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First, the metaphor just doesn't do it for me. It posits that the roles are "do damage" "debuff" and "buff". So yes, of course every party who tries to be more combat capable ends up sort of resembling your model, you've taken every useful combat action and lumped them into 3 broad categories. I laughed when your ideal initiative order ended with "everyone else", because they don't exist, unless by that you meant to say "the opposition". There's no way to become stronger at combat without increasing your ability to do damage, to remove opponent's options, or to help other PCs do the same.
Well, yeah. The ideal initiative order is before the enemy with certain people going in a certain order. You can't control how the enemy goes in the initiative. But, you can control your groups and you can control if you go before the enemy.
Second, it writes off healing as a kind of buff. That's neither more nor less legitimate as writing damage off as kind of debuff, because dead creatures do no damage. A lack of combat healing presupposes a combat model in which the PCs have already won, and we're just trying to see how many resources they have to spend to get through the fight. I'm not saying a cleric should ONLY heal in many or most fights, nor am I saying a cleric should not be able to fill other roles, but if you're having many encounters in which no character will die, or stand a significant chance of dying with no combat heals, then your encounters are probably just too easy.
Damage does not equal difficulty. Difficult fights can happen without pc's taking any damage at all. It's a question of resource expenditure.
It's more accurate to say that if you're in a number of fights without expending any resources than it is too easy. This can include heals, abilities, hit points, whatever.
And yes, healing is little more than a buff to your hp score. It's affect is pretty much keeping you from dying. Which doesn't end the fight.
However the primary difference between it and damage is that if you knock your opponent into the negatives you win. That's why the damage dealers job is to end the fight.
No sane amount of battlefield control can replace the ability to undo the enemy's attacks in a tactical and selective manner. Eventually, some BBEG will fail to be shut down by solid fog/icy prison/a grappling T-Rex, and a member of your party will be put on 4 hp. Would you rather buff everyone and hope the BBEG dies before his next turn, hit him and hope he dies? Debuff him and hope his turn is made useless? Hope the GM plays the villain dumb and attacks someone else? No, the right move is to push the PC on death's door back into two-shot territory.
Battlefield control is the ability to remove an opponents actions in a tactical and selective manner. That is it's very definition.
And yes all of the above is a potential answer to an emergency. It's all dependent on the situation you find yourself in and the group your with. Sometimes healing is the answer. A lot of the time it's not.
Secondly, a group without support classes can exist quite comfortably. I've played a bunch of APs with a 2 man party, where nobody had native access to divine magic. I needed to UMD the occasional utility scroll, but as far as combat is concerned, parties are rarely so big and so optimized that it makes more sense to add a buffer than another character who can control or kill foes. Support is a thing that you do before combat, or when your primary role is impaired, or when it doesn't cost you significant actions.
That's great, but that's not an experience I've encountered often. There are plenty of stories and ap's run on these boards and elsewhere when that is not the experience. A GM running for two player's has very likely adapted that AP so it can be runnable for two players. That's important to note especially since published AP's are tested with 4 man groups using 15pt. buy.
Your critique of supportless parties is made even more baffling when you suggest that healerless parties have to waste wealth on CLW wands or have shorter adventuring days. If a party with a healer in it is having their cleric take care of most of their healing with his own spells, he's impairing his ability to actually function during combat (unless, as explained above, he's doing necessary combat healing), thus shortening the party's adventuring day and reducing the group's peak output.
On the other hand, if short adventuring days aren't a problem, there's no need to waste a single charge whether or not you have a cleric. CLW wands are a staple of adventuring parties because for a relatively low cost, they allow you to bring your party's full strength to bear during combat, because the divine caster won't have burned all his spells on post-combat healing.
Remember I said shorter days are made worse by a lack of magical healing. Not caused by it. What I mean is if a group lacks both support and a means of recovering hp or normal status than the problem is exasperated.
The reason a group without arm's have shorter adventuring days is because they're the ones that allow the other two to act more efficiently. A wizard casting fly on his barbarian or haste over the group is allowing those parts of the group to act more efficiently.
That's ditto to the bard who uses inspire courage, the shaman who uses heaven's leap, or the cleric who casts deathward.
Please also note that I mentioned a group without arms is also the most forgiving in the first line. You can easily go without support classes at all. I've certainly done it before it simply requires characters to be more self sufficient and adaptable. It's just not terribly efficient.
Third, as has already been noted upthread, your ability to prepare for combat is EXTREMELY influential in your combat performance, and not all parties are equally capable of making those preparations. I'm less sold on the logistical side, since that role ends once you set foot in the dungeon, but recon and scouting are hugely important from the moment you arrive (and oftimes, earlier than that). Yes, your group may naturally fill the necessary pre-combat roles, just like they may fill your paradigm without even ever having heard of it, but if they take your model as their sole source of guidance and structure, it's just as likely that they won't. Control Sorcerer, defensive Fighter, offensive Barbarian, and a supportive Oracle fills out your model just fine, but they'd be lucky to scrounge up a rogue's worth of skills between the four of them combined, and will have to rely on scrolls for any sort of utility casting they want done. Forget about diplomacy and K:religion and all those "it might bear on combat" skills. The first step of any combat isn't the first attack, it's locating the enemy. Every single time.
You're thinking very narrowly here particularly since the example you give is actually quite broad.
Like, by what do you mean a control sorcerer? Is he based on enchantment? Summons? Does he focus purely on battlefield control?
Or a defensive fighter? Is he sword and board? Reach? Does he prefer to plink away from far away with archery?
Most Pathfinder classes can fill quite a lot of areas some even more than others. If you looked at the characters in the exa ple group provided you will note that they're actually quite competent out of combat.
And ultimately, out of combat things are outside of the scope of the essay presented here. The subject is simply too broad and subjective to be able to provide a valuable analysis. I've said as much repeatedly.
I mean you talk about how Know Religion and Diplomacy won't help you find the enemy. But what if that's exactly what they do? Diplomacy to find out where the thieves den is, know religion to tell which hole the ghouls are more likely to hide in. Whether or not you agree does not matter the exact value is entirely campaign dependent.
If you really wanted to keep arms as a thing, I'd make their minimum requirements the ability to buff as a move action or better (swift, if they rely on full attacks), or to make favorable action trades rather than simply ability to make the trades at all. If giving your standard action to the Barbarian is a worthy trade, it means your spot would be better served with a second Barbarian.
Again, you're thinking narrowly and not considering context.
Let's say I'm spending a standard action a barbarian. Why?
If I'm using it to boost the barbarians numbers that makes him hit more reliably. Depending on the numbers in question he'll hit more reliably or be less likely to be halted by a counter offensive. A second barbarian doesn't do that.
If I'm using it to boost his actions than I'm allowing him to get more out of his not inconsiderable numbers. He gets more attacks, more ways to do his job efficiently. A second barbarian does not do that.
If I'm using it to improve his positioning I'm placing him where he doesn't waste actions attempting to do his job. He'll be spending his turns charging, or full attacking, or sundering, rather than moving to a place where he can. A second barbarian does not do this.
And keep in mind a good arm can do this over multiple characters. A bard can improve the numbers of everyone in the group. A cleric or wizard can increase the actions and positioning of multiple people at once.
Lastly, bear in mind nowhere is it mentioned anyone is married to their role the whole combat. If you're at a point where it's more efficient to start dealing damage and ending the fight than expending more resources, than do it. The group can be flexible and often it's better to be redundant in terms of having multiple of the same role in the group. You can have a group with nothing but secondary arms, or secondary hammers (heck a group that does nothing but control in the first round of combat would be interesting to see) and function quite well. It's only when you are missing those roles entirely, or when you have an insufficiency that issues arise.
Tark: I misunderstood. I thought the "everyone else" was meant to imply the existence of PCs who somehow aren't one of your three roles.
Damage does not equal difficulty. Difficult fights can happen without pc's taking any damage at all. It's a question of resource expenditure.
That's fair, but misunderstands my point. You can also lose easy fights without a single point of damage by getting unlucky on saves. What I'm getting at, though, is that difficult fights should include the non-trivial risk of death, and the most common way that happens is through hp damage. If you expend 20% of your resources and nobody comes close to dying, the fight was easy. Some fights are supposed to be easy, but not every fight.
Battlefield control is the ability to remove an opponents actions in a tactical and selective manner. That is it's very definition.
Yes, but it's usually situational, unreliable, and worst of all, pre-emptive. When someone's on very low hp, it's a lot easier to raise their hp than to deny every foe's actions for the rest of the combat.
That's great, but that's not an experience I've encountered often.
I guess I'll counter that by saying it's the situation I've seen most often, both in APs and in Society play. The APs were run at full strength, with adventure bosses actually being scaled up.
Please also note that I mentioned a group without arms is also the most forgiving in the first line. You can easily go without support classes at all. I've certainly done it before it simply requires characters to be more self sufficient and adaptable. It's just not terribly efficient.
A Barbarian who buys a wand of CLW is actually more efficient than most support characters you could drop into most parties. Supportless parties are the most forgiving because they're just damage in different hats. Parties without support classes don't suffer in combat. That's why Arm isn't a combat role.
Out of combat stuff
Yes, your example party has a nice mix of skills and flexibility with spells. Mine has atrocious skills, and little flexibility with spells outside of purchased scrolls. With the right fleshing out, both fill your combat model equally well. That's my point: it's a combat model only. Following your principles does not preclude the possibility of being extremely useful out of combat, but it definitely won't guarantee it.
Non-combat stuff
Technically, you could have an entire campaign without a single combat. That means your whole combat model is entirely campaign dependent.
But if we're being practical and honest, every single published module and every game I've played in for more than a few session has featured combat. No module, so far as I know, allows K: Religion to give you the drop on a group of ghouls. In order to assess the value of anything in a campaign, you have to make certain reasonable assumptions, such as that the campaign will feature combat, that the Knowledge skills will not allow you to win 100,000 gold piece at level one on the first and only episode of Who Knows Stuff About Golarian? and that there's a reasonable opportunity to use either enhanced senses or enhanced stealth to learn of the presence of foes before they become aware of you, or at least one round before they reach striking distance.
The majority of the usefulness of support classes comes from their ability to affect combat with buffs before the combat begins. Anything else they do is just DPR through other means.
If I'm using it to boost the barbarians numbers that makes him hit more reliably. Depending on the numbers in question he'll hit more reliably or be less likely to be halted by a counter offensive. A second barbarian doesn't do that.
A second Barbarian means you're making twice as many attacks, doing twice as much damage as a single Barbarian. No general buff will outperform that. Perhaps you're better off with a blaster Sorcerer, or a Zen Archer or something so that both don't get hosed by the same set of defenses, but having someone add efficiency to the Barbarian will nearly never be as efficient as just doubling the raw numbers.
"The Shield" as you've defined it, isn't really a role in Pathfinder. Since there is no aggro mechanic, there is nothing that forces the enemies to target the big brick...I would agree that one should ask what jobs need to be covered, the issue is that you sort of miss one. The shield. Someone has to present themselves as a target for the inevitable aggression that the party faces. This is seperate from the anvil, in so much as the iconic anvil, the controller wizard, cant do it. Even the very best controller wizard cant keep all the enemies under control 100% of the time. A summoning caster can, but that sort of blurs the lines between anvil and hammer.
Usually, the hammer, is also the shield. Fighters, paladins, barbarians, etc, can dish out the defined damage, and take hits with loads of hp, high ac, etc. But it doesnt have to be. In theory a squishy archer type, or even a blasty caster could be part or all of a hammer. But they wouldnt then be the thing that stands between the enemy and the party.
I know that by your definition, blocking the enemy or occupying its attention is the anvils job. It just isnt realistic for the role to be covered by a single character. The controller caster (barring summons) cant provide a target for the enemy's hostility. There is also a difference between limiting or even blocking mobility, and being the target of hostility. You could stop the enemy cold and they could still be shooting/casting spells/whatever. At some point, someone is taking hits.
I've gone over this subject before.
But to expand a bit I believe that the actual responsibility of making sure not too much damage ends up on the wrong people is entirely on the group as a whole.
An anvil can control the field to ensure the enemy is limited in their choices and an arm can help mitigate that damage while a hammer can simply build themselves to take little damage from a counter attack.
The reason you can't have someoen dedicated under this role is that there are no hard fast rules on enemy targeting. The enemy targets absed entirely upon GM discretion. That means if the wizard gets rushed down there's next to nothing a fat wad of armor and hitpoints can do about it.
So, it's better really to use positioning and control as a defensive measure than it is to rely on a party punching bag to absorb enemy actions.
So really, when people are asking for a melee character what they want is a nice piece of guaranteed field control that forces an enemy to try and get around it. What they're asking for is a melee anvil. And as mentioned before characters with reach weapons perform that function quite well.
The problem is the hammer as you define it doesn't need to be in a square blocking the enemy. It just needs to do damage.
And I am not saying there needs to be a mmo style tank. But someone has to take the hits that WILL come, because if they don't, the dn, who is a living thinking being will make them happen. All the black ttentacles in the world won't change that most dms won't be happy if no one ever takes a hit.
And yes, most melee hammers sever this role, but not all hammers do. It could also be spread through a varied party, but that's no different then the anvil or arm roles being spread out. It is still distinct from the others.
And while there's no targeting there is the choices of the dm, and things like a big armored fighter or a raging barn attract attention.(particularly when the are also the hammer,but they don't have to be). It goes beyond control. Because they have to be ready and able to absorb the punishment that being up front and grabbing attention creates.
Unless your dm runs exclusively on cr encounters and never adjusts to what the party can do, you need an explicate sheild
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The problem is the hammer as you define it doesn't need to be in a square blocking the enemy. It just needs to do damage.
And I am not saying there needs to be a mmo style tank. But someone has to take the hits that WILL come, because if they don't, the dn, who is a living thinking being will make them happen. All the black ttentacles in the world won't change that most dms won't be happy if no one ever takes a hit.
And yes, most melee hammers sever this role, but not all hammers do. It could also be spread through a varied party, but that's no different then the anvil or arm roles being spread out. It is still distinct from the others.
And while there's no targeting there is the choices of the dm, and things like a big armored fighter or a raging barn attract attention.(particularly when the are also the hammer,but they don't have to be). It goes beyond control. Because they have to be ready and able to absorb the punishment that being up front and grabbing attention creates.
Unless your dm runs exclusively on cr encounters and never adjusts to what the party can do, you need an explicate sheild
Your "shield" is just a hammer that either A) Doesn't suck at his job (minimizing party resource expenditure), or B) Gets supported by the Arm(s) to the point that he can take relatively little damage, or survive the damage he takes.
Yes, but it's usually situational, unreliable, and worst of all, pre-emptive. When someone's on very low hp, it's a lot easier to raise their hp than to deny every foe's actions for the rest of the combat.
That works both ways. Healing in and of itself is situational, and too often unreliable.
A Barbarian who buys a wand of CLW is actually more efficient than most support characters you could drop into most parties. Supportless parties are the most forgiving because they're just damage in different hats. Parties without support classes don't suffer in combat. That's why Arm isn't a combat role.
Well, right up until they do suffer. You actually appear to be contradicting yourself here. Above you've made the claim for having value in healing but disregard the arm as a role in combat.
You also don't appear to understand the full scope of the role. I've already pointed out things that arms do outside of simple numerical buffs.
Yes, your example party has a nice mix of skills and flexibility with spells. Mine has atrocious skills, and little flexibility with spells outside of purchased scrolls. With the right fleshing out, both fill your combat model equally well. That's my point: it's a combat model only. Following your principles does not preclude the possibility of being extremely useful out of combat, but it definitely won't guarantee it.
And I've said as much and never said nor meant to say otherwise repeatedly.
But if we're being practical and honest, every single published module and every game I've played in for more than a few session has featured combat. No module, so far as I know, allows K: Religion to give you the drop on a group of ghouls.
But at certain tables under certain gms it can. That's the point.
The majority of the usefulness of support classes comes from their ability to affect combat with buffs before the combat begins. Anything else they do is just DPR through other means.
Again, you're missing the scope of what the role does. It's more than numbers and not every support ability is usable or even practical in an out of combat context.
There's no arguing about whether before combat buffs are better or not. I've sad as much But, there's more to the role than numerical buffs.
A second Barbarian means you're making twice as many attacks, doing twice as much damage as a single Barbarian. No general buff will outperform that. Perhaps you're better off with a blaster Sorcerer, or a Zen Archer or something so that both don't get hosed by the same set of defenses, but having someone add efficiency to the Barbarian will nearly never be as efficient as just doubling the raw numbers.
Except you're not doubling any numbers. You're just adding more sets of them to the group. That does not translate to a more efficient barbarian. A barbarian who cannot reach his enemy is not benefitted by a zen archer, a barbarian put to sleep by a failed save is not aided by more damage, a blaster sorcerer is not giving the barbarian action advantage.
We are not comparing single buffs to entire characters. We are comparing flexible roles and how they function as a group versus others.
Ultimately I cannot speak for your experience. If it works for you than I've got nothing and I do appreciate you saying something particularly something that isn't more complaining about min/maxing attitudes. I can only explain that I did not pull my conclusions merely from personal gaming experience.
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I find the main problem with building a balanced party using the Hammer/Anvil/Arm terms is that how you intend to fill a role matters just as much as what roll you intend to fill.
No one, and certainly not Tark, said otherwise. The purpose of this metaphor is to get a general feel for things. It's a starting point for building a balanced party.
Great to see this healthy discussion!
No one, and certainly not Tark, said otherwise. The purpose of this metaphor is to get a general feel for things. It's a starting point for building a balanced party.I guess my point is that I am not convinced that it gives any better general feel than Class names or the classic Martial/Divine Caster/Arcane Caster, breakdown would.
You would perhaps have to sit down and consider the strengths and weaknesses of the different power sources to understand why this works and how to build an arcane caster without being an arcane caster. But, you would need to do this in order to get anything useful out of a DD/Buffer/Controller split as well.
The confusion in some of the posts here about the "shield" role, melee anvils vs. caster anvils, hammers that can or cannot pretend to be an anvil by blocking charge lanes, and classes that typically fill multiple roles at once while still claiming that 2 characters aren't enough to cover a broad range of encounters. In the end, I find the terms are both too specific and not specific enough to give meaningful input on what to play.
I think you're trying to cram classes and characters in one role when the model very easily support flexibility between two or all three particularly when spread throughout a group.
Let's go back to the reach fighter/blaster sorcerer examples you gave above.
Let's say that for his group the reach fighter functions early on as a screen against meleers who also rushes forward to trip or otherwise hinder threats as necessary for the blaster sorcerer to safely explode. He doesn't really expend daily resources for this he just invests a lot of his character into it which is not the same thing.
IF the fighter finds himself dealing with a teleporting opponent than the sorcerer can step into the anvil role and shut down the teleportation abilities or step into the role of arm and grant the fighter the means to catch the spellcaster.
Should the sorcerer find himself unable to harm an opponent (unlikely he is a T1 character afterall ;) ) than he can take on a different role to support the fighter who can take on a more damaging role if they are more suited.
I actually go into this during the article. If you can't fill one role most efficiently you should consider expanding your options into other roles when you find yourself in a situation where your primary role cannot be done.
This group still functions. It is probably not the most efficient group you can ask for but it is a functional group. No one should cram themselves into a single role unless they are particularly well suited for it (see: Grumpy McShootsfaces). As in everything context is key.
If anything the model presented can give you a good idea what jobs the group needs. Character optimization will tell you how to do those jobs best.
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While I think this mini-guide definitely gets one thinking about combat roles. If the goal is to survive the encounter with the least expenditure or resources, it's the out of combat roles that can do that most efficiently. A good diplomacy, disable device, knowledge, or linguistics check can circumvent or lessen the need for violence, not always but often enough that it's important, especially for those instances when the violence makes things worse.
You've got to survive your battles, but you can't balance a group by only looking at combat.
I'm sure everyone already knows this on some level, but it can be annoying when you sit down and realize half of the party is so optimized for combat that if a problem can't be solved by violence they find themselves without purpose and can feel useless, leading them to disengage from the role play.
I just fail to see how the roles help building a balanced group if the conclusion is that any given character fills multiple roles, while an optimized character fills all the roles at the same time?
Because the game rewards build specialization while simultaneously rewarding tactical flexibility.
And yes, that's confusing.
But it makes sense once you consider why characters are T1 or T2 or whatever. They specialize in their most potent abilities (spells) which allow them greatest tactical flexibility (summons, battlefield control, save or dies).
But most people aren't playing T1 or T2 characters. They're playing T3 and T4 or below characters. Which are usually only good at one or two things.
So what the model does is give you ideas on where to specialize in order to do combat well. Even the minimums I give are fairly easy to achieve for some classes more than others. That's not a problem with the model, that's just the ups and downs of class design.
I mean, what is most useful to know when building a character to fit with the rest of the group? That they have a character who can be an Arm, Anvil or Hammer at any given turn, or if the character is a divine or an arcane caster? (or if the character in question is a reach cleric or a blockbuster wizard?)
The most useful thing to know is actually none of those.
The most useful thing to know is how individual characters withint the group fight and then go from there.
I mean, consider this for a moment, how many groups have you sat in where everyone made separate characters devoid of input from others?
What I usually see happen when I've watched other groups bring up this model is that one member will do a quick analysis of the group when characters are presented. Other members will come in and explain how that analysis is wrong/right on their individual character.
Then what usually happens is someone will go "well we could really use someone to play arm/anvil maybe we should get x?"
It should be noted almost no one ever needs more hammers. They're just too easy to make in pathfinder.
What X is gets determined by the group in question. Sometimes the group will also want out of combat concerns to be met as well. Perhaps the group needs a face? Maybe their knowledge skills are severely lacking. Why not a scout? A character of a certain race or class may get certain roleplay benefits.
And in-combat concerns can be defined by other members as well. If the group has mostly archery based hammers than fog spells and other things that limit line of sight without harming mobility much are going to get you the stink eye. However those same archers who have precise shot are going to appreciate summons who block charge lanes and discourage reckless mobility without providing soft cover. That too helps determine what to play.
Ultimately the most useful thing to know, is what everyone else is doing and what will benefit everyone the most. More damage? BEtter support? Strong control? When you don't know, or when that hasn't been determined you have the most freedom to do what you want.
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While I think this mini-guide definitely gets one thinking about combat roles. If the goal is to survive the encounter with the least expenditure or resources, it's the out of combat roles that can do that most efficiently. A good diplomacy, disable device, knowledge, or linguistics check can circumvent or lessen the need for violence, not always but often enough that it's important, especially for those instances when the violence makes things worse.
You've got to survive your battles, but you can't balance a group by only looking at combat.
I'm sure everyone already knows this on some level, but it can be annoying when you sit down and realize half of the party is so optimized for combat that if a problem can't be solved by violence they find themselves without purpose and can feel useless, leading them to disengage from the role play.
That's solved by not building terrible characters with little to no skill points. One of many reasons Fighters get so much flak on the boards.
Combat is one of the few things you can absolutely be certain the campaign will have plenty of. Thus building for combat makes you always somewhat useful. A Skill check is often done by a sole person.
Really this guide can just as easily be read as: Once a fight breaks out heres what you do.
The guide doesn't advise solving all your problems with violence. All it does is state "Here's how to do things in a fight effectively."
What a class is capable of outside of combat is almost completely separate from what it can do in combat. They're hardwired from the start that way. A Ranger for example is way better at avoiding combat from the getgo than a Fighter is due to the myriad of skill bonuses and scouting abilities it gets in addition to spellcasting. You can build to shore up the deficiencies inherent in the class, but doesn't really change the baseline. Your average Fighter only has 1-3 Skill points usually. Your Average Ranger usually has 4-7 and gets skill bonuses inherent to the class.
Your "shield" is just a hammer that either A) Doesn't suck at his job (minimizing party resource expenditure), or B) Gets supported by the Arm(s) to the point that he can take relatively little damage, or survive the damage he takes.The problem is the hammer as you define it doesn't need to be in a square blocking the enemy. It just needs to do damage.
And I am not saying there needs to be a mmo style tank. But someone has to take the hits that WILL come, because if they don't, the dn, who is a living thinking being will make them happen. All the black ttentacles in the world won't change that most dms won't be happy if no one ever takes a hit.
And yes, most melee hammers sever this role, but not all hammers do. It could also be spread through a varied party, but that's no different then the anvil or arm roles being spread out. It is still distinct from the others.
And while there's no targeting there is the choices of the dm, and things like a big armored fighter or a raging barn attract attention.(particularly when the are also the hammer,but they don't have to be). It goes beyond control. Because they have to be ready and able to absorb the punishment that being up front and grabbing attention creates.
Unless your dm runs exclusively on cr encounters and never adjusts to what the party can do, you need an explicate sheild
Except that isn't in the definition of a hammer. All that's there is get into position and do damage. Not to mention a hammers doesn't have to be that guy it just often is. The caster could summon as a shield while the ranged char lays down the hurt
Then what usually happens is someone will go "well we could really use someone to play arm/hammer maybe we should get x?"Except it is never "we really need someone to play arm/hammer" in PF. It is "we really need an Arcane Caster" or maybe a Divine Caster (perhaps expressed as a Wizard or a Cleric). Because how the various characters do stuff is more important for a "balanced" and versatile party then what they do.
I only explained what I see when I watch other people use this. Nothing else. I've seen it used in groups that had multiple arcane/divine casters to help determine just where the group was failing in terms of combat.
The discussion of combat roles is interesting, but because of how versatile most pathfinder classes are both before and after they have been created. The discussion of combat roles is more relevant to the tactics part of the game than the character creation part in my opinion.
Why not both?
Groups evolve based on the campaign. If your GM allows retraining that can be even more true.
I do not agree with this part. The key part is not if the party needs more damage, better support, or strong control. But what kind of damage/support/control it is the party needs?
Well yes and no.
First you ahve to determine whether you need that first bit, then determine the how's.
That works both ways. Healing in and of itself is situational, and too often unreliable.
Fair. Perhaps there ought to be a role whose duties are to counter the worst of whatever the enemy does. There are a lot of things that you'd be better off spending your turn undoing than trying to fight from uneven footing. The guy who packs a silver bullet for everything that could go wrong. See invis versus the invisible, Fly for the Barbarian versus the..I dunno, wyvern. Something that flies.
But this seems problematic, because 95% of their capability will go unused every fight. You lump that under Arm. My case is this: of the ten thousand things that go wrong and are best answered with a specific counter, heavy damage/combat healing is the most common one (unless, of course, you can end the fight with fewer resources expended another way. It happens both ways.)
Well, right up until they do suffer. You actually appear to be contradicting yourself here. Above you've made the claim for having value in healing but disregard the arm as a role in combat.You also don't appear to understand the full scope of the role. I've already pointed out things that arms do outside of simple numerical buffs.
I'm internally consistent, as I was saying Combat Healer should be a role on its own. Not a necessary one, but one still more vital than the the sum of a non-healing Arm's contribution, in my opinion. For the same reason that you consider damage to be distinct from debuffs, I consider healing separate from support. One alters the exchange rate of turns:damage, another actually moves the goalposts.
And I've said as much and never said nor meant to say otherwise repeatedly.
Apologies, then. From things you said on page 1, I came upon the notion you thought out of combat duties would handle themselves. I'm glad we don't disagree.
But at certain tables under certain gms it can. That's the point.
Anything is possible, yes, but in the vast majority of discussions we don't feel the need to account for the limitless. We make reasonable assumptions about what a hypothetical average Pathfinder game looks like.
Except you're not doubling any numbers. You're just adding more sets of them to the group. That does not translate to a more efficient barbarian. A barbarian who cannot reach his enemy is not benefitted by a zen archer, a barbarian put to sleep by a failed save is not aided by more damage, a blaster sorcerer is not giving the barbarian action advantage.
The point is that the group as a whole is often benefited more by additional damage than supporting.
Ultimately I cannot speak for your experience. If it works for you than I've got nothing and I do appreciate you saying something particularly something that isn't more complaining about min/maxing attitudes. I can only explain that I did not pull my conclusions merely from personal gaming experience.
And nor can I speak for yours, but I've got nothing else to speak from and you did ask for input. I'm glad at least I wasn't the most annoying thing you got from that request. So if not personal gaming experience, what are you citing?
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I'm internally consistent, as I was saying Combat Healer should be a role on its own. Not a necessary one, but one still more vital than the the sum of a non-healing Arm's contribution, in my opinion. For the same reason that you consider damage to be distinct from debuffs, I consider healing separate from support.
Magda is a very martial PFS Evangelist Cleric. Using the Forge of Combat metaphor she is a primary Arm and secondary Hammer. While she is a competent 'combat healer', and always prepares a couple solid in-combat healing spells, it hardly ever comes up. Circumstances only require her to do in-combat healing once every 10 fights, if even that often. This is because her specialty is damage mitigation. Usually she buffs her allies (with spells and bard song), acts to minimize incoming damage, then bashes heads. Thus, her primary role is to support allies. In-combat healing is one (minor) type of support she provides when needed. If you called Magda a 'combat healer' that would be incorrect. That's not her role, it's just something she occasionally does.
Frankly, an 'arm' with zero healing ability is a pretty lousy arm. Healing is an important form of 'support'. That's why the 'arm' role is typically filled by a divine caster, sometimes by a Bard, but almost never by a non-caster. I'd be suspicious of a PC who claimed to fill the 'arm' role but could not cast any spells.
Some groups depend heavily on an in-combat healer. Usually, when I observe such a group, I also observe a group that lacks effective Battlefield Control and/or effective damage mitigation. The Forge of Combat metaphor generally shows that such groups lack either an Anvil, an Arm, or both. People who play in such groups generally believe the role of in-combat healer to be indispensable.
Groups with both solid battlefield control (anvil role) and solid damage mitigation (arm role) usually don't take a lot of damage. These groups don't really need in combat healing. In combat healing only comes up when someone messes up badly. People who play in such groups generally don't find the role of in-combat healer to be very important.
Second, it writes off healing as a kind of buff. That's neither more nor less legitimate as writing damage off as kind of debuff, because dead creatures do no damage. A lack of combat healing presupposes a combat model in which the PCs have already won, and we're just trying to see how many resources they have to spend to get through the fight. I'm not saying a cleric should ONLY heal in many or most fights, nor am I saying a cleric should not be able to fill other roles, but if you're having many encounters in which no character will die, or stand a significant chance of dying with no combat heals, then your encounters are probably just too easy. No sane amount of battlefield control can replace the ability to undo the enemy's attacks in a tactical and selective manner. Eventually, some BBEG will fail to be shut down by solid fog/icy prison/a grappling T-Rex, and a member of your party will be put on 4 hp. Would you rather buff everyone and hope the BBEG dies before his next turn, hit him and hope he dies? Debuff him and hope his turn is made useless? Hope the GM plays the villain dumb and attacks someone else? No, the right move is to push the PC on death's door back into two-shot territory.
THANK YOU for putting that into words for me
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Then what usually happens is someone will go "well we could really use someone to play arm/hammer maybe we should get x?"Except it is never "we really need someone to play arm/hammer" in PF. It is "we really need an Arcane Caster" or maybe a Divine Caster (perhaps expressed as a Wizard or a Cleric). Because how the various characters do stuff is more important for a "balanced" and versatile party then what they do.
...And then someone brings a Sorcerer optimized for Fireball and none of the group's problems are solved even though they now have an arcane caster.
I actually had a similar experience to this in a PFS game a couple weeks back. I was playing an Arcanist because I had noticed that virtually no one brings buff/debuff casters; every wizard and sorcerer I had seen was of the blaster or save-or-die variety. Of course, when I got to the table, we had no hammers. But... we did have a "martial". He was a Mouser Swashbuckler. This Swashbuckler did not have dexterity-to-damage, so he was dealing 1d4-1 on his attacks. Combats dragged on for so long I was reduced to flinging Acid Splash by the last combat of the scenario.
So, bringing a "martial" to the table did not help. Bringing a hammer definitely would have.
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Second, it writes off healing as a kind of buff. That's neither more nor less legitimate as writing damage off as kind of debuff, because dead creatures do no damage. A lack of combat healing presupposes a combat model in which the PCs have already won, and we're just trying to see how many resources they have to spend to get through the fight. I'm not saying a cleric should ONLY heal in many or most fights, nor am I saying a cleric should not be able to fill other roles, but if you're having many encounters in which no character will die, or stand a significant chance of dying with no combat heals, then your encounters are probably just too easy. No sane amount of battlefield control can replace the ability to undo the enemy's attacks in a tactical and selective manner. Eventually, some BBEG will fail to be shut down by solid fog/icy prison/a grappling T-Rex, and a member of your party will be put on 4 hp. Would you rather buff everyone and hope the BBEG dies before his next turn, hit him and hope he dies? Debuff him and hope his turn is made useless? Hope the GM plays the villain dumb and attacks someone else? No, the right move is to push the PC on death's door back into two-shot territory.THANK YOU for putting that into words for me
For a majority of a healer's career (everything before the heal spell), a single cure cast will probably not prevent an ally from being defeated, at least not moreso than increasing his defenses against the target of his likely demise, or debilitating it, or helping your allies kill it. Heals just generally don't heal for very much compared to the amount of damage equal CR enemies put out, let alone higher CR enemies. That's not to say healing is bad, but the other choices mentioned are probably about equally as viable. Plus, if the PC JUST got to death's door, it sounds like a perfect time for a tactical retreat (withdraw action). Let the rest of the healthy party mop up the fight while he pulls out a ranged weapon once within a safe-ish distance.
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First you ahve to determine whether you need that first bit, then determine the how's.What kind of damage/support/control the party needs is the important part because it is the how's determine which enemies you can target, which defenses you can target, what you can do to make your allies more effective, and so on. Further more, in addition to being more difficult for the opponent to shut down, different how's tend to stack better than same how's.
Whether your character is best utilized as DD, Support, or Control will depend upon the given encounter unless you made a one trick pony who is a waste of space whenever his trick isn't applicable. Discussing what kind of tactics the party should use ahead of time will of course only be helpful, and such a discussion can help the party spot a weakness so that it can be patched up before the TPK happens.
But, it helps to do that during character creation as well. The trick is not to overspecialize but to specialize in several aspects of the same direction or to take on another direction if you can only go so far. Something I repeat throughout the piece actually. For example the archaeologist bard given in the example group is only really a functional archer when being a hammer from a distance. When enemies close he goes to his whip and spell selection to limit and debuff any close by enemies. The groups hammer is a switch hitting ranger, and a build I've taken into other games with great success, and very reliably gets in full attacks with different forms of damage on a regular basis.
Determining if the party needs more damage/support/control isn't sufficient. Because there is more than one way to perform any of those roles. And if you choose the wrong way to perform whatever role you wish (or the party wishes for you) to specialize in, it won't help the party as the set of situations that shut down the rest of the party might shut down you as well. If you choose a different way of doing your thing however, then your abilities will work during different sets of circumstances making the party as a whole more robust.Thus once you know what kind of damage/support/control it is your character's job to apply. You can start determining what to specialize in as well as what measures to take in order to contribute when your stick simply does not apply. This part is to a large degree dependent upon choices you make in game.
Agreed, that's the reason I don't go into specifics in terms of class. PAthfinder as a game has made it worse on individual players with so many options so saying we need an arcane spellcaster or a divine caster or a cleric, or a sorcerer, or even a rogue doesn't have much meaning.
So it requires dialogue that's the same as any group discussion. The analysis and model acts as a starting point. Determine the what, than discuss the how. The how gets discussed all throughout the game.
A sorcerer who specializes in fireball is going to help the group that is in dire need of arcane control, buffs and utility a lot more than yet another martial character focused on area lock down and combat maneuvers. Because first of all sorcerers know more than one spell, and secondly dazing fireball is a thing. Finally, the sorcerer can easily pick up/be given a page of spell knowledge or a scroll to cover what the party needs to get done.
As for the swashbuckler... If someone makes a one trick pony specialized in a trick that isn't especially applicable. Then don't expect the one trick pony to be useful. It does not matter if he pretends to be a martial character, divine caster, arcane caster, arm, hammer, or anvil.
Optimization isn't work into the model purely because every game can be wildly different. What's optimal on the boards does not always translate to the table.The model itself is meant to work at as many tables as possible as there's things that every group will need for combat.
There are some truths that tend to be universal(initiative is good, positioning is everything, one trick ponies suck, etc.), and I did include optimization minimums to have as a base to look at.
But what good is it for me to tell someone they need to have an optimized wizard for the anvil position in a low magic game? Where does a discussion about the best hammer in the game being a barbarian come up in a game that only allows corebook and 3pp material?
So yes, in a normal game you can easily see how certain classes fit certain roles easily. It's actually rather intuitive though not often followed since little to no thought is ever put into group cohesiveness over individual optimization or personal roleplay concerns.
As far as one trick ponies go I state out very early on in the piece as something to avoid on the first page. Sometimes though, especially when you pick up a class like swashbuckler, slayer, or goo too far on the mounted side of cavalier, it can be unavoidable. That's when you just have to make do and adapt. That's why gunslingers carry swords, swashbucklers carry javelins, and mounted cavaliers learn to double as fighters with a pet flesh eating horse.
That one class or another is bettter at filling a role or another is really not important to the model. The analysis may show an insufficiency but that does not necesssarily require a class change, but usually only a different view on the character. A balanced group is only about covering every job needed. An optimal group is about doing it exceedingly well.
You may be interested in the follow up to this called fueling the forge. As it is more of a tactical discussion and deals in different concepts (actions/numbers/positioning)
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Honestly, writing this as an answer to the "what role does the party need" threads that cropped up all the time back then is what drove me into looking more deeply at the tactics of the game.
Let's get very basic. The majority of combat is resolved in one way: Doing hitpoint damage in excess of your threats' total hitpoints.
The primary thing a party will need is the ability to consistently do hitpoint damage that outpaces the hitpoint damage done to them. Everything else is auxiliary.
We have to assume that every party understands that they will need to damage their opponents, and has some ability to effectively do so. Efficiency, then, becomes about the best use of the auxiliaries. Anything that reduces the aggregate hitpoints of your threats, either in the short-term or long-term, increases your efficiency.
Since we have no way to determine party make-up across the board, may I propose: Efficiency is effectively reducing your opponents' threat while increasing the party's.
Short term or Long term - Anything that makes an opponents action useless is an effective reduction of threat. Your AC and save bonuses are the most common, passive way this is done. But, anything that reduces an opponents effectiveness for a round, or even an iteration in that round is a boon. Field/crowd control, miss chance, debuffs, combat maneuvers, effective use of terrain, forcing re-rolls, (honestly, this list is potentially very extensive!), etc... Make an opponent's action/round/encounter worthless, and you have massively increased your combat efficiency.
In the same vein, you need to make all of your actions count, effectively increasing your (and your party's) threat. Anything that makes you more likely to hit, do more damage when you hit, and give you more opportunities to hit, increases your party's combat efficiency.
The highest model of efficiency is in the ability to reduce the overall volume of opponents' threat, while maximizing your own threat. This is most effectively done through manipulating the turn-based action economy. I'll say that again: Highest Efficiency is Effectively Manipulating the Turn-Based Action Economy.
In short: You are going to miss. Your opponent is going to hit. You are going to fail a save. Your opponent is going to make a save. You are going to use an ineffective tactic. Your opponent is going to use an effective one. These things are going to happen to you at some point, and probably at multiple points throughout a campaign. We are slaves to the twenty-sided die. There will be ones and twenties, and they won't always benefit you and your party!
The only way to reduce this is to reduce the number of actions/turns your opponents get, and increase the number of actions/turns you and your party gets. Period.
1. He who goes first, goes last. Initiative is almost everything. Surprise rounds are almost everything. Pathfinder does not reward you for reducing an opponent to 1 hp. He can still hit you just as hard as when he was full hp. You need to act before he gets that chance... all of you! Going first gives you the best chance of also going last.
2. Crowd control wins. You were facing five, now you're facing four. Maybe the other gets back in the fight in a round or two. It doesn't matter. One cast of sleep, slow, hold person, fear, grease, whatever. One bullrush, overrun, trip, disarm, grapple, whatever. One use of cover or terrain, one forced re-roll, one anything that takes away a round of an opponents action wins.
3. Second chances win. Ever gotten that one re-roll? that one extra standard action? that post-roll bonus that took it from fail to success? Oh, yes. It turned the battle right on its head, didn't it? These are rarities. But, they are options you should look for, possess, and cultivate! Hero points, if available, are amazing...
Without dragging on... every class is a potential "Hammer". Really. Combat efficiency, effective party tactics, balanced parties are all ephemera. Especially since there are innumerable character builds and unfathomable party builds! "Effectiveness" is about taking more actions than your opponents, making them count for more, and making your opponents fewer actions count for less. IMHO.
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Can this concept work for GMs too when designing encounters? Should a group of villains/monsters contain the ideal mix of hammers, anvils and arms to be a challenge?
Can this concept work for GMs too when designing encounters? Should a group of villains/monsters contain the ideal mix of hammers, anvils and arms to be a challenge?
Yes and maybe.
When I was still planning on doing the Tactics 101 book I had already planned on a GM section and the first part was going to be about translating the forge to the gm side of the screen.
Basically it breaks down into the following.
~The anvil portion of an encounter is represented by those things that inhibit a groups action or positioning. This includes terrain, lower CR monsters, or enemies that purposely limit the pc's capability somehow.
~The hammer portion represents enemies that endanger the pc's by wailing on their hit points or on some other form of damage (shadow's for example can operate as hammers that target strength scores).
~The arm portion is trickier and is mostly represented either by enemies or terrain that directly buff an enemy (fighting a shambling mound during a lightning storm or something like that.) or by tactics that work to support individual enemies in harming the pc's.
As to whether or not you should to provide a challenging encounter is a maybe. By using the analysis you can determine the sort of encounter you are building and decide for yourself if that's how you want the fight to go.
It's very different from doing it as a pc since a balanced and successful group is the ultimate goal. However that is not the goal of an encounter. Sometimes having a balanced, multifaceted encounter can provide an interesting tactical challenge. However, you can decide to challenge the pc's a different way by exagerrating or downplaying a different aspect.
For example if you exemplify the arm and anvil aspects of the encounter while downplaying the hammer you can build an encounter that creates a slow sense of dread where the pc's have to fight through inhibiting control methods in order to defeat an encounter before the arm aspect makes that nigh impossible.
If you're using kobolds and the encounter is low enough level, consider a kobold skald 1 or Adept 3 as the Arm. They're small and with a little effort can have tremendous Stealth. They can sequester themselves in a Small to Tiny space close enough to the battle and then utilize either their song or their familiar to deliver buffs to their comrades.
Even an Adept 2 with an Emissary familiar hiding directly behind a pair of kobold warrior 1 NPCs can ensure that said warriors each receive a bless spell and the benefit of a Guidance spell every round.
No, my problem seems to be the anvil. PCs have decent saves, are usually powerful enough to switch-hit and avoid difficult terrain, and so on. I seem to always be able to put down an effective hammer and an arm, but my "anvils" always end up being duds.
If you're using kobolds and the encounter is low enough level, consider a kobold skald 1 or Adept 3 as the Arm. They're small and with a little effort can have tremendous Stealth. They can sequester themselves in a Small to Tiny space close enough to the battle and then utilize either their song or their familiar to deliver buffs to their comrades.
Even an Adept 2 with an Emissary familiar hiding directly behind a pair of kobold warrior 1 NPCs can ensure that said warriors each receive a bless spell and the benefit of a Guidance spell every round.
No, my problem seems to be the anvil. PCs have decent saves, are usually powerful enough to switch-hit and avoid difficult terrain, and so on. I seem to always be able to put down an effective hammer and an arm, but my "anvils" always end up being duds.
You might find some inspiration by reading some of Ashiel's goblin posts. I know I did.
Adepts have very limited spell lists. I expand their list and give them goodies like Entangle and Animate Rope.
I also use their wealth by level to give them some partially charged wands and/or scrolls. They've got Web, Obscuring Mist, and Animate Dead on their list, so I can feel free to give them a couple of scrolls of Web or an undead pet like a leopard skeleton (and beef it up with barding or maybe some poison caps filled with Drow Poison while I'm at it). A wand with a couple of charges of Scorching Ray or the like for sniping (another trick from Ashiel) beefs them up, too, along with a level of rogue for the sneak damage and stealth skill.
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Magda is a very martial PFS Evangelist Cleric...
I hate to drag in MMO baggage with me, but on this one occasion, I think I will choose to beg your forgiveness and do it anyway. There's a mantra in many MMOs that it's not damage that kills people, it's spike damage. That is, damage which is large and unpredictable. It looks like an unlucky crit on an injured martial or an intact, less beefy character, or it can look like a lucky full attack, or a direct damage spell that rolls very high on its damage range. By preventing damage with your support abilities you reduce overall damage, and you probably reduce the likelihood of spike damage. Or you may mitigate it down from a one-shot to merely a near kill. What I argue is that once that spike occurs, you will be more efficient resolving the combat by healing the spiked character than by going nova to turn all remaining combatants to cinders, denying them any further turns, and/or supporting (minus healing) everyone else to accomplish one or both of those things.
I concede Davor's point that healing often sucks straight out of the box. Sometimes you just have to play the odds and hope that your heal is better than a non-spike round of damage, or else nova the fight. Tactical withdrawals are spotty at best, unless your GM pulls punches.
Magda is a very martial PFS Evangelist Cleric...I hate to drag in MMO baggage with me, but on this one occasion, I think I will choose to beg your forgiveness and do it anyway. There's a mantra in many MMOs that it's not damage that kills people, it's spike damage. That is, damage which is large and unpredictable. It looks like an unlucky crit on an injured martial or an intact, less beefy character, or it can look like a lucky full attack, or a direct damage spell that rolls very high on its damage range. By preventing damage with your support abilities you reduce overall damage, and you probably reduce the likelihood of spike damage. Or you may mitigate it down from a one-shot to merely a near kill. What I argue is that once that spike occurs, you will be more efficient resolving the combat by healing the spiked character than by going nova to turn all remaining combatants to cinders, denying them any further turns, and/or supporting (minus healing) everyone else to accomplish one or both of those things.
I concede Davor's point that healing often sucks straight out of the box. Sometimes you just have to play the odds and hope that your heal is better than a non-spike round of damage, or else nova the fight. Tactical withdrawals are spotty at best, unless your GM pulls punches.
Or play an optimized Blaster and kill all the enemies with incredible probability!
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Sure. Full agreement. Magda occasionally heals in combat. It just doesn't come up all that often. For example, the Divine Interference feat (available to 11th level Clerics) prevents a lot of this 'spike damage'. This is damage mitigation at its best.
The point of healing after a spike isn't to protect from another spike, because those happen. It's to protect you from love taps from the minions. If the next hit kills you with or without heals, absolutely, pursue another avenue.
Yes, one hit kills happen too. I'm not at all advocating taking healing instead of control. Big heals are an insurance policy for when your control, for whatever reason, fails to stop a spike. If you get x4'd by a scythe, either you should've had more control, higher init, or you're just having a bad day. Not sure what else to tell you. Challenging combats should be tuned so that both one shots and negligible damage are uncommon outcomes.
In response to your response to the earlier question, yes, of course you can try controlling them. But it's not guaranteed. Even if you move away, another foe might finish you off, or they just drop a scorching ray on your touch AC+4 cover face. Protecting a damaged character for the rest of combat just seems like a much lower probability tactic than removing the damage in a majority of cases.