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Hey guys I'm just reposting my playtest reports to cut out the 5 pages of design that were making it hard to find the actual playtest reports.
Okay so due to TS Fay wrecking my life (and pathfinder #1 and #3 ruined, my grandmother in laws house flooded) I have stepped down as DM in my group and rolled up a character. I chose my race as half-orc, my class as paladin. Play started at lvl. 2 and just to get us warmed up we had one non roleplay combat to test run the characters (no story involved, just a fun combat)
Generation was done with heroic rolls (2d6+6) arranged to taste, but when I rolled my stats they literally came in the pattern 9, +1, +2, +1, +2, +1. I thought that was so cool I decided it was meant to be kept down the line. My final stats after racial mods came in at 11, 10, 12, 11, 17, 16. So when I get to the appropriate levels I'm going to focus on my magic/mystical powers. since I'm a rather average combatant.
Anyways we ran our combat. and I must say I found the paladin to be as much of a let down at level two, as previous playtesting showed level one to be. The big issue is that other than the saves the way the paladin is written up he fights just like a warrior npc class. At level 2 he has one smite per day, and can detect evil and lay on hands. I will break down how none of these abilities are of any assistance in combat.
First detect evil. I never used it. In roleplay I will use the crap out of it, but it's a standard action. I won the initiative for the combat and had a surpirse round but the problem was that we were fighting 7 goblins who were spread out and started 60 ft away which means that unless I closed on some quickly I was pincussion. So I ran to close the gap. Then spent just about every round charging a goblin because one hit would drop them. There was never a round I could afford to waste a standard action just to detect evil. I think that a pally's detect evil needs to be a swift action so that it doesn't waste an entire round of combat. Otherwise it's more of a hindrance than a blessing.
Second Smite Evil. I tried to use my whoping 1 use per day on the leader. rolled a 3 yippee. So my main class feature the defining ability of the paladin got one shot at lvl 2 and got wasted on a single miss. without smite evil I literally become a warrior in combat, I have no bonus feats and I'm left to my stats and BAB, like I said. Like a warrior NPC class. I have proposed before that a palladin needs more smites anyways. even at 20th level he has a whopping seven. I don't think it would be game breaking or kill backwards compatability to have 1 plus cha or wis bonus per day. In the best possible scenario a 1st level halfling or gnome palladin having 6 smites is no worse than a focused specialist wizard having 3 spells per day and an infinite at will ability.
Third Lay on hands. Heal two hp, wow, aweful. No offense I love how you've broken up healing so you have more at higher levels, but really lay on hands until you get those nifty you can use your lay on hands to do x abilities this is aweful in any situation other than out of combat healing. either we need to be able to use multiple lay on hands at once say three uses to heal 6 hp as a standard action, or the healing needs to be bumped. I couldn't use this ability because by the time I needed it the thing I was fighting was relying on a wand of Magic missle. Which on the lowest possible roll deals 2 damage. if my other players hadn't been occupying the other goblins I would have been killed. As it was I had to ignore my low HP and keep hitting the guy because I couldn't afford to waste an action healing.
Are you getting the gist of the low level paladin, cause if not here it is. I have a bunch of cool abilities, but I can't use any of them because a normal attack is better than any of them. smite might be good but it's use it and loose it nature combined with not being worth loosing an action to Detect means it isn't up to the task either.This isn't a fault of pathfinder, for the most part it's a failure of 3.x since it's the same problem it always has. But it would be nice if the palladin wasn't the passive agressive class (I.E all my useful abilities are passive features like save boosts and immunities). At level 4 this problem starts to go away as spells turning and bonds start kicking in. But you shouldn't have to wait till 4th level to really enjoy your character, and 1-3rd level pallys are glorified warrior NPC classes.
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You have, however, made a direct decision to align your ability scores such that you will only notice your "power" at later levels. This is not really a problem with the class, so much as it is with your decision to boost spell casting over melee ability. This isn't a Bad decision- it's just one that you need to be aware of at level 1, since paladin don't get a good use for Wisdom until later in life.
I am aware of that, however I wasn't complaining that the pally was inefective at combat, In fact quite the oposite, with my high AC and good rolls with my heavy pick I was quite effective. The issue wasn't that I wasn't effective but rather that if I had been playing a Warrior NPC class you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. My character in no way felt like a holy warrior against evil because when it came down to it, I couldn't afford to waste an action to do anything palladiny.
And I am aware that no first level class is whiz bang, but I've built a fighter, a wizard, a monk, and a commoner as characters and a ton of NPCs and each class felt distinct (the commoner felt distinct specifically because of it's weakness) when in combat but the pally is the first character I've played that when playing I thought, wow this is just as if I was an NPC class.
Also I want to make it clear, I do not blame Jason or Pathfinder for this, I blame 3.x which has screwed the pally over since day one at low level.
EDIT: I saw this mentioned on another thread and need to bring it up. Our DM houseruled in 4+int skillpoints per level. This is good, since I had an 11 int, that meant if he hadn't given me the extra two my character would have had bubkus for skills, ride and spellcraft would've been it but now I have knowelege nobility and heal as well. This is a much needed change since loosing x4 at first level, Jason please make skill ranks at min 4+int
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Okay so we finally had a chance to put my character through his paces. My character bundled up the captive goblin and we got to town plagued by banditry. Detect evil great for roleplaying, if everyone you meet is evil. In this town my detecto sight garnered nothing so even though I can detect evil there was no evil to detect. It did help me to become convinced that the bandits are actually under some kind of magical compulsion for non-evil characters so clearly devoted as they are to the cause of banditry something has to be up. The problem is that there are no spellcasters in this town so we have no way to be sure. My lay on hands saw a lot more use though, after a confrontation with a group of bandits who thought to simply take us with superior # I managed to cut down our out of commision time for healing from 6 days to three. Out of combat I always use my healing hands as part of bandaging people up. I've only once used it obtusely and that was when I was locked in a room with an unconscious man, I healed him in his sleep without bandages, but everyone in town just thinks I'm a great healer.
In combat was more of the same. when bandits attacked we were always outnumbered by a good 3-1 ratio. this meant that wasting time detecting was a round lost that my ally (we are a two player game) got surrounded. so no detect. 2 hitpoints still not worth ever trying to use, I couldn't even try to be defensive while healing because taking total defense is a full round action and the -4, +2 has to be done as part of an attack, so no healing ever. And smite, In four combats, on four different days, I got off a whoping 1 smite. one combat I never used it for holding it for the leader who ran before i could get to him. another I missed, and the one time I hit the extra damage did make a difference in that I dropped the guy where if I hadn't have smited, the last fight was over before I had a chance to smite. Anyways in one combat I did try to detect just to see if evil was in the enemies and I found out that there was evil, unfortunatly the evil character got taken down before I could smite (the DM told me who it was afterwards) and so it was a waste of an action.
So paladin lvl two, roleplay, yes it's fun but not worth the feeling like a sword swinging lump in combat. I was rolling hits, but I just don't feel like a paladin in combat, it's very offputting and all I can do is try to imagine how cool i'll be once any of my combat abilities come into play. till then I'll just play my character like the NPC warrior he is in combat. oh yeah, my saves haven't come up yet in combat so far the only spell my character has been hit with is magic missile. The other player has needed saves, I just haven't.
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Okay so my last session went pretty interestingly, we had left off just coming upon an isolated bandit group. So at the begining of the game my character walks up to the camp to make his presence known and question them. When it became obvious they were lying I told them to surrender and come with us. Of course that led to initiatives. Luckily I have made a point of taking peoples measure (detect evil) as I first talk to them so this time I knew there was one evil person in the group. Unfortunately to get to that guy I had to plow through about 6 characters. So I charged the person who was in front activated my law devotion for a boost to AC and immediately got surronded on the bandits round. Yay for me the evil guy had a bow so he backs way off leaving me to fight 5 non-evil guys while the knight rode around on his horse killing all the bowmen (including mr. evil). Finally as the knight killed 4 guys and the enemy realized they could only hit me maybe once every other round, they broke and ran off, I managed to knock two out (one during combat, the other as he tried to flee). So I went through an entire fight, ended with 9 of my 30 hp. The knight had gotten hit with a crit by a bow in the very first round so he was also down to 8, we both have thirty hp, so after combat I go to patch us up and heal my whopping 8 hp a day, 4 each. After all, I'd have to be a complete moron to use it in combat to heal 2 hp. Smite wasn't usable because these people aren't evil (I'm so convinced they are being magically compelled at this point its actually driving me nuts that we don't have a spellcaster, and I have to wait till level 4 for my spells so we have no way of knowing). I must say that with a bunch of rolled threes and nothing special to do during combat I've never felt so much like the warrior class as this night.
So we take our prisoners to town, start healing up, we have to patrol the town in case of retalitory attacks, so we couldn't get complete bedrest. so after three days of splitting up my healing between the two of us and resting we were still shy hp when the next attack came. The fight began with the enemy throwing alchemist fire on the silos that stored all the towns grain, so my first action is to run full tilt into the silo wall battering the flames down with my shield. A reflex save (finally, and passed) kept me from falling or catching on fire. Meanwhile a group of enemies comes around from behind the silo. I spend my next round continuing to batter the flames as they hold off for one bandit to try and tanglefoot me (again saved, so I do like my high saves). however, being entangled means I only have a +1 to hit. So once again I get surrounded by enemies as I am trying to wildly fend them off (once again using my law devotion for a +3 to AC) and battering the flames down during my turn with my shield. When the DM says my efforts managed to prevent the flames, I turn to attacking the group surrounding me. Funny story the town sheriff is fighting this fights BBEG and the knight tries to come riding up to assist me since I look like I am in dire straights and (out of character and in) I yell "what are you crazy go help Janus, I can handle this", the knight tries to argue and I yell again (out of character and in) "Just go!" so the knight rides to assist Janus, unfortunately he fell as the knight got to him. When the tanglefoot bag wore out I was finally able to start hitting and took out one mook, when a different mook got a crit, we use Paizo's crit hit deck so I had a fort save, even with my +7 I still failed when I rolled a 2. So I became sickened. Great, so I know there is one evil guy. Funny thing about Smite, it was barely enough to beat the sickened condition, I had a +1 to hit (not counting my normal bonus to hit) and normal damage because of it, for one round, whoopie. So I actually hit with that smite, but then stay surrounded until they finally realize almost everyone else is dead, reinforcements are coming, and they turn tail to run. At this point I run to help Janus, but as I get up to him I see the BBEG jump out of the barn window and start to limp off. The knight in order to follow him into the barn had dismounted, so I climbed up onto his horse, and charge it after the BBEG, he is just far enough that I have to spur the horse to reach him, take my charge, and roll a 1 followed by a 5, so I crit fumble, and my card is eat dirt (paizo's crit fumble deck FtW), I fall prone and am blinded for 1d3 rounds. I fall off the horse smash into the ground and hear the BBEG laughing as he mount the horse while i'm busy brushing dirt out of my eyes to see him riding off on the other players horse. My DM says it was the most cinematic, spectacular failure he has ever seen in D&D so at least it was memorable.
Xp gain was enough to level up and we left it there. So I got to look into level three for a paladin, wow, what a dissapointing level. Absolutely nothing to help during combat. I am immune to fear and disease, which are both nice, any ally within 10 ft gains a +4 vs. fear, if we were in a 4 player game I'd be pissed about that, since that means in order to gain that bonus the party has to cluster so close together that we'd get hit with every area effect spell imaginable, but since there are only 2 of us, it works since we are usually walking side by side anyways. Other than immunities that may or may not ever even come up I got nothing. After seeing myself miss so much I took weapon focus as my level 3 feat, I hadn't planned on taking it till much later, if at all, but since I have no strength bonus, I need that masterwork bonus of mine and the weapon focus bonus to finally have a decent to hit. When I get my next level I'll put my bonus point to strength and finally have a damage bonus and my to hit will go up by two points that level. So yeah, my lay on hands now heals 3 hp per use, I still have 4 uses, that's 12 hp a day, I have 37 hp. The knight has 40. Yeah lay on hands continues to be a dissapointing suckfest that only gets used out of combat. I don't get another smite till next level and after 3 sessions I have still not seen it be worth its per day status, I can definitely not think of what person thought that it was so powerful that you shouldn't get a 2nd till 4th level. If I at least had my Cha bonus worth +1 I'd have 4 a day and I might enjoy it a little more since I could've used it on the mook and the BBEG instead of just the mook to get past being sickened.
I cannot stress this enough in play, Paladin smite and lay on hands need work please do not think these abilities are worthwile, are they useless, no, are they useful enough to their limited status, no. Either we need more uses of both, or we need them strengthened. I'm hoping you'll add more uses to smite and beef up lay on hands. If lay on hands was level x2 then I'd be healing 6 hp, that at least is a single hit at this level, not great, but by no means the suckfest that healing 3 as a standard action. Hell or you could turn it into a swift action for 3 hp, it's still weak then, but at least it would be usable in combat. Still of all the fixes for lay on hands, I like having level x2 best.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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Ok much as you feel useless I think the circumstances of both your build and your party make-up contribute to your woes. Two PC's mean your precious standard action is even more valuable and you're right saying that for you using Detect Evil in combat is a bad choice. However if you had at least 4 party members you'd find it wasn't so bad. You have crap STR and CON, so yes you will feel like a warrior if your Smite doesn't work. Blame it on your build.
Playing a paladin is more than just your mechanical goodies. So you are surrounded by non evil charmed baddies. Try attacking with the flat of your blade. Save up for a Scroll of Break Enchantment or Magic Circle against Evil... that'd stop the commanding ability of the BBEG on his charmed minions.
Now the DM shouldn't be a complete prick and keep the Evil villain out of your reach forever. You should get a least a chance to use your abilities in the adventure and that's as much part of adventure design as class design.
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Ok much as you feel useless I think the circumstances of both your build and your party make-up contribute to your woes. Two PC's mean your precious standard action is even more valuable and you're right saying that for you using Detect Evil in combat is a bad choice. However if you had at least 4 party members you'd find it wasn't so bad. You have crap STR and CON, so yes you will feel like a warrior if your Smite doesn't work. Blame it on your build.
Playing a paladin is more than just your mechanical goodies. So you are surrounded by non evil charmed baddies. Try attacking with the flat of your blade. Save up for a Scroll of Break Enchantment or Magic Circle against Evil... that'd stop the commanding ability of the BBEG on his charmed minions.
Now the DM shouldn't be a complete prick and keep the Evil villain out of your reach forever. You should get a least a chance to use your abilities in the adventure and that's as much part of adventure design as class design.
This was hashed out on the original thread, but you can't say that my build is responsible for thinking the paladin abilities are crap. I am well aware of the constraints of my build. Question: If I had an 18 strength and an 18 con and an 18 dex would that change a thing with how my paladin abilities play out. No it wouldn't. I could have an npc warrior with an 18 strength, an 18 con, and an 18 dex, and the gameplay would go the exact same because of the way the abilities are built. If anything if I had good stats, my abilities would be even more useless. I would have more hit points so the healing from lay on hands would be even more useless. and with an 18 strength I would probably never miss and be dealing a lot of damage anyways so smite would be a useless tack on (the bonus to hit wouldn't be needed and an extra 2 damage, oooh whoopie) as opposed to now where a +3 to hit and an extra 2 damage are at least meaningful (still not enough to be worth waiting till 4th level to get a second)
Blame it on my build, no offense but that's a silly response. Tell me how if my build was different my abilities would be more important please.
And finally, when did I ever say I felt useless, I may have called an ability useless, but I have been kicking ass and taking prisoners. As to your rather insulting comments on roleplaying, I have taken prisoners every single fight, I have reprimanded my ally for killing to many and mistreating prisoners, and I have done everything in my power to be merciful, but I have no way of knowing if they really are because there are no spellcasters in this podunk town we are defending, and we can't afford to leave this village undefended for 6 weeks while we run back to the city to hire someone. I roleplay rather well and in fact write an in character journal in between sessions. But i stick to talking about mechanics on this thread because unlike roleplaying you can actually fix bad mechanics. And no amount of roleplaying makes these abilities worthwile.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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Well if your strength was higher you might have hit on that 3 and not wasted your Smite... just saying that was bad luck. You have no Int so you can't go Combat Expertise route to be more defense oriented... face it your build and party make-up does influence how effective using your Paladin's powers are.
Smite might be better if it was just damage added to a successful hit x times per day or encounter.
But I do agree that Lay on hands should be more useful, it's too little to be used in combat and shouldn't have been changed from 3.5.
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Ok I understand what you are saying, but really the good thing about my stats is that it really shows how well the abilities hold up (as a side note even with an 18 str on the roll of a 3 I woulda missed) because when you have high stats, those stats will carry the abilities since they make up for the shortcomings. With the physical stats I have I see how badly smite underperforms, not in the bonus to hit which is a blessing with my stats, but in the damage. getting your level in damage on a single attack isn't significant enough to warrant only getting 7 total throughout your career.
Glad we agree on the lay on hands issue. although I like some aspects of the change, I think if he switched it to level x2 damage healed it would actually make the ability worthwile.
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Well there are a few spells (Rhino Rush) that allow you to do double damage on a successful hit... maybe something like that is more appropriate for a smite?
If you have the time, you should read up on paladin in action we went through a bunch of ideas for smite. I am mostly in favor of a really simple fix for smite
1+cha mod per day smites, specifically worded to not be used up on a miss.
In my opinion that is all that is needed to bring a little parity to the class feature.
for lay on hands same as now, healing level x2 damage
and for detect, concentrate as a move action, that way you only loose one attack to detecting (granted this limits mobility, but I'd rather attack and not move, then move and not attack for three rounds). Maybe if it feels necesary activate as a swift action.
these changes would fix low level paladin play, whithout the risk of unbalancing the class. And prevent the 15 minute work day that a paladin promotes.
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Arg post eating bug is going to be the death of me, take two:
Wow, this is why we play the game. (this time condensed for my sanity and because the post eating bug needs to be squished to fine jelly). We had an amazing playtest session this weekend. Play was brilliant. We took down mooks with ease thanks to a lucky UMD check and a wand of fireball, we were outnumbered 8 to 1 so after two attempts to let them surrender or run, my paladin got a lucky 17 on his UMD (he needed 16 or better to use the wand), sudenly we were outnumbered 3-1. The BBEG took my ally to 0 and he passed out trying to take a final swing. My character charged in when he fell and got a critical with the pick and the paizo deck and smite, which begs the question is smite damage doubled on a critical hit, or is it like sneak attack damage? We went with sneak attack so it wasn't doubled. Can I emphasize enough how unimpressive smite evil is as the defining offensive ability of the class. I mean even when I hit with it I am so underwhelmed by smite that I'm beggining to think the ability is downright pathetic. I could see the ability if I had 4-5 uses, but 1 use a day I mean COME ON. On a positive note, the Paizo critical hit deck is the most awesome product ever. I love how bad I F*cked this guy up. I dealt 4 dex damage, left him flat-footed, and 7 bleed damage a round. So he tries to run he's usually a two weapon fighter, but this fight he thought that this bag of goodies he was carrying was important enough to only fight with one weapon. So as he tries to run, I charge him and get another critical. This time he was stunned, took 3 con damage, I dealt triple damage and had a +2 to my next attack. Did I mention that stunned characters drop what they are carrying? anywho when he gets over it he tries to run, my character knows this guy is actually out of his league, in one hit he took me from 23 to 8. So instead of closing with him which would have left me flat-footed from a full run (he was in light armor, I'm in heavy) I tell him (while standing dramatically) that if he ever threatens this region again I would hunt him down and kill him. This was apparently the right thing to say because my DM slammed his head into the table and said that this guys arrogance wouldn't allow him to run. He attacks me with his claws (we figured out that he was a half-fiend because he had smited me and was casting evil spells earlier, this confirmed it) then tries to grapple me since he would have total advantage due to his natural weapons. But when my AoO came up, I got a third critical. 1d6 ability damage of my choice, I took out his eye, and it lodged in there dealing 2 ability damage (which is good because he had taken a potion to stop the previous bleed) which could only be stopped with a DC 20 heal check. This guy must have some plot significance because even after all of that he got away, stopped his bleeding, and managed to continue running for 5 hours eventually loosing my tracking dogs. The DM says he kept it by the roles, but I don't believe him because I added up the he took between the 6 total con loss, the bleed damage (several rounds at 7 and several more at 2) and my combat damage and it was enough to drop a 7-8th level character. Got 2000 xp for the fight though which kicks ass.
Now to the paladin abilities. I've discussed smite allready but I actually attempted to use every ability I had in this fight.
My saves, and immunities never came up, so they weren't of any assistance.
Lay on Hands, my ally had fallen. But he had been at 0hp when he fell. My lay on hands healed him for 3hp just enough to give him conciousness. Then the BBEG kicked him. Let me repeat that, the BBEG used his 1d4 AoO provoking unarmed strike to kick him. He rolled a 1 for damage and had a plus three strength mod. WITH A ROLL OF ONE ON A FEATLESS UNARMED STRIKE HE DEALT MORE DAMAGE THAN I WAS ABLE TO HEAL. I know I said that smite was starting to feel pathetic. BUT LAY ON HANDS HAS BEEN PATHETIC SINCE DAY ONE. I know that eventually it will be good, when I can use it to do other things, but right now it sucks so much balls I actually want to trade it out for a bonus feat. I hate sounding like this, I want to sound well reasoned and have playtesting back it up, but this ability is just complete fail right now. It is depressing me to have an ability I dislike so much. PLEASE ADRESS THIS ABILITY. I have faith that you can make it worthwile, all it needs is to do level x2 damage, in fact if the only change made to the paladin was to make his smite and lay on hands level x2 I'd be happy. Well I'd still want 1+ cha mod smites, but still ;).
Detect evil: I used it, unfortunately as has been the case it showed me that the mooks weren't evil, and if it wasn't for the fact that they outnumbered us 8-1 I wouldn't have used lethal force, but I did give then two rounds where I tried to let them surrender or run. Still this ability could use a little work.
I figured I'd finally chime in, as the DM of this game, to give a perspective from behind the screen on having a PC Paladin in the party.
Just some stuff to put into perspective as to why some things have gone the way they have:
Seeing as how this is a playtest, I've been fairly loathe to throw single strong enemies against the two-man group until I've had a feel for how things fully sync together, especially as they don't have a spellcaster character in the party (see note on Half-fiend, below). However, the paladin's build isn't really to blame here at all on this one.
Most of the things they've been fighting are npc class characters. Mostly warrior and expert npc type stuff, low level. I've been trying to give the game a "PCs are heroic, they are awesome compared to normal people in the world" type feel. It's been working pretty well so far. They have no issues getting through combats, since they are well armored enough only extremly large numbers of enemies with strong situational modifiers (aka, flanking, assist, etc) combined stand much of a chance of regularly hitting them, but even the stronger "BBEG"s of the combats they stand up against fairly well (See half-fiend portion, again). It takes a lot to hit the PCs, it takes an even bigger amount to seriously hurt them, and the npcs die fairly quickly (usually within 1-2 attacks most of the time so far). Combats tend to run a little on the longer side (usually 5-12 rounds) due to only having two players, but they run quick and clean. Better than a 4 person group that only took 2-3 rounds, imo. Their biggest issue thus far has been downtime healing in between large fights. Even without full healing, they are still getting through the fights without any punches being pulled on my part. I will admit I've been consistently throwing cr+1-3 (adjusted for a two man party) fights against them on a regular basis, this is being looked at from a playtest point of view, after all, and I'd like to see how the changes work out. During on-CR or below-CR fights they blow through like a knife through melted butter, as to be expected from lower level melee powerhouses, with hardly any damage taken at all. In fact, the only thing to really hurt them in the opening fight were magic missiles, despite being outnumberd 4:1. The only reason they took that much damage was due to a battle tactics error on their part, which has yet to be repeated.
Last's physical stats aren't going to change that he feels like a warrior. I could give him 18's in all three and it wouldn't change that. What he's referring to are his lack of combat options. His tactics are limited by lack of feats that would apply in changing up what he does, outside of "I move I swing". He would have needed at least a +8 strength modifier to hit when he rolled that 3. That would have hit the target AC of 14. Any explanation on hitting a 26 strength at level 2?
The chance to use the abilities is presented, usually multiple times a session, but once again, 1/day just doesn't do a whole lot. Maybe if it were 1/encounter, there'd be a difference. Right now, I'm fairly confident in saying Last would prefer single large fights each game day to multiple smaller ones, since he'd get more of a chance to use his smite, technically speaking.
The detect evil has been used a lot more since he's started kicking it on as he approaches before combat is actually joined, then dropping it once he gets a feel for the enemies, it's just not revealed a whole lot of use thus far. It lets him know who to keep an eye on as a possible ringleader in the fights, but the followup smite is pretty lackluster.
The Half-Fiend. Now, Last knew this guy was evil from the first time he met him. He's kind of been a recurring individual, but the role he's appeared to play has kept shifting ("Bodyguard", scout, assassin, and pissed-off-arrogant-jerk to name a few), and neither of the player's are 100% sure what to make of him just yet, although Last has had some pretty interesting theories thus far (one of the reasons I enjoy writing out villains, so I can see how the party reacts to them). He has attempted to smite, once successfully, but seeing as how the guy isn't undead, his 2 damage/use LoH isn't going to help a lot, especially with a "BBEG" that is melee focused dishing damage right back out. The AoO provoking non-lethal kick to the head was kind of a slap in the face move that accentuated that. Rolling a 1, did that. I have been nothing but unimpressed with the paladin's class features thus far in terms of flexibility, or combat use. At least in 3.x, LoH could be dumped in one big use to get yourself or an ally back on your feet in an emergency. Not so in Pathfinder. This seriously needs a look at. When Last hit's fourth level, he gets access to turning. I'd like to point out how quickly that's going to outpace LoH, not even including the feat that lets him preclude certain enemies within range from it's effect.
Another thing, in combat PC vs NPC, smiting favors the NPCs. Always. Enemy HD have a trend to increase faster than their challenge does with certain types, and unless it's an on-CR type fight, the NPC is going to have more HD most of the time. It makes their smite hit harder, simple fact. The one hit that dropped Last from 23 to 8 was a near max damage smite attack, and then the guy was pretty spent with how I had designed him into the encounter. The critical hit deck nearly killed off the guy through status effects (He has some low value fast heal, btw. That's why that second set of low-level bleed didn't kill him, but both characters had already figured that out through perception checks and watching wounds close), even with everything else. That one surprised me, but it was a pretty amazing mirror of the previous face-planting-into-the-dust that occured the last time the two characters had "dueled".
Paladin's definitely need a boost to smiting. x2 level wouldn't be a bad start, especially considering the limited scope of targets (only Evil).
edit: One more thing, for hitpoints (PC only), we used the HD + Con + Racial method. That should help explain the HP totals for the PCs.
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Wow, last session was full of fail.
So we had our first random encounter. Two hungry bears (yeah all you nature lovers groaning, I know) attacked us. Well these weren't fiendish dire bears, just normal bears. If our horses could've gotten away I would have avoided them entirely, but it wasn't an option. Non-Evil= suck for the paladin. Since my healing isn't worth wasting an action there's just nothing for me to do but swing my pick, and nothing says paragon of virtue like being outshined by your horse. In this instance I am willing to accept it, they weren't evil so I was out of my element with a stat array that doesn't lend itself otherwise to martial prowess. It's what happened later that made the entire session full of fail.
So we pass by the fallen bear corpses (neither of us has ranks in survival or craft(taxidermy) so there wasn't much we could do). and continue to follow the map we captured last session to the arcane lab that the bandit leader was in.
We get there and rest the night. I'm finally to the point that if I dump all four uses of my healing and get a nights rest I am up to full health, the other guy didn't get hurt badly so he just rested. Anywho we have a long discussion on tactics (and the merits of trying to take a horse into a cave without a spellcaster) finally deciding there was nothing for it but to go in. We make it through the complex and sure enough, there was Kaine the BBEG from last session sitting behind bars. After a conversation where he reveals that the spellcaster was the real leader after all and had locked him there for failure right before summoning something that wound up killing everyone in the cave. Being behind bars was the only thing that had saved him to that point, not that if he was locked in there for much longer they wouldn't just tunnel into the cell and eat him. I almost left him in there, but decided at the last minute to let him come with us (I would much rather he face justice in a real trial then get eaten by some monster). All he has is a knife while we are fully armed with all of our abilities up to par. So I wasn't as worried as the last fight where we had waded through mooks to get to him, and he had his sword (which I now wear on my hip as a sign of my victory and which he told me to give back several times). Anywho we are leading him out when all of a sudden a swarm of Zergling (for the starcraft players) like creatures attacked us. Kaine went running off ahead to escape only to come charging back out saying "go the other way".
Anywho so we get in front of the door to face this swarm of creatures, the DM shows us the picture and I recognize them. Kythons from the book of vile darkness. In game my character doesn't know they're evil and hadn't been detecting (my mistake, I honestly just forgot in all the RP) so he didn't know that these things were the nasty little buggers. So the knight takes point at the door where his difficult terrain ability means that we get AoOs as they try to swarm through. My character in his support role is doing allright, although I must say that d6's don't seem to like me much. When I roll a d6 I get a one more often than should be statistically possible, did I tell you about last session when I rolled a triple damage crit for 3 damage (3d6 all came up 1s) my DM started laughing because I would literally say if I rolled a hit before I rolled damage I would say "I hit for one damage" and then actually hit for one damage. Finally when things start getting desperate and we know we can't take them and need to escape, it's my round. So I go to smite the one blocking our escape. Roll a 4, another missed smite whoopie. They barely hit, but when they do it's for 5-8 damage, so there was nothing for me to do but swing my sword (I started using the sword because in the fight when I was rolling 1s on my pick I finally asked Kaine if his sword was magic, he said yes so I started using it, d8s like me, I never rolled below 7 damage). Anyways we escape, when we get out of the tunnels the other player blows his horn (stupid, we just got away and you want to send a giant signal saying here we are because you want your stupid f-ing horse that won't even be relevant in 3 friggin levels.) oh since Kaine was able to crawl through the tunnels and we had gotten stuck in our armor for a while, he was able to get to a secret stash of goodies. As such since I was no longer sure that he was the BBEG (he was no longer popping up as evil so he either had an item that was making him pop up evil the first time or he had one now, masking his aura). I told him that my previous edict stood, he could escape but if I ever saw him again I would bring him to justice. He told me he wanted his sword back and my ally said I should give it to him. I told him it was the price he paid for consorting with evil, and with the words "You'll be seeing me again" he slunk off into the woods. I kept his sword specifically because I was counting on it.
Anyways, our DM gave us enough XP to level up, (we are accelerating the pace of xp gain to make us cover more levels in playtesting) I will post later on my thoughts of the abilities I gain.
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Wow, here I had been all excited to get to level 4 to finally get some more class features, to finally be on par with other classes. Level 4 comes...
.
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And now I'm waiting till level 5 to finally choose a cool class feature.
I never realized just how gimped the level 4 abilities are. In the game I ran before the paladin dropped out and became a ranger at level 3, and the other game with a paladin fell apart at level 2. This is the first time I've actually taken a good hard look at those features.
Channeling, 1+ cha mod as opposed to a clerics 3 + cha mod channeling, and cleric level -3 for his channeling.
So a feature that a cleric gets at first level, is stronger and gets more uses per day (or at least the same # based on the cha breakdown), and the pally has yet another class feature that isn't on par. WHY?!?
I don't get it. Why is a power gotten at higher level weaker than an ability gotten at first level. Seriously thats retarded, hey I've got a capstone power for the paladin, at 20th level he gets a character trait. We can't give him a bonus feat that steps on the fighters toes, and he doesn't get it at first level so it shouldn't be as strong as the fighters bonus feat, a character trait would fit perfectly.
Sound rediculous? then why is that the mantra for the paladins channel energy? I could understand it if the paladin got it at first level. He has all his martial abilities so he doesn't have as good a channel, but this is 4th level. In one level Wizard are going to be throwing fireballs and I have yet another ability that only has utility out of combat.
Let me break this down, 1d6 damage healed is 3.5 average damage. At level three I already showed you how healing 3 damage was a waste of an action so now the difference is that I can do it at range, and if I waste a feat, not heal my enemies as well. Do I need to playtest this, I will, next session I'll try to use this. but I can tell you what will happen, the same that happened when I used lay on hands. Nothing worthwile.
So now we move onto spells. OK I'm a caster now. Lets look at my spell list, after all I have to memorize it. well lets see, hm, bless weapon is good if I'm fighting evil, or divine favor if I'm just fighting random mooks, but each day I have to know which its gonna be before hand or I'm wasting breath. Lets not even get into all the situational spells that would be great if I could cast spontaneously but are as of now never going to get cast because I won't have them memorized when I might actually need them. So lets go look in my splat books, okay nothing there is really any better, one spell lets me take damage to do extra damage but it lasts 2 rounds because my caster level is half my paladin level. Jeeze yet another instance of feeling gipped, one spell a day that may be the wrong choice and leave me screwed with a selection of spells that could be useful but never will because I never have enough spell slots to make memorizing them worthwile.
I'm really starting to get discouraged, I'm beginning to think the only thing that will save the paladin is a complete overhaul. I mean tear down and rebuild from the ground up. I think the problem is that I like the idea of the paladin so much and it's implementation is just heartbreaking.
Technically, the bears did try to run away after you guys hit them for more than 1 damage. You just managed to kill them with the AoOs in the process :P
And don't forget, your 3.5 average heal at range can effect multiple people. Zomg broken, right? That's stepping on the Cleric's toes :P
The paladin's channeling is worthless for anything outside of fueling Devotion or Divine feats. It's not worth the action to do for the piddly amount it restores, and you have to take a feat to not heal your enemies as well. Well, some of the enemies. If it's a large group you're still healing them. Even as a cleric it's not all that hot. Useful, but not in combat itself unless you're actually turning undead.
Useful in limited circumstances != good. Especially since the image of the Paladin as the brave fighter of evil (which undead most certainly are), and the fact they get all this positive energy manipulation (LoH, Channeling, smite to a degree, etc) I fail to see why they are so bad at channeling the direct power of their god. Maybe that's just my personal point of view though.
That's about all I can throw in from last session that Last didn't already cover.
edit: I'm also very disappointed in the changes to Poison. Makes it almost entirely useless with the new save system, not to mention the long drag out effect for what they cost. Still not happy about Darkness spell either :(
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edit: I'm also very disappointed in the changes to Poison. Makes it almost entirely useless with the new save system, not to mention the long drag out effect for what they cost. Still not happy about Darkness spell either :(
Actually the first bear dropped without running, the second bear was me not thinking and accidentally taking an AoO because it provoked one, still if these bears were willing to attack mounted passerby (a very unlikely situation) its probably best they were put down :). justification, is there anything it doesn't have an answer for? Also my one damage hardly dropped that bear, it was the other guys 8 and you know he would probably have run it down had it gotten away anyways, cause that's how he plays his character, an asshat.
As to poison, I like the new poison rules personally, they have a lot less bang for the buck (maybe adding an initial damage boost then folowed by the smaller round by round save mechanic) but they feel more realistic than the every poison has a minute before it hits you again sillyness that was 3.5.
Jason says he'll have a re-write posted on monday I am very looking forward after the coolness that was his barbarian re-write.
I blame the paladins continued low level suckiness not on Jason failing, but on Jason being to rushed to get all the Alpha/Beta material released. Since he couldn't really take the time to focus on the Paladins needs he just added some abilities to see how they played with folks and now that he has time I'm hoping that the paladin will get the attention it deserves. Otherwise expect a lot more negative playtest reports.
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I ran the encounters my group faced that got us to level 4 over the weekend (to a degree) to see if the changes posted to the paladin made a difference. I will break it down for you. Overall I am happy that Jason is trying, however there are several issues with his fixes, that while easily remedied are making the change not as worthwile as I had hoped.
Smite Evil: Okay so as non-sensical as the Armor boost is, I love it. It synergizes so nicely with my law devotion feat, I can switch my +3 from my AC to attack for a whopping +6 and still maintain my 21 AC. However, the situational modifier is anoying. I have not faced a single outsider with the evil subtype, or undead yet so I'm still smiting at a whopping +1-4 damage, woopideedoo. I don't like that it only works on those types because it changes the flavor of a paladin from a crusader against evil, to a demon/undead hunter, that's a specialized rangers role. I don't like being mechanically shoehorned into certain types, I want to play a scourge of evil warlord, and clerics who seek to shatter the world, oh but you aren't undead, well take your piddly extra 4 damage and I hope you don't have DR.
the fix: I also whenever I hit with a smite, would then roll as if the creature was in fact a demon, the extra damage was nice and never overpowering, so why the shoehorn? Just make it always work that way when smiting evil, not when fighting undead/demons.
detect evil: This is the one change that I have nothing but good things to say (the actual detect evil spell and nature of auras will wait till the spells section). Much needed and much appreciated, now if only it worked on creatures with less than 5 HD so I wasn't shooting in the dark with my smite.
the fix: fix the spell so that creatures with lower than 5 hd once again register to detect evil if they are evil.
lay on hands Yay, finally an ability that has combat utility weee. Love that it now actually heals, however, without any bonus to the amount healed it's to risky to waste a standard action on healing allies (when I did I healed a whopping 3 damage at 3rd level, not the worst possible, but still the risk/reward benefit is skewed) mechanically it's much better to just wade in and use all of the LoH on myself, saving one for ICoE use. I'm just not a fan of a mechanic that encourages the paladin to be selfish with the healing.
the fix: just make it a swift action when healing anyone.
Channel energy: OK I hate raining on the parade, but this change was just aweful. It's wonderful, wonderful that the healing is no longer nerfed to level-3, but it now costs twice as much as before, doesn't add extra uses and therefore cuts your total healing in half. There is no benefit to using channel energy, it's much better to just heal yourself with LoH, you heal more, and never loose an action. Then there is the horrible blow it deals to people who don't want to play a healing paladin. In 3.5 when I got turning, I would be able to instead get 2 extra uses a day of my law devotion. In the original Beta this got cut to 1 extra use, and a channel energy left over. In the new version I HAVE TO WAIT TILL LEVEL 6 TO GET AN EXTRA USE OF MY FEAT. Channel energy is a waste. There is still no reason to take level 4 of paladin, instead take level 1 of cleric. You would get three times as much healing (because you'd get lots of extra channeling without loosing you LoH), and actually have enough to burn for divine and domain devotion feats WITHOUT LOOSING YOUR LoH!
the fix:this can still be workable if you are willing to add 6+level worth of uses of lay on hands, since I have no doubts that that will not add that many uses of LoH then the only thing to do is to re-split the abilities and give the Paladin back his 3+ cha mod channels per day.
Spells see the rant about level 1 cleric being better than level 4 paladin, I would get more spells, unlimited cantrips, and two domain abilities. At least with spontaneous casting you can't say that the first level of cleric is better, because it's completely different.
the fix: just give the paladin spontaneous casting so it isn't a game of the cleric singing, anything you can do I can do better.
Level 4 is still the worst level for a paladin in the game because you had to wait on it and you're still looking jealously at what the cleric got 3 levels ago for the sacrifice of +1 BAB I'm sorry, I really don't see how that is a fair trade.
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Playing the game yesterday was a blast. First was getting out of the way the buying of stuff and getting our rewards, I litterally had like an eyes pop out of my head moment when the DM told us that for the two wagons worth of trade goods, we got 7000gp. Seemed a little over the top for non-magical equipment, but since that was the only reward we got in 2 levels I wasn't going to complain. So my ally immeadiately goes and buys a +1 shield, +1 chain shirt, amulet of natural armor, cloak of resistance, you know, the basics. My character who I didn't play as a conosoiur who knew exactly how to raise his AC (also as a player I had been hoping for like a couple hundred GP to get a masterwork plate mail so I hadn't done any book flipping. I bought a +1 plate mail. I wasn't going to buy magical shield or pick because I know mine have founded legacies.
Anywho so we get a contingent of soldiers and head back to the Kython caves to clean them out. I leave 4 to guard one entrance and we start heading in. we have 11 low level mooks with us, but darnit if I don't intend if possible to leave with 11 low level mooks. That doesn't happen though as when the kythons appear they kill one on the first attack, we are in a waste deep underground river thats only ten foot wide so me and the other pc step up and make them fight us keeping the mooks as rear guard, I don't waste any resources and don't get hurt.
So we get out of the river into a large cavern. Uh-oh, there are only about 25 of the little Kythons and 3 large ones. Crap. We form up into a formation that prevents flanking, but we can't get too far in before we are swarmed, so its just us, fighting in a box trying to hold the line. Then the big ones come down the river and hit the opposite side from the swarming little ones. So I leave the little ones fighting mooks and my partner, and rush in to smite one of the big ones.
Oh that new AC bonus works sooo well with my law devotion. Switching from AC to offense isn't listed as an action, just something I have to do at the beggining of my turn. So I can still switch, swift to smite.
But Kythons are abberations, so I do a whopping 4 extra damage for a total of 12 damage. How many times do I have to say underwhelming. If he had been an outsider I would have done 2d6 (I rolled 7, plus 8 from my weapon so 15 total, would have been much more satisfying but hardly overpowering, since the knight is hitting for an average of 12 and I'm hitting normally for an average of 7) Please Jason, just let the extra damage apply to any evil.
So that doesn't drop the thing (I think they had somewhere around 30hp) a few round later though I do drop it and move on to the next one. it had one of the mooks really hurt so I finally openly used my lay on hands to heal someone, rolled 8 healed. Nice, granted the next round the Kython hit with every single attack and left the mook as a puddle of human parts but still, Okay so I'm a convert, I love the new lay on hands mechanic, It works wonderfully, it actually does decent shots of healing for a touch, the (su) meaning it doesn't provoke AoOs works when you have allies standing around you, at least for low levels, I'm sold.
Anywho, we wind up clearing out all of the freaking creatures. Out of 11 mooks we have 4 left, everyone is hurt, time to channel (I certainly couldn't channel with swarms of kythons surrounding us abberations are alive, even with selective channeling I would have left out 3 of the 20 or so kythons from getting healed) right? Wrong, the fight used up 4 of my 5 daily lay on hands. Now because Channel has been worked into LoH I went from having 4 weak channels to none. Granted if I could have channeled it would have healed more, but if I was invincible I wouldn't have gotten hurt in the first place so so much for ifs...
Look I understand that working it into LoH gives you a simplified mechanic to track. But this is hurting more than it helps and now I can say officially that it does so. If the mechanic hadn't been conjoined I could have either healed up our allies so that my other player hadn't had to give up 4 potions or I could have had another use of my law devotion feat (two if this was 3.5) to use if there are any more. As it is now, If I don't take 8 hours of rest, I am going into the next fight hurt (16 hp total) with no healing, no law devotion, and a single smite which we know is good for a whopping 4 extra damage max.
SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE ABOUT CHANNELING, I can't even take advantage of my DMs houserule that I can burn LoHs uses for divine feats at 1-1 instead of the 2-1 that the current system forces because with only 5 LoH a day they are too precious to waste, and Lay on Hands works wonderfully, it's awesome, so I'm not going to burn two for a channel unless I'm actually fighting undead. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix this, either split them back up, or have us gain an extra pool of LoH uses when we hit 4th level. Anything short of that severely nerfs our capabilities.
By the way, I've talked about this before, but I have to reiterate it, The treat deadly wounds feature of the heal skill is aweful. not the idea of healing wounds with the heal skill, that is great, but the implementation is terrible.
50gp buys you either a healing kit, or a potion. the healers kit gives you two uses of this ability, I was level 4, the mooks were level 1 or 2. For one hour I could have healed a mook for a total of 5 damage, or for 3 seconds he could get that same healing at the same cost. If I healed myself with it I would receive 7hp, out of 45, drop in the bucket. Oh did I mention that I rolled a 33 on the skill check to heal. 33 with most skills would be the heal equivalent of removing a cancerous tumor with a shovel and not hurting the patient, I heal 7hp. it takes an hour, and I can't do it again in a day, even if I get injured again. Too expensive, too much time expended, and too little benefit when for the same cost I can get a friken potion that heals the exact same amount.
Fixes, A) take it from 5 uses of a healer's kit to two, this makes it cost effective to buying a potion and doesn't make it impossible to do a healing without one (is using strips of cloak to bandage wounds, and a tree branch as a makeshift splint, not iconic? cause I thought it was) but still more beneficial to use it.
B) allow each 5 you beat the DC by after 25 heal an additional 1d4, this doesn't keep pace with clerical healing, but allows for godly skill checks to feel like godly skill checks, and allows for fantasy icon characters like miracle max, whom D&D has no corolary for because the heal skill sucks so much balls.
If those two things were implemented, then my healing skill (assuming average rolls) would have healed me 9 or a mook 7, still matchable by a potion, but at least it's comparably cost effective. As it is now its a waste of a skill.
As a side note, if both me and my gaming partner were to take leadership next level (DM houseruled it to level 5) he would have a situational negative modifier from his behavior, and I would have a situational positive one from mine, I was actually giving orders to maintain formations, allow injured to fall back, and afterwards tried to heal everyone while my partner tried to keep all of his healing for himself, man I love roleplaying.
For reference, the little kythons (17 of them) had 11 hp, the three bigger ones had 41. The allied mooks were level 2, plus one level 3 battlefield control sorceress with lots of disposable magic items. The Web scroll she got off tied up over half the combatants for a large portion of the fight.
And yeah, that healed mook getting shredded was just amazing dice. All in all, it was a pretty even fight. There was a lot of whiffing from the kythons due to strong AC with the Allied party, but when they hit, they hurt (2d6 base damage on their bite).
Otherwise, what Last wrote.
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My final stats after racial mods came in at 11, 10, 12, 11, 17, 16.17 wisdom? Paladins use Charisma to cast spells.
[QUOTE=]
To prepare or cast a spell, a paladin must have a Charisma score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a paladin’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the paladin’s Charisma modifier.
Yes, yes they do, and I knew that when I made the character too, what's your point?
For the record, it explains in my OP that the nature of my rolls being such a cool mathematical pattern I didn't want to re-order them.
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A bunch of stupid things a teenager who thinks he's smarter than everyone would say
My character sucks huh, wow, I couldn't have figured out that. In a game where so far I've pretty much kicked ass, but have complained about the crap abilities that the paladin gets. Which is funny, cause the stats the paladins abilities are based on is charisma, which I couldn't get any higher unless I was some douche who chose the race that provided a +2 to the stat instead of one that actually makes for an interesting and fun character. You have the amazing ability to ignore anything intelligent and focus on a stat. What's funny is that class features and attack bonuses pretty much make stats irrelevant by level 4 or so, but your juvenile interpretation of the game is that you have to "win" I've already stated that I'm aware of the limitations of my build, what I've also never stated is that my character sucks, can you like the other people who think the game is about having stats as high as possible tell me how anything I've reported would have changed if I had 18s in all of my physical stats? because I can. I'd hit more and do more damage, but it wouldn't change how my abilities work, which funnily enough, is what I'm reporting on, how the abilities work. But you're too busy being a 5 year old focused on where I put my stats. My character hasn't died yet and with every level gained has been closing the gap with knight who coincidentally had ordered his stats in every way like he should. You want to argue that something I've reported about the abilities is wrong go ahead, but if you just want to come and say "your stats suck, reroll and it will change the game" then you aren't paying attention and we don't need your pathetic imput.
I must have missed the point where I said my problem was that my character never hits, or doesn't pull his weight, oh no I haven't because my character does just fine, but I guess that I have to listen to some idiot who thinks that without str I suck, so I'm going to go listen to him. Hey why don't you tell me next that my character sucks because I haven't used my wealth to buy a bunch of items that all stack their bonuses because every character I play should be a savant and know exactly how too? When you grow up enough to contribute, feel free to counter any Playtest report that I post, but you haven't done that. You focus in on one thing and then say, I made a thread for me and my DM. Which is funny, cuase you'd think that me and my DM would be the best people to report on our playtest.
I have a low tolerance for stupid people.
Not everyone maxes out their characters, and some games still use the "what you roll is what you get" method of rolling up a character, as well. I've found that role playing a character with less that perfect stats is often more fun than just steamrolling your way through a game.
And that said, I've found this thread to be an excellent evaluation of the paladins Beta skillsets, and (most recently) of the fixes Jason has put out. Looking forward to more of the same, and I hope that Jason is reading this thread as well - I like the suggestions I've seen so far (I've always loved the theory/storyline behind the character class, but implementation has never really lived up to potential).
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Thank you WmTell, I appreciate you weighing in.
So because I'm sick of the post eating bug, I'm not going to say much.
Last session just reconfirmed that the new version of smite is only good if you have undead/outsiders to fight, while the new AC bonus is nice, 1 damage per level (or 4 damage) is so underwhelming as to be sad. At least with 1d6/2 levels (which I always roll to compare) feels a lot more satisfying even though on average it's only 2-3 extra damage. And if anyone can explain to me how having an 18 strength would somehow make 4 extra damage from smite suddenly be just awesome and leave me with no complaints, I'm all ears.
The new LoH is awesomesauce. I wind up using it a lot, Channeling, not so much, why would I waste awesome LoH for ok Channels, I'd much rather heal one person with no AoOs than my party and every enemy within 30 ft. Please split channeling up from LoH, [sarcasm]or rule that paladins always have 18 str, because that can solve channeling's issues aparently and I didn't get the memo[/sarcasm].
I didn't really get much out of my spells, divine favor again. exciting, but what else can I do, I'm not going to memorize a spell I might not be able to use. Spontaneous spellcasting would go so far. [sarcasm again]Or a good strength score would apparently make my casting so much more diverse and interesting[/sarcasm again].
Other then that, there was a lot of roleplaying more than combat this session, [big sarcastic rant]not having a good str score really hurt me here, I kept wishing that I had a good strength score so that the NPCs would bend easily to my whims. If only I had made a better choice when allocating my stats, but without str, you can't have fun roleplaying because your character sucks. So I've talked to my DM and I'm going to re-roll my character, I'll have 18s in every stat and suddenly every ability will be worthwile and roleplaying will get so much more fun and dynamic.[/big sarcastic rant]
My partners character got retired when he was court marshalled and striped of his rank. Now we have a wizard (although I'm wondering how much like his last character this one will be). That was a big surprise. Also two new players joined the game so now the party consists of...
Half-Orc Paladin 4 [one last pot-shot](terrible stats so its not worth playing)[/one last pot shot]
Human Wizard 3
Human Fighter 2/ Rogue 1
Human Cleric 1/ Sorcerer 2
Do people seriously stop reading after the first couple sentences of the OP? Since when has this ever been about combat effectiveness, or anything else for that matter, outside of whether the abilities (which happen to be independent of stats aside from uses/day) are working properly and how effective they are.
[sarcasm]I've decided, as the DM of the game, that I'm going to secretly treat the paladin as having a 22 strength for everything, because then he'll be a much better character.[/sarcasm]
For the record, we converse much more in person, phone, and email than here. I'm just posting in this thread because it gives a view from behind the screen of the analysis, in case things differ in view (like they slightly have in a few cases, see above).
Lrn2read noobs.
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What's the point whith this thread....Prove a Paladin with a strenght score of 11 suck? Yes we all know that. My Paladin has a Str score of 11 and he really suck".
- Yes and he SHOULD.Do you need to post a thread just to talk to your DM? Rerole the Paladin or stop complaining.
Yeah how did I ever get the impression that you were rude? The world may never know.
As it stands though I accept your apology and will gladly respond to you in the future if you make a point of being civil with me and not assuming that I don't know how the rules work.
I am also sorry to anyone following this thread for my harsh tone and snarkiness, this thread is meant to be a valid playtest, not me responding to percieved flames with returned flames. I promise that as long as people who post with me are civil, I will not respond harshly and endeavor to answer your questions with well thought out responses. I may have come down a litte harder than I meant to because that last line quoted really got under my skin, but I need to remember that if I'm going to post online I have to have a thick skin.
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...a snarky post, for which he apologised...
I feel your pain, having played a paladin that got converted from 2E to 3E, and losing half my abilities. But getting mad at someone isn't going to fix the class. You can't convince anyone if the thread gets locked.
There's a lot of good stuff been posted by a lot of people, and it is being read, and incorporated. I'm confident there'll be further rewrites over the coming months, and if they don't go as far as we'd like, it won't be for lack of effort on your part.
Time for a break?
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On a bright note, I've gotten to level 5, I had already seen Jason's repost of animal companions and have been super excited about trying them out. I may be bending the rules a little by taking a boar as my mount, it fits the character (the spirit of his orc mother will be posessing the boar so that he knows she holds no ill will to him even though his actions did partly lead to her death) even though it won't be a suitable mount till I can take whatever feat Jason has offered when we get to the feat section.
I've discussed it with my DM and he is ok with bending the rules (the book does say you can choose a boar if it fits the campaign, but I think the spirit of the rules was that I had to be able to use it as a mount) So Tora will be crossing paths with my paladin next campaign. Then when Jason introduces whatever feats allow me to upgrade her to large size (hopefully by making her Dire) I will do so to keep the feature within the spirit of the rules.
I am eager. Aside from my two smites per day, 5th level gives you your only other offensive ability the paladin gets for themselves in the game.
Wow, saying that out loud makes me realize just how badly underperforming smite is, its really all you get and it does 1/level damage to 70% of the monsters in the game. I'm sorry that just pitiful.
My character charged in when he fell and got a critical with the pick and the paizo deck and smite, which begs the question is smite damage doubled on a critical hit, or is it like sneak attack damage? We went with sneak attack so it wasn't doubled.
I'm pretty sure paizo didn't change the Crit rules:
Bonus die (like Sneak attack) aren't doubled (or x3 or x4 in your case); bonus damage like magical enhancment bonus (+1 sword =+1 damage x4), Smite Evil damage, etc.So no wonder Smite didn't look do good. You dealt less than you should have.
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My character charged in when he fell and got a critical with the pick and the paizo deck and smite, which begs the question is smite damage doubled on a critical hit, or is it like sneak attack damage? We went with sneak attack so it wasn't doubled.
I'm pretty sure paizo didn't change the Crit rules:
Bonus die (like Sneak attack) aren't doubled (or x3 or x4 in your case); bonus damage like magical enhancment bonus (+1 sword =+1 damage x4), Smite Evil damage, etc.So no wonder Smite didn't look do good. You dealt less than you should have.
Yeah, we looked that up and found out later, but just for the record, that fight was at level three which would have been a total of 6 extra damage, I may not be a mathmatician, but 6 extra damage from a 1 per day class feature is not any more impressive to me than three. especially since at that level a rogue would be rolling 2d6 on a sneak attack that would average that damage, let alone get a good roll of 12 extra damage and that's not critting. Whereas if they had the worst roll possible be doing 1 less damage than me when I'm not critting with the only offensive class feature I have, then they could do it again, and again, and again. While I got the one. I unserstand now that smite is doubled (sorry for not mentioning that earlier) but that doesn't change the fact that it is pathetically unimpressive... Unless it's an outsider or undead, then its at least decent. I don't like a once per day class feature that makes me look to one type of creature to be decent.
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lets talk about my recent trip to the build-a-boar workshop.
Okay, so far things are looking good, decent HP, good damage, decent AC. Things look pretty good for my boar, until we get to feats.
Now as a paladin AnCo it has an int of 6 which means that it isn't limited to the list of animal companion feats, but I wound up giving her all animal feats anyways.
What I want to talk about are pre-requisites. Sometimes they seem to make sense, but when it gets to the improved X feats it really doesn't to me, I mean I know the ideas behind the pre-reqs make sense, but the mechanics don't really play out.
For example, I wanted improved overrun for my boar. in order to get improved overrun I needed power attack. This isn't a rail against the new version of power attack, I personally having not playtested it, like the change. But my boar has a low attack bonus (only +6) but deals decent damage on a hit allready because I took imp natural attack. As such, power attack is a waste of space for the boar to get imp overrun as I am never going to use power attack unless its something I know I can reliably hit already. Which is probably never. so I had to waste the space. I could understand it if the improved x feats were really powerful, but they aren't. The only one that was ever "powerful" was improved trip, but it got nerfed so why are we keeping around these lame pre-reqs that don't add to the character. Really it's just a lame way to force you to have a str 13, if you need a str 13 to preform a manuever, just say pre-req: str 13 and not waste the feat for players that aren't going to use it.
Now the other feat I want to talk about. Weapon Focus... what to say about it. this is a feat that comes in really handy at low levels, but by the time you hit levels 8-10, was a waste of space that could've been used on other things. Weapon Focus needs to scale. it doesn't have to be anything huge, let it give another +1 at level 10, I'd prefer a +1 every 5 levels, but I'll settle for +1 at level 10. It's just such a horrible trap feat, it helps you survive low levels, then is wasted space at high levels. Not that it matters for my boar as I had to loose weapon focus to take power attack *rolls eyes*, but it is relevant to my paladin who's attack bonus is getting to that, this feat was a waste place, but for whom the feat was needed at low levels.
For reference, the entire tree of "focus" feats are a trap. This includes the spec tree, as well. Anything that costs a feat should be run into the ground by a first level spell, especially if it costs multiple feats. That's just bad.
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For reference, the entire tree of "focus" feats are a trap. This includes the spec tree, as well.
Okay, I'm following you so far...
Anything that costs a feat should be run into the ground by a first level spell, especially if it costs multiple feats. That's just bad.
...And you've lost me, anything that costs a feat should be easily beaten by a first level spell? Is there supposed to be a "not" in that sentence that just got lost in your speed inducing nerd rage? :P
For the record I agree, divine favor available at first level gives a +1/+1 attack and damage at first level, and by level 3 for a cleric for a cleric it is giving a +2/+2, then the fighter hits level 4 and can take weapon specialization for a +1/+2? Now I understand that it doesn't take an action to activate and you can do it all day, but then again divine favor works with any weapon and You have two feats that if your weapon is sundered do a whole lot of nothing while you wield your backup weapon.
This is relevant because right now I have weapon focus. I needed it at 3rd level to get my attack up so that I could reliably hit. Now at 5th level I'm needing it less often, By tenth level it will be a waste of a feat slot. I think its great that it helps you out at low levels. the paladin needs a lot of help at low levels. But in the long run it's an aweful trap feat that in the end hinders my character more than it helps. And I'd talk to my DM about retraining from the PHII but lo and behold power critical, a feat I actually do want, has weapon focus as a pre-req, so once again. Bad pre-reqs combined with trap feats = absolutely no fun. Bad pre-reqs wouldn't be as bad an issue if there weren't trap feats but combining the two, come on.
Please when we get to the feats section Make the weapon focus/ Spec tree worthwile and fix any feat that becomes useless by xth level.
Also remove the pre-req feats from the CMB feats. It was fine when taking those feats significantly improved your chances of success, but now it's darn near impossible to get off CMBs and the feats make it slightly less impossible (unless they've taken Defensive Combat Training which is the most aweful feat I have ever seen in my life, no offense but one feat that shuts down 6+ feats is just too unfair) If you want a player to have a str 13 to do the feats that have power attack as a pre-req then just make it a freaking str 13 pre-req and don't make us waste a feat that may or may not fit what we are trying to do with the character. Unless you make those feats super awesome, in which case this whole discussion is nill. But if the feats stay in their current form REMOVE THE POWER ATTACK/COMBAT EXPERTISE PRE-REQ!
And I'd talk to my DM about retraining from the PHII but lo and behold power critical, a feat I actually do want, has weapon focus as a pre-req, so once again. Bad pre-reqs combined with trap feats = absolutely no fun. Bad pre-reqs wouldn't be as bad an issue if there weren't trap feats but combining the two, come on.Please when we get to the feats section Make the weapon focus/ Spec tree worthwile and fix any feat that becomes useless by xth level.
Also remove the pre-req feats from the CMB feats. It was fine when taking those feats significantly improved your...
Well, the WotC and Paizo designer wanted people to take certain feats so they made them prereqs.
Sometime it was deemed the feat was too good not to have additional requirements (whirlwind or spring attack requiring dodge), others like Paizos new Power attack...
I think they just didn't want to mess this time with backwards compatibility (he said he only messes with it when it conflicts with his other goals in the PDF).
The new PA (which I feel was nerfed somewhat) shouldn't be a Prereq for those Combat manuevers, but eh, what you gonna do.
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Keep reporting in my playtest how it's sucking fun from my character and hope it gets changed ;)Who knows, that just might work.
My fingers are crossed :)
As a side note I was worried for a while that nobody actually ever looked at my thread cause no-one ever responded. I'm glad to find out that there are people reading it even if they don't post much, I hope for the most part it's explanative and fun to follow although I know I can sound like a broken record from one playtest to the next.
I've found it to be an insightful reading, I just haven't wanted to clutter it up with stuff that wasn't relevant.
However thank you for the paladin reports.
For the record I agree, divine favor available at first level gives a +1/+1 attack and damage at first level, and by level 3 for a cleric for a cleric it is giving a +2/+2, then the fighter hits level 4 and can take weapon specialization for a +1/+2?
Off Topic minor point: Divine Favor gives +2/+2 at 6th level, not 3rd.
I do think TomJohn had a point - having an exceptionally low strength for a Paladin can throw off the roll dynamics quite a bit.
An example of what I mean, by no means meant to be all inclusive:
3rd level Paladin - let's say Longsword. 1d8 + 0 with strength 11. Fight.. a Gnoll - 11 hp. You swing, you hit! - 5 points average. Still alive - okay. Friend kills it. Another Gnoll - Smite this time! - you hit - 8 points average - still alive. Friend kills it. Seems like it sucks.
Instead: 3rd level paladin, str 17. Gnoll - swing, hit - 8 points - friend kills. SMITE - swing, hit, 11 points - got him down.
What I mean is that the lower your starting damage, the less often that smite damage will be enough to hit the "break points" that make it feel cool.
Certainly not the only issue - but it did bear thinking about.
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Off Topic minor point: Divine Favor gives +2/+2 at 6th level, not 3rd.
Off topic: Your right, I misread every three caster levels, doesn't change the fact that one spell at level 6 == 3 feats (weapon focus, weapon spec, and greater weapon focus) that you wont have till level 8. and that as you level divine focus gets better, and those feats don't.
On topic, I disagree, that break point is your strengh making it feel cool, not the ability itself, the ability should feel cool, then your strength should be the thing that makes it extra cool. If you need str for an ability that isn't dependant on str to be cool, then the ability isn't cool and needs work. If I have a +20 bonus from strength, +4 from smite isn't any cooler than it is if I have a +1 to str.
I'm not disagreeing that Str has a factor in your melee potential, the oposite I have said I am well aware of it. But no matter what bonus str is at the ability underperforms.
Now I'm not aware of how it lasting multiple rounds affects the outcome, the problem with that is that its a fix in the wrong place. Smite sucks worst at the lower levels. the multiple rounds might do the trick for high levels, but doesn't help in the lower levels. I would rather smite always feel like a whammy and always be 1 round, then suck at low levels and be a good whammy at high because it lasts longer.
Yeah, there should have been a "not" in there. Posting from work while half-asleep on the graveyard shift ftl.
And I'd like to point out, seconding Last on this one, if an ability requires a good stat that isn't intrinsically tied into the the mechanic to function, it's a bad ability. Especially since, as he pointed out, +4 smote damage has the same "whoopitydo" effect with a +20 strength mod as a +1. It's still not enough.
Especially since, unless catering to the fact there's a paladin in the party, not everything is evil aligned. In fact, a good portion of the "foes" in the MM's are neutral in some way, or only evil part of the time. There are exceptions, but Defense rapidly increases faster than offense, so once you get up into those higher echelons, getting the chance to deal that extra damage is harder due to constant miss chances and high ACs.
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Okay so this session was a lot of fun. We traveled to my home so we dealt with random encounters (we had two more so including the goblins we had three).
Lets talk about each, first fight bandits. not much to say here, we owned. Between crits so nasty that the bandits seeing it just surrendered (I love the paizo crit deck, and the omen for my pick which will be a legacy weapon is that when I score a crit, the air ripples like a powerboat cutting through water, Sooo cool). And my spike chain weilding squire (don't ask it's another player). The battle was over quickly. My boar joined after the fight in a cool way, trust a DM to ruin a touching in character moment where the paladin realizes that the spirit of his mother is in the boar and that she doesn't hold him any ill will by making a furry joke (for those of you that don't know, "furries" are people who dress up like animals to have sex/orgies).
So the next fight was a few days later, 4 Owlbears, which should have owned our party, but the DM was aparently having a horrible day at the dice. Okay my high AC meant I rarely got hit and never for enough damage to need to heal, but I'm becoming a competent warrior. So my boar kicks ass so far. I don't think having her not be a mount is that balance throwing because she went from being able to make three attacks to one but can move seperately from me. Tit for Tat. I gotta say, so far I'm loving the new AnCo rules. Makes for a pretty awesome companion, I will say though that between the AnCo and the weapon bond, until the weapon bond gets a property to make the weapon indestructable, I think the AnCo is the much better choice. The boar helped me feel finally like more than an NPC warrior, even though my actual paladin still played out that combat as Mr. NPC warrior.
Moving on from that we got to the next fight. I came home and saw my manor was under seige, coming from behind meant that we took on the softies first. My character Smites the evil spellcaster. 12 damage, if my strength had been a 16 instead of 12, it would have been 14 damage, closer but not quite there considering the fighter can get that on a normal attack, so I rolled to see what the difference would have been if they were an outsider. the difference? two damage, which means I would have done 14 damage, and if my strength was 16 I would have done 16 damage. There you go. 16 is a solid thwump accompanied by an AC boost and an attack boost. TO BAD THE CREATURE WAS A HUMAN SO INSTEAD I DID MY CRAPPY 5 DAMAGE. Stop Stop Stop Stop Stop, saying that the d6 per two levels is too powerful, on average its the difference of a few damage, but it feels better to roll damage than to get the steady +5 and the small boost to damage is necessary in order to make the smite have that satisfying thump (I hope that adding the breakdown of my strength will help finally silence the naysayers), unless I crit. ooh, so in order to have a cool class feature I have to play a crit build character every time or play in a undead/demon centric campaign. Yeah that just screams fun... no thanks, please make the ability work the same across the board the boost you gave it against demons/undead is actually what smite needs to be perfect as a 1 per day ability, and instead it's perfect SITUATIONALLY! Which means that it still needs work, but not much just removing the super-ranger clause that was never a paladin thing to begin with. So anywho I kill my spellcaster and move on to the people fighting through the hole they put in the wall. I see a fighter who seems more compitent than the others and close with him. A detect shows me he's evil, and another underwhelming smite, and this time having +2d6 wouldn't have made a difference because I rolled a 5 BUT AT LEAST ROLLING MADE IT FEEL MORE EXCITING.
My boar is moping up mooks left and right so once again the new AnCo rules so far seem great. Not as good as me or the fighter in the party (who is lower level but is hitting for more damage regularly, not just because of high strength which is only +3 over my damage). The new Detect evil rules work well, I used it on both enemies I smited and both were 5th level or higher, because they had auras.
Classic moment of the game, DM after I had told soldiers to back off and leave evil fighter to me says "yeah he doesn't seem concerned he seems to think he can take you." he had just scored a crit and took away my strength bonus, so I drop my pick draw my sword (Kaine's Sword for those following) and hit for a kill. nothing funnier than hearing, yeah he thinks he can take you, and killing him with the next stroke.
LoH continues to be perfectly well suited ability that works well and fits the flavor.
Channel energy continues to never get used. especially now that I have a cleric in the group. why on earth would I use a channel energy which sacrifices two of my LoH? after combat healing is all well and good, but not at the expense of good in combat healing. Here pay twice as much for half the utility, but you can get more people, as long as you don't mind shooting yourself in the foot considering you have 5 LoH per day so you can channel 2 times. Mr. Cleric please take over from here and do your channeling which leaves you with all your spellslots. Oh no, its okay that it doesn't take you two spellslots to channel, my powers are supposed to be pathetic otherwise I'm stepping on your toes.
And yes, aparently just not being able to do it as many times as you isn't enough, I have to seriously gimp myself or else I'm too powerful. You know even though the only real difference between us is that I have a +2 to attack over you. yes your right that is worth so much that I should never have an actually decent amount of healing, I need to be limited to a very small pool.
Finally, I had a discussion with my DM. So far we have been playing in scenarios where we have one big fight a day, which even though I ration my powers to try and keep them going I can tell you something.
The current suite of paladin abilities gives me two fights a day as long as they aren't too tough. Did you hear that? At 5th level, I have two fights in me before I'm burned out, assuming there's evil to be smitten. Which means that in order to go the standard # of combats per day, I have to go through to fights still as an NPC warrior.
Which means that since we discussed starting to get those four a day, I'm gonna suck through two of them (aside from my boar, but I don't have enough healing to keep her going without help. Which means that not only am I Mr. NPC warrior, I'm also a bigger drain on party resources.
The more I play the more I see how combining the two pools seriously hurts the paladin. There either needs to be a boost to the # of times per day a paladin can use lay on hands at level 4 when he gets channeling, or they need to be seperate pools again. Even if channeling gets altered to cost 1-1 of LoH without that boost it still doesn't work. The paladin needs those old amounts to actually have stuff to do for multiple fights.
And that's not even discussing the ability to burn for feats, which is completely gone now unless you really only want one combat a day. Or in the instance of my law devotion feat, impossible to burn for until next level. I can't repeat enough how big a blow the changes have been to backwards compatability.
Other than that we ended after some light roleplaying. maybe ten minutes worth so nothing worth talking about.
There's only one thing that bothers me with the new modifications on the Paladin, and this is the 1d6 per 2 levels of the Smite versus Evil Outsiders and Undead.
The player in my group said just yesterday: "Boy, it would have been better if the guy was NOT an Evil outsider but a plain evil character... at least, I would not have rolled so badly!"
The fact that the Paladin has become a better character is obvious.
The fact that Smite Evil has been improved is obvious.
The fact that Smite Evil SHOULD be better against Evil Outsiders and Undead is not so obvious.
Sure, the "bypass all DR of the creature" that works only against Undead and Fiends is a life-saver, BUT: the fact that the bonus damage is a random variable, that this variable cannot be multiplied in case of the scoring of a critical hit, and the fact that a poor roll can result in a damage lower than that against a "plain vanilla" evil monster is a bit... discouraging.
Let's talk of facts: a 3rd level Paladin (my player's one) deals 3 extra damage (can be multiplied if a critical hit is scored) against evil monsters BUT only 1d6 (possible result, as effectively happened = 1) against the Paladin's nemesis... and this cannot be multiplied if he scores a critical hit.
My solution would be to ADD the "1d6 for every 2 levels" to the regular "1 per paladin level" bonus damage of the Smite against a Fiend or an Undead.
In that case, a critical would multiply AT LEAST the fixed bonus; also, a poor roll would however be a BONUS on the basic bonus of the Smite Evil.
Just my 2c.