Lots of stuff negating my assertions that the PF rules are flexible enough to support a large number of playstyles, that we all bring subjective "baggage" to the table that inform iour opinions, and that I learn more from discussions of how the rules are working in actual games than in from theoretical discussions.
We'll just have to agree to disagree here. I don't believe I'm likely to shake your confidence in your own supposed complete objectivity, and I know for certain you'll never be able to convince me of it, so no point in continuing to beat that drum.
We're obviously coming from very different places with vastly different assumptions not just about the game but about how things work in the world in general, which makes true communication between us difficult, but not impossible. Kind of like me trying to use my
Spanish to talk to a Brazilian. I can kind of understand what they are saying and vice versa, but not really.
The house rules list is prohibitively long, seeing as just the house rules, with no flavor text or rewritten text from other sources is a half dozen pages.As for 3.5 material, we have everything, and everything is allowed with the sole caveat being that anything a player uses a DM can use without question. However we use substantially less than everything.
3.5 sources:
Tome of Battle: Perhaps the biggest one, to permit martial types to have nice things.
Magic Item Compendium: Similar motivations here.
Spell Compendium: Only really gets used for buffs. Specifically Mass Conviction, Recitation, Righteous Wrath, Greater/Superior Resistance. The offensive spells are largely inferior to their core only counterparts, and the utility effects are usually too narrow to matter. But when they do matter you'll want to have them. Mass Snowshoes is the only example that's coming to mind within the last year.
Completes: Divine Metamagic (so that Recitation and Righteous Wrath have a good enough duration to actually be worth casting), various feats, mostly for the martial types.
EPH: Only gets used for the Stand Still feat. No one has any psionic abilities.
Libris Mortis: Only for Nightsticks, which grant more turn attempts. The applications with DMM should be obvious.I think that's everything.
Ultimately, the motivations for all of those is the same. Pathfinder supports the...
CoDzilla, thanks for sharing. If you have a document, I'd be very interested in reading it, mnevill (_at_) hotmail (.) com
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Completes: Divine Metamagic (so that Recitation and Righteous Wrath have a good enough duration to actually be worth casting), various feats, mostly for the martial types
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Libris Mortis: Only for Nightsticks, which grant more turn attempts. The applications with DMM should be obvious.
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Pathfinder == Caster Edition statement....
I find it interesting that one of the most broken cleric empowering combos is deliberately left in your game, and you call PF the Caster Edition.
Could you explain why you make this statement against PF yet not 3.5?
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So you have houseruled that it is only usable with buff spells? Or is the group's play style to only use it to buff the group.
Does your group only use 3.5 rules? How do they rule turn attempts in regards to DMM? PF clersc do not officially get Turn attempts...just Channel Energy attempts. Do you intertwine these?
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So you have houseruled that it is only usable with buff spells?DMM: Persist ONLY works with buff spells. It is definitively limited to them. That's what 3.5 Persist does. So what are you talking about?
You did not say only Persist in regards to DMM. I am talking about DMM as a whole. It is a horribly broken mechanic and made worse by the use of nightsticks, an extremely cheap item.
I, personally, used to enjoy whoring my turn attempts to use Twin and Quicken Metamagics
I do not have a typed document. It's handwritten. No, I'm not going to snail mail it. However most of them are common house rules in optimization circles, so if you go on a CO board you can probably find something similar.
I wouldn't ask for a snail mail, that's just... tacky? I was mainly just hopeful for a word document, thanks for letting me know what form your rules take.
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Really, it depends on the level of play and several other things. Once you hit level 16ish (or before, haven't done the math) nightsticks are like candy.Frankly, I think the nightstick is a poorly designed item. I suspect it would have worked better as a +X (most likely 1, but possibly 2) armor enhancement that grants a number of turns based on effective cleric level. (Maybe equal to cleric level + wisdom modifier [or double-dipping on charisma instead]?)
Otherwise, you run into instances where, at super high levels, a cleric is burning up a nightstick (or two) every turn in combat being a super caster.
For what Turn Attempts were initially intended to be used for (Turning undead obviously, but also mostly thematic and fluff driven uses like opening special doors in temples and stuff like that) nightsticks are well balanced. Toss in the DMM powerup and they are stupid cheap and over powered, or more to the point, create an overpowered situation.
I agree they should have been a part of an slot item. I could see it as a neck item, as a Holy Symbol.
In the end, we are fully agreeing. I am thankful when I was DMing 3.5 my players never did the DMM cheese. And my DMs should be happy I did not know about the Nightstick at teh time I was doing the DMM cheese.
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You have to take DMM once for every metamagic you want to use it with. And none of the others are really worth it. The only one that comes close is Quicken, but even then it amounts to a waste of resources when compared to alternatives.Not to mention every time I brought it up was in reference to buffs, and buff durations. Context matters.
I understand how DMM works. You need the feat and all pre-requisites to take teh DMM version of the feat. It is certainly a case of playstyle when you talk about "wasted" resources. I can efficiently use DMM to cast, at least, 2 spells to one persisted one.
When you brought up DMm you were posting your 3.5 open material.
"Completes: Divine Metamagic (so that Recitation and Righteous Wrath have a good enough duration to actually be worth casting),"
I asked about wy you left a badly OP option from 3.5, yet call PF the Caster Edition.
"I find it interesting that one of the most broken cleric empowering combos is deliberately left in your game, and you call PF the Caster Edition.
Could you explain why you make this statement against PF yet not 3.5?"
Your reply was about DMM persist.
"Simple. DMM only helps with buffs."
I asked about that further since you were not overly clear where you were taking this.
"So you have houseruled that it is only usable with buff spells?"
You replied.
"DMM: Persist ONLY works with buff spells"
Bringing us back to the beginning of what material you use in your game since you were slightly exclusive as to what you use inthe Complete books and I was looking for clarity. Becasue Clarity matters.
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"No one actually uses Turn Undead to Turn Undead, even if they do not have other alternatives. The reason is simple - it doesn't work."
---No disagreement there, but you missed what i said. or what they were INITIALLY intended for. DMM is not what they were meant for in the beginning of 3e. It was only about turning and fluff/story reasons.
"With what? Quicken? Quicken is 5 turns a pop. That's not 2:1. It's not even 1.5:1."
---I never said only quicken. I can quicken and max. that is 9:7, which while not 2:1, I am sure you get what I mean.
"I have already answered this question as well, so one more time."
---Not really. You shifted and such but did not answer my question...Now this:
"PF is Caster Edition because..."
---is an answer. One that holds true in 3.5 as much as PF.
"Just in case you missed it the first ten times or so."
---Nice hyperbole. There had to be a hundred times a thousand requests for you to answer it once. ;)
Take the snark down a few notches please.
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Maximizing what? Blasting? The damage is still trivial, you have wasted 4 turns. Healing? It's still not a Heal spell, so it is not viable in combat healing.
Once again for the hundredth time...depends on playstyle. We don't play in a game like yours so "viability" and "wasting" is relative isn't it.
Quicken Twin with a rod of max on a blast spell...or even a cure spell...is hardly trivial...and for only 3 more slots for your 1 persist spell. But hey like I said 500 times already YMMV, play your powergame, with the old persist and the broken DMM, if that is what you like. I just don't see that the game needs them.
Dismissiveness and lack of reading comprehension snipped.
yes you did have that going for you didn't you. Apology accepted.
Seriously CoD, relax. I did not start out attacking you but you acted from the beginning like I did. Everything since has been in reaction to your own attitude.
Simple. DMM only helps with buffs.......
Completes: Divine Metamagic (so that Recitation and Righteous Wrath have a good enough duration to actually be worth casting), various feats, mostly for the martial types
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Libris Mortis: Only for Nightsticks, which grant more turn attempts. The applications with DMM should be obvious.
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Pathfinder == Caster Edition statement....I find it interesting that one of the most broken cleric empowering combos is deliberately left in your game, and you call PF the Caster Edition.
Could you explain why you make this statement against PF yet not 3.5?
Lolwhat? Are you houseruling that?
Persist is the ONLY valid use of DMM.
I'll disagree with you here. I've seen too many great saves by DMM: Quicken in situations in which a Quicken rod either wasn't an option or wasn't a great option. Sometimes ClericZilla has better things to do with his hands than screw around with a rod.
Edited to add: Of course, I've also literally never played in a game in which 3.0 or 3.5 persist were allowed feats.
Oh the double entendres...
I try to put in a little something for everybody in the audience!
When designing encounters and/or campaigns, what are the differences people have seen between allowing players the Standard Fantasy Point Buy (15) and High Fantasy Point Buy (20)?
To go way back to your original question for NPC's the standard array is a 3 point buy for the elite array its a 15 point buy. This 12 point swing coupled with a PC class and all its features serves to make CR increase from -2 to -1 for class based humanoids. Leads me to believe that either 20 or 25 point buys aren't statistically so much stronger than the 15 to change much
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And it's better still to have a 20, a 16, a 10, and 3 meaningless 7s. If you can, which you can as a SAD character and cannot as a MAD character.
In 3.5 this doesn't work (lowest stat is 8, plenty of things punish dumpstats), but in PF you have a free license to go nuts. The only reason not to is if you don't need to. Which is why I mentioned higher PB = fill out flavor stats.
In low PB you cannot afford "well rounded". That is what having limited resources and using them to the best of your ability means. Take that same 15 PB Wizard, and make him 25 PB and his Str is 8, and his Wis and Cha are 10, and that's the only change. Flavor stats raised.
First of all, I don't think you can make such generic statements; whether you *absolutely* need your character to have 20 in his/her primary stat depends on the GM and the campaign. It's not an unwritten rule, to my knowledge. Let's consider those 15 points; for example, in a campaign in which the GM uses a lot of spellcasting adversaries, your Wis 7 fighter has to be lucky (or loaded with magic and buffs) to make it past mid levels (at least that's my experience; you are easily surprised and nigh-automatically fail all will saves). Or in a campaign that involves lots of skill checks and intrigue an int 7 and cha 7 character will have likely very little to do.
You can afford "well-rounded" with less points; again, this is also dependant on the GM's style, too -- if the base assumption is that every PC fighter has str 20, your str 12 halfling fighter will be in trouble. But that's not a given; I'd still rather have two 16s than a single 20, if the latter choice has a major (negative) impact on my saving throws, skills, AC and/or initiative. With points to spare I may be tempted to "go wild" and put 19-20 in my primary score; however, I (and most of the guys I've gamed with) tend to end up with a more even spread in ability scores when I have less points.
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Already been explained, try to follow along.Lolwhat? Are you houseruling that?Simple. DMM only helps with buffs.
Could you explain why you make this statement against PF yet not 3.5?
And CoD wonders why people are not so pleasant when dealing with him...I had to ask a thousand times for his explanation on all that.
To him he mentioned DMM and since he ONLY mentioned two spells, both of which are buffs, that it was fully clear that he meant ONLY Persist.
He is of the opinion that ONLY Persist is of any use.
So you do not play D&D? Because as long as you are, blasting spells are made trivial, and so are heal spells not named Heal. So let's see... Quicken, Twin, Max Rod. Either you're burning 10 turns and a max rod charge for a 1-4 level spell, or you're burning 5 turns, and casting a level 1-4 spell out of a level 5-8 slot. In the latter, a simple Heal spell is superior in every possible way by far. In the former you're setting an incredibly large amount of resources on fire to... heal about half of a single hit from a single enemy. heal about half of a single hit from a single enemy. That is what is known as paying for the privilege of sucking and is in no way overpowered - quite the opposite.
Persist is the ONLY valid use of DMM. Everything else is either flat out worthless, or too overcosted to be worth it. And what does Persist give you?BUFFS.
QED.
I play DnD...just not your hacked powered up version of it.
I've seen you assert that @ level 5 you HAVE to do 60 points of damage on a SINGLE hit or your attack meant nothing. I call BS. IF you were Soloing maybe you might have a case. I believe I have heard you use the 25 point buy so it is known you can only play with POWERFUL PCs. The DM must use powered up monsters cause....as a general rule, in the AVERAGE game (in which YOUR game is not included) a party with an APL of 5 should be meeting encounters of a 5-6 CR most of the time. Special encounter of a BOSS variety are of a CR 7-8...
CR 5-6 encounters:
2 Ankeg: HP 28 each...Damage average: 11+2.5
2 Barghest: HP 45 each...Damage average: 7
1 Basilisk: 52HP/ 8 damage with special attack
CR 7-8:
Greater Barghest: 87HP/10.5 damage
Dire Bear: 95HP/10-11 damage
Huh. With a party of 4 each doing about 15-25 each and all of these encounters are finished in a round. A far cry from the 60 average single hit damage you claim to need.
level 5 wiz casts fireball..average damage 15 in AoE...7 on save (w/o evasion). On a lower end of the damage his group needs, but in an area so covering more enemies, a trade off.
Back to the discussion:
DMM Persist is NT the ONLY use for DMM. Blasting is viable in the normal game . Since DMM modifies any spell you cast, not just Divine ones, you only need that 1 level of cleric to gain the Turn ability. By level 5 I have the ability to fire off 2 scorching ray spells minimum (DMM quick,as a wiz and not having pumped up my Cha...as a sorcerer I can have done a DMM quick and twin and have fired off 3 scorching rays)...
None of those challenges have a particularly hard touch AC, so his 1 round damage is 28 for the wiz (42 for the sorcerer). All averaged remember...this attack killed an ankeg, ripped up the barghest and basilisk nad put a good dent in the hard encounters. And yet the rest of his party still gets to go.
And healing w/o using the Heal spell is just as viable, especially if you need to drop a quick twin serious for over 50 points of healing in a round...looks to be on average to a Heal spell (@ 10/level for a level 5 cleric).
SO...what is it you proved Mssr. QED?
Already been explained, try to follow along.
At no point did you explain why DMM and nightsticks wouldn't be used on other types of metamagic. Nor why and how people would only use it for buffs.
Ok so I used to favor 15 or 20 point buys, but my players insisted on rolling (or whining and i couldnt take the whine)
they always wanted to do 4d6 drop the lowest (which I hate), which seems to put you in the 25 point area.
Today I prefer 3d6 re roll 1s.
this CAN give you great stats, but usually prevents horrid ones.
I like it alot.
I do not like min-maxed characters,think it ruins the game.
The BAD thing about the point buy system is, in order to get the character you wanted to play, the stats ALWAYS seemed to be the same after a while.
and for that matter the difference between 20 and 25 point buys was enough to change anything in the game in my opinion.
5 points isnt enough to take that really good stat one higher (usually)
but its just enough to get two 16s.
i think 5 points more makes for less characters with 7s for stats than it makes characters with 20s for stats.
Two 16s isn't bad, but it is mediocre. It means you are decent at doing two things.
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What I said was 60 a round. And at level 5 that probably does mean one hit. Thing is, you can't hit that. Which means the standard level 5 enemy survives easily, and is completely unimpeded as it counterattacks you for over half your HP.
25 PB is not any more powerful than 15. Either way you have all the power you need, namely 20 prime stat 16 Con casters. What you do not have, without using 25 PB is viable MAD characters. Such as the ones stuck doing HP damage.In a normal game, as in the enemies are exactly as written level 5 enemies average 55 HP. And since your damage in play will be less than what your damage estimate is, if you don't estimate at least 60 damage what happens is you are completely wasting your time......
Oh look, the examples you provided match up to that nicely......
50% more or even more that that. Imagine that. Lot of HP to plow through, and only the last one counts.....
So after all that you still are wrong as I fully proved to you.
Where do those creatures kill one of my PCs after they were NOT killed in 1-55+ HP damage hit.
Just to clarify again CoD...you say that ONE PC needs to deal 55+ damage in ONE HIT or it means nothing because that PC will get killed by the return attack.
You talk alot yet say nothing. I just threw down the proof you are wrong, have the manhood to either:
1. Admit you are wrong
OR
2. Show a counterpoint.
Just writing that someone is wrong it NOT a counterpoint. Actually show some valid points.
See "all those HPs" are eliminated in 1 round by a party of 4 doing the average amount of damage. Not some ridiculous amount of damage you just thought up.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.
1: Blasting is not viable in D&D, unless you mean 1st or 2nd edition. In which case it's a moot point.
I see you trying, but once again, just saying it is so does not make it so. Stand up and prove it or sit down and leave it alone.
2: DMM specifically only works for Divine spells. A Druid could do the Cleric dip trick, but not an arcane caster. As such your examples are automatically invalid. And in what way are you getting the 10 turn attempts required, at minimum to do that? Or 30, for the Sorcerer? Exactly. And that's 3 feats too (5 for the Sorcerer). So no, no you can't.
Read the feat. The only requirement was: Ability to Turn or Rebuke. The benefits say NOTHING about only affecting Divine spells. It is Spells you KNOW.
The Wiz is not a Cha based PC, so he only needs 5 Turn attempts. 3 base+2cha (either 14 cha or 12 and a +2 cha item).
The Sorcerer IS a Cha based caster so will have more points in Cha.
3base+5minimum from base Cha+ +4 cha boost item==10.
Feat needed is 4. quicken, twin, DMM quicken, DMM twin. Feats @ 1, 3 and 5. Human bonus feat. DUN.
3: It's cool to know the rules!
It is and when you do I will let you back into the club.
Because level 5 Clerics have 10 turn attempts to blow on one heal right? And you've used 5 feats. Do you even HAVE 5 feats?
What actually happens is a single hit from a single enemy is more than good enough to negate the entire spell. Which means you were better off casting a spell to stop the enemy from hitting you. Then you can actually keep up with incoming damage.
The feat and tunr attempts parts have been taken care of above.
The damage incoming....oh, wait I showed that a quicken twin CSW will more than out match the damage done by the AVERAGE monsters that the party may face. I will remind you cause I am that nice.
2 Ankeg: HP 28 each...Damage average: 11+2.5
2 Barghest: HP 45 each...Damage average: 7
1 Basilisk: 52HP/ 8 damage with special attack
Greater Barghest: 87HP/10.5 damage
Dire Bear: 95HP/10-11 damage
NONE of those encounters will deal any where near 50 HP damage in a round.
Catch up brother. When you can actually prove the stuff you say is true then come on back. Until then...QED.
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No offense, actually I am not overly concerned if you do find it offensive but whatever, but provide a link to that errata. Your record of actually backing up anything is more than suspect, and just cause you wrote it does not hold much weight.
Buy it or not it is possible and legal. As for 1/day that is no different that your DMM persist. 1/day. AND you had to wait for 2-4 extra levels. AND you have yet to prove that damage thing.
I did demonstrate how the cleric did it. Your reading comprehension is the issue, go read again.
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In my experience: The difference amounts to roughly a -1 to attacks and damage for fighter-types and a -1 to DCs for spellcasters. YMMV, etc.
This post, early on, actually answers the original question of 15 pt buy vs 20 pt buy for encounter design. If melee types can increase their attack bonus (on average) by 1 point, then they are effectively one level higher. If spellcasters can increase their DCs by 1 (and possibly their melee touch and ranged touch), then they are effectively one level higher. Equipment can modify this slightly, but that's a different topic.
This changes the formula:
Easy APL-1
Average APL+0
Challenging APL+1
Hard APL+2
Epic APL+3
To:
Easy APL+0
Average APL+1
Challenging APL+2
Hard APL+3
Epic APL+4
Which makes sense given what I have seen in Pathfinder Society Games, which uses 20 pt buys. The party only felt challenged when hitting APL+2 and APL+3. I don't doubt that there are posters on this board who can conceive APL+1 encounters that will flat-out kill at least one party member, but I'm just looking for the general guidelines, not the exceptions.
Unless anyone has anything else they wish to add relating to encounter design (and NOT character build choices, where did that come from???), I am considering this a dead thread.
-Perry
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Two 16s isn't bad, but it is mediocre. It means you are decent at doing two things.
Whoa... hey... what? Mediocre? Two 16s are pretty good, even for 3E -- at least if you're used to rolling your stats. My first 3E character had 14 as his highest stat (I rolled poorly) and the "alpha male" in that party had just a single 16 (but all the rest of his scores were either 14 or 15, which is pretty amazing in my books). In AD&D a character with more than two 16s felt like a *god*! ;)
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1: No, whether you need a 20 or not depends on if you are playing PF D&D. Since you are, that's where the bar is set, and anything less is too weak.
2: A Fighter is an MAD character, and thus irrelevant to the quoted example.
3: You'd have to be lucky to get a 15 PB Fighter past the mid levels regardless of what you actually do with those points. At least by having a 20 Str you can try to do something in the meantime.
Er... where does it say in the core rules that 20 in your primary stat is mandatory in PF RPG? I don't think it's implied in any of the books. And having a 16 as your highest stat is quite fine in my campaigns, even for 25-point PCs. Also, in PF RPG rules NPCs don't have, per RAW, stats above 17 (plus level bumps and magic, naturally). Maybe I'm running the game wrong, but I think PCs are not as dependant on high ability scores as they were in 3E? And it's just my campaigns; I've heard other PF fans saying it as well.
If you absolutely need 20 in your primary ability score for every PC, maybe your GM is regularly running a bit too hard (way above suggested guidelines) or optimized-to-the-hilt encounters in his/her games?