What does a "non-wuxia" high-level fighter look like?

[Kirth Gersen]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I'm all for martials being better...but the setting follows pretty logically from its premises.

Having a country perpetually locked in the midst of the French Revolution strains my credibility a bit. If for no other reason, eventually there would be no one left whose head could be cut off.

[Deadmanwalking]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I'm all for martials being better...but the setting follows pretty logically from its premises.

Having a country perpetually locked in the midst of the French Revolution strains my credibility a bit. If for no other reason, eventually there would be no one left whose head could be cut off.

40 year long civil wars aren't exactly nonexistent in real history. The Somali Civil War has basically been going since 1988 and is only beginning to slow down, for example.

And the Red Revolution is a lot less on the 'mass killings' than the French Revolution was. They kill people, sure, but not 'hundreds a day' kinda kill people. Not any more anyway.

[Firewarrior44]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I'm all for martials being better...but the setting follows pretty logically from its premises.

Having a country perpetually locked in the midst of the French Revolution strains my credibility a bit. If for no other reason, eventually there would be no one left whose head could be cut off.

Pff we have regenerate and raise dead for that. Let the good times and, heads roll!

[Envall]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Envall wrote:

thejeff wrote:

I'd say it's more a matter of wanting the game to be more "realistic" than the genre sources.

Pardon?

Can you rephrase that?

There is a good portion of the Pathfinder community that want Pathfinder to be more realistic than any of the source material it draws from.

See Smash from the Air and Richochet toss.

Then that is not what I said at all. Responding to tom above as well.

In most video games and movies we do not need to struggle with the golden words "suspension of disbelief" because games have mechanical challenge and movies have visual spectacle. But roleplaying games have neither.

I mean what is going on with Pathfinder. We got a system that is basically still made for dungeon crawling at the heart, but that is not how published adventures are framed. Because social drama is hot and exciting. Because there is a feeling people want something more than just a wargame.

Yes, Golarion is THE kitchen skin setting. It is its both blessing and curse, the freedom and inconsistency it provides. Look at all those region books, and how mundane they paint life in each one. The world has 5 bestiaries of monsters out there but somehow nothing ever happens to the world, perfect balance of inactivity.

But one still willingly suspends that disbelief if AP hook is good enough. Blot out the rest of the Inner Sea, focus on what is presented. Just yesterday you might had been lvl 15 in fantasy/reality russia fighting literal baba yaga and now you are lvl 1 again in some other place, killing the entry beasts of animals or weak undead.

I mean, even spells in this game are horrible. For each one that does something interesting like gate, there is one that makes your singing into a bird singing. Or lets you track children like a creepy pervert.

And yet Pathfinder is charming in its way. Hey, at least the Paizo's new classes make a good job validating the special powers! Oracle is a really nice class with good flavor that backs their powers for example. Make "Domain" system global so all classes can pick a supernatural font of power to draw their supernatural powers from. Now there is a reason why even Fighter can do whatever. Hercules has divine bloodline for example.

Ramble ramble.

[Deadmanwalking]

Firewarrior44 wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I'm all for martials being better...but the setting follows pretty logically from its premises.

Having a country perpetually locked in the midst of the French Revolution strains my credibility a bit. If for no other reason, eventually there would be no one left whose head could be cut off.

Pff we have regenerate and raise dead for that. Let the good times and, heads roll!

Given that the Final Blades in Galt trap the souls of the slain...this explanation doesn't actually work. For the record.

[Orfamay Quest]

Envall wrote:

Make "Domain" system global so all classes can pick a supernatural font of power to draw their supernatural powers from. Now there is a reason why even Fighter can do whatever.

That's a great idea, with one tiny superfluous word.

I demand -- as the premise of this thread -- that the fighter's "font of power" not be supernatural, and you need to write the fluff appropriately.

Since the "source of power" has literally no game-mechanical effect, it's literalliy all in the writing. You can, if you like, say that the fighter is so good a pastry chef that the scent of his croissants transcends time and space, allowing him to travel literally anywhere in the blink of an eye as long as he has a freshly baked pastry with him. The rogue is so perceptive that she can tell just by looking at your stance and how you dress exactly how to pitch her ideas to you so that you'll obey them without hesitation, allowing her to give commands to anyone with who she shares a language. The gunslinger has such fantastic eyesight that she can see individual muscle twitches in an opponent, allowing her two full attacks per round.

Whatever.

[thejeff]

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Envall wrote:

thejeff wrote:

I'd say it's more a matter of wanting the game to be more "realistic" than the genre sources.

Pardon?

Can you rephrase that?

There is a good portion of the Pathfinder community that want Pathfinder to be more realistic than any of the source material it draws from.

See Smash from the Air and Richochet toss.

Then that is not what I said at all. Responding to tom above as well.

In most video games and movies we do not need to struggle with the golden words "suspension of disbelief" because games have mechanical challenge and movies have visual spectacle. But roleplaying games have neither.

It's quite easy to run into suspension of disbelief in movies or in games. It's not about mechanical challenge or visual spectacle, it's about genre expectations.

What you'll happily accept someone doing in a martial arts flick is not what you'd accept someone doing in standard action movie and that's not what you'll accept in a slice of life drama.
In a game, it's the same thing. Figure out what genre you're going for and use its conventions. When you violate those, that's when people's suspension of disbelief shatters.
Trying to play high level PF as a game where both casters, pseudo-casters and a ton of monsters break the laws of physics as a matter of course, even without explicit magic, expecting some PCs to be strictly bound by those laws breaks my suspension of disbelief. Luckily, they're not, but only certain types of law breaking are acceptable. The fighter can trade blows with a 15' giant with impunity, but let him do something cool that isn't explained by just bigger stats and heads explode.

[hiiamtom]

Envall wrote:

...

Yes, Golarion has a charm to it. We both play games in it without caring about the world's most power hungry wizard ignoring the country with alien technology a few hundred miles away and how little sense it makes for dirt farmers to farm dirt when single adventuring parties have so much gold they could buy cities. Ignore the complete lack of industry in major cities. None of this matters to have a fun engaging story that everyone enjoys in their free time.

I'm just saying the "bad" writing is in place to just say a particularly talented person is able to just do things without an explanation. Hell, oracle is literally "mysterious font of power that is unexplained" and paladin is literally "power through conviction" while a fighter can't just do things. You don't have to have "the fighter gains a font of supernatural power from XYZ", you can just let them do it because it's what a fighter does.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Uh...what? This is pretty much completely wrong. Cities near each other explicitly trade and the effects of such trade are even gone into. And CR 17 creatures almost universally either don't care about nearby communities, rule them, or wouldn't have a prayer against the high level people within them.

And adventurers in the PC sense are so vanishingly rare in-setting that expecting the world to assume a lot of them is just weird. WBL is for PCs, not something that applies to random people in the world. there's an NPC WBL chart for everyone else...

The world's pretty well thought out if actually examined.

I'm all for martials being better...but the setting follows pretty logically from its premises.

Dude, wages vary greatly book to book and I can't think of a single supplement that talks about the economy in any detail beyond "there is trade" and "guilds protect skilled workers". There's almost no magical commerce, and little to know wondrous items for everyday utility even described in setting materials. All ambition in Golarion is power, but they don't allow villans to do anything. Evil countries have mostly normal folks, but the entirety of the evil armies are evil. It's just part of the setting, and not surprising after this long.

[Deadmanwalking]

hiiamtom wrote:

Dude, wages vary greatly book to book and I can't think of a single supplement that talks about the economy in any detail beyond "there is trade" and "guilds protect skilled workers".

Wages vary greatly between places in the real world, too. And there are a few different books that talk about trade routes and the like. It's not an economic simulator or anything, but stuff gets talked about.

The trade route over the Crown of the World leaps to mind immediately, just for example.

hiiamtom wrote:

There's almost no magical commerce, and little to know wondrous items for everyday utility even described in setting materials.

What do you mean by 'no magical commerce'? Magic items are available in every city. As for every day utility items...those are gone into in descriptions, but stats would be a bit superfluous in most circumstances.

hiiamtom wrote:

All ambition in Golarion is power, but they don't allow villans to do anything.

Uh...Razimir personally conquered a country and started a fake religion. Baba Yaga owns a country lock, stock, and barrel. The Whispering Tyrant murdered a demigoddess.

Golarion is stuck in a perpetual 'now' to avoid metaplot, but that's true for everyone, not just villains, and the villains have certainly accomplished things prior to that 'now' moment.

hiiamtom wrote:

Evil countries have mostly normal folks, but the entirety of the evil armies are evil.

Huh? Where are entire armies statted? If you mean army stat-blocks in the mass combat system, those are necessarily an abstraction, and thus not actually reflective of the individual stats of particular soldiers.

hiiamtom wrote:

It's just part of the setting, and not surprising after this long.

I'm still not clear on your precise issue here.

[hiiamtom]

• "Trade happens"
  
• Commerce is the large-scale typically international trading of goods and services
  
• I didn't say "they didn't allow villains to do anything"
  
• I can't tell if you are being intentional here when the largest most famous evil empire has comical goons though I have not read all of Hell's Rebels
  
• That's because your style of discussion is to parse text whether it makes sense to or not.

[Deadmanwalking]

hiiamtom wrote:

"Trade happens"

Yes? They do also go into what gets traded on what routes a little bit.

hiiamtom wrote:

Commerce is the large-scale typically international trading of goods and services

And that totally happens. But how is it relevant to PCs? And how, in an economical fashion, does magic get involved?

hiiamtom wrote:

I didn't say "they didn't allow villains to do anything"

As noted, the only way to 'have villains do anything' or have anyone do anything in the present tense is metaplot. I've played games with metaplot, avoiding it is good.

They certainly let villains do stuff in APs, adventures, and individual home games.

hiiamtom wrote:

I can't tell if you are being intentional here when the largest most famous evil empire has comical goons though I have not read all of Hell's Rebels

Uh...the people you fight in Hell's Rebels are mostly actively oppressing a civilian population. That's kinda definitionally Evil behavior.

Alignment is a result of behavior. You do Evil stuff, you wind up Evil.

hiiamtom wrote:

That's because your style of discussion is to parse text whether it makes sense to or not.

Uh...responding to your specific points individually is weird, now? Because you were making a lot of different ones and I'm not sure how else to meaningfully respond to that.

[Gark the Goblin]

Maybe it's tunnel vision from my main game being in Sargava, but it seems like trade is very well-explained. Imports and exports from most countries are known, trade routes are described, and the production of capital is an integral part of both adventure hooks and cities. E.g. Eleder's export of whale oil, gemstones, salt, and ships to Avistan/Rahadoum, and its import of worked metal, textiles, and flour from countries like Varisia and Nidal.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Envall wrote:

In most video games and movies we do not need to struggle with the golden words "suspension of disbelief" because games have mechanical challenge and movies have visual spectacle. But roleplaying games have neither.

Are you kidding me? Games and movies have exactly the same problems with suspension of disbelief as anything else. I may be dating myself, but the classic for me is FF7. Spoilers, a party member dies in a cutscene, and all I could think was "So what, I've used an item that revives dead people like half a dozen times just to get here. Throw them a Phoenix Down and keep going".

D&D hasn't been a wargame since Chainmail. It's been, at best, a tactical squad game, and even that probably only covers OD&D, possibly AD&D. Because everything after that included things unrelated to combat, even in the character options (to say nothing of the Harlot Table). They were called non-weapon proficiencies instead of skills, but they're basically the same thing.

I can explain my problem with all the requirements of "non-wuxia" really easily with Mad Max Fury Road. In the movie (spoilers) someone gets stabbed and it's very dramatic, as it's clearly a serious stab wound. More importantly, we know it's a serious stab wound because everything else about the world works just like our world and every injury is portrayed as seriously as our world. In D&D an attack with a dagger from a level 1 character, even a sneak attack, is basically only a threat to another level 1 character. If you can walk off a stab wound, the rules of our world should no longer apply.

[Orfamay Quest]

Bob Bob Bob wrote:

In D&D an attack with a dagger from a level 1 character, even a sneak attack, is basically only a threat to another level 1 character. If you can walk off a stab wound, the rules of our world should no longer apply.

This gets back to the hit point abstraction that has been around since at last AD&D. When a first level character stabs at a 10th level fighter, it does not necessarily produce a serious stab wound (although it's also quite probably that there's an element of "no human could have survived that!", a phrase we heard quite a bit from Conan as well). The fighter's reflexes are so quick that he was able to dodge the blade and reduce what would have been a life-threatening injury to a mere scratch, or possibly not even that.

That's why you see Conan surrounded by the dead bodies of thirty of his foes, covered in blood but not seriously injured. Each of those injuries did 1d8 + Strength his points to him, but 1d8 hit points isn't actually all that much. He might have taken forty hits over the fight, but 40d8 is "still" only 180 hit points.

Basically, there are two ways to play increasing toughness. One is to explicitly allow a high level fighter to dodge, to "roll with the blow," and so forth, granting some form of damage reduction -- so that the amount of physical punishment done by each hit is reduced as he levels (progressive DR), but the amount of punishment he can take is similar. (This is roughly how GURPS uses active defenses). The alternative is to allow that the amount of nominal damage done remains constant (so a hit from a dagger always rolls the same die) but increase the amount of damage one can take as levels advance. This, obviously, is the D&D approach.

So "an attack with a dagger from a level 1 character, even a sneak attack, is basically only a threat to another level 1 character" because an attack on a higher level character isn't going to land a solid, life-threatening blow. And, of course, if it does (e.g., coup de grace), then the hit point damage is a nominal threat, because the real reason high level fighters die is failing the saving throw.

So, no, this isn't really "wuxia," just a different way of abstraction than perhaps you are familiar with.

[swoosh]

That weird 'explanation' where constitution = reflexes and luck doesn't really hold up though if the target is helpless or when dealing with things like fall damage or lava or being on fire or being drenched in acid or boiling water and so on though. Nevermind the fundamental weirdness with the association in general.

Plus even if you assume that the fighter used his 'luck points' to survive thirty bullets to the chest or a hundred thousand foot fall onto a rock it doesn't do much to deal with the fighter's other capabilities. A fighter can eat arsenic and chug rat poison and really be in no danger whatsoever because his fort save is so high and his combined abilities can let him fight whole armies at once. Nevermind trivially overcoming extremely dangerous wildlife with bare hands.

Then after all that to turn around and guffaw at the idea of that same character being able to jump far or run fast or be able to effectively hurt someone who's ten whole feet away is just... weird.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

So "an attack with a dagger from a level 1 character, even a sneak attack, is basically only a threat to another level 1 character" because an attack on a higher level character isn't going to land a solid, life-threatening blow. And, of course, if it does (e.g., coup de grace), then the hit point damage is a nominal threat, because the real reason high level fighters die is failing the saving throw.

So, no, this isn't really "wuxia," just a different way of abstraction than perhaps you are familiar with.

And that abstraction works just fine until we hit effects that require that someone be stabbed to work. Injury poisons, sneak attack, Boar Style, take your pick. Does a sneak attack use up more "reflexes" because it aims at a vital area? Does that make any sense whatsoever? My entire point was that the abstraction of HP uses both real world and cinematic/novel/video game rules for health, but somehow everything else martials do is confined to the real world unless you slap a [magic] label on it. Everything else except a fundamental aspect of the game that everything uses (HP). I understand the abstraction. That doesn't make it less wildly contrary and inconsistent.

[Kirth Gersen]

Maybe it's just a nick?

To be honest, I don't have a problem with either interpretation. I don't even have a problem with it if different people apply them to the same attack -- I picture Karmack from twisting away from a knife thrust (maybe getting barely nicked with the tip if it's poisoned), whereas Karmack's player insists that he was stabbed square in the chest but was just too tough to be killed. We can both imagine our own version without having to argue over whose version is "correct."

[Envall]

hiiamtom wrote:

Envall wrote:

...

Yes, Golarion has a charm to it. We both play games in it without caring about the world's most power hungry wizard ignoring the country with alien technology a few hundred miles away and how little sense it makes for dirt farmers to farm dirt when single adventuring parties have so much gold they could buy cities. Ignore the complete lack of industry in major cities. None of this matters to have a fun engaging story that everyone enjoys in their free time.

I'm just saying the "bad" writing is in place to just say a particularly talented person is able to just do things without an explanation. Hell, oracle is literally "mysterious font of power that is unexplained" and paladin is literally "power through conviction" while a fighter can't just do things. You don't have to have "the fighter gains a font of supernatural power from XYZ", you can just let them do it because it's what a fighter does.

I see what you say, but don't agree with it.

Oracle and Witch are good examples where the power might be mysterious, but it is not a mystery to the player itself. Oracle is most likely driven by her curse and mystery. Witch is in service of her patron. There is a natural story element to it, and I want that.

Paladin is a cop-out. They really can't decide if Paladin religious or not, because one moment they talk about Paladin as if it is not tied to a religion and next moment the rules call that paladins receive gifts from their deity.

There is a difference between no power and unexplained power. After all, unexplained power is merely something that is waiting to be built on and later explained by the GM and player. Having no power is exactly that.

In the end, it is easier to make new classes than change Fighter. Fighter is a sandbox class, an empty canvas, relic class. Lots of feats but no real class features. If you wanted "Fighter but with class features", there is all the other classes in the game. The closest to high level fighter to me is like that one Reynolds picture where a guy has like 20 weapons on his back with a smirk on his face. His source of power might be weapons to the point of gadgets, but that is one option.

"I'm just saying the "bad" writing is in place to just say a particularly talented person is able to just do things without an explanation."
I am just saying that "bad" writing is in place just say any person is able to do things because of a good explanation they came up with. But too bad this is not Exalted, this is a crunch system so it needs be to systematic.

[Orfamay Quest]

Envall wrote:

Oracle and Witch are good examples where the power might be mysterious, but it is not a mystery to the player itself. Oracle is most likely driven by her curse and mystery. Witch is in service of her patron. There is a natural story element to it, and I want that.

Well, I'm glad that you want that, but a lot of people don't, which is why I'm asking about how to fluff the Fighter to be awesome without needing to be supernatural.

It's actually fairly explicit that witches need not actually understand their patrons -- "As a witch grows in power, she might learn about the source of her magic, but some remain blissfully unaware. Some are even afraid of that source, fearful of what it might be or where its true purposes lie." There's not even any indication in the source material that the patron is an actual intelligent being.

The text for oracles is similar: "These divine vessels are granted power without their choice, selected by providence to wield powers that even they do not fully understand," and again there's no indication of agency involved. Maybe being an eighth son of an eighth son is all it takes to wield spell-like power, or maybe it has something to do with astrology.

There's no explanation, either at the character or at the player level, for why an oracle can do what an oracle can do. Similarly, there's no explanation at either the character or the player level for why a fighter can do the things he does, except the basic idea that the fighter can't actually do anything awesome,.... which I reject.

Too many people, both on and off this thread, have equated "wuxia" to "magical" to "supernatural" to "superhuman." Those are actually four different concepts, as Conan and and Batman both demonstrate. Batman is the illustrative example of what TV Tropes calls the Charles Atlas Superpower, able to do superhuman things by virtue of --- well, of being Batman, basically. Tarzan, through a combination of being an English aristocrat and raised by noble savages, was capable of actions no civilized person could perform. The titular Count of Monte Cristo simply learned to be awesome because there was nothing else to do while serving twenty years for a crime he did not commit.

[Envall]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Well, I'm glad that you want that, but a lot of people don't, which is why I'm asking about how to fluff the Fighter to be awesome without needing to be supernatural.

It's actually fairly explicit that witches need not actually understand their patrons -- "As a witch grows in power, she might learn about the source of her magic, but some remain blissfully unaware. Some are even afraid of that source, fearful of what it might be or where its true purposes lie." There's not even any indication in the source material that the patron is an actual intelligent being.

The text for oracles is similar: "These divine vessels are granted power without their choice, selected by providence to wield powers that even they do not fully understand," and again there's no indication of agency involved. Maybe being an eighth son of an eighth son is all it takes to wield spell-like power, or maybe it has something to do with astrology.

There's no explanation, either at the character or at the player level, for why an oracle can do what an oracle can do. Similarly, there's no explanation at either the character or the player level for why a fighter can do the things he does, except the basic idea that the fighter can't actually do anything awesome,.... which I reject.

Too many people, both on and off this thread, have equated "wuxia" to "magical" to "supernatural" to "superhuman." Those are actually four different concepts, as Conan and and Batman both demonstrate. Batman is the illustrative example of what TV Tropes calls the Charles Atlas Superpower, able to do superhuman things by virtue of --- well, of being Batman, basically....

My post was reply directly to the discussion of supernatural fighter that people want. I mean, I know this is your thread and its original purpose, but at this point we are discussing the topics raised by the original thread, not replaying to the thread itself.

I mean with Oracle and Witch, the character is not the same as the player. Character having no idea where their power comes from is not the same as the player not knowing where their power comes from.

There is an explanation why Oracle gets her powers. It is the mystery. Why can Bones Oracle raise the dead? Because the mystery allows it. Why can Batman (depending on what Batman we are talking about) fly from building to building? Because hook gadget.

Batman can fight, but in most versions he is not superhuman. Bane breaks his back. He is not a mutated freak with mutation powers. Batman is physically strong, mentally powerful guy with lot of gadgets. Superman is truly superhuman, he is a person whose power comes from supernatural origin. Batman is a superhero, but not superhuman (of course once again depending on which version because there are lot of those).

This is why I pushed for technology in my first post. It is the path for gadgets outside of artefacts that are more mundane than fantastical.

[Orfamay Quest]

Envall wrote:

There is an explanation why Oracle gets her powers. It is the mystery.

Shrug. That's not an explanation, though. That's simply replacing one unknown with another explicit unknown.

In fact, Tarzan's explanation for his superhuman abilities is actually better than the explanation for either the Witch's or the Oracle's, because we at least know what "British aristocrat" means. Bran Mak Morn's "mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will" are much more meaningful than "a patron."

Steven King put it well: "Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless." One of the major point of the fighter trope is that the fighter is NOT "gifted by the Gods" or granted some arcane bloodline or something. He's awesome because he chooses to be awesome, and so he can do fantastic things while still following the rules of the universe (as understood by the typical fourteen year old boy who is reading Wierd Tales, not necessarily by a Ph.D. physicist). The phrase from upthread "not too cartoonishly disrespectful to physics" embodies the same idea.

A wizard is awesome because he remakes the rules of our normal universe.

A fighter is awesome because he does superheroic things within the rules of our normal universe.

[hiiamtom]

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

[Orfamay Quest]

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

Shrug. It wasn't built for science fiction, either, and look at the recent adventure paths.

Certainly a lot of the base material from which it was drawn were S&S stories. Don't try to tell me that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser aren't a fighter and rogue, respectively.

[thejeff]

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

What genre expectations should it be meeting? What are examples of fantasy works that Pathfinder is built for?
Preferably not ones based on D&D, since that's too much of a closed loop.

[Envall]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Shrug. That's not an explanation, though. That's simply replacing one unknown with another explicit unknown.

In fact, Tarzan's explanation for his superhuman abilities is actually better than the explanation for either the Witch's or the Oracle's, because we at least know what "British aristocrat" means. Bran Mak Morn's "mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will" are much more meaningful than "a patron."

Steven King put it well: "Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless." One of the major point of the fighter trope is that the fighter is NOT "gifted by the Gods" or granted some arcane bloodline or something. He's awesome because he chooses to be awesome, and so he can do fantastic things while still following the rules of the universe (as understood by the typical fourteen year old boy who is reading Wierd Tales, not necessarily by a Ph.D. physicist). The phrase from upthread "not too cartoonishly disrespectful to physics" embodies the same idea.

A wizard is awesome because he remakes the rules of our normal universe.

A fighter is awesome because he does superheroic things within the rules of our normal universe.

The name of the Oracle's domain is irrelevant. Mysteries are not actually mysteries. Because unlike the character, you, the player, know what you want it to be. You probably have any idea what the truth behind the mystery is. Because you are a player, not the character.

You flesh out the flavor inside the trappings of the rules. "Who is my character and where does his/her powers come from?" Very simple question. "He is a Sorcerer and he gets his powers from the..." Now you pick a bloodline. First decision. After you pick the bloodline, you got a theme and rules. Now you have your hands free, within these frames you can come up with any idea how that power come to be.

Because in the end, nobody can just choose to be awesome. You say Wizard remakes the rules of the universe, I say the opposite. Wizard acts according to the true rules of the universe that he found with his study of the arcana. Arcane magic in Golarion is completely mundane.

I am not adamant on keeping fighter weak and unable to do what he wants. I want to acknowledge that nobody gets what they want by just wanting really hard. Everyone relies on a method to be powerful, fighter included. And this thread had a lot of examples that were "cheating" in that area.

[Orfamay Quest]

thejeff wrote:

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

Well, there's what it was built for, and there's how it's being used. My understanding is that it was built to be a bug-for-bug compatible replacement for D&D 3.5 because there were a whole bunch of people that felt that WotC was abandoning them with the move to 4th edition, and so Paizo wanted to provide them with additional gaming material.

That said, I also believe that Paizo makes a near fetish of inclusiveness and has been systematically writing crunch, rules, and adventure narrative to make it cover as many different genres as they can, to provide people with additional gaming material. For example, the Occult handbook provides support for gothic horror as well as cosmic horror, something that Pathfinder wasn't really built for, either.

[Orfamay Quest]

Envall wrote:

Because in the end, nobody can just choose to be awesome.

Shrug. Batman did. Charles Atlas did. Edmond Dantes did. It's literally a standard trope.

Quote:

I want to acknowledge that nobody gets what they want by just wanting really hard.

In the real world, perhaps. In the world of heroic fiction, that statement is patently untrue.

[hiiamtom]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

Shrug. It wasn't built for science fiction, either, and look at the recent adventure paths.

Certainly a lot of the base material from which it was drawn were S&S stories. Don't try to tell me that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser aren't a fighter and rogue, respectively.

OK? None of that has any bearing on Golarion being one of the highest fantasy settings there is, and that absolute morality is cooked into the game mechanics which would go against Sword & Sorcery genre conventions.

Also, Pathfinder has zero science fiction because technology is represented as a replacement or alternative to magic. There may be supernatural elements to science fiction but they are intended to be unexplained phenomena and not magic.

thejeff wrote:

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

What genre expectations should it be meeting? What are examples of fantasy works that Pathfinder is built for?
Preferably not ones based on D&D, since that's too much of a closed loop.

Well D&D was based almost entirely on the Dying Earth series of books, and then modern influences rolled movies, TV, anime, etc into the inspirations for new setting and stories using the base rules. At this point in time, Pathfinder is so wrapped up in so many sources that there is a magical girl archetype in Ultimate Intrigue.

So Pathfinder's use can be generic with rules specific for a setting. The base setting of Golarion is high fantasy, and the rules and archetypes reflect that. Without already heavily restricting classes and levels, you cannot make Sword & Sorcery settings for Pathfinder. The best way to do it is with an E6/E8 type house rules. Using the "default" rules or PFS rules means you are built for the craziest high fantasy imaginable.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

That said, I also believe that Paizo makes a near fetish of inclusiveness and has been systematically writing crunch, rules, and adventure narrative to make it cover as many different genres as they can, to provide people with additional gaming material. For example, the Occult handbook provides support for gothic horror as well as cosmic horror, something that Pathfinder wasn't really built for, either.

Pathfinder is terrible for gothic horror and cosmic horror, because as much as the types of themes are influencing the classes and mechanics the genres never ever have the level of capability that Pathfinder allows. Again, it's possible but requires heavy handed homebrewing. The mechanics have some small rules devoted to investigation of the unknown and horrible, and building tension with HP & spells is extremely difficult.

I mean just glance at another system built for adventures in other genres. Look at the mechanics. It is much easier to learn an entirely new system than it is to get the same effect by bending Pathfinder to match.

None of this is a problem with Pathfinder in any way, there is literally nothing still supported than can tell as crazy of stories of superheroes in high fantasy settings become near gods in the process of epic adventures. The only problem is when people then try to say a 20th level fighter should struggle to jump 4ft in the air without dedicating extremely limited resources into making that jump reliably, or shouldn't run as fast as a wizard flies at 5th level without dedicating even more rare resources.

[thejeff]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

thejeff wrote:

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

Well, there's what it was built for, and there's how it's being used. My understanding is that it was built to be a bug-for-bug compatible replacement for D&D 3.5 because there were a whole bunch of people that felt that WotC was abandoning them with the move to 4th edition, and so Paizo wanted to provide them with additional gaming material.

That said, I also believe that Paizo makes a near fetish of inclusiveness and has been systematically writing crunch, rules, and adventure narrative to make it cover as many different genres as they can, to provide people with additional gaming material. For example, the Occult handbook provides support for gothic horror as well as cosmic horror, something that Pathfinder wasn't really built for, either.

Well, that first part while certainly true, just pushes the question back a step. What was D&D built for?

[hiiamtom]

thejeff wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

thejeff wrote:

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

Well, there's what it was built for, and there's how it's being used. My understanding is that it was built to be a bug-for-bug compatible replacement for D&D 3.5 because there were a whole bunch of people that felt that WotC was abandoning them with the move to 4th edition, and so Paizo wanted to provide them with additional gaming material.

That said, I also believe that Paizo makes a near fetish of inclusiveness and has been systematically writing crunch, rules, and adventure narrative to make it cover as many different genres as they can, to provide people with additional gaming material. For example, the Occult handbook provides support for gothic horror as well as cosmic horror, something that Pathfinder wasn't really built for, either.

Well, that first part while certainly true, just pushes the question back a step. What was D&D built for?

Gary Gygax and his friends and family.

And Gygax liked morality based romantic high fantasy stories.

[Envall]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Shrug. Batman did. Charles Atlas did. Edmond Dantes did. It's literally a standard trope.

In the real world, perhaps. In the world of heroic fiction, that statement is patently untrue.

Oh which Batman? I really do not want to use Nolan Batman because it is also cheating, but what superhuman did TAS Batman ever do? There was always a trick, a gadget behind his victories. Actual superhuman villains, be it Bane or who else, broke him physically.

Also being fiction does not mean being without rules. You are not actually free to do whatever you want in SOMEONE ELSE'S fiction. That did not come out the best. Urgh, you know what I mean.

[Insain Dragoon]

Saitama is good example of a non-wuxia high level fighter can be.

He worked really hard and with diligence and became so good at the thing he wanted to do that it's all he needs.

[Bluenose]

thejeff wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

thejeff wrote:

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

Well, there's what it was built for, and there's how it's being used. My understanding is that it was built to be a bug-for-bug compatible replacement for D&D 3.5 because there were a whole bunch of people that felt that WotC was abandoning them with the move to 4th edition, and so Paizo wanted to provide them with additional gaming material.

That said, I also believe that Paizo makes a near fetish of inclusiveness and has been systematically writing crunch, rules, and adventure narrative to make it cover as many different genres as they can, to provide people with additional gaming material. For example, the Occult handbook provides support for gothic horror as well as cosmic horror, something that Pathfinder wasn't really built for, either.

Well, that first part while certainly true, just pushes the question back a step. What was D&D built for?

To play a game in a setting that you could imagine the characters from Appendix N appearing in and not being out of place; or to play a game in the settings from Appendix N and have characters that seem like they aren't OCPs there.

[Envall]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Saitama is good example of a non-wuxia high level fighter can be.

He worked really hard and with diligence and became so good at the thing he wanted to do that it's all he needs.

One Punch Man is pretty much satire, don't think it counts.

[Insain Dragoon]

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Saitama is good example of a non-wuxia high level fighter can be.

He worked really hard and with diligence and became so good at the thing he wanted to do that it's all he needs.

One Punch Man is pretty much satire, don't think it counts.

Why shouldn't it? Saitama is a great example of the natural evolution of a martial.

[swoosh]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Why shouldn't it? Saitama is a great example of the natural evolution of a martial.

Are you kidding? I mean sure, blowing things up with punches is cool and all but there's one scene where he jumps really, really far and that's just too unrealistic to stomach.

[Envall]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Saitama is good example of a non-wuxia high level fighter can be.

He worked really hard and with diligence and became so good at the thing he wanted to do that it's all he needs.

One Punch Man is pretty much satire, don't think it counts.

Why shouldn't it? Saitama is a great example of the natural evolution of a martial.

Is that a rhetoric question?

It is a gag manga.

[Insain Dragoon]

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Saitama is good example of a non-wuxia high level fighter can be.

He worked really hard and with diligence and became so good at the thing he wanted to do that it's all he needs.

One Punch Man is pretty much satire, don't think it counts.

Why shouldn't it? Saitama is a great example of the natural evolution of a martial.

Is that a rhetoric question?

It is a gag manga.

That still is not a convincing argument for why it doesnt count.

[Envall]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Envall wrote:

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Saitama is good example of a non-wuxia high level fighter can be.

He worked really hard and with diligence and became so good at the thing he wanted to do that it's all he needs.

One Punch Man is pretty much satire, don't think it counts.

Why shouldn't it? Saitama is a great example of the natural evolution of a martial.

Is that a rhetoric question?

It is a gag manga.

That still is not a convincing argument for why it doesnt count.

It is. It does not matter if you stubbornly don't just accept it.

[thejeff]

Bluenose wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

thejeff wrote:

hiiamtom wrote:

Pathfinder isn't built for Sword and Sorcery at all.

That's part of the problem. What was Pathfinder built for?

Well, there's what it was built for, and there's how it's being used. My understanding is that it was built to be a bug-for-bug compatible replacement for D&D 3.5 because there were a whole bunch of people that felt that WotC was abandoning them with the move to 4th edition, and so Paizo wanted to provide them with additional gaming material.

That said, I also believe that Paizo makes a near fetish of inclusiveness and has been systematically writing crunch, rules, and adventure narrative to make it cover as many different genres as they can, to provide people with additional gaming material. For example, the Occult handbook provides support for gothic horror as well as cosmic horror, something that Pathfinder wasn't really built for, either.

Well, that first part while certainly true, just pushes the question back a step. What was D&D built for?

To play a game in a setting that you could imagine the characters from Appendix N appearing in and not being out of place; or to play a game in the settings from Appendix N and have characters that seem like they aren't OCPs there.

Then it's a really horrible failure. It doesn't (and didn't even back in the AD&D day, though for slightly different reasons) handle the vast majority of those books/settings/characters well.

Partly because there's a very broad variety of settings, magic systems, power levels and genre tropes in those books.

[Insain Dragoon]

Next thing you know you'll tell me Slayers isn't a good example of high level casters because you think it's too silly.

You don't have a real argument against Saitama.

[Orfamay Quest]

thejeff wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

To play a game in a setting that you could imagine the characters from Appendix N appearing in and not being out of place; or to play a game in the settings from Appendix N and have characters that seem like they aren't OCPs there.

Then it's a really horrible failure. It doesn't (and didn't even back in the AD&D day, though for slightly different reasons) handle the vast majority of those books/settings/characters well.

Partly because there's a very broad variety of settings, magic systems, power levels and genre tropes in those books.

Granted. Which is why I'm trying to explore ways to make it do a better job of fulfilling what I perceive to be the joint desires of the publisher (to make the system more broadly workable with across settings, magic systems, power levels, and genre tropes) and the specifically expressed desires of the target community to make martial types more effective without making them "wuxia."

Ideally without at the same time nerfing the hell out of casters, because that's simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[GM Rednal]

Perhaps it would be best to work backwards, starting from a list of what you actually want the fighter to be able to accomplish in a narrative sense. In most cases, this generally falls under being able to do something themselves, or being able to counter something that another character does.

For example, Casters' ability to Levitate and Fly, even at low levels, makes the Climb skill largely redundant. Perhaps as part of a 'Mundane Training' feature, a Fighter could learn to tie ropes to objects and throw them in such a way as to reach up to the rope's height and lodge securely in whatever it's thrown at (which is totally Batman-like, I suppose). Presto, a way to reach high places without necessarily having to rely on a caster or having a super-high climb score, and not necessarily an option available to every class.

...Well, I suppose there are Grappling Hooks for that (mundane equipment, yay!), but my point stands. XD Figure out what you WANT the Fighter to be doing, and design something to fit.

[Kirth Gersen]

Maybe we could step back even further, too, and examine the system itself. Like, what if it, too, was more class-dependent in some areas? Casters get to play a whole sub-game (spells) that occupy half the rulebooks, and that martials for the most part don't get access to. In 1e, the thief got to play a whole sub-game (skills and traps) using different rules than everyone else.

What if the game rules themselves were totally different for fighters?

Bluff for them might not be a simple skill purchased with skill points, but an entire manual of options and checks and modifiers and different outcomes, none of which non-martials could use? Likewise for athletics, diplomacy, leadership, tactics, and so on.

[Orfamay Quest]

GM Rednal wrote:

Perhaps it would be best to work backwards, starting from a list of what you actually want the fighter to be able to accomplish in a narrative sense.

I thought that was what I was asking people for.

Quote:

For example, Casters' ability to Levitate and Fly, even at low levels, makes the Climb skill largely redundant. Perhaps as part of a 'Mundane Training' feature, a Fighter could learn to tie ropes to objects and throw them in such a way as to reach up to the rope's height and lodge securely in whatever it's thrown at (which is totally Batman-like, I suppose). Presto, a way to reach high places without necessarily having to rely on a caster or having a super-high climb score, and not necessarily an option available to every class.

I think that's too limiting an approach. First, not everyone needs to be able to do all the same things (I've seen that trope too many times in super hero rpgs, where everyone has a generic "Ranged Attack" despite some people casting lightning bolts and other people throwing high speed Kraft singles). Superman flies, the Hulk leaps, and Spider-man swings on webs, but they all get to the top of the Kraftwerk building at the same time, because they all spent the same number of points on "Movement."

Second,... and it's really the same issue,... fighters and other martial types should have really awesome iconic abilities of their own. For example, clerics' iconic ability is probably healing, and the only people that can heal anywhere near as well as clerics are essentially vice-clerics (oracles). Wizards have their own iconic abilities, of which the ability to evoke flaming hot area-of-effect death is probably the most obvious. Paladins smite evil, bards charm, barbarians rage,....

... and fighters suck wombat genitalia. Barbarians and paladins are both generally better at doing hit point damage or standing and tanking it in the front line than the fighter is.

And as for rogues,.... well, rogues suck fighters-who-are-sucking-wombat-genitalia. Even their iconic abilities (stealth and breaking-and-entering) are outclassed by any number of other classes.

And this, of course, gets back to the stock phrase I've been using for a while. "The rogue is so sneaky that ...." and fill it in with something awesomely cool that could become an iconic power.

[hiiamtom]

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Maybe we could step back even further, too, and examine the system itself. Like, what if it, too, was more class-dependent in some areas? Casters get to play a whole sub-game (spells) that occupy half the rulebooks, and that martials for the most part don't get access to. In 1e, the thief got to play a whole sub-game (skills and traps) using different rules than everyone else.

What if the game rules themselves were totally different for fighters?

Bluff for them might not be a simple skill purchased with skill points, but an entire manual of options and checks and modifiers and different outcomes, none of which non-martials could use? Likewise for athletics, diplomacy, leadership, tactics, and so on.

I would much prefer the game went the other direction where systems were more generic and less dependent on specialization. In general keeping all the systems in place, but just make them XP costs instead of dedicated class level would offer more customization and modularity and with iconics you still have characters to serve as examples to make similar builds from.

[Kirth Gersen]

hiiamtom wrote:

I would much prefer the game went the other direction where systems were more generic and less dependent on specialization. In general keeping all the systems in place, but just make them XP costs instead of dedicated class level would offer more customization and modularity and with iconics you still have characters to serve as examples to make similar builds from.

I would, too -- but then I'd be designing a classless system like GURPS. Which is running directly contrary to the goal of improving PF, a game founded on class identity (for better or for worse).

[thejeff]

Orfamay Quest wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

To play a game in a setting that you could imagine the characters from Appendix N appearing in and not being out of place; or to play a game in the settings from Appendix N and have characters that seem like they aren't OCPs there.

Then it's a really horrible failure. It doesn't (and didn't even back in the AD&D day, though for slightly different reasons) handle the vast majority of those books/settings/characters well.

Partly because there's a very broad variety of settings, magic systems, power levels and genre tropes in those books.

Granted. Which is why I'm trying to explore ways to make it do a better job of fulfilling what I perceive to be the joint desires of the publisher (to make the system more broadly workable with across settings, magic systems, power levels, and genre tropes) and the specifically expressed desires of the target community to make martial types more effective without making them "wuxia."

Ideally without at the same time nerfing the hell out of casters, because that's simply robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Honestly, you can't emulate most of those books, or most of genre fantasy in general without nerfing the hell out of casters, because PF casters are way more powerful than the vast majority of the source material. Or at least more combat effective - sources with world shaking ritual magic are fairly common, but mostly as "We have to stop BBEG's ritual before ...".

[Orfamay Quest]

hiiamtom wrote:

I would much prefer the game went the other direction where systems were more generic and less dependent on specialization.

The problem with this -- and I've seen this in systems dating back to the [ahem]... well, a long time ago, anyway -- is that not only do the systems become more generic, but so do many of the characters. It was even a problem with 3.5 (and one of the things that Paizo tried to get away from) with prestige classes. Because so many cool abilities were only a single class level away, people would help themselves to all the cool abilities like they were at a buffet.... and everyone went for the pizza instead of for the braised tofu.

Paizo tried to reward specialization, and at least in the caster classes succeeded. It's very rare, for example, to see an optimization guide to a caster class that recommends multiclassing away, because you almost always get more with another level of CODzilla than you would with a barbarian level.

However, they didn't do as much (or as well) with the martials, and that's largely for the reasons we've been discussing on this thread -- a 10th level of rogue offers.... a point of BAB, a point of reflex save, and the ability to get a +10 on a disguise check once per day. A first level of fighter gets me a point of BAB, two points on a more important save (and one that I'm weak at), and literally more feats than I can count, between the bonus feat and all martial weapon proficiencies.