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I'm still going to kill it with Baird's BBEG in Rats Part 1
All I heard this past weekend was how much the BBEG in Part 2 was even more difficult. I've decided I need to do a "Battle for Round Mountain" at Gen Con and pit BBEG 1 and BBEG 2 against each other (which if you know the story of the scenarios, could potentially happen).
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.. I find the Golarion deities a little lackluster. None of them really compel me to exciting character concepts..
I know I definitely miss expanded demi-human pantheons. Having the option for Corellon, Vandria, Sehanine, Solonor, etc makes it feel much more flavorful. Or for the dwarves, Clanggedin, Dumathoin, Abbathor, Moradin, etc.
Seeing more lesser deities in Golarion woul be a great cure for it's greater god malaise. I loved when Besmara and Hanspur sprung into existence. More official lesser and niche deities please!
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We have a couple of clerics in PFS Finland, but there seems to be an eerie lack of healers among them. Summoning is very popular, battle clerics even more and then there's a couple negative energy channelers who also moonlight as the party face. Very few people seem to enjoy playing the healer or the troubleshooter, but, especially for convention games and or games with newbies aplenty, they are often needed and when not needed people will still moan after them.
I'm thinking about a Crusader of Moloch at the moment. He'd probably be a dwarf and a traditionalist at heart, uninterested in being a thrall to a nation so serving a different faction than Cheliax. More than a diabolist or a warmonger as well, seeing war and diplomacy as intertwined concepts precariously balanced and fully incompatible with notions of good or evil, amity or avarice.
That said, I'll roll an oracle of life for RopeCon. There'll always be a wealth of gun-ho newbie barbarians and wizards to save. Healing newer goes out of style.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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I'm still going to kill it with Baird's BBEG in Rats Part 1All I heard this past weekend was how much the BBEG in Part 2 was even more difficult. I've decided I need to do a "Battle for Round Mountain" at Gen Con and pit BBEG 1 and BBEG 2 against each other (which if you know the story of the scenarios, could potentially happen).
I mean, I guess that Durriya could blast a few lightning bolts (oh wait, SR), or just dominate the dragon (oh wait, its dominate person). Heck, even if the two just auto attack back and forth - the dragon's got her beat...
I guess if we gave Durriya her agents, they'd pick at the dragon a bit, until half of em got feared and the rest got melted with her fire breath, not to mention all her stone shenanigans.
I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure Xianguer is already winning. She could just slow ball it and pick off one agent a round, then burrow around for a bit before engaging Durriya.
Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Pullman
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Putting aside the hijack of this thread for Mr. Baird's brain baby(rats of round mountain).
Clerics are few and far between because when you start looking at the damage people do in combat, barbs, gunslingers, magus, summoners, other arcane casters; you start looking at people doing a great amount of damage and finishing encounters off fairly quickly before any real healing is needed.
Utility classes only show up when people feel there is a market for them. If you are zerging the BBEG with 3 barbarians, a wizard who casts haste, and a healbot cleric that does minimal damage/buffing before the boss is dead, and who's only real task is patching before the next fight. Is it any surprise the cleric stops playing the cleric and rolls up a different character?
Solutions? Paizo can tinker with clerics. I'm not for this. I think cleric is great how it is. Another solution is carving a niche out for clerics to play in, I have a cleric that's main duty is to healbot and strip away those pesky buffs bosses put on themselves, so much so that when I play with arcane casters no one prepares dispel magics.
I guess my long winded rambling point is if you want clerics to stick around you gotta make them feel welcomed.
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Agreed on who would win - which pretty much explains the balance of power in Round Mountain before the PCs arrive. </thread derail>
As for the original topic, my 8 PFS characters include 2 positive energy clerics, 2 bards with wands of CLW, and my newest that I haven't finished creating yet will be a melee oracle, probably with cure spells. I also have two sorcerers with wands of Infernal Healing and UMD trained, in case someone hands them a wand of CLW. That leaves only my barbarian as a non-healer, though he provides for himself much of the time with potions and brings his own wands for others to use on him.
So I don't see the need for a cleric healbot in every party. Everyone should be responsible for their own healing, but secondary healing characters like my bards can help when needed, too.
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Just remember that we don't know how the encounters are going to run in Season 4 since they increased the "optimal" party grouping to 6. This may bring Clerics back to a more standard class. If anyone can say anything about Season 4 and how it works with it optimized for 6 PCs, I would love to know.
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Mr. Baird's brain baby
Thanks for making me spit my drink all over my keyboard.
Look for it in Bestiary IV, Baird's Brain Baby, a CR 22 diminutive evil undead outsider.
On topic: Clerics were more popular in 2009 when PFRPG was released, everyone wanted to try out the channeling ability and new domain powers. Fast forward 3 years and there's several newer classes that offer healing for the party AND have some pretty awesome abilities not offered before. Why go back and play a cleric when you can play an Oracle or Inquisitor or a new Paladin archetype?
The other answer is that since in PFRPG anyone with CLW or Infernal Healing on their spell list or has access to a decent UMD skill check can heal the party out of combat. Most parties don't realize the real value of in-combat healing (besides stabilize) until higher levels when Breath of Life and Heal are being thrown around.
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Mr. Baird's brain babyThanks for making me spit my drink all over my keyboard.
Look for it in Bestiary IV, Baird's Brain Baby, a CR 22 diminutive evil undead outsider.
On topic: Clerics were more popular in 2009 when PFRPG was released, everyone wanted to try out the channeling ability and new domain powers. Fast forward 3 years and there's several newer classes that offer healing for the party AND have some pretty awesome abilities not offered before. Why go back and play a cleric when you can play an Oracle or Inquisitor or a new Paladin archetype?
The other answer is that since in PFRPG anyone with CLW or Infernal Healing on their spell list or has access to a decent UMD skill check can heal the party out of combat. Most parties don't realize the real value of in-combat healing (besides stabilize) until higher levels when Breath of Life and Heal are being thrown around.
There's no reason that PCs can't fight NPCs with power attack and cleave and decent to-hit chances at level 3 or 4. PFS's infinite mook attack strategy is a big cause for this, I think. If PFS had more encounters that just couldn't be DPRed down, this would make things more interesting as well.
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next person?
I've got 6 characters:
Cleric 10Alchemist 6
Magus 5
Rogue 3
Inquisitor 1
Monk 1
My Cleric hasn't been used for almost a year since we don't have as many high level characters in the area, but that appears to be changing with more people wanting to judge.
Look for it in Bestiary IV, Baird's Brain Baby, a CR 22 diminutive evil undead outsider.
If that actually makes it into Bestiary IV, that would be awesome. :)
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Explain? Just make the fights harder, and give the NPCs a wider variety of options so they just don't auto-lose to a single pet class.
At the risk of a major thread derail:
1) Have you played any 5-9 or 7-11 scenarios?
2) I find most players crying for a challenge are the first to cry foul when their precious snowflakes actually die in an encounter.
3) GM "tactical awareness" has as much to do with encounter difficulty as does the encounter design itself.
4) If players TRULY want more difficult encounters, stop optimizing PCs for combat.
5) Season 2 & 3 scenarios are significantly more challenging than season 0 & 1.
6) Season 4 is actually designing encounters for 6 players instead of 4. The result is that every single encounter is one CR higher than it would have been otherwise.
7) Really want a challenge? Come to Gen Con and qualify for Part 2 of the Special. As submitted, I'll be surprised if more than 1 in 6 players actually survives (of course the rewards are amazingly ridiculous!).
8) Can't make it to Gen Con? Part 1 is already easily the most difficult scenario I've seen. It's going to force characters to be well rounded and force players to work together to be successful.
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Explain? Just make the fights harder, and give the NPCs a wider variety of options so they just don't auto-lose to a single pet class.At the risk of a major thread derail:
1) Have you played any 5-9 or 7-11 scenarios?
Yes. They are somewhat better, but still use too many stock monsters that have fluffy, ineffective abilities built into their CR ratings. Pets are still too effective compared to homebrew games. Minmaxers like fighter archers still yawn all the way to the bank.
2) I find most players crying for a challenge are the first to cry foul when their precious snowflakes actually die in an encounter.
I have no problems dying to making a tactical mistake. I find "save or die" to be the cheap way out for DMs to make this happen. But there is no dishonor in losing to effective NPCs. In fact, I played in a game where we all died, and then started a new campaign whose goal was to resurrect the old PCs.
3) GM "tactical awareness" has as much to do with encounter difficulty as does the encounter design itself.
I partially disagree on this. Too many of the PFS encounters even in season 3 can not stand up mathematically to a group that happens to have even a single minmaxer or a pet class.
4) If players TRULY want more difficult encounters, stop optimizing PCs for combat.
As a scenario writer, I can not control how PCs are built. I can, however, adapt. I think we are getting to the point where we must start assuming each party has at least one scenario-breaking PC. For those groups that don't have that, it's going to be really hard for them. DMs need to quit being softies on faction missions. I know a guy with three dump stats on a fighter that has never failed a faction mission at level 8 WTF?#$$%#@
5) Season 2 & 3 scenarios are significantly more challenging than season 0 & 1.
True, but as I said before, they are still mathematically demolished by a pet class or a minmaxer.
6) Season 4 is actually designing encounters for 6 players instead of 4. The result is that every single encounter is one CR higher than it would have been otherwise.
That should help. But only if they spend the CR on opposition that can handle the minmaxers and pets. More chumps is not going to cut it, that's just more glory for the pets.
7) Really want a challenge? Come to Gen Con and qualify for Part 2 of the Special. As submitted, I'll be surprised if more than 1 in 6 players actually survives (of course the rewards are amazingly ridiculous!).
Not going to GenCon this year.
8) Can't make it to Gen Con? Part 1 is already easily the most difficult scenario I've seen. It's going to force characters to be well rounded and force players to work together to be successful.
I believe you, but that is not a general fix that makes clerics more desirable and respected.
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Explain? Just make the fights harder, and give the NPCs a wider variety of options so they just don't auto-lose to a single pet class.Damage reduction cuts into that a lot.
Not to be contrary, but the druid has many ways to bypass DR. It's not just the pet; it's the fact that the druid is effectively playing two PCs for the price of one. The pet cleans up mooks better than many PCs, and the druid can support the pet and/or provide a good amount of energy damage.
The amount of encounters that a druid with a druid pet with improved natural AC can clean up by themselves is kind of embarrassing.
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how would these posts have changed if we had been talking about Wizards rather than Clerics? or Barbarians for that matter.
Exactly. We've been discussing various possible Eyes of The Ten group configurations in our area and we've found a distinct lack of arcane casters around. There's at least one traditional cleric, a buff cleric, and a negative channeling specialist all ready to go within a couple of months but nary a wizard, sorcerer, or even a magus to be found.
And as mentioned above the only real advantage a "traditional" cleric has in most scenarios is in channeling positive to harm undead. Any flavor of divine caster with a few level appropriate healing spells known/memorized is usually enough to keep the party up in combat. You do see a lot more item use between combats though. (As in "everyone's down 20, so that's 12 charges off my infernal healing wand" instead of "I channel, what's everyone at now?")
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Oh and I should add two things:
1) The last group in our area to do Eyes of the Ten had an inquisitor and a battle oracle for healing. And all survived.
2) The next Eyes group (which sadly did not gibe with my schedule) is going to have an alchemist for arcane power.
There's a thousand different ways to play in PFS. Thank goodness this isn't the bad old days of "no rogue? You are stuck. Play something else."
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RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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I'm counting it as:9 in 43 so far.
or just over 20% clerics.
And since there are 18 (or 20, if you count alternate) playable base classes for PFS, and we would consider a ratio of 1:1* (cleric to any other race) to be average, that's about 3 or 4 times "average."
So clerics aren't gone, they're in fact, according to numbers so far, quite popular!
*if not including alternate classes, 1:1 ratio for all classes would be ...1/18 characters is a cleric : 5.56%
*if including alternate classes, 1:1 ratio for all classes would be...1/20 characters is a cleric: 5%