Two different viewpoints likely based on two very different play styles - I'm guessing optimizers vs. storybuilders?
Nothing wrong with either as long as your whole group is consistent. But you guys are never gonna agree on this stuff. My impression based on years of looking at Paizo's offerings is that they lean towards storytelling over mechanical issues, but who knows? We'll see more on Wednesday.
Actually, since I started playing in Age of Worms, I became much more interested in underlying class mechanics out of sheer survival instinct. It's not much fun to realize that underlying mechanic for the archetype you wanted to have fun playing essentially makes you a burden to be born by the people who wanted to have fun playing archetypes whose underlying mechanics actually work.
Also, feeling powerless in combat tends to undermine most kinds of storytelling and role playing for melee characters. It's hard to role play the tough guy when your hits are doing 7 points of damage on average, and you're getting smacked around, and you're fifth level. Meanwhile the 5th level warmage is blowing stuff up all day long, the warlock's doing 50% more damage than you and hits practically every turn, and the scout and rogue are effective and fun in social, skills, and combat encounters.
When you DM, you hold that down-time, item-creation time, travel-on-the-high-seas time, research-the-town time, etc. run contrary to basic game assumptions. Okay. My mileage varies. Because, and this is my big point, that's not the kind of fantasy world I want to simulate.
Just a quick note about the 2 months need to go from level 1 to level 20... If it's not the basic game assumption and not the kind of fantasy world you like, I wonder why all the adventures path published by Paizo follow those assumption...
Just a quick note about the 2 months need to go from level 1 to level 20... If it's not the basic game assumption and not the kind of fantasy world you like, I wonder why all the adventures path published by Paizo follow those assumption...
I'm inclined to say they don't, as there are periods where the designers do give points in the story where characters can take time off for item creation and such.
These points of lull in the action also are meant to allow for the characters to get to know the inhabitants and to build a connection with the city/story-line.
I'm really not interested in telling stories about a world where normal people fire their fingers at people, or where gladiators fly around the Colloseum because they're that good. I want my fantasy a little more sword-and-sorcery, thanks.
I can understand that, although I do want to point out that Spectral Hand does something close to that. There's a lesser invocation where you take your eye out, it grows legs and walks around. Also, there's one that takes your hand off to manipulate levers and such from a distance.
So, to be clear, what I'm understanding is that you want fighters to be normal people and you want spell casters to be extraordinary. Can you at least understand why a player who wants to play the tough guy archetype might find that to be a little underwhelming? We want to be big damn heroes too.
Actually, since I started playing in Age of Worms, I became much more interested in underlying class mechanics out of sheer survival instinct. It's not much fun to realize that underlying mechanic for the archetype you wanted to have fun playing essentially makes you a burden to be born by the people who wanted to have fun playing archetypes whose underlying mechanics actually work.
Paizo has been making some bad-ass encounters, haven't they? >:)
I find the DM has to have a keen eye for adjusting some of those encounters for his own particular group to avoid TPK's or pushovers. And fun is the goal.
Also, feeling powerless in combat tends to undermine most kinds of storytelling and role playing for melee characters. It's hard to role play the tough guy when your hits are doing 7 points of damage on average, and you're getting smacked around, and you're fifth level. Meanwhile the 5th level warmage is blowing stuff up all day long, the warlock's doing 50% more damage than you and hits practically every turn, and the scout and rogue are effective and fun in social, skills, and combat encounters.
This is where "consistent groups" come in. Comparing the fighter to a warlock, warmage or scout involves different stages in the evolution of the game. IMO even the base four classes are not balanced against each other, let alone once you start bringing in the "splatbooks". People argue endlessly whether they should be or whether they are. They argue over how you can test for it (hence the Level/CR 50:50 fiasco). They argue about combat balance vs. noncombat role balance. It never ends. Depending how your group plays is going to determine how your "vanilla" fighter stacks up. If your group had a fighter/wizard in place of the warmage, and a sorcerer in place of the warlock, the fighter might still shine a bit more.
Will the Pathfinder RPG versions of the base classes be more equal? I don't know. Probably not because that has not ever been mentioned as one of the goals. The main goal of Pathfinder is to keep the 3.5 rules in print. "Fixing" glaring problems is a secondary goal, and maintaining backwards compatibility is still right up there. No harm in advocating to fix issues that really bug you. But I feel sorry for some of the people spending so much time in retconning the classes when they clearly have not heard or appreciated what Paizo's aiming to do. I'm concerned that the mechanics-oriented people will end up frustrated and reject the whole system rather than recognize it for what it is: a minor revision that allows the continued publication of 3.5 material, so Paizo can tell the stories they want to tell.
To be honest, I believe the OP really does understand Paizo's goal, but just doesn't agree with them. He, and a number of others, have a particular mandate to "fix" 3.5 along specific lines, starting with the fighter. Again, nothing wrong with this, and some useful stuff may come of it. And the OP is certainly much more diplomatic and insightful approaching this board in consideration of Paizo's "culture" then some of his previous colleagues. :)
To be honest, I believe the OP really does understand Paizo's goal, but just doesn't agree with them. He, and a number of others, have a particular mandate to "fix" 3.5 along specific lines, starting with the fighter. Again, nothing wrong with this, and some useful stuff may come of it. And the OP is certainly much more diplomatic and insightful approaching this board in consideration of Paizo's "culture" then some of his previous colleagues. :)
I've wondered for a while now why the people who want to see a major revision don't just put together a group to do just that? The OGL and the SRD are there for anyone to use. It seems that there exists a growing number of individuals who wish to produce a game that falls outside of the scope of the stated goals for the Pathfinder RPG. I say, get together and hash it out! People are playing all kinds of variants out there; True20 and Castles and Crusades off the top of my head. While I would hate to see more division amongst D&D players, I would rather see 20 flavors of the game than 2 or 3 versions being played by people who aren't at all happy with any of them. The existence of the OGL means that you can not only play your own group's specially seasoned home-ruled version, but also print it, sell it, and spread it out for all the enjoy.
I think the ideal of a true community designed game is a fantastic and powerful ideal, just not one that fits with Paizo's goal for Pathfinder.
I've wondered for a while now why the people who want to see a major revision don't just put together a group to do just that?
Some of us *have*. The infamous Frank Trollman and K have an extensive alternate system that plays very well. You can find it pretty easily by searching for "Tome of Fiends" or "Races of War."
So why do we care about Pathfinder? Two reasons:
First, personal convenience. Even though I honestly prefer Trollman's revisions to Pathfinder and will almost certainly continue to use his preferentially (Trollman's rules aren't for everyone, but they happen to suit my groups needs perfectly) I am likely at some point to join a game run by someone else using the published rules, and I'd like that to minimize the frustration.
More importantly, in my mind, a sense of protectiveness towards fledgeling gamers. You and I and most of us on these boards know the rules, know our gaming tastes and know what we want. We can beg borrow or steal the systems we need to run the games we want. Pathfinder is important to me because if Paizo succeeds, a generation of new gamers will grow up with Pathfinder as their game of choice. You and I both know the score, and we're both capable of adjusting the rules to make fighters work the way we want them to. We're both capable of fixing broken spells.
We're also capable of throwing artifact swords at our fighters, of choosing to have monsters attack him to make him useful, of scaling down the CRs until the monsters are appropriate.
Those new gamers, though? Some of them will probably read the flavortext and think that an eleventh level fighter sounds really *badass* and they'll roll one, expecting to be able to put a smackdown on dragons and demons. And thats a tragedy that can and should be prevented.
I'm really not interested in telling stories about a world where normal people fire their fingers at people, or where gladiators fly around the Colloseum because they're that good. I want my fantasy a little more sword-and-sorcery, thanks.
So, to be clear, you'd also be against the magical effects of the new rage?
I've wondered for a while now why the people who want to see a major revision don't just put together a group to do just that? The OGL and the SRD are there for anyone to use. It seems that there exists a growing number of individuals who wish to produce a game that falls outside of the scope of the stated goals for the Pathfinder RPG. ...To be honest, I believe the OP really does understand Paizo's goal, but just doesn't agree with them. He, and a number of others, have a particular mandate to "fix" 3.5 along specific lines, starting with the fighter. Again, nothing wrong with this, and some useful stuff may come of it. ...
Well, first, obviously, Paizo would have a bit more market power.
Second, Paizo's been making non-insignificant changes that attack structural problems in the classes: wizard survivability at low levels, barbarian boredom, the sorcerer cookie cutter, changing how you use feats in combat, etc. The more that that occurs, the more viable arguments for other non-insignificant tweaks become.
Third, they solicited play tests AND feedback. Look at the site. Its architecture is set up to encourage both.
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^^^So you've decided to harass that minority into submission.^^^
So now disagreement is harassment? This is a thread about a request for a design goal. It would seem that conversation related to design goals would go here as opposed to another thread. Are you seriously suggesting that this forum should operate in a manner where there are two threads for every topic, one that has nothing but positives to say and one that has nothing but posts expressing disagreement? No one is being attacked. Take it easy. Sheesh. I believe that pursuing this approach will take the game in a direction I do not wish it to go. That is the sole purpose of my post.
If you really feel the way you do, and aren't just trolling up an archaic discussion that you had with a banned poster. I would love to see some of you playtest results. Aside from that though I feel like you're trying really hard to harrangle and argument out of that dude.
I am not certain the point of me doing additional playtesting. Is it to show that the 3.5 system already does what I want it to? Why would I playtest that? I need to do some 3.P playtesting but my group is finishing up a 2-year campaign and I do not want them to get distracted from the story line (btw they went 1-13 in 2 real-time years playing weekly and are now in their third game year in game time, which shows I play a much different game than the "20 levels in 2 months" I see discussed here.)
Cause basically you're trying to say "Stop talking about you're stupid CR playtesting" and since you're doing it in a thread that is about just that, you may have well showed up here just to antagoize. Why not just let these people phrase thier argument, and you phrase yours... in another thread perhaps?
I am certainly not telling anyone to stop talking about CR playtesting. And starting a new thread just to counter a thread can be seen as as an attack (in fact that is what ultimately caused the suspensions here in the first place.) Thus if we don't want to double the thread count and spread the discussion out over twice as many threads and we don't want to start counter-argument threads, then everyone interested in a topic, whether they agree with the OP or not, should post politely in the same thread. I have been here for years and found that the community here has never had a problem discussing both sides of an issue in the same thread. I see no reason to change this approach now.
Hmm... I just read this over and can see the futility of it all. So, I will comply. I am going to do what the vast majority of the long standing community is doing regarding these playtest threads and just walk away.
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So, to be clear, you'd also be against the magical effects of the new rage?
(nod) And I said so in the appropriate thread.
I look to literary antecedents for my idea about what the fighting classes ought to be capable of:
- Bellerophon
- Beowulf and Wiglaf
- The Pendragon and his knights Launcelot, Gawain, and Percival
- Roland
None of them could fly (although Bellerophon often rode on Pegasus, his twin brother). None of them got so angry that acid ran down their spears into their enemies (but, ya know, Beowulf probably could have, if anyone had ever mocked him that he was unable to do just that.)
Hmm... I just read this over and can see the futility of it all. So, I will comply. I am going to do what the vast majority of the long standing community is doing regarding these playtest threads and just walk away.
I know that you're frustrated, but silencing yourself is hardly the solution. I (and others) value your feedback, BECAUSE I (and others) sometimes disagree with you.
So, to be clear, you'd also be against the magical effects of the new rage?(nod) And I said so in the appropriate thread.
I look to literary antecedents for my idea about what the fighting classes ought to be capable of:
- Bellerophon
- Beowulf and Wiglaf
- The Pendragon and his knights Launcelot, Gawain, and Percival
- Roland
None of them could fly (although Bellerophon often rode on Pegasus, his twin brother). None of them got so angry that acid ran down their spears into their enemies (but, ya know, Beowulf probably could have, if anyone had ever mocked him that he was unable to do just that.)
Honestly, so do I. And after my experiences with a melee build ranger, I'm starting to understand why the spiked chain Trip build was so popular: it allowed the character to serve as a blocker for the rest of the party very effectively while still being (relatively) non-magical.
plus there weren't many other options.
But yeah +1
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You realize that this basically expresses the preference "I want martial classes to play from levels 1-10". Which is a fine preference for running your own games (->"I want to play from levels 1-10"), but that doesn't mean that it works past that point (it doesn't, really) nor does it mean that everybody wants that or that everybody should want that.
Squirrelloid,
Respectfully, I want to have the option for a non-magic using fighter up to level 20. I believe there are viable prestige classes and even basic classes for those who want otherwise.
I asked earlier, but received no answer. Have you play-tested, in a game, the Alpha fighter?
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If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Just because you want a 1-20 'mundane' class doesn't mean such a thing actually works in play.
And I suppose If I said that it is working so far you would tell me that this is irrelevant. My experience may be anecdotal, but so is yours. You keep throwing out math 'facts' but it seems to me you are pick and choosing your examples to fit your bias. The fighter is not optimal for all situations but our fighters have always done a lot of damage and even more so with the Alpha fighter.
Further, you don't actually mean you want a non-magic class. You mean you want a class where all his magical abilities come from items. This paradigm creates a divide between have and have-not classes because of effective wealth advantage.
Fair enough on what I really mean. The fighter's special abilities should come from magical weapons and strength of arms. Not spellcasting.
But I have to agree with Chris when he says that the DM really needs to be running the game. PCs do not exist in a vacuum. Even so, wealth disparity doesn't really bother me. PCs have a tendency to 'loan' each other money when necessary and even then sometimes one person makes a little more than another. The PC with a castle is going to have a money sinkhole the PC without one doesn't have. So what? It will affect their ability to buy equipment but as far as I am concerned that just means they have to try a little harder.
I have not gotten to the fighter yet. I'm still playing with the Barbarian. That said, I see the same flaws with the 3.P.0.2 fighter as I saw with the 3.5 fighter, plus Paizo has added new ones.
(1) No new capabilities. Around level 10 if you can't fly under your own power its a liability. Sometime around then you also need a way to be immune to mind-affecting magic, and by level 15 that immunity better be all day.
Right here is where you lose me completely. I think you want a different game than I do. Firstly, if a PC can't fly, I as a DM don't care. If the Wizard doesn't choose teleport, thats fine with me. They'll have to slog it. And then it will take them longer than 2 months to hit level 20. Its a win/win for everyone.
And personally, I don't want my PCs to be 'immune all day' to much of anything. As a DM its far more fun to have them squirm.
(2) Minor increases in numbers aren't sufficient to play against team monster. The new fighter seriously thinks handing out +4 to hit/damage and +4 AC is enough numbers to compete. What it misses is that *melee* monsters generally have a 4-10 (or more) *strength* advantage on the PC from the get-go, which not only adds to attack/damage, but also to things like CMB checks, and that's before considering the steady trend towards bigger and bigger melee monsters as levels increase meaning larger size bonuses to CMB as well. They also get new movement modes, arbitrary immunities, DR 10-15 with up to 2 required types to break it, special attack abilities strictly better than anything available as a feat, and spell-like abilities, and get these things in increasing numbers as CR increases. Small number increases are not enough to compete against Team Monster in that sort of environment.
And yet the monsters still get beat down in almost every encounter. Really makes me wonder what I as a DM am doing wrong. Perhaps its because monsters tend to act alone and PCs make a team (in my case almost always 5 PCs). You fail to account for the fact that the PCs tend to get many, many more attacks than the monsters due to teamwork.
(3) The fighter still has nothing to do outside of combat. Give them at least 4 skills per level, but 6 would be even better.
We tend to value intelligent PCs. Most of our PCs have 5+ skills. And fighters get Craft and Profession both. Those aren't combat oriented. Using the Alpha rules the fighter can take just about any skill he wants and though he won't shine like the rogue, he can do alright.
(4) Combat Feats are a bad idea. The ability to use only 1/round puts synergy caps on the fighter *who is already lagging behind the synergy masters that are spellcasters*. And when not a single one of them is a seriously considerable high level option, you're both deprived of the ability to take a feat that lets you do level appropriate things, but even the ability to take a slew of feats that combine in bizarre ways to crunch something out of the Rube Goldberg machine of your feats that is level-appropriate.
YMMV. Jason's feats seem to me to allow you to combine your attacks into one or two very likely to hit attacks that do as much or more damage than normal. And since you think level appropriate = fly for everyone at level 10, we're probably on different planets when it comes to what is level appropriate.
(5) The change to power attack is bad for the fighter, because it means he can't use it at mid-high levels.
That depends entirely on the AC of the monster. Personally I didn't have a problem with the old Power Attack, but I will admit my wife is finally using it now.
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You realize that this basically expresses the preference "I want martial classes to play from levels 1-10". ... I have no problem with 'mundane' martial classes through approximately level 10. Its when we start moving beyond there that we have serious problems.
(grin) Okay. Beowulf fights a full-fledged dragon, with only one cohort. Roland fights an army. "Mundane martial classes only work till 10th Level". Okay. My mileage varies.
Thor is a martial hero who flies and calls lightning (the fact that he's a god is irrelevant - he's like a level 13 character in all respects).
Oh, I disagree. The fact that Thor is a god is very relevant to his abilities.
(I take it you're talking about the comicbook Thor. The Thor of the Poetic and Prose Eddas never flew, at least, not without his magic chariot and his goats Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr-- although I may have mised that. If you're talking about the comics, then certainly Balder, the Warriors Three and Sif all fight 50'-tall giants, dragons, and other mythic-level bad guys with nothing more than puissance of arms.)
Squirreloid, I think we need to simply shake hands and agree to disagree here. You don't like my sword-and-sorcery D&D, and I'm not interested in your wuxia D&D.
