Today my group ran a one shot with level 6 Pathfinder characters. It went well!
The group consisted of:
Human Paladin -> Dwarven Fighter (player swapped after pally's messy death early on)
Half-elf Cleric
Gnomish Sorcerer
Elven Ranger
Observations:
1. The Perception differentiations weren't that useful. One, the dwarf got teased incessantly about his "taste bonus." Two, in most situations Perception checks are done to discover something secret or hidden. It pretty much spoils this (and slows the game down) when everyone launches into twenty questions about "Is it a smell? Did I hear something? Is this a sight based check?" Fact is, all the senses work together; if you wander into a room with hidden zombies do you see them, hear their shuffling, smell their rotting flesh, or what? Really it's a combo of all of them. This rule needs to be revisited - added complexity for little value.
2. The paladin died fast. Due to the need for multiple prime reqs even the sorcerer had more hit points than he did. One round of troll attacks did him in. His ability to make his sword flame was useful but overall he was underpowered and didn't hang well.
3. I played the cleric (of Desna), the domain powers were fun and useful. Once I teamed up with the dwarven fighter I kept him unhittable and high on hp while the ranger/sorc shot stuff all the time. I had the feat that lets you control who you heal with a channeling, which was good because otherwise I would never have used it.
4. The ranger shot arrows all the time, and was good at it. Not sure how he'd do in melee because he was careful to never get there.
5. Long time pain point - the elven/half-elven "roll if you wander by secret doors" power, for the same reason as #1 above. Either the DM has to remember and have your stats on hand, or you have to request it all the time; half the time you get asked to make a check, fail, and know there's a door around; half the time the DM forgets. It's a bad power when the PC doesn't know when to trigger it and the DM has to remember and keep it secret. I know this is tradition but it's a retarded tradition. Get it outa there for something more directed.
6. The fighter was quite a beefcake. His way high AC meant that many foes needed nat20's to hit him.
7. We went through a dungeon a lot faster than the DM expected from our 3.5e experience, which was cool. More healing + more powers meant we didn't have to "leave and sleep" to clear the small dungeon. We did a little city adventuring too, we sucked at it but our character/skill choices were largely at fault.
8. The end boss was a pumped up L10 fighter and we creamed him - one round of full attack from him would have killed any of us, luckily we didn't let it come to that. I am a little concerned that Pathfinder, like 3.5, kinda "turns the volume up to 11" on the fights - a lot of it starts coming down to "who goes first" even at low levels; PCs and monsters can easily do killing damage in 1 round. Raises the standard deviation of how they come out pretty high and it is harder for the DM to have any wiggle room in a too-hard-designed encounter. The idea of "wearing down the party" doesn't really exist; everyone has more stuff than they have standard actions to do it in.
9. After the pally death, everyone enjoyed their characters and found them useful and adequately powered, and we fought a wide variety of stuff (humanoids, corporeal undead, incorporeal undead, aberrations, critters, people...)
The biggest two takeaways really were:
- Pallys in practice are weak (semi easy to fix)
- Very high damage output on both sides increases the randomness of combat greatly (harder to fix)
Could use some more details on the Paladin situation since that seems to be the major snag you hit.
Could use some more details on the Paladin situation since that seems to be the major snag you hit.
Sure. The paladin suffered from a number of things.
1. Survivability. Due to the need for multiple high stats he could only afford a 12 for his CON. With the higher HD and fewer prime reqs needed, even the sorcerer had more hit points. And the pally is expected to be a front tier fighter. He also didn't have the armor bonuses etc. a fighter does. I, as the cleric, was the other front line guy and frankly I was doing better as I had access to more buffs, including domain powers.
2. Not enough to do. With the new "longer adventuring day," powers like smite evil 2/day (if they're evil, if it hits, what a waste of a power) are diluted in usefulness. At level 6 he had a couple L1 spells - I had a mess of cure wands and whatnot, and told him not to stress himself. Some of the problem was that as a cleric I had way more healing than we ever used - I ended the day with a couple channels left and wands and whatnot. So he wasn't really useful for healing (not that one 2d6 channel, maybe 36 hp of lay on hands, and 2 cure light wounds would have gone far). Often people consider the pally to be "half fighter, half cleric" in terms of role, but the pathfinder pally isn't near half of a Pathfinder cleric.
The "divine bond" was the one power used to good effect (trolls!). He even got poisoned. "Aren't you immune to poison?" "No, just disease." "Bogus."
At L6 all the pally had on me the cleric was +2 BAB and in theory 6 hp, and a bunch of abilities I could easily do better than with my spells.
So IMO the pally needs something a little better esp. if they're going to hang in the front line. The issue gets worse with level, where their spellcasting lags farther and farther behind what's useful.
Suggestions include:
1. Better spellcasting. Either just spells as cleric level -4, or give them some other more unique trick like spontaneous casting.
2. Some more "holy combat tricks", especially ones that will boost survivability. Maybe an immediate action "ass-saver" trick or two. Here's an idea. "Holy shield." Usable #/day same as smite evil. As an immediate action the pally can gain, for 1 round, various defenses (cooler ones available with level). At L1 DR=level, L6 energy resist=level, L12 SR=level, L18 give it to someone else. If that's too much extra, have each use use a channel for the day.