No, I say it like it's throwing something even a same level Commoner PC would get at a fundamental class problem and hoping to not be outclasseed by someone of a class that doesn't have that problem in the first place (you also lose the entire first round of damage).
Also they are suggestions for spending, not rules.
If you want to insist the Fighter isn't lacking something the rules expect by CR8 or so, do it here. http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz6d0b?Fighters-cant-Fly#1
Are you going to make the argument that a commoner would have the same effect as a fighter for aerial combat? How is the other class outclassing him.
Provide examples.
PS:If you had been reading the thread you would know it is not a problem. If your definition of problem is "my class abilities can't do it" then we have a different definition of the word "problem".
PS2:Magic items exist to allow you to do things you could not do otherwise. <--Pathfinder 101
You seem to be talking as if the party is just walking along and suddenly BAM! They're fighting a flying opponent. In an actual game you get an idea of what is happening as you go through an adventure. You get a chance to prepare for combats beforehand many times, often out of hearing range of the enemy. You get to see the flying creature flying towards you before they attack.
I'm bowing out here though. I've said my bit and your view of how the game works is clearly highly different from my own.
That's never been my experience. Monsters almost always suddenly appear out of nowhere, with the GM insisting that he rolled our Perception checks for us.
He doesn't hate me. In fact, he ruled in my favor earlier today. If he hated me, why would he do that?
;P
I'll note that on the OP, the aforementioned Eidolon was illegal because it was size L and that cost too many points.
However, if it was size L for a fight because of Enlarge Person, then I believe it was a legal build. The main difference would be that its strength score wasn't so high (+2 instead of +8).
==Aelryinth
I'll echo Ravingdork's experience. My group might get hints like there's *a* monster out there with unreliable descriptions or scant clues but next to nothing is really revealed until the big bads are in front of us.
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My current GM has this opinion that a 7th level synthesist is THE most powerful character in the game. He had a character that used a size large eidolon, had four arms, reach, and two set of claws maximized damage via evolutions and feats, and maxed out possible strength.
So yes, is he correct?
at 9th level a pack lord druid can have 3x level 7 raptors with 5 attacks per round each (all primary attacks), pounce, and still have acess to spells and wildshape...
pack lord druids are much much more op then summoners at 7-10.
As others have mentioned, this is where I'm starting to think you're a troll. You keep repeating a form of this arguement, but it doesn't stack up.
Also run the numbers. +2 dex, +1 bow and 10 BAB isn't going to hit a CR 10's average AC.
OK. The average AC for a CR 10 encounter is 24. If I only use the limited things you just listed, that gives our fighter +13 to hit with a bow. That's not useless.
I would also add that by level 10, a fighter should have a strength adjusted bow, adding in another +4, and possibly +1 for weapon training. This is assuming most other feats are invested in his melee weapon. So that gives our fighter +18 to hit an AC of 24.
Edit: Oh and I just realized: This ALSO blows an action to draw the bow, getting only the first shot off. Fun stuff. So a Fighter is ALWAYS costing the group an action a Barbarian or Synthesist won't once flight becomes common.
I've rarely seen a fighter in my games who doesn't take Quick Draw early. Now, the barbarian and the synthesist are costing the group an action by chasing a flying opponent while the fighter fills the enemy with arrows.
Fighter can't keep up with the Synthesist in melee, ESPECIALLY once flight is common, even when the Synthesist isn't using an illegal build. This isn't due to Synthesist being powerful, but Fighter being weak (Barbarian and Magus ALSO out melee it with less effort, so either 3 classes are broken, or 1 is.), costing an action to even TRY to engage in flying foes, so it's the Fighter that needs fixing (or not being melee, Archer fighter is pretty decent), not Synthesist. Full stop.
Again, you repeat the same weak arguement. Damage is damage. I could care less if a fighter kills the enemy with a sword or an arrow.
That's never been my experience. Monsters almost always suddenly appear out of nowhere, with the GM insisting that he rolled our Perception checks for us.You seem to be talking as if the party is just walking along and suddenly BAM! They're fighting a flying opponent. In an actual game you get an idea of what is happening as you go through an adventure. You get a chance to prepare for combats beforehand many times, often out of hearing range of the enemy. You get to see the flying creature flying towards you before they attack.
I'm bowing out here though. I've said my bit and your view of how the game works is clearly highly different from my own.
This is my experience too. Both as a DM and player. But really, this cuts both ways. In the game I'm running with a synthesist, he never really gets to buff, or cast spells once combat starts because he's in melee.
Edit: I should clarify, I have the players roll their own perception checks.
Duex unless I am mistaken you Barb build is illegal. You cant have two totems.
My current GM has this opinion that a 7th level synthesist is THE most powerful character in the game. He had a character that used a size large eidolon, had four arms, reach, and two set of claws maximized damage via evolutions and feats, and maxed out possible strength.
So yes, is he correct?
at 9th level a pack lord druid can have 3x level 7 raptors with 5 attacks per round each (all primary attacks), pounce, and still have access to spells and wildshape...
pack lord druids are much much more op then summoners at 7-10.
Where are these raptors? All I can find are the deinonychus, which only have 4 attacks each, only 3 of which seem to be primary attacks.
Ah, my bad
By RAW DH is correct, and I have nothing to disagree with him, but I was hoping for either errata or a reason to not always go with the Totem barbarian if you never lose anything. It does not even make sense to call it an archetype if its free since the point of an archetype is to trade things out. I noticed it a while back, but I just keep forgetting to make a thread on it. I would just rather have errata that gets rid of the false restriction on totems. The only thing I can think of is that if a class gets access to barbarian rage powers, like one of the ranger archetypes does, they want to make the barbarian the king of totems.
Gray, a strength adjusted bow, assuming you are talking about composite bows, adds Strength to damage rolls, not attack rolls. So it is still +13 attack against AC 24, which is 50% with absolutely minimum investment in archery.
Gray, a strength adjusted bow, assuming you are talking about composite bows, adds Strength to damage rolls, not attack rolls. So it is still +13 attack against AC 24, which is 50% with absolutely minimum investment in archery.
Thanks, and you're correct. Not sure why I thought the bonus went to hit as well.
And yes, the point I was trying to make is that +13 is far from useless with such a minimal investment.
By RAW DH is correct, and I have nothing to disagree with him, but I was hoping for either errata or a reason to not always go with the Totem barbarian if you never lose anything. It does not even make sense to call it an archetype if its free since the point of an archetype is to trade things out. I noticed it a while back, but I just keep forgetting to make a thread on it. I would just rather have errata that gets rid of the false restriction on totems. The only thing I can think of is that if a class gets access to barbarian rage powers, like one of the ranger archetypes does, they want to make the barbarian the king of totems.I'm looking at Totem Warrior Barbarian, and it's true you don't lose anything. You also don't gain anything either I always thought it was a type-o that they left out the archtype benefits.
Ya was looking at it also. Don't see anything about being able to take more than one totem. (Checked my book, PRD, and pfSRD) was it addressed elsewhere because I admittedly rarely looked at the errata.
By RAW DH is correct, and I have nothing to disagree with him, but I was hoping for either errata or a reason to not always go with the Totem barbarian if you never lose anything. It does not even make sense to call it an archetype if its free since the point of an archetype is to trade things out. I noticed it a while back, but I just keep forgetting to make a thread on it. I would just rather have errata that gets rid of the false restriction on totems. The only thing I can think of is that if a class gets access to barbarian rage powers, like one of the ranger archetypes does, they want to make the barbarian the king of totems.I'm looking at Totem Warrior Barbarian, and it's true you don't lose anything. You also don't gain anything either I always thought it was a type-o that they left out the archtype benefits.
You gain the ability to bypass the totem restriction which IIRC says you can only pick one totem otherwise.
Ya was looking at it also. Don't see anything about being able to take more than one totem. (Checked my book, PRD, and pfSRD) was it addressed elsewhere because I admittedly rarely looked at the errata.By RAW DH is correct, and I have nothing to disagree with him, but I was hoping for either errata or a reason to not always go with the Totem barbarian if you never lose anything. It does not even make sense to call it an archetype if its free since the point of an archetype is to trade things out. I noticed it a while back, but I just keep forgetting to make a thread on it. I would just rather have errata that gets rid of the false restriction on totems. The only thing I can think of is that if a class gets access to barbarian rage powers, like one of the ranger archetypes does, they want to make the barbarian the king of totems.I'm looking at Totem Warrior Barbarian, and it's true you don't lose anything. You also don't gain anything either I always thought it was a type-o that they left out the archtype benefits.
You are correct. It does not say you can choose more than one totem. I guess it was extrapolated because the barbarian is based completely upon his totem powers, but that does not mean you can choose more than one totem.
Edit:That means the archetype is useless though if it does not do anything. It seems that either way there is an issue with it.
Good catch.
Dunno with other GMs, but I sure as heck don't make dungeons where huge creatures can easily come and go. Maybe the odd dragon's lair, but generally, you cannot even bring a mount into a dungeon, much less a huge creature.
Conclusion: Fighter can go almost everywhere, synthesist cannot
I also see that the average synthesist walks around with 6-12 manufactured huge weapons. Short of looting dead giants that just HAPPEN to have relevant weapons, where do you even get these? Before you get to be level 13 and have access to Greater Teleport (if you have a wizard in party) to get you to Absalom or Katapesh, you'd be screwed in my game. Towns don't have all the things a medium humanoid could stand to enjoy, and certainly don't cater to huge monsters.
Conclusion: A fighter can find gear easily, a synthesist cannot
And finally: A fighter that does not even do BASIC archery is an idiot. By the time Weapon Training 2 rolls around, he could very likely have afforded Gloves of Dueling, and put his secondary training on bows. Get a +1 seeking bow, dump ONE of his many feats into Deadly Aim, and any fighter can engage a flyer adequately. Not to mention the assumption that any given flyer will be able to remain out of reach in all situations. There is often a roof or a limited range of it's powers. And that said, Winged Boots are 16,000, and should be available by the same time that the synthesist gets Overland Flight.
Conclusion: The notion that a fighter cannot fight flyers is silly, and bases itself on a logical fallacy that people cannot build a competent fighter.
DH's notion is that the fighter sucks at melee because flying creatures can not be faced as easily as ones on the ground, but the point of being able to fly is to make yourself harder to reach. If other creatures can just get to you anyway it kind of takes a large part of the advantage of being able to fly away. He also admits that it is not a problem in his games. Why he is arguing a theorycraft issue is unknown to me.
Dunno with other GMs, but I sure as heck don't make dungeons where huge creatures can easily come and go. Maybe the odd dragon's lair, but generally, you cannot even bring a mount into a dungeon, much less a huge creature.Do your dungeons never contain trolls or ogres or giant lizards or chimera's or hill giants or golems or large elementals or any of the other large sized or bigger monsters?
If they do then theres no particular reason why a player couldnt bring a large mount or animal companion with them. Getting your horse up and down stairs or over rock falls or something might be tricky but large wolves and cats and bears or what have you shouldnt face too many problems.
Depends on the dungeon, as I said. Most creatures make lairs that are defensible against larger predators. That is why you never see a fox making a nest in a cave large enough for a bear.
If the dungeon in question is the lair of very big creatures, then yes, as I said, it will be accessible for larger creatures. But most human sized castles/dungeons will not have stairwells that can accommodate large+ creatures, they will have doors sized for people, and in general be a hassle.
Why would anyone build a dungeon that would clearly give an enemy an advantage?
Gray, a strength adjusted bow, assuming you are talking about composite bows, adds Strength to damage rolls, not attack rolls. So it is still +13 attack against AC 24, which is 50% with absolutely minimum investment in archery.Thats a +13 to attack with probably around 1d8+8 damage for the primarily melee fighter dipping into archery for some ranged options. Assuming the enemy has an AC of 24 and you get your full attack at 13/8 thats around an average damage of 11 damage per round assuming no DR. I dont know about you but thats a bit underwhelimg to me.
The PRD Bestiary 1 lists CR10 monsters with the following HP:
150, 171, 101, 142, 149, 114, 115, 115, 104, 149.
Thats less than 10% of an ememies health on average. If we limit it to enemies who can fly then you are looking at:
142, 115, 104, 149
Of course then you run into the other problem of the fighter dipping into archery. Archery is feat intensive if you really want to be good at it. Dipping doesn't give you all that many feats to play with. Two handed fighters dont need many feats to make them good at just hitting things in the face so you could take more of the good arcehry feats but that then eats into other stuff. Do you want to pass up on stuff like Step Up in order to cover your ranged weakness?
Which leads to the other major issue. Fighters are locked into most of their feats once they have chosen them. This is the fighters major class feature so you have to be careful what you pick or you are stuck with it. The Summoner gets to modify their Eidolon with the Surge spells and ultimately to completely rewrite it as required with Transmogrify to cover multiple different situations.
If you are talking about a lv10 fighter:
Str22, Dex16 is roughly to be expected of a competent one. At least.
Sink a single feat into archery: Deadly Aim
Weapon Training 2 goes towards bows.
Assuming Seeking Bow +1, Str Adj+6 and Gloves of Dueling, which any fighter will get at the first opportunity, due to being the single best item a fighter can have.
To hit: +14/+9 (BAB+10, Dex+3, Bow+1, Training+3, Deadly Aim -3)
Damage: 1d8+16 (Str+6, Training+3, Bow+1, Deadly Aim+6)
Not buffed. Any sorc/wizard/bard/cleric/oracle/etc should cast Haste/Blessing of Fervor at very least if the fight is even the slightest bit hazardous, lest the party is made up by "hurr durr, how do I shoot teamwork?"-kids. So I will assume at very least to get off +16/+16/+11 for 3d8+48 in any fight against CR>=APL. But if the party has ACTUAL teamwork, we could be looking at +20 or so to hit, and 1d8+20 damage. Seeking is a must-have enchantment imo, to deal with all those invisible/displaced/concealed enemies.
All this for 1 feat, your secondary weapon training and 1/7th of your WBL. Oh, and a party that covers the basics.
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You are correct. It does not say you can choose more than one totem. I guess it was extrapolated because the barbarian is based completely upon his totem powers, but that does not mean you can choose more than one totem.
Edit:That means the archetype is useless though if it does not do anything. It seems that either way there is an issue with it.
Good catch.
When Totem Warrior was originally written, it did absolutely nothing.
Then Ultimate Combat came out and buffed it without adding any drawback.
Rage Powers: Any barbarian who meets the powers' prerequisites can select and use the following new rage powers. Totem rage powers grant powers related to a theme. A barbarian cannot select from more than one group of totem rage powers; for example, a barbarian who selects a beast totem rage power (see the Advanced Player's Guide) cannot later choose to gain any of the dragon totem rage powers (any rage power with “dragon totem” in its title), unless she has the totem warrior archetype.
I'm glad UC did it; restricting Barbs to one totem only was a dumb restriction and basically meant every totem power they printed was a waste of space cause no way in hell is anything else worth losing pounce over. (blah blah blah, synthesist can pounce at level 1, stop complaining about barbarian getting it at 10, blah blah blah...)
If you are talking about a lv10 fighter:
Str22, Dex16 is roughly to be expected of a competent one. At least.
Sink a single feat into archery: Deadly Aim
Weapon Training 2 goes towards bows.
Assuming Seeking Bow +1, Str Adj+6 and Gloves of Dueling, which any...
The level 10 Fighter has 33k to spend.
Gloves of Dueling are 15k.
A +1 Seeking Bow is 8k plus the composite strength bonus
To have 22str/16 dex at level 10 you are probably buying a +2 Dex/Str Belt (assuming 20 point buy, you could eek a bit more out by completely dumping both Int and Cha). Thats 10k.You have now spent more than your available wealth without having picked up key stuff such as a Cloak of Resistance or your main melee weapon (we are talking about someone dipping into archery to help out against flyers) or any form of Con boost.
First, it is 62k. I check stuff before I make statements.
Second, I always base off 15pb, and easily make 18/14/14 at lv1 by dumping the most useless stat to 7 and int to 9. Or 8 if I want to have wis 11, since wis is more often hit than int by various attacks, and is more important. The belt+2 to all physicals is a given at lv10.
A quick mental add-up allows the fighter to have a +2 main weapon, a +2 fullplate, a +2 cloak and +1 ring and amulet for filling the basic defensive slots. On top of the items mentioned earlier.
You are correct. It does not say you can choose more than one totem. I guess it was extrapolated because the barbarian is based completely upon his totem powers, but that does not mean you can choose more than one totem.
Edit:That means the archetype is useless though if it does not do anything. It seems that either way there is an issue with it.
Good catch.
When Totem Warrior was originally written, it did absolutely nothing.
Then Ultimate Combat came out and buffed it without adding any drawback.
Rage Powers: Any barbarian who meets the powers' prerequisites can select and use the following new rage powers. Totem rage powers grant powers related to a theme. A barbarian cannot select from more than one group of totem rage powers; for example, a barbarian who selects a beast totem rage power (see the Advanced Player's Guide) cannot later choose to gain any of the dragon totem rage powers (any rage power with “dragon totem” in its title), unless she has the totem warrior archetype.I'm glad UC did it; restricting Barbs to one totem only was a dumb restriction and basically meant every totem power they printed was a waste of space cause no way in hell is anything else worth losing pounce over. (blah blah blah, synthesist can pounce at level 1, stop complaining about barbarian getting it at 10, blah blah blah...)
Thanks Stream. Hadn't. Seen that, good to know.
Thread Necro....sorry sorry
I'm playing synth...and while I'm looking forward to the higher levels, I still would not want to solo against a competent fighter build (NPC). I see the synth as a great 2nd wave melee, to come at the enemy sideways after the party's main gun has gotten their attention and wrecking their day. This allows the buffage and when I take the baddie's attention away from the fighter (or barbie), he gets a second wind (healing, self buffing, repositioning, whatever). Wolf tactics!
Np on the thread Necro, I wanted to add my conclusion anyway.
After running a brief play-test I came to a conclusion. The fact that with a Synthesist's Eidolon granting temporary hit points vs. real hp your spell use is heavily focused on restoring said temporary hit points as those spells are the summoner is the only one that can.
This drastically reduces the power of the Synthesist.
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mmmm... only until they get second level spells. once that happens they can summon there edilon as a standard action. a wand of Summon Eidolon, and they pretty much lose that disadvantage. they can have there edilon killed over and over while they spend a standard action to get it back for minutes per level.
It is best to be a Quadraped with an extra set of arms for manufactored weapons (or casting).
Enlarge person will get you large size.
You can get pounce at low levels (since haste is 4th level Summmoner) you can get multiple attacks by charging.
No need to wait till 10th like a Barbarian.