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I did, but going strictly by the chart and ignoring spells it falls in line.
I am assuming the giants weak will saves would be the reason for their CR despite them doing a lot of damage. If I were to investigate the other monsters I could find similar weaknesses.
Which was more or less my point. If you ignore the majority of the creature's capabilities and assume no buffs and no equipment, then he falls in about the right spot. However, his actual capability is a little below the standard pre-buffs and significantly above standard post-buffs. The sword is negligible.
Likewise, the giants have negligible swords as well. Again, the giants lack the other abilities that the Ghaele does (including self buffs) but has such incredible prowess that it doesn't need them. Like I said before, creatures with treasure values other than "NPC gear" aren't affected by gear as much as others. The DPR of the ghaele if he means business is 84/round if all attacks hit with a mundane sword. 105 for the giants. Now the giant has 11,600 gp worth of treasure. Even if we dropped a +2 sword on him (the most powerful weapon he can wield for 8,300+ gp), the effect on him is negligible.
Just as the effect on the Ghaele is negligible to replace his +4 sword with a mundane sword, or give him a +2 sword and a +2 bow instead. It might change his tactics slightly, or bump his hit/damage a tiny bit, but ultimately it has no effect on its CR. I mean, in a slow XP game you're expected to amass the same treasure per level as in a fast XP game, but a Ghaele is the same CR across slow, medium, and fast, even though in a slow game the ghaele cannot have his standard sword, and in a fast game he could have a superior sword.
In essence, the chart is not valid for actual play. It's nothing but a starting point. A helpful tool for looking at the baseline for an enemy of a particular challenge rating when creating an entirely new creature. It is clearly pre-buffs, and clearly does not take much of anything into account beyond their most raw statistics (as we noted, it doesn't have anything concerning their senses, SLAs, spells, special powers, etc). Arguing monsters or fairness based solely on the monster creation charts is not going to go anywhere because most monsters (especially at higher CRs) don't follow them anyway. At least, not in the way that you're describing.
Now if you're trying to make an encounter easier on your PCs, then converting treasure solely to basic wealth (coins, gems, art, etc) could be a step in that direction. If you want to give the Ghaele a masterwork sword and about 35,000 gp worth of completely mundane treasures then you could do that. However, the difficulty of that encounter is not going to actually change much. In the heat of the moment, PCs aren't going to notice that the celestial isn't wielding a +4 sword. It's just far too minor of an impact on the encounter. If you wanted to truly humble some PCs, you could give him a club and have him beat the party's martial senseless with it (his damage would still exceed the average of 60 by about 10 points).
To truly change the difficulty of the encounter in the favor of newbies, you'd need to give them some actual real advantages. Stuff like terrain advantages, weaken the Azata before hand (wounded or ability drained), or just play the Azata as a stooge like most new GMs will. Most new GMs are not going to have the Azata actually fight like he wants to win. Most of them will not make use of his greater teleport to pull back. Most aren't going to take advantage of terrain and have him turn incorporeal and pummel the party with spells and rays while healing himself. Most of them aren't even going to remember that he has spells at all and just throw him into melee like he was a drooling ogre. Most aren't going to recognize that turning incorporeal while globe of invulnerability is active is going to essentially destroy the party's ability to damage him effectively (he's now immune to stuff like magic missile and metamagic versions thereof). If a GM is actually playing the creature intelligently, the +4 weapon will not be missed. Likewise, if the GM isn't, the +4 weapon isn't going to make much of a different. Likewise yet still, if the GM is AND he has the +4 weapon, it's still not going to make much of a difference.
Unless you start piling PC wealth on the Azata...that would be worth a +1 CR, because you'd be able to arm him with enough shwag that it takes him from being a normal enemy to something much, much more. You'd be able to outfit him in the finest gear (a +4 weapon breaks the poor celestial's bank as it is) and improve significantly on all fronts quite a bit.
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All that being said, what are we arguing about again? I can't remember. Last I checked I said monsters using their treasure is expected. It seems both you and 3.5 Loyalist agree (3.5 Loyalist just seems to have an aversion to dragons in armor). We've discussed the statblocks, NPC wealth, how NPCs use that wealth, and the divergences from the basic monster creation chart (which I think we both agree is woefully incomplete if you actually want to use it as anything more than a bare bones estimate of a creature's strength). We've determined that we agree that NPCs should wear their treasure and during an actual game it should be done (for verisimilitude reasons). I think you're advocating not having NPCs use their treasures with the inexperienced, but I'm not 100% sure. If so, I would say two things:
1) If they're still utter newbies by the time they're encountering CR 13 creatures, they've been softballed way to much. :P
2) One learns through experiences. We could blame Darwin, but I say either you rise to the occasion or you go back to the drawing board.
When I'm GMing for newbies, I generally step up stuff slowly, and I don't mean in gear (like I said, adjusting NPC gear within their indicated limits has little effect on overall difficulty). Instead, I begin with fairly simple instances and become more complex. For example, if I wanted to educate PCs on the game, I would do more of the following:
1) Let the PCs roll up some fresh characters. Begin a new game.
2) Let the characters encounter things slow. First a trivial encounter that lets them experience how attacking and maybe spells work.
3) Have encounters get a little more complex. Teach the PCs by experience. Teach them about cover by having an enemy turn over a table and use it for cover. Teach them about concealment with a foggy scene.
4) Teach them about traps by triggering some alarms or other minor things, stepping up the danger bit by bit.
5) Teach them about aquatic situations by using a flooded building or underground tunnel (probably with pockets of air, at least initially).
And then continue getting a bit more wild. As the party became more comfortable with things I would introduce problem encounters. A pack of goblins who use archery + stealth to hit and run. An enemy who relies on trickery and spells. An enemy who charms people. A powerful brute with a reach weapon, and so forth. By the time they hit 6th level they would have an answer for many types of situations. By the time they hit 11th level those Ghaele Azatas wouldn't be that scary even if I had them use their death ward spell and wield a life-drinker.
I had to actually do this sort of thing in an online community I was part of once. It had a council of GMs, and I got invited to GM, and then shortly after that I was put on the council, and shortly after that I was made head GM (but got burnt out dealing with certain social dramas concerning a particular player and stepped down because I was spending more time sorting out people's conflicts and drama than I was GMing or playing). During my time there, I ran a few higher level games (the 13th+ range) and realized that while a lot of these players were certain that their "optimization-fu" was very strong (and many of them played pretty broken things) they were frequently getting steamrolled in my games (often by enemies who were lower level than themselves), while some of folks that had "practical experience" were outpacing them with far more mundane builds.
I mentioned that I wanted to run a high level game (I actually built a 20th level adventure, complete with advanced monsters, including a very bad drow priestess, an advanced nightwalker who had a DC 50+ save vs destroying your goodies, traps like pits that drop you into rooms of advanced black puddings and stone golems, etc). However, I quickly realized that there was maybe 1-2 people in the community that would survive the mooks of the dungeon, let alone the end game; which was sad because some of the folks there were pushing epics. To point out how pathetic some of these situations were, one guy whined and moaned that an encounter that another GM (not I) ran at 18th-21st level was unbalanced, unfair, and clearly against the players because the enemy was flying and his Ranger/Beastmaster thing only had his animal companions and melee (he complained his archery wasn't enough). He even lodged a formal complaint to get the game discounted from the group history because his PC died in it because he didn't have so much as a potion of fly at 19th level.
So I explained to the community that I was going to be running a game. A 20th level dungeon game. However, I told them strait up that I didn't believe anyone would actually be able to handle it, so I was going to run a campaign from 1st level that was actually the party getting to the dungeon to be explored (essentially the party would set out with a team of archaelogists through a vast wilderness dotted with communities, stopping at various communities regularly, with tons of side quests and adventures on the way to their true destination to get them where they needed to be). During these adventures I tested their cleverness, and worked to get them to develop teamwork (most played like a one-man band with backup dancers), and deal with the unexpected.
During the game, they encountered everything from net wielding orcish slavers (orcs with nets, glaives, shamans casting bless, and chugging enlarge person potions), goblin firestarters (goblins flinging explosives while wearing armor made out of flint), burrowing giant centipedes, misguided priests, wyverns, and more. As they grew levels, they were clearly getting better. At first level they were a scattered group of rag-tag misfits. By the time they reached 5th level, they were diving into melee and providing their allies with cover so the mage could take his spell without an AoO; or using anklets to port to more advantageous positions; or teaming up to focus-fire down threats; throwing up team buffs; using some crowd controls; retreating and regrouping; and even comboing abilities together. Not one complained that the game was too hard. They just got better. Bit by bit, they got better. I was proud of them. They would check new communities and get supplies, craft items during the days the caravan was just wandering along or when they were in town, purchase potions and consumables, and more.
Sadly, due to some of the non-game related drama with a couple of folks (like I said, I was head GM and the final arbiter of conflicts), I never did get around to running that 20th level game. The PCs only made it to around 6th level or so and I took a hiatus. It was fun while it lasted, and like I said before, I was very proud of them all.
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I did, but going strictly by the chart and ignoring spells it falls in line.
I am assuming the giants weak will saves would be the reason for their CR despite them doing a lot of damage. If I were to investigate the other monsters I could find similar weaknesses.
Which was more or less my point. If you ignore the majority of the creature's capabilities and assume no buffs and no equipment, then he falls in about the right spot. However, his actual capability is a little below the standard pre-buffs and significantly above standard post-buffs. The sword is negligible.
Likewise, the giants have negligible swords as well. Again, the giants lack the other abilities that the Ghaele does (including self buffs) but has such incredible prowess that it doesn't need them. Like I said before, creatures with treasure values other than "NPC gear" aren't affected by gear as much as others. The DPR of the ghaele if he means business is 84/round if all attacks hit with a mundane sword. 105 for the giants. Now the giant has 11,600 gp worth of treasure. Even if we dropped a +2 sword on him (the most powerful weapon he can wield for 8,300+ gp), the effect on him is negligible.
Just as the effect on the Ghaele is negligible to replace his +4 sword with a mundane sword, or give him a +2 sword and a +2 bow instead. It might change his tactics slightly, or bump his hit/damage a tiny bit, but ultimately it has no effect on its CR. I mean, in a slow XP game you're expected to amass the same treasure per level as in a fast XP game, but a Ghaele is the same CR across slow, medium, and fast, even though in a slow game the ghaele cannot have his standard sword, and in a fast game he could have a superior sword.
In essence, the chart is not valid for actual play. It's nothing but a starting point. A helpful tool for looking at the baseline for an enemy of a particular challenge rating when creating an entirely new creature. It is clearly pre-buffs, and clearly does not take much of anything...
Hmm, I guess.. from now on... I'll just have to say another mortal passed the test of the Starstone in my version of Golarion. :P
No insult intended here, but on this end it seems you have got too much wargaming and optimisation mixed in your roleplaying there. The abundance of crunch has been a criticism of pathfinder.
Make the good hard, make the great harder, but not everything needs modification and optimisation (or magic armour on top). If you do so, a dm can easily wipe the floor with pcs. To then blame the pcs is folly. You are not seeing what you are doing.
Next game in the coming days, murder mystery. Few combats, not much of that though. No need to modify the monsters and combatants because it isn't mainly about that. It will be a few hours of rping and skill checks. The battle may be simple, or it may be glorious.
Ashiel I am going to give you a cap on word count. :)
Our debate was whether or not the chart falling in line with the book included treasure the book(beastiary) wanted it to have.
I used steps 7 and 9 as my evidence that when a monster is not meeting the chart that giving it treasure is to make sure it meets the chart, and when a monster bypass the chart it has a weakness somewhere else. The chart however does not account for buff.
I think that falls in line with basic players using 15 pb.
Both of us ignore the chart though in actual games.
3.5 believes that giving extra equipment to the monsters is not cool.
In short my disagreement with you is more in theory than practical application(real games usage).
3.5 disagrees with you on both counts. :)
IIRC and 3.5 will correct me if I am wrong felt like you were stacking the deck against the monk by giving the monsters additional gear.
My feeling, and probably yours to, is that if the monk was capable of keeping up the extra gear would not hinder it, any more than the other classes are hindered.
edit:That last post was really for monks played by players without a strong grasp of the system.
edit2:I was not taking a pot shot at any posters. It basically falls in line with my "to play a monk you better really know what you are doing or you will suck" idea.
Nope, of course you can give the party's enemies more stuff, cool things, useful items. Got to be careful you don't overwhelm the party and skewer the CR. Dragons in armour though, entirely not pathfinder canon (and you have to go to Draconomicon to find it in 3.5). Yes, they could get some more ac, so could anything in mw studded leather (er, like an ooze, but oozes like dragons are not depicted or statted as wearing armour around them (not within them, oozes have been shown to have digested armour inside) in the bestiary or monster manuals of yore). It ain't official, it ain't common, it is entirely a dm sticking a dragon in armour to beef its ac.
That I never change the kit of monsters or opponents or that I am always against it is a misrepresentation of what I am saying. Sure there is a rhetorical term for this. Ash is saying this over and over through many paragraphs so it was assumed to be what I was saying.
Positions are now clear.
Some examples, I've given half-ogres levels of scout and cooler weapons before, to really try the party as they tried to leave the Mwangi expanse with a lot of loot.
Lizardfolk, I give them cool weapons, throw in some warlocks, don't give them added armour, because they have nat ac and their home environment (swamp, reeds, rivers) would foul a lot of armours quickly. That is a lot like Black (and some Green dragons), funnily enough. Great ac, terrible home terrain for armour.
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I would not do it unless the group can handle it. My very unofficial rule is that A CR X for one group is not CR X for another group.
Nope, of course you can give the party's enemies more stuff, cool things, useful items. Got to be careful you don't overwhelm the party and skewer the CR. Dragons in armour though, entirely not pathfinder canon (and you have to go to Draconomicon to find it in 3.5). Yes, they could get some more ac, so could anything in mw studded leather (er, like an ooze, but oozes like dragons are not depicted or statted as wearing armour around them (not within them, oozes have been shown to have digested armour inside) in the bestiary or monster manuals of yore). It ain't official, it ain't common, it is entirely a dm sticking a dragon in armour to beef its ac.
I wouldn't put an ooze in armour, though I might leave armour in the ooze. Seriously, though, an ooze isn't smart enough to wear armour.
That I never change the kit of monsters or opponents or that I am always against it is a misrepresentation of what I am saying. Sure there is a rhetorical term for this. Ash is saying this over and over through many paragraphs so it was assumed to be what I was saying.
Positions are now clear.
It's easy to make assumptions from what was not said.
You have no idea how hard I laughed at this post. So very, very hard. Hard enough that every time I tried to respond, I lost mobility in my arms and had to lay my head on the desk from reading it again. In essence, I was LMAO.
Aha! I see you rolled a natural 1 against my Hideous Laghter spell! Cast with the "Extend Range Through Internet" metamagic feat! Take that, warforged!
Not-scary explanation about shoveling dead chickens.
Ah, I see. That makes sense. Huh, I knew chicken were not the bravest or smartest of creatures, but your tale still surprised me. Poor birds.
"a family emergency means I gotta go shovel dead chickens" is a pretty weird sentence. Considering the kind of people I've met on RPG tables over the years (and more importantly, in the internet!), this could mean anything from:
"My relatives who run a farm had a problem with their chickens and asked me to help."
to:
"My uncle is sick, in order to be granted a miracle from our dark gods, I must face a horde of demonic chickens in the arena! My only weapon is my family heirloon, a chicken-bane vorpal shovel."
Sorry for yor loss (of chickens).
But I must say, I'm somewhat relieved it was the former scenario (maybe a bit disappointed that there are no demonic-chicken arenas, though). At least the Paladin you mentioned before (or was it in the other monk thread?) get to keep his allignment and powers.
Hopefully, everything will end well. I wish you and your family the best of luck.
Back on topic.
I've very rarely equiped monsters with extra equipment following the chart. I usually just try and give them some gear that makes sense and may be useful for the players (my players right now, ar a bit under-geared, so giving them a few extras is helpful) or just interesting, like a +1 dagger that detects time/space anomallies (aka: teleports).
We don't have a monk in this game, as the player who intended to make one decided for a Gunslinger instead. Last PF monk I've seen in play got tired of the character because he had to burn his ki points not to lag (too much) behind the others.
We ended up making a homebrew monk-fix. It was good enough for him to be able to deal decent damage without having an AC of 17 or something like that. And he didn't even come close to breaking the game in anyway (Except I made the GM hate his Sense Motive).
We used 25 point buy, so that helped. 15 point buy is basically the same as abnning the monk for me. I love the idea of a unarmed guy kicking dragon ass, and the RPing a martial artist is fun, but no RPing can save the fun if the character doesn't work as intended.
No insult intended here, but on this end it seems you have got too much wargaming and optimisation mixed in your roleplaying there. The abundance of crunch has been a criticism of pathfinder.
Make the good hard, make the great harder, but not everything needs modification and optimisation (or magic armour on top). If you do so, a dm can easily wipe the floor with pcs. To then blame the pcs is folly. You are not seeing what you are doing.
Next game in the coming days, murder mystery. Few combats, not much of that though. No need to modify the monsters and combatants because it isn't mainly about that. It will be a few hours of rping and skill checks. The battle may be simple, or it may be glorious.
I'm not sure where you're going with this. Exactly what did I say in my previous post that encourages "too much wargaming and optimization"? In fact, what makes you think there was too much next to the roleplaying?
Should instead of challenges and obstacles that the party encountered to help them learn the system and grow as a team, I have talked about the adventure where the "misguided priest" poisoned a community with a poison that only affects those of evil alignment and how it nearly brought a town to its knees, ruined lives, and involved a multi-session adventure to solve the reason that people were seemingly going mad with no apparent similarities between them (everyone spanning from cutpurses to noblemen)? Or how the party of mixed alignments solved the mystery and then confronted the priest involved, leading to an encounter against his acolytes and their summoned monsters (the party was thrown out of a church by a rampaging celestial bull before they apprehended the acolyte; and gave chase to the priest in the following session and made him realize that he was becoming what he sought to destroy).
Perhaps instead I should have thrown the newbies into encounters with enemies who a serious encounter without a good understanding of how things work. It's worth noting that I didn't overgear any of the NPCs, and most of the ones I used were actually creatures with no gear at all (like the giant centipedes). Encounters got more "complex" as the game went on, but the individual creatures were mild. Never did they encounter something with the capability of anything we've discussed in this thread. They learned through the game. NPCs demonstrated tactics like aid-another, throwing tanglefoot bags, focus-firing, and clever use of positioning, and the players absorbed like a sponge.
Because I don't think anyone has complained that monks are a problem because they can't roleplay very well. That would be a pretty stupid argument. One can roleplay a commoner to be the coolest character in the entire world. That doesn't mean that a commoner is actually worthwhile or even a good idea in your typical D&D game (but a good player can take a commoner and make 'em look like they belong in a party of fighter, rogue, monk, commoner).
Incidentally, the psionic monks that have been present in our games since I introduced the psi-monk fix have contributed on about the same level as other characters now. They have their own self-contained methods for keeping their hit/damage/AC/survivability up. They roleplay the same (though there are now more RP opportunities because it's easier to build them with different variations and still be reasonably effective).
The irony here is you're talking about optimizing enemies. I pointed out enemy equipment wasn't a major contributing factor to optimization in some of my previous posts (the effect of a mundane vs +4 sword is pretty negligible when it comes to a ghaele azata curbstomping a party). If I wanted to optimize a creature, then looking at their feats would be a first start. Tweaking their ability scores would be a second (giving them a different non-elite array at the same value instead of 11s and 10s across the board). Adding hit dice or levels would be a third (adding levels of warrior or adept to shore up some saving throws, provide proficiencies, increase BAB or HP, grant them a familiar or spellcasting potential, etc).
What exactly is the problem that you're seeing here 3.5 Loyalist? I just broke down the differences between creatures based on equipment for you and Wraithstrike, its effects on CR, and gave an example of how I don't believe that people should still be newbs by 11th level; and how I help players learn at a comfortable but steady pace without overwhelming them with tactics. I mean, I probably wouldn't spring an encounter with Darkfolk + Darklings on the party if they barely knew how to make attack rolls or understand concealment. An experienced player might realize that if they can't see, dropping a smokestick in the dark would even the odds. Oh boy, darklings can see in the supernatural sub-darkness, but they can't see through smoke, so no sneak attacks for them...
I mean, I probably wouldn't spring an encounter with Darkfolk + Darklings on the party if they barely knew how to make attack rolls or understand concealment. An experienced player might realize that if they can't see, dropping a smokestick in the dark would even the odds. Oh boy, darklings can see in the supernatural sub-darkness, but they can't see through smoke, so no sneak attacks for them...
I think you need to re-read your guide mister! It's all about the Heightend Continual Flame now-a-days :P
Well.. except for those who think casting a spell on an object makes it a magic item... Just saying..
I mean, I probably wouldn't spring an encounter with Darkfolk + Darklings on the party if they barely knew how to make attack rolls or understand concealment. An experienced player might realize that if they can't see, dropping a smokestick in the dark would even the odds. Oh boy, darklings can see in the supernatural sub-darkness, but they can't see through smoke, so no sneak attacks for them...I think you need to re-read your guide mister! It's all about the Heightend Continual Flame now-a-days :P
Well.. except for those who think casting a spell on an object makes it a magic item... Just saying..
That would be my suggestion, but smokesticks are a cheaper alternative, and they might have some of them even if they weren't expecting to be ambushed by the darkfolk/darklings. :)
But yes, I agree. ^.^
PS: Working on a remix of the adventuring guide. I'll send you a copy when it's more complete.
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No insult intended here, but on this end it seems you have got too much wargaming and optimisation mixed in your roleplaying there. The abundance of crunch has been a criticism of pathfinder.
Make the good hard, make the great harder, but not everything needs modification and optimisation (or magic armour on top). If you do so, a dm can easily wipe the floor with pcs. To then blame the pcs is folly. You are not seeing what you are doing.
Next game in the coming days, murder mystery. Few combats, not much of that though. No need to modify the monsters and combatants because it isn't mainly about that. It will be a few hours of rping and skill checks. The battle may be simple, or it may be glorious.
I do not think the pathfinder game is too crunchy war game, i think too much of the forum members are. In my location the wargamers love DnD4 while the roleplayers and guys that just love options to make unique characters went entirely to pathfinder. My only pathfinder experience with munchkins and super optimization is here
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I do not think the pathfinder game is too crunchy war game, i think too much of the forum members are. In my location the wargamers love DnD4 while the roleplayers and guys that just love options to make unique characters went entirely to pathfinder. My only pathfinder experience with munchkins and super optimization is hereNo insult intended here, but on this end it seems you have got too much wargaming and optimisation mixed in your roleplaying there. The abundance of crunch has been a criticism of pathfinder.
Make the good hard, make the great harder, but not everything needs modification and optimisation (or magic armour on top). If you do so, a dm can easily wipe the floor with pcs. To then blame the pcs is folly. You are not seeing what you are doing.
Next game in the coming days, murder mystery. Few combats, not much of that though. No need to modify the monsters and combatants because it isn't mainly about that. It will be a few hours of rping and skill checks. The battle may be simple, or it may be glorious.
I bought all the 4E core books when they launched, and abandoned it within 3 weeks. It was quite sad.
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I bought all the 4E core books when they launched, and abandoned it within 3 weeks. It was quite sad.I do not think the pathfinder game is too crunchy war game, i think too much of the forum members are. In my location the wargamers love DnD4 while the roleplayers and guys that just love options to make unique characters went entirely to pathfinder. My only pathfinder experience with munchkins and super optimization is hereNo insult intended here, but on this end it seems you have got too much wargaming and optimisation mixed in your roleplaying there. The abundance of crunch has been a criticism of pathfinder.
Make the good hard, make the great harder, but not everything needs modification and optimisation (or magic armour on top). If you do so, a dm can easily wipe the floor with pcs. To then blame the pcs is folly. You are not seeing what you are doing.
Next game in the coming days, murder mystery. Few combats, not much of that though. No need to modify the monsters and combatants because it isn't mainly about that. It will be a few hours of rping and skill checks. The battle may be simple, or it may be glorious.
I went to my hobby store intending to buy them, opened the books, flipped through them for an hour while chatting with the store owner, put them on the shelf, and took my money home.
I went to my hobby store intending to buy them, opened the books, flipped through them for an hour while chatting with the store owner, put them on the shelf, and took my money home.I bought all the 4E core books when they launched, and abandoned it within 3 weeks. It was quite sad.I do not think the pathfinder game is too crunchy war game, i think too much of the forum members are. In my location the wargamers love DnD4 while the roleplayers and guys that just love options to make unique characters went entirely to pathfinder. My only pathfinder experience with munchkins and super optimization is hereNo insult intended here, but on this end it seems you have got too much wargaming and optimisation mixed in your roleplaying there. The abundance of crunch has been a criticism of pathfinder.
Make the good hard, make the great harder, but not everything needs modification and optimisation (or magic armour on top). If you do so, a dm can easily wipe the floor with pcs. To then blame the pcs is folly. You are not seeing what you are doing.
Next game in the coming days, murder mystery. Few combats, not much of that though. No need to modify the monsters and combatants because it isn't mainly about that. It will be a few hours of rping and skill checks. The battle may be simple, or it may be glorious.
Bought mine second hand off of my DM two days after he bought them paid $50 dollars and a pizza for the 3 book box set. The pizza was good at least.
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I can only wait and see what happens. Brother Sapo, my PFS monk (no archetype yet, but almost certainly Qinggong) reached 2nd level on GM credit and "We Be Goblins", but I haven't had a chance to play the character yet. Maybe the character will die quickly or be unable to contribute in any meaningful way. Maybe the character will shine and make everyone else feel inferior. Maybe somewhere in between.
My last monk got "one-shotted" on a confirmed critical at 1st level. Up to then, he had been doing pretty well, though.
Thee are many sides to this argument, and all are right to some degree.
I would like to see the monk get the ability to bypass more types of DR, perhaps by spending ki. I would like to see the monk's AC bonus kick in earlier and progress more quickly. I would like the Wholeness of Body to heal more than 1 point per level. I would like to see the AC increase from spending a ki point last more than 1 round.
I have found that 1 level of empyreal sorcerer helps compensate for the monk's weaknesses. It is unfortunate that the "Magical Knack" trait is not allowed in PFS.
If I may recommend an additional bit of supplementary material. The quintessential monk. Interesting options of taking your monk in whichever direction they want.