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You guys are using the term power creep very differently to how I would.
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Power creep isn't necessarily a bad thing. There can be good power creep that makes classes with some innate proficiencies better able to perform at a level where they contribute as much as their counter-parts, and there can be bad power creep, that widens the gap between classes that already had an edge.
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Heh, I'm a pretty empirical sort of person. I try to judge things based on data, not just personal perception.
So when I see thread after thread bemoaning how this class or that spell or these feats or that enchantment or these newly introduced items are breaking their game and they need help to "fix it", I use that as data.
Some things that have generated multiple threads of that sort:
Gunslingers
Summoners
Witches
Alchemists
Paragon surge
Ice tomb
Slumber
Rage-pouncing
Courageous-furious
Daze-locking
Cackle-fortune
That's just off the top of my head, from this and a few other recent threads.
That's not even going into things like "Why do bracers of the falcon completely obsolete bracers of archery?" and other similar questions.
Will doesn't matter if he dies before he can take the free action to activate Frightful Presence...An 11th level Gunslinger could 1 round kill a CR13 Adult Blue Dragon?
Go on then. Start with a DC 21 Will save please, or drop yer guns and run for the hills...
not to mention gunslingers dont have wis as a dump stat, so DC 21 will save for an 11th level gunslinger isn't undoable.
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The truth is, it's impossible to avoid power creep and continue to expand the game. "More options" is simply "more power."
A very simple example: which is more powerful, a cleric who can prepare command or a cleric who can prepare either command or murderous command?
But Pathfinder has done a very good job of keeping power creep under control, at least from my perspective as someone who GMs players who want strong characters but who aren't big optimizers. (Which also describes me as a player.)
I do have a specific question, though ... why is the falcata considered so good? 19-20 crit, x3, yeah, I get that, but that fits the paradigm for an exotic weapon, doesn't it? Is the idea that an increase to the crit-multiplier is more powerful than an increase to the crit-range?
That "good power creep" isn't really power creep, IMO. The overall power of the options which see common use doesn't increase much at all, but the variety of practical options does. That's more like "viability creep".
Real power creep is also bad even if it doesn't widen the power gap. Power creep options make old options irrelevant, so they're printed without broadening the game and they lead to imbalance between characters of the same type, regardless of where that type of character stands in the overall power rankings.
EDIT: The thing with the falcata is increasing the multiplier is worth more the wider the range and increasing the range is worth more the higher the multiplier. Therefore the falcata gets better crits than weapons which have more of one or the other.
It's equivalent to a x5 or 17-20 weapon and it has perfectly good damage.
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Aaah, the famous - sleeping dragon gambit.
Of course.
How about an actual concious functioning dragon, played up to its intelligence score?
Still slow. Gunslinger's have high Dex and class-based initiative boosts, and all of their most common builds grab at least the Reactionary trait to widen the gap. A Pistolero doesn't have to catch him sleeping, they just have to use their high DEX to Sneak in close, then use their superior initiative to unload with their 14 attacks dealing at least 1d8+8+3d6 (probably more) before the dragon moves. Given that he's targeting an AC of 8, he'll only miss with a natural 1 on anything other than his very last attacks with either hand, which he'll still need a below average roll to miss with. Not that it will matter since the dragon died 3 attacks before we ever got to that point.
Again, that's not really pertinent to the conversation at hand, but it's definitely power creep as it wasn't something you could do before UC hit shelves.
but it's definitely power creep as it wasn't something you could do before UC hit shelves.
That's a terrible way to judge if something is power creep. All it means is we have a new option. If it's genuinely new and it's actually useful, it's going to be better at some particular thing than whatever came before it. That's the point in having new things.
In the case of the pistolero it may very well have gone too far, but I don't agree with your reasoning and I don't think we should judge power creep by outliers and extreme cases anyway. Those are only a sign of the system getting more powerful if they happen more frequently over time.
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but it's definitely power creep as it wasn't something you could do before UC hit shelves.That's a terrible way to judge if something is power creep. All it means is we have a new option. If it's genuinely new and it's actually useful, it's going to be better at some particular thing than whatever came before it. That's the point in having new things.
In the case of the pistolero it may very well have gone too far, but I don't agree with your reasoning and I don't think we should judge power creep by outliers and extreme cases anyway. Those are only a sign of the system getting more powerful if they happen more frequently over time.
By "something you couldn't do before" I meant "killing a dragon in one round because your average damage is equal to his point total plus one hundred and you only have to target a touch AC of 8" not "use firearms". Power creep is new options, specifically ones that raise the general potential of characters at a given level. If you want to gauge power creep, the best measure is to take a given CR, and gauge how effective the party is capable of being against monsters in that range with or without the new options. If your overall facility for dealing with CR appropriate critters has increased, TA-DAH!, you've experienced power creep. Power creep is "the general increase of PC power as new options are introduced which make them more effective". Bad power creep invalidates old choices. Good and well managed power creep enhances original options while maintaining their validity.
48 max.... that's still less damage than the above pisolero will do to the dragon. can the dragon survive TWO rounds of pistols?
Chances are the 11th level gunslinger is going to have more than 48 hps. What's the odds of the dragon making it through the 2nd salvo to attack again??
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It's rather well established that gunslingers can be made into ridiculous dragon-killers... Or any other extremely low touch AC monster.
Why PF thought creating a major class with ranged attacks that hit touch AC and can do massive damage on a hit is a mystery to me.
Oh yeah... smiting archer paladins.
Oh yeah... instant enemy bane exploiting rangers.
Oh yeah... wizards...
Never mind.
By "something you couldn't do before" I meant "killing a dragon in one round because your average damage is equal to his point total plus one hundred and you only have to target a touch AC of 8" not "use firearms".
Actually, I've heard of paladins doing exactly that before ultimate combat.
Anyway, if using firearms doesn't make you better at doing some particular thing (like, say, killing a powerful foe with a low touch AC, at short range and at high levels) than using other weapons, firearms don't really do anything new at all and might as well be re-skinned crossbows. They're worse at some things too.
The rest of your post, I agree with.
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It's flying, 100ft up.
Woops.
Gunslingers. Pure murder vs. Massive Slow Dopey Straw Men.
:-)
You picked an ancient blue dragon and are trying to pick this fight, not me, so nice self-troll there FB. At 11th level the GS can fly too, so your flying dragon is as much of a straw man as one encountered in its lair (you know, where most fantasy tropes would indicate they're commonly encountered).
But yeah, if your omniscient stra.. err blue dragon saw the adventurers coming and flew up into the sky because it heard through the dragon grapevine that those crazy little buggers with the iron pipes were the most insane dragon-slayers around, he probably doesn't die. Happy?
Does it really matter how easy it is to pull that trick off? It's hardly relevant and it will vary massively between different GMing styles, circumstances of the meeting, dragon personalities and terrain.
This is one of those places where theoretical scenarios on a forum can only prove that it's possible, not whether it's practical or if it's ever likely to happen that way.
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It's rather well established that gunslingers can be made into ridiculous dragon-killers... Or any other extremely low touch AC monster.
Why PF thought creating a major class with ranged attacks that hit touch AC and can do massive damage on a hit is a mystery to me.
Oh yeah... smiting archer paladins.
Oh yeah... instant enemy bane exploiting rangers.
Oh yeah... wizards...Never mind.
I don't think any of those but the last one target touch AC, and Wizards generally still have to deal with SR. The GS' touch AC mechanic is the probably the biggest example of real, negative power creep though. The game is actually balanced around the assumption that a) most characters will be fighting in melee and b)they'll be targeting a defense that generally improves as the level rises, not decreases.
Aren't Smiting Archer Paladins fun though? I hadn't really explored that option until recently, I had the old 2nd (I think? was it AD&D?) rules stuck in my head where paladins couldn't use ranged weapons because it was dishonorable somehow.
The ranged paladin smiting probably comes closest in damage output vs. the hypothetical dragon to the GS, but you're still looking at nearly 2/3 fewer attacks, and not much in the way of a noticeable boost in damage per hit over the GS. Smitey Pally adds his level to damage (double his level on the first hit) and Pistolero adds 3d6+ his DEX on every hit. Since they both have equal access to pretty much all other buffs and enhancements... GS stays ahead on damage, but pally doesn't lose effectiveness at range.
Back in AD&D I had an Illusionist who was able to literally shoot dragons out of the sky with magic missile...
Was awesome.
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Does it really matter how easy it is to pull that trick off? It's hardly relevant and it will vary massively between different GMing styles, circumstances of the meeting, dragon personalities and terrain.
This is one of those places where theoretical scenarios on a forum can only prove that it's possible, not whether it's practical or if it's ever likely to happen that way.
Word.
Any other good examples of power creep, good or bad, that don't involve a hypothetical dragon?
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Anyway, if using firearms doesn't make you better at doing some particular thing (like, say, killing a powerful foe with a low touch AC, at short range and at high levels) than using other weapons, firearms don't really do anything new at all and might as well be re-skinned crossbows. They're worse at some things too.
The rest of your post, I agree with.
Crossbows don't target Touch AC, which is really the biggest issue with firearms..... Touch AC is low mainly because it was traditionally targeted only by casters with terrible BAB who still needed a fair shake at landing their touch spells. Having a weapon that now targets a low defense not normally targeted, and which doesn't scale much, if at all, with level in most cases, is a pretty wild deviation.
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There has to be a most powerful Nth level spell a most powerful weapon property for barbarians.
Why? Why does there have to be a "hey barbarians this weapon property is strictly superior to everything else and if you don't take this then you're hurting yourself for no reason" property?
One option shouldn't be the just same as the others except better. That defeats the purpose of having many different options.
There has to be a most powerful Nth level spell a most powerful weapon property for barbarians.Why? Why does there have to be a "hey barbarians this weapon property is strictly superior to everything else and if you don't take this then you're hurting yourself for no reason" property?
One option shouldn't be the just same as the others except better. That defeats the purpose of having many different options.
...but what I said is COMPLETELY different from what you're asking me to justify.
It is literally impossible to make two things exactly as good if they're not very, very similar. Just like there's always a biggest apple in the box, even if you have to work really hard to find it, there will always be a best weapon or a best feat.
I'm not saying that it's ok for paizo to deliberately give us apples of different sizes. I'm just saying that if they keep giving us more, the chance of the biggest being one of the originals can only decrease over time. Finding new best powers does not mean powers are getting better.
The argument that "power creep" is not a problem because wizards are still awesome cosmic reality altering magic-slingers is not very compelling.
Clearly clerics, wizards and druids are powerful. But ramping up the power of a barbarian is still power creep within the barbarian class. Creating new classes that outclass earlier similar classes (ninja -> rogue) is still power creep. Creating new races that outclass previous races is still power creep. Creating feats that outclass previous feats is still power creep. Creating spells that outclass previous spells is still power creep. Creating enchantments that outclass previous enchantments is still power creep.
And every one of those things has happened.
Not to mention that some of those things (new, more powerful, spells, items and feats) actually apply to the already acknowledged most powerful classes.
Well Ninja/rogue asside (in my group we are happy to have the ninja replace the rogue as core more or less)
I think one of the things people miss about 'power creep' is that you cant do one to one comparisons. Its not 'is there anything coming out that is more powerful then anything in the core rules'. It SHOULD be 'is the power distribution among new options similar to those in the original rules'. And if you look at it that way, you there has been almost no power creep. There are some good, a few powerful and many low powered/suboptimal options in ALL the material that has come after the core rules.
If in the core rules you have Options A, B, and C, and their order of 'power is' A < B < C. And in splatbook one you have options 1, 2 and 3. If option 1 is more powerful then option A that doesnt mean there was power creep. That means one of the options that came out later is more powerful then one of the options that came. So long as It looks something like A<1<2<B<3<C you havent really changed your distribution of power of options in the game. You already HAD power differences in options in the original rules. Continued power differences does not mean power creep. It means a continued varied distribution of power in the available options.
The problem in 3.5 was that almost ALL the options were more powerful then the ones that came before. So you had something like A<B<1<2<C<3. And then the next release you had A<B<1<2<X<C<3<Y>Z. Thats power creep. And we are not seeing much of that in pathfinder in my opinion.
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Crossbows don't target Touch AC, which is really the biggest issue with firearms..... Touch AC is low mainly because it was traditionally targeted only by casters with terrible BAB who still needed a fair shake at landing their touch spells. Having a weapon that now targets a low defense not normally targeted, and which doesn't scale much, if at all, with level in most cases, is a pretty wild deviation.
That's my point. Like I said, if you take away what makes them different, they end up the same and therefore pointless. If they are different, they WILL do something better than anything else can.
Maybe they're too good, maybe they're not, but either way their ability to cream very powerful foes in certain situations and do unprecedented things are inevitable. Desirable, even.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Power Creep in published Paizo products has reached a severe level, IMO. It did that with the Ultimate books.
Not counting Organzied Play, Power Creep only enters games where one of two things occur:
1) There are many games in town and players prefer to play video-game style braggerts who's only point in playing the game is to build something that steals the spotlight from their friends thereby requirng a GM to give in to keep players or;
2) A GM who doesn't ban books, classes, feats and COMBINATIONS of abilities that on their own aren't bad until combined with something else that makes them especially powerful.
In my opinion, a GM who says "I'll allow anything Paizo publishes in my games" is a poor GM. And frankly, not one that I would enjoy playing with very much.
My method to avoid Power Creep:
A) I tell my players what is allowed.
B) I tell them anything else I have to approve it first.
C) I tell them they are smart enough to know if its power creep and if that's the choices they present to me I have no problem singing them a chorus of no's until I'm blue in the face.
D) Lastly, if I'm inudated with requrest for approval of things that are over-powered compared to the baseline CRB, we'll just go back to core and I'll have peace.
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I dont see a tremendous amount of power creep. Sure there are outliers here and there. Certain items that trump past ones, or a class that can nova or look super elite in certain environs. But that too be expected.
What makes many scream power creep is something that happens to any game that has a leveling system and even card games like magic that feature new abilities over time. And that is unforseen interactions. New feats, Items and archtypes come out all the time and these can have unintended and game breaking consequences when used in concert with older abilities. Its not the dev's fault, after all when putting out a new doodad they cant possibly go back and test it as it applies to all other previous whatsits.
In short you just have to play test things... Riggler said above that any GM who lets you play all paizo material is a bad GM, that I disagree with. But I do believe any GM who lets you play said material and then finds its hurting the game and doesnt offer you an alternative in exchange for removing the bad combo is a problem, and any player who doesnt abide by his GM's ruling (allowing for some grumbling) is a bad player.
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That's silly, Riggler.
Nobody is smart enough to just "know if something is power creep". That's a matter of opinion. I have no idea what you think is power creep and what you think is just strong.How am I supposed to know?
You also just called quite a lot of people poor GMs, myself included. That's much more rude than it is relevant.
Oh, and you're repeating the stormwind fallacy. Playing extremely powerful characters is not the same thing as being a jerk who cares only about winning and showing off. Way to dismiss one of my players as well.
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Crossbows don't target Touch AC, which is really the biggest issue with firearms..... Having a weapon that now targets a low defense not normally targeted, and which doesn't scale much, if at all, with level in most cases, is a pretty wild deviation.That's my point. Like I said, if you take away what makes them different, they end up the same and therefore pointless. If they are different, they WILL do something better than anything else can.
Maybe they're too good, maybe they're not, but either way their ability to cream very powerful foes in certain situations and do unprecedented things are inevitable. Desirable, even.
A one-handed ranged weapon with a x4 crit dealing B/P damage wasn't different enough to make it worthwhile and is pointless? Or weapons that have two barrels that can be fired with a single trigger-squeeze? Or which can fire an attack targeting everything within a cone? Or which have variable ammunition types?
Firearms, even without the touch AC mechanic, are still plenty different from anything else out there, and still effective, so you'll forgive me if I respectfully disagree on this one.
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That's silly, Riggler.
Nobody is smart enough to just "know if something is power creep". That's a matter of opinion. I have no idea what you think is power creep and what you think is just strong.How am I supposed to know?
You also just called quite a lot of people poor GMs, myself included. That's much more rude than it is relevant.
Oh, and you're repeating the stormwind fallacy. Playing extremely powerful characters is not the same thing as being a jerk who cares only about winning and showing off. Way to dismiss one of my players as well.
Agreed. Building mechanically superior characters and being a good role-player are not mutually exclusive. Neither is allowing your characters to try out the fun new stuff in a book that they (or someone in the group) paid for. If an element becomes disruptive to the game, by all means, usher it out, but what one group might find disruptive or imbalancing, another group may find hilarious, or discover that it fills a niche they were looking for.
Actually, you're right about the guns. They could be different enough to be worthwhile if armour stopped them. The danger is they might replace other stuff rather than carving out a new niche if they weren't different enough, or that they'd lack mechanical identity as a group. You'd probably get away with it fine though.
In spite of that, I still stand my my claim that creaming a dragon at short range and using the system in a way it was never intended are not bad things on their own, just indicators of something new existing.
Crossbows don't target Touch AC, which is really the biggest issue with firearms..... Having a weapon that now targets a low defense not normally targeted, and which doesn't scale much, if at all, with level in most cases, is a pretty wild deviation.That's my point. Like I said, if you take away what makes them different, they end up the same and therefore pointless. If they are different, they WILL do something better than anything else can.
Maybe they're too good, maybe they're not, but either way their ability to cream very powerful foes in certain situations and do unprecedented things are inevitable. Desirable, even.A one-handed ranged weapon with a x4 crit dealing B/P damage wasn't different enough to make it worthwhile and is pointless? Or weapons that have two barrels that can be fired with a single trigger-squeeze? Or which can fire an attack targeting everything within a cone? Or which have variable ammunition types?
Firearms, even without the touch AC mechanic, are still plenty different from anything else out there, and still effective, so you'll forgive me if I respectfully disagree on this one.
I really feel like paizo droped the ball on the firearms rules myself. I think they worked too hard to please everyone and ended up with a clunky shoehorned into the game. I think the firearms rules that were in the original campaign setting, while less 'accurate to how historical firearms worked' were alot better as rules because they worked much more like crossbows then they do now. Sure you couldnt load a black powered weapon multiple times in 6 seconds historically but that kind of simulationism leads to the nonsense rules we have. We ended up rules for firearms that force general disregard for the normal wealth and armor rules to the players disadvantage at low levels and sever advantage at high levels for gunslingers. Its really stupid if you ask me.
They played with fire, they got burned a bit, it may or may not have been worth it. My party's low level luring musketeer cavalier under performs noticably, so whatever it is, it sure as hell aint across-the-board power creep. It's just... general wonkeyness.
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They played with fire, they got burned a bit, it may or may not have been worth it. My party's low level luring musketeer cavalier under performs noticably, so whatever it is, it sure as hell aint across-the-board power creep. It's just... general wonkeyness.
That's the gunslinger and related archetypes in general though. Or maybe just firearms in general. 80-90% of the possible builds out there are either on par or even slightly sub-par with existing options. But then the other 10% consists of leviathan slaying speedsters who manage to treat black-powder weapons like modern-day chainguns with phosphorus rounds. And unfortunately, that 10% becomes the poster-child and most commonly emulated trend for the entire system.
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Oh yeah, and the Gunslinger. A class whose primary schtick is annihilating the traditional conventions for AC is definitely a marker for power creep. I think he comes up less often because of the tendency for them to either be glass cannons or relatively ineffective without much middle ground between the two (not to mention the ludicrously painful cost in gold per encounter to actually utilize their fullest potential), but a class who can one-round-kill CR+2 dragons and is virtually assured to go first probably deserves at least honorable mention in the power creep thread.
Hum, no, the gunslinger isn't an itteration of power creep. I've seen 2 optimized, different ones being played at different levels for quite some time, and while they are potent in their own right and field, a vanilla fighter with a bow still handed them their own asses on a silver plate. Did I mention the first one who said "OMG OP CRUNCH" was the GM himself, and he finally played one when I convinced him he would not be unbalanced ?
On the other side, ranged combat as a whole could indeed benefit from some MUCH NEEDED nerfs (or at least, less love, like the adaptative bow property, the Manyshot or the Clustered Shot feat).Dervish Dance, while not power creep per se, should be put naked and thrown in the sun (or rewritten to work for more weapons, because damn, I hate the way it shoehorns magi). There are some instances of power creep everywhere, but most only patch dumbed down classes or concepts. I don't care if the monk becomes really better, since it just means someone in our group can now play one and actually feel relevant during the game.
Our group's GM allows pretty much everything from Paizo I present him (and now even 3PP or homebrewed content !), under the condition that no one clearly overshadows the others and everyone is having fun. So it might mean "this spell looks too crazy to my tastes" or "your eidolon is a friggin' monster, please tone it down"; but the general rule is "don't be a jerk, we are all here to have fun".
And no, Riggler, my GM despite all of this my GM isn't a "poor GM". I never played in your game, bust because you seem to have a knee-jerk reaction against some rules that may break your conception of balance does not mean you are supposedly a better GM than most people out there.
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There has to be a most powerful Nth level spell a most powerful weapon property for barbarians.Why? Why does there have to be a "hey barbarians this weapon property is strictly superior to everything else and if you don't take this then you're hurting yourself for no reason" property?
BECAUSE AM WHAT SEPARATE CRAPPY BARBARIANS FROM NON-CRAPPY BARBARIANS.
NON-CRAPPY BARBARIANS AM WRECK ALL, AM SMASH ALL, AM SUNDER ALL.
CRAPPY BARBARIAN AM MORE IN LINE WITH OPTOMITRIZED CLASS OF OTHER TYPE.
BARBARIAN NOT SAYING ALL ASPIRING BARBARIAN NEED +5 FURIOUS COURAGEOUS LANCE FOR OPTOMITRIZATION OF DAMAGE OUTPUT.
BARBARIAN JUST SAYING ASPIRING BARBARIAN WITHOUT LANCE AM NOT NEARLY AS AWESOME AS BARBARIAN.
BARBARIAN ALSO NOT SAYING NEED RAGING VITALITY.
BARBARIAN JUST SAYING NOT TAKING RAGING VITALITY GENERALLY LEADS TO BEING DEAD.
THAT AM GAME.
That's silly, Riggler.
Nobody is smart enough to just "know if something is power creep". That's a matter of opinion. I have no idea what you think is power creep and what you think is just strong.How am I supposed to know?
You also just called quite a lot of people poor GMs, myself included. That's much more rude than it is relevant.
Oh, and you're repeating the stormwind fallacy. Playing extremely powerful characters is not the same thing as being a jerk who cares only about winning and showing off. Way to dismiss one of my players as well.
Apparently my definition of power creep is a lot closer to a lot of others in this discussion than yours based on your other comments in this thread.
Powers, feats, spells etc. are simply math and some are situational.
So, yes, being able to do math (and with pathfinder its typicall simple addition) building a character that has a better mathmatical chance of general success at tasks (especially combat) when the source is from products beyond the CRB indicates power creep.
If this was simply a case of more variety, that would not be power creep, but alas it is not. It is a mathmatical advantage.
Now that we've defined terms, I stand by my two instances of when power creep enters a home game.
And I think plenty of MBs have been used in data transfer explaining why optomizing players and non-optomizing players just don't mix for an enjoyable game.
I said in my opinion GMs who allow all published material is a bad GM, because it's not a game I'd want to play in and not a game I'd like to GM. I've seen what it does to the tone of a game group when its allowed. Keeping up with the arms race, eliminating 100s if not 1000s of page of rules simply because they are not the BEST choice doesn't make sense to me. And that's what it does. If you play an allow everything, and there is power creep in a game, you eliminate a vast majority of the builds simply because you will be a bystander in that game.
And it might have been cool when I was 15 to show off my character building muscles, but more than 20 years later -- I just don't. I'll go play board games if I want to go compete with my friends on my strategy, tactics and mathmatics and I'd suggest they do the same. But again, that's just my opinion.
Nope. You're trying to have your cake and eat it there.
You're telling me I'm a bad GM because you wouldn't enjoy my game (which is not made for you to enjoy, by the way), but also claiming that's just your opinion.
You also said that without a "poor GM", unusually powerful builds only show up because of braggarts playing pathfinder like a videogame in a deliberate attempt to steal the spotlight from their friends.
Either my players and I are wrong and bad or you and I just have different but equally valid tastes and each do what's right for ourselves and our groups. The two possibilities are mutually exclusive.
Please be consistent, non-judgemental or quite.
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Nope. You're trying to have your cake and eat it there.
You're telling me I'm a bad GM because you wouldn't enjoy my game (which is not made for you to enjoy, by the way), but also claiming that's just your opinion.
You also said that without a "poor GM", unusually powerful builds only show up because of braggarts playing pathfinder like a videogame in a deliberate attempt to steal the spotlight from their friends.
Either my players and I are wrong and bad or you and I just have different but equally valid tastes and each do what's right for ourselves and our groups. The two possibilities are mutually exclusive.
Please be consistent, non-judgemental or quite.
My apologies if I offended you.
I'll stick to the points. I think there is a lot of power creep in Paizo's products, especially in the last 18 months. And I think there are ways that if a DM doesn't like it, they can easily keep it out of their games.
That's ok.
You're right, it's easy to stop that stuff getting into your game. After all, it's more effort to hunt something down than it is to stick to the couple of books in front of you.
I have to wonder if using the CRB as your whitelist represents the best play experience, though. I mean, it's got most of the most powerful classes in it and bigger power gaps between classes than the rest of the PRD.
Out of curiosity, what are some major things you never allow? Guns? The Summoner? Ninjas?
Still slow. Gunslinger's have high Dex and class-based initiative boosts, and all of their most common builds grab at least the Reactionary trait to widen the gap. A Pistolero doesn't have to catch him sleeping, they just have to use their high DEX to Sneak in close, then use their superior initiative to unload with their 14 attacks dealing at least 1d8+8+3d6 (probably more) before the dragon moves. Given that he's targeting an AC of 8, he'll only miss with a natural 1 on anything other than his very last attacks with either hand, which he'll still need a below average roll to miss with. Not that it will matter since the dragon died 3 attacks before we ever got to that point.
Again, that's not really pertinent to the conversation at hand, but it's definitely power creep as it wasn't something you could do before UC hit shelves.
I can see the damage/shot being dealt, that's easy enough and it's also easy enough to get more than that per shot, but what mystifies me about this post is the 14 attacks/full attack action that you said the gunslinger gets.. At 11th level, you get 3, where do the other 11 come from?
Base: 3
Greater TWF grants: 3
Haste: 1
Rapid Shot: 1
2 Double Barreled Pistols: Shots Fired 8x2 = 16
Guess I blew past 14. At this level, you can get enchantments on your pistols so you won't ever run out of ammo or misfire. Looks legit, I think this guy could easily kill an adult dragon, although the dragon might get an attack due to the variable of dice rolls.
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I can see the damage/shot being dealt, that's easy enough and it's also easy enough to get more than that per shot, but what mystifies me about this post is the 14 attacks/full attack action that you said the gunslinger gets.. At 11th level, you get 3, where do the other 11 come from?
Base: 3
Greater TWF grants: 3
Haste: 1
Rapid Shot: 1
2 Double Barreled Pistols: Shots Fired 8x2 = 16Guess I blew past 14. At this level, you can get enchantments on your pistols so you won't ever run out of ammo or misfire. Looks legit, I think this guy could easily kill an adult dragon, although the dragon might get an attack due to the variable of dice rolls.
I hadn't counted in Haste for the attack routine, but even without it you were looking at over 100 hp worth of damage more than the dragon had to take just based on average damage, with only about 80 points worth of attacks even having the possibility of missing on anything other than a 1. Your dice would have to crap out in a pretty spectacular manner for you to not kill the dragon on a full attack.
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for me the power creep is par for the course. to be honest I see not too many thing in PF or 3.5 that could be classified as power creep imo. Simple solution dont use what rules that as a person you consider broken. what is forgotten is that Paizo never promised to elimanate power creep. They said they would try to curb it. empahsis on the word try. Something they imo could never really do. Or should have said inthe first place.
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Power creep was a gigantic and real factor in 3.5, primarily due to the fact that that core classes were.... Boring. They tried to introduce new classes, feats, Prestige Classes, etc. to spice things up, and ultimately ended up making the classes from their own PHB incapable of competing with all the crazy new characters in town, like the Swashbuckler and Favored Soul, or the warlock and warmage. Classes like the Sorcerer were jumping ship into any PrC they could find since they got nothing after the first few levels other than spell progression, and the Book of Nine Swords completely invalidated the fighter since it came with multiple classes that all did his job better, some of whom even counted as fighters for taking the fighter only feats.
Pathfinder curbed it on several fronts, introducing Archetypes in order to expand the options available without crafting new classes whole cloth and creating buckets of feats that only work for specialized classes. They also raised the power levelof the Core classes, particularly the martial classes, to a level where you had strong reasons to play one over some strange hybrid forged from the contents of disparate splat books. And that's still true. PF has thus far avoided turning into the same morass of out-gunned and outdated Core options surrounded by a sea of weird characters and options that only make sense in the context of the book they appeared in, and most options are basically just as good as any others (or at least, as comparatively good now as they were when the CRB was the only option).
I was a bit disappointed that there hasn't been more power creep on the monster end of the spectrum to compensate for the power of the PCs. In 3.5 I found that I was constantly having to beef up monsters to make them a challenge for PCs. In pathfinder I had been hoping that the designers would have seen this as an issue, and made more of an effort to give the monsters a bit of boost. I'm finding that I still have to modify them regularly, which takes significant session prep time that could easily be used for other things. If you run published adventures relatively RAW, I think most gms find that the PCs tend to steam roll a lot encounters that the designers seem to intend to be challenging. That being said, there are still plenty of deaths being reported on the obituaries thread, so maybe I'm overestimating this issue.
If you run published adventures relatively RAW, I think most gms find that the PCs tend to steam roll a lot encounters that the designers seem to intend to be challenging.
I'm not sure this is true. My understanding is that APLs are pretty tame because, from a business perspective, the longer a party survives the more books in the APL the DM will buy.