I agree there's a lot of potential in the system as it is Kaiyanwang, and I didn't mean to say it was unplayable, or even that the imbalances I mentioned are revealed in every campaign.When he said certain plots, I was thinking of things like the classical 'magic dominates and non-mages struggle against all odds to triumph' type setup, in which case a better balanced system could do the same way with simply a level gap (and could easily invert the plot to have mages struggling against a warlord or something like that.)
Uh, I see your point. I generally set the gameworld in factions. there is not wizards vs warlord.. there is [cheesy nation name] vs [cheesy faction name].. each has his caster and meleers and roguish character and they play more or less like a party of PCs.
I'm sure even a thief guild has his sorcerer assassin, and crossbow fighter sniper. A druidic circle has rangers and few barbarians too. A paladin chapter will feature a cleric chaplain. A wizard guild can summon brutes, but few buff-sponge monks could be cool if a situation with odd magic arises. inquisition will feature Clerics, Inquisitors, Assassins (rogue). Lord Kubota (Cavalier) has his Shugenjas (Elemental Wizards), Ninjas (Rogues), Bushi (Fighters). His allied temple of Monks has Sohei too (Paladins).
Moreover, I re-state it: "optimizers" DMs here are IMHO great carebears with their casters. I wonder if spells effects are adjudicated in a very favorale manner. i wonder how much hit and run tactics are used.
Smart enemies in the short term COULD favor casters, ubt I'm not sure on the long term how can go if you manage to make them waste spells, or to use them as counter-measures for other spellcaster.
Magic can fail you. What about impeded and wild magic?
YMMV of course. For me, it works and is awesome.
(this does not mean I wouldn't change several things if I had the power - I simply don't see differences and problems as big as some people show them here).
This gets the point across, in detail in one sentence. Brevity is beauty, at times. Times like where long and detailed posts are removed without warning or cause.
It's also rude, offensive and without justification,which is why your posts get removed in the first place. Brevity is only beauty when you can also make it politely, otherwise it just comes across as "F*** off" and that's pretty ugly.
Now in 1st and 2nd edition? Fireball was one of the best spells in the game. I always went for it ASAP and encouraged others to do the same. Aside from legacy though, there's little point even having it in the game in its current state.
Yes, I too recall the TPKs inflicted when the wizard thoughtlessly released a fireball in a confined space ... after taking it every time to begin with, it soon became the most unused spell in the spell lists. Just goes to show that all play-styles are not the same and experiences do differ!
Peter? What stories in the game can you play now, with imbalanced class discrepancies, that you couldn't tell in a more balanced game by having imbalanced levels instead?
Heck, in such a setting you'd actually have more options for those kinds of stories, because you could flip the coin on it's head and have the noncaster be the experienced hero and the caster be the rookie who can barely keep up.
Perhaps I phrased this poorly.
The large thing that jumps out at me here isn't that I want a game that is at times slightly imbalanced, but rather that as past examples have shown (e.g. 4th Edition) when you attempt to remove anything potentially unbalancing you end up with a game lacking many icons of the game. I'd rather have a game that has the potential for imbalance and a ton of possible options than one with a more severe focus on balance.
Smart enemies in the short term COULD favor casters, but I'm not sure on the long term how can go if you manage to make them waste spells, or to use them as counter-measures for other spellcaster.
I'm always amused when people talk about how scry and die is broken and such, and how they can use it to wipe out any bad guy, without taking into account that the bad guy could do the exact same thing. I wonder if, in his super hard mode, Cod often has scrying + dying enemy casters porting in to jump his group while resting, after expending most/all of their spells?
You insist on dumping virtually all stats with casters except spellcasting ones and con, which is, in my honest opinion, usually the first sign that a player has little actual table experience.Ad hom. Argue for or against stat dumps based on their merits, not based on some unproven accusations of someone's conclusions being based on less experience than your own. This is the internet, for all you know the person on the other side could be some white beard who played with gygax and has had a weekly game in every edition from the red box to pathfinder or some 12 year old kid who picked up the book last week... and there's no way to tell.
i suppose you could try to argue that because they don't agree with you you're right about their experience level, but that's more circular than a presupositinal argument.
Alright, well, let me clarify. Usually when you see stat dumps it is a result of someone who has a great deal of time invested in theory, because they look at the numbers and say "wow, I get a lot more bang for my buck if I max out X and Y stat, by the numbers". Typically however this approach forgets that there are a great number of intangibles associated with many other stats, and problems that frequently come up when you are extremely weak in them. Low charisma typically means either ugly PCs or ones with extremely weak personalities, while low wisdom tends to mean foolhardiness. Low strength as a result of dumps tends to mean characters with extreme difficulty doing fairly basic physical things we take for granted. While these things are all fine in their own right, if you're willing to play to them, if that is the character you want to play, most often they are utterly discounted by Min/Maxers without practical experience, because they are not tangibly evident until you actually are forced to play to them.
The first character I brought to a table after browsing the Char Op boards had dumped charisma. Dwarf wizard in 3.5. I thought I was brilliant, because I had a super high int, super high con, and excellent defenses relative to the rest of the party. I was tough as nails and had the highest DC spells and most of them. My mirth lasted all of about eight minutes before the game master came down on me like a load of bricks for trying to play a character with a 6 charisma like he had a 10.
Although! A group of 3 Rogues and a Bard would probably do pretty well.
In a game with little to no combat or no combat against significant enemies. A player in one of our games has had his Rogue killed twice in as many weeks in combat. And those weren't even serious combats.
Alright, well, let me clarify. Usually when you see stat dumps it is a result of someone who has a great deal of time invested in theory, because they look at the numbers and say "wow, I get a lot more bang for my buck if I max out X and Y stat, by the numbers". Typically however this approach forgets that there are a great number of intangibles associated with many other stats, and problems that frequently come up when you are extremely weak in them. Low charisma typically means either ugly PCs or ones with extremely weak personalities, while low wisdom tends to mean foolhardiness. Low strength as a result of dumps tends to mean characters with extreme difficulty doing fairly basic physical things we take for granted. While these things are all fine in their own right, if you're willing to play to them, if that is the character you want to play, most often they are utterly discounted by Min/Maxers without practical experience, because they are not tangibly evident until you actually are forced to play to them.
Yes, the strength 7 works only as long as it takes you to realise that encumbrance matters.
The same is true of parties: A party of clerics sounds great in theory, and is very powerful, but is less workable in practice. That's why there are balanced parties with all the bases covered, and why it's important to cover all the bases.
(seriously is that all he ever does? (And while we're on the subject, why is his name CoDzilla when he prefers arcanes? Shouldn't it be SoWzilla? But I digress))Who says I prefer arcanes?
I do have an alias (GODWizard), but people get mad at me when I use the board features in exactly the manner they are intended. As if it's hard to click my name and see who I am.
Ahh. My apologies. It is simply that every time we have this debate, it appears to be 'Wizards' that are the main point of contention, hence the arcane assumption. That said, there are three other boards currently available at this time for spewing forth vitriolic arguments about why casters >>>>>> all, and all of them are currently active. Is it really necessary to attempt to turn every other thread discussing the merits of a class/party into the same argument? I mean, if this is about some grand overarching worry for the design of the game itself, it would make more sense from a diplomatic standpoint to just send a bunch of emails with the same general point of view to the people responsible for the original game balance than derailing otherwise good threads for the same old same old argument. At least then you can come off as cordial (and even likable!) to anyone outside the development team responsible for whatever perceived imbalance there is.
This isn't quite on-topic, but a while back some friends and I made characters to play in a gestalt Eberron game. We made our character completely independantly, and in the end, each of us were half specialist wizard (each of a different school). I made a Cleric/Necromancer, one player made an Enchanter/Beguiler, another a Transmuter/Fighter (I think), and the last an Illusionist/Rogue. We never actually played with them, but it was just too perfect to not mention (especially considering, like I said, we all came up with them independantly- not only were we each a diffrent specialist wizard, but we also covered the base four classes, with the exception of the Beguiler filling in for the arcane caster).
Yes, the strength 7 works only as long as it takes you to realise that encumbrance matters.
... and then you find a way to work around your low carrying capacity. There are several, and even the worst of them is worth it for what you're getting.
The same is true of parties: A party of clerics sounds great in theory, and is very powerful, but is less workable in practice.
Have you tried it? With players who halfway know what they're doing and enough forethought to build a variety of kinds of cleric? It works great.
Disclaimer: I haven't since 3.5, but that campaign had very tight restrictions on what outside of 3.5 PHB was allowed and I don't think it'd look a lot different in PF. Better in some ways, worse in others, and overall about a wash.
... and then you find a way to work around your low carrying capacity. There are several, and even the worst of them is worth it for what you're getting.Yes, the strength 7 works only as long as it takes you to realise that encumbrance matters.
I was going to type up an argument about how that doesn't change the fact that you have trouble lifting anything over 20lbs as a character, and about how you can barely manage a basket of laundry, much less a box of books or something similarly mundane, but ultimately it just isn't worth it.
I think to a certain extent what we have here is a fundamental disconnect within how we view the game. Not everything is cost benefit for me in pure mechanical terms, and for, I think, many players. I'm sitting down to play a role playing game, not a war game. While you can argue - with success - that in pure mechanical terms things like a low charisma or strength can be offset by magic items or skill point spent, the reality is in games I've played in you are still playing a weakling or someone who is uglier than a troll. As I said above, what is lost in pure number crunching are the intangibles that go into a lot of what the numbers C/O discount represent.
I love board games as much as the next person, I even enjoy miniatures games where you do want to maximize power at the expense of all other things, but that is not how I approach Pathfinder, and I don't think that is the paradigm with which most design work goes forward.
They are quite strong, but they have some weaknesses. It's the 9/10 situation again. Being able to easily win 9/10 fights still isn't much help if 1/10 encounter is one you lack the skills, spells, or abilities to deal with.
The cleric squad are weak in reflex saves and skills, and so are vulnerable to basic area-effect attacks. While not as spell dependent as a party of wizards, and while they have awesome healing potential, sooner or later these run out. The classic 4 arrangement can cover 10/10 encounters, even if they struggle with 4/10 of them - but better to struggle with 4/10 than TPK on 1/10.
The cleric squad are weak in reflex saves and skills, and so are vulnerable to basic area-effect attacks.
Except most of the area-effect attacks deal elemental damage, and the class best equipped to soak those up with a combination of spell/power-based resistances, solid HP, and healing is... the cleric.
In core-book Pathfinder, there's very, very little the Cleric team has to worry about from reflex saves. Add the APG and they at least have to worry about the pit spells until flight comes out.
Seriously, try actually playing it with people who are decent enough with the cleric class to be more than healbots -- the PF cleric doesn't put out the ridiculous melee beatdown of the 3.X cleric in all its glory, but it's still a really, really good class that can be built in a lot of different ways which all basically work. All the kinds of things that you think will be rough for the all-cleric team it turns out, not a fraction as bad as you'd think.
I think to a certain extent what we have here is a fundamental disconnect within how we view the game.
We do; to you, a character that's actually good at their job at the expense of things that aren't their job becomes a wargame character and not an RPG character.
That doesn't mean that every wizard or sorcerer I play will have a 7 STR. It does mean that I can accept that taking the 7 STR is probably the mechanically superior choice.
The game should provide consequences for dump stats. In many cases it doesn't, or doesn't provide enough. It's getting better in this respect; in 3.5, a druid with 3 STR/DEX/CON was perfectly viable, and even a melee damage monster, and now it's not. Think about that for a minute: it was smarter, mechanically, for the 3.5 druid to put stat points into INT or CHR than CON (assuming survival to 6th level or so -- which I wouldn't assume in a game starting from level 1, but for some reason let's say you were making a higher level druid to replace a deceased PC or whatever) because what his CON was literally did not matter. At all. You can't do that anymore. That's a step in the right direction.
But the game doesn't get better if we don't talk like adults about the places it still does fall down instead of sticking our fingers in our ears and yelling "La la la I can't HEAR you!" when we see a wizard with a 7 STR and 20 INT.
But the game doesn't get better if we don't talk like adults about the places it still does fall down instead of sticking our fingers in our ears and yelling "La la la I can't HEAR you!" when we see a wizard with a 7 STR and 20 INT.
Except there is zero problem with that. Just like there is zero problem with a Fighter having 7 Int and 20 Str. Those are useless stats, which they were for a Druid in 3.5, but they were useless for a Druid due to a game design loophole, not necessarily because they didn't need those stats. If you want to make those stats relevant, you can do what 4e did and start double-booking them for use, but that won't happen without another game version really.
I was going to type up an argument about how that doesn't change the fact that you have trouble lifting anything over 20lbs as a character, and about how you can barely manage a basket of laundry, much less a box of books or something similarly mundane, but ultimately it just isn't worth it.
Because it's an inane argument. Also false. The Wizard wasn't going to be the mule to begin with and oh no, 23 pounds is a light load! We should obviously pick on the Wizard for choosing crap strength and forget that a 10 strength only nets you a light load of 10 pounds greater.
*** many reasonable posts ***
Dude! Your last series of posts are excellent!
I've been dodging your threads because your manner often riles me up, but these were exemplary. You explained your position well and I really had to think about what you were saying rather than dismissing you as a crank.
Thanks.
Low charisma typically means either ugly PCs or ones with extremely weak personalities
or really horrible personalities, which can be quite strong.
while low wisdom tends to mean foolhardiness.
int and wis can do quite a bit to compensate for each other.
Low strength as a result of dumps tends to mean characters with extreme difficulty doing fairly basic physical things we take for granted.
even a 7 isn't that low. There's not a lot most of us do in our daily lives that a schoolgirl couldn't do as well.
While these things are all fine in their own right, if you're willing to play to them, if that is the character you want to play, most often they are utterly discounted by Min/Maxers without practical experience, because they are not tangibly evident until you actually are forced to play to them.
i think the min maxers do have experience, its just with a different dming style than you're used to, more combat oriented and less rp oriented.
My mirth lasted all of about eight minutes before the game master came down on me like a load of bricks for trying to play a character with a 6 charisma like he had a 10.
good dm!... not everyone has had one of those though.
I admit it *ahem* Hello, my name is Big Norse Wolf and i dump charisma
Why? Because I can adjust my play style and role playing around having a character with an average or worse charisma and still have fun. my dwarven fighter/monk is shy and looks at his boots a lot and stutters. My fighter is taciturn and hardly says a word except "ow" when he's critically hit, my dwarven druid was raised by mushrooms and thinks that tact is what you do to notices, and my elven alchemist is high as a kite on his own product and stares off into the distance at rand
What i cannot adjust is the rules of the game. By the rules of the game charismia is useless for most characters. Even Wizards get more out of strength nowadays (it adds to CMD)It only comes up when interacting with NPCs.. something i can let another member of the party do for me. In combat, everyone makes fort reflex and will saves, everyone takes hitpoint damage. In conversation.. only one person needs to talk. I can get around that.
What i can't get around is being dead. If my job is meatshield and i decided it would be fun to play a fighter with a pretty face and a glass jaw its going to detract from everyone's fun when the troll eviscerates me in round one and stars chewing on the cleric. What am i going to gain in return... playing a high charisma character over a low charisma one.. WHATS the difference? They can both be well rounded, three dimensional characters. You are not going to make your character any better by making them suck at what they're supposed to do. Requiring that a character have a high charisma or off model stats in order to be well role played isn't freeing yourself from your stats: its enslaving you to them.
I would submit that a stealth based party would approach combats much differently than a mixed party.In a game with little to no combat or no combat against significant enemies. A player in one of our games has had his Rogue killed twice in as many weeks in combat. And those weren't even serious combats.Although! A group of 3 Rogues and a Bard would probably do pretty well.
And how long does stealth last? The first round?
*** many reasonable posts ***
Dude! Your last series of posts are excellent!
I've been dodging your threads because your manner often riles me up, but these were exemplary. You explained your position well and I really had to think about what you were saying rather than dismissing you as a crank.
Thanks.
That's great and all. But without telling me what posts you referring to, you're not actually telling me anything.
What posts are you referring to?
Though, since you mentioned it... Dismissing someone just because you think they're rude? Not a key to success in life.
The posts from about 9AM. I thought a smart fella like you wouldn't need it spelled out for him.
And, I guess that Dale Carnegie course didn't work out for you.
And then you remember that haversacks are cheap, and before that there's pack animals. And you realize that Str is right after Cha in "stat least useful if not your primary stat".
I take it you mean Hewards Handy Haversacks, which are out of reach for your 1st level character.
And what bases would those be? There is no tanking in D&D, so the Fighter doesn't have a base.
A bold assertion made with nothing to back it up. On the other hand, I have seen 'tanks' played and played well, so I'm afraid i can't take this seriously unless you back it with something other than "Because I say so and you are stupid if you don't agree."
Skills are obsolete past level 5, and traps are more trivial than ever, which means Rogues don't have a base either.
Another assertion that runs counter to my experience of the game, again unsubstantiated by anything other than your word for it.
And that just leaves arcane and divine casters. Imagine that.
Only it doesn't because you haven't made a case, just an assertion. Back up your statements with more than 'everybody knows' or stop making them.
A party of entirely wizards would fail the OP's requirements, since I'd probably get bored and leave the game before we got to level 3. Variety is important too.
A bold assertion made with nothing to back it up. On the other hand, I have seen 'tanks' played and played well, so I'm afraid i can't take this seriously unless you back it with something other than "Because I say so and you are stupid if you don't agree."
There is no such thing as a tank in a game where you can't force anyone to attack you.
A bold assertion made with nothing to back it up. On the other hand, I have seen 'tanks' played and played well, so I'm afraid i can't take this seriously unless you back it with something other than "Because I say so and you are stupid if you don't agree."There is no such thing as a tank in a game where you can't force anyone to attack you.
That's where tactics come in, by being between them and the people they really want to attack. What you really mean is: "Without the right feats, tactics and circumstances tanking is very difficult" which is a statement I would readily agree with.
What is more, tanking is not the only function of the beatstick. Even if you can get past him (and he can hurt you for doing it) he's then behind you and can lay on the hurt. Damage dealers cannot do the same scope of actions that casters can, agreed. This does not make them irrelevant, however.
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I'd go with a varient of the classic 4:
Paladin - I like the saves protecting from spells as well as the instant LoH's to keep up in combat. Also the party face.
Urban Ranger - Switch hitter or Archer for plenty of damage. He replaces the need for a Rogue for traps, he has decent HP and makes a good back up front man (if switch hitter)
Wizard - Powerful and fun
Cleric - Heals between combat, helpful front man especially if Ranger is an Archer, and if Ranger is a Switch Hitter you have 3 guys to get in the way of monsters trying to reach the Wizard
This group probably is not the strongest, but they cover the basics so have a good chacne of survival and they are plenty fun to RP
Even if you can get past him
Then he has failed as a tank. And since it is impossible to stop some one from getting past you sans completely contrived conditions that the player has exactly nothing to do with, there is no such thing as a tank. A beatstick or meatshield maybe, but not a tank.
Move around you how?
Sometimes is trivial, sometimes is not because of CMD and terrain.
At worst, take a loon on the "Protect the Meek" order of the Shield Cavalier ability. Can be enough? (EDITED: I WROTE "Stem the Tide")
Actually, I would be curious about the implementation of a "taunt" mechanic like Goad or the PH2 Knight (CD based on Str or Cha). I'd like it, but I don't know how peple could consider it.
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Move around you how?
Sometimes is trivial, sometimes is not because of CMD and terrain.
At worst, take a loon on the "Stem the Tide" order of the Shield Cavalier ability. Can be enough?
Actually, I would be curious about the implementation of a "taunt" mechanic like Goad or the PH2 Knight (CD based on Str or Cha). I'd like it, but I don't know how peple could consider it.
There's a single little problem with MMO-style "tanking" mechanics. Or any MMO-inspired mechanics.
They work OK in an asymmetrical system. In MMOs, monsters and PCs are built from entirely different sets of lego bricks.
Not so much in 3.5 D&D, in which both sides are built of the same bricks, small differences aside. There's very little that monsters can do that the players cant (some corner case special abilities aside).
Any class with "tanking" abilities would be also used by GMs, leading to rather silly encounters (1 goblin Tanknight "aggros" the whole party, while 3 goblin wizards tear the party a new one.)
Move around you how?
Sometimes is trivial, sometimes is not because of CMD and terrain.
At worst, take a loon on the "Stem the Tide" order of the Shield Cavalier ability. Can be enough?
Actually, I would be curious about the implementation of a "taunt" mechanic like Goad or the PH2 Knight (CD based on Str or Cha). I'd like it, but I don't know how peple could consider it.
There's a single little problem with MMO-style "tanking" mechanics. Or any MMO-inspired mechanics.
They work OK in an asymmetrical system. In MMOs, monsters and PCs are built from entirely different sets of lego bricks.
Not so much in 3.5 D&D, in which both sides are built of the same bricks, small differences aside. There's very little that monsters can do that the players cant (some corner case special abilities aside).
Now, consider a base class with some "you have to attack me" ability
In 3.5 existed both a feat and a class, see above. You mean, it was a problem when the "taunt" came from monsters...
I have to admit that taunting a mage to go melee could be silly... but maybe there's a way to write it down correctly... dunno. Just wondering.
The fact that something existed in 3.5 does not mean that it should have existed. See: Truenamer, Swashbuckler, CW Samurai.
Very true. But that offers a sort of "playtest". Some times negative ("how about a spell granting a standard action cast as an immediate action? HOW ABOUT NO?) in this case... I was just asking.
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With what actual abilities do you tank with? The answer of course will be none. No such ability exists. Which means enemies just walk around. Particularly if you have actually succeeded at making yourself durable (and you probably haven't) meaning things have even less incentive to attack you. This is not an MMO. There are no aggro mechanics. Enemies can and will attack whoever they believe is most threatening, which is not Sir Clanksalot.
The simplest answer is a reach weapon, combat reflexes and (aiming to fight in) a confined space. Nothing is getting past the 'tank' without getting hit.
tanking is possible, it just requires teamwork or the fighter to be built completely for that purpose. A fighter with a guisarm and Improved trip can hold most foes at bay , especially if he can get an enlarge person or a druid's animal companion to take up some extra space.