We saw the demise of the melee fighter at level 11 or so because he loses his power if he moves. The disparity will appear sooner now. Somewhere between lvl 5 and lvl 7 will see the sidelining of the fighter.
Yes; we're seeing it in playtesting at level 7, unless active steps (read: intensive DM intervention) are taken to mitigate it.
to simplify terminology any refrence of round refers to a standard, move, swift single characters action. Refrence of turns refers to all characters acting on their initiative sequence in a turn. If something has a casting time of 1 turn then the spell is cast as a full round action and doesn't take effect until the start of your next round. Which means that everyone who moves in between you has a chance to disrupt your spell
So why not make spellcasting a "full attack action" -- then there's no moving (except a 5-ft. step) while casting, but also no wholescale interruption across the board?
The reason why I belive the favor will shift to casters at an earlier level is that casters can now Tumble trhough the field of combat without suffering AoO, effectively having free movement across the board AND still get off their entire spell attack. By fifth level you will see wizards ducking between combatants, tossing fireballs, and then rolling around to the next victim.Yes a Fighter can do that too, sort of. At 6th level the fighter can tumble around and avoid the AoO but looses half his attack power. Then at level 11 he looses 2/3 his attacking power, at lvl 16 he looses 3/4 of his attacking power.
All the while the wizard's power actually is increasing.
We saw the demise of the melee fighter at level 11 or so because he looses his iterative attacks- his power- if he moves. The disparity will appear sooner now.
Somewhere between lvl 5 and lvl 7 will see the sidelining of the fighter.
How exactly are we seeing a the melee fighter's effectiveness disappear faster under Pathfinder than 3x... other than with this particular tumbly-fighter example? How exactly does a tumbly-wizard make them significantly better (other than, perhaps, with melee touch attacks)?
I'm not seeing the argument here.
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So why not make spellcasting a "full attack action" -- then there's no moving (except a 5-ft. step) while casting, but also no wholescale interruption across the board?
A combination of turning Standard Action spells into Full-Round Action spells, with a tweaking upwards of the DC checks required, would, IMO, pretty handily solve this specific issue without introducing the, again, IMO, cumbersome weapon speed issue.
The only thing that I liked less than weapon speeds from the 'good old days' was the weapon vs. armor adjustment tables. Yikes.
The only thing that I liked less than weapon speeds from the 'good old days' was the weapon vs. armor adjustment tables. Yikes.
I like the concept of certain weapons being more effective against heavily armored targets than others. But the 1e tables were WAY too cumbersome and blatantly punitive to the monk's open hand attacks, whether realistic or not.
I wouldn't mind a bit of consideration for it and had been working on a house rule for it in 2e. I had a weapon property: armor piercing. Basically, against characters in armor or armor-like hide/scales, it gave a modest bonus to hit.
So why not make spellcasting a "full attack action" -- then there's no moving (except a 5-ft. step) while casting, but also no wholescale interruption across the board?A combination of turning Standard Action spells into Full-Round Action spells, with a tweaking upwards of the DC checks required, would, IMO, pretty handily solve this specific issue without introducing the, again, IMO, cumbersome weapon speed issue.
In other words, if I'm understanding you correctly, you feel that full-attack spellcasting is still too fast? (Neither that nor full-round spellcasting would re-introduce weapon speeds.)
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The only thing that I liked less than weapon speeds from the 'good old days' was the weapon vs. armor adjustment tables. Yikes.I like the concept of certain weapons being more effective against heavily armored targets than others.
GURPS broke it down to 'impaling/cutting/blunt' weapons, and had chainmail have less DR vs. impaling attacks.
Then 3.0 came out with piercing/slashing/bludgeoning weapons, and the concept of DR, and, somehow, didn't follow-through in their borrowing from GURPS, since armor-as-DR ended up being an optional side-note sort of thing, and the idea of DR that could be bypassed by piercing/etc. didn't show up until 3.5.
If one were to have a system in which Medium Armor provided DR 1 and Heavy Armor provided DR 2, it might be an okay tweak to rule that Chainmail didn't gain it's DR vs. piercing attacks, but that's really the only level of 'armor vs. weapon type' adjustment I'd be comfortable with.
And yeah, being a Monk before 3rd edition was an exercise in stupidity. A melee class with d4s for hit points and an attack bonus and AC slightly better than a Magic-User? Yikes. I've never been in love with the class (even in Oriental Adventures games), but if I'm gonna allow it in my game, I'm going to walk as far away from 'realism' and towards 'fantasy / Wuxia / crazy ki power kung fu madness' as I need to walk to make the character fun to play.
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In other words, if I'm understanding you correctly, you feel that full-attack spellcasting is still too fast? (Neither that nor full-round spellcasting would re-introduce weapon speeds.)
I'm not sure what you mean by a full attack, in this context.
A full-round action still allows a 5 ft. step, so it *seems* to mean the same thing as you mean by a 'full attack.'
As far as I know, using the Standard Action model of spellcasting, spellcasters never got to use their Iterative Attacks anyway in conjunction with spellcasting*, making every 'standard action' spellcasting pretty much a 'full attack' for them anyway. (But allowing them their full 30 ft. of move along with a standard action spellcasting.)
*Barring one or two cool PrCs that allowed a Warrior of the White Fire to cast a spell, and then swing with their staff with any secondary or tertiary attacks, or whatever.
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Quite simpoly I have to agree with this more than anything else in this thread. When I played a Fighter it was great until higher levels. Once we got up over lvl 15 my Fighter was just a road bump most of the time. Either that or I had to wait for the Cleric to buff me up so much that I could seriously contribute. That usually required 4-5 rounds of the waiting game. But it was mostly due to the Cleric that I could do massive amounts of damage, not due to the Fighter.
And this is a problem.... why? Do you want the fighter to be able to do all the stuff that took the cleric 5 rounds of casting (during which time he's also wasting his own actions, by the way, for those who think that the casters can be instantly buffed, while he spends all his spells on the fight - ultimate teamwork) without having any time spent to "power up" or prepare for the fight?
I have long wanted to go back to:
1) round by round initiative. Far more dynamic and unpredictable. Also gets rid of "who's turn is it again?" as you have a new order every round.
2) Weapon speeds and Spell Cating times. Gives having a Short Sword a reason to even exist. Causes spells to match the literature and cinema that inspires the game.
3) Have it possible for spells to be interrupted. With the ability to cause massive damage, there should be a risk.
I posted in one of these threads what we use for initiative rules at the table. We never even bothered with the cyclical initiative rules, we have always rolled (1d20 + init for 3.x) *every round*. THEN we apply casting times and weapon speed factors. Unarmed attack (or monster slam attack) is 1 segment, light weapons 2 segments, one-handed weapons 3 segments, two-handed weapons and missile weapons 4 segments. For each size category over medium add 2 segments to the wsf. (We used to use the real charts but found that it just got too much looking stuff up, and since 3.x neatly categorized all the weapons into those groupings, why not take advantage of it?). 1-Action spells take their level in segments to cast (unless the spell has a distinctly different casting time like Feather Fall or Dim Door, or full-round or longer casting times, or quickened spells, etc).
So, for example...
Fighter has an initiative of 15, and is using a longsword (one-handed weapon, wsf3) and a shortsword (light weapon, wsf2) in TWF configuration. Let's say, through use of feats and level he gets 3 attacks with his primary weapon (longsword) and two attacks with his off-hand (shortsword). We also say that you have to alternate attacks since the order of attacks might be important.
Wizard has an initiative of 16, and is casting a 7th level spell.
- *Init 16: wizard takes 5' step out of range of the fighter and begins casting defensively in case he ends up being in a threatened space before he's done casting (especially with the fighter within step range)
*Init 15: fighter takes 5' step and begins swinging (longsword)
*Init 12: fighter's first longsword attack hits - requires immediate spellcraft check from wizard to keep his spell
*Init 10: fighter's first shortsword attack hits - requires another spellcraft check from wizard to keep his spell
*Init 9: *IF* he has not failed one of the two spellcraft checks previously, the spell finally goes off.
*Round continues on with fighter getting 3 more attacks on the wizard before end of round.
It works very well for us, but I don't know that it should be part of the core rules. It's definitely an option for a house rule, though, I think.
Will these make their way into PFRPG? Absolutely not. Backwards compatability severely limits anyone's ability to actually improve the game, causing it to be gimped and screwy with easily fixed but still broken rules.
Wow, that's pretty fatalistic. If you have already determined that Pathfinder will be unable to "actually improve the game" then you might as well find another system right away so as not to lose any gaming time. On the other hand, even if this stuff doesn't make it into the core rules, there are a lot of smart people with a lot of good ideas from whom we can get house rules to play by. I think that Pathfinder is going to be a great success. Will it do all the things I think should be done? Nope. Nobody will be able to answer Yes to that - not even Jason. I bet there are things he'd like to do that he knows would never fly, and so won't be in there. But in this time of system fluidity, why not take the opportunity to implement/integrate some "house rules" that you like?
It is entertaining to read this thread, but honestly we can expect PFRPG casters to be even more dominant than they were before, and probably at lower levels than before.
So your post is... what? A recommendation to give up, stop trying to come up with ideas, because no matter what it cannot succeed because it won't do what you have said it should do? Be realistic. I, too, am frustrated with the lack of designer feedback on some of these more contentious issues (I actually took a couple months off from monitoring the messageboards because it seemed like talking to the void). In the end all that is going to do is anger both sides (or all sides) of the discussion because nobody has had any guidance along the way of where things are going. Some people will be happy with some situations where they get what they want, but they will be unhappy with other places where they didn't. Paizo is in a really difficult spot with this, but I think that greater communication with the beta testers would have helped a lot with that. It's not too late to begin strident communications, but many opportunities have been lost and much time has been wasted discussing things that, as you pointed out, might be for naught.
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Sigh... after reading:
Here is a very good article on just this subject.I find I am now second guessing my decision to return to the days of speed factors.
Double sigh.
Sean makes some good points, but that doesn't mean he's right. I have respect for Sean as a designer, and am glad he's aboard at Paizo, but I still disagree with his reasoning. And that's OK. He doesn't play in our weekly group, and if he did he'd have to use speed factors. If he's happy without them, then that's great. Use what works for your group. :)
Personally, with all of the players at the table in my group having come through 1e and 2e, it was a natural thing to have in 3e. None of us could really abide the "everything happens in an instant" mechanic of 3.0 initiative, so we modified it for what made sense to our own understanding of how combat went.
Be strong, jreyst! Fight for speed factors! :)
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Hmmm, it only takes once to discourage rope trick use all the time, one time getting captured when they drop out of the space...one time dropping onto the back of a hungry bear that's used it's scent ability to locate the location where the tracks stopped and it just so happens to still be there...it might work at lower levels, and sure let them get away with it...but at higher levels use of rope trick might be a TPK if used improperly...
Get rid of portable holes and the Ioun stones that allow you to not need air...especially for assassins...
Clever use of spells or abiities should not be penalized, if used by a character, but repeated use by repeated characters should be penalized XP wise as a crutch.
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I hope you're exaggerating about the 80 hp hobgoblins and the monk not landing a blow. Because if not, you should probably call shenanigans on the DM. I've got the mod and the hobgoblins aren't that tough and none of them have an AC out of the monk's reach without persistently crappy dice rolls.No exaggeration, and absolutely no shenanigans, either; we were told in advance that all of the monsters would be "souped up" so that they'd provide some semblance of a challenge (we ran through "Last Baron" like stepping on a bunch of ants). The thing is, that made them a challenge for the wizard, and pointless for the fighter and monk (fight over in 4 rounds; I spent 2 rounds moving, one round executing a flurry of misses in melee, and one round wasting a couple of arrows). None of this is the DM's fault -- indeed, he took active steps to improve things -- but that's the way the game is built. Paralyzing/immobilizing enemies and then killing them at leisure will always be more effective than chasing them around making single attacks. Now, if melee guys could move AND full attack... right there, that would have changed the entire picture.
And from what I'm reading on these boards, that could be the change that would cause the biggest impact and solve many of the perceived problems with the fighting classes at higher levels. I'm all for giving it a try (unfortunately we're just starting out at 1st level in CotCT, so it will be months before anyone is getting multiple attacks, I think).
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Perhaps the DM increased AC and HP but not saving throws, leaving the monsters vulnerable to magic but virtually immune to melee?
But that's exactly what the core rules do; it's inherent in the structure of the game. The entire game is set up so that hp scale between 6 and 60 times more rapidly than do saving throws. That's one of the main reasons why warriors suck so much at higher levels.
Yah, and the ability to do damage scales much more quickly than the ability to increase the DC of a spell.
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to simplify terminology any refrence of round refers to a standard, move, swift single characters action. Refrence of turns refers to all characters acting on their initiative sequence in a turn. If something has a casting time of 1 turn then the spell is cast as a full round action and doesn't take effect until the start of your next round. Which means that everyone who moves in between you has a chance to disrupt your spellSo why not make spellcasting a "full attack action" -- then there's no moving (except a 5-ft. step) while casting, but also no wholescale interruption across the board?
Because I want disruption, and I also want some spells to be able to cast as a standard still, I thought I made that clear? I don't want casting across the board to just be a full attack action which I specifically said in the first part and I want spells to be disruptable the more powerful they get, which was said in the last part.
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Flawed because it is based on the 3.x rule for initiative? Hardly. I admitted as much that round-by-round init would solve some of the problems. But it doesn't solve all of them.
How would you handle someone wielding a dagger at the start of the round, dropping it on his turn and then drawing a greataxe? Does his initiative change? If it drops lower than someone else, does that person go before he can finish his turn?
Round-by-round initiative isn't something for everyone. I much prefer the lesser hassle of static init.
If you prefer the static init, then that's cool. You could still, conceivably, use wsf and casting times with no problem. Check out my house rule a few posts up. In your question, drop the dagger on 17 and draw a greataxe [to draw a new weapon takes as long as to swing it in our house rule unless you have quickdraw - in this case WSF4 for a two-handed weapon]. Greataxe will be ready on 13, then you can attack with it. Attack will land on 9. If someone else's initiative occurs in the meantime, then of course they go before you.
Easy. :)
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Perhaps the DM increased AC and HP but not saving throws, leaving the monsters vulnerable to magic but virtually immune to melee?But that's exactly what the core rules do; it's inherent in the structure of the game. The entire game is set up so that hp scale between 6 and 60 times more rapidly than do saving throws. That's one of the main reasons why warriors suck so much at higher levels.
Ran Burnt Offering with Pathfinder.
PCs ROLLED over the goblins. By second level they were doing 4-6 times the goblin's HP in damage. The one decent caster was doing damage every single round, and if not destorying them then setting them up to be nothing but cleave magnets.
The inept casters were trying to use crossbows instead of spells... but that was plaer issues just being dumb and not having a clue.
Quite simply Monsters need to have thier HPs increased significantly, their AC remain the same or close, and their saves against magic doubled or tripled and many many many more need Spell Resistence to even have a chance.
The reason why I belive the favor will shift to casters at an earlier level is that casters can now Tumble trhough the field of combat without suffering AoO, effectively having free movement across the board AND still get off their entire spell attack. By fifth level you will see wizards ducking between combatants, tossing fireballs, and then rolling around to the next victim.
Yes a Fighter can do that too, sort of. At 6th level the fighter can tumble around and avoid the AoO but looses half his attack power. Then at level 11 he looses 2/3 his attacking power, at lvl 16 he looses 3/4 of his attacking power.
All the while the wizard's power actually is increasing.
We saw the demise of the melee fighter at level 11 or so because he looses his iterative attacks- his power- if he moves. The disparity will appear sooner now.
Somewhere between lvl 5 and lvl 7 will see the sidelining of the fighter.
I honestly can't take you seriously with such suggestions. Tripled saves and spell resistance for all? If you don't want to have wizards in your game, then ban them. But don't try to bring that into the core.
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The only thing that I liked less than weapon speeds from the 'good old days' was the weapon vs. armor adjustment tables. Yikes.
Heh, we used those for years in 3.x as well. There was one person in our group who refused to let them go.. we finally convinced him that it was an unnecessary complication and was actually stopping people from taking weapons that made sense or that they wanted to use.
Realistic? Yep. Fun and Fantasy? Not so much.
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In other words, if I'm understanding you correctly, you feel that full-attack spellcasting is still too fast? (Neither that nor full-round spellcasting would re-introduce weapon speeds.)
I'm not sure what you mean by a full attack, in this context.
A full-round action still allows a 5 ft. step, so it *seems* to mean the same thing as you mean by a 'full attack.'
As far as I know, using the Standard Action model of spellcasting, spellcasters never got to use their Iterative Attacks anyway in conjunction with spellcasting*, making every 'standard action' spellcasting pretty much a 'full attack' for them anyway. (But allowing them their full 30 ft. of move along with a standard action spellcasting.)
*Barring one or two cool PrCs that allowed a Warrior of the White Fire to cast a spell, and then swing with their staff with any secondary or tertiary attacks, or whatever.
The difference between it being a full attack action and a full round action is that a full attack action still wouldn't provide any better chance to disrupt the spell (although the Ready action exists and is perfect for this kind of manoeuvre), but means that the wizard cannot move and cast in the same round. The full-round-action means he's casting for the entire duration of the round, and the next round, too, until his initiative comes around. MUCH more chance for disruption since someone could step in and make a full attack action (4, 5, 6, 7 attacks) and almost guarantee that the spell isn't going to happen.
The first (full-attack action) addresses movement concerns but not disruption concerns (even though I personally don't agree with those who want spells more easily disrupted), while the second (full-round action) means that spells can be disrupted almost at will as long as someone is within charge range of the caster and is *far* too punitive for casters.
