Mista Green wrote: "80 (DPR) is the minimum benchmark for level 10. ...more"
I think you play very differently then the vast majority of people on this board.
Nothing wrong with that, but I would try to be less dismissive of other peoples play styles, especially if you are trying to convince them and/or the designers of your opinions.
PS "HP damage is like Canadian money. It's not worth a lot, so you need a lot of it to make up for that. "
1.00 CAD = 0.975247 USD
Those classes are unplayable in casual play. You need CharOp quality builds to make them work.TWF went from unplayable to all non Rogues to unplayable for everyone, so what it does or does not do for off hand weapons is a moot point.
Considering lots of people play fighters and characters with some variety of TWF, I'm going to say that your definition of "unplayable" is probably idiosyncratic and not generally agreed to by everybody.
If you believe that certain things are unplayable, by all means, make your opinions known. That's what playtest threads are for. But don't assume that everyone must agree with your methodology or conclusions.
By the rules as written, you are pretty far off in your assessments of what a CR 10 should be able to do.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/monsters/monsterCreation.html
A creature that relies on melee attacks will be attacking at +18, and do an average of 45 damage if ALL attacks hit. Assuming that you are taking steps to not get hit, mitigate the damage, and generally not allow monsters to totally control the flow of combat, I think a wide variety of options are viable, even though they are not "totally optimal".
I think much of what you are saying may have been true in various parts of 3.5, but there is something of a consensus that the classes are as equal as they can be in a game where some characters get to cast Wish, and others get to hit things really really hard a bunch of times. In short, melee types can be VERY relevant in combat these days.
Here is a challenge to you and indeed no small number of others here. Mathematically tell me why the theorycraft falls about."But Cirno, why do I use math?"
Because we're all nerds in the nerdy hobby of tabletop gaming, and D&D has always been built on the shoulders of math, that's why. Because D&D is math. Because as soon as you roll that die - and you do it a lot in D&D! - you're doing math.
Point the first: I fully approve theorycraft as a valuable tool to compare two things mechanically. There is no reason to 'play out' 1000 combats between a 3rd level Fighter with feats x, y, z and a 3rd level barbarian with feats x and y and rage power z to see how they mechanically stack up. If you want to know which character is going to be more successful in a stand-up fight, then theorycraft is the way to go.
However, there is much more to the game than 1000 static combats. Because the game is stochastic, we don't get to use average results from 1000 combats.
Theroycrafting can tell you which character is more likely to live or die, more likely to kill all the bad guys or whiff helplessly, but that's a vacuum.
The actual game takes the standard theorycrafting tools (featureless planes, Stealth vs Perception surprise rounds and encounter distances, etc) and turns them on their ears.
In an actual game you have to deal with so many factors that theorycrafting becomes unable to handle them all...
First, what's the party makeup? Is it 3 people? 4? 5? 6? more? Does the party have henchmen? Cohorts? NPCs? Guides? Horses/Mounts? Animal Companions? Guard Dogs? Allies?
How were stats generated? What point buy, what dice method? Are all players the same level, or do they advance at different rates (due to deaths, missing games, whatever).
What's the class makeup? How much arcane magic is available? how much divine magic? How many group buffs? How much time do you have to prepare for the encounter? Do you have a surprise round? What's the initiative?
What's the tactical situation? Are the enemies intelligent, beasts, mindless? Is there usable terrain and cover? Can an ambush be set, or detected? Is the encounter to the death, a skirmish? Does the party have to win right now, or can they retreat and come back later? Is there potential for negotiation, or avoidance?
How many encounters are there in the adventuring day? How many resources were expended earlier? Can you nova the encounter? Have you previously nova'd, and were attacked while resting?
All this, and we haven't even gotten to dice rolls... while over 1000 battles, the rolls will curve nicely, in *this* battle, a botched save, a max damage crit, these things take a basic encounter and change it. Maybe the BBEG is rolling on the floor after a Save-or-Lose and now it's just cleanup. Or maybe the Wizard and the Cleric in your party are caught in a save-or-lose, and now the rest of the party has to finish the battle, or escape, or surrender, or what have you.
So, math is important. It's especially important in direct comparisons (the more similar the two subjects are, the more valuable theorycrafting becomes). However, trying to theorycraft 'All Magi' vs 'All Bards' is a difficult proposition. For every character there are choices of race, traits, feats, stats, skills, spells, class features that are all variable. Theorycrafting can easily tell you 'A Magus built this way is inferior in melee combat vs a Bard built this way, given this opponent in this situation'. However, that's such a minor slice of the possibilities that it fails to be valuable in a playtest situation, *unless* it is describing a gross imbalance.
At this level (playtesting a class provided by professional game designers), theorycrafting is only valuable if it shows a *massive* imbalance between a similar established class.
While 'actual playtesting' is basically anecdotal when taken singularly in a vacuum, enough anecdotes become data. Good playtests, that describe situations and mention if the dice went one way or the other are very valuable to see how a class works in actual play, and massive playtest data is something that is very difficult to generate as a game company, which is why companies look to external testers to provide it. Massive theorycrafting is much easier to do in house, although it is still valuable for external theorycraft to happen, because more eyes have more potential to see broken combinations. But, you really need BOTH, and as we aren't the developers, actual playtests are worth more than any amount of theorycrafting.
TL;DR: theorycrafting is important, but actual playtesting is more valuable to a developer.
Example please. The adult white dragon pushes the numbers a bit, but well, it is a dragon. Other then that, most are within a few points of the numbers on the chart.
I find that the Pathfinder math can work well if you make assumptions concerning optimal encounter design.
If you assume that the optimal encounter is not 1 CR+4 monster but rather 1-2 CR equivalent + some combo of CR -1 and -2 mobs and that encounters are designed to last roughly 3 rounds (1 initial contact round for manuevering/buffing/ranged combat, and 2 or so for melee scrum) doing x damage at level y is probably adequate.
Under these scenarios the SoS/SoD caster can negate a % of the opposition early but unless they have a multi-target "I win" button they generally can't win the encounter in the first round. This gives the Melee characters the ability to close and then do their hack-n-slash routine (1 round charge + 2nd round Full attack) and contribute meaningfully to the fight.
If you play 4-5 PCs on 1 Monster (which some people play) there really isn't any reason whatsoever to not go Nova and swing for the fences with a optimized SoS/SoD spell every encounter. These fights either require massive defenses on the part of the monster and the ability to slay 1-2 PCs a round or they turn into "Wizard is cruise control for boring".
The problem is that "optimized" play has IMHO turned into a rather gameplay exercise where the party hangs out in a safe refuge, uses divination to find the BBEG, spell buffs, teleports in and goes for the 1 round alpha strike every single encounter.
I understand that some people like that style of play and feel that the extended 3.x ruleset allows rogues and fighters to feel less marginalized during encounters like this but realize that for a certain percentage of games (I'd say the majority of Pathfinder enthuisasts) this scenario does not represent their ideal form of gameplay and they actively seek to undermine it through various methods (metagaming, different encounter designs, even fudging) because they feel optimized play is completely and totally boring.
It's also the reason why some people enjoy playing Exalted even though by RAW optimized play is going to be Chung-xalted with paranoia combos every round of every combat.
So while 3.x Pathfinder is certainly flawed, it's also playable even though it's Herp Derp "Caster Edition".
The more I talk to those here the more it becomes clear that it will not become anything more than that, and while me and my buddies could fix it to give some amount of depth to the experience doing so would require stripping out everything that makes Pathfinder Pathfinder... at which point we would be better served sticking to our 2 shelves of 3.5 books and 2 chapters of house rules.
That was clear in the Beta playtest, which is why I released an entire homebrew game to my group not long after the release of the Pathfinder core rules. I stick with Paizo because they write cool adventures that I can then modify for use -- not because they necessarily have any commitment to game balance.
Look at it this way: no one commercially produces the game we want to play. No matter where we start (3.5 SRD, PRD, Monte Cook, whatever), it's still "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit: The RPG," unless heavily modified. Pathfinder seems to be the one system still actively churning out ideas that can be stripped for modified 3.X spare parts, so we can still support them on that basis, without necessarily expecting them to create a balanced system.
It's also the reason why some people enjoy playing Exalted even though by RAW optimized play is going to be Chung-xalted with paranoia combos every round of every combat.
Attempting to play Exalted in other mode than Chung-xalted does, in fact, require from a GM to cheat about every second combat in which PCs are faced with opposition that can pose any danger to them at all, unless the party is OK with regular character turnover due to random deaths. That if said GM is good enough at measuring opposition to avoid TPKs and restricts yourself from using grand killsticks, unexpected attacks, massive damage Charms and other fun stuff that puts "paranoia" in paranoia combat. That's what I was forced to finally accept after running 2E for a year and a half (1E was less murderous, but had other issues). DnD/PF's balance issues aren't remotely as bad. I was able to run whole campaigns to early two-digit levels without any outright cheating, despite ramping up the challenge factor, compared to published APs I used.
So it is a really bad counterexample.
That was clear in the Beta playtest, which is why I released an entire homebrew game to my group not long after the release of the Pathfinder core rules.
Can you give a link to it?
(I wouldn't call my own houserules a new game, but they are pretty extensive, including significant rewrites for every core melee class, and I'm still mining for ideas.)
Oh, I'm not expecting them to give me everything I want right away. I am expecting some sort of solid framework, since that's what I am paying for. I can overlook balance problems. I cannot overlook a complete lack of balancing.
I'd suggest your expectations are maybe a bit high, since I don't know of a game like the one you describe outside of individual, non-commercial efforts like Frank's, mine, and those of the zillions of other people who notice the same things we do.
Commercially, an unbalanced game seems to sell best -- or, recently, a better-balanced game that was stripped of most of what made it D&D, but I won't go there.
(I wouldn't call my own houserules a new game, but they are pretty extensive, including significant rewrites for every core melee class, and I'm still mining for ideas.)
I'd love to see your efforts as well, if you wouldn't mind sending them
My houserules have only been playtested up to 5th level before I hit a critical player shortage, and there's a LOT there, so I'm pretty certain there are a number of infinite-abuse loopholes that will need to be plugged. On the whole, though, it was intended to allow melee characters to remain viable up into higher levels, without feeling like caddies.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Example please. The adult white dragon pushes the numbers a bit, but well, it is a dragon. Other then that, most are within a few points of the numbers on the chart.
Most CR 10 monsters aren't very good at self-buffing. The rakshasa (sorc 7) and guardian naga (sorc 9, with cleric spells, but also Lawful Good and thus rarely comes up as an opponent in most campaigns) are the best spellcasters by a mile. The GN could stack up a lot of good sor and clr buffs, especially on the defensive side, but with only 1 attack per round (2 if hasted) its best-case scenario as a combat killer is limited.
Most CR 10 creatures look a lot more like this:
Bebilith (AC 22, 150 hp, DR 10/good)
Full attack: +19 for 2d6+4d4+27 (claws are 19-20)
Full attack with PA: +15 for 2d6+4d4+51 (claws are 19-20)
Standard (cleave/PA): +15 (2d6+17) vs. 2 targets – assuming SA/cleave with bite for better damage + rot
Fire giant (AC 24, 142 hp)
Full attack +21/+16/+11 (9d6+45/19-20)
FA + PA +18/+13/+8 (9d6+72/19-20)
Standard (great cleave/PA) +18 (3d6+24/19-20) vs. 2+ targets
Adult white dragon (AC 31 w/shield spell, 149 hp, DR 5/magic)
Full attack bite +20 (2d6+10/19–20), 2 claws +19 (1d8+7), 2 wings +14 (1d6+3), tail slap +14 (1d8+10)
FA + PA bite +16 (2d6+22/19–20), 2 claws +15 (1d8+15), 2 wings +10 (1d6+7), tail slap +10 (1d8+22)
SA (true strike + vital strike + power attack bite) +36 (4d6+22/19-20)
These aren't low-balled, gimped enemies; they are the presumptive standard encounters right out of the PFSRD for 10th-level parties to face. These are also the guys who might auto-kill characters in 2 rounds.
For the opposition, assume the most vanilla of 10th level fighter defensive gear, costing less a total of about 11K (out of 62K WBL, leaving 51K for his stat items, misc nice things, and BFS):
+1 full plate
+1 insight AC Ioun stone
+1 ring of protection
+1 amulet of natural armor
Dex 13, Dodge feat.
No shield (since he's most likely a TH fighter), no better DEX to take advantage of armor training, no +2 gear. No buffs of any kind. No help from allies.
Basic Fighter Guy has AC 25, which means that 3 typical CR 10 melee-focused monsters will miss him about 20-25% of the time, 40-50% of the time if power attacking.
Whatever Fighter Guy's offensive options (in this case, he probably has maxed STR with stat points and items, perhaps as high as 28 if he's really focused), going with the bare minimum token investment in defense he's unlikely to get one-rounded or even two-rounded by any of these creatures one on one... and bear in mind that these are supposed to be CR10 for a party of four, not a one-on-one fight.
The dragon will prove the most challenging because of its massive mobility advantage and high AC. It could potentially do a lot of damage, but half of its attacks are iffy propositions to hit.
The bebilith is potentially dangerous because it could double-hit with claws and roll well enough on its armor-busting CMB attack to peel the fighter like a grape and near-auto-hit thereafter.
The fire giant has no DR, a middling AC, and iteratives that probably aren't going to hit. He's probably least likely to
Any of these standard monsters could be made more vicious by changing their feat selection (say, swapping around the fire giant's feats for Vital Strike and Improved Vital Strike so he takes one good whack for big damage rather than one decent whack and two probable misses, and enabling him to move around better is probably to the giant's advantage), but at that point they're not quite the same monster any more and might warrant a CR increase.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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After all a level + 4 encounter could very easily end up with something like 'as many Balors as there are players'. At which point you really do need to be able to go one on one, and win. Because that's what you are doing.There's one name for the Balor One-to-one encounter in any game where the players weren't supplied by Monty Haul... it's called a TPK. That's not a baseline encounter... that's a freak of gaming that's way off the curve.
It's also a good example of how just relying on CR to design encounters can result in a total game meltdown.... and the limits of theorycraft.
You could look for the Fighterman vs. balor thread describing the chances that a single-classed fighter with standard WBL gear could one-round a balor. It was an interesting read.
Oh, I'm not expecting them to give me everything I want right away. I am expecting some sort of solid framework, since that's what I am paying for. I can overlook balance problems. I cannot overlook a complete lack of balancing.I'd suggest your expectations are maybe a bit high, since I don't know of a game like the one you describe outside of individual, non-commercial efforts like Frank's, mine, and those of the zillions of other people who notice the same things we do.
Commercially, an unbalanced game seems to sell best -- or, recently, a better-balanced game that was stripped of most of what made it D&D, but I won't go there.
I know of plenty. However none of them are tabletop games. And far more flippantly disregard balance.
But you are right. Most players don't want balance. They want to 'pwn all the noobs' with godmode on.
4th edition doesn't count. It intended to be balanced, but did not even come close to doing so, while at the same time stripping the game down to video game like levels of interactivity. Most tabletop games intended to be balanced. That intent means nothing if not backed by deeds.
After all a level + 4 encounter could very easily end up with something like 'as many Balors as there are players'. At which point you really do need to be able to go one on one, and win. Because that's what you are doing.There's one name for the Balor One-to-one encounter in any game where the players weren't supplied by Monty Haul... it's called a TPK. That's not a baseline encounter... that's a freak of gaming that's way off the curve.
It's also a good example of how just relying on CR to design encounters can result in a total game meltdown.... and the limits of theorycraft.
It is a below average level + 4 encounter for a group of level 20 PCs. If it does slaughter everyone, then they were well below par.
Speaking of well below par I am beginning to...
Does the craft magic x feats limit you to putting certain bonuses on certain items taht use certain slots? Or can you make a cloak of STR and Headband of Speed, etc etc.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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There was also another non caster nerf hidden in there. Physical stat boosters share one slot. Mental stat boosters all share a different slot. Except that the non casters need more than one physical stat, and the casters don't need more than one mental stat. Getting more than one on the same item? Lots of extra cash. Oh, you need Str, Dex, and Con? Ouch. Caster takes his Con item and his mental stat item and shrugs.
+1 to this.
The mileage a physical stat user gets out of "secondary" physical stats far exceeds its mental stat equivalent.
Ftr/Brb/etc. boost to DEX and CON? Yes please!
Rog/ranged Ftr/Rgr/etc. boost to STR and CON? Yes please!
Wizard boost to WIS and CHA (INT/CHA cleric, INT/WIS sorc, etc.)? It's nice, I suppose, but I'd rather spend that dough on extra metamagic rods... :)
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Does the craft magic x feats limit you to putting certain bonuses on certain items taht use certain slots? Or can you make a cloak of STR and Headband of Speed, etc etc.
It might be impossible in PF; I'd have to double-check; however, I believe you can do it, but they cost +50% or maybe +100% if you want to make stat items in non-standard (head-mental/belt-physical) slots.
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I agree with the OP. Full or 3/4 BAB does not matter much unless you're a fighter trying to qualify for BAB prereq feats.
Full or 3/4 BAB is not really as important in the grand scheme of things as say, access to the weapon training + weapon specialization abilities, or the smiting ability, or the sneak attack ability, etc.
So if a PRC allows level to stack with fighter for the purposes of weapon specialization, it is a bit more powerful. If a PRC allows level to stack with paladin for smiting, to stack with rogues for sneak attack, or for ranger for fave enemy, then I could live on BAB 3/4. However, if it's class intended for melee or ranged (weapon) attacks, and it doesn't build on previous fighting classes (fighter, pally, ranger, rogue) then full BAB and full casting is perfectly acceptable.
This is why I don't get why people whine about Eldritch Knight: full BAB and (almost) full casting, with weapon specialization buildup enabled. A high STR high CHA (ftr/sor) or high STR high INT (ftr/wiz) or high DEX high (INT or CHA) (ray specialist, ray weapon specialization, ray improved critical, critical focus) are all awesome option (with the last being my fave, as you can effectively do 3 attacks at full BAB with scorching ray, each with the benefits of all your ftr feats...)
There was also another non caster nerf hidden in there.
Magic item crafting is a big new shiny advantage to the casters as well now: no XP costs anymore. And Master Craftsman is a false promise: fighters have the feats but not the skills to pull it off; barbarians and rangers have the skills but not the feats.
Mistah, you do realize that a CR+4 encounter should have arround a 50% success rate for the PCs. It is not a standard encounter. PCs, through optimization, can trivialize these encounters, but that is not the standard. The standard is characters who do not optimize and spend 1/4 to 1/2 of their feats and other resources not on combat abilities. This results in characters who are optimized being able to take out significantly more challenging encounters. They are not opperating at the baseline though, and I have seen builds that will perform at 2-3 levels higher because of optimization. What a character can do when optimized and what a player will do in an actual game are 2 totally different things. Classes need to be played on relatively the same power level. They do not need to have the same power level when optimized.
I am currently playing in a game where all of my feats on my ranger have gone to item crafting. I am still capable of handling encounters at my level. It is more fun, because the GM does not have to go out of his way to find monsters significantly more powerful than me to challenge me. I could play my class more efficiently, but that is not the character I want. So long as challenges are geared towards what the party can handle, it does not matter if they are fighting what the book says they can, 3 times that, or are lagging levels behind.
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Magic item crafting is a big bone to the casters as well: no XP costs anymore. And Master Craftsman is a false promise: fighters have the feats but not the skills to pull it off; barbarians and rangers have the skills but not the feats.
With more feats, spending one on Master Craftsman is hardly a problem for Barb/Ranger/Cav.
And as for Fighter - what ELSE would you use your skill points for, anyway ?
There was also another non caster nerf hidden in there. Physical stat boosters share one slot. Mental stat boosters all share a different slot. Except that the non casters need more than one physical stat, and the casters don't need more than one mental stat. Getting more than one on the same item? Lots of extra cash. Oh, you need Str, Dex, and Con? Ouch. Caster takes his Con item and his mental stat item and shrugs.+1 to this.
The mileage a physical stat user gets out of "secondary" physical stats far exceeds its mental stat equivalent.
Ftr/Brb/etc. boost to DEX and CON? Yes please!
Rog/ranged Ftr/Rgr/etc. boost to STR and CON? Yes please!
Wizard boost to WIS and CHA (INT/CHA cleric, INT/WIS sorc, etc.)? It's nice, I suppose, but I'd rather spend that dough on extra metamagic rods... :)
Indeed--I've found the +2 enhancement ioun stones for physical stats to be worth it for this reason. Yes, they cost more than just buying a belt with +2 to all three stats, but the +2 Str, Dex, Con belt is a trap because it makes it take way too long to get +4 and then +6 to Str (since you aren't allowed to have a belt that distributes unequally--for instance +4 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Con).
1. With more feats, spending one on Master Craftsman is hardly a problem for Barb/Ranger/Cav.
2. And as for Fighter - what ELSE would you use your skill points for, anyway ?
1. Yes, it is -- because feats don't scale with level the way spells do; you have to purchase chains instead. Warriors other than fighters need every feat they can lay their hands on just to do their jobs; they can't be spending minimum 2 more on something wizards can do for free.
2. Athletics. Perception. Handle Animal. Bluff if you want to intimidate anyone. Sense Motive if you want to not play the dumbest-seeming guy around. Plus anything you need for character purposes. Also, if the DM makes Knowledge (warfare) or Profession (soldier) or whatever worth anything at all, you want to keep that maxed out as well.
Indeed--I've found the +2 enhancement ioun stones for physical stats to be worth it for this reason. Yes, they cost more than just buying a belt with +2 to all three stats, but the +2 Str, Dex, Con belt is a trap because it makes it take way too long to get +4 and then +6 to Str (since you aren't allowed to have a belt that distributes unequally--for instance +4 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Con).
I pretty quickly just allowed people to build uneven belts, reverse engineering the math is pretty simple and that allows people to upgrade already existing magic items in a piecemeal fashion.
That way they get their +2 str item at the right time, they upgrade it to a +2 str, +2 con in a level or two, and then continue incrementally improving them as resources allow. The result is that they get the necessary boosts and the necessary time without forcing them to eat a ton of equipment slots. It also allows for more regular upgrades of combat effectiveness because they don't have to wait for wealth plateaus.
In can understand why Jason did the combo items like he did (ease of play and more importantly shorter word count) but allowing uneven progression is not even remotely gamebreaking and while it wouldn't fly in Organized Play seems to work fine in home campaigns.
1. With more feats, spending one on Master Craftsman is hardly a problem for Barb/Ranger/Cav.
2. And as for Fighter - what ELSE would you use your skill points for, anyway ?1. Yes, it is -- because feats don't scale with level the way spells do; you have to purchase chains instead. Warriors need every feat they can lay their hands on just to do their jobs; they can't be spending minimum 2 more on something wizards can do for free.
2. Athletics. Perception. Handle Animal. Bluff if you want to intimidate anyone. Sense Motive if you want to not play the dumbest-seeming guy around. Plus anything you need for character purposes. Also, if the DM makes Knowledge (warfare) or Profession (soldier) or whatever worth anything at all, you want to keep that maxed out as well.
Meh, while I'm not enamored with Master Craftsman as a PC choice (2+ feats to become a pseudo-caster?) you have to admit that some people really want to play the Bruenor Battlehammer archetype of the warrior/smith. Thus they faithfully build Dwarven Fighters with maximum craft.
Master Craftsman allows them to build Wulfgar's hammer. Prior to Master Craftsman that ability really didn't exist for non-casters.
I personally doubt that I'll ever have more than one or two PCs ever take Master Craftsman as the reward for investment isn't really great. However it makes sense as a NPC feat all day long as it helps explain the large number of magical items that really are of no use to casters. If non-magic NPCs are churning out items it's far easier to accept the christmas tree effect for example.
I'd love to see your efforts as well, if you wouldn't mind sending them
I've sent you the file. They are, unfortunately, not really in the shape where I can feel them worthy of posting on the net.
Meh, while I'm not enamored with Master Craftsman as a PC choice (2+ feats to become a pseudo-caster?) you have to admit that some people really want to play the Bruenor Battlehammer archetype of the warrior/smith.
I agree 100% that some people will burden the rest of the party with someone they need to babysit, because his character concept demands it. That's a failure of 3e, and remains a failing of 3.PF. In a better-engineered system, most character concepts should be viable even if they're nonstandard -- but that breaks "backwards compatibility."
I've sent you the file. They are, unfortunately, not really in the shape where I can feel them worthy of posting on the net.
Thanks! I look forward to checking them out. If you spot any glaring holes in my stuff, do give me a heads-up; I'm working on Version 2.0 for 2011.
2. Athletics. Perception. Handle Animal. Bluff if you want to intimidate anyone. Sense Motive if you want to not play the dumbest-seeming guy around. Plus anything you need for character purposes. Also, if the DM makes Knowledge (warfare) or Profession (soldier) or whatever worth anything at all, you want to keep that maxed out as well.
False. You do not need to keep skills maxed. Look at skill DCs, and what they do in game. By the time you have 5 ranks in accrobatics you are better than most olympic athletes. 5 points in a knowledge/profession skill shows that you are an expert in the field. You can split skill ranks up. The system was designed that way. That is why DCs are so trivially low.
False. You do not need to keep skills maxed. Look at skill DCs, and what they do in game. By the time you have 5 ranks in accrobatics you are better than most olympic athletes. 5 points in a knowledge/profession skill shows that you are an expert in the field. You can split skill ranks up. The system was designed that way. That is why DCs are so trivially low.
That might be... but then you're admitting that the skill monkey as a class focus is worthless, which exposes yet another unerlying system issue.
Thanks! I look forward to checking them out. If you spot any glaring holes in my stuff, do give me a heads-up; I'm working on Version 2.0 for 2011.
I'm sorry for hijacking the thread, but these forums have no PM function, and I got messages about undelivered mail right away. You might try sending me a letter to
and I'll send the files to the return address.
Mistah, you do realize that a CR+4 encounter should have arround a 50% success rate for the PCs. It is not a standard encounter. PCs, through optimization, can trivialize these encounters, but that is not the standard. The standard is characters who do not optimize and spend 1/4 to 1/2 of their feats and other resources not on combat abilities. This results in characters who are optimized being able to take out significantly more challenging encounters. They are not opperating at the baseline though, and I have seen builds that will perform at 2-3 levels higher because of optimization. What a character can do when optimized and what a player will do in an actual game are 2 totally different things. Classes need to be played on relatively the same power level. They do not need to have the same power level when optimized.Point 1: It is an encounter you are expected to face. I never said it was standard. 40% of encounters are harder than the norm, norm being level = CR. Not all of those 40 are 4 levels higher, but enough are that you would be hard pressed to go even a single character level without encountering at least one. And that's with the 'fast' advancement. You'll see more otherwise.
Point 2: The standard is characters... who spend 25-50% of their resources on non combat abilities. Since when?
Point 3: Who is doing the optimizing? Optimized casters punch well over their weight class. Optimized melee characters even out into 'average party member'.
I am currently playing in a game where all of my feats on my ranger have gone to item crafting. I am still capable of handling encounters at my level. It is more fun, because the GM does not have to go out of his way to find monsters significantly more powerful than me to challenge me. I could play my class more efficiently, but that is not the character I want. So long as challenges are geared towards what the party can handle, it does not matter if they are fighting what the book says they can, 3 times that, or are...
No it's not. APL +3 is consider an epic encounter. APL +4 is off the chart and leads to dead characters if not TPK. Now high stats, maximum optimization of characters, and/or more wealth than recommended can alter this but if you play a 15 pt build with character aren't optimized with appropriate wealth by level then the APL +4 encounter is killer.
False. You do not need to keep skills maxed. Look at skill DCs, and what they do in game. By the time you have 5 ranks in accrobatics you are better than most olympic athletes. 5 points in a knowledge/profession skill shows that you are an expert in the field. You can split skill ranks up. The system was designed that way. That is why DCs are so trivially low.That might be... but then you're admitting that the skill monkey as a class focus is worthless, which exposes yet another unerlying system issue.
3.x had a fundamental flaw in thinking that skills were a good balancing feature. This really hasn't been fixed in any of the commercial D&D variants that I've seen.
I understand that not every game has the same priorities (some people play combat heavy, skill use light and some people play very combat light social/skill use games) but everyone should be useful outside of combat. Yes in some people's games the fighter is still the leader of men that he was in OD&D and AD&D but in many games he's relegated to big stupid fighter.
Rather than use skills as a balancing factor (you can be good at skills if you take a 20% reduction in combat utility) everyone should have a good baseline of skills and skill points that allows them to be useful in a wide variety of situations.
Further not every skill is equally relevant. While craft is a very useful skill from a simulationist standpoint it's basically a worthless skill from a game balance perspective. Even if it confers some marginal mechanical benefit it's such a passive skill use that it really adds only marginal value to the game. After all the game is not Cobblers & Carpenters.
One solution is to give everyone a certain amount of really broad skills and excise the background skills from the game (this is the strategy they used in 4e to good effect) or you give people x number of active skills (stealth, bluff, athletics, etc) and y number of background skills (knowledges, languages, profession, craft) and never the two shall mix (this was the solution chosen in part by Shadowrun 3e). That way you have people that still have skill points in the expected active skills and also have the skill points to fulfill their character concepts without sacrificing in-game functionality.
I find that a large % of D&D players either go with increased skill points (works to a point but still maintains the divide of useful and useless skills) or the set the DCs low enough that outside of opposed skills (bluff vs sense motive and stealth vs perception) you can get to a decent result with a marginal investment in the skill.
The truth of the matter is that while Paizo did a decent job of cleaning up the skill system, they could've gone much farther in enabling player choice but were likely constrained by the dreaded backwards compatibility goal.
Backwards compatibility is good for improving baseline sales (something that was very much in doubt prior to the release of core) but is also a major straitjacket for designers. If they felt like a more divergent game would've achieved the same market saturation I think they would've gone for that but as in most thinks market demands often trump creative demands :| Fortunately outside of Organized Play the sky is the limit and if you want to homebrew Pathfinder into a new funky flavor I say go for it.
No it's not. APL +3 is consider an epic encounter. APL +4 is off the chart and leads to dead characters if not TPK. Now high stats, maximum optimization of characters, and/or more wealth than recommended can alter this but if you play a 15 pt build with character aren't optimized with appropriate wealth by level then the APL +4 encounter is killer.So if your party of say... a level 10 fighter, a level 10 rogue, a level 10 wizard, and a level 10 cleric fights a party of level 10s who are fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric your party is guaranteed to lose? If so that makes my point better than I could.
Now if you simply meant that it's dangerous that's the whole point. Most of the deaths that occur in a campaign are going to occur when fighting your equals, because that's what CR + 4 actually represents.
MG--
I think you're remembering things back from 3.5, when APL +4 was the epic boss encounter. In Pathfinder, they've changed this to APL+3 but made a few modifications that are subtle but important. One of them is the fact that NPCs count as 1 CR lower than their level now, so that party of level 10 NPCs would actually be APL+3. If they were all level 11, it would be APL+4 (and a scary scary fight, since they all outclass the PCs in level and only fall behind in gear).
No it's not. APL +3 is consider an epic encounter. APL +4 is off the chart and leads to dead characters if not TPK. Now high stats, maximum optimization of characters, and/or more wealth than recommended can alter this but if you play a 15 pt build with character aren't optimized with appropriate wealth by level then the APL +4 encounter is killer.So if your party of say... a level 10 fighter, a level 10 rogue, a level 10 wizard, and a level 10 cleric fights a party of level 10s who are fighter, rogue, wizard, and cleric your party is guaranteed to lose? If so that makes my point better than I could.
Now if you simply meant that it's dangerous that's the whole point. Most of the deaths that occur in a campaign are going to occur when fighting your equals, because that's what CR + 4 actually represents.
MG--
I think you're remembering things back from 3.5, when APL +4 was the epic boss encounter. In Pathfinder, they've changed this to APL+3 but made a few modifications that are subtle but important. One of them is the fact that NPCs count as 1 CR lower than their level now, so that party of level 10 NPCs would actually be APL+3. If they were all level 11, it would be APL+4 (and a scary scary fight, since they all outclass the PCs in level and only fall behind in gear).
Good point, I'm not sure how they did it 3.5 really as I didn't play much of it.
For the opposition, assume the most vanilla of 10th level fighter defensive gear, costing less a total of about 11K (out of 62K WBL, leaving 51K for his stat items, misc nice things, and BFS):
+1 full plate
+1 insight AC Ioun stone
+1 ring of protection
+1 amulet of natural armorDex 13, Dodge feat.
No shield (since he's most likely a TH...
I've never heard of a 10th-level fighter only having +1 gear. That seems ridiculous to me. Why on earth isn't he using all of his starting funds to get better gear?
What is the point of posting an example if it isn't at all realistic?