three times I ran this. With an Initiative bonus of +12 vs. the Marut's +1, the Marut lost Initiative every time. So our Rogue got a Surprise round and a full attack before the Marut even got an action. Each bottle of Alchemist Frost deals 9d6 of Sneak Attack Energy Goodness that bypasses our Marut's formidable DR and Spell Resistance, and hits on a natural 2. Even with some bad rolls on the second run through the Marut never even got a turn.
Hullathoin This is a much weirder encounter, because there's so much crap on the table. Of course, the vast majority of it has no chance of spotting our Rogue before he goes into combat berserk mode, so he basically gets to get to sneak attack range of the big baddy right off. The big boy is an offensive powerhouse, but it only has 104 hit points and an Initiative modifier of -1. Seriously it never got a turn, it drops in 3 or four attacks, and our Rogue friend here is virtually guaranteed 6. What's more difficult is the ensuing melee with minions. The Vampire Spawn and Skeletons only hit on a natural 20 followed by a 50% miss chance, so they didn't accomplish anything at all in one of the run-throughs and very little the rest of the time. The storm of Bloodfiend Locusts is a much bigger problem. Our Rogue hero can't sneak attack them, so it takes forever to actually kill them. Hyped up on speed, the Rogue is faster than the swarm, so he can mostly avoid fighting them, which leaves him dancing around throwing explosives into the faces of vampire spawn. It's ugly and grueling, but he still won all three fights (walked out with more than a few negative levels in two though).
Nightmare Beast: The hedge maze is actually more of a difficulty than the Nightmare Beast. Our Rogue exploded from mind attack before getting to the middle in one run through and slaughtered the enemy in the other two. First loss, but he's still ahead on points.
Windghost in the Sky: Interestingly, if the Rogue gets the Windghost down to his level he smacks it into oblivion, if he has to drink a potion to fly up to the Windghost it went very badly. 3rd run through was kind of a tie as neither side made that tactical mistake. That was an even match I guess.
Yakfolk Cleric + Dao: Interesting note: if the Rogue starts by killing some Dao, it's over virtually instantaneously. The Cleric can wall of force off the Rogue with a granted limited wish and then it just gets bad. A subsequent limited wish fills the whole area up with deadly poison gas and it's over. Going after that Cleric first shuts down the entire Wish engine because there are no more Mortals to give them to. The Dao still do pretty well because they can wall off areas with actual stone and the Rogue has to blink through which is occasionally painful and always cuts his atttacks own to 1/round. It's actually an encounter that the Rogue does poorly in no matter what. 2/3 attempts the main villain died, but the Rogue eventually lost every time.
Drow Priestess + Ghouls: The evil chick died on the first round every time. The Ghouls explode 1 per attack, but there are a lot of them. Interestingly, on one go-through our hero actually got hit on a natural 20, the blink miss chance was made, and he rolled the 1 on a paralysis check. That seems like a fluke to me, but technically he did lose 1 time out of 3.
Warparty of Cloud Giants: This is 4 Cloud Giants. Combat begins with the Rogue killing a Cloud Giant. The first time I did this one, the Giants stayed in close and the Rogue continued to kill a Cloud giant every round or two. The whole fight was over in six rounds of actual combat. The second and third time I did this I noted that the Giants are much faster than our hero and can keep things out of sneak attack range once they see their friend going down. It may seem out of character for giants to run around going "whoop whoop whoop" like Looney Tunes characters after combat is initiated by a Halfling, but they are supposed to be master tacticians, so I'm kind of OK with it. Anyway, long ranged combat goes poorly for our Rogue, and the attempt to do it ended in defeat. Last go through our Rogue killed a dude, then things went to range, then he hid and that was that. Victory-ish?
Mature Adult White Dragon This is actually weird because White Dragons have "ridiculous senses" and automatically bypass the need for Perception tests out to 60 feet. Meaning that our Rogue and Dragon roll initiative normally well outside of Sneak Attack range. Nevertheless, our Rogue friend always wins this test, and can move up and throw a Fire Flask, which hurts like crap (in one case doing 57 damage and lighting the dragon on fire in one attack). If the Dragon closes it's basically all over right away, Dragon boy doesn't kill the Halfling on his turn and then the Halfling just eviscerates the Dragon in one more turn of explosions. Going to range is a lot more frustrating. The Halfling has Evasion and makes the Breath weapon save on a 2+, so he plinks it away with a +1 bow until the Dragon dies or gives up. The Rogue won every time, but it was kind of ugly looking for about one round in the melee version.
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And that's how it is done. It's a huge undertaking, but it's a possible undertaking, as opposed to running all 330 mixed parties of four through 4 encounters a day and then trying to find outlying data points in the overall picture to figure out what's over powered and what isn't.
Provisionally it is looking to me like a 15th level Rogue, when played to his tactical utmost is rather powerful when contrasted with the monsters he is fighting. This may be OK with the new experience tables which seem to imply that higher level characters will be fighting many more enemies, as the Rogue's abilities dropped substantially as the number of enemies on the board increased.
-Frank
How is this character doing so much damage? Are these standard flasks of Alchemists fire? If so, are you assuming sneak attack damage? Can one get sneak attack damage with a grenade-like weapon? Even if allowed by the rules as written ("RAW"), I'm not sure I would allow it. (I don't see how a thrown flask--which is intended to break--would allow the type of precision that sneak attack presupposes). How would the same Rogue fare with, say, a shortbow, or dual wielding shortswords? Because I've never seen a character designed around throwing flasks. And even if allowed by the RAW, it seems so unusual that I'm not sure it is the best design to test the rules. I think a character like this would break even a standard 3.5 game.
Also, I assume he's carrying all of these flasks in the Heward's Handy Haversack, correct? And that is how he knows he's grabbing alchemists fire instead of, say, acid? But what about the fact that retrieving any specific item from a haversack is a move action? Doesn't this limit the number of flasks he can grab and throw in a round?
Overall, I think it is good to test the limits of the system, but I think this character is inherently such an outlier that any data gleaned from it is minimal. I think a more standard character would likely yield more useful data. However, this is all simply my opinion, and I may well be mistaken. In any event, it is an interesting experiment.
How is this character doing so much damage? Are these standard flasks of Alchemists fire? If so, are you assuming sneak attack damage? Can one get sneak attack damage with a grenade-like weapon? Even if allowed by the rules as written ("RAW"), I'm not sure I would allow it. (I don't see how a thrown flask--which is intended to break--would allow the type of precision that sneak attack presupposes). How would the same Rogue fare with, say, a shortbow, or dual wielding shortswords?
Much in the same way that a Rogue 3/Wizard 1 does 1d3 + 2d6 cold damage with a ray of frost during a sneak attack, any extra damage derived from sneak attack is automatically considered the same type of damage as the initial attack. If you sneak attack with a greatsword, your extra damage is slashing damage. If you use an acid flask, it's acid damage.
Because I've never seen a character designed around throwing flasks. And even if allowed by the RAW, it seems so unusual that I'm not sure it is the best design to test the rules. I think a character like this would break even a standard 3.5 game.
You've never seen the iconic "halfling hurler" build? Heck, pulling from the DMG's NPC table, a 1st level halfling fighter with the Weapon Focus (Sling) and Point Blank Shot feats has a +7 to hit using a sling (+2 Dex, +1 BAB, +1 size, +1 halfling thrown bonus, +1 WF (Sling), +1 PBS). It's not "game breaking", but it is an optimized build.
Also, I assume he's carrying all of these flasks in the Heward's Handy Haversack, correct? And that is how he knows he's grabbing alchemists fire instead of, say, acid? But what about the fact that retrieving any specific item from a haversack is a move action? Doesn't this limit the number of flasks he can grab and throw in a round?
Interesting discussion.
Robin Laws, no stranger to playtests, says that in the end, you can't really rely on formulas in playtesting, because there are too many variables that don't exist in a CRPG. He recommends eyeballing it, which means (to me, anyway) running a playtest campaign and see what shakes out. (paraphrase)
I understand that may seem incredibly vague, but running the game in a real campaign setting is the only way to find out if it can be run in a real campaign setting. When eyeballing, I use the following criterion:
How many rounds did the combat take? Did it seem to take forever, or did it seem too short?
When a character dies, was it because of something the player did wrong? Did the character have an ample chance to adequately defend itself?
Did a single action effectively defeat the encounter, or was teamwork necessary?
Did everyone have something interesting to do throughout the entire encounter?
Admittedly, these criteria are all subjective. We each have our own answers to the questions above. Figure out your optimal answers to the above questions, and then see if your encounters using Pathfinder match up to them.
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I also feel the need to point out that the game assumes a party of four and that four fights against a creature of a CR equal to the APL is designed to drain most of a party's resources.This is really really important for game balance concerns: no it does not. The game assumptions are that a party of 4 against will use up just 20% of their "disposable resources" against an enemy with a CR equal to the APL.
Um, you may want to reread what Jason said.
20% of disposable resources * four fights = 80% of disposable resources. It think that qualifies as "most" by the traditional definition.
Interesting discussion.
Robin Laws, no stranger to playtests, says that in the end, you can't really rely on formulas in playtesting, because there are too many variables that don't exist in a CRPG. He recommends eyeballing it, which means (to me, anyway) running a playtest campaign and see what shakes out. (paraphrase)
A lack of formulas doesn't really equate to playing out an actual campaign.
A real campaign setting takes too much time, because it includes all the stuff that doesn't need to be tested, somewhat ironically, the roleplaying. It also doesn't give you a worthwhile sample set. You'd be testing a handful of race/class combinations against a subset of all available monsters. Thats not worth much. You really can't even swap out abilities and feats during a campaign to see how much better (or worse) characters perform with the changes.You really do need to sit down and grind through encounters. Some should be party sized encounters, so you can get a feel for how everything interacts, but when you're dealing with class features, abilities and feats, you need to test them, and individuals tend to work best for that, otherwise the individual abilities are lost in the overwhelming mass of details.
Formulas are really beside the point.
A lack of formulas doesn't really equate to playing out an actual campaign.
A real campaign setting takes too much time, because it includes all the stuff that doesn't need to be tested, somewhat ironically, the roleplaying. It also doesn't give you a worthwhile sample set. You'd be testing a handful of race/class combinations against a subset of all available monsters. Thats not worth much. You really can't even swap out abilities and feats during a campaign to see how much better (or worse) characters perform with the changes.
That's why this is an open playtest, so that a lot of participants can provide feedback, which then can be compared and evaluated by Buhlman, etc.
I don't discount that YOU will learn a lot from this exercise. But your viewpoint after engaging in this exercise will still be just one person's viewpoint.
There are thousands of these discussions on message boards, each proclaiming that thier particular opinion, after dealing with the system, is the most logical and reasoned. But you may come to conclusions that the designers would never accept, so that unless you gain a lot of joy from running these solo fights, you are probably just better off running a campaign using the rules, and enjoying yourself.
This is really really important for game balance concerns: no it does not. The game assumptions are that a party of 4 against will use up just 20% of their "disposable resources" against an enemy with a CR equal to the APL. It says that a Party of Four going up against a monster with a CR of APL + 4 is considered so deadly that it has a 50% chance of killing the party (that is: it is of roughly equal power to the entire party).
Marut= according to your numbers, the Marut didn't have its Pathfinder perception bonus, it just used its old listen checks. It would be +25 under the new rules. Also, while you do get sneak attack damage according to RAW with thrown flasks, the problem is, you still have to aim to hit, i.e. you can't attack the creature's square with an area attack and get sneak attack damage, (because its only taking splash damage then) which "a natural 2" indicates. Unless I'm off, you would need to roll a 12 to hit the Marut's flat footed AC.
Hullathoin= Did the halfling have a budget to research this thing with a sage? Because its got a lot of immunities and resistances, and to know even basic information about a hullathoin would take a DC 26 Knowledge (religion) check.
White Dragon= If the dragon survives the first round, it should be able to snatch the halfling, breathe on the gappled bugger, and toss him from a long way up. He doesn't have any friends to force him down or to wound him before he can do this.
I'm just wondering a bit more about the details.
The assumption that since a CR7 encounter is suppose to drain 20% of the resources of a level 7 party, that 1 charcter should be able to win 50% of the time is rather interesting but unrealistic...
using one of franks favorite cr7 examples [the hill giant]...
The party members likely goes first (and regardless of whether they go first) get four members worth of actions per round... the hill giant only gets 1 round worth of actions each round... the damage to the hill giant is being multiplied by 4 (yes, i know, not everyone in the party does the same damage)...
If the hill giant fights only one party member, that member just lost the actions of three other members and so the hill giant stays alive longer and gets more swings in...
Even with a party of 4, a giant that faces 4 party members has a shot of a one shot kill (6d6+30 for that lucky hill giant critical assuming he is only using a greatclub: avg 51... Fighter7 with 14Con avg 55 so he'll likely live but what about the rogue/cleric/wizard?)
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The party members likely goes first (and regardless of whether they go first) get four members worth of actions per round... the hill giant only gets 1 round worth of actions each round... the damage to the hill giant is being multiplied by 4 (yes, i know, not everyone in the party does the same damage)...
If the hill giant fights only one party member, that member just lost the actions of three other members and so the hill giant stays alive longer and gets more swings in...
I just ran three combats between a 7th level fighter and a hill giant under PRPG rules and the fighter won all three. He only took damage in one of them, in fact.
I wonder what I'm missing.
according to your numbers, the Marut didn't have its Pathfinder perception bonus, it just used its old listen checks.
Right, because its Pathfinder bonus has not been defined. It could be +25 (like it would be for an in-class skill for a PC), it could be +17 (like it would be for a cross-class PC), it could be +7 (what it would be for an unranked PC character), it could be some other number entirely. But Maruts have a specific arbitrary bonus to their Perceptions which brings it to a specific number of +16. I have no reason to believe it wold be any other number.
On the flip side, I don't know how Pathfinder "Shadow" items work, and while the Rogue in question has more than enough gp value left over to afford some and possibly get another +5, +10, or more to his Stealth checks, I seriously didn't know how that was supposed to work so I left it alone. It is entirely possible that rather than +16 vs. +32 it was supposed to be +25 vs. +42, which would be even more tilted in the favor of the PC.
Unless I'm off, you would need to roll a 12 to hit the Marut's flat footed AC.
Acid Flasks are a touch attack normally, it's like using the spell acid splash. A Marut's Touch AC is 10.
Did the halfling have a budget to research this thing with a sage? Because its got a lot of immunities and resistances, and to know even basic information about a hullathoin would take a DC 26 Knowledge (religion) check.
Nope. But our hero only has three choices: Fire , Acid, and Cold. Skipping the Cold against the Undead is a no-brainer, and the Fire Resistance is not super important (yet obvious on the first attack). I had him throw some Fire flasks a few times just for yucks, but the discrepency between damage and hit points is so huge that it doesn't even matter.
If the dragon survives the first round, it should be able to snatch the halfling, breathe on the gappled bugger, and toss him from a long way up. He doesn't have any friends to force him down or to wound him before he can do this.
Our hero is blinking, which means that a Snatch ends as soon as it begins. So it goes: Dragon moves, makes one attack (which may or may not hit given the 50% miss chance), assuming the attack goes through the dragon pins, and then the Rogue takes a 5' step through the dragon (which has a chance of causing him a d6 of damage), and then starts attacking again - killing the dragon straight off.
-Frank
There are thousands of these discussions on message boards, each proclaiming that their particular opinion, after dealing with the system, is the most logical and reasoned. But you may come to conclusions that the designers would never accept, so that unless you gain a lot of joy from running these solo fights, you are probably just better off running a campaign using the rules, and enjoying yourself.
Big thanks again to the wonderful people of this message board who say what I was thinking, only first. It saves me so much typing!
Peace,
tfad
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There are thousands of these discussions on message boards, each proclaiming that thier particular opinion, after dealing with the system, is the most logical and reasoned. But you may come to conclusions that the designers would never accept, so that unless you gain a lot of joy from running these solo fights, you are probably just better off running a campaign using the rules, and enjoying yourself.
You are wrong.
Having worked both as a professional game designer (Shadowrun 4th edition) and as a professional playtester (Heroes of Might and Magic, Army Men, etc.) in the past, I can tell you without reservation that there are right and wrong ways to playtest games. You can find bugs in a system by one of two methods: prediction and exploration. The first involves looking at how the game works and making informed guesses as to where the game will fail. The second involves grinding through the game and hoping to run into parts of the game which will fail. You need to do both, but in either case you should do so systematically if you hope to get any real answers out of the deal.
Once you have found something that you think is a bug, you need to regress that bug. Find out how often it comes up, find out the limits of where in the game it comes up and how big a problem it is when it does. That last part is tricky for a pen & paper game because the DM can seriously handwave problems out of existence in an individual game. This means that while in a computer game your top priority are "Crash Bugs" that stop play altogether, in a role playing game your top priority is actually subtle bugs which can gradually become large problems for the game as DMs are less likely to notice that sort of thing.
In any case, reporting of a bug needs to say exactly how the problem was uncovered, as well as a numerical estimation of what the problem actually does. Coming in and saying that you "don't like" something means very little to a developer unless a lot of other people are saying the same thing. Just one voice coming in with a numerical breakdown of how one gets an infinite loop going actually strikes chords quite loudly in development circles.
Big problems can be turned into small problems by cutting them into minimal systems and then running through them systematically. If you play through the game a dozen times with your friends you will have literally thousands of factors juggling about, and you coming in at the end to say that one character or another seemed very weak or very strong doesn't tell the developers much of anything. So many factors (from the skill of the player to the party dynamics to the monster choices to blind luck) have such a strong influence on how a character does in a campaign that your assessments aren't of much (if any) value to the game as a whole.
Yes, the game needs some high level playtesting for "feel" and "playthrough" but the vast majority of playtesting hours - especially early in development - should necessarily be done on reductionist encounters taken in isolate. That's the professional, the scientific way to do things. And doing other things is ineffective.
-Frank
Coming in and saying that you "don't like" something means very little to a developer...
I thought that this is exactly what we are being asked to do. Read the Alpha, play with the Alpha and post what we think about the Alpha. Of course, the reasons behind not liking something are important to the designers but they may relate to something non-numerical e.g. roleplaying based.
For example: "Under the Alpha rules I can't make my character *not* good at a skill. This is important to me as I like playing the 'clueless ranger' and the 'doesn't know anything wizard', with just a few skill ranks in my class skills. Some of the other players in my group also enjoy dabbling in different skills."
'Feeling' changes like this are important, and I think the designers will be interested to hear these thoughts.
The 3rd edition/d20 system has been extensively playtested for 8 (ish) years now and, like all other RPG's on the market, you can mechanically break the system with very little effort. What we're testing now is not a new system but changes to the existing one. The final version of Pathfinder is going to be backwards compatible and thus very similar to what we already have with a few minor changes to the places that need fixing. Paizo are obviously confident in the system's general robustness.
The question is what do we enjoy and what do we want to see, not can you plot points on this probability scale.
I think that the goal of this open playtest has more to do with what us (the market) wants from Paizo in their effort to keep the 3.5 rules in print. We all know 3.x can be horribly broken and Pathfinder will not change any of the assumptions behind the maths of the core system.
I came across this thread whilst looking at the boards as a distraction from updating some NPCs to the Pathfinder rules. I thought there may have been some preferred format for feedback posted here.
I'm looking forward to my group's game on Saturday and can't wait to post our feedback. I'll do so knowing that Paizo is interested in my group's comments even though they won't consist of any staged fight results or statistical analysis. Just how we used the rule updates and what we thought of them.
Peace,
tfad
You are wrong.
OK. :)
Having had some of my stuff published in the past (Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, BRP) has taught me some different lessons then the ones you have learned, Frank. Without trying to change your mind or win the debate, I got a lot more use out of seeing how others ran the scenarios I had written, and seeing how campaign supplements I was working on were run with real players than any of the sorts of exercises you describe.
Admittedly, CoC and Pendragon are not Pathfinder and Shadowrun, which operate on a different level of approach to the rules. But I still believe that stating where our group found problems, and what our group liked and disliked is of great help to the designers, especially when multiplied by the hundreds on this board.
I would encourage everyone else to follow this approach, because I personally find getting together with your buddies, playing, and talking about the rules to be more enjoyable then running solo combats.
Pax,
Doyle
Doyle it sounds like you were writing scenarios for games whose rules had already been established and made essentially immutable. As such what you'd literally want from playtesters would be play throughs. After all, the rules are already set, so there's basically crap all you can do if someone finds a rules error anyway - you just need to know if the scenario holds together as a whole.
It's a very different stage of game design, and yes it requires a very different approach. The equivalent would be after one had already made sure that all the individual levels of a game like Army Men or Warriors of Might and Magic ran acceptably close to bug free and then playing through the actual game to make sure that the level transitions and such all functioned.
But doing full game play throughs on Early Alpha builds is essentially a complete waste of time.
-Frank
/Aids the Trollman, hopefully granting him a +2 bonus on his Diplomacy checks.
(STUFF)
Rolled a 1, plus your bonus....
Damn....
;P
Peace,
tfad
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Director of Games
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Doyle it sounds like you were writing scenarios for games whose rules had already been established and made essentially immutable. As such what you'd literally want from playtesters would be play throughs. After all, the rules are already set, so there's basically crap all you can do if someone finds a rules error anyway - you just need to know if the scenario holds together as a whole.
It's a very different stage of game design, and yes it requires a very different approach. The equivalent would be after one had already made sure that all the individual levels of a game like Army Men or Warriors of Might and Magic ran acceptably close to bug free and then playing through the actual game to make sure that the level transitions and such all functioned.
But doing full game play throughs on Early Alpha builds is essentially a complete waste of time.
-Frank
Frank,
Although I appreciate your experience in this matter, I do not think anyone playing with these rules in a normal environment is a waste of time. We have a complete rule set, we are simply changing out some components. More will be changed over time, but for now, these are the ones we have to work with. If you would like to run a number of scientific playtests, I invite you to do so, and look forward to seeing the results. At the same time, I would like everyone else to play with these rules in a manner that best suits your play style. There are a lot of different ways to play this game, and I want feedback from as many different sources as possible.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing
I disagree with the above statement, and re-challenge the notion that you can use quick draw to retrieve items from a Harversack as a free action. Yes, the alchemical flask IS a weapon, but it is also considered stowed. The rules are very clear about this, retrieving a stowed item from the Haversack (or any other sack for that matter) is a move action, and it doesn't say anything about the ability to use quickdraw to affect this.
Now this is RAW, though a reasonably minded person may decide that there is not much difference between drawing a weapon from his/her person and from a magic item thats purpose is the quick retrieval of items for convenience sake. But, it seems to me that the spirit of the item is meant to prevent the abuse you see above by requiring a move action in all situations, regardless of the capabilities of the owner. A reasonable argument could be made that the "magic" of the Harversack simply does not work that fast.
Now that we've established that (or at least I hope we have), this pretty much throws a wrench into our plucky hero's strategy. Still, it's not a bad one, but I couldn't give much credence to the above test. I doubt that the battles would be so one sided with our protagonist only getting 1 attack per round instead of 6. Not so over the top. I suppose the halfling could have specially designed "sheaths" so that he may strap his flasks all over his self. This would still be a limited number and possibly have drastic consequences of it's own.
My point is that the results of even the most exhaustive playtest can be corrupted by assumptions about rules that are, in my view, at least questionable.
On top of that, DM's make mistakes, players make mistakes. We've had a player in our group for ten years that, god bless her, has absolutely no sense of strategy at all whatsoever and repeatedly finds herself quite dead. Her characters and her die rolls are fine.
I find the scientific approach to playtesting to be the least informative. Not just because one extremely minor detail can screw everything up, but also because this game is a bunch of humans doing a bunch of human crap. A good DM should be able to playtest standard combats and thin-slice the action to find out who's overpowered, underpowered, and just right. Who's making bad decisions, assumptions about magical items that may or may not be accurate, or who doesn't necessarily know how to make the most bad-assed character in the world.
The character in question can seriously just carry more than 20 of those things "on his person." If you want to play in a game where characters can't quick draw (or sleight of hand) out of a haversack, it changes nothing because the character could just put multiple rounds worth of those bad boys into his pockets and quick draw from that.
I've never seen or heard of a game that didn't allow people to use Quick Draw from a Handy Haversack, but if for some reason you refused the option it wouldn't make any difference to any particular combat (the haversack is mostly just to physically carry multiple combats worth of alchemist fire and acid, which would otherwise require a pack mule).
-Frank
I like to approach game developement like people develope cars.
Step one: Test the parts (how does this feat or class stand up over 20 levels)
Step two: Test the system (how does this feat or class effect the rest of the feats or classes)
Step three: Test drive (how does this feat or class effect the players outside your own head, how does it stand up when the dice are rolling)
In the end no matter what your eventually going to have to drive it. Isolated data collection only can get you so much, it so happens that we have a slightly older version of the same car that we can throw are new parts into and test drive them. Yeah it might always fit together pretty but we just need it to run.
I disagree with the above statement, and re-challenge the notion that you can use quick draw to retrieve items from a Harversack as a free action. Yes, the alchemical flask IS a weapon, but it is also considered stowed. The rules are very clear about this, retrieving a stowed item from the Haversack (or any other sack for that matter) is a move action, and it doesn't say anything about the ability to use quickdraw to affect this.
<Snip>
What about bandoleers, belt pouches, or other non-magical storage devices? As I stated before, Quick Draw doesn't discriminate between where you have the item stowed, just that it's a free action to draw it..
Would there be as big a deal if the rogue was using a +1 flaming shortbow instead of vials of alchemist fire?
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What about bandoleers, belt pouches, or other non-magical storage devices? As I stated before, Quick Draw doesn't discriminate between where you have the item stowed, just that it's a free action to draw it..
FYI, from the SRD:
"You can draw a weapon as a free action instead of as a move action. You can draw a hidden weapon (see the Sleight of Hand skill) as a move action."
Personally, I wouldn't allow Quick Draw to affect retrieving stowed items as they can't really be considered "at hand" the same way a sheathed weapon is. Unless you have something like a bag of holding, since you could argue it automatically offers up whatever you open it to retrieve. If you have a potion bandolier or something like that, I'd allow retrieving those items as a free action since it's basically being carried like a weapon.
What about bandoleers, belt pouches, or other non-magical storage devices? As I stated before, Quick Draw doesn't discriminate between where you have the item stowed, just that it's a free action to draw it..FYI, from the SRD:
"You can draw a weapon as a free action instead of as a move action. You can draw a hidden weapon (see the Sleight of Hand skill) as a move action."
Personally, I wouldn't allow Quick Draw to affect retrieving stowed items as they can't really be considered "at hand" the same way a sheathed weapon is. Unless you have something like a bag of holding, since you could argue it automatically offers up whatever you open it to retrieve. If you have a potion bandolier or something like that, I'd allow retrieving those items as a free action since it's basically being carried like a weapon.
You're absolutely correct. As long as the vials aren't hidden, as with the Sleight of Hand (or Theft) skill, it looks like it's a free action to drawn them.
I was going to comment on the possibility of an all-alchemist fire flask-filled bag of holding, but reading the bag's rules muddy it up a bit...
I think you guys are alittle off topic, quickdraw isnt the question here. Its methods of playtesting.
I think you guys are alittle off topic, quickdraw isnt the question here. Its methods of playtesting.
The only reason I'm pressing the issue is to show that the playtest looks rules legal. As to whether it is or not, well that's Frank's area of response.
It does indeed make a difference if the character is sporting his fragile, easily breakable, and perhaps heavy, flasks of liquid incendiary on his person. Case in point:
If our plucky hero straps 20 of these devices to his body, as Frank suggests, thats 20 extra pounds that didn't make it into the playtest. Which, depending on the characters strength (and this IS a halfling) it may or may not move the character into medium encumbrance, which has an effect on combat, stealth checks etc.
Furthermore, there is a realism issue here. These are fragile containers containing volatile liquid that, if sundered, crushed, or otherwise broken while they are sitting in a bandoleer (like for instance, getting man handled by a dragon) could cause it's owner to have a really bad day. Admittedly, Characters in my game who have just a couple of these ready to throw don't usually have to worry about this happening. But 20? Sorry, you just try playing a PC in my game waltzing around with 20 lbs of napalm strapped to his chest in ceramic containers, I triple dog dare you.
Someone else asked if it would be as big a deal if instead of the halfling using flasks of alchemical fire, he was using a +1 flaming bow. It would. Splash weapons only require a ranged touch attack, and for a high level halfling with a good dexterity, is an almost guaranteed hit. Armed with a bow, this is not necessarily the case. Moreover, the sneak attack damage itself would be based on the bow; a la piercing: subject to damage reduction. This may turn the tide of the fight slightly out of the PC's favor. Which is why, I am guessing, the player of this halfing choose to wield flasks of special substances. It is easy to hit with them, they do energy damage so it bypasses DR, it's not magic based so they bypass spell resistance, and when combined with a sneak attack it simply adds to whatever energy damage type. The only thing left is energy resistance which is overcome by switching between types of damage you are doing.
In the end, it's not really the rogue thats overpowered. It's an unlimited supply of splash weapons that do energy damage. Unless of course your DM exercises some discretion when interpreting the rules for storing these items. Virtually all extra dimensional magical containers require a move action to access. If your character has a heavy mace, yes you can quickdraw it if you have the feat. But if it's in a bag of holding, it's at least a move action or more. I'm not trying to be a stickler, thats just what it says. And thats A OK with me since it keeps a muchkin with the fantasy equivalent of a rapid fire incendiary grenade launcher out of my game, unless he is dumb enough to wear all of them on some kind of specialized bandoleer, in which case you can imagine the rest of my players glee when he is eventually lit up like the Forth of freakin' July.
I'm seriously not trying to be an ass. I just question the validity of a supposedly balanced playtest strategy where none of these things were taken into account.
Well, first, it's a rogue so he's not likely to get seen anyway.Second, if you're worried about the flasks blowing up, then just wear a ring of fire resistance 10. That's going to eliminate the damage from any possible backfires.
Third, what you're doing isn't by the rulebook anyway, and is just a matter of GM fiat to make his stuff explode (unless it was part of a sunder attempt or something), so you can't really playtest that in the first place.
Hey I'm not "worried" about anything. The fact that there are no rules governing this is exactly my point. It's quite unconventional. Whether or not our halfing takes damage from his own napalm is hardly my concern.
Let me be real here. If there was some guy farting fire at me with bottles of napalm on his chest, that is certainly going to affect the way I fight him. Just saying "well the playtest is fine because all you have to so is this, this, this, and this and it doesn't matter" I'm going to remain largely unconvinced. We don't know how things would have went. So far, all I've been able to determine is not that a halfing rogue is super a bad-ass, it's that throwing a crap ton of splash weapons at something is a super bad-ass way of fighting.
A game system is full of checks and balances. A Mage can hurt a whole lot of people really bad at the same time, but can't fight effectively and gets killed easier. Yes you can use incendiary grenades to bypass AC, DR, spell resistance and energy resistance, but if there has to be a way of balancing it out, even if you have to do so by enforcing common sense if there are no rules.
If our plucky hero straps 20 of these devices to his body, as Frank suggests, thats 20 extra pounds that didn't make it into the playtest. Which, depending on the characters strength (and this IS a halfling) it may or may not move the character into medium encumbrance, which has an effect on combat, stealth checks etc.
True, but we don't know what his ability scores or other equipment are. If all he has is a mithral chain shirt and dagger, a darkwood club, the bandoleer with the alchemist fire, and a Str of 12, I'd say he's golden still.
Furthermore, there is a realism issue here. These are fragile containers containing volatile liquid that, if sundered, crushed, or otherwise broken while they are sitting in a bandoleer (like for instance, getting man handled by a dragon) could cause it's owner to have a really bad day. Admittedly, Characters in my game who have just a couple of these ready to throw don't usually have to worry about this happening. But 20? Sorry, you just try playing a PC in my game waltzing around with 20 lbs of napalm strapped to his chest in ceramic containers, I triple dog dare you.
Ok. So, if I'm going up against a grappling monster I should simply wear a bunch of cure light potions in a bandoleer, right? Twenty of those would only be 1,000 gp, well within reasonable range. The "realism" seems to be needlessly killing creativity, IMHO.
Someone else asked if it would be as big a deal if instead of the halfling using flasks of alchemical fire, he was using a +1 flaming bow. It would. Splash weapons only require a ranged touch attack, and for a high level halfling with a good dexterity, is an almost guaranteed hit. Armed with a bow, this is not necessarily the case. Moreover, the sneak attack damage itself would be based on the bow; a la piercing: subject to damage reduction. This may turn the tide of the fight slightly out of the PC's favor. Which is why, I am guessing, the player of this halfing choose to wield flasks of special substances. It is easy to hit with them, they do energy damage so it bypasses DR, it's not magic based so they bypass spell resistance, and when combined with a sneak attack it simply adds to whatever energy damage type. The only thing left is energy resistance which is overcome by switching between types of damage you are doing.
I was the poster who postulated about switching from vials to arrow. Ok, while yes, the arrows are tougher to hit with and subject to damage reduction, what about a wand of scorching ray? A high level rogue worth his lock picks should have this skill trained by now. Granted you can't full attack with the wand, but that's still 4d6 + how much sneak attack worth of fire damage.
The vials, while seemingly game breaking have their place as disposbale equipment and players shouldn't be penalized for using such tactics.
Alright, cool.
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Let's consider a simpler case: that of a lower level character. Specifically, let's go with the Half Orc Monk, both because it has substantial synergy (+ to Wisdom and Strength), and because both are much maligned. Since a Pathfinder Monk has yet to be published, we are going to use a PHB standard Monk chassis with the Pathfinder character rules and Pathfinder Half-Orc.
The Monk has huge MAD going on and is acknowledged to suffer worse from low Point Buy situations than other classes. So I'm doing this guy on 32 point buy, keep that in mind. With only 9000 gp to throw around, our character can be really fleshed out in terms of equipment: pretty much every copper piece has to go into staying alive.
Stats: Str 18; Dex 14; Con 14; Wis 18; Int 8; Cha 8; Hit Points: 36
Saves: Fort: +7; Ref: +7; Will: +9; AC: 19
Feats: Stunning Fist, Combat Reflexes, Defensive Combat Training,
Skills: Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, Perception, Stealth
Equipment: Cloak of Resistance +1, Bracers of Armor +1, +1 Light Crossbow, +1 Nunchucks, +1 Ring of Protection, 3 Cure Light Potions,
Challenges:
Huge Statue: Ugh. Given the choice of inflicting a d6+5 or d8+4 moderately favors striking with punches and kicks. But mostly it just doesn't work at all. The Huge Statue hits a little more than half the time and knocks our hero out in just three hits. It can be extended somewhat by backing off and quaffing potions, but the battle is a forgone conclusion. Monk lost all three battles very badly.
Basilisk: Three real options for fighting this battle: fall back on the character's good Fort save to beat the basilisk down in close combat, run away and plink at it with a light crossbow from outside petrification range, and run in with closed eyes and try to blindfight it to pieces. So I tried one of each. The melee thing failed. The Basilisk is pretty crap in melee and the Monk was laying down the smack every round, stunning it once. But on round three the Monk failed a fort save and died instantly. The second run through was better. The Monk can move 40 feet while loading a crossbow, and can fire once a turn (for a d8 +1). With 50 bolts in the bag, he ran through just 37 before killing it. He used so many because the monk was closing his eyes to fire, so that when the basilisk ran up to death ray range on its turn the monk would already have his eyes closed. I was using a forest, but with closer terrain (like a cavern or a canyon), I imagine it would have gone much worse. And finally, having at it with the Basilisk in close combat while closing eyes: painful. The Basilisk attacked less often and for less damage, but the monk had a lower attack bonus, and worse AC. And of course, no 50% miss chance. The monk didn't do even half the basilisk's hit points before he was torn in half. 1/3 and more restrictive terrain might have made it a total loss.
Large Fire Elemental: I found the Monk to be outclassed across the board. He was slower, weaker, and less resilient than the fire elemental. The Elemental is even immune to stunning fist, there's just no way to win this without getting extraordinarily lucky. Very one sided battle which the Monk lost every time.
Manticore: I could see where this was going when the Manticore used its spikes attack on the first round of combat and took off more than half our Monk's hit points. Yeah, it pretty much went exactly like that, and the Monk was badly beaten all three times.
Mummy: The Despair power is straight lethal, but with the Monk's high Will bonus, he only failed once. I mean that battle involved the Mummy walking up and performing a coup de grace, but it was just the once. The rest of the time wasn't so great either. Purity of Body mentions Mummy Rot by name as an effect it doesn't protect you against! The Mummy does more damage than the Monk and has more hit points. The very existence of the Mummy Rot prevents the Monk from withdrawing and using Healing Potions (you need to roll a 19+ to keep the potion from being dispelled). Better AC, more damage, more hit points, stun immunity, the Mummy just outclassed our monk in hand to hand, and the tomb area I set it up in kept the Monk from accomplishing much with the crossbow.
Phase Spider: This is a weird battle. The Phase Spider is invisible and inaudible, so it always gets the first attack by surprise. It also prevents the character from getting more than a single readied attack back on it because it phases out at the end of any attack. Once the character fails a save against the poison even once the battle is basically over because the character's Fort save drops a couple of points and he gets hit again automatically in a minute. Nevertheless, if our Monk slaps the Phase Spider with a readied stunning fist it can't phase out and he can flurry of blows on the next round. This actually led to victory one time out of three.
Troll: Gruesome. The Troll regenerates fast enough that ranged combat may as well not exist. His only hope is to lay down enough damage to knock it out and then coup de grace with an acid bottle or light it on fire with some alchemist fire and kick it until it accumulates lots of real damage and stays dead. This didn't actually work even once. If the Troll tags the Monk with two claws in one turn he does the Monk's entire pile of hit points in one go. This requires our monk to use his Orcish Ferocity to drink a healing potion, and it's right over next round with the Troll's follow up. The Monk went zero for three.
So far the Monk is pulling in at just under 10%, which I think is about what you'd expect from a 3rd level character. Monks are currently testing in at the strength of their own cohorts.
-Frank
The only issue I see is that the monk is usually part of a team. Which if there had been 3 trolls vs monk, cleric, and a paladin, the party would provide greater support to each other, allowing them to overcome the trolls who just arnt cordinated enough to work well together.
Though I see your point that the monk is not a great frontline fighter and without support will fail. Its role as a flanker should be better defined possibly adding sudden stike progression allow them to move and attack.
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Which if there had been 3 trolls vs monk, cleric, and a paladin, the party would provide greater support to each other, allowing them to overcome the trolls who just arnt cordinated enough to work well together.
I don't even know what you are talking about here. Had there been a Cleric and a Paladin on the team there would have been two characters who inflicted more damage, had more hitpoints, and had much higher armor classes than did the Monk. The party may have won, but the Monk still would have been a larger drain on healing resources than the other party members and he would still have been inflicting less damage than the other characters. He would have been the least contributing party member. The fact that it was him, and not a rogue or a wizard who was the third party member may well have caused the party to lose because he is seriously that ineffective.
Though I see your point that the monk is not a great frontline fighter and without support will fail. Its role as a flanker should be better defined possibly adding sudden stike progression allow them to move and attack.
The Monk doesn't really do anything other than frontline though. He isn't especially fast, he has straight up the worst ranged combat in the entire game, and he doesn't hit nearly hard enough to drop things on a charge. Whether there's one enemy or fifteen, the Monk really doesn't seem to be able to win combats at short range or at long range.
Flanking really isn't a role unless you can actually kill your opponents or at least shut them down by getting into a flanking position. Rogues are great at Flanking at low levels (at high levels, as illustrated above they don't even bother flanking anyone and just turn into grenadiers that make individual enemies explode).
Right now the Monk's role seems to be to be just like a Barbarian with longsword and shield, except instead being naked and having smaller numbers. That's not cool. Our 5th level Monk isn't even faster than a 5th level Barbarian.
-Frank
Frank I love the effort you are putting into this to make it a successful playtest, and while I personally feel you may be taking it a bit TOO seriously (dude, you ain't getting paid) you obviously have some mad skills on the field, and I do have a request to make for you.
Since you are doing this sort of thing anyways, could you maybe playtest character classes against other character classes? Maybe getting a handle on what plusses and minuses are involved with what the PC's are going to be playing should be the first step, like taking that 5th level monk (just an example) and putting him up against a 5th level fighter (Pathfinder) or Wizard (Pathfinder) and telling us the results. It would also give an idea of what is needed for the improvement of the monk (again as an example) to the Pathfinder ideal.
After getting that info and finding out how the classes can balance against each other, then we could move on to the monsters comparison, and make any corrections needed to CR and such. I am definately interested in what you find from your findings on this, but I am also more interested in your findings for the Character Classes themselves at this stage.
I remember thinking that battledancers from the Dragon Compendium Volume One were just "Chaotic monks," until I looked at the class and realized that they were actually better front line fighters than monks. I wonder how much it would screw with backwards compatibility to give monks a d10 and a full BaB?
Flanking really isn't a role unless you can actually kill your opponents or at least shut them down by getting into a flanking position.
Stunning Fist, Improved Disarm, Improved Trip
Monks get access to these. Their job is to shut down opponents.
Rings of blinking. None of my players ever bother with those when they play rogues. Probably because in our house-rules, miss-chances are the under-the-hood mechanic of concealment, and any mention of a miss chance (say, in the blink spell description) is a mistaken reference to concealment. Since Blink gives enemies a 20% miss chance (read: concealment) against your attacks, you can't sneak attack while blinking.
Shuts that little loophole down quite nicely.
Now, greater blinking is another story, but it's a much higher level spell (and thus a much more expensive ring) for a reason. It's also not in the SRD.
Rings of blinking. None of my players ever bother with those when they play rogues. Probably because in our house-rules, miss-chances are the under-the-hood mechanic of concealment, and any mention of a miss chance (say, in the blink spell description) is a mistaken reference to concealment. Since Blink gives enemies a 20% miss chance (read: concealment) against your attacks, you can't sneak attack while blinking.
Shuts that little loophole down quite nicely.
Now, greater blinking is another story, but it's a much higher level spell (and thus a much more expensive ring) for a reason. It's also not in the SRD.
It's not a loophole; it's quite explicit.
Flanking really isn't a role unless you can actually kill your opponents or at least shut them down by getting into a flanking position.Stunning Fist, Improved Disarm, Improved Trip
Monks get access to these. Their job is to shut down opponents.
Stunning Fist DCs are very hard to get up to respectable levels.
Rings of blinking. None of my players ever bother with those when they play rogues. Probably because in our house-rules, miss-chances are the under-the-hood mechanic of concealment, and any mention of a miss chance (say, in the blink spell description) is a mistaken reference to concealment. Since Blink gives enemies a 20% miss chance (read: concealment) against your attacks, you can't sneak attack while blinking.
It is important to note that according to the rules regarding etherealness and incorporeality as explained exhaustively by the kind folks at WotC, that the miss chance from attacking while blinking does not apply when throwing objects (that's good), and that the ability to strike ethereal enemies while blinking does not apply when throwing objects (that's bad). Once an object leaves your hand it is considered to be a physical or ethereal object only (whichever it would have been if not held by a blinking character).
So while your ruling would totally nerf any Rogue who attempted to engage in melee while blinking (at least, unless and until they invested in a Ghost Touch Short Sword), it doesn't impact the Halfling Hurler in the slightest.
Improved Disarm, Improved Trip
Monks get access to these.
Not at 5th level they don't. That's like saying that a 5th level Wizard is great at diplomacy because they have charm monster. Note also that in Pathfinder Rules Monks still suck at Tripping or Disarming when compared with Barbarians, because the bonus of that Feat is +2, and by the time they get the feat (6th level), a Barbarian is actually 2 points of BAB ahead (+6 instead of +4). And a Barbarian can rage and even take those feats himself. So no, that's a completely invalid argument, the rules objectively do not support what you just said.
Since you are doing this sort of thing anyways, could you maybe playtest character classes against other character classes?
You'll note that in the first playtest I actually had a couple of Clerics in there as a baseline. Drow Cleric + Undead and Yakfolk Cleric + Dao. An NPC is a very valid sample encounter because it is exactly the kind of encounter that people really do have. I set the NPCs up in the playtest as "Big Bad Evil Guy" type NPCs who used their abilities to have some minions and throw their weight around. The 5th level version would have had one as well, save for the fact that I gave up about halfway through when the Monk was performing so atrociously badly that it just wasn't fun anymore.
One of the difficulties here is that the NPCs are as much in flux as the PCs are because the rules aren't settled. So while I an test a Monk or a Paladin using the SRD writeups for the classes to demonstrate where they may need to be changed, using them as a baseline encounter is more problematic. I picked the Cleric here as an encounter to have at all levels because I feel that it is unlikely to change much. As more classes seem to get to a "final draft" feeling, they can be smoothly inserted into the lineup.
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On how to handle the Monk, there are numerous solutions proposed in various places. For example, there's the Pharaoh's Fist thing from Sandstorm (or as we call it: It's Hot Outside). This upgrades the Monk's Stunning Fist to a 10' area burst, which gives the Monk some severe horde managing techniques (although it wouldn't have delivered victory in any of the encounters I ran, so it should probably be part of a balanced breakfast rather than a solitary change). K has a good Monk variant over at The Dungeonomicon that has a decent Defense and can hold its own in encounters by juggling monsters.
-Frank