Hm... I can't say that I would really see using power attack keeping someone from hitting -- it's your full attack bonus for the first swing so I would hope that the user could connect with such an attack on a regular basis... I could understand if it was a larger penalty but seriously a -1+-1/4 levels isn't that huge of a penalty to throw the attack into question.
What I believe he's trying to say (although it's a problem that was in 3.5 cleave as well) is that Power Attack can prevent your ability to even take the second swing, because you have to hit the first time to swing the second.
Honestly that wouldn't really bother me, so long as cleave weren't restricted to adjacent targets.
I suspect the primary reason for limiting cleave to adjacent is because it could get ridiculous with huge+ monsters with reach.
It could be interesting though, something like a Colossal Dragon would be quite interesting with the great cleave feat + vital strike chain (I assume cleave + vital strike work).
In 3.5, the condition for cleave was target death, so increasing damage made sense to do. In this way, PA made a good pre req, they worked together.
In PF, cleave occurs when you Hit, so the last thing you want to do on a cleave action is power attack unless your enemies have low AC. The two feats work against eachother, and the link becomes entirely "fluff".
This is not a huge problem, btw. More like a personal pet peeve. I like when pre-req feats work with subsequent feats, and I hate hate hate arbitrary pre-read!
Negative stuff about the critical miss deck, which I don't think you've ever used.
We've already discussed the two-round assumption you have many, many times. If you don't realize by now that is unique to your particular playstyle (I know, I know, you maintain that it is the only "valid" playstyle), you never will, so let's just ignore that issue and move on.
I find comic relief a very welcome ingredient to fun at the table. some of the most memorable moments occur when funny stuff happens by accident. We don't run a comical campaign, but neither do we take ourselves so seriously that we reject the humor that occurs naturally.
The other guy who DMs in my group also doesn't like the fumbles. He's also a more generous DM than I am who very rarely kills characters. I simply can't conscience having critical hits without fumbles. One just goes with the other, in my opinion. Running without fumbles makes the game "easier" on all involved, as it reduces chances for failure. Not what I'm looking for. I like the idea that outrageous luck, either good or bad, can change the flow of a battle.
Back to my main point. In practice, both the critical hits and the critical miss tables tend to favor the party, in my expierience, and particularly the martial types. Critical hits, in particular, produce effects many times exactly equivalent to the SoS spells you are in love with.
I don't mind critical hits but I am exceedingly dubious of critical fumbles as a general mechanic. With the sheer number of dice rolls the average party member will roll over the course of an adventure the percentages simply aren't great.
Because PCs are on screen for the majority of the time and a NPC is a short term cameo this tends to disadvantage PCs more than NPCs (after all if an NPC dies the DM can always make more).
The consequences for failure (failed saves, missed attacks, etc) are generally strong enough that I don't need to balance out critical hits with some sort of special mechanic.
I don't mind critical hits but I am exceedingly dubious of critical fumbles as a general mechanic. With the sheer number of dice rolls the average party member will roll over the course of an adventure the percentages simply aren't great.
Because PCs are on screen for the majority of the time and a NPC is a short term cameo this tends to disadvantage PCs more than NPCs (after all if an NPC dies the DM can always make more).
The consequences for failure (failed saves, missed attacks, etc) are generally strong enough that I don't need to balance out critical hits with some sort of special mechanic.
Take a look at the Critical Miss deck. Honestly, the consequences for failure aren't that big. I've been using it for a few months now and no one has died as a result of it. Only once was someone even incapacitated.
Where fumbles are concerned, I recognize that someone who can swing a pair of swords up to 8+ times per round has a much greater chance of a botch than someone making a charge or casting a spell. As such, in my game I've ruled that only your first attack in a round is susceptible to a fumble on a natural 1. Also, 'named' combatants can fumble only once per encounter.
Since I'm mostly playing/running PbPs these days, I've done away with using the Crit and Fumble decks. Instead, for fumbles I make the result relevant to whatever the preceding action was. If it was a charge, perhaps the character trips over a loose stone and kisses dirt, if already in melee, perhaps they leave themselves so wide open on their miss that they provoke an AoO from their target (but no one else).
My current PbP group is still play-testing it but so far it works well enough. In order for personal skill to still factor in, characters often will be able to avert a bad effect with an appropriate save, the DC of which is based off of their level and a relevant ability score:
- Whiff on a big swing? Fort DC 10 + 1/2 your level + your Str mod
- Fumble on a charge? Ref DC 10 + 1/2 lvl + Dex mod
Take a look at the Critical Miss deck. Honestly, the consequences for failure aren't that big. I've been using it for a few months now and no one has died as a result of it. Only once was someone even incapacitated.I don't mind critical hits but I am exceedingly dubious of critical fumbles as a general mechanic. With the sheer number of dice rolls the average party member will roll over the course of an adventure the percentages simply aren't great.
Because PCs are on screen for the majority of the time and a NPC is a short term cameo this tends to disadvantage PCs more than NPCs (after all if an NPC dies the DM can always make more).
The consequences for failure (failed saves, missed attacks, etc) are generally strong enough that I don't need to balance out critical hits with some sort of special mechanic.
Even if the consequences are minor, the probabilities just aren't in the PCs favor. 1s simply come up too often. If the game used a dice rolling mechanic that was more bell shaped (like a 3d6) then maybe I'd be okay with a 3 being a critical miss but honestly the probabilities are simply too high.
Combined with the fact that critical fumbles impact the classes unevenly. Character with a large number of attacks like TWF builds suffer disproportionately in comparison to a caster that might have a handful of attack rolls a session.
Overall it's not a great system IMHO, mainly because it's so swingy in nature.
As for balance with critical hits, I think the primary balance to critical hits is that sometimes you are on the receiving end of the critical hit.
I'd much rather play around the with death by massive damage (lower threshhold, scaling fort saves) as a way of incorporating higher lethality than incorporate a separate mechanical subsystem (card draw).
Take a look at the Critical Miss deck. Honestly, the consequences for failure aren't that big. I've been using it for a few months now and no one has died as a result of it. Only once was someone even incapacitated.I don't mind critical hits but I am exceedingly dubious of critical fumbles as a general mechanic. With the sheer number of dice rolls the average party member will roll over the course of an adventure the percentages simply aren't great.
Because PCs are on screen for the majority of the time and a NPC is a short term cameo this tends to disadvantage PCs more than NPCs (after all if an NPC dies the DM can always make more).
The consequences for failure (failed saves, missed attacks, etc) are generally strong enough that I don't need to balance out critical hits with some sort of special mechanic.
Even if the consequences are minor, the probabilities just aren't in the PCs favor. 1s simply come up too often. If the game used a dice rolling mechanic that was more bell shaped (like a 3d6) then maybe I'd be okay with a 3 being a critical miss but honestly the probabilities are simply too high.
Combined with the fact that critical fumbles impact the classes unevenly. Character with a large number of attacks like TWF builds suffer disproportionately in comparison to a caster that might have a handful of attack rolls a session.
Overall it's not a great system IMHO, mainly because it's so swingy in nature.
As for balance with critical hits, I think the primary balance to critical hits is that sometimes you are on the receiving end of the critical hit.
I'd much rather play around the with death by massive damage (lower threshhold, scaling fort saves) as a way of incorporating higher lethality than incorporate a separate mechanical subsystem (card draw).
Remember that you have to confirm critical misses just like you do critical hits, which takes the probability way down, as you need a second low roll to confirm unless you are fighting something with high AC.
It is a good point that, at higher levels, the PCs with multiple attacks could be disadvantaged. In my mind, theoretically that balances with the extra benefits from crits that they get, but I'll have to see how it plays out in practice.
It occurs to me that a major factor in hown this will play out in your campaign is what kind of encounters are most prevalent. If most of your encounters are with single high-CR critters with high ACs, then the PCs might be disadvantaged, as they will both be less likely to confirm critical hits and more likely to confirm critical misses, and the opposite will be true for the opposition.
If, however, the majority of encounters are with large groups of lower-CR, lower AC critters, then that assumption completely switches, as the critters will be less likely to confirm hits and more likely to confirm misses, and the opposite will be true of the PCs.
If you have a mix, I think it balances nicely with sometimes the PCs having an advantage and sometimes the bad guys.
I removed two posts.
First, if you don't feel the need to respond, then don't. Saying so is just trying to get the last word.
Second, don't make things personal. Flag it, ignore it, and move on.
I suppose we can now resume mature conversation!
So, I've been chewing on this for a bit. Excluding the extreme-envelope-pushing style that featured upthread, do we have any evidence that this kind of encounter structure creates balance for martial classes? I believe that was the OP's premise, though I could be projecting.
I feel the need to say that a mix of encounter types is what's important. A good number of encounters should be mobs. At high levels, victory conditions should definitely be more complex than "kill all the enemies".
I think one of the disconnects is that this kind of adventure structure depends on the GM. At the least, the adventure needs a timer, enemy response, or divided attention to limit the flexibility of spells. Some may look upon this as going after the spellcasters to make martials better- I feel that giving casters unlimited time is coddling them.
I'm pretty sure GMs here know the value of a timer (soft or hard). I assure you, the more you play with time as a victory condition, the more conservative your casters will become, to the benefit of party balance.
The other two tricks I fall back on most are enemy response and divided attention. Enemy response is straight forward- if you take an 8 hour rest in the middle of an assault, the enemy will be ready for you when you return, else they will abscond with whatever MacGuffin you were after. In this scenario, a forced rest is defeat (however temporary).
Divided attention is a personal favorite of mine. As soon as the party makes an enemy capable of scry n die tactics, that enemy will try to time his attacks for when the party is most weak. Provided that the PCs anticipate this threat, they will hold key resources in reserve. As long as the enemy does show up in the end, this kind of paranoia can make the presence of martial character less PF a convenience and more of a necessity.
On the topic of critical fumbles (and apologies for throwing more wood on the fire of digression), I'll say that one thing I and friends have done in the past is incorporate a d10 as a 'cruelty meter' that is rolled by the person whose character (or NPC in the case of the DM) rolled a 1.
Lower rolls on the D10 would mean nothing happened (ie. you overswung and almost lost your balance), mid roles might mean a check to hold onto one's weapon or keep one's footing, higher might mean higher difficulties on similar rolls and a 10 might mean something fairly dire.
Overall it was generally well accepted and added to the atmosphere of combat, but even with the mitigation of the effects of a rolled 1 with a sliding scale, it obviously still has a more adverse affect on melee characters than casters due to the sheer volume of combat rolls they must make. =/
stuff on various tactics
I have found that Encounters that not only mix opponents but objectives really helps with keeping the players challenged as well. They might only have 20 hobgoblins to fight all of which are fairly spread out and much under their level -- but if those 20 hobgoblins have several hostages then the situation has a much more different dynamic than simply 20 hobgoblins.
Some other situations I like:
An "unbeatable" (regen, "untouchable" AC, with several invulnerabilities) that is between the players and where they need to be, but the area favors the players in avoidance of the unbeatable (for example a huge dragon in an area with several large rooms that are filled with pillars which blocks its movement and small hallways snaking around the rooms).
Difficult terrain (requiring different movement types) with archers and flyers -- especially in a "just passing through" situation for the players (could be a monsterous "toll bridge" that the creatures aren't likely to leave but will defend/harass those on it).
Defenders that the PCs are unlikely to want to fight (good vs good) or that can only be challenged in a specific way to get pass (more artificial limits than anything here but these sorts of challenges do appear in folklore)
Vulnerable environment that the PCs have to be careful of breaking.
Visibility limiters -- nothing like putting a bunch of rats/what not in a smoky cave that has fire blasts going through it irregularly. Had the players wasting all sorts of stuff trying to kill the "dragon thing" they thought was in the cave.
Time limiters is one Evil Lincoln mentioned that I like as well.
Combining these sorts of things with various monsters and multile/single challengers can easily create situations that are a challenge no matter what the players bring to the table.
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I suppose we can now resume mature conversation!
So, I've been chewing on this for a bit. Excluding the extreme-envelope-pushing style that featured upthread, do we have any evidence that this kind of encounter structure creates balance for martial classes? I believe that was the OP's premise, though I could be projecting.
I feel the need to say that a mix of encounter types is what's important. A good number of encounters should be mobs. At high levels, victory conditions should definitely be more complex than "kill all the enemies".
I think one of the disconnects is that this kind of adventure structure depends on the GM. At the least, the adventure needs a timer, enemy response, or divided attention to limit the flexibility of spells. Some may look upon this as going after the spellcasters to make martials better- I feel that giving casters unlimited time is coddling them.
I'm pretty sure GMs here know the value of a timer (soft or hard). I assure you, the more you play with time as a victory condition, the more conservative your casters will become, to the benefit of party balance.
The other two tricks I fall back on most are enemy response and divided attention. Enemy response is straight forward- if you take an 8 hour rest in the middle of an assault, the enemy will be ready for you when you return, else they will abscond with whatever MacGuffin you were after. In this scenario, a forced rest is defeat (however temporary).
Divided attention is a personal favorite of mine. As soon as the party makes an enemy capable of scry n die tactics, that enemy will try to time his attacks for when the party is most weak. Provided that the PCs anticipate this threat, they will hold key resources in reserve. As long as the enemy does show up in the end, this kind of paranoia can make the presence of martial character less PF a convenience and more of a necessity.
+1 and then some.
The higher level you are, the smarter and more capable the enemy you are fighting is.
The enemy will use tactics, they will set traps, both physically and strategically. They will spend as much time figuring you out and researching you as you spend on them.
It isn't DM vs PC at higher levels, but it is very much more the DM's job to create a challenge for.the PC as both sides are going to be trying to take advantage of the others weaknesses while emphasising strengths.
The best piece of advice for high level DMing I was giving was to make a plan before you come to the table and them let your players beat it.
Don't worry about how, they know what they can do better than you. And so they may figure something out you never considered.
If both sides are relatively equal in power, the advantage is the players since they know the capabilities they have better than you know what you are playing.
So just be the bad guy. Scout as he would, attack as he would, try to trick and trap them as he would.
If the party gets predictable, use that against them. The bad guy would.
I guess the problem is that the book doesn't really say any of this stuff. Not even the GMG really.
A lot of folks seem to think that the default of high level play is timer-less and response-less, which very much benefits well-prepared characters. And who can prepare better than prep casters? No one.
Again, the boilerplate response is that this means the GM has to tailor his game to thwart the casters, which means Martials aren't good because you have to nerf casters to make them good. It is worth saying again: giving casters time and non-responsive obstacles is buffing the caster. Most adventuring situations should have a timer or a response, otherwise it's not an adventure it's a slaughter.
The downside of this whole approach is the specificity of conditions. For the martials in a mixed party to really shine, you need to force the wizard to conserve his power for the major fights, but make the minor fights powerful enough to be a threat, and make them hard to bypass. And after all that, if the wizard screws up and goes nova too early, either from sheer stupidity or from ignorance of the scenario, then you're pinned as a GM into cascading plot consequences that can be a pain to run. It IS a lot to juggle, and I'm not surprised that some people don't play this way at all.
You know what would be neat? A random table that combined all these elements with some examples.
I guess the problem is that the book doesn't really say any of this stuff. Not even the GMG really.
Taking that a step further, I wouldn't say most published adventures account for it very well either. At best (not always, but often) at higher levels they take invalidate some of the biggest or most standard ways that casters start to break adventures (e.g. you can't teleport or scry for some reason) but otherwise don't well address the problem mechanics.
And honestly, for a published adventure, these things are hard to balance right. "The party's able to escape and rest when they really need to and nothing bad happens as a result" is kind of a pressure release valve -- really tough parties blast through the dungeon or whatever in one go and weaker ones get to take it slower, allowing the same encounters to be workable for a spread of skill levels without TPKs on the low end.
Games I've GM'd tend to skew more caster-PC-heavy than your iconic party mixes, and yet I've never seen them run even close to the alotted time for things that are supposed to happen under time pressure. I'd assume that a less forgiving timeline that would push or punish my players would wipe out other groups completely.
I'm not sure how you address that or account for it as a published adventure author.
I think the problem is that with the exception of some specific APs and organized play scenarios most adventures are designed for the widest appeal to the most number of groups. That includes a ton of very casual gamers.
As a result any group that significantly deviates from the design norms (4 characters of the iconic classes) will often either completely plow through most encounters (particularly if they are a party of optimized codzillas and godwizards) or they will fail utterly (if they lack a critical resource like divine healing, or specific arcane spells).
In general it's easier for a GM to scale up an encounter than scale it down particularly if it's a solo monster or god forbid a solo caster.
I'd personally like it if adventure designers offered advice on how to scale encounters for different difficulty levels but I'm also cognizant of the fact that page count is limited and if more words are spent on a single encounter that means fewer encounters and fluff can make it into an average AP, etc.
Books like GMG with big sets of prebuilt stock NPCs that can be used to supplement encounters are a nice resource. While I don't particularly like some of the design ideas presented and most don't work really well as primary foes (BBEGs, etc) the ability to supplement an encounter with a variety of human mooks and lieutenant characters is nice.
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I guess the problem is that the book doesn't really say any of this stuff. Not even the GMG really.
Taking that a step further, I wouldn't say most published adventures account for it very well either. At best (not always, but often) at higher levels they take invalidate some of the biggest or most standard ways that casters start to break adventures (e.g. you can't teleport or scry for some reason) but otherwise don't well address the problem mechanics.
And honestly, for a published adventure, these things are hard to balance right. "The party's able to escape and rest when they really need to and nothing bad happens as a result" is kind of a pressure release valve -- really tough parties blast through the dungeon or whatever in one go and weaker ones get to take it slower, allowing the same encounters to be workable for a spread of skill levels without TPKs on the low end.
Games I've GM'd tend to skew more caster-PC-heavy than your iconic party mixes, and yet I've never seen them run even close to the alotted time for things that are supposed to happen under time pressure. I'd assume that a less forgiving timeline that would push or punish my players would wipe out other groups completely.
I'm not sure how you address that or account for it as a published adventure author.
See here I disagree.
Without going to far into spoiler territory all of the high level AP's have some or all of the following.
1. Encounters that come in waves, aka things attracted to the sound of battle to make the fights on going.
2. Areas that you can't teleport in or out of.
3. Explicit timers.
4. Available reinforcements to punish withdraw and return tactics.
5. Bad guys who can scry you back and/or who observe you regularly. Often the text explicitly says these bad guys will adjust strategy to the weaknesses of the group based on these observations (in one case even forcing you to be more susceptable to it due to circumstances needed to win.)
And all of the have the "what if" section at the end dealing with what to do if you don't succeed fully.
I can cite specifics under spoilers if you like, but in all the high level AP's I've read the issues of "Leave and come back" were addressed throughout most of the quest.
I don't mean to be combatative, but did you actually read my post? I specifically commented on your #2 and #3 and in general it seems like you're responding to an argument I wasn't making.
(Specifically, my first paragraph is about how #2 is done and can be necessary but isn't alone sufficient, and the entire rest of the post is about how even when #3 does exist, as written, it doesn't achieve its probable design goals.)
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I don't mean to be combatative, but did you actually read my post? I specifically commented on your #2 and #3 and in general it seems like you're responding to an argument I wasn't making.
My misunderstanding, I read it as you kind of dismissing those restrictions being effective so I wanted to include them in the larger argument regarding all of the things in play in high level AP's.
The point being if you are running a high level game, challenges should also include these types of planning.
Sorry if it came off more aggressive than intended. You are one of the good guys :)
Still it seems like everyone except a few outliers agree that these tactics are GM gold.
So... do they actually benefit Martials vs. Casters? Or can the case be made that Casters will still be better equipped to deal with these issues and you're making everyone's life harder?
I think Timers are definitely something you can hold up and say "this hurts casters more than martials" but then again, there's other resources that get chewed through, like potions.
Hmm.
Still it seems like everyone except a few outliers agree that these tactics are GM gold.
So... do they actually benefit Martials vs. Casters? Or can the case be made that Casters will still be better equipped to deal with these issues and you're making everyone's life harder?
I think Timers are definitely something you can hold up and say "this hurts casters more than martials" but then again, there's other resources that get chewed through, like potions.
Hmm.
Maybe its balanced...
What am I saying... thats crazy talk.
Maybe its balanced...
What am I saying... thats crazy talk.
What is "Game Balance"?
A miserable pile of secrets!
But enough talk. HAVE AT YOU!
Maybe its balanced...
What am I saying... thats crazy talk.
What is "Game Balance"?
A miserable pile of secrets!
But enough talk. HAVE AT YOU!
Its a fictional image created by players minds in order to suggest that their own inferior playing styles are insufficient because they can not use every tool of the game to its maximum advantage in a particular situation due to the inability to process the usefulness of a given attribute in all situations.
or something.
Its a fictional image created by players minds in order to suggest that their own inferior playing styles are insufficient because they can not use every tool of the game to its maximum advantage in a particular situation due to the inability to process the usefulness of a given attribute in all situations.
or something.
Heh, I always figured it was achieved at the moment each player feels they are contributing heroically to a situation where failure is a risk. But what the hell do I know?
Heh, I always figured it was achieved at the moment each player feels they are contributing heroically to a situation where failure is a risk. But what the hell do I know?
This is how I generally feel about it too -- mechanically it bears out as well which is good.
2 out of 2 Abrahams agree!
I really like the idea of more published info about pacing campaigns and adventures, and challenging PCs for the long haul. There are some great sections in some of the books that offer general advice, which is good, but well, I think we need more.
I find [u]The Art of War[/u] to be a great guide for creating challenges for PCs. The way things are broken down into sections (The five types of terrain, etc.) makes it easy to grab a piece from here, and a piece from there. It also has numerous examples of battles that seem almost unbelievable or super-hardcore even by fantasy standards.
To get into the strategic mindset, I would also recommend [u]Attacks[/u], by Erwin Rommel. Attacks is his account of small unit fighting during WWI. Many of the stories involve things that seem very much like D&D. Storming a series of farmhouses, chasing down fleeing troops through mountainous terrain, etc.
Basically, a mid-high level party is like a small army in itself. To challenge it, you need to throw up obstacles that would give an army trouble, and responsibilities and rewards fit for an army.
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Been there, tried that, party had one week to blast through about two dozen encounters...
2 dozen encounters in a week is 24 encounters in 7 days, or an average of less than 4 encounters a day.
4 encounters a day is a normal encounter day.
So your "extreme" example is less than the average number of encounter per expected by game design.
let me say that again, your "extreme" game has less encounters per day than the intended "average" game.
Your games are based on being able to nova. Not to mention tons of house rules and what seems to be a painfully predictable and uncreative DM.
Have fun with that, if that is what floats your boat. But your post may be the best evidence so far for the argument that people who have short encounter days view the game very differently.
Yeah, dude, scenario from my last 4 months of mid-level (8-10) gaming has stints where if the players can't survive a run of 12 encounters in 2 hours (in character) they fail. And I'm not adding anything to the adventure text that specifies that, I'm just running what's there.
EDIT: Removed the word "average". That run was actually pretty tough.
In other words, the DC becomes higher to avoid pulling a three stooges as they become higher level, and thus more skilled?
This is why fumble rules are an abomination. They promote backwards logic such as this.
Practically every saving throw in d20 is based on that same formula:
10 + 1/2 level + relevant ability score modifierSince the character is essentially saving vs. themselves, it should remain fairly balanced over the course of their career. The exception to this being for builds that neglect to keep up with their saves, or opt to become lumbering mountains of muscle with all the agility of an invalid.
Of course, the the difference between theory and practice is that in theory there is no difference while in practice there is. That's why I mentioned earlier that my group is currently playtesting this.
I realize that you are dead-set against the use of fumbles. You have provided several reasons why and I can see where you are coming from. However, as a thought exercise, let's say that for some reason you were in a group that was going to use them regardless and that not using them was not an option. How would you go about designing the mechanism for avoiding a fumble?
That's one approach, although it tends to go against the spirit of what I'm asking. To clarify, I'm really looking for something that remains relevant regardless of the level of play. Even if the likelihood should decrease markedly due to increased skill, there should still be some chance for it. What then would be the mechanism for achieving that?
Since BAB is supposed to be indicative of skill, perhaps rolling full BAB (well your attack roll really) against the DC I mentioned earlier might be worth look into. After all, for all classes except full arcane casters, BAB advances more rapidly than saves or save DCs. Thoughts?
If one had to be in play I liked someone from earlier in the thread suggestion that they be limited to once per round... I might add that the fumble effect takes place at the end of fumbling creature's actions instead of in the middle. That way they can still finish before they screw up and having more attacks doesn't mean that screwing up hurts you more.
I removed some posts.
Also, I'd like to remind everyone that trolls thrive on attention, negative or otherwise. Attempting to prove that they are incorrect, or that you know they are a troll, only encourages them to continue.
Instead, simply pretend the post isn't there. If it violates our messageboard rules, please flag it. Don't call them out. Don't tell them you're going to ignore them. Just continue the conversation as if there were not there, just like a child throwing a tantrum.
Thank you for making the Paizo messageboards a more friendly and civil place.
Abe (no, not the evil one ;) Yeah, actually I was the one who limits it to just once per round — only the very first attack roll of a creature's turn is subject to scrutiny. I further limit it to just one fumble per named creature per encounter.
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Been there, tried that, party had one week to blast through about two dozen encounters...2 dozen encounters in a week is 24 encounters in 7 days, or an average of less than 4 encounters a day.
4 encounters a day is a normal encounter day.
So your "extreme" example is less than the average number of encounter per expected by game design.
let me say that again, your "extreme" game has less encounters per day than the intended "average" game.
Your games are based on being able to nova. Not to mention tons of house rules and what seems to be a painfully predictable and uncreative DM.
Have fun with that, if that is what floats your boat. But your post may be the best evidence so far for the argument that people who have short encounter days view the game very differently.
Except that the encounters themselves are considerably above par. APL +2 material to APL +4 material being common.
So by all means, try to claim we have an easy mode DM when we're taking on four boss battles a day. And actually, though the time limit was a week, we did it in half that. Think about that a moment. 24 / 3 = ??? Hint, it's not less than 4. And most of those are still boss battles.
Not to mention that if we actually took a week, the boss would have been something like APL +13 to APL +18 instead of APL + 8.
And what novaing? Battles are won with a tiny handful of spells. There's plenty of resources left for more. Even after the party fights enough encounters to gain an entire character level in a single in game day.
Ross deleted my other post, so I will try to say this in a different way, because I do think the point I made in the other post is relevant to the thread and not just poking at a troll.
You have posted numerous times about house rules that you use in your games. You have never posted any specific build or specific example of how a scenario played out at your table. You sometimes post numbers out of context, and demand others meet the criteria you set, but not where these numbers come from.
For example, above you have not posted what you fought, what your party consisted of, what level anyone was, how it played out on the table, etc...
And so even if I believed the example above wasn't 7 days as you originally said but was three days as you later said, I have no reason to think your +2 APL is even in the same ballpark as the RAW +2 APL, as I have no reason to think the character you played with was created or played RAW.
In other words I have no reason to think that we are functionally playing the same game, and many, many reasons to think we are not.
If someone who held a similar position to your regarding the Caster viability following RAW, say if Kurt Ryder, Dire Mongoose, or Kirth said the statement above, I believe they have earned enough credibility that most people would reasonably give them the benefit of the doubt that in the example above it actually happened as explained and that therefore it was a data point that needed to be looked at. Even though they consistently say that they prefer a variant of the game that is played with a different rule set that is conducive to their preferred play style, when discussing game experience they discuss in context to these changes. All of the above have posted specific examples, and most have posted builds at various points.
You, at this stage, have earned very little credibility here. Many people have tried to get you to flesh out examples of your broad proclamations with little success. When we did get something out of you up to level 5, your build was decent, but not in any way overwhelming or dominant. You argue to prove your narrative, not to discuss it being accurate.
You seem to have an interest in the game. You seem to like to talk about the game. It would be nice to have you in the tent talking about the game rather than having you shouting from the rafters about how it sucks, and your game is better, and how dare anyone point out that your house ruled game isn't the same as RAW. But in these discussions it has to be said that you aren't playing the game as written. Because the discussion is of how the game works (or doesn't) as written.
I wish either the messageboard had an ignore function or that banning was utilized more. Sure, it may make me have to take vacations for awhile when I speak out of turn, but the derailing of actual discussion being curtailed would be worth it to me.
At this stage it is very clear to anyone who has been on the board for awhile that there is a group who thinks casters are dominant and martial classes are underpowered, and who discuss it openly as part of an intellectual exercise to improve the style of game they like to play. They have interesting well thought out posts with specific examples from play, and even engage in active playtests to see what changes can work.
Above you have some vague reference to a personal gaming experience you had without any information as to what you fought, who was in the party, etc...
You can join with that group, who are generally well respected on here even by those who disagree with them, or you can continue as a marginalized outlier full of sound and fury that we are all told to ignore and flag.
Your call.
But if you go with the later, can you give me the link to that greasemonkey script you used to reference all the time. I think it will be best for all parties. Unless Ross is right and you are just posting for attention, in which case, Merry Christmas, my gift to you.