For GMs - Role Playing vs Power Gaming - Round 1 - ability scores


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Shadow_of_death wrote:
just jumping back in on the tower shield thing, when swimming it is a -20 + 2x armor ACP.

This is incorrect. They took that out when switching over to pathfinder from 3.5.


Elven_Blades wrote:
1) yes, 20 dpr is exceptionally low. We do generally play more powerful characters.

Yes it is very low for your characters level and it would be difficult for Barbarian at 8th level to downscale his damage to match the rest of the parties out put. To put it in perspective the party I am in now has a barbarian that 4th level was putting out I believe 22.5 to 43 points of damage a round thanks to cleave power attack and rage. Now that we have hit sixth level and he gets a second attack per round that damage is going to be at least 40-60 around without a great deal of effort or paying attention to what other feats he might put on it as well.

Barbarians hurt people a lot without much effort...which is a good thing because for a BAB class their A.C. tends to be painfully low (frequently my witch in the same game with nothing more than a high dex Bracers +2 and a ring of protection +1) has had a higher A.C. than him while he does his job.

Elven_Blades wrote:
2) low damaged does not mean gimped. It seams most people optimize towards damage first, defense second, specialty/situational third.

Typically because of the resource cost per character tends to be higher with a defensive approach versus an offensive approach. It costs more resources to get high defenses that it does to create high offense. After all you have 4 defense stats that you need to adjust (A.C., Reflexes, Will, and Fort), plus working on boosting hit points and elemental protections While only needing to adjust 2 offensive stats (Attack Bonus and Damage).

Additionally its an artifact of the way that D&D handles damage that encourages high damage output builds. Its been said in several different threads but the combat abilities of a monster with 1 hit point remaining and a monster with all of its hit points remaining is exactly the same. This creates as a situation where frequently the best defensive choices in the game is actually load up on offense and kill the monster before he gets lucky and pulls a crit or a save or suck spell off on the party. This is something you probably have seen already with the party after all with this barbarian in the party how much damage is party taking per round?

Elven_Blades wrote:
Again we overdid the low damage on this one, but whatever.

and he may have overdid the damage on this one, but whatever.

Elven_Blades wrote:
Om a side note, no, not fudging rolls or decreasing encounters difficulty in any means. On the contrary, increasing nearly all of them and still having a problem with barb outshining everyone.

Because once again defense takes a lot more effort and time to generate for P.C.s to get than offense does and is far less noticeable to tracks as well. A parties rogue who successfully evades the 15 point fireball the rest of the party took (after half damage and elemental protections taken into account), is typically far less memorable than the 60 point precise strike he then delivered to the enemy wizard afterwords.

Elven_Blades wrote:
3) it seems most of the examples given are around a 15 point buy with feat selection also heavily weighted towards damage output. I see nearly no examples of a character with defensive oriented feat selection, with some offense, doing the levels of damage you all explain. This is partially, in my view, what i am calling power gaming. I seek more balanced characters with both offense and defense feat/ability.

That's because its very hard to actually pull off in play a famous military axiom after all is "whoever tries to defend everything, defends nothing in the end" To be equally adept in both offense and defense is to be good at neither. The defensive players in your game have characters that are really bad at offense, and the barbarian is probably really bad defense. Both build priorities give up game elements to achieve the results they wanted.

Its also an issue of time an 8th level barbarian only has 4 feat selections with some of those feet selections possibly being part of feat train that he is looking to complete. It is is also probable that he sees his niche within the group as being the damage dealer while others cover other niches (the face, the stealth guy, the buffer etc).

Elven_Blades wrote:
The "one trick pony" is what i don't like. The barb i reference is just that, and every time he finds a feat that he can squeeze more damage out of than a current feat, he wants to retrain. He has no character type in mind, aside from damage. He doesn't do anything creative, he just hits stuff.

That's martial classes though they don't have the built in support for creative combat answers that caster classes have. They dish out the damage that's their agreed upon role at the table while the skill monkeys figure bypass the skill challenges and the casters control the battlefield.

Elven_Blades wrote:
I think a character i could wrap my head around ,without headache, someone that would do something aside from max out damage. Maybe spend the first round or two sundering enemy weapons, making them less effective in combat.

But why do so with the current rules? His class is built to do damage and apparently he can do so well enough to one shot a number of bad guys with his build. Which leaves him the choice of either simply killing the bad guy and looting his stuff afterwords for the parties benefit, or breaking the valuable magic items for a couple of rounds before killing the bad guy. Giving said bad guy plenty of opportunity to leave or to use different resources against the group instead.

Would the group truly be relieved to note that the barbarian just destroyed a +3 mace for example that the parties own cleric could use forcing the enemy cleric to instead it a party member with a 130 point harm spell instead of using his mace. Especially when a round later the barbarian one shots the cleric after the harm spell goes off?

Does the barbarian simply not like having nice stuff or is perpetually jealous of other people having nice stuff instead. Reducing but not eliminating combat effectiveness of enemies still leaves them possibility of really hurting a party member and only matters if the ineffectiveness really matters for the rest of the fight.

Elven_Blades wrote:
He would never do such a thing, because it dors not directly impact HIS damage output.

He would never do such a thing because such tactics require their own specialized builds and going after the other sides weapons instead of the other sides soldiers is typically much more of a situationaly good idea rather than the go to answer in every encounter


IdleMind wrote:
Cartigan wrote:
If you want role-playing to matter, d20 is not your game.

I'm pretty sure this is the crux of the issue.

-Idle

I was pretty sure that the crux of the issue was a failure to communicate effectively by elven_blades.

Several suggestions were offered and requests for actual character stats and sample combats made so that an honest analysis rather than monday morning quarterbacking were made. I suggested E6 style play as it may suit what his group is after better.

The poor methods of his communication here would imply (but by no means guarantee) that he was also having difficulty articulating what was causing stress with the player and that has seemed to be the top suggestion to have serious sit down with all the players about what the games expectations are in all areas: combat, in town rp, in group rp, even problem/puzzle solving yet the suggestions have been ignored.


Abraham spalding wrote:
Shadow_of_death wrote:
just jumping back in on the tower shield thing, when swimming it is a -20 + 2x armor ACP.
This is incorrect. They took that out when switching over to pathfinder from 3.5.

Okay so I love you, but seriously I had not noticed that. Could save some lives in the future... Except I am dming next and I kinda like the rule mwahahaha


Shadow_of_death wrote:
Abraham spalding wrote:
Shadow_of_death wrote:
just jumping back in on the tower shield thing, when swimming it is a -20 + 2x armor ACP.
This is incorrect. They took that out when switching over to pathfinder from 3.5.
Okay so I love you, but seriously I had not noticed that. Could save some lives in the future... Except I am dming next and I kinda like the rule mwahahaha

Thats what house rules are for especially if players are already used to that style of mechanic go and drown many and many more.


Elven_Blades wrote:

The problem is that we are all more focused on role-playing, and the last player always is a power gamer.

Anyway, what this tends to lead to, is that we have a front line putting out ridiculous damage or a caster with ridiculous unmakeable save dc's.

Currently we have an 8th level barbarian on one set of characters, who averages 50+ dmg on a full attack, highest was 83 dmg with haste up. Best average damage output by any other member of the group is 15 or so. The main problem here is that anything that is a threat to the group, can usually One-shot any member of the group, or has such a high AC that no one can hit it and gets frustrated.

The high save dc: the same player that has the barbarian has a witch in the other campaign (we switch off every couple weeks, taking turns as GM). A couple weeks ago, against a large group of low level opponents, he basically cut the encounter in half with one spell and some metamagic, all cuz nothing could mace the save. (fireball maximized, intensified, metamagic rod: selective). Droped the fireball right on 2 PCs heads's and eliminated 8 enemies.

Here is your problem. It's not the "power gamer". He's actually making average characters at best, given that the extent of his "power gaming" is doing 50 damage over 2 hits at level 8. (hint: that's not a lot) The people swinging for a pathetic little 15 at 8? That's the problem. Thank that Barbarian - he's the only reason you get through even routine encounters.

As for Rocket Tag, welcome to D&D. Though if you are dying in one hit I suspect people thinking it's "good roleplaying" to make some 6 Con walking corpse go adventuring is your problem. Even if it isn't, the fact you are honestly using the term "roleplaying" as opposed to actual roleplaying is the reason why you are having so much trouble. You are as much of an enemy to yourself as the enemies are. Perhaps more so.

In the second example, you have a caster... using Fireball. To kill mooks. And this is a problem because...

Your game will immediately and drastically improve if everyone but your so called power gamer begins playing competently, as opposed to deliberately sabotaging themselves. Because that's all your so called power gamer is doing. Properly roleplaying. And that means you don't sign up for dangerous jobs unless you can actually handle them.


Shadow_of_death wrote:
Okay so I love you, but seriously I had not noticed that. Could save some lives in the future... Except I am dming next and I kinda like the rule mwahahaha

Hey, it's good to be loved! I don't mind what you use in your campaigns -- I just want to make sure you know what's in the book.

After all your table == your rules.

Liberty's Edge

1) If 3 members of the group purposefully gimped (or optimized for defense, whatever you want to call it) themselves, and the 4th didn't you shouldn't really consider the 4th one a power gamer.

2) Just because a half-orc has the mental stats of 6 / 6 / 6 now doesn't mean he had them growing up. Maybe he did get hit in the head with the axe and that's why he's now challenged.

Grand Lodge

CoDzilla wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:

The problem is that we are all more focused on role-playing, and the last player always is a power gamer.

Anyway, what this tends to lead to, is that we have a front line putting out ridiculous damage or a caster with ridiculous unmakeable save dc's.

Currently we have an 8th level barbarian on one set of characters, who averages 50+ dmg on a full attack, highest was 83 dmg with haste up. Best average damage output by any other member of the group is 15 or so. The main problem here is that anything that is a threat to the group, can usually One-shot any member of the group, or has such a high AC that no one can hit it and gets frustrated.

The high save dc: the same player that has the barbarian has a witch in the other campaign (we switch off every couple weeks, taking turns as GM). A couple weeks ago, against a large group of low level opponents, he basically cut the encounter in half with one spell and some metamagic, all cuz nothing could mace the save. (fireball maximized, intensified, metamagic rod: selective). Droped the fireball right on 2 PCs heads's and eliminated 8 enemies.

Here is your problem. It's not the "power gamer". He's actually making average characters at best, given that the extent of his "power gaming" is doing 50 damage over 2 hits at level 8. (hint: that's not a lot) The people swinging for a pathetic little 15 at 8? That's the problem. Thank that Barbarian - he's the only reason you get through even routine encounters.

As for Rocket Tag, welcome to D&D. Though if you are dying in one hit I suspect people thinking it's "good roleplaying" to make some 6 Con walking corpse go adventuring is your problem. Even if it isn't, the fact you are honestly using the term "roleplaying" as opposed to actual roleplaying is the reason why you are having so much trouble. You are as much of an enemy to yourself as the enemies are. Perhaps more so.

In the second example, you have a caster... using Fireball. To kill mooks. And this is a problem because...

Your...

Your late...we expect you back in page 2 :P .

Liberty's Edge

Abraham spalding wrote:
Shadow_of_death wrote:
just jumping back in on the tower shield thing, when swimming it is a -20 + 2x armor ACP.
This is incorrect. They took that out when switching over to pathfinder from 3.5.

I think the issue, as usual, is not applying the rules.

The party doesn't seem "over powered" to me. You are supposed to have an easy go of same CR encounters.

We just had a huge Drow fight today that turned out to be very challenging because of light rules. I had to read the book several times before we played to make sure I was clear about the effects of darkness throughout the board, as well as light spells that could effect the light sensitivity of the Drow.

If I don't study up on the rules before the game, it falls into chaos. As it was, it was a pain to run because of all of the variables (I was running 20+ enemies of 5 different types) even studying before hand.

If the DM doesn't have a strong grasp of the rules, or experienced and honest players to "help", things fall apart quickly.


Elven_Blades wrote:
On a side note, would you consider 23 ac at level 1 to be a decent stat, and anything under that to be gimped, cuz thats what the barb had at level 1, before he went into 2handed weapon usage.

And how did he manage this?

Quote:
Your exactly right, it's a style issue. As i said before, we have played a few power campaigns, but as a whole, we don't like when BBEGs can be smote in 2-3 rounds. In fact we don't like it when any combat lasts only 2 rounds.

Welcome to D&D.

Quote:
Again, going to the barb, he 1-rounded at cleric/fighter that I gave full hit points per hit die to, that was supposed to be the BBEG of the dungeon. Its not only not fun for the players, but very not fun for me (the GM), having spent 3 hours designing something that would have been extremely challenging for the group, likely a tpk, without him. (he hadn't been there in 2 week, I had planed on him not being there again)

Bad builds die quickly. Welcome to D&D. With 3 hours, you should have came up with something better.

Quote:
Your telling me that if I'm not doing 100+ dpr, I'm gimping myself unless I'm below level 10?

Absolutely. Ever seen enemy HP?


CoDzilla wrote:


Absolutely. Ever seen enemy HP?

Yes, it's surprisingly not that high. Not that you shouldn't end big, dangerous monsters as soon as possible.


I think you can stop now... the OP is already dead

Grand Lodge

Pual wrote:
I think you can stop now... the OP is already dead

But we have to be sure...


Elven_Blades wrote:

You insult me by suggesting 4e. I tried it. I hate it. I will never play it again.

Good day sir.

I give up on this thread. It seams there are a precious few who understand my plight, and the rest just don't understand how i could view this game as anything other than a damage race. It isn't world of warcraft people. There isn't a strict 5 round limit before the boss enrages and smotes everyone with a single hit.

4e was nothing but a gross over-fix from one side of the problem to the other.

I understand your plight, Elven_Blades. Most people that frequent internet boards don't play the game like we do.

If you have a mechanical problem or need a clarification of the rules, there is no better place to go than here.

But for a philosophical discussion, especially involving the topic at hand, I believe you've come to the wrong place, sadly.


Elven_Blades wrote:

You insult me by suggesting 4e. I tried it. I hate it. I will never play it again.

Good day sir.

I give up on this thread. It seams there are a precious few who understand my plight, and the rest just don't understand how i could view this game as anything other than a damage race. It isn't world of warcraft people. There isn't a strict 5 round limit before the boss enrages and smotes everyone with a single hit.

4e was nothing but a gross over-fix from one side of the problem to the other.

If came to the boards looking for yes mean you will rarely find them here. One day you will see me argueing vehmently with a poster, and the next day I will agree with them.

Your style of play is not standard, and rather than storming out, since this is your second time doing so, it is more mature to question what the "insulter" said. Maybe they were being snarky or maybe you just misunderstood.

PS:We understand your plight. We just don't agree with your methods. I have no idea what the WoW reference was about. If you come back I guess you can enlighten us, and we are still waiting for a description of one of your fights and a boss fight. Alternately you can post your group's builds, and we can post a typical encounter, and a boss level encounter to see how you group might do.

PPS:Most of us have been quiet civil. The fact that we don't agree does not make us less civilized.


Elven_Blades wrote:

You insult me by suggesting 4e. I tried it. I hate it. I will never play it again.

Good day sir.

I give up on this thread. It seams there are a precious few who understand my plight, and the rest just don't understand how i could view this game as anything other than a damage race. It isn't world of warcraft people. There isn't a strict 5 round limit before the boss enrages and smotes everyone with a single hit.

4e was nothing but a gross over-fix from one side of the problem to the other.

Are you kidding? 4e practically defines exactly what you want to do in the game. Long boring rounds where everyone is just a punching bag that doesn't to much of anything.


Riggler wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:

You insult me by suggesting 4e. I tried it. I hate it. I will never play it again.

Good day sir.

I give up on this thread. It seams there are a precious few who understand my plight, and the rest just don't understand how i could view this game as anything other than a damage race. It isn't world of warcraft people. There isn't a strict 5 round limit before the boss enrages and smotes everyone with a single hit.

4e was nothing but a gross over-fix from one side of the problem to the other.

I understand your plight, Elven_Blades. Most people that frequent internet boards don't play the game like we do.

If you have a mechanical problem or need a clarification of the rules, there is no better place to go than here.

But for a philosophical discussion, especially involving the topic at hand, I believe you've come to the wrong place, sadly.

...since the mechanical issue was the barbarian, just saying. :)


Posting again because the whole 15 damage a round thing is still making me chuckle. I've had characters that do 25 damage a hit, punching at those levels. And they have absolutely no unarmed focus of any kind, and are punching with entirely mundane spiked gauntlets, there only because punching with spiked gauntlets does not provoke AoOs. They aren't even MW. Attacking with an actual weapon results in a damage range more around 1d6+40, as opposed to 1d4+22. So to all the people wondering just how you do that poorly, I'm right there with you asking the same question.


Cold Napalm wrote:
Pual wrote:
I think you can stop now... the OP is already dead
But we have to be sure...

Never forget to dead-check


Cartigan wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:

You insult me by suggesting 4e. I tried it. I hate it. I will never play it again.

Good day sir.

I give up on this thread. It seams there are a precious few who understand my plight, and the rest just don't understand how i could view this game as anything other than a damage race. It isn't world of warcraft people. There isn't a strict 5 round limit before the boss enrages and smotes everyone with a single hit.

4e was nothing but a gross over-fix from one side of the problem to the other.

Are you kidding? 4e practically defines exactly what you want to do in the game. Long boring rounds where everyone is just a punching bag that doesn't to much of anything.

I don't think he wanted long boring rounds where no-one does anything, just not the barbarian charges, followed by full attacks until BBEG is dead.

I would personally give rewards like 'hero points' to PC's that do unusual things rather than just roll dice with no description (i am not saying that you have to give up dpr just not it being you're only option).

But everyone was jumping on the fact that the OP said that the rest generally do about 20dpr, how much does most wizards do casting stinking cloud, or bards directly do with their songs. Which of course mean that the barbarian benefits from the buffs more than the rest.


From looking over this whole thread, I think the OP's group suffers from a bad case of "how do we shoot teamwork, LOL?". There CANNOT be any buffs afoot, because having basic buffs going (haste, prayer, magic circle, bless etc) even a badly built combatant should be able to deal close to 50 damage at lv8 as long as they just have power attack. As I said earlier, the only thing that makes my paladin consistently do 60-ish damage on a full attack is power attack combined with a party that actually works together.

The rest of the party must be a mish-mash of hopeless multiclassers or self-centered casters who like silly spells like fireball too much. No sense of team effort, synergy or tactics.

On the issue of combat maneuvers: Ignore the feats, they are garbage, spend 750gp on a wand of enlarge person, hand it to the worst excuse for a caster in the party, and do the disarms/sunder/trips/silly outside the other guy's threat range. Done deal.

On the 3hour boss; Fighter/Clerics are a thing of the past. Full fighter is better, full cleric is even better again. Give him mooks, have him buff them as well. Potions. Scrolls of spells outside his casting range. I am fond of giving mid-level baddies a scroll of time-stop to buff themselves. Much better for them than a stat+2 item, and almost the same price. Again, do not let melee monsters close and make full-attacks.


Cold Napalm wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:

You insult me by suggesting 4e. I tried it. I hate it. I will never play it again.

Good day sir.

I give up on this thread. It seams there are a precious few who understand my plight, and the rest just don't understand how i could view this game as anything other than a damage race. It isn't world of warcraft people. There isn't a strict 5 round limit before the boss enrages and smotes everyone with a single hit.

4e was nothing but a gross over-fix from one side of the problem to the other.

So you can't even defend your point so your insult pretty much the board then. Do you have any idea how rare it is for some of these posters to agree with Cartigan? The fact that people who normally are at each other's throats suggests that your game is seriouly below standard level should tell you SOMETHING. Seriously, it's not the 4th guy...it's really you. When you feel like learning from the community, your welcomed back...till then have fun with your temper tantrum.

Its so funny you said this because that was one of my first thoughts...utter shock that I was on Cartigan's side on something.

My second thought...that yet again I am baffled by a person who has no concept that when 30 people disagree with them it could just maaaaayyybeee be them.


FatR wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:
I think a character i could wrap my head around ,without headache, someone that would do something aside from max out damage. Maybe spend the first round or two sundering enemy weapons, making them less effective in combat. He would never do such a thing, because it dors not directly impact HIS damage output. Everything is about max damage output, any attempt at roleplaying is an afterthought at best.
And now my anger has transformed into rage of an exploding supernova. Why, pray tell, do you equate doing something OBVIOUSLY SUBOPTIMAL in combat with roleplaying? Why?

+1. I mean, heaven forbid the Barbarian not gimp himself forever by destroying his own loot instead of defeating his enemies in glorious combat, hearing the lamentations of their women, and all that jazz.


Cold Napalm wrote:
Your late...we expect you back in page 2 :P .

Held up in forum traffic.

Cartigan wrote:
CoDzilla wrote:


Absolutely. Ever seen enemy HP?
Yes, it's surprisingly not that high. Not that you shouldn't end big, dangerous monsters as soon as possible.

It's quite high relative to default damage. It's even higher compared to 15 damage a round at 7, or 10, or whatever level it was. For example, one level 10 enemy is 135. And 2 level 8 enemies instead means around 200 in total, if not higher. That's just the average, it can easily be boosted.


Shadow_of_death wrote:
Cold Napalm wrote:
Pual wrote:
I think you can stop now... the OP is already dead
But we have to be sure...
Never forget to dead-check

"When in doubt, put cold steel in it. Kill it, and then kill it again."

Private Yimt 'little mad one' Arkhorn.


Curiosity only:

Level 8 barbarian

16 str(10 base, 2 level, 4 raging)
12 dex
14 con
10 mental stats

spiked gauntlet
1d4

Feat Power Attack
Other feats=useless

Raging 1d3+(3 strength, +1 magic gauntlet, +6 power attack)= 1d3+10
Hasted 1d3+10. If all attacks hit that is 30+3d3.

With a point buy of 7 and no racial modifiers I can still can't go below 15.


Kamelguru wrote:

From looking over this whole thread, I think the OP's group suffers from a bad case of "how do we shoot teamwork, LOL?". There CANNOT be any buffs afoot, because having basic buffs going (haste, prayer, magic circle, bless etc) even a badly built combatant should be able to deal close to 50 damage at lv8 as long as they just have power attack. As I said earlier, the only thing that makes my paladin consistently do 60-ish damage on a full attack is power attack combined with a party that actually works together.

The rest of the party must be a mish-mash of hopeless multiclassers or self-centered casters who like silly spells like fireball too much. No sense of team effort, synergy or tactics.

On the issue of combat maneuvers: Ignore the feats, they are garbage, spend 750gp on a wand of enlarge person, hand it to the worst excuse for a caster in the party, and do the disarms/sunder/trips/silly outside the other guy's threat range. Done deal.

On the 3hour boss; Fighter/Clerics are a thing of the past. Full fighter is better, full cleric is even better again. Give him mooks, have him buff them as well. Potions. Scrolls of spells outside his casting range. I am fond of giving mid-level baddies a scroll of time-stop to buff themselves. Much better for them than a stat+2 item, and almost the same price. Again, do not let melee monsters close and make full-attacks.

He said they do buff, but it the issue was that a hasted barbarian + other buffs did too much damage.


wraithstrike wrote:

Curiosity only:

Level 8 barbarian

16 str(10 base, 2 level, 4 raging)
12 dex
14 con
10 mental stats

spiked gauntlet
1d4

Feat Power Attack
Other feats=useless

Raging 1d3+(3 strength, +1 magic gauntlet, +6 power attack)= 1d3+10
Hasted 1d3+10. If all attacks hit that is 30+3d3.

With a point buy of 7 and no racial modifiers I can still can't go below 15.

Well i am sure the OP would have been happy with a Bar. dpr of twice anyone else 50-60.

But it probably seems like a play style clash, where the player chooses not to take a stat less than 18, when the rest of the party has happily reduced pure effectiveness.


This thread is high comedy. Thanks guys!


wraithstrike wrote:
Kamelguru wrote:

From looking over this whole thread, I think the OP's group suffers from a bad case of "how do we shoot teamwork, LOL?". There CANNOT be any buffs afoot, because having basic buffs going (haste, prayer, magic circle, bless etc) even a badly built combatant should be able to deal close to 50 damage at lv8 as long as they just have power attack. As I said earlier, the only thing that makes my paladin consistently do 60-ish damage on a full attack is power attack combined with a party that actually works together.

The rest of the party must be a mish-mash of hopeless multiclassers or self-centered casters who like silly spells like fireball too much. No sense of team effort, synergy or tactics.

On the issue of combat maneuvers: Ignore the feats, they are garbage, spend 750gp on a wand of enlarge person, hand it to the worst excuse for a caster in the party, and do the disarms/sunder/trips/silly outside the other guy's threat range. Done deal.

On the 3hour boss; Fighter/Clerics are a thing of the past. Full fighter is better, full cleric is even better again. Give him mooks, have him buff them as well. Potions. Scrolls of spells outside his casting range. I am fond of giving mid-level baddies a scroll of time-stop to buff themselves. Much better for them than a stat+2 item, and almost the same price. Again, do not let melee monsters close and make full-attacks.

He said they do buff, but it the issue was that a hasted barbarian + other buffs did too much damage.

Yes, I clearly remember reading that, but it just makes no sense. Are the rest of the party casters that play at melee? There is just no way to deal so little damage otherwise. Even if they don't have power attack.


Kamelguru wrote:


Yes, I clearly remember reading that, but it just makes no sense. Are the rest of the party casters that play at melee? There is just no way to deal so little damage otherwise. Even if they don't have power attack.

You assume they attack during their rounds. In fact, they perform deep soliloquies and interpretive dances.


Varthanna wrote:
Kamelguru wrote:


Yes, I clearly remember reading that, but it just makes no sense. Are the rest of the party casters that play at melee? There is just no way to deal so little damage otherwise. Even if they don't have power attack.

You assume they attack during their rounds. In fact, they perform deep soliloquies and interpretive dances.

Hmm... maybe I should have Toshirou use his +7 in perform (oratory) to recite a beautiful haiku every other round next time I play. To balance out the 50-60 damage average when he full-attacks with his sword. That way, the utility/skill oriented rogue/diviner/AT won't feel too bad about my character out-damaging hers outside her field of specialization.


Cold Napalm wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:

As far as the 343 damage spell goes, I'll do my best to remember all the feats and stuff

I don't know his int score, let's assume it's a 30

Level 18 ( 8 warmage / 10 elemental savant <fire>) may be off on exact level
Greater Fireburst level 4 spell
15d8 damage
Warmage edge and (feat) extra edge. +10 from regular edge and +5 from extra
That feat that reduces metamagic cost by one spell level, cant remember name
Energy admixture - effectively doubles spell damage, 4 levels (3 after above feat
Up to lvl 7 spell
Empower spell - +50% spell dice, 2 levels,, up to level 9
Sudden maximize - you know

Not legal. Sudden meta magic, like instant meta magic can not raise a spell level above 9. Not that 343 damage at level 18 is all that impressive for 3.5 with splat characters.

False.

Sudden Metamagic has no Slot adjustment. So it will never bring a spell above 9 because it doesn't raise spell slot level. No, not even then. Don't confuse houserules with actual rules.
So it very possible.


Kamelguru wrote:
Varthanna wrote:
Kamelguru wrote:


Yes, I clearly remember reading that, but it just makes no sense. Are the rest of the party casters that play at melee? There is just no way to deal so little damage otherwise. Even if they don't have power attack.

You assume they attack during their rounds. In fact, they perform deep soliloquies and interpretive dances.
Hmm... maybe I should have Toshirou use his +7 in perform (oratory) to recite a beautiful haiku every other round next time I play. To balance out the 50-60 damage average when he full-attacks with his sword. That way, the utility/skill oriented rogue/diviner/AT won't feel too bad about my character out-damaging hers outside her field of specialization.

Or they could be casting battlefield control spells, healing, moving to sneak attack/flank, disarming, sundering,intimidating, animal empathy or any number of things that isn't direct damage.

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded snarky, just a bit sad people might have driven off the OP, who was basically asking advice for an OP PC (IN HIS GAME) & with the same premise as the "Wizards who don't max out Intelligence" thread.


DSXMachina wrote:


EDIT: Sorry if that sounded snarky, just a bit sad people might have driven off the OP, who was basically asking advice for an OP PC (IN HIS GAME) & with the same premise as the "Wizards who don't max out Intelligence" thread.

That's ok,

You've just made the mistake of assuming people who post to the advice forum are posting to give advice and discussion. Instead, most of them are posting purely to stroke their own ego and show to everyone else just how clever they can be while packing the maximum amount of snark and smarmyness into the minimum amount of words in a post while never acknowledging anything posted by anyone else that they can't turn into a joke.

It's a common mistake, I make it regularly myself. Then one of the above jokesters posts and reminds me of the sad reality.

EDIT : Advice, General Discussion, really any forum out here.


mdt wrote:
DSXMachina wrote:


EDIT: Sorry if that sounded snarky, just a bit sad people might have driven off the OP, who was basically asking advice for an OP PC (IN HIS GAME) & with the same premise as the "Wizards who don't max out Intelligence" thread.

That's ok,

You've just made the mistake of assuming people who post to the advice forum are posting to give advice and discussion. Instead, most of them are posting purely to stroke their own ego and show to everyone else just how clever they can be while packing the maximum amount of snark and smarmyness into the minimum amount of words in a post while never acknowledging anything posted by anyone else that they can't turn into a joke.

It's a common mistake, I make it regularly myself. Then one of the above jokesters posts and reminds me of the sad reality.

EDIT : Advice, General Discussion, really any forum out here.

You act like jokes and being clever are a bad thing, not like the OP answered any of the important questions posed to them, We didnt scare him off he left before having to actually give us more then "I good roleplayer, guy who does 50-60 damage in round cant possibly match my skillzz, help me fix him"


DSXMachina wrote:
Kamelguru wrote:
Varthanna wrote:
Kamelguru wrote:


Yes, I clearly remember reading that, but it just makes no sense. Are the rest of the party casters that play at melee? There is just no way to deal so little damage otherwise. Even if they don't have power attack.

You assume they attack during their rounds. In fact, they perform deep soliloquies and interpretive dances.
Hmm... maybe I should have Toshirou use his +7 in perform (oratory) to recite a beautiful haiku every other round next time I play. To balance out the 50-60 damage average when he full-attacks with his sword. That way, the utility/skill oriented rogue/diviner/AT won't feel too bad about my character out-damaging hers outside her field of specialization.

Or they could be casting battlefield control spells, healing, moving to sneak attack/flank, disarming, sundering,intimidating, animal empathy or any number of things that isn't direct damage.

EDIT: Sorry if that sounded snarky, just a bit sad people might have driven off the OP, who was basically asking advice for an OP PC (IN HIS GAME) & with the same premise as the "Wizards who don't max out Intelligence" thread.

While the last few posts have been snarky. Most people were genuinely trying to help when he was still here. I don't know if it was an issue of not being able to articulate, but it seemed like he felt that anyone that did not agree with him was insulting him.

An example was the 4th edition comment, which is actually valid since monsters get a lot of hit points, and it takes a while to whittle them away.
I think he took it as "go play 4E since 3.x/Pathfinder is to hard for you", but that is not what was being said.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I'm still chuckling over how absurd this is...
I have a player in my game thats a level 5 barbarian...
She does 2D6+34 on a crit while raged using power attack.

It would be impossible to lower her to 15 damage/rnd without serious fiat on my part.


If elven blade wants high HP and Low damage across the board. he should just play 4th edition.

4th edition optimizers also have less of a lead than 4th edition non optimzers and point values are extremely low compared to the point costs. but since damage bonuses are so rare, every static DPR bonus helps, even if it subtracts from your ungodly defenses. you just have to ban the entire ranger class and the demigod epic destiny.

at least if elven blade were to play 4th edition. his bosses would last a lot longer than one round. try entire game sessions.


Shuriken Nekogami wrote:

If elven blade wants high HP and Low damage across the board. he should just play 4th edition.

4th edition optimizers also have less of a lead than 4th edition non optimzers and point values are extremely low compared to the point costs. but since damage bonuses are so rare, every static DPR bonus helps, even if it subtracts from your ungodly defenses. you just have to ban the entire ranger class and the demigod epic destiny.

at least if elven blade were to play 4th edition. his bosses would last a lot longer than one round. try entire game sessions.

Last time someone brought that up he felt insulted. He specifically wants to do his thing 3.x/pathfinder style which works within his group, but not for anyone else so far.

Grand Lodge

Starbuck_II wrote:
Cold Napalm wrote:
Elven_Blades wrote:

As far as the 343 damage spell goes, I'll do my best to remember all the feats and stuff

I don't know his int score, let's assume it's a 30

Level 18 ( 8 warmage / 10 elemental savant <fire>) may be off on exact level
Greater Fireburst level 4 spell
15d8 damage
Warmage edge and (feat) extra edge. +10 from regular edge and +5 from extra
That feat that reduces metamagic cost by one spell level, cant remember name
Energy admixture - effectively doubles spell damage, 4 levels (3 after above feat
Up to lvl 7 spell
Empower spell - +50% spell dice, 2 levels,, up to level 9
Sudden maximize - you know

Not legal. Sudden meta magic, like instant meta magic can not raise a spell level above 9. Not that 343 damage at level 18 is all that impressive for 3.5 with splat characters.

False.

Sudden Metamagic has no Slot adjustment. So it will never bring a spell above 9 because it doesn't raise spell slot level. No, not even then. Don't confuse houserules with actual rules.
So it very possible.

Humm since you can use sudden feats for item creation, I could have sworn they had a spell level eqv. and had the same restrictions as instant meta magic. For instance you can use sudden maximize to make a maximized fireball scroll as a 6th spell level scroll. I do clearly remember the arguments over the item creation part on the old board and it being clearly said that is how item creation with sudden meta feats work.

Grand Lodge

wraithstrike wrote:
Shuriken Nekogami wrote:

If elven blade wants high HP and Low damage across the board. he should just play 4th edition.

4th edition optimizers also have less of a lead than 4th edition non optimzers and point values are extremely low compared to the point costs. but since damage bonuses are so rare, every static DPR bonus helps, even if it subtracts from your ungodly defenses. you just have to ban the entire ranger class and the demigod epic destiny.

at least if elven blade were to play 4th edition. his bosses would last a lot longer than one round. try entire game sessions.

Last time someone brought that up he felt insulted. He specifically wants to do his thing 3.x/pathfinder style which works within his group, but not for anyone else so far.

Which would be fine except he seems hell bent on thinking that the rest of the world is wrong and he is the norm. That's where the running him off comes from. He is completely unwilling to accept that what he is playing ain't normal. Not even close. Until he accepts this little fact, he will continue to have problems because anyone else that joins his games will make your average characters and blow the rest of the players away. I mean honestly god help him should a compentant caster joins the group...much less a meh barbarian that wasted a level 1 feat of tower shield.


Cold Napalm wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
Shuriken Nekogami wrote:

If elven blade wants high HP and Low damage across the board. he should just play 4th edition.

4th edition optimizers also have less of a lead than 4th edition non optimzers and point values are extremely low compared to the point costs. but since damage bonuses are so rare, every static DPR bonus helps, even if it subtracts from your ungodly defenses. you just have to ban the entire ranger class and the demigod epic destiny.

at least if elven blade were to play 4th edition. his bosses would last a lot longer than one round. try entire game sessions.

Last time someone brought that up he felt insulted. He specifically wants to do his thing 3.x/pathfinder style which works within his group, but not for anyone else so far.
Which would be fine except he seems hell bent on thinking that the rest of the world is wrong and he is the norm. That's where the running him off comes from. He is completely unwilling to accept that what he is playing ain't normal. Not even close. Until he accepts this little fact, he will continue to have problems because anyone else that joins his games will make your average characters and blow the rest of the players away. I mean honestly god help him should a compentant caster joins the group...much less a meh barbarian that wasted a level 1 feat of tower shield.

I hear ya man, but what can you do.


Ya know i really like these boards, good people, lots of ingenuity... however, their seems to be a plethora of snarkiness and a very low (rock bottom) amount of patience in this thread. Having just read this thread, it ran rampant... and i would like to point out i can understand about the barb doing insane amounts of damage (hell you should see the people i play with, not trying they optimize their characters through the roof...) its irritating, and you have to work around it. Play style definitely is what i think the most critical part of his problem was, unfortunately communication was not the board's strong point in this one.

Ya know though i can understand were he was coming from... Now theirs nothing wrong with trying to make your character survivable, however, your not trying to beat the DM, your fellow players, or the world around you.

SO STOP TRYING TO, seriously this mentality irritates me to no end, and when people start talking Builds? its not i had this really cool elven paladin named (enter name here) from elven city which is why he knows a spell or to and he learned archery from the great master archers of Kelthilos instead its... I made a Paladin/Wizard/Arcane Archer which did mad damage with my bow LOLZ!. It's the same on a lot of gaming boards.

This mentality needs to die a horrible, horrible death, if your playing to roll dice and play pen and paper MMO's cool but not everybody does... I think that was the point elven blade was trying to make in his post though he did not explain it well. Some people like to think of characters as well... Characters, ya know the ones you read in books with a back story that hopefully makes sense, not the drooling combat machine. You can Optimize and make interesting characters, well rounded characters, real characters... It can be done.

Anyway... rant over, now go get some Mountain Dew and Doritos and lets drop this thread its getting ridiculous.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
JadedDemiGod wrote:


Ya know though i can understand were he was coming from... Now theirs nothing wrong with trying to make your character survivable, however, your not trying to beat the DM, your fellow players, or the world around you.

SO STOP TRYING TO,

...

This mentality needs to die a horrible, horrible death, if your playing to roll dice and play pen and paper MMO's cool but not everybody does...

...

now go get some Mountain Dew and Doritos and lets drop this thread its getting ridiculous.

Where, anywhere, in this thread, has anyone proclaimed they were trying to 'beat' the DM or play pen and paper MMOs?


JadedDemiGod wrote:


Ya know though i can understand were he was coming from... Now theirs nothing wrong with trying to make your character survivable, however, your not trying to beat the DM, your fellow players, or the world around you.

You mind further explaining this?

Quote:


SO STOP TRYING TO, seriously this mentality irritates me to no end, and when people start talking Builds? its not i had this really cool elven paladin named (enter name here) from elven city which is why he knows a spell or to and he learned archery from the great master archers of Kelthilos instead its... I made a Paladin/Wizard/Arcane Archer which did mad damage with my bow LOLZ!. It's the same on a lot of gaming boards.

and this one.

Quote:


This mentality needs to die a horrible, horrible death, if your playing to roll dice and play pen and paper MMO's cool but not everybody does... I think that was the point elven blade was trying to make in his post though he did not explain it well. Some people like to think of characters as well... Characters, ya know the ones you read in books with a back story that hopefully makes sense, not the drooling combat machine. You can Optimize and make interesting characters, well rounded characters, real characters... It can be done.

and this

I am asking you to elaborate because I want to be sure of what you are saying before I reply.
edit:added bb code


JadedDemiGod wrote:


You can Optimize and make interesting characters, well rounded characters, real characters... It can be done.

It doesn't change fact that you will be doing more than 15 damage/rd by level 8. Even if a "well rounded real" character. If you disagree, than you are speaking gibberish. Because it hard to be "well rounded real" and suck that much.


It just seems like theirs always an arms race, it just seems to be the mentality TriOmegaZero. I could be wrong but the difference between just trying to make sure your character is good at something and trying to keep the cohesion of the group together, and trying to make the superman is lost.

If that makes any sense...

I've played in many games were people try to make the character with the most bonuses. Its like building the Monk who has the Vow of Poverty feat and takes the (peace bringer? caller... Its from BOED), its an insane build, that was built for no other reason then to be the biggest bad-A** out their.

To sum it up, theirs nothing wrong with optimizing, but i do see a problem with power gaming. There was a lot of "Your other players need to optimize better", and that just wasn't the kind of advice i think the OP needed. "Talk to him and try to work out a compromise, Have the optimizer help the other players in making the characters more effective in combat without sacrificing their character ideas" also appeared on here but the previous advice seemed more prevalent, along with a fair amount of... attitude behind it. Did the OP have some as well? yeah but i think the thread kinda got out of control.

Read back through the thread, it does; Hopefully i've cleared up my point... to many times have i seen people create character's in D&D/Pathfinder/Rifts/White Wolf/Gurps/Etc. which are designed to make them the spotlight trying to outshine everyone else (whether or not it is intentional i don't know and can't say for other people) and when people come on this board talking about it there does seem to be a fair amount of heat on the subject one way or the other. and the Final comment was more aimed at power gaming and how their are people who claim its required and if your not doing it, your not playing the game right.

That mentality is what irritates me, the "if your not playing this way your doing it wrong" it happens to often. The OP asked a question in trying to find a way to talk/work with the player who is disrupting the combat portion of the game (from what little i got from the OP... More info would have been nice), and people seemed to get irritated because he was playing a different form that apparently isn't the "NORM" and he is trying to get the norm player to convert to his way of thinking.

Hopefully that cleared things up.


one a side note i wasn't talking about the 15/dpr thing, yeah thats low at 8th level; i was talking about the attitudes shown here on this particular thread and on every other thread like this one.

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