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A few of my fellow players and I have a PF game where we are testing PFRPG for our own purposes, taking it out around the block, kicking the tires, kicking the ogre in the shin, opening the hood poking around in the engine compartment, spraying the gremlins with cans of silly string, that sort of thing. We each DM one or two sessions (though one poor fellow has had more than his share)
Well it was my turn last weekend (yes I know I am staring at this weekend already but better late then never). There are 4 of us, we each have a character and who ever DM's that character goes NPC that week. The abilities were 4d6 drop the lowest, but most of us have right around a 15 point buy give or take a point here or there.
Characters:
Mine: Dwarf Marshall 1/Cleric 3 of Torag. Earth and Protection Domains.
His: Dwarf Fighter 4
The Other His: Dwarf Sorc 1 (claw bloodline don't remember which)/Barbarian 3? I forget if there is another level of a different class in there. It is an odd build but he is having fun raging with nat weapons so who cares.
Him's: Dwarf Ninja 4 You've not seen anything until you see a dwarf "Ghost Step"
If it seems that I don't know the details of the characters very well, well thats true, but remember this is sort of a side project of ours more an attempt to break it to see what we think needs fixing than a 100% serious take the party out and do the great deeds that need to be done group.
Humor is a higher priority here than the greatest adventure ever, in my opinion.
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So, I dm'd this past weekend, did I mention that? Here is a report on what happened.I built my small little dungeon crawl on the premise of testing 3 things out.
1 Turning using the Channel energy rules.
2 CMB
3 Trapfinding using a variant where anyone can "Search" for traps by declaring a Perception check, but the rogue gets a passive perception check whenever he comes within 10 feet of a trap.
Let us look at each thing seperately.
1 Turning: I have a cleric (my character but I let the guys decide when to use his channeling and spells) At the beginning he was 2nd level cleric/1st level Marshall. The first encounter was a pack of Skeletons. 2 wolf skeletons and 6 humanoids. My cleric Channeled twice. There is an oddity in the Channeling rules. The damage was fine, and luckily the other PC's needed a bit of healing by the time it came to my turn. The rules give the undead a Will save for 1/2 damage and get to shrug off the fear effect of the channeling. Regular old skeletons had no trouble shrugging off the effect. I understand that it is low level character and that the DC goes up 1 every 2 levels. However, could it at least be a Fort Save? The will on undead is pretty steep. They saved for 1/2 and no flee. While admittedly the raw damage was pretty good, I could only make one of 8 undead flee. A bit odd. This character was built for Channeling. Cha 16 (The best a dwarf can get) extra turning (this should be extra channeling btw), Selective Channeling. Otherwise I like the channeling.
2 CMB: The other combat encounters were pretty much CMB builds. An Ogre Fighter with the Bullrush/Awesome blow build (bull rush), 2 Direwolves (trip), and Owlbear (grapple). All the encounters were Large creatures that were built to do what they were designed for, cmbing it up. The PC's as you will notice were all Dwarves so they got a +4 against the Bullrush and Trip (not to mention the AC enhancement against the Ogre) One Note: We used CMB = BAB + Str + Dex + Size + Racial. The DC was 10+CMB.
Some observations here. 10 + Dex inclusive CMB works much better. These creatures were all very good at what they did and were able to still do their cmb's but at the same time the balance seemed right. They still failed occassionally. Poor Dice rolls failed. A couple of decent rolls failed (tripping a dwarf is not easy) but a few decent ones succeeded (grappling a dwarf is easier than tripping him). Was it conclusive? No...we couldn't run the fights several times again and again to see what the numbers did. But my feeling was that 10+CMB works. Here is my suggestion though. Use the Dex inclusive CMB and go back to opposed rolls. d20 + CMB vs d20 + CMB. Not saying to go back to 3.5, don't worry about the initial touch attack (the Dex keeps some of that anyway). In my experience as a DM (over 25+ years) including 2 long 3.5 campaigns involving trip characters the touch portion of trips/grapples was never an issue anyway. It was so rare that touch attack missed to start one of these maneuvers that just skipping to the opposed roll should not be a problem.
3. Trapfinding: This worked out pretty well, though our ninja was built more for combat (I ghost step) than he was trapfinding. And it turns out the Player has discovered that trapfinding isn't something he enjoys much. Something about to many Rolls of the Dice with to little success. "You take 12 hp's", "Ok...I disable... 17 again..." "You take 10 hp's" *Sigh*. The "spotting" aspect of traps seemed to work, but there weren't enough trap encounters to truly make a judgement. But, between this and my other playtest, I expect that this is a good idea. The key seems to be to have a pre-rolled list of Perception checks from characters with the trapfinding ability if you let them do it as a passive search, ie whenever they move within 10' of the trap.
Here is a report on what happened. I built my small little dungeon crawl on the premise of testing 3 things out.
1. Turning, using the Channel energy rules.
2. CMB
3. Trapfinding, using a variant where anyone can "Search" for traps by declaring a Perception check, but the rogue gets a passive perception check whenever he comes within 10 feet of a trap.
DWARVEN NINJA 3/ (Obligatory) FIGHTER 1
Party Function:I have been the one "attempting" to locate & disarm traps as well as unlock doors. My dice, the hundreds that I own and the 50 or so I usually bring, do not seem to care much for getting 20+ results. This has made me quite the unsuccessful rogue.
Having an obligatory Fighter level for the goodies (feat,BAB,HP,Weap. Prof.) and Ninja up to 3rd has no bearing on the capability to do his job at all. He has maximum ranks in all of his "rogue" skills, which are class skills.
His feat choices are what I like to call "combat rogue" as he took 'Combat Expertise' & 'Improved Feint' so he might 'Sudden Strike' a quite bit more often. The only downside so far that I've seen is Dwarves are a bit on the slower side and IMO make better use of Heavy Armor classes.
I suppose if I had taken Nimble Fingers and Skill Focus {blah} he would be a super rogue, but being as most of my die rolls average under 10 for some reason, not likely.
He wields an Earthbreaker (PLEASE! Put this in the PF PHB!!) and wears no armor. Typical attack is to render an enemy flat-footed (Ghost step or Bluff check) and Hammer them with 2d6+3 +2d6 damage.
He is point built using 20 points, I did not use the die roll method as I was becoming frustrated after the first three attempts of getting 6 stats that had a TOTAL modifier of +2 or better. As a result he has lesser stats than his companions, but he is functional with 12s & 14-15s.
The idea behind the claw build dwarf is essentially to push my luck as far as I can on making those claws into a viable combat method into later levels. What I have so far is level 1 Sorc. and 2 levels of Barbarian. What I get from that is 2 claw attacks a round at 1d6 with my arcane strike feat and 18 strength I get +5 to damage on each before rage. Not to shabby. On top of that I get to use magic missle wands as missle weapons. I am taking a level of fighter ( happened last session) before I get back to sorcerer and then I will probably presitge from there. This isnt really the way I normally make a character I am a firm beliver in one or two classes and rarely prestige. But like Brute said this is a fun game and I am trying to achieve a certain build.
Arr. Doin' tha' sword & board thing. Well, Dwarven Battle Axe & shield. I'm hopin' tha' I c'n convince the DM to let meh use mah ale barrel as a Tower shield.
Two-Handed & Shield trees. With some stuff working off charging, so that I do something other than lower my AC on the opening round.
(No Brute, I'm just kidding about the Tower Shield of Ale Storage)
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we shouldnt make cmb rolls too good or else people will use them over standard attacks. (screw fighting the high level character, ill sunder his weapon and start beating him up after that)
Agreed, but if they don't work ever then you have the other problem. My point was that I had creatures who were built to CMB, they had to roll a 15ish or better. I think that 15 is the sweet spot in D20. Maybe 12 or 14 on a good day or easy fight 16 or 17 on a hard fight.
Seemed to work.