Yes: a “20-point damage greataxe chop” always reflects the same physics: the fact that the physics involved does not match the physics of the real world, or player or game master preconceptions based on their experience with real-world physics, does not matter. The physics of the game world recognize the difference between 1'st and 18'th level warriors: otherwise there would be no differences in play.
But if you see it from the point of view of the orc and the greataxe, continuity is messy: a "critical" becomes a glancing blow. In other words, what for the orc axeman is his best killing blow becomes a scratch (near-miss) when hitting the 18th level character. One part of the system (relationship between HP damage and HP total) bases its precision in making another part fuzzy and imprecise (the solidity of the orc's blow). It's not a matter of "Physics", it's a matter of the whole system being diffuse: HPs may represent difficulty to hit an opponent (so they overlap with hit rolls and AC) as a solid hit on a high-HP character makes him "lost his footing" or suffer a minor bruise. But think of the same 20-HP chops against a Purple Worm or dragon (which may have a magnitude of HPs similar to a hale 20th level fighter): they probably still reflect solid blows, even hacking big chunks of worm flesh. Those models (if you run narrative combat) have to be adjudicated case-by-case and common sense. Unless you say that these elements are not relevant (and if they are not combat description becomes pure roll play), there is a discontinuity between world and the approximation which are rules which needs to be filled by common sense.
after all, I could always state that "I don't see how you can not understand how "I don't see how" arguments are invalid. Therefore your response must simply be an attempt to confuse the issue!" But wait! We've just arrived at a contradiction! Ergo our initial hypothesis (that such arguments are valid) must be invalid.
That's technically not a contradiction as the "I don't see how"s appear in different levels of discourse. It would be an indeterminacy, as in the Cretan saying all Cretans are liars.
For the rest of the point, I was not denying the overpowered Channeling issue (or its importance thereof), I was just noting that testimony of people who don't see the problem is to be valued both qualitatively and quantitatively. I still don't see how "good enough for most games" is any different from "good enough for most gamers and the purposes of the publishers". Last time I checked games were set up and played by gamers.So would a wand, giving everyone fast healing 10, or many other things. Again, not an answer to whether or not this is overpowered, although like (3) it does tend to support that position a bit since, if it isn’t overpowered and doesn’t make any difference, why object to replacing it with that wand?
Turning the idea around, if its magnitude is similar to the wand's, why not leaving it? It gives clerics a little edge of speciality, so a party with a cleric can do with fewer expenditure on healing items, just as a fighter gets "value for money" with the armor she wears, and a party with a rogue is going to suffer less damage from traps and require less brute force (and alerted foes) when bypassing locked doors.
Also it is elegant as it combines a previous existing power (channel/turn) with the healing abilities of the cleric and paladin classes and it fits in the default cosmology of the setting, where Positive-Negative Energy Planes are associated with life and (un)death. More flavor than buying an item at the store or giving PCs "healing surges" just because they're cute (sorry, couldn't help myself).
Furthermore, this has already been addressed under the note that this will work if the players are not interested in the logical background and development of the campaign world.
I assume the normal tendency is a decreasing level of interest and detail as action moves away from the PCs' area. Not only with PC-triggered, but also with all events. You want to have a good runout of factions, power groups and other intrigues of the town, country and maybe neighboring countries of your PCs' milieu. For countries further away, you can probably do with a sketch, unless the PCs are expected to travel there. Taking a whole-world approach is bound to make things totally illogical (if the fantasy world is anything like the real world).
Keeping events following the "plot" through game master fiat is usually known as "railroading" - treating the players as an audience, rather than as co-authors. Things haven't changed a bit. Railroading still bores quite a few people.
Not at all, railroading implies not letting players decide or having their decisions not have an impact in the story. But players' actions do not impact everything in the world (or even in the adventure). If your adventure design begins with the PCs coming upon a runaway prostitute who has been mistreated by a customer who happens to be an evil necromancer linked to a foreign cult; the PCs protect her from a couple hired thugs and "by chance" get therefore embroiled in the necromantic conspiracy, that is not railroading. It's creating a plot element which, if we applied the rules for random encounters in a 15000-inhabitant city, for instance, would be nearly impossible to come up. PCs would probably run into petty thieves, shopkeepers, bartenders (and perhaps prostitutes without an adventure-inducing backstory). If I create an adventure in which PCs have to find an exotic cure for an ailing friend, I am not going to roll to see if the friend dies while they're searching for the cure. On the other hand, if they do something stupid, like missing clues or wasting time in retrieving treasure or pursuing personal interests in that lapse of time, their friend will die and they can see the impact of their actions. If they have a moral quandary, like get the healing for their friend or capture the head of the evil cult who poisoned him, they have a choice (and a very character-building one). I just won't let the rules get in the way of my storytelling. None of the cases above implies "railroading" in the usual sense.
"But if you see it from the point of view of the orc and the greataxe"
What do we actually know about "Hit Points"? We know that they "tell you how much punishment you can take before dropping", that they are "based on your class and level", that they "measure how hard you are to kill", that "no matter how many hit points you lose, your character isn't hindered in any way until your hit points drop to 0 or lower", and "Hit points mean two things in the game world: the ability to take physical punishment and keep going and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power". From various spells, such as Deathwatch and the Cure spells, it looks like hit points are both measurable and manipulable by spells that measure and manipulate positive or negative energy. Apparently creatures can be killed just as readily by damage to their feet - such as when characters are attacking a colossal creatures feet with knives - as by damage to their necks or "vital locations". Actually doing extra damage by attacking "Vital Locations" requires a special ability, such as "Sneak Attack" or "Death Blow" or a "Vorpal Weapon". "Coup de Grace" attacks represent a special attack which bypasses hit points. Hit points are also equally effective against immersion in lava as they are against blows.
This does not tell us HOW a character can turn a serious blow into a less serious one - although this seems to have something to do with level. We do know that "damage" in d20 settings does not operate like real-world injuries. Real-world injuries produce a wide variety of hindering effects. d20 "damage" does not.
So how can we envision this?
Simple option one: A blow does 20 hit points to a first-level warrior. The blade plunges deep into his chest shattering his heart, his store of positive energy is depleted, his spirit departs his body, and he is dead. An identical blow strikes an 18'th level warrior, the blade plunges deep into his chest, shatters his heart - and the warrior still has plenty of positive energy infusing his body, so he is nowhere near dead. Why should he die? His life is linked to positive energy, not to minor and unimportant functions like "blood circulation".
Simple option two: the blow strikes the 18'th level warrior, but the energy in his body absorbs the blow like the "force fields" you see in some movies. The blow leaves a mere scratch, turned "from a serious blow into a lesser one" by his "inner power" - as noted in the d20 descriptions of what hit points are.
I could go on with alternative ways to envision this - but the point is sufficient: the "fuzzy part" you see comes from attempting to import real-world physics and biomechanics into a realm where they do not apply. Hit points are defined in the system. They do not represent "difficulty to hit an opponent" (armor class) or making someone having "lost his footing" (a trip or knockdown attempt).
"That's technically not a contradiction"
We have indeed arrived at a contradiction: If arguments of the form "I don't understand (proposition A) are valid arguments that (proposition A) is false, then statements of the form "I don't understand how you [don't understand (proposition A)] are valid arguments that the preposition [I don't understand (proposition A)] is false - demonstrating the you do understand the original statement. Since we started with the assumption that this was a valid form of argument, and thus that the first statement was valid - and have now proven by the same form of argument that it must be false - we have demonstrated that our initial assumption - that this was a valid form or argument - must be false since we have derived contradictory statements from it.
To reduce to symbology if (D) defines the “I don’t understand” argument, and we have a proposition (P), and accept that (D) (P) is a valid argument implying (Not-P), than since (D) is a valid argument, (P) is false. However, this also indicates that (D)[(D)(P)] is also a valid operation, implying (D)(Not-P) and thus that (P) is true. If (D) is a valid argument, then (P) = (Not-P). Since accepting the validity of (D) leads to a contradiction, (D) is not a valid argument.
The problem lies in the fact that "I don't understand" is neither an argument nor evidence for or against the item which is not understood. It is merely an indication that the person making the statement does not understand something - and thus is a valid starting point for a question.
As for the “I am a Cretan. All Cretans are Liars” routine, this is a weak version of the classical Liars Paradox. The stronger version is simply “this sentence is not true”. See: Tarski’s Undefinability Theorem and Godels Theorem. It is not, however, related to arguments of the form “I don’t understand (P)”: such arguments are not self-referential, a key component of all versions of the liars paradox.
Now "good enough for most games" is inferior to "good enough for almost all games". Perfection is not obtainable. Improvement often is.
"Turning the idea around, if its magnitude is similar to the wand's, why not leaving"
Unfortunately, this misrepresents the original statement. This was about the idea that "It fulfills the design purpose" ("its magnitude is similar" is your own interpolation). Lets see: if a pesky squirrel keeps stealing the birdseed from my bird feeder, using a nuclear warhead on said squirrel will fulfill the "design purpose" of eliminating the squirrel and - incidently - the design purpose of the warhead. That does not make it an optimal solution.
Secondarily, this once again ignores all other dimensions of a problem to focus on a small party of adventurers. A wand is a very small expense for such a party. It is, however, both a larger one for most people in the campaign and is a limited (charged) resource. Channeling has no associated expense and is not limited over time.
As for "elegance" - lets see, if this is a burst of "raw life force", why doesn't it encourage diseases and sprout slimes all over everything? What level of spell will duplicate this effect? I'd suspect that you'd say that it regrows flesh and restores blood, so why wouldn't it restore a damaged plant? Does it work on trees, allowing instant replenishment of lumber resources? Pumpkins and fresh (living) fruits, allowing an endless food source? Why should an uncontrolled burst of energy do the subtle work of healing? Wouldn't it be more likely to encourage cancers and wild scarring?
Secondarily, What does "Elegance" have to do with it being overpowered?
"I assume the normal tendency is a decreasing level of interest and detail as action moves away from the PCs' area. Not only with PC-triggered, but also with all events."
It's a planet. The characters are free to make their own decisions - and its not at all uncommon for them to find some distant rumor intriguing, and go off to pursue it. So yes: the normal opening for a group that is not currently engaged in urgent business is "here is what you were doing last time, here are other things you were intending to get around to, a list of things you've observed going on in the area, some rumors of other things going on elsewhere, some old stories or historical tidbits you may opt to follow up on, and some items related to your character histories and contacts. You may, of course, opt to dig for other things, go elsewhere, work at home, or start off for anywhere on the planet you wish to go and do anything you wish to do". From the characters point of view there is no such thing as "plot" or "the convenience of the game master". Paying attention to either, or to whether a given character is a PC or NPC, or to whether or not every PC is going in the same direction or doing the same thing outside of the characters in-game relationships is metagaming on the players part or the game masters - and in the game master that's usually called "railroading". Having events depend on the "plot" is metagaming by the game master. "That's the only dungeon I've got ready!" is railroading. Yes, your "prostitute" example is railroading. It's more subtle than some forms - but if there's a big necromantic conspiracy going on, and the players miss it for better than a years worth of sessions, or simply go somewhere else before noticing it, so be it. There are hundreds of other things going on they could opt to get involved with - or they could opt to have a party, and spend the night interacting with each other without any “adventuring” at all. The Champions players back in college missed a secretive alien takeover attempt for better than 60 sessions, and were quite annoyed with themselves when they finally realized what had been going on in the background for the last three and a half semesters. If they'd never noticed, and no other events had interfered, the aliens might have taken over - and they might never have known what was behind all the changes.
People create stories about their lives. The characters create their own stories from the various events that they observe and participate in. The players give their characters direction and purpose. “Your storytelling” is a fairly blunt statement: you are telling a story. The players are not free to tell their own stories. The fact that you allow a limited degree of freedom within the structure of “your story” is the usual pattern, and most players are willing to accept a certain amount of railroading for the sake of the game, but it is still railroading.
Actually doing extra damage by attacking "Vital Locations" requires a special ability,
Criticals imply that "vital spot attack" (as there are critters immune to them). Still, they only cause HP damage. Hence the fuzziness on adjudicating. A "critical" which deals 20 hp to a 20th level character would not have the cinematics of a critical, unless you come up with some irrational physics, as in your example of interpretation.
Death risk from massive damage (over 50 HP) is an interesting case, as it fixes an "absolute" in HP. So, again, the system is combining absolute measurement of trauma with the relativity of levels and HPs. Your reductionist approach in order to preserve the objectivity of the rules can lead to insanity.this is a weak version of the classical Liars Paradox. The stronger version is simply “this sentence is not true”. See: Tarski’s Undefinability Theorem and Godels Theorem. It is not, however, related to arguments of the form “I don’t understand (P)”:
It is, as both are based on leaps between levels of language or metalanguage. Self-referenciality is not needed for leaps between levels. But, honestly, a good deal of arguments which begin with "I don't see how..." are actually hidden by rhetorical (and polite) language. "I don't see may mean "I see it, I profoundly disagree, but I am too polite to say it so". Rhetorical usages are badly adapted to logical formulation (fortunately).
Now "good enough for most games" is inferior to "good enough for almost all games". Perfection is not obtainable. Improvement often is
You still don't explain the difference. I don't see any unless it implies that some game sessions are better and more sophisticated than others (or some games more smart). That can quickly degenerate into thinking that one's way of gaming is the smart and sophisticated way.
As for "elegance" - lets see, if this is a burst of "raw life force", why doesn't it encourage diseases and sprout slimes all over everything? What level of spell will duplicate this effect? I'd suspect that you'd say that it regrows flesh and restores blood, so why wouldn't it restore a damaged plant? Does it work on trees, allowing instant replenishment of lumber resources? Pumpkins and fresh (living) fruits, allowing an endless food source? Why should an uncontrolled burst of energy do the subtle work of healing? Wouldn't it be more likely to encourage cancers and wild scarring?
Now you're forgetting your own theories on "game physics". "life force" (HP-based as in the description of the effects in the Positive Plane) is quite rules-defined. For what we know, cancers *could* be in a given fantasy world just demon's curses. Molds and fungi might be the children of a god and sneezes and colds are caused by tiny imps. In that case I was approaching the flavor and coherence from the gleanings on Positive Energy (and the Positive Plane) in the basic d20 rules. It is you who introduces real world physics and biology in the fantasy physics of the srd.
“Your storytelling” is a fairly blunt statement: you are telling a story. The players are not free to tell their own stories. The fact that you allow a limited degree of freedom within the structure of “your story” is the usual pattern, and most players are willing to accept a certain amount of railroading for the sake of the game, but it is still railroading.
Whatever. GM creating a world and a story and players playing it has been pretty well defined as the bases for D&D. Why isn't having a given world railroading? If a GM defines the basic pattern and setting of the PCs game world, that could be equally seen as railroading. Just "physical railroading". It seems you favor the concept of "game physics" over the concept of "game storytelling". More power to you. Yeah, there is a Gygax chapter in the 1st ed DMG, IIRC, "The DM as a Master Storyteller". That's what I feel the game's about. If that's railroading, be it, if it's conductive to good stories and to the party having fun (and the big complaint about storytelling is that it hampers fun), you can call it anything you want.
Quentyn, the rules cannot be a perfect mirror of reality, even a fantasy reality. And the DM cannot possibly be expected to run an entire universe.
Channel Energy does not distort a setting any more than previous clerical healing did. It doesn't. If you want to worry about things that break known social structures, worry about the fact that Clerics can cast Create Water all day.
The physics of a game world are not transparent to the people living in that world. Example of why.
You are misusing 'railroading'. Railroading is when the adventure is 'on rails' and the players cannot deviate from it. Dangling an adventure hook in front of them doesn't constitute railroading simply because it wasn't a purely random encounter. They players should be free to turn it down. They should be able to make meaningful choices, but 'all roads lead to rome', as they say. That doesn't mean they are railroads.
"Criticals imply that "vital spot attack""
This involves unsupported assumptions again and ignores portions of the game rules. Some creatures are immune to criticals that definitely have vital points, such as skeletons (although they may now be subject to sneak attacks: the current rules are unclear). There are quite a few single-connection points in a human skeleton, each of them vital to effective function. You are, of course, entitled to make your own assumptions - but they are still house rules.
As for "Irrational Physics" "Irrational" is "not logical". Since you offer no explanation of how such physics is not logical, and have failed to present an alternative set of explanations that are consistent with the defined properties of hit points, shall I presume that you have given up on the project?
As for "Death from Massive Damage", in what fashion does this combine "an absolute measurement of trauma" with "the relativity of levels and HPs"? For example, a colossal creature can still be instantly killed by a blow to the foot or tail while a tiny one can survive a blow that would crush its entire body. Both take the same amount of damage from a fall into lava, despite one having a much greater exposed area than the other. This is not how real-world injuries work and there is no reason to assume a related mechanism. I take it you define "Insanity" as "Not how I want to think of it"? I would recommend avoiding most branches of mathematics then.
"It is, as both are based on leaps between levels of language or metalanguage."
In what way is "I don't understand" based on leaps between levels of language? Self-referentiality is a necessary element of the liars paradox. Secondarily, "rhetorical usage" allows one to emphasize a point. It does not establish a point in itself. Since no other point was established where this phrase was used, it could not have been a "rhetorical usage".
"You still don't explain the difference. I don't see any unless it implies that some game sessions are better and more sophisticated than others"
This has already been explained several time before, in terms of players, in terms of character tendencies to experiment, and in terms of tactical and strategic situations, but I'm quite willing to explain again. Try it this way. A rule that functions well in 50% of game situations but causes difficulty in 50% is inferior to one that functions well in 80% and only causes a similar level of difficulty in 20% ("Most"), which is inferior to one that functions well in 95% of all games and only causes a similar level of difficulty to the 50/50 rule in 5% of all games ("almost all"). Ideally a rule should function well in 100% of all games. This is probably not attainable.
As for some game sessions being "better than others", lets see: a game session which so infuriates three of the seven players that they kill the game master and other four players, set fire to the place where it was being run, and go home and commit suicide is - I suspect - a "bad session". One which causes the players to want to come back every week until they die of old age is probably "better". Most sessions fall in between such extremes. If the average effect of a particular rule is to move the quality of the sessions towards the "kill everyone else involved" end of the spectrum, it is a bad rule - and the fact that this thread exists at all, and has attracted participants on both sides, is sufficient to establish that some groups find that it has a negative effect on their sessions. Whether or not this is acceptable depends on the percentage of groups that find it has a negative impact versus those on which it has a positive impact and on whether alternative rules which can accomplish the same goal can be found. Since all reports of positive effects have indicated that the desired positive effect can be achieved in other ways, and none yet have addressed ways to mitigate all observed negative effects, it seems likely that this is a poorly-designed rule.
"Now you're forgetting your own theories on "game physics"."
Not at all. You have made it quite apparent that you do not subscribe to such theories, and these questions are addressed to you, in relationship to your position as to the rules being merely an approximation of the underlying reality. If you had actually considered that "underlying reality" you could give sensible answers to those questions, and explain other ways in which a given ability or effect can be used or misused within the game reality. However, you seem to have opted to avoid making such an attempt.
"whatever. GM creating a world and a story and players playing it has been pretty well defined as the bases for D&D."
Really? Lets see: you have already indicated a preference for using a pre-packaged world. The "Story" is often up to the players. Some GM's let the players design large parts of the world - or simply peruse their backstories to see what kind of a world they want to play in. Others never bother with much of a "world" or "story" of any kind, being content with the good old kick-in-the-door and fight routine. Others don't like combat, and focus on intrigue - to quote the Pathfinder rules introduction; "These rules can be used to run a game of high intrigue set in the court of a dying king, or they can be used to chronicle a desperate struggle for survival on
the borderlands of an evil empire. It all depends on you and your imagination." Nice to know that most of these people aren't actually playing D&D. Will you tell them or will I have to do it?
As for having a particular world being railroading? If you insist on running in that world despite player requests for another setting, then it is indeed railroading. As already noted, it's a relatively subtle form, and one that most players are willing to accept. It's not railroading if the players ask for a particular world or system; that's their choice. If they ask to be surprised on Wednesdays (request night), well, everyone had fun with the "Magic Gophers versus Land Developers" game (and there are occasional requests for a return to it). When they requested a "low-magic semi-historical Ancient Rome setting - but with being able to play gargoyles and druids", that was what they got too.
Now, as for the first edition Dungeon Masters Guide, I have two copies: the first one was getting pretty battered and the later printings one had some extra pages with tables on them in the back, so why not? Now I see the old Potion Miscibility Table (PG 119), the section on Morale Scores and when to make die rolls (PG 67), random NPC reactions (PG 63), the percentage chances of intervention by deities (PG 111), the section on Random Dungeon Generation (PG 169), the rules which gave you more hit points when you were drunk (PG 82), the section on the Fabrication of Other Magic Items (PG 118), the random table for secondary skills (PG 12), the section on monsters as characters and why the world is "humanocentric" (PG 20-21), the skills and spellcasting abilities of Sages (PG 31), the random table for the party getting lost in the woods (PG 49), the Psionic Attack Matrixes (PG 76-77), the random insanity table (PG 83), a section on Climate and Ecology (PG 87), a section on the rational placement of monsters (PG 90-91), Random NPC Personality Traits (PG 100). Most of this seems to be concerned either with world logic or random tables. I'm afraid that I don't see a chapter labeled "The GM as a Master Storyteller". Could you provide a page number?
To quote Mr Gygax: “Know the game systems, and you will know how and when to take upon yourself the ultimate power. To become the final arbiter, rather than the interpreter of the rules, can be a difficult and demanding task, and it cannot be undertaken lightly, for your players expect to play this game, not one made up on the spot.” (1979 first edition Dungeon Masters Guide, Introduction, Page 9, second column).
And on to the next one...
"Quentyn, the rules cannot be a perfect mirror of reality, even a fantasy reality. And the DM cannot possibly be expected to run an entire universe.
Channel Energy does not distort a setting any more than previous clerical healing did. It doesn't. If you want to worry about things that break known social structures, worry about the fact that Clerics can cast Create Water all day"
Lets see... We have here an unsupported (and inverted) statement - a world is always a mirror of the rules it operates under. A game world may, of course, be operating under the vaguely-defined rules in your head rather than the ones in a book - but they are still rules.
Next up, the GM can certainly be expected to run an entire universe. If the players want to go somewhere that is insufficiently detailed, then knowing how your universe actually works and has developed lets you run it. If you can't manage, take a break until next week, develop your material, and then run it.
We've already discussed fairly extensively why Channel Energy does have a larger impact than clerical healing did - and no support is provided for the statement that it does not.
"The physics of a game world are not transparent to the people living in that world"
Who said that they were? They're entitled to whatever they can observe and deduce from those observations though. The rules of the game world aren't even necessarily transparent to the Players. They do, however, need to be transparent to the Game Master. That way he or she can maintain a consistent world in the face of player questions and character experiments. You're running a game according to the requirements of the "story"? According to your ideas of how the world "should function"? Those are still rules, and hopefully you've examined them.
"You are misusing 'railroading'. Railroading is when the adventure is 'on rails' and the players cannot deviate from it. Dangling an adventure hook in front of them doesn't constitute railroading simply because it wasn't a purely random encounter. They players should be free to turn it down. They should be able to make meaningful choices, but 'all roads lead to rome', as they say. That doesn't mean they are railroads."
Lets see... If "all roads lead to Rome", then my choice of road is not meaningful. That doesn't constitute "railroading"? What does? Even the most "railroaded" adventure provides some degree of freedom: I have yet to see a game master who won't let you announce that you're scratching an itch while you're walking down a corridor (unless, perhaps, your armor makes it impossible). Few game masters will allow you to announce that "I'm using my dimension-traveling power to leave the current dimension in favor of one with sunny beaches, walking couches which carry you around while massaging your back, and three-headed storks which bring you drinks" - unless, of course, you happen to be playing Amber (a game which does, indeed, expect the game master to run an entire multiverse, with player-described dimensions, on the fly). This is why the concept of "degrees of railroading" was discussed above: What one person will regard as unacceptable levels of game-master manipulation, another will find too little. Can you provide a test which will tell us which one is wrong?
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So, can you restate your position succinctly?
I believe you are saying:
1) Channel Energy tremendously increases the amount of healing available in the game world.
2) Because more healing is available, this would have a tremendous effect on every aspect of society.
3) Because good societies can channel positive energy, they should now dominate the world.
4) Because of channel energy, the entire world of Golarion is useless since this rule would have such profound effects that the world would look completely different... Including, but not limited to having cleric shelters within 30' of walls to include defenders in a healing burst.
“So, can you restate your position succinctly?”
The question was and is "Is channel energy overpowered".
The Position was, and is, Yes. To be more elaborate, Yes: Channel Energy has been observed to be overpowered in in-game playtesting in a variety of - admittedly uncommon in many games - situations, in inter-player and inter-society situations due to the increased value of a cleric to the party or a society versus members of other classes (and the resulting need to rebuild adventures and social assumptions to accommodate the presence or absence of various numbers of clerics), and in game-master situations both when role-playing NPC’s who want to survive (via winning as efficiently as possible given their intelligence, abilities, and knowledge, or by fleeing if that looks like a better option) instead of serving as an “exciting encounter” and on an analysis of various likely larger-scale effects.
As for your specific attempts at a summary:
“I believe you are saying: 1) Channel Energy tremendously increases the amount of healing available in the game world. 2) Because more healing is available, this would have a tremendous effect on every aspect of society. 3) Because good societies can channel positive energy, they should now dominate the world. 4) Because of channel energy, the entire world of Golarion is useless since this rule would have such profound effects that the world would look completely different... Including, but not limited to having cleric shelters within 30' of walls to include defenders in a healing burst.”
To answer these:
(1) Yes it does. This has been mathematically demonstrated earlier. Whether or not that healing is needed, useful, or provides a survival advantage for a group that possesses it, is a more complex question.
(2) No. It may or may not have a large impact on any given social structure. In a variety of the situations examined it seems like it should have a notable impact barring the introduction of some counterbalancing factor or explanation. Worlds that operate logically seem to be more popular than those which do not, especially for long-term games (Anyone ever had a two-year d20 Toon campaign? Anyone out there?). Based on that, it is evidently more satisfactory to have such explanations - which leaves it as the responsibility of the game rules and game master to supply them when such questions come up.
(3) No. They will have a competitive survival advantage, and will eventually come to dominate a setting over time IF no counterbalancing factor comes into play. Channel Energy makes it necessary to introduce such factors if you wish to maintain a logical structure to your world over the long term - and each such factor introduced carries its own set of ramifications. This can be fun, but it is an unnecessary burden. Unfortunately, most opposing posters so far have chosen to argue that “no such advantage exists” rather than suggesting that “these other factors exist, or can be easily introduced, to counter this advantage”.
This is actually pretty easy. Large-scale effects could be readily avoided by adding a sentence to the Channel Energy description, such as “Sadly, the gods only entrust the power to heal or damage living creatures with Channel Energy to great champions who are regularly involved in confrontations with other great champions”. That doesn’t address the smaller-scale tactical issues, but it neatly includes the vast majority of player characters (and almost all of them who need lots of healing available), and the classed NPCs that they confront, while excluding most local clerics. There would still be smaller-scale issues in various situations, but there may well be equally simple patches for them. Proposing or applying such a patch, however, implies admitting that there could be a problem - something which many of the posters here seem to be reluctant to even consider.
(4) No. The interpolation that “the entire world of Golarion is useless” is quite unjustified (Falling under the “Straw Man Argument” classification). As already noted, large-scale effects can be ignored if your players are not interested in them and/or are not inclined to apply deductive reasoning to the description of the world you supply. Even if such considerations apply to your group, it is often easy enough (although a bother) to alter the appropriate details - provided that you think about them in advance. In terms of any particular world, the game master can easily insert various (hopefully well-thought-out) house rules to modify any given effect or situation (Such as the modification to Channel Energy noted above). Even aside from such details, few worlds are ever “useless” even if there are problems modeling them with a given set of rules. The worlds of Dragons Egg (a novel about fast-living vaguely ameboid organisms of condensed matter who live on the surface of a neutron star), Tolkien, Traveler (I prefer the original system to Megatraveler), The Black Company, the Bible, the Vedas, of Gilgamesh, World War II, the Book of Coming Forth by Day (I have a childhood preference for the Budge translation), and Edding’s Belgariad all make useful sources.
Now, for the non-succinct portion - attempting to quickly break down other presented positions:
Opposing arguments have been presented based on
(1) The limited prevalence of “Faith” in the population. (varies with the setting and in no way relevant to many of the other problems).
(2) The relationship of gods to clerics. (Varies with the setting).
(3) Having not encountered such problems. (Personally I have not encountered a breadfruit tree. That does not mean that they do not exist).
(4) The “Fifteen Minute Adventuring Day”. (Not related to whether or not Channel Energy is overpowered).
(5) Not caring about the world beyond the party - and it working well in our party. (Which is fine, but does not invalidate the problem for people who do care about the larger world or who have parties for whom it does not work well).
(6) That GM fiat or a wide variety of house rules prevent such effects in particular campaigns. (Also fine, but irrelevant to other campaigns).
(7) Not having any players or game masters who find this ability overpowered in their groups. (Again, fine for them - but the existence of this thread demonstrates that this is not universal. This is basically a variant on (5), but has been presented several times and so merits a listing of its own)
(8) On it allowing clerics to save their spell slots for things other than healing. (If anything, an argument that it is indeed overpowered)
(9) On it being a “vital tool for party survival” (Ditto above).
(10) On it not making a difference. (Observably incorrect in many situations - and, if so, why argue anyway?)
(11) On “flavor”, “Style” , “Narrative Choices”. (Not related to whether or not Channel Energy is overpowered)
(12) That “Balance” - and player perceptions thereof - depends on “every character having a chance to shine” (Already disposed of at length above).
(13) That it’s necessary because the party takes too much damage. (A problem of adventure design, game mastering methods, player decisions, die rolls, and other factors - and one that can be addressed in many other fashions and not relevant to whether or not the ability is overpowered).
(14) That various classes do various things. (True. Also irrelevant to whether or not this ability is overpowered).
(15) That curative spells are less important than other spells (Debatable. Also, once again, quite irrelevant).
(16) That no other patches for the perceived problem of “too much damage” are available. (Simply incorrect. A number were suggested).
(17) That charisma is usually considered a dump stat. (Only true in a limited range of game styles, and irrelevant as to whether the ability is too powerful).
(18) That such situations never come up. (Observedly untrue).
(19) That having a healer is a strategic choice for the party. (Yes it is. This is, however, not relevant to whether or not the ability is overpowered).
(20) That it is not possible for people manning a wall to be in line of sight of those inside the wall while the people within the wall remain out of line of sight of those outside the wall. (Demonstratably untrue if your setting has three dimensions).
(21) That other poor rules exist. (Yes, but irrelevant).
(22) That the characters acting in accordance with what they know about the world is “metagaming” if it does not suit the game masters ideas of how they “should” behave. (Both an fairly original definition of “metagaming” and irrelevant).
(23) That Storytelling takes precedence over game logic and that problems with the setting and events can always be fixed by game master fiat. (Only true for a limited number of game masters - and for those players and game masters who do not see “game master fiat” as a problem in itself. Also true of any rule whatsoever for those game masters and groups willing to accept game master fiat as a valid answer to questions, and hence irrelevant to the question of whether Channel Energy is overpowered).
(24) That having large amounts of healing available is not useful because there situations in which it is not relevant. (A classic “does not follow” error, as well as often being coupled with the argument that Channel Energy is important to the party - while somehow being unimportant to everyone else. This is where the discussion on plagues came from).
(25) That this “is not based on playtesting. (Observedly false).
(26) That it will not have any large-scale social effects over the long term. (Reasons for “why not” so far have tended towards “because I don’t think it ought to” or “because I don’t see why it should”. Sadly, neither of these are valid arguments, as was demonstrated earlier at length).
(27) That the game rules do not actually reflect the physics of the game world. (Quite possible in various settings - but it requires a good deal of thought as to what those actual rules are and as to how they modify game conventions when the players opt to investigate. Usually coupled with the “the assumptions in my head are not “rules” because they’re not written down” fallacy).
(28) The idea that basic changes will not have massive ramifications. (They often do. Consider “Increased Intelligence” and “Thumbs”).
(29) That it fulfills the “design purpose”. (Which is irrelevant to whether or not it is overpowered, as demonstrated earlier).
(30) That the mechanisms of social change are very complicated. (True, if only relevant to a very small part of the discussion - however, by this point, enough situations in which the ability is overpowered have been presented to change the original question to “Do situations in which the ability is overpowered come up often enough in play throughout the customer base to worry about?”).
(31) Assorted apparent digressions - the Liar’s Paradox, the “fuzzyness” that results if you attempt to have two different systems of rules (those of real-world biology and physics and those of the game world) operating at the same time, statements that “The game master cannot be expected to run an entire universe”, discussions of “railroading”, the “basis of D&D”, and that there is no definable difference between “good” and “bad” sessions - have also been presented. In most cases I do not personally see how these are relevant to whether or not Channel Energy is overpowered. Since the people bringing up these topics in the context of this discussion evidently do see such a connection, I have, of course, assumed for the sake of argument that such a connection exists and responded to those sections of their statements as well.
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"Overpowered" seems to imply a standard of comparison that has not been defined and has absolutely not been agreed on.
I think it's fascinating that you're willing to stipulate that limiting channeled healing to PC/important NPC types would greatly or entirely eliminate the social issues you're having, when adepts lack such healing inherently and thus the amount of healing available to the world as a whole is entirely dependent on GM fiat (i.e., who is a cleric vs. an adept).
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The question was and is "Is channel energy overpowered".The Position was, and is, Yes. To be more elaborate, Yes: Channel Energy has been observed to be overpowered in in-game playtesting in a variety of - admittedly uncommon in many games - situations...
I disagree. Overpowered involves a value judgement, and must be determined based upon comparison of something else. Are you saying that Channel Energy is overpowered compared to a 3.5 party that did not have such healing power? Certainly the Pathfinder classes have a little more power across the board. Each character has more feats if nothing else, and most have other 'benefits'. So, what exactly, is Channel Energy overpowered compared to?
Which situations, specifically, do you think that it is 'overpowered' and not simple 'a useful tactical option'?
...in inter-player and inter-society situations due to the increased value of a cleric to the party or a society versus members of other classes...
I also disagree on this point. A cleric is not more valuable, they are equally valuable, but more flexible. A party without a cleric is an extremely rare thing in any 'standard' campaign. A party that did not have a cleric before is mostly unaffected by this change. But druids, paladins, rangers, and bards all make poor primary healers. Even a large group with a combination of 'secondary' or 'tertiary' healers is at a marked disadvantage compared to a group that has at least one cleric. And this is true whether channel energy is available or not.
...(and the resulting need to rebuild adventures and social assumptions to accommodate the presence or absence of various numbers of clerics)...
Why would an adventure need to be changed based on the party composition? An adventure that is designed for 20th level characters could still be attempted by 5th level characters. They will likely die, but if they have a reasonable chance of determining the relative level of power they're expected to have, that is their choice. It seems as though you wish to avoid 'railroading', so adapting the adventure based on the specific characters seems like something you would prefer to avoid. In any case, I have neither written nor purchased an adventure that had a specific estimate for the amount of healing that the party had available (whether through wands, clerics, or other means). As for social assumptions, most societies will worry very little about 'hit point damage'. Hit Point Damage is not used when a woman delivers a baby. It is not used when someone suffers from food poisoning. It is not used when a plague begins spreading. The only time it really comes into play is in combat. Most socities don't engage in combat all that frequently. Even those that do usually only seem to get involved in a major war every generation or so. Even if it is an 'every year' event, it is likely to only last during the 'campaign season' which is when the weather supports such activities. Since that also tends to be the time that planting and harvesting happen, there are more restrictions on the frequency predicated upon the need to produce sufficient food resources to make war feasible. I guess I see the channel energy as only a very small ability (on a societal level) compared to spells that can produce food and water, and spells that can alter the weather pattern for many miles. Magic requires an answer in society, and in general, campaigns have not addressed that issue fully. But the addition of channel energy does little to change the nature of the equation... Effectively, more healing available from each provider, without increasing the number of providers, does little to increase the overall amount of healing available in any situation. Particularly since hit point damage is only one type of 'damage' and the one that is least significant on a societal level (since it tends to affect individuals - the wood cutter who accidentally missed the tree, or the child who fell out of a tree).
...and in game-master situations both when role-playing NPC’s who want to survive (via winning as efficiently as possible given their intelligence, abilities, and knowledge, or by fleeing if that looks like a better option) instead of serving as an “exciting encounter” and on an analysis of various likely larger-scale effects.
I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here. Is it that if the party finds an enemy to attack, and the party has a cleric, the bad guy is more likely to run away? He might think that he can't cause enough damage to kill the opponents?
I suppose that could happen. Though he might also benefit from that healing. If that is your concern, I think that is easily addressed with other 'minor effects'. For example, creating an area where channel energy doesn't work shouldn't be that difficult. If unhallow and other effects exist, they may reduce or eliminate the healing power. Since the game isn't released, those areas can still be addressed. But most creatures have some motivation to fight, even if they think they might lose... Otherwise, everyone might run away from the PCs.
""Overpowered" seems to imply a standard of comparison that has not been defined and has absolutely not been agreed on. I think it's fascinating that you're willing to stipulate that limiting channeled healing to PC/important NPC types would greatly or entirely eliminate the social issues you're having, when adepts lack such healing inherently and thus the amount of healing available to the world as a whole is entirely dependent on GM fiat (i.e., who is a cleric vs. an adept)."
The precentages of various character types in the population of various areas is defined by the rules system: see the section on "Demographics". This was discussed earlier in the thread. As for the standard of comparison, it was indeed defined earlier in the thread. If you want to use another definition, please provide it.
"I disagree. Overpowered involves a value judgement"
Already discussed. "Overpowered" as it is commonly used relates to one character of level "x" making a greater contribution to party success than another character of level "x" on a reasonably consistent basis, thus causing player discontent and reducing the enjoyment of the game. If the question involves a value judgement, I trust you will not mind a player with a first level character deciding that said character can use "Wish" at will? Why should one "value judgement" (yours) be superior to that of the player who would like such an ability?
As for “specific situations”, please read the entire thread. A number have been presented.
"Why would an adventure need to be changed based on the party composition?"
Because we are discussing material which is published to make a profit. Many people purchase adventures and expect them to be enjoyable for their players based purely on statements such as "suitable for five fifth-level characters". If they do not find them readily usable and fun for their players, they will cease buying them. Personally, I do not have a problem with characters who commit suicide through failure to gather information and make deductions and preparations based on it. That is, however, simply my preference. There are many game masters and players who do not feel that way, and this discussion concerns them as well.
"As for social assumptions, most societies will worry very little about 'hit point damage'"
Already discussed at length earlier in the thread. See: cumulative effects of survival advantages.
"Most societies don't engage in combat all that frequently."
Sources of hit point damage both from accidents, natural disasters, and similar troubles have been discussed earlier. Combat ranges from domestic disputes on through being kicked by a domestic animal, through attacks by various animals and monsters, and only then on to massed armies. Consider the statistics for automobile accidents - which, as defined in the game, cause hit point damage.
"Since that also tends to be the time that planting and harvesting happen"
Assuming, of course, a temperate or subtropical climate, an agrarian society with European-style agricultural patterns and crops. The patterns of life and warfare in a tropical rain forest or the arctic are quite different. Magic, exotic species and races, and large-scale supernatural effects may well make things more different still iin a d20 setting. All this amounts to "If I assume that the campaign background works without examining it, then I won't notice any effects".
"Effectively, more healing available from each provider, without increasing the number of providers, does little to increase the overall amount of healing available in any situation"
Addressed earlier. See the discussions on "disasters". Also self-contradictory. Lets see... If I substitute “wealth” for “healing” has the net worth of an area gone up? Yes? Hm. If each person with wealth now has ten times as much, then the net worth of the area has gone up by a factor of ten. Perhaps you could explain why this does not apply to healing?
"I'm not even sure what you're trying to say here. Is it that if the party finds an enemy to attack, and the party has a cleric, the bad guy is more likely to run away? He might think that he can't cause enough damage to kill the opponents?"
No: it's that NPC's will make efficient use of their abilities within the limits of their intelligence - and if the characters are attacking them, will do their best to either kill their opponents or escape. For example, if they're fighting a group of characters and one of those characters goes down, they're very likely to use the same tactic the party does - make sure that that individual will not be getting up again before moving on. They will concentrate their attacks on more vulnerable opponents. They will retreat if they are losing. They will arrange their defenses to put the characters at as severe a disadvantage as possible. This is normal. Sadly, we have found that a that a party of negative energy channelers with selective channeling can - if they can arrange for a fight to take place in a confined area such as a classical dungeon - usually eliminate a "balanced party" and handily deal with quite a few different kinds of encounters (the best group-of-four in many cases turned out to be three negative channelers and one positive channeler, but four negative channelers were quite deadly enough). At long ranges they simply broke contact, used cure light wounds wands, and attempted to arrange ambushes or to escape. The outcomes of series of battles tended to be influenced much more heavily by the presence or absence of a Cleric than by a fighter, druid, or members of several other classes. This tended to provoke player discontent, and was therefore a problem.
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The precentages of various character types in the population of various areas is defined by the rules system: see the section on "Demographics". This was discussed earlier in the thread.
I went back and found that section of the thread, and all I can say is, it is not me that needs to reread the demographics section of the DMG again. Fully 1/3 of hamlets have no clerics at all, half will have 1-3 clerics, and only 17% will have 7 clerics, the absolute maximum (such an unusually high concentration suggests a geographical anomaly, such as a monastery). It's also worth remembering that roughly 1/3 of all clerics will be negative energy channelers, and thus irrelevant to the question of how much healing changes the game.
Even a metropolis of 25,000 has fewer than 100 clerics total, or roughly 60 people capable of channeling positive energy - a ratio of about 1/400. The number of people such a small number of clerics can heal is not going to be great, just simply because they won't have contact with them.
Furthermore, all of the above-mentioned positive energy clerics were already capable of producing between 4 and 18 points of positive energy healing per day (at minimum) even under 3.5 rules, so in order for this to be a problem only now, you have to be arguing that the amount of hit point damage suffered by the general populace on a daily basis is enough to overrun the standards of two cure light wounds a day. Given that most of the things people go to the doctor for are represented in D&D as ability damage rather than hit point damage, you're either suggesting an extraordinarily violent setting, or you're talking specifically about war. (I saw mention of natural disasters, but that's laughable - recent events in China and southeast Asia have shown that even modern-day transportation and logistics can't get enough healers into an area affected by a large-scale disaster.) If it's the former, it's not my problem - if it's the latter, all I can say is that only 1-2% of a typical population is actually involved in that population's military, which means that statistically there would only be a single cleric in the entirety of a metropolis' military force. I'm not buying that this is a major change in the way the world works.
As for the standard of comparison, it was indeed defined earlier in the thread. If you want to use another definition, please provide it.
Heh. No, I think I'll use yours, since you clearly aren't.
"Overpowered" as it is commonly used relates to one character of level "x" making a greater contribution to party success than another character of level "x" on a reasonably consistent basis, thus causing player discontent and reducing the enjoyment of the game.
By this standard, positive energy channelers aren't - in fact, can never be - overpowered on the basis of their positive energy channeling, save where encounters with undead are concerned. The reason is simple: healing does not contribute directly to party success. It's true that it contributes massively in an indirect fashion, but the mechanism for that indirect contribution is the direct contribution of the healed party members. The only way (again, leaving undead aside) healing the party helps anything is if the party then goes on to do what it does - i.e., to contribute directly to success. It is therefore impossible for healing to outstrip the contributions of other characters; in fact, the contribution of healing is fundamentally capped by whatever contributions the healed characters can then supply on their own.
This is, in fact, why so many people don't want to play clerics - healing doesn't seem to do anything the way playing a fighter or a wizard does. If this is your basis for determining overpowered, then we really only have negative energy to even theoretically discuss.
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Edit - started writing before Shisumo posted.
Sources of hit point damage both from accidents, natural disasters, and similar troubles have been discussed earlier. Combat ranges from domestic disputes on through being kicked by a domestic animal, through attacks by various animals and monsters, and only then on to massed armies. Consider the statistics for automobile accidents - which, as defined in the game, cause hit point damage.
In the game world of D&D, magical healing was already available in these situations. Additional healing, whether through channel energy or another source does not change the fact that the healing was already available. Usually, the healing will not make any difference, since much of the time, hit point damage is enough to kill a character outright. For example, if you are killed in a car accident before help arrives, it doesn't matter how good the doctor into whose care you are delivered. He cannot bring you back from the dead. However, if you survive the initial accident, you are quite likely to survive completely. Certainly some people die before arriving at the hospital, or after two or three days in intensive care, but once the care begins, death is much less likely to occur. Trauma units in D&D exist whether channel energy does or not. They are called temples, they have clerics and not doctors, and they can put someone back together very easily as long as that person is still alive. And perhaps more amazingly, even if that person is not. So, my considered opinion is that channel energy isn't that significant an increase in available healing. Clerics may use fewer healing spells and fewer healing wands, but for the most part, they are not going to heal more people, expect in very specific situations that seem unlikely to occur in anything other than a laboratory experiment, and even then, I find it an interesting tactical exercise, not something that is 'overpowered'.
Addressed earlier. See the discussions on "disasters". Also self-contradictory. Lets see... If I substitute “wealth” for “healing” has the net worth of an area gone up? Yes? Hm. If each person with wealth now has ten times as much, then the net worth of the area has gone up by a factor of ten. Perhaps you could explain why this does not apply to healing?
If you multiply the wealth by a factor of 10, nearly instantly inflation will also multiply prices by a factor of 10. While the 'net wealth' may have increased, when adjusted for cost of living it will remain the same. This is because if you want or desire a service relative to your total wealth, and your wealth increases, the amount you're willing to pay for it increases as well. Since you are 'bidding' against other potential buyers, and their willingness to spend has also increased, the price will inflate by a factor of 10. You will end up having the same buying power you had before your wealth multiplied.
However, the point I make is that if you do not increase the number of clerics, you do not increase the access to healing. If I'm not near a cleric, it doesn't matter that he has 10d6 more healing per day, it will not benefit me at all. The people who may benefit are the ones that already had access to said cleric. It is a little like giving each gas station more gas, but not making more stations. Can you fuel more cars? Technically, yes. But you can't fill up cars any faster without making more pumps. So while a cleric might heal more people, that would only happen if more people came to him, either because there were people that were not being healed before or because the amount of damage people receive increases.
Thus, this really matters only to people who not only experience severe hit point damage, but frequent hit point damage. The person who is involved in a domestic disturbance can count on natural healing taking care of his injuries in the next day or two. Unless there is a monster attack, he has no need of the extra healing available. PCs, on the other hand, who both frequently take hit point damage (to the tune of 3-4x per day) and take severe hit point damage (frequently to within a point or two of death) are the ones that would be likely to benefit from this change most.
So, specifically, I disagree with your assertion that channel energy will have any more effect on society than healing magic in general. Absolutely and unconditionally disagree with your reasoning and conclusion.
As for the effect that it has within a party in terms of increasing the power of a cleric over other characters, I have not found that to be the case. Since that is a matter of personal opinion, I won't disagree that you've found it to be the case in your games. Since we think of the game as a team event, and the cleric helps the team succeed, we think that this kind of power boost is fine - it is a boost to the team power, not the individual's power. While certainly your opinion has merit and is worth considering, I specifically believe that is a small minority that shares that opinion, so I certainly hope that they do not make a change based on this small group. If you feel uncomfortable with it, of course you can remove it from your campaign.
As for what channel energy is intended to do, I find it succeeds nicely, and again, I have not had any trouble with it in play, and have yet to see a situation where I consider it to be a problem either in this thread or anywhere else.
"I went back and found that section of the thread, and all I can say is, it is not me that needs to reread the demographics section of the DMG again"
Evidently you didn't. Having forgotten the -2 modifiers was already noted in a later post. You also failed to read the sections on unusual situations and cumulative survival advantages. This argument has already been dealt with.
"I saw mention of natural disasters, but that's laughable - recent events in China and southeast Asia have shown that even modern-day transportation and logistics can't get enough healers into an area affected by a large-scale disaster"
Evidently you missed some of the early posts dealing with the number of people who can be treated with a single healing burst. This argument has already dealt with.
"By this standard, positive energy channelers aren't - in fact, can never be - overpowered on the basis of their positive energy channeling, save where encounters with undead are concerned. The reason is simple: healing does not contribute directly to party success. It's true that it contributes massively in an indirect fashion"
Ah. An "Indirect Contribution" - as you have opted to define it - is somehow less important than a direct one. Under your definition, a party that completes a mission but is wiped out in the process has been just as successful as a party that completes the mission and survives without injury. I suspect that a solid majority of players would not agree. I could also read this argument as a statement that players are incapable of evaluating the value of "indirect contributions”, but I suspect that this is not what you meant.
"In the game world of D&D, magical healing was already available in these situations. Additional healing, whether through channel energy or another source does not change the fact that the healing was already available. Usually, the healing will not make any difference"
Already dealt with under cumulative survival advantages. Getting all the survivors in a village almost immediately to uninjured status after a disaster is a substantial advantage.
As a side note, it is nice to see that you embrace the “game physics” approach. Otherwise you would presumably have considered lost productivity due to injuries and the other effects of real traumas.
"If you multiply the wealth by a factor of 10, nearly instantly inflation will also multiply prices by a factor of 10"
Unfortunately, "Wealth" is not "Gold Pieces". “Wealth” includes lands, domestic animals, stored food and supplies, tools and equipment, and other chattels as well as precious metals or symbolic monetary units.
"However, the point I make is that if you do not increase the number of clerics, you do not increase the access to healing"
Sadly for arguments of this form, increasing the abundance of a given resource will - as usual in any supply-and-demand situation - reduce the average difficulty of obtaining access to said resource. Even in your own analogy, radius-effect pumps versus single-vehicle pumps will allow many vehicles to fuel at once at each pump.
"So, specifically, I disagree with your assertion that channel energy will have any more effect on society than healing magic in general. Absolutely and unconditionally disagree with your reasoning and conclusion."
Disagreeing is entirely your privilege, but - as demonstrated above - I find your arguments unconvincing.
As a side, note, given at least one posters initial assertion that evaluating whether or not something is "Too Powerful” or “Overpowered" is meaningless, their refusal to provide an alternative definition for something being “Too Powerful” or “Overpowered” that they would find meaningful, and the topic of this thread - “Is Channel Energy Too Powerful”, I must wonder why anyone would bother to post to a topic they feel is inherently meaningless?
I wonder if other people/designers have experienced problems with this.....
I enjoyed running a level 1 dungeon crawl (3.0 converted to 3.5 and again to 3.P) where nobody died the first few days due to hp loss, but we became a lot less useful as the ability damage from dire rats and the shadow we fought really made us useless as we approached the mid-point to ending. We had to run back to town to heal up.
Was it overpowered? Well, our cleric used all 4 healing bursts in the first three battles: (our party: elf wizard, human cleric, dwarf fighter, halfling rouge)
Battle 1.)vs. undead - pretty easy fight. It cured the fighter completely (he was missing only one hp) and halved the hp of the skeletons. The rouge didn't have a bludgeoning weapon, so she was useless in the battle.
Battle 2.)vs. kobolds - roughly 8 of them, some firing javelins, others in melee. After the ambush, the clerics used a burst to save the wizard (who was really zinging the kobolds with her evocation school power). But it healed a couple of wounded kobolds. Another burst was used to close the distance between the ranged fighters with out dropping to 0 hp.
Battle 3.)vs. goblins (one was an evil cleric, 4 warriors) and a bugbear. At this point, we had used some spells prepared rather than convert them into healing spells. We took out the goblin warriors and had flanked the evil cleric before the negative energy started to flow. That really changed the dynamics of the battle. One positive flow against 3 of the goblin's negative dropped the rogue. The bugbear was caught in one of the negative attacks, but was caught in a reactionary positive one too.
As for a gameworld setting, we have yet to encounter anything like that. We went back to town healed of hp, but the ability damage was what we needed healing.
But, my statements will probably be deemed useless and untrue... ;-)
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Evidently you didn't. Having forgotten the -2 modifiers was already noted in a later post. You also failed to read the sections on unusual situations and cumulative survival advantages. This argument has already been dealt with.
Not to my satisfaction it hasn't. What you continue to avoid dealing with is that this is a problem of logisitics, not supply. Injuries do not conveniently happen simultaneously and within a 30 ft radius of a cleric. If there is only one person who needs healing within 30 ft., you might as well be casting cure light wounds, the previous availability of which you are still not addressing. And if there's no cleric within 10 miles, then all the healing they have in the world won't save you.
Ah. An "Indirect Contribution" - as you have opted to define it - is somehow less important than a direct one. Under your definition, a party that completes a mission but is wiped out in the process has been just as successful as a party that completes the mission and survives without injury. I suspect that a solid majority of players would not agree.
Less important? I said nothing of the kind. And even setting aside the question of how a "wiped out" party is supposed to complete any kind of mission, that example is also completely beside my point, and doesn't in fact connect to it at all that I can see. Since you're having trouble with this, let me try again.
Healing, on its own, does not directly contribute anything to a party's success. It results in no forward progress, removes no enemies, accomplishes no objectives. What it does is allow others to do so. This does not mean, in any way, that the healing is not important or necessary. What it means is that the contribution of healing to the party's success is always going to be matched by a contribution from the healed character(s). Healing will never be able to outstrip - to contribute more to the party's success, as you put it - the contributions of the other party members. Parity will be maintained.
To use an actually relevant example, consider a cleric who heals a fighter who had been dropped to unconsciousness. The fighter then goes on to kill all the party's enemies. This was only possible thanks to the healer, but the fighter did the actually slaughtering; thus both PCs contributed equally - neither would have accomplished the victory alone. Conversely, if the fighter then proceeds to miss every swing for the rest of the combat, then neither the fighter nor the cleric's healing contributed a thing; the cleric might as well have saved the spell/channeling and left the fighter on the floor. The benefit of healing to the party's success is entirely dependent on what the recipients do with the extra hit points once they have them.
I could also read this argument as a statement that players are incapable of evaluating the value of "indirect contributions”, but I suspect that this is not what you meant.
Actually, it is what I meant, to a certain extent. The cleric's role as a support character - a character whose contribution is measured primarily in terms of the contributions they allow others to make - is frequently cited as a reason why "no one wants to play a cleric;" it was even offered as an excuse for the massively overpowered 3rd Edition cleric by the game's designers. Bards have similar problems; despite being substantial force multipliers, they are often mocked and ridiculed, and players even my own games have expressed dissatisfaction with being forced to "sing instead of do something." If the point of avoiding "overpowered" abilities is to enhance the enjoyment of players as your definition suggests, then this is definitely an element that must be taken into account.
Why would a truthfully-stated observation be either useless or untrue in itself? Contributing an additional observed case is almost invariably useful.
While your post expresses no direct opinion as to whether or not the ability is overpowered, it rather sounds like it falls into one of the cases examined earlier - that the ability usually functions well with regards to a a party that is relatively small, has few associated NPC's or creatures, and is primarily involved in combat encounters. The fact that the party has a mixture of classes and is up against mixed opponents using a mixture of strategies eliminates some of the cases considered earlier as well (such as a player character party or group of opponents with multiple negative channelers with Selective Channeling).
The only problem with arguments based on playtesting is that they tend to be of the form "I have not yet encountered a problem with (x); therefore no one has encountered a problem with (x) - and if report that you have, you must be wrong".
So yes, thank you for your post: at least from my point of view it is neither useless nor untrue.
Sorry to double-post, but someone else posted while I was working on the last reponse:
"Not to my satisfaction it hasn't. What you continue to avoid dealing with is that this is a problem of logisitics, not supply. Injuries do not conveniently happen simultaneously and within a 30 ft radius of a cleric."
No they don't - but wounded people are can usually either move or be moved. Getting the hundred or so severely injured victims of a collapsing bridge, and the people who were injured during rescue operations, to an area where the single locally available low-level cleric can heal them all with a few bursts isn't all that hard - and being healed now, instead of waiting for natural healing or taking a week out for cure light wounds spells is probably beneficial.
"even setting aside the question of how a "wiped out" party is supposed to complete any kind of mission"
For the classic fantasy example, if Frodo had sacrificed himself to destroy the ring after the entire rest of the fellowship had been killed, would that not have succeeded in his mission? There have been enormous numbers of historical missions that succeeded despite everyone involved being killed or captured.
"Healing, on its own, does not directly contribute anything to a party's success. It results in no forward progress, removes no enemies, accomplishes no objectives."
Well, I usually do include "Survival" among the character objectives.
"What it means is that the contribution of healing to the party's success is always going to be matched by a contribution from the healed character(s)."
To take a counterexample from earlier in the thread, what if your objective is to being a group of low-level NPC-class refugees through a difficult situation alive? Healing them is a direct contribution. Secondarily, most healers heal themselves as well - thus increasing their own "direct contribution" (more selfish characters with healing abilities excaberate this difference even more). More importantly, if healing is only important through its effects on other characters, no amount of healing can be unbalancing between characters: ergo simply allowing any character with healing abilities to heal without limit should in no way annoy the players of characters without healing abilities - yet somehow it does seem to, as long-ago experiments with spell point systems confirmed. Finally, under this theory it should make no difference if you trade out all the characters with healing abilities for characters with no healing abilities, since they should contribute equally in other ways - yet it does seem to make a difference.
"To use an actually relevant example, consider a cleric who heals a fighter who had been dropped to unconsciousness. The fighter then goes on to kill all the party's enemies. This was only possible thanks to the healer, but the fighter did the actually slaughtering; thus both PCs contributed equally - neither would have accomplished the victory alone. Conversely, if the fighter then proceeds to miss every swing for the rest of the combat, then neither the fighter nor the cleric's healing contributed a thing; the cleric might as well have saved the spell/channeling and left the fighter on the floor."
Well, as noted, "everyone surviving" is usually a part of the party objectives - to which the healing has directly contributed. After all, if the Fighter had been stabilized at -8 hits, the next area-effect attack he was exposed to would almost certainly have finished him off. It looks to me like the healing made a very direct contribution towards that goal of "survival".
"Actually, it is what I meant, to a certain extent. The cleric's role as a support character - a character whose contribution is measured primarily in terms of the contributions they allow others to make - is frequently cited as a reason why "no one wants to play a cleric;" it was even offered as an excuse for the massively overpowered 3rd Edition cleric by the game's designers. Bards have similar problems; despite being substantial force multipliers, they are often mocked and ridiculed, and players even my own games have expressed dissatisfaction with being forced to "sing instead of do something." If the point of avoiding "overpowered" abilities is to enhance the enjoyment of players as your definition suggests, then this is definitely an element that must be taken into account."
Agreed - although it depends a good deal on the players. I've had one who took Mystic Artist/Architecture (Instead of the usual bardic music) and a selection of enhancement spells and abilities and happily lurked in the background doing nothing at all directly while enhancing other people and designing buildings. That's pretty unusual though. In our playtests (admittedly including many odd situations, including player-groups versus player-groups, all-channeler groups, and players running defenders versus players running attackers) most of the players - including the ones playing clerics - have come to the conclusion that Channel Energy is just too good for comfort. The war-leader fighter was especially annoyed that - despite his special feats for organizing and enhancing the troops he was leading - the cleric made a bigger difference in holding the walls and gates of the town when the orc army attacked then he did.
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Evidently you missed some of the early posts dealing with the number of people who can be treated with a single healing burst. This argument has already dealt with.
I disagree. To state that 80 people can be affected by a healing burst is not to say that the situation will ever occur in the game, even if we look only at a scene without PCs. That 80 people should take damage simultaneously while within proximity to a cleric is so exceedingly rare that it is not worth considering - anymore than sitting a million monkeys down with typewriters in order to generate the Great American Novel is worth considering. If the cleric is endeavoring to 'maximize' the healing burst by getting all possible creatures within the area, you have to at least make sure they've all been stabilized first. You wouldn't want a large number to 'bleed out' before the healing burst occurs. If they are all stabilized and the cleric isn't worried about them taking more damage (so has time to arrange them all within area of maximum effect) then it doesn't really change the situation. The characters were safe to heal naturally, but the cleric speeds up the process. This is the same as if the cleric converted spells into cure spells to deal with the carnage.
In the events you have described, you have not shown a situation where I would consider there to a problem. It would be the way healing works, and it does not complicate the game - even in the sitautions described.
As for the number of clerics, while you've admitted the error, you have not analyzed the change, instead asserting that the mistake doesn't change the conclusion - that every hamlet will have more healing...
As for survival advantages, it is likely that they will take time to have any effect. Sometimes, millions of years. I don't know how long clerics have been channeling energy, but it is quite possible that it has not been long enough to allow good aligned channelers to dominate the planet the way that humans have done so. Even clearly superior technologies have not allowed unfettered domination - consider the Greeks. While the stand of 300 Spartans against legions of Persians is still celebrated, the Spartans did not come to dominate the Persians. While they certainly had advantages in a military conflict, their 'survival advantage' did not permit them to spread. Determining how long it will take to have any meaningful effect on the spread of people is entirely dependent on the type of campaign, and it depends on developing a surplus of clerics - which itself requires a surplus of population (to keep the percentages along the lines found in the DMG). Since the rules don't cover this aspect of the game, it is entirely up to the DM to determine what the overall effect is. And again, even if humanity is in a 'last stand' against the massed evils in the world, channel energy doesn't make such a conclusion impossible. Heck, it only helps to explain why humanity has not been wiped out by a single shadow.
Regarding whether the ability is overpowered, it can be discussed in comparison to some other ability. I find that a cleric without companions has a similar survival rate of any other class. Overall, I find that they do a little better than most as a 'solo' class, since their major weakness is against ranged attacks/area of effect - they are fairly competent in most other regards. However, there is always a creature better at melee than a cleric.
As part of a team, a cleric does contribute significantly more to the overall success of the party than any other class. For that reason, clerics have usually been seen as 'essential'. This was true in 3.5 and is no more untrue in Pathfinder. However, the character in Pathfinder is able to do more to contribute to overall success as an individual than in 3.5, where many clerics in my experience found themselves almost entirely relegated to the role of 'healing b$%*#', spending every action they had keeping companions in the fight. Considering the number of people reluctant to play a cleric (despite the overall survival advantages in 3.5), I think this is a welcome change.
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No they don't - but wounded people are can usually either move or be moved. Getting the hundred or so severely injured victims of a collapsing bridge, and the people who were injured during rescue operations, to an area where the single locally available low-level cleric can heal them all with a few bursts isn't all that hard - and being healed now, instead of waiting for natural healing or taking a week out for cure light wounds spells is probably beneficial.
Beneficial? Absolutely. World-changing? Much, much harder to prove. Is there really going to be a measurable impact whether people are back on their feet in an hour or three to five days? We're no longer discussing the question of whether they live, mind - just how soon they get on their feet.
Also, don't forget that any putz with a +5 Heal modifier - including even level 1 commoners, as long as they have Skill Focus (Heal) and a +1 Wisdom modifier - can arrange for patients to heal 4 hp/patient's HD per day of bed rest, and can do so for 6 people.
Well, I usually do include "Survival" among the character objectives.
In almost every game, survival is a means, not an end. Characters for whom "survival" is an objective typically neither delve into dungeons nor try to slay dragons.
To take a counterexample from earlier in the thread, what if your objective is to being a group of low-level NPC-class refugees through a difficult situation alive? Healing them is a direct contribution.
What if you're a 1st level party in a temple that has been desecrated so that clerics channel positive energy as though they were two levels lower? What if yo're adventuring on the Negative Energy Plane, so that not only can you not channel positive energy at all, but attempts to do so actually damage you? What if you're a cleric in a party otherwise composed entirely of lifespark golems?
Arguments that involve cornercase examples are useless, because they can always be met with a cornercase counterexample. This is the same reason why people who argue fighters are balanced in 3.5 because of the existence of antimagic field; when you have to invoke specific circumstances only to prove a point that goes beyond those circumstances, you've already failed.
And, lest you suggest that my examples are less realistic than yours, just let me say that I've actually played through exactly one of the above example scenarios - and it wasn't yours.
More importantly, if healing is only important through its effects on other characters, no amount of healing can be unbalancing between characters: ergo simply allowing any character with healing abilities to heal without limit should in no way annoy the players of characters without healing abilities - yet somehow it does seem to, as long-ago experiments with spell point systems confirmed.
Nothing in what I've arguing suggests that unlimited healing is a good thing, and if anything, you're proving my point. Healing, as I said before, provides other characters with additional resources to contribute - and infinite healing means, in essence, infinite resources. Setting infinite resources up against finite obstacles generally removes the challenge from the contest, which usually (though not always) results in a less satisfying game. So yes, unlimited healing does annoy players, and they are right to point out that it is the cleric who is the source of the problem - but it isn't the cleric that is over-contributing, it is themselves, but only because the cleric makes it possible to do so.
Now, it would be well within reason to argue that an ability which makes things too easy for the party as a whole is "overpowered," but there are two problems with doing so - first, it wasn't the definition you offered before, which specified a character-vs-character comparison, and second, "too easy" is inherently subjective. Even infinite healing is not objectively flawed, as computer gamers who use "invincibility" cheat codes proves. Finding the balance is what the game designers job is, which is why the arguments about "achieving design objective" are actually relevant.
Finally, under this theory it should make no difference if you trade out all the characters with healing abilities for characters with no healing abilities, since they should contribute equally in other ways - yet it does seem to make a difference.
As I said, this is a party-level issue, not a character-level one.
In our playtests (admittedly including many odd situations, including player-groups versus player-groups, all-channeler groups, and players running defenders versus players running attackers) most of the players - including the ones playing clerics - have come to the conclusion that Channel Energy is just too good for comfort. The war-leader fighter was especially annoyed that - despite his special feats for organizing and enhancing the troops he was leading - the cleric made a bigger difference in holding the walls and gates of the town when the orc army attacked then he did.
One cleric managed to hold multiple gates? That's impressive.
Honestly, this is worthwhile information, but it is, as you said above, fundamentally localized. There's no way to tell how significant it is on a grand scale; thus far, though, it seems to me that the preponderance of playtest response goes the other way.
Clerics lost a spell slot and gained healing bursts.
Fair trade off.
Plus its not overpowered at all.
"I disagree. To state that 80 people can be affected by a healing burst is not to say that the situation will ever occur in the game"
As noted earlier, such situations have occurred in playtesting. You are also assuming that characters are safe to heal naturally simply because they are safe for the next few minutes. This is not necessarily true, since there may be additional or ongoing threats.
"That 80 people should take damage simultaneously while within proximity to a cleric is so exceedingly rare that it is not worth considering"
Really? Several playtesting situations (town defense and disaster rescue) have already been mentioned. For some real-life examples, Hurricanes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, dam breaks, bridge collapses, fires, battles, building collapses, and many other events have occured through history, many producing large numbers of injuries at a time. If you'd like some historical references, here's the fist one that came to mind - in part thanks to it being pretty throughly researched: http://members.cox.net/rb2307/content/medicine_and_the_battle_of_getty.htm
You might also like to look up the number of casualties produced by tidal waves relatively recently. Of course, you may be assuming that "In proximity to a cleric" means "within a 30-foot radius", which probably would restrict things to battlefield situations. Shall we compromise on "within an hour or so on foot" and a radius of around five miles?
"In the events you have described, you have not shown a situation where I would consider there to a problem"
As already noted, both I and the local players, have observed such a problem. This argument falls under the “personal playtest fallacy” noted earlier.
"As for the number of clerics, while you've admitted the error, you have not analyzed the change, instead asserting that the mistake doesn't change the conclusion - that every hamlet will have more healing..."
Unfortunately, you are skipping an important word there - "average". If you wish to examine the effects of advantages or adaptions over time, there are plenty of real-world examples ranging from human social adaptions to rain forests to animal species being introduced to new environments. The average healing available to a single, low-level cleric, was calculated earlier in the thread with and without channeling - and, as the link above demonstrates, there are occasions when that healing will be very useful indeed.
"As for survival advantages, it is likely that they will take time to have any effect. Sometimes, millions of years"
Actually this varies as a complex function related to the scale of the advantage, how frequently it comes into play, and how subject a characteristic is to random changes in frequency. The effects of 1% increase in yearly survival rates - such as, in the one hamlet in three that was raided by the goblins this year, an average of 6 additional people survived thanks to Healing Channeling - will take the setting from a zero population growth rate to doubling every 70 years even without calculating in those survivors contributions to farming, cooperative defense, producing children (and the occasional adventurer) of their own, and so on. This sort of calculation has been around since first edition, and the old discussions on how - if the Orcs lost an average of 200 Orcs to kill a single Elf - the Orcs were winning the war.
"While the stand of 300 Spartans against legions of Persians is still celebrated, the Spartans did not come to dominate the Persians"
Which actually is one of those cases where "the mission is (somewhat) successful despite the party being wiped out" that you couldn't imagine earlier: The Spartans (and 900 assorted servants) lost and died; they just managed to make it take long enough for other people to start getting organized. I'm not quite sure how dying constitutes a survival advantage. The sacrifice didn't even suffice to keep Athens from being reduced to rubble.
"Determining how long it will take to have any meaningful effect on the spread of people is entirely dependent on the type of campaign"
Quite true, and already discussed, since part of the "design purpose" of the rules (maximizing sales) is to make them work well in as many campaigns and situations as possible.
"Since the rules don't cover this aspect of the game, it is entirely up to the DM to determine what the overall effect is."
Actually they do cover quite a lot - it is quite possible, for example, to determine the skill of each individual shoemaker in a city and determine each ones daily business success: it's just a great deal faster to deal in averages. The option of ignoring such complications by GM Fiat has already been discussed.
"As part of a team, a cleric does contribute significantly more to the overall success of the party than any other class. For that reason, clerics have usually been seen as 'essential'. This was true in 3.5 and is no more untrue in Pathfinder. However, the character in Pathfinder is able to do more to contribute to overall success as an individual than in 3.5, where many clerics in my experience found themselves almost entirely relegated to the role of 'healing b#~@~', spending every action they had keeping companions in the fight. Considering the number of people reluctant to play a cleric (despite the overall survival advantages in 3.5), I think this is a welcome change."
Which apparently states that it is indeed overpowered, but that this does not matter since it helps keep the party going. The underlying problem here would apparently be that the party is taking too much damage - a problem which has already been discussed.
"Beneficial? Absolutely. World-changing? Much, much harder to prove. Is there really going to be a measurable impact whether people are back on their feet in an hour or three to five days? We're no longer discussing the question of whether they live, mind - just how soon they get on their feet."
Yes: Beneficial is always world-changing, the only question is the extent. “On their feet” is not the issue unless they were in negative HP: damage does not cause penalties in d20.
"In almost every game, survival is a means, not an end"
Really? So none of the players mind if all their character die in pursuit of wealth, as long as they had their hands on a big pile of loot when they did? The phrase here is "among the character objectives". Characters often have to compromise between multiple objectives, otherwise they would regard it as a victory to dive into the dragon's lair at level one, grab what they wanted, and die holding it. Survival is just a means to an end in some Samurai games, but most people want to live to enjoy their victories.
"What if you're a 1st level party in a temple that has been desecrated so that clerics channel positive energy as though they were two levels lower? What if you're adventuring on the Negative Energy Plane, so that not only can you not channel positive energy at all, but attempts to do so actually damage you? What if you're a cleric in a party otherwise composed entirely of lifespark golems?
Arguments that involve cornercase examples are useless, because they can always be met with a cornercase counterexample. This is the same reason why people who argue fighters are balanced in 3.5 because of the existence of antimagic field; when you have to invoke specific circumstances only to prove a point that goes beyond those circumstances, you've already failed"
Sorry, no: basic logic here: one observed example is enough to prove that something exists. No number of counterexamples or failures to observe something is eough to prove that it does not exist.
"Nothing in what I've arguing suggests that unlimited healing is a good thing, and if anything, you're proving my point. Healing, as I said before, provides other characters with additional resources to contribute - and infinite healing means, in essence, infinite resources. Setting infinite resources up against finite obstacles generally removes the challenge from the contest, which usually (though not always) results in a less satisfying game. So yes, unlimited healing does annoy players, and they are right to point out that it is the cleric who is the source of the problem - but it isn't the cleric that is over-contributing, it is themselves, but only because the cleric makes it possible to do so."
I'm sorry, but you have skipped between levels here: your original argument was an attempt to demonstrate that increasing the amount of healing available through a particular character or ability could not create imbalances between the characters in the group. Since you have abandoned that viewpoint and switched to a different standard of comparison - player characters as a group versus the world rather than player-percieved imbalances between character types - I take it you have abandoned that argument?
"Finding the balance is what the game designers job is, which is why the arguments about "achieving design objective" are actually relevant"
Unfortunately, they're not - as already demonstrated, neither "design objectives" nor rules exist in isolation from each other except, perhaps, at their most basic levels - "Will this rule increase sales of the final version of this game?". Lacking the ability to compare alternate future histories, that's unknowable. "Does this rule make the game enough more enjoyable for a high enough percentage of the people who have experimented with it to counterbalance those who have a problem with it or find that it decreases enjoyment" is theoritically knowable, but practically indterminate; the people who have actually tried the rules and posted to these boards seem to be a relatively small subset of those who have downloaded the rules.
The fact that the question was asked, and has provoked debate, suffices to demonstrate that at least some people do have a problem with "Channel Energy" - finding it "Unbalanced" however they personally define that term. The game exists to please the game masters and players, Some of them are not pleased with this feature. Therefore there is a problem and all attempts to argue that there is no problem are observably wrong. The only real question is "does this warrant a patch or are the number who are displeased too small to worry about?"
Secondarily, judging by this thread, most attempts at arguing design purpose seeem to revolve around "the party is taking too much damage" and "letting the cleric save his or her spells for things other than healing". It works to some extent on too much damage and does let a cleric save his or her spells sometimes. So would ruling that "all player characters take only one-quarter damage from anything". If the problem is "too much damage", why is the solution to a party-wide problem loaded onto a single ability only available to a few classes? If the problem is "saving your spells", why not just eliminate healing spells from your repetoire?
"As I said, this is a party-level issue, not a character-level one."
As I said, you introduced this argument as a response to an observed character-level issue.
"One cleric managed to hold multiple gates? That's impressive."
Easy enough: First he helped defend the walls against the initial exchanges of missile fire (cover made a large difference, using a cure light wounds wand was sufficient for some time), and then helped hold them against the first few escalade attempts (using a couple of Channeling bursts). With the attackers now concentrating on the main gate, the characters relocated to back up the troops defending said gate and used it as a chokepoint after it got blasted open with a little magic (The Cleric used several more Channeling bursts there). Our war-commander Fighter and the Cleric then fell back to the gate of the inner wall, leaving the field open for area-effect covering fire from the party Wizard who was providing rear support. He didn't have all that much of it available after his long-range fight with the attackers magical support, but taking advantage of the confined places between the buildings let him use it fairly effectively. Meanwhile, the party Rogue and Ranger had slipped out to cause troube in the enemy rear, which reduced the pressure nicely - giving the characters who'd gone off with the NPC messengers to organize a relieving force more than enough time to deal with various interception attempts and get their assistance back before the inner defenses were overrun.
"Honestly, this is worthwhile information, but it is, as you said above, fundamentally localized. There's no way to tell how significant it is on a grand scale; thus far, though, it seems to me that the preponderance of playtest response goes the other way."
So it may: we really have no idea how many people tried Pathfinder, said "Nah", and never came to these boards to post. That's why - as noted earlier - the only real question is "does this warrant a patch or are the number who are displeased too small a percentage to worry about?"
There have been quite a few suggested patches so far. For example, I already provided a possible one-sentence patch for larger-scale social effects that will not affect player-characters or their opponents: “Sadly, the gods only entrust the power to heal or damage living creatures with Channel Energy to great champions who are regularly involved in confrontations with other great champions”.
That doesn't address inter-player considerations due to perceived or actual (however defined) character imbalances and the occasional tactical issues which have been mentioned. I personally think that these ought to be addressed as well - hopefully with similarly-simple patches - but they may not be especially common.
And on to the next response:
"Clerics lost a spell slot and gained healing bursts. Fair trade off. Plus its not overpowered at all."
Well, I thought they got some new domain powers as well, as well as some of them getting damaging bursts. Oh well. It rather looks like this is a vote for "I haven't encountered any problems, ergo no one has". I think I'll leave the "Is! Isn't! Is! Isn't!" routine as a low-probablity (since I find it hard to imagine why anyone would bother with it) theoritical alternate future timeline.
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"In the events you have described, you have not shown a situation where I would consider there to a problem"As already noted, both I and the local players, have observed such a problem. This argument falls under the “personal playtest fallacy” noted earlier.
I disagree. I am not saying that the situation cannot exist or did not exist in your game. While I consider it to be rare enough as to not be worth considering, I also consider the situations that you described to be acceptable. The cleric being able to provide healing to 80 people in such an unusual situation is an interesting tactical ability, and the player will likely enjoy it. In our groups, we would not consider the player to have an ‘unfair advantage’ or to be overpowered. As far as that goes, I am stating that I agree that you feel a particular way about a situation, but making it clear that my feelings are exactly opposite. If this were a ‘vote’, I am voting for this being ‘an acceptable use of the ability, not a problem’.
Which apparently states that it is indeed overpowered, but that this does not matter since it helps keep the party going. The underlying problem here would apparently be that the party is taking too much damage - a problem which has already been discussed.
"As part of a team, a cleric does contribute significantly more to the overall success of the party than any other class. For that reason, clerics have usually been seen as 'essential'. This was true in 3.5 and is no more untrue in Pathfinder. However, the character in Pathfinder is able to do more to contribute to overall success as an individual than in 3.5, where many clerics in my experience found themselves almost entirely relegated to the role of 'healing b#~@~', spending every action they had keeping companions in the fight. Considering the number of people reluctant to play a cleric (despite the overall survival advantages in 3.5), I think this is a welcome change."
I disagree. Who is the cleric ‘overpowered’ compared against? I prefer to play fighters and wizards, but I like a cleric in the party. The cleric has a particular range of powers that help the group. While there are some who believe that clerics are overpowered, I am not one of them. Clerics can fill any role well, with preparation. But they cannot fill every role simultaneously. As a class, they have great flexibility, but not a lot of direct power (say, compared to wizards). One of their big limitations is that since healing is so important to the group, and the cleric has most of the healing power, they are expected to contribute most of their resources to the group, not hoard them for themselves. Now, a player could ‘buck the trend’ and choose not to contribute to the party. That is a difference in play style. Again, just because it could happen, I don’t consider it a problem. As the DM, if the cleric wants to go off and play by himself, that’s fine. I’ll focus on the rest of the party.
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Which actually is one of those cases where "the mission is (somewhat) successful despite the party being wiped out" that you couldn't imagine earlier:
Actually, that was me, not the DeadDM. Please learn to use the quote feature. Your continued unwillingness to do so is incredibly disrespectful.
Yes: Beneficial is always world-changing, the only question is the extent. “On their feet” is not the issue unless they were in negative HP: damage does not cause penalties in d20.
And if they weren’t negative HP, then healing is not an issue: damage does not cause penalties in d20.
In almost every game, survival is a means, not an endReally? So none of the players mind if all their character die in pursuit of wealth, as long as they had their hands on a big pile of loot when they did? The phrase here is "among the character objectives". Characters often have to compromise between multiple objectives, otherwise they would regard it as a victory to dive into the dragon's lair at level one, grab what they wanted, and die holding it. Survival is just a means to an end in some Samurai games, but most people want to live to enjoy their victories.
Do me a favor, will you? Stop with the straw man and false ad absurdum arguments. You have used at least one every time you have responded to me, and they have never been accurate. If “most people want to live to enjoy their victories,” then by definition, survival is the means to the end of enjoying the victory. Of course the characters want to survive. But survival by itself means nothing and accomplishes nothing. It’s what they do with that survival that matters.
Sorry, no: basic logic here: one observed example is enough to prove that something exists. No number of counterexamples or failures to observe something is eough to prove that it does not exist.
Since I just provided you with three examples where healing is literally useless, your argument would then suggest that healing is useless and no amount of counterexamples can prove otherwise. I’m thinking that “healing is useless” and “healing is overpowered” are contradictions, so your argument is not valid. What you’ve shown is that in your very limited context, healing has X level of contribution, which you deem too high; what I’ve shown is that in my very limited context, healing has Y level of contribution, which the mechanics define as 0. Nothing more.
I'm sorry, but you have skipped between levels here: your original argument was an attempt to demonstrate that increasing the amount of healing available through a particular character or ability could not create imbalances between the characters in the group. Since you have abandoned that viewpoint and switched to a different standard of comparison - player characters as a group versus the world rather than player-percieved imbalances between character types - I take it you have abandoned that argument?
No, and if you’ll reread my argument you’ll see I switched levels on the basis of my previous statements. Again, I repeat: a healer cannot contribute more to party success than the character(s) she heals, because healing does not directly contribute to party success at all. The healer heals, and then the healed character goes off and achieves the party’s goals. If the healed character contributes a huge amount to party success, then the healer did as well, and if the healed character did nothing, then neither did the healer. Parity is automatically and inviolably maintained.
What happens in the case of infinite healing is that the healed characters’ contributions become potentially infinite, because they’re being healed for a potentially infinite amount. Parity is still maintained – the other characters still set the limit for how much the healer is actually contributing. But when that limit is potentially infinite, then everyone can contribute an infinite amount, and challenges become pointless because victory is inevitable. Parity within the group is just as it was before, but parity between the group and the challenges it faces has been entirely destroyed. That’s why I shifted levels, because, in bringing up player dissatisfaction with too much healing, you went there first, whether you realized it or not.
The fact that the question was asked, and has provoked debate, suffices to demonstrate that at least some people do have a problem with "Channel Energy" - finding it "Unbalanced" however they personally define that term. The game exists to please the game masters and players, Some of them are not pleased with this feature. Therefore there is a problem and all attempts to argue that there is no problem are observably wrong. The only real question is "does this warrant a patch or are the number who are displeased too small to worry about?"
You’re absolutely right, that is the only real question. But the standard against those complaints will be measured is the game design ideals stipulated by the game designers. And that is why game design arguments matter. If your complaint is, “There’s more healing than there used to be!” and the game design goal is, “We want increased amounts of healing,” then your “problem” is nothing of the sort for those who make the decisions. You are unwise to dismiss them so thoroughly.
Your continued unwillingness to do so is incredibly disrespectful.
Indeed, Quentyn, I find your posts nigh unreadable since you do not quote properly. I'm pretty sure I disagree with you, but I can't figure out exactly what it is you are saying because of the terrible way in which you quote. Using proper formatting will not only make it more clear what it is you are arguing with, but it will also break up the massive walls of text that make up your posts.
It should not be easier to read the replies to your post to figure out what you want to say.
If you won't use the built in quotation feature (I'm pretty sure you can type [quote=Some Guy and [/quote in word), then please use an academic quoting style. That is, attribute an in-line quote, and use alternate formatting for block quotes.
For example, an in-line quote:
Ross Byers claimed that "[he] found [my] quotes nigh unreadable."
A block quote:
Actually, that was me, not the DeadDM. Please learn to use the quote feature. Your continued unwillingness to do so is incredibly disrespectful.
-Shisumo
"I disagree. I am not saying that the situation cannot exist or did not exist in your game. While I consider it to be rare enough as to not be worth considering, I also consider the situations that you described to be acceptable." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "DeadDMWalking", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity. Proper attribution is difficult on messageboards since there is no objective way for most users to determine the actual identity or identities of the person being quoted, hence I find casual attempts to do so extremely disrespectful. So are - for example - treating Cliff's Notes as being equivalent to actually reading the work in question. Requests for summaries fall into that category, since they strongly imply that "I don't feel that I need to actually read and understand what has been said previously to properly evaluate it". I apologize for accidently misattributing something earlier).
Which takes us back to "Yes: Channel Energy has been observed to be overpowered in in-game playtesting in a variety of - admittedly uncommon in many games - situations".
This takes us to "Is this problem common enough to bother addressing?". That depends on the usual cost-benefit calculation: Will the benefits of implementing a solution to this unusual problem be sufficient to both outweigh the costs of doing so and the costs of not investing those resources elsewhere?
Personally, I suspect that there are enough benefits to outweigh the costs of inserting a couple of sentences. That does require some effort of discussion, composition, editing, and page formatting, but not necessarily a lot: much of the discussion work is being done on these messageboards. I must admit, barring omniscient access to alternate potential futures, that this position is not provable. Neither is the inverse - so there's not much point in debating it.
"I disagree. Who is the cleric ‘overpowered’ compared against? I prefer to play fighters and wizards, but I like a cleric in the party. The cleric has a particular range of powers that help the group. While there are some who believe that clerics are overpowered, I am not one of them. Clerics can fill any role well, with preparation. But they cannot fill every role simultaneously. As a class, they have great flexibility, but not a lot of direct power (say, compared to wizards). One of their big limitations is that since healing is so important to the group, and the cleric has most of the healing power, they are expected to contribute most of their resources to the group, not hoard them for themselves. Now, a player could ‘buck the trend’ and choose not to contribute to the party. That is a difference in play style. Again, just because it could happen, I don’t consider it a problem. As the DM, if the cleric wants to go off and play by himself, that’s fine. I’ll focus on the rest of the party." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "DeadDMWalking", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity).
Several definitions have been presented, revolving around (1) making a larger contribution on average to the overall success of a group in various situations, (2) player perceptions, (3) difficulties in using commercial material due to the presence or absence of a Cleric or Clerics in the local group, and (4) every character having a chance to "shine" (among others). What definition are you using? Alternatively, are you switching to arguing that the questions is meaningless? I'd have to point out that arguing that something is NOT overpowered is sufficient to demonstrate that some standard of comparison is in use: one cannot argue (Not-A) without admitting the existence of some definition of (A), whether or not any actual instances of (A) exist.
Secondarily, arguing that a particular Class is not omni-competent is a bit irrelevant to whether or not it is overpowered. That particular line of argument popped up back in first edition, notably with regard to various "ninja" classes with arguments of the general form "Well this version can't cast high level spells, therefore they are not overpowered!".
And to continue:
"Actually, that was me, not the DeadDM. Please learn to use the quote feature. Your continued unwillingness to do so is incredibly disrespectful." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "Shisumo", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity).
Personally I find attempts to argue which are made without taking the time and effort to examine all previous arguments in detail, or without taking care to either examine or refute each earlier point presented, or without eliminating from consideration all arguments which are logically or semantically identical to prior arguments which have been answered, or which either refuse to provide definitions or argue that the question under discussion in inherently meaningless without demonstrating that this is true in all cases, are incredibly disrespectful. Since standards differ, I do not demand that others adhere to my mine.
"And if they weren’t negative HP, then healing is not an issue: damage does not cause penalties in d20." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "Shisumo", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity).
Unless, of course, they were to suffer some additional injury before recovery.
"Do me a favor, will you? Stop with the straw man and false ad absurdum arguments." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "Shisumo", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity).
Really? Then you have merely to point out where they are logically flawed. An ad absurdum argument without logical flaws suffices to demonstrate that the initial premise was flawed - whether inherently or due to a lack of definition of its boundary conditions.
A "straw man" argument is based on assigning a position to someone that they have not supported. In this case, there was a simple declarative sentence: "In almost every game, survival is a means, not an end". If this is an accurate statement of a position and not logically flawed, it should survive any ad absurdum test applied. If it is not an accurate statement of a position, why declare it?
"But survival by itself means nothing and accomplishes nothing. It’s what they do with that survival that matters." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "Shisumo", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity).
Oddly enough, many creatures - and many role-played simulations thereof - do find their own survival important in and of itself. It observedly matters to them.
"Since I just provided you with three examples where healing is literally useless, your argument would then suggest that healing is useless and no amount of counterexamples can prove otherwise"
Unfortunately, this disregards the difference between positive observations and negative ones: no number of observations of something being useless in particular situations is sufficient to demonstrate the negative statement "this has no utility". Unfortunately, the statement you are quoting is not an argument: it is a logical rule. The classical counterexample tends to revolve around "proving" negative statements such as "there are no elephants in the room" with statements of the general form "I looked and there weren't". Unfortunately, this is not correct. You can't confirm that no elephants existed, you can only confirm that you didn't find any. Any check that can be made is vulnerable to statements of the form "but this particular elephant cannot be detected in that fashion". You won't find any "proofs" of this for the same reason that you won't find any proofs of Euclid's first axiom ("A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points."). A geometrical argument must be built using the axioms of the geometry in use. A logical argument must be built using the axioms of logic.
"No, and if you’ll reread my argument you’ll see I switched levels on the basis of my previous statements. Again, I repeat: a healer cannot contribute more to party success than the character(s) she heals, because healing does not directly contribute to party success at all. The healer heals, and then the healed character goes off and achieves the party’s goals. If the healed character contributes a huge amount to party success, then the healer did as well, and if the healed character did nothing, then neither did the healer. Parity is automatically and inviolably maintained.
What happens in the case of infinite healing is that the healed characters’ contributions become potentially infinite, because they’re being healed for a potentially infinite amount. Parity is still maintained – the other characters still set the limit for how much the healer is actually contributing. But when that limit is potentially infinite, then everyone can contribute an infinite amount, and challenges become pointless because victory is inevitable. Parity within the group is just as it was before, but parity between the group and the challenges it faces has been entirely destroyed. That’s why I shifted levels, because, in bringing up player dissatisfaction with too much healing, you went there first, whether you realized it or not." (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "Shisumo", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity)
Once again, this argument assumes that survival is not a goal in itself (if you are planning to provide a counterexample by committing suicide in order to make a point in this debate, I would strongly urge you to seek treatment). It also assumes that the players will not be able to make the connection between "I can only do this because the Cleric healed me" and "the Cleric is partially responsible for the results of my actions". Your original argument was that healing cannot lead to perceived imbalances between characters because actual accomplishments are limited by other party members. Observedly, it can. Almost as importantly, the argument assumes that the healer does not extend his own contributions by giving a priority to healing himself, that a individuals and groups cannot be challenged without facing the possibility of injury (the fact that you are debating this topic without notable risk of injury demonstrates that one can be challenged without such risks), and that you have proved that "parity within the group is just as it was before" (a part of the quote above) rather than simply avoiding that issue by switching levels. The "parity" argument has been demonstrated to be flawed in practice by observation, in logic by demonstrating that it involves several unsupported - and in some cases flawed - assumptions, and in your own statements by your admission of switching levels - redefining what you are attempting to demonstrate.
And on to the next one:
"It should not be easier to read the replies to your post to figure out what you want to say. (Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "Ross Byers", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity)
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be. Many of the responses do not seem to consider the restrictions and qualifications on the original statements or to respond to all logical points. Sadly, since I do attempt to respond to all points as far as possible given time constraints, attempting to block-quote each earlier response would require quoting the entire text of each earlier post to which I am responding - including each included quote from an earlier post. That would make what are (admittedly already lengthy) posts twice as long initially and increase their length with each new post. This does not appear practical.
(Since the request for attribution has been made, this was apparently posted by a person or by some combination of persons using the name "DeadDMWalking", whether or not they have authorized access to that messageboard identity. Proper attribution is difficult on messageboards since there is no objective way for most users to determine the actual identity or identities of the person being quoted, hence I find casual attempts to do so extremely disrespectful. So are - for example - treating Cliff's Notes as being equivalent to actually reading the work in question. Requests for summaries fall into that category, since they strongly imply that "I don't feel that I need to actually read and understand what has been said previously to properly evaluate it". I apologize for accidently misattributing something earlier).There is no need to be snarky. Quoting may well increase the length of your post, but two pages of readable information is better than one that I have to squint at and re-read, as there is no graphical break between your thoughts and those of the people you are quoting (Especially as you are missing closing or opening quotation marks in some places). As it is, you could just but
blocks around the text you are currently quoting using quotation marks, and readability would improve dramatically.
Attribution, while nice, is not the point. Readability is. I honestly don't care if you attribute everything to 'someone else'. Putting an attribution breaks the logical flow and makes it clear that someone else's words are being used. Take a look at any novel. In a block of dialog, 'he says' is frequently omitted, but in those cases a new paragraph break and indentation are used to separate speakers. Otherwise everything becomes one big muddle.
Getting this thread back on track, Sannos has been kind enough to put some healing number crunching in this thread. He assumed a 5-member party at level 8, and that Channel would on average hit 75% of the party. He found a truly surprising disparity between clerics and other healing classes, particularly druid.
I have read with great delight the analysis you mentioned, and would like to thank Sannos for his excellent work.
However, I disagree with some of his calculations.
I calculated that an 8th level cleric, with 18 Wis (so as to get an extra spell from all his spell levels), and still with 16 Chr, would, IF he switched all his spells to casting (unlikely, both for the sake of comparability), would be able to heal, on average :
(5 x (1d8+5)) + (4 x (2d8+8) + (4 x (3d8+8)) + (3 x (4d8+8)) =
(47,5) + (68) + (86) + (78) =
280 hp
This is very close to Sannos calculations, and entirely explainable by the difference in wisdom.
Now, if I read correctly the alpha 3, the cleric would get an additionnal 4d6, in a 30 feet area, 6 times a day, with 16 Chr. This makes, on average:
6 x 4d6 =
84 hp
But this is if he only gets one injured in the area at the time. Sannos offered getting 75 % of 5 character into the radius. I think this is too many. Of course, it all depends on a number of variables. The most striking ones are:
-the size of the group;
-the number of sufficiently injured.
Thus, I would assume that, on average, two person would benefit from the effect, for a total of:
280 hp from all spells, and 168 hp from channeling.
This gives me a figure very different from Sannos, but based on different assumptions (somewhat pessimistic perhaps).
Now, this needs to be compared with the total number of hp in the group, to see how much damage this type of healing answers to.
Assuming a total of 4 x 8th level PCs, and 448 hp of available healing, we get:
448 hp / 4 PC / 8 HD =
14 hp per HD per PC
That strikes me as a lot, and would mean that the full extent of the cleric healing power would seldom be needed.
This analysis, and my reading of the various points of view so far presented, brings me to the conclusion that channeling is not overpowered.
I also find the idea of having spontaneous casting apply to domains instead of cure spells quite enticing.
Hope this helped. Thank you Sannos for the idea which I based my comparison on, though we disagree on the underlining hypotheses, the methodology is all yours.
DW
Lets put this into perspective. This helps clerics out in the short run and the long run. What keeps the Wizard from consistantly using his 9th level ability instead of casting his spells. I believe the intent is not just keep low levels alive. But to continue with the dungeon crawl. Lets say your party is 2 clerics, 1 wizard, and a rogue. A weird party, yes, but it has alot of things and values that will allow the party to continue. Indeed it has alot of curing power, and if equipped correctly this party will rule against an enemy. I guarantee that the group will have the same advantages with say, 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 1 wizard, 1 rogue. Or if you want 2 wizards, 1 rogue, 1 cleric, and 2 sorcerors, 1 wizard, 1 cleric. Only thing you don't like are clerics.
My group will finish Burnt Offerings next week, and then I will allow them to convert there PC's before begining Skinsaw Murders, which I spent the weekend updating. Of all the new powers this once worries me the most, and I can think of no better testing ground the Skinsaw.
I'll let u know how it goes, but I really thing the cleric of Sarenrae will mop up even easier than with the regular turning.
AWP: I agree completely.
I have never, ever, seen a "mass cure" spell cast- except for Mass Heal.
As for "people training clerics".
You can't simply take a wise person and make them clerics. The ability to channel divine magic isn't as simple as being wise. A person has to have a very strong faith- in a deity or in some force- in order to do it.
In the Battles of Eberron book (think that's the name) there's mention of one of the houses trying to raise up a force of clerics who's "patron force" was patriotism, in order to get around some healing problems. The book expressed that despite their efforts, they were never successful.They weren't successful because while you can teach faith, you can't force it. A person acquires it on their own, if they want it.'
I mean, lets face it. If having clerics was as easy as picking out the folks with wis 11+ and sending them to school, they would be far far more of them around than there are. Villages and cities alike would recruit them for damage management and cantrip use.
Create Water alone would be worth the effort, even before "unlimited cantrips".It just isn't as easy as saying "you there, you seem wise.. go learn to be a cleric so we can get some channeled energy going on".
Hmm...Perhaps I'm a bit out of it here, but if I'm remembering it correctly....The Drow do that (except it's all females) and it seems to work quite well. And while that might be due to their society, it shows it's possible.