Dragon Magazine like anything had some good stuff and plenty of bad stuff. In general my problem with using it in games was that I felt that it's harder and harder to keep the all options in balance (some are overpowered, others are fluff traps) and feature bloat is the worst enemy of a DM.
Considering how hard it is to keep track of just the Pathfinder ruleset, keeping track of the extended 3.x ruleset + 3PP sources + pathfinder is too difficult and I personally hate having to nerf characters mid campaign.
Could you explain that statement Vuron? In my experience, feature starvation is the worst enemy of a DM.feature bloat is the worst enemy of a DM.
In my mind the more features (spells, feats, class features) the harder the job is for the DM to balance them. Especially when so many features are wildly out of balance with each other (trap features and overpowered features).
This leads to a dilemma, does the DM quit worrying about PC options and focus on only a limited subset of the total options for NPCs and trust that the players will conform to the attitudes and norms of the campaign or does he try to actively direct the number of options available in his game?
Personally I don't have time to maintain system mastery over the complete 3.x ruleset so at a certain point in time I either need to trust my players (which is my initial inclination) or I need to limit the subset of the game rules that I'm playing with.
Even if I trust that players will avoid the really obvious newbie traps and avoid the really egregious rule exploits popularized by CharOp characters there is still the issue that so much of the ruleset has wildly different synergy levels.
If someone really wants to play a martial character with a suboptimal build do I step in and say no? Do I step in and say no to the hideously overpowered (relative to the rest of the party) SoS caster? Personally I like having at least a working knowledge of the common features and options so that I can subtly intervene in order to improve game play.
Like I said earlier I really dislike having to nerf in the middle of a campaign by taking away options or reconfiguring the opposition (I'm more of a sandbox GM anyway). That means being proactive rather than reactive.
Combine with the relative incompatibility of some elements of the 3.x ruleset with the Pathfinder design goals (simplified play, less swingy combats, etc) and I'm really reluctant to incorporate a ton of 3.x stuff into the Pathfinder game without being really really clear what direction this inclusion is going to take a game.
Factor in my tendency to houserule like crazy and it's easier for me to play with Pathfinder core + APG than Core + APG + 3.x extended.
|
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?
If you have a 16 instead of a 20, you take a -2 to everything you do and you're not even done with character creation yet. Which means you're either screwed beyond belief or salvation, or screwed for no reason. Either way, you're screwed.
This is especially true for NPCs. They have a hard enough time being relevant with a 20, unless a full spellcaster. By giving them -2 to everything they do on top of that? You might as well just narrate the fight and move on.
You're as high stat dependent as ever. Just the +2 racial bonuses like candy make the bar slightly higher.
And if you have a 7 in your wisdom and dexterity, you take -2 to two saves, right? I find that just as "crippling", if not even more. I just don't get your point, because you seem to imply that your opinion is the only right way to create characters in PF. Let me repeat: you won't be screwed at my table if you have a 16 in your primary stat -- but you *will* be screwed if you drop your wis and cha to 7. Besides, I tend to tailor my campaigns around the PCs; if all the characters are optimized for diplomacy and intrigue, I'll run a less combat-heavy campaign.
NPC creation rules in PF RPG set the highest ability score at 17 for levels 1-3, including racial modifiers; if you give them higher stats, you're not doing it by official guidelines. And I've found out that even though NPCs are slightly less powerful than PCs, this leaves more room for tinkering with encounters; i.e. I can use more NPCs in a single encounter, which I think is good. If even minor NPCs have over the top stats, it's no wonder if you feel that PCs should begin with 20 in their primary ability.
Personally I find the dump 3 stats to 7s to be a negative build. For the most part I think it requires significant complicity on the part of the DM to survive low levels. However by 5th level or so the cost benefit begins to swing in favor of lopsided builds as the core weaknesses of the 3 7s build begin to be outweighed by the benefits of being +2 over generic NPC threat.
Personally the 18 prime stat is adequate for the style of play I prefer. For MAD classes 2 or 3 16s is probably a decent enough build. Unfortunately 15 point buy tends to limit generalist and non standard builds such as the twf fighter.
|
1: Google search Complete Divine errata, second link is from the official WotC site. Click it.
WE never used errata...but thanks for at least proving something. My Arcane DMM specialist is no more...but wait....
2: DMM: Persist is something you do for one buff a day and then that's it, it's on all day. Except that it's actually two spells, because you can Extend spells and cast one yesterday and one today. And it becomes 4 once you get 14 turns. And 6 once you get 21. And so forth. Which Nightsticks help with. And DMM: Persist is 3 feats. You can do it at level 3. No, you don't wait 2-4 extra levels to Persist stuff. But YOU wait 2 extra levels to try and do things other than Persist stuff.
All day until the enemy dispels....Extend only doubles the duration...means jack to all those buff that have durations of rounds or minutes, since very few buffs have durations of hours. So how does Extend help? Not so much does it...Burn higher level slots to lengthen a spell for extra minutes...Yay...eyeroll...
Your example of how great DMM Persist was about 4th and 5th level buffs...I can do my big turn by level 5, YOU have to wait to get those spells...What great buff are you casting on the group @ level 5, or level 3?
Just remember that my turns will boost up also...For your 2 Persisted spell I can Quicken 3, I can Twin 3...I can Quicken/Twin1 and Quicken or Twin 1...For your 3 I can do 4 Quick or Turn, or a double quick/Turn...This can go on and on...You still have not proven that Persist is unequivocally better. It is just your opinion.
3: You did not demonstrate how the Cleric did it. You demonstrated how the Sorcerer and the Wizard would hypothetically do it if there were a such thing as a Sorcerer or a Wizard who cast divine spells.
I did not think it was a hard stretch to see how it would be done by the examples I showed. Go back read it again and think about it...you'll get it.
|
|
Alternative Source Spell.And that is...?He is right about it though (the Divine Metamagic Errata.) Of course slip in Alternative Source Spell and you're good to go.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.
Oh my that is just hilarious...taken @ 3rd level...so my build has been saved and only had to wait a level where my Wiz gets to 5th class level...
BtW CoD...see how he was nice enough to actually produce a link to the item in question...he didn't just tell the person he was talking with to Google and search...
So how about getting on the proof of why a person needs to deal 55+ damage in a single attack @ 5th level?
|
|
Not sure if we are saying the same thing here, but it reads to me as if you do not lose a level of cleric for taking the feat (the only requirement is to be able to cast both arcane and divine spells). But to prepare spells at the OTHER source will lower your level for that spell.
The example is a 1cleric/6wiz...and preparing fireball as divine will lower his wiz level to 5...
I would take it that a level 5 wiz could NOT prepare a fireball as divine as his CL will drop to 4, NOR couldl he prepare CLW as an arcane spell as it will drop his cleric level to 0.
For the aspect of DMM though he need not prepare divine spells as arcane. So having a 5th level wiz with DMM Quick and Twin is viable for Quicken Twin DMM casting Scorching Ray again. I am titillated.
For all my home games it does not matter as we do not use Dragon Mags, nor do we use WotC material. We are strictly PF.
I removed a post. If you cannot post without talking down to other members of the community, then don't post.
What actually happens is Persist applies, making the duration from whatever it is to 24 hours, and then Extend applies which makes it 48 hours
Nope. You get a spell that lasts 24 hours plus 2X the duration of the spell. Its the same way a maximized empowered fireball doesn't do 90 points of damage, it does 60 points +1/2 the roll.
|
What actually happens is Persist applies, making the duration from whatever it is to 24 hours, and then Extend applies which makes it 48 hoursNope. You get a spell that lasts 24 hours plus 2X the duration of the spell. Its the same way a maximized empowered fireball doesn't do 90 points of damage, it does 60 points +1/2 the roll.
I'm not sure that is spelled out anywhere in the rules in the same way Maximize and Empower are.
|
|
You are mistaken.
They are not exceptions, they are clarified(though most just let them stack anyway for ease of play). They set a precedent that shows that 2 metamagic feats that modify the same portion of a spell do not stack normally.
Thus, Extend modifies the normal duration by doubling it, and Persist modifies the normal duration by setting it to 24 hours. The combined effect is 24 hours + double the normal duration.
I'm not sure I 100% buy the implication of no overlapping effect rule for all the metamagics.
It's pretty clear that for instance maximize and intensify spell stack for instance.
There is a precedent though that metamagic that modifies numerical effects (maximize + empower) operates separately. In some cases this in nonsensical but I think it was established to clearly exclude maximized empowered blast (which are still relatively marginal given the high casting cost).
Personally I think 48 hour buff spells is kinda ridiculous but personally I found persist to be ridiculous especially in conjunction with DMM (which with the changes to Pathfinder Clerics isn't really something that really works anymore without rewrites).
If CoDzilla's group like 48 hour buffs then more power to him but he also needs to realize that the applicability of his game to basically virtually everyone else playing is pretty low.
He can still make inferences but authoritative statements like he's prone to doing should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.
What I'm saying is that there are so many variables in place in your campaigns that make them unique that applying the lessons learned in your game are of limited use for most of the other people reading this forum.
Even those who have independently come to the conclusion that Full Casters > Martial Characters are by no means in agreement as to the solution.
Some people think that if the wizards and clerics are dialed up to 10, every class needs to be dialed up to 10. Others think the everyone is functionally a SoD killing machine is an unsatisfactory form of gameplay and see the solution as toning the full casters back down to say 5 out of 10.
Other people either consciously or unconsciously gravitate away from the "optimal" method of playing the game. To use economic terms they move towards an pareto-optimal equilibrium between caster and non-caster. While the caster could increase his efficiency and effectiveness it actively undermines the enjoyment of the other players. As a result net enjoyment is reduced.
Personally I think Paizo adopted a lot of half-measures in the development of Pathfinder. Too many flaws were ported over from the 3.x ruleset and other new flaws were developed. Overall I think it's possible to look at what they were trying to achieve (streamlined gameplay, improved balance, continuity with the 3.x ruleset) and take the necessary steps needed to achieve the style of gameplay that we like in our individual games (Organized Play members are at the mercy of RAW and errata though).
For you that means incorporating elements of 3.x that enabled martial characters to keep pace. For other players the solution means rewriting the martial classes and toning down the casters, other people make those changes more or less on the fly. I think the vast majority simply play in casual mode and don't even notice that the game breaks down around the margins.
I think the vast majority simply play in casual mode and don't even notice that the game breaks down around the margins.
I think it's some combination of this + different standards of character death.
Part of the ultra-optimizer argument is that you need to crank PCs to 11 to beat well-played enemies without frequent character death. If you read something like the obituary threads in each AP's forum, it's pretty clear that a lot of groups have instead taken the angle of making peace with frequent character death.
Just as there's a wide gulf between the level of optimization at which character deaths almost never happen and the level at which you get one every couple sessions, there's at least as wide a gulf between that and the level at which TPKs happen more than once in a blue moon.
Monsters being 10/10 (which is definitely overstating the case especially if you are including all the classed monster builds). Outside of some rare examples (High CR Casters, Outsiders and Dragons) most SRD monsters aren't 10/10 and many of the upper tier of threats have significant weaknesses.
Even if there is consensus that elite foes played smartly are able to nuke casual play parties routinely a lot of that can be solved by throwing lower CR encounters at the party.
It's pretty clear that some people on the board feel that anything less than APL+4 or more is needed to effectively challenge optimized PCs. If the casters are reduced in power sure you can't challenge APL +4 encounters (APL +2 might be the upper boundary) but a GM can tailor the opposition so that it is both level and group appropriate.
High Mortality in a game with minimal consequences for PC death really doesn't bother me too much. Death really isn't an effective end point for a character given the preponderance of life restoring magic available at even low levels. Even in the rare cases of final death, the Player can generally bring in a replacement character without too many lasting consequences (yes losing a character sucks and it can screw up plot development but if you are playing D&D a certain amount of mortality is to be expected).
So basically what we are talking about is the % chance of a TPK. Personally a game where every class can single shot any NPC or monster at mid to high level only increases that % chance of a TPK.
Either the PCs win init and steamroll the NPC (whoa power up and more loot) or the PCs lose init and the NPC kills off a PC. Unless there is a reasonable chance that the PCs can lose then it's not really a challenge. So either we are talking about PCs at 10 and the monsters get wiped every combat reliably or we are talking a scenario where the PCs and the monsters are close to even matched and it's a very real likelihood that the PCs are going to lose.
Scenario 1 has limited appeal for me. Unless there is a chance of player failure then I feel like I'm in a visual novel :(
Scenario 2 is okay if and only if the PCs reasonably have time to react to the possibility they might lose and can flee, withdrawal, parlay, accordingly.
The power curve at Char Op levels is too close to the razor's edge for me. If the conflict is either won or lost in the first round then there is no margin for error. PC chances of success need to be extremely high or the law of averages is going to catch up with you.
Various elements of your rhetoric have indicated that you strongly feel that the PCs if played correctly should win almost all the time. I assume that means chance of individual PC death is low and TPK approaches nil. Other people like for that chance of death/failure/TPK to be a significant larger number. In those campaigns suboptimal characters actually work better because chance of PC failure can deviate significantly from chance of TPK.
|
|
Except that you're still wrong, because without any optimization at all the monsters can still take you out in two rounds, and the casters can still take the enemy out in less than that... but without optimization, martial characters cannot even hope to keep up. It's still RLT, they just didn't grab a rocket launcher.
You keep saying this yet don't show any proof as to how this is happening.
I gave a list of encounters for a APL 5 party...there is no way these encounters take a single PC out in 2 rounds, let alone a whole party...optimized or not.
I have asked for you to prove it, yet you keep shying away from that. So come on CoD back up what you are saying for me. If you are on to something I am not afraid to admit your correctness. Otherwise it is only an anomaly within your game.
|
I've gone to fixed arrays (players pick one of several fixed arrays and arrange the stats in it as desired) for over a year now for much this reason. I absolutely LOATHE 20s in casting stats at level 1, and I'm not a fan of stats dumped to 7 for purely mechanical reasons either. The 20 at level 1 is something of a magic number (+1 DC, 1 more 1st level spell) and enables the 36 (+5 level +5 inherent +6 headband) at level 20, which is also yet another magic number (2 bonus level 9 spells). I don't have a problem giving out 'good stats', the arrays I'm willing to give actually point out very close to 25, but they're not optimized for SAD characters. That's deliberate.
Do you mind posting these fixed arrays?
Shane
I removed a post. Play nice.
|
|
By helpful posters using the 'Flag' option present on every post.I removed a post. Play nice.I imagine you with a program that causes all new messages on the boards to pop up automatically in front of you as they are submitted. How else could you be so omnipresent?
Shane
I hadn't considered that, but it makes sense. Superficially I have been aware of the Flag option for a while. As as 90% lurker I have never been motivated to use it.
Shane
|
I'm only interested in in depth conversations with reasonable and intelligent people. Since you aren't willing to ask specific questions, that means there won't be any details unless someone else with a level head asks me. Suffice it to say, I dismiss any claims that any encounter where such things happen as "level 15-16 party takes 90d6 damage" is easymode as laughable, because they are.So kyrt, offer still stands.I don't really have that much to say on the situation. I just thought it was entertaining that you put yourself in a position to have your own post thrown back at you in a different thread.
At any rate, I do have one question. Would you be willing to 'play nice' in this thread, and play it through to completion? You've been developing a reputation as someone who makes claims without backing them up, either dismissing people for not knowing 'how 3.X plays' or for not paying attention to points hidden between the lines of your earlier posts.
Can you just go along with it until this topic is concluded man?
See I would describe this as arguing. :)
|
|
Someone did declare, more than once that the encounters in my game were easier than the default. He might as well have just insulted my race and entire family at the same time. Slight exaggeration, but you do NOT tell an optimizer their encounters suck unless you have a very solid and detailed explanation to back yourself.
I did. And unless you have "a very solid and detailed explanation to back yourself" I have no reason to think you are "optimized" and your campaigns aren't farcical.
All you have to do to prove me wrong is post an outline with builds. I mean if it happened, you should be able to show your work.