Welcome to the Song, Fist, and Stealth Playtest

[Jason Bulmahn]

Welcome to the fourth stage of the playtest for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. We have now wrapped up the first three stages of the playtest, which took a look at the Ability Scores, Races, and some of the Classes (Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Paladin, and Ranger). We are now continuing on with classes, moving our focus to the Bard, Monk, and Rogue classes. Following this two-week cycle, we will conclude the Classes playtest with the Sorcerer and Wizard. Comments on the other classes, or other parts of the rules (such as spells), should wait until we reach their portion of the playtest. As a general note, if the rules would not be placed in this chapter, then it should probably wait (so the Bardic Music ability is perfectly relevant here, but particular bard spells are not). When discussing the Classes, start your thread title out with the name of the class, followed by the issue you want to discuss. For example, if you wanted to talk about the Monk's Ki abilities, your thread subject might read: Monk - Ki Abilities.

Special Note: Due to the great deal of discussion in the previous playtest, I will be paying a fair amount of attention to the Cleric, Druid, and Paladin playtest for the next week (until 10/20/08). I will be paying attention to both forums as time permits.

To get things started here, we need to take a look at all three of these classes. Here are some areas that need a good solid look at.

- Bard: Does bardic music work as both and ally boosting ability and as a enemy hindering ability? Are the powers balanced? Is the capstone ability (at 20th level) too good?

- Monk: Are they effective combatants? If not, how can they be improved? Note that we are not looking to increase the monk base attack bonus at this time. We are looking for more innovative solutions... assuming they are needed. Do the monk Ki abilities fit with the flavor of the class? Are there any themes that are missing from this ability?

- Rogue - Talents, talents, talents: Are there enough? Are any of them too good? Are any of them underpowered? Are there any thematic areas that the tricks should cover?

This is an area of the rules that can be quite contentious. To keep things clean, I would appreciate that you label your threads appropriately and keep things civil. Presenting entirely rebuilt classes is not very useful to us at this point, but presenting fixes to the rules we have is quite useful. Please keep that in mind, when you are posting. Finally, lets try not to stray all over the book in these discussions. It is really easy to start talking about feats and spells when we discuss classes and I would really like to stay on focus.

The first two class playtests were very productive and I am excited to see where this one leads us.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

[seekerofshadowlight]

yay this is up

edit: First post ,woot

[seekerofshadowlight]

On monks I had a thought. what about allowing monks to do unarmed damage with the monk weapons?. I have done this in a home game was much fun, also what about a few different "weapon packages" not all monks are Asian themed

[Fischkopp]

The first seven threads are all about the monk.

[seekerofshadowlight]

well the rogue is good, always has been and the new bard is very nice as well, but they'll have there own threads soon.

[toyrobots]

For the Monk:

The new approach seems to be that the monk is the master of combat maneuvers. This has worked very well so far in my playtest so far, albeit my monk is still low level and multiclassed.

Nonetheless, I really think maneuvers are the best way to represent martial arts, and this is a great way to beef up the monk without making him a full-martial combatant. Keep moving in this direction, if any.

For the Rogue:
My feeling is that the rogue was always a pretty effective class. I think rogue talents are a great idea, but they might go a step too far in power level. Compare the number of feats to a fighter if the rogue takes all feats. Be careful not to over-fix this one.

[Roman]

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

- Rogue - Talents, talents, talents: Are there enough? Are any of them too good? Are any of them underpowered? Are there any thematic areas that the tricks should cover?

1) I think there are enough, but having more never hurts.

2) Bleeding Attack can be very deadly in specific situations where the creature affected does not have access to healing. The Rogue can hit and run for the whole party and let the creature simply bleed to death. Still, this does not happen very often so often, so the talent is not overpowered overall.
3) Yes, several are rather weak. Rogue Crawl and Stand Up come to mind. None of my rogue players has considered taking them and I would combine them into one talent called Prone Movement or something like that. The feat-obtaining talents are also not particularly powerful, but they are useful to add further customization, so they should probably stay.
4) As to thematic areas that talents should cover, please, please remove the Minor Magic, Major Magic and Dispelling Attack from the talent list. They are wholly thematically inappropriate for a non-magical class, at least for the core. Many DMs, myself included, don't like banning basic features of classes - please, please move these magical abilities to an optional sidebar if they absolutely must stay.

[Arakhor]

I think that simply losing the combat feat talent would a good idea. The rest vary in usage, but that one seems a bit over-powerful unless its selection is limited.

[Archade]

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

- Rogue - Talents, talents, talents: Are there enough? Are any of them too good? Are any of them underpowered? Are there any thematic areas that the tricks should cover?

Yes. The existing talents are almost completely combat oriented. There should be talents that deal with Diplomacy, Bluff and other skills. There could be talents that run on the theme of luck, opportunity, or the like. All in all, some more rounding of the Talent ability.

[-Archangel-]

Monk healing ability needs to be improved. Spending a standard action to heal monk lvl at lvl 7+ is just not worth it during combat. And out of combat clerics, druids, bards and wands of healing are again more effective. And since healing now works of Ki points I can see Monks saving up those points for much more useful things.

Change the healing to 1d8/per 4 levels + monk level. Or to the old 2xmonk level. Also allow the monk to be in full defensive while doing it because the amount of self healing is not going to be worth once enemies do more damage to him then he healed.

[Rynthief]

seekerofshadowlight wrote:

On monks I had a thought. what about allowing monks to do unarmed damage with the monk weapons?. I have done this in a home game was much fun, also what about a few different "weapon packages" not all monks are Asian themed

I'd like to second the first proposal. Allowing monks to get their unarmed damage when using special monk weapons means that they can stay closer to the other melee classes in attack bonuses without the prohibitively expensive Amulet of Mighty Fists. It will also allow a monk to bypass DR and give them something to quest for akin to Holy Swords or a Staff of Power.

Ryn, who loves the "new" monk

[Montalve]

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

- Bard: Does bardic music work as both and ally boosting ability and as a enemy hindering ability? Are the powers balanced? Is the capstone ability (at 20th level) too good?

i would say its just right

ok its a bit definitive... but if its to take agains a character of the same level the odds are exageratedly good... since the DC is not too high

considering other classes hae similar things under their slevee (high level fighters can make massive damage, and a lcky rogue can do it too, and its a lot more definitive, spellcasters have spells that areabel to kill an individual witha lot less of effort than the bard's capstone ability.

[pontoark]

Archade wrote:

Yes. The existing talents are almost completely combat oriented. There should be talents that deal with Diplomacy, Bluff and other skills. There could be talents that run on the theme of luck, opportunity, or the like. All in all, some more rounding of the Talent ability.

I agree.

[Majuba]

-Archangel- wrote:

Monk healing ability needs to be improved. Spending a standard action to heal monk lvl at lvl 7+ is just not worth it during combat. And out of combat clerics, druids, bards and wands of healing are again more effective. And since healing now works of Ki points I can see Monks saving up those points for much more useful things.

Change the healing to 1d8/per 4 levels + monk level. Or to the old 2xmonk level. Also allow the monk to be in full defensive while doing it because the amount of self healing is not going to be worth once enemies do more damage to him then he healed.

I hadn't noticed it was dropped to just Monk level - it should definitely be the old 2xlevel - especially if it is going to cost 2 Ki points to use.

I'd personally go so far as to make it 2xlevel for 1 Ki point. It shouldn't necessarily be for much in combat use, but it should be usable a bit more often.

[tasslehoff220]

Bard: Over all I really like the bard. I think it is relatively well balanced. But the capstone is far too good. The save or die effect is interesting and very flavorful (I like the idea of music so beautiful it can kill someone) but still too good. The major reason being that 1d4 rounds of stun on a successful save is insanely powerful. Think of a 9th level spell which stuns for a d4 rounds at a range with no save or SR. Way too good, especially if you compare it to irresistible dance as a benchmark. Irresistible dance is similar but require touch (rather than range), allows a save for partial (1 round of dancing), and allows SR. Albeit the capstones are supposed to be pretty spectacular but even on a successful save whatever the party is fighting is screwed. I think the best fix for this would be to say it doesn't work on things with more hit dice than the bard, that way against a group the bard can use his capstone effectively but when facing the tarrasque, a massive dragon, or any other single monster vs the group fight, the battle does not end before it begins.

Monk: I have a hard time judging the monk in terms of balance but I do like the changes. They are really cool. Most importantly I like the ki abilities. I always thought it sucked that a bard could only use things like abundant step once per day. Also, when it was a standard action a monk would never use it in a monkish way.

Rogue: Talents are awesome. There should be more of them. My only complaint is that there are not more non-combat talents. Talents that augment bluff, disguise, etc. would be good and would increase the number of possible rogue builds. Lastly, their capstone is very cool, but like the bard's capstone, I would say it doesn't work against any thing with more hit-dice than the rogue. I feel this fix works very well for most powers which seem like they might be too strong and I think pathfinder has done a decent job implementing it so far with things like the illusionist's blinding ray.