Lastly, I've seen a few people suggest that they can't survive without a CLW-W (a slight exaggeration, to be sure). If you cannot survive without one I think your view of Pathfinder is quite limited. I also don't agree with the view that without a wand your combat experience will be...
Talking about strawmans, that's one. Now you know how they look, you should try to check again the thread.
Healer's kit costs 50 gp and contains 10 uses. Treating deadly wounds costs 2 uses of the kit, whether the roll is successful or not. You must be carrying around a lot of healer's kits to get one use per party member per day.Since a kit weighs just one pound, this is not exactly a hardship.
Doug M.
A single Wand weight less, and has 50 charges. 50 charges of healing kits weight 5 pounts, cost 250g, and are waaaaaay worse than a single CLWW.
If real life would had fuctional CLWW, I'm 1000% confident that ER crews will use them instead of first-aid kits.
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Except a 48 hour delay is often unacceptable.
Just for the hell of it, here are the numbers on that party.
** spoiler omitted **
Again: you have to work really, really hard to design a party that can't bounce back in less than 48 hours.
Doug M.
So sleeping 48 hours straight in a dungeon, inside room designed so the denizens never use it, breaks your inmersion less than healing using a magic item designed to heal?
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Your thought experiment had a dedicated healer, aka Bard, so what are you saying?A bard with one Cure spell and no ranks in Heal is a dedicated healer?
Doug M.
A character that has to use all his highest level spell slots to heal is a dedicated healer. In your example, the bard is.
back on point, wands of CLW are the most effective way to heal large amounts of damage, and are balanced by requiring to play a class that can either cast it or has UMDWhich means pretty much... everybody?
Those without CLW (paladin, ranger, cleric, oracle, inquisitor, druid, bard, alchemist and witch) or UMD (Sorcerer, Rogue, Summoner) can cast Infernal healing (magus, wizard) Without clerics, paladins or inquisitors of good religions in your group, that's an option too.
So basically, to have a party where nobody can use a CLWW, you basically have to make it on purpose.
But it is entirely possible for a party to only have one character that has the spell on their list. Now if they get knocked out during the fight, then it doesn't really matter if they could use it because they can't in that situation. That is why potions cost more than wands, because in that case you can have someone that can't heal still pour a potion down the healer's throat.
Infernal healing doesn't appear in the prd, so I don't think anyone can assume that by default a given group will have access to the spell.
And yes, people can take UMD, which was the person's point, you'd have to have someone dedicated to spending skill points on that.
the issue is more about UMD being broken then about CLW
Except a 48 hour delay is often unacceptable.People keep saying this. But, you know, looking at Paizo's APs and modules? Most of them don't have clocks on them, or if they do, the clocks are very loose. (Harrowstone is a rare exception.) "The Princess is being tortured!" is, while not quite a strawman, not all that strong an argument. Nobody's being tortured in Thistletop, and while the goblins will certainly prepare against your return, there are only so many of them and they have limited resources. (And Nualia isn't going to come help them. She's nuts.)
Doug M.
Curse of Crimson Throne, for example. While no single princess is being tortured, the Queen IS torturing and oppressing a lot of people. You could say that, as you don't know the names of those being tortured, you couldn't care less. But that doesn't make them less tortured, or your party less in a hurry.
We can check other if you want. For example Varnhold Vanishing in Kingmaker, with the people kidnaped. While they aren't being tortured (they are in soul jars) your character's don't know. Armag building his army in Kingmaker. The Fable. The Skinsaw murderer killing people. Retaking Fort Rannick (the PC are unsure if the prisioners are alive). Etc
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Except a 48 hour delay is often unacceptable.People keep saying this. But, you know, looking at Paizo's APs and modules? Most of them don't have clocks on them, or if they do, the clocks are very loose. (Harrowstone is a rare exception.) "The Princess is being tortured!" is, while not quite a strawman, not all that strong an argument. Nobody's being tortured in Thistletop, and while the goblins will certainly prepare against your return, there are only so many of them and they have limited resources. (And Nualia isn't going to come help them. She's nuts.)
Doug M.
Why isn't it? This game is equal parts roleplay and mechanics use. The roleplay is just as important as succeeding in your goal.
Is there a mechanical penalty for waiting two days? Maybe not.
Is there a mighty blow to the suspension of disbelief if you do? Most likely.
@Gustavo: I have to head off but I thought from reading this thread that your opinion(and thus my fair approximation of your position) is that without a wand or similar method the party will be stuck in the 15 minute "work-day' and will be unable to run through most dungeons successfully.
First, what you have just said is different to the strawman above, which was "I've seen a few people suggest that they can't survive without a CLW-W".
Second, and addressing this question you rise now too, I've not said you couln't survive, or you couldn't run through dungeons successfully. I've said you would need to rest more, to retreat more often, or sleeping inside the dungeon. And that this alternative is less desirable, from my point of view, than using CLWW.
Given the alternative of the group sleeping in a false stairs that go to nowhere in Varnhold's Vanishing 's lair of the Cyclop Lich, specifically built so the PC can sleep there, or using CLWW to keep the adventure going, I'd rather take the second, 10/10 of ten. Some people feel their inmersion is broken if the group use CLW wands to heal. I feel my inmersion broken if people say "hey, we are here in this valley of death, in the lair of an ancient lich, trying to find the missing citizens of a village misterously vanished. So let's take a nap in that stair that goes to nowhere, and we can go back to the dungeon in just 48 hours"
Can someone from the "better tactics" club explain exactly what they mean?
Suppose a party of 4 jumps 6 enemies. They get lucky with crits in the suprise round and drop 2 of them. They drop one more round 1. That still leaves 3 living enemies who get to attack them back. Damage is guaranteed.
Your scenario is confusing to me. How are you only killing two of them with crits? Why can a party of 4 only kill 1 guy in a round? What kind of damage are you putting out? Seems like very very little.
And damage is guaranteed? Do people just regularly neglect AC/saves now?
So, maybe before we talk about tactics (and ambushing the bad guys is a great one), we should talk about character building...
A party goes into a dungeon because they have to, do everything right, and are still forced to retreat because of attrition.
Now when they come back they have to deal with traps that weren't there before and re clear old rooms? Sounds fun.
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Except a 48 hour delay is often unacceptable.People keep saying this. But, you know, looking at Paizo's APs and modules? Most of them don't have clocks on them, or if they do, the clocks are very loose. (Harrowstone is a rare exception.) "The Princess is being tortured!" is, while not quite a strawman, not all that strong an argument. Nobody's being tortured in Thistletop, and while the goblins will certainly prepare against your return, there are only so many of them and they have limited resources. (And Nualia isn't going to come help them. She's nuts.)
Doug M.
Why isn't it? This game is equal parts roleplay and mechanics use. The roleplay is just as important as succeeding in your goal.
Is there a mechanical penalty for waiting two days? Maybe not.
Is there a mighty blow to the suspension of disbelief if you do? Most likely.
Plus almost all of the adventure paths have timelines and clocks. If you like I can break them down starting with the first book of RoTRL.
Can someone from the "better tactics" club explain exactly what they mean?
Suppose a party of 4 jumps 6 enemies. They get lucky with crits in the suprise round and drop 2 of them. They drop one more round 1. That still leaves 3 living enemies who get to attack them back. Damage is guaranteed.
Your scenario is confusing to me. How are you only killing two of them with crits? Why can a party of 4 only kill 1 guy in a round? What kind of damage are you putting out? Seems like very very little.
And damage is guaranteed? Do people just regularly neglect AC/saves now?
So, maybe before we talk about tactics (and ambushing the bad guys is a great one), we should talk about character building...
2 crits and 2 misses in the suprise round. Bad guys with high initiatives in the 1st round. Doesn't matter, it's certainly not some rare untenable situation I described.
The bad guys aren't guaranteed to hit but they're not always going to miss either. Any damage the party takes, they are keeping, and while those mooks may die, there are plenty more. That is the whole point of the meat grinder.
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Except a 48 hour delay is often unacceptable.Nobody's being tortured in Thistletop, and while the goblins will certainly prepare against your return, there are only so many of them and they have limited resources. (And Nualia isn't going to come help them. She's nuts.)
Doug M.
Um...you are just wrong
RoTRL spoilerThe first attack is an ambush, they have a prisoner who will be taken back to Thistletop and potentially killed in the glassworks if you don't complete fast enough. The catacombs will start releasing sin spawn, and, oh yeah, NUALIA'S WHOLE PLAN IT TO RELEASE THE BARGHAST AND YOU ARE TRYING TO STOP HER BEFORE SHE DOES IT!
Are you kidding me, no clocks or timelines. Really.
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There seems to be a disparity in statistics:
The math of you will take damage vs: Cr Vs: available healing because you will take damage circle.
This again reverts to MMO style playing CHARGE. IF you focus on doing the most damage possible, the fastest it will put you in a position to take the most damage possible, but you're ok with that because you have maxed your con, taken toughness and have a wand of healing....
Dat's not roleplaying. How many people think... "axe to the gut, it's ok rogues got the wand!"
Your character is built mechanically with all the above in mind, because THAT's your playstyle. But it's not THE playstyle.
There seems to be an odd focus on time. 15 minute adventuring day (does your character have a goal of killing certain monsters before a certain birthday?), weeks to heal; etc.
Something about "15 minute" adventuring day ruins your suspension of belief but rocketing from 1st-18th level in 3 months doesn't....
Heck your reputation would never preceed you, because news couldnt travel that fast. You could meet people who would think you were nobody... "No! Seriously I am Super-Wiz the powerful!" and people would be thinking, "Wasnt that Superfluous the wizard who couldnt tie his own shoes last month?"
Slow down, enjoy the game, stop trying to race everyone to get to the pinnacle of your 'build'. The statistics and number crunch belong in MMO, not table table.
It makes more sense there, because of how fast everything happens.
In MMO if you DONT have in combat healing the party is goin down because the damage flows so fast.
But here , in table top, there are tons of other options. The computer can only a lot for so many scenarios, usually 1-2....
1) fight from doorways and limit the angle of attack
2) fight from cover
3) sneak ahead, scout and ambush
4) dungeons used to have more puzzles and riddles, bring back some of those to extend your adventuring time
5) travel farther (how BIG is moria??)
6) this list could go on....
Only one person in my party right now does the "C'mon I can take em" schtick. That's my ten year old who plays a ronin. It's weird no one else does that I dunno where she gets it from.
It's usually a BA Barracus move where one of the other characters has to trick her into going into a sewer to hide "Hey we are all attacking in this direction, cmon!"
It's not like there aren't wands in the game, they occasionally show up.
But the whole magi mart buy whatever thing is optional, if it bugs you there's no rule saying yu have to have it.
We rarely have a cleric unless Im a player. And the group does fine playing PF 1e style.
(Bards, witches, etc)
usually 2/3 characters have SOME kind of heal ability.
The current party is a character going for rage prophet (heals), a Ronin/bard (small heal) , an oracle/ninja (heals) and a Magus (technically no heals but she's a hex crafter so she could get heal hex.
No dedicated heals but there is some nearly everywhere. Our parties seem to do that a lot (like rangers and bards etc)
Jus because they can use wands doesn't mean they always have them.
Now in PFS it's set up quite a bit different, because the system DOES assume those things are available, and why not you work for an ultra powerful secret (or not so secret) society of tomb robbers.
They are going to have the wares needed for the mission. They probably have sages int he back room mass producing stuff for this purpose. It's enterprise!
One of the main reasons I dislike the pathfinder society so much is that it over commercialized adventuring, it makes it seem common, too common to haul booty out of hidden hoardes. As if there is a never ending supply.
Takes the adventure out of something and turns it into a grind, Like running an MMO scenario over and over again until you get something out of it.
In which case the wands, and the party make up, and the dont join unless you can zerg with 400 or more HP... blah blah blah.
The adventure, the mystery, the fantasy is all gone... then it's only interest is "the build"
the rest is all grind. the game is gone.
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A 14 Con fighter being continuously attended to by a healer using Heal takes 4 days to recover from a fight. That's fast compared to real life, but in game terms that's still an eternity.
Without a CLW wand or a dedicated healer cleric, a fighter's resources are significantly more limited than a wizard's. That's just wrong.
False comparison, a Wizard suffers under the same restrictions because he also uses hit points. A fighter who is badly wounded can still take the risk of a conventional fight since he has the best AC and still has more hp than the party wizard, that same wizard if already wounded and without healing is paralyzed. Even if he hides in the back - once you go within "one hit" range your tactics and level of courage adjust accordingly. Unless of course you have a softball DM who doesn't like to go after the softer targets in the back.
So while a fighter trades in hp as currency the other characters do also, and they have a worse rate of exchange.
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A party goes into a dungeon because they have to, do everything right, and are still forced to retreat because of attrition.
Now when they come back they have to deal with traps that weren't there before and re clear old rooms? Sounds fun.
It was, and it works/worked. Of course if you don't need to play that way due to design considerations (CLWW availability) then why do it?
So this goes to a play style and feel preference. Some older players (and even some new ones) prefer the challenge of having a more resource starved game where their decisions weight heavily in their success and failure.-
And yeah, in my game the players would still go after the kids (Ninja in the Rye's scenario) - they would just do it with lower hp and resources and full well knowing that they may die.This is the disconnect, characters with full access to magic healing and wands of CLW know they may die. Characters without access to magic healing approaching such a scenario should be viewing it as a suicide run that they will almost certainly fail.
This is, of course, assuming that they're facing level appropriate encounters.
There are several disconnects here.
Old style players had to play more cautiously and carefully because the resources that exist in 3rd ed/PF (aka Easy mode) didn’t exist. This isn’t a deep philosophical debate – they had to play better and smarter if they wanted to survive – so when using your example they:A) Would not let themselves get that low in hit points and spell resources or be put in a vulnerable position like most 3rd ed PF players do with the assumption of healing, go back to town, etc. Just wasn’t part of their makeup.
B) If they were resource deprived (hp, spells) they would be that much more cautious and use better planning as they went forward from that point (wounded and still on a time table to save the kids). So no suicide if they keep their brains functioning and tried to stick to a plan or strategy.
This isn’t an attempt to be insulting to new school players and if someone is insulted then I apologize.
To some extent my old school players have made several assumptions/slips and they rely on cure items in the game more than they used to. They still retain that old paranoid and resource restricted mentality – but I can see that changing over time if by core they are allowed several cleric substitute items. To sum up – I don’t think modern players are weak or stupid – just not properly challenged. The game has shifted from planning and a thinking persons game to a Build vs. GameEnvironment one; sans brains (beyond an optimized build to do the work for you), good decision making, resource control, etc. Eliminating the need for a dedicated healer is just another shift in that direction.
At this point I don't know if that's what everyone wants (obviously not - from this thread), or if that's the way people now play because the game designers of 3rd ed made it so.
so if a fighter kills a bunch of stuff and comes out of a battle with little to no damage, but everyone else is wounded, the fighter has not done his job?
Where did this "tis the fighters job to taketh thy damage" originate from??
A character that has to use all his highest level spell slots to heal is a dedicated healer. In your example, the bard is.Following this logic, a 6th level bard with no Cure spells and no ranks in Heal? Who takes Cure Serious as his first 3rd level spell when he reaches 7th level? Instantly becomes a "dedicated healer".
That seems odd to me but, okey doke. I can work with it.
Doug M.
That's why Pathfinder made a HUGE step to remove the healbot syndrome, thanks to Channelling positive energy.
The problem with being a healbot is not that you have to heal the party. The problem is that, when doing it, you give up your ability to do anything else. If you have a lot of cool first level spells you like to use with your bard, you can't if you have to spend all your slots in CLW. Or whatever other level of spell you want.
Clerics on the other hand have a resource which has no other use except healing (if you exclude the fact that they might be used for damaging undeads, which are a narrow part of the Beastiary). So the cost of oportunity is low, or non-existant. For a Bard, casting Cure Serious wounds means he can't do the other things that are cool and make the character interesting. Such as casting Heroism to buff his party, cast hideous laughter, or whatever.
That's the healbot syndrome. That's why in AD&D often you had "who is going to play cleric this time" arguments. Because if you are a dedicated healer, you do nothing but being a pain supression pill dispenser.
CLWW let the bard to play like a bard, doing bard-things.
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so if a fighter kills a bunch of stuff and comes out of a battle with little to no damage, but everyone else is wounded, the fighter has not done his job?
Where did this "tis the fighters job to taketh thy damage" originate from??
It's called Tanking, from MMO's.
To be fair in almost all editions fighters were the damage soak - they only had higher AC and hp to do it though (no special hp mechanic until 4th).
To ciretose's point though - my comment to Roberta is that the whole party is in the dungeon/adventure/whatever so they are always ALL at risk of hp. Her statement that with low or no healing a fighter is useless since that is his core resource. My comment back to her is that he would still fare better due to higher AC and hp then the rest of his party placed in that same situation, with Wizards being the most vulnerable if they are wounded.
Just because they are in the back doesn't make them immune to the risk of damage. So job or not his job, the wizard is going to take damage (or should at least) - and his rate of exchange and overall risk when doing so is far greater than the fighters. Using wizards without damage consideration to their lower hp is just another schrodinger wizard style of argument.
For the record I wasn't the one advocating low or no healing. What I would prefer would be better healing mechanics and spells in place, something that scaled better with the increase of damage and hp in 3rd ed/PF. So in that regard you would use less/need less magic, and if you had a dedicated healer you wouldn't need the CLWW crap and he wouldn't need to use all his spells to keep the group functional.
Perfect world scenario - what we have in reality is a 1d8+1 device which has to be spammed between encounters to keep the group working because people do not want to be bothered to play a cleric who heals.
This again reverts to MMO style playing CHARGE.
Really? I thought it reverted to epic fantasy and sword and sorcery novels. Could you point me some Conan the Barbarian or Elric of Melniboné novel where they went back to town to sleep a few days before going back to the dungeon with a 10 feet pole?
Dat's not roleplaying.
You should really try hard to understand that just because you like fish more than meat, it doesn't mean meat isn't food.
the game is gone
Oh, the drama... sky is falling, world is death, etc.
Everything was better back when people had 10' poles in their gear, to check traps that autokills with no save.
Thought experiment: I'm a 4th level fighter with 14 Con. Bizarrely, my party has NO healing whatsoever except for my friend Buddy the Bard, who has Cure Moderate Wounds as one of his second level spells. Also, we have no potions and no scrolls, and there's no friendly local cleric in town. Nothing. Oh, and nobody has bothered putting any ranks in Heal, either.
We come staggering back from the Dungeon of Doom. I've been reduced to zero hits! How long will it take me to recover?
Guess first, and then click.
** spoiler omitted **
Doug M.
How are you getting to 8 hp/level?
Natural healing + full day of rest = 2 hp/levelNatural healing + full day of rest + successful heal check = 4 hp/level
Is there something else I'm missing?
It was, and it works/worked. Of course if you don't need to play that way due to design considerations (CLWW availability) then why do it?
So this goes to a play style and feel preference. Some older players (and even some new ones) prefer the challenge of having a more resource starved game where their decisions weight heavily in their success and failure.
So in the old days, after you've killed 15 of the Bandit Lord's men, and are now hiding in his fort, he doesn't park every single one of his men outside your room in those 8 hours?
And if he does, what is the strategy to avoid taking damage then?
A party goes into a dungeon because they have to, do everything right, and are still forced to retreat because of attrition.
Now when they come back they have to deal with traps that weren't there before and re clear old rooms? Sounds fun.
I think it sounds fun...
It's a different style, I get that, and that's ok. I want the dungeon to be alive. And you don't "reclear" the entire dungeon--what you killed is still dead. Nothing reproduces so fast that a matter of days will bring everything back.
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so if a fighter kills a bunch of stuff and comes out of a battle with little to no damage, but everyone else is wounded, the fighter has not done his job?
Where did this "tis the fighters job to taketh thy damage" originate from??
It originate from 1st edition OD&D, when the fighter's job was being the front line to keep the magic user alive so he could use his spells without being beated.
However, the sentence isn't very well phrased. The fighter's job is not "taking damage". It's taking the blunt of *attacks*. He should be avoiding damage as much as he can, through higher AC, tactics, reach weapons, whatever. But his job, is being in the heat of the fray, to keep other more fragile teammates safe. It's a very old tactic, from the real world. It's from the ancient times, when the heavy infantry phalanx with shields were used as frontliners to keep the archers safe.
so if a fighter kills a bunch of stuff and comes out of a battle with little to no damage, but everyone else is wounded, the fighter has not done his job?
Where did this "tis the fighters job to taketh thy damage" originate from??
^ this is the exact wrong mind set for this discussion
our problem is our experience in the games mechanics have forced us to make assumptions about party roles. There are no classes (in pathfinder at least) called the Healer, and none of the classes are specifically based on the idea. not even clerics.
We keep making the assumption that no one will ever play their character wrong, or that someone playing a rouge WON'T put ranks into UMD. As if it was the only way to play, and therefore the games design must compensate for it, and that all players will have some skill equal to our power gamers who would never NOT go without a CLWW.
before i go on to make a thesis we need to look at what we want this thread to accomplish, because im seeing this going one of two ways:
1) we find a way to, withing the rules of the game, balance what we perceive as a broken item because our players have learned to be economical and versatile
2) we change the rules about the way we deal with the item in question in a way that forces our players to be less economical, outside of the rules (creating a house ruling)
as far as im concerned, if you want to go with option 2, then the thread was over a long time ago, option 1 is where we have to think.
we have to stop assuming that everyone knows they need a healer, casual players exist, and for them the wand of CLW isnt a commodity, its background noise
for our power gamers who know the best economical and statistical strategies for optimizing their roles and spreading out their options, then we have to worry about doing something. The game's mechanics do NOT need to change because we learned how to exploit them. We need to learn how to exploit a different aspect of the game to counter balance.
A party goes into a dungeon because they have to, do everything right, and are still forced to retreat because of attrition.
Now when they come back they have to deal with traps that weren't there before and re clear old rooms? Sounds fun.
I think it sounds fun...
It's a different style, I get that, and that's ok. I want the dungeon to be alive. And you don't "reclear" the entire dungeon--what you killed is still dead. Nothing reproduces so fast that a matter of days will bring everything back.
I don't know how many people were in the rooms I never saw. All I know is that yesterday THIS room had 10 enemies and today it has 15. Today it has traps.
That would at least FEEL like negative progress to me. I would feel like I did something wrong and should have avoided this situation. Then I would think about all the "strategy" I used yesterday, and how I only left because of the meat grinder.
I would realize that this situation was unavoidable since I had to leave to heal, and I had to come back because the MacGuffin is here. Except it's not here anymore. Why wouldn't the BBEG take it elsewhere while I was gone since it's OBVIOUSLY not safe here?
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Douglas, how can you simultaneously claim that CLW wands are broken and that waiting a few days after every battle has no negative consequences? If waiting a few days after every battle had no drawbacks, CLW wands would be a complete waste of money. (And casters would always have all their spells every battle - remember, even in your example, the casters get their spells back far quicker than the fighters get their hit points back.)
I like how your sample party contains two healers. Pathfinder has 21 base classes (including alternate classes), of which only 9 ever get cure powers. (And it's really more like 8 because rangers don't even get CLW until 7th or 8th level as a second-level spell with a very slow casting progression; a ranger is largely less effective than the Heal skill at curing damage.) And a lot of the classes that can cure have enough similarities that if you dislike a couple of them, you probably dislike more; someone who doesn't like paladins and oracles probably isn't keen on clerics or inquisitors either. What do you want to tell parties where nobody wants to play one? "Sorry, someone needs to take the hit and play a class they don't want"? "Okay, you'll have to rest up a week after every battle"?
(This actually happened in my current game. Our party was barbarian, fighter, ninja, cleric, and two sorcerers, and the GM decided to make it a "low magic" game, so no cure wands. When the cleric's player moved away, I was forced to switch from fighter to Life Oracle to keep the group moving.)
Let me put it this way: in Book 11 of the Iliad, Odysseus - who is more famous for his cunning than for sheer battle prowess - single-handedly keeps the Trojans from taking the Greek ships for a long time until Menelaus and Ajax come to his aid. According to a lot of the comments in this thread, what Odysseus should have done - no, what a complete team of Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Diomedes, and both Ajaxes should have done - was avoid combat as long as possible, eventually jump out and fight for eighteen seconds, and then retire for the next few days to heal.
What's wrong with letting heroes be heroic?
What do you want to tell parties where nobody wants to play one? "Sorry, someone needs to take the hit and play a class they don't want"? "Okay, you'll have to rest up a week after every battle"?
(This actually happened in my current game. Our party was barbarian, fighter, ninja, cleric, and two sorcerers, and the GM decided to make it a "low magic" game, so no cure wands. When the cleric's player moved away, I was forced to switch from fighter to Life Oracle to keep the group moving.)
As I explained in this post yesterday, I've run games in this exact situation and not had problems. I have literally never run a game with a healer in it, and nobody had to switch to make it work.
Perhaps the problem is with AP design? I've never run one, so I never had to deal with material that expected the PCs to have unlimited out of combat healing.
Let me put it this way: in Book 11 of the Iliad, Odysseus - who is more famous for his cunning than for sheer battle prowess - single-handedly keeps the Trojans from taking the Greek ships for a long time until Menelaus and Ajax come to his aid. According to a lot of the comments in this thread, what Odysseus should have done was avoid combat as long as possible, eventually jump out and fight for eighteen seconds, and then retire for the next few days to heal.
Hmm, I think I missed the part of the Illiad where the Greeks had a bunch of wands and healing magic...
Odysseus was awesome and good enough to fight all those enemies without dying. A high level Fighter would be similarly awesome against a bunch of low level enemies. He wouldn't need to fight for 18 seconds, because he would not be severely injured in 18 seconds--his AC and attack bonuses were good enough to take on the Trojans without much worry.
What's wrong with letting heroes be heroic?
I think it's more heroic if the heroes are doing it on their own, instead of doing it via wand crutches.
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It was, and it works/worked. Of course if you don't need to play that way due to design considerations (CLWW availability) then why do it?
So this goes to a play style and feel preference. Some older players (and even some new ones) prefer the challenge of having a more resource starved game where their decisions weight heavily in their success and failure.So in the old days, after you've killed 15 of the Bandit Lord's men, and are now hiding in his fort, he doesn't park every single one of his men outside your room in those 8 hours?
And if he does, what is the strategy to avoid taking damage then?
This exact scenario happened to my group last year while playing AD&D - I was actually playing (I mostly DM). All starting at 1st level.
After several grueling encounters (8 or 10, with a few being insta-kill creatures - green slime) we were forced to camp in the bandit ruins. We had cleared out the top level but we debated continuing on. We secured a room with the best defenses and we picked a place that would least likely be searched (we debated camping in or out of the ruins). We also made our best efforts to cover our tracks (had a ranger), removed bodies and make it look like we may have fled the ruins they were using as a base (that didn't work) and we also posted guards. We defending in a area with the best choke points so we could mount a good defense while still keep the option of a breakout if they found us and we had to flee (you might not know what that word means – it’s to run away from an encounter).But we could have continued on, even in our battered state. It was a tough and long thought out discussion as to what course we were going to take.
The DM in question sent out patrols looking for us, and he also had time to beef up the final encounter (as the leader was getting prepped to leave but didn't want to by going topside). In the end we rested the night while hiding out, we continued on and it was a brutal fight. I'm not going to lie to you – in the end the leader and his top man got away, we killed pretty much every single one of his guards and for all intent and purpose his predations on the area were stopped. We left off in the adventure that we were going to pick up the trail and take him out.
And a simple answer to your question - when you hit that Bandit Lord you hit him as hard and as smart as you can and he won't be placing a ton of guards outside your room as you sleep since a good number of them will already be dead. You can do this directly if their numbers are not great, or you can tear them apart piece by piece if his army of facelss men vastly outnumber you. Once that process is started the rest will be either: A)s!@&ting their pants and want to flee B) in a panic trying to figure out who or what hit them, C) figuring how to retaliate while not dying themselves ...unless your DM runs them like robots, if that's the case then they will simply zerg-swarm your defenses in a heroic bandit sucidal wave.
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so if a fighter kills a bunch of stuff and comes out of a battle with little to no damage, but everyone else is wounded, the fighter has not done his job?
Where did this "tis the fighters job to taketh thy damage" originate from??
Because if the Wizard tries to engage the BBEG, the wizard will die.
If the BBEG is engaged, his casting and movement are effected and severely limited.
This is a party benefit.
If the fighter can kill everything without taking damage, awesome. But if someone in the party has to take damage, you try to direct it toward the player who will survive it, correct?
And that is a party benefit, correct?
It was, and it works/worked. Of course if you don't need to play that way due to design considerations (CLWW availability) then why do it?
So this goes to a play style and feel preference. Some older players (and even some new ones) prefer the challenge of having a more resource starved game where their decisions weight heavily in their success and failure.So in the old days, after you've killed 15 of the Bandit Lord's men, and are now hiding in his fort, he doesn't park every single one of his men outside your room in those 8 hours?
And if he does, what is the strategy to avoid taking damage then?
This exact scenario happened to my group last year while playing AD&D - I was actually playing (I mostly DM). All starting at 1st level.
After several grueling encounters (8 or 10, with a few being insta-kill creatures - green slime) we were forced to camp in the bandit ruins. We had cleared out the top level but we debated continuing on. We secured a room with the best defenses and we picked a place that would least likely be searched (we debated camping in or out of the ruins). We also made our best efforts to cover our tracks (had a ranger), removed bodies and make it look like we may have fled the ruins they were using as a base (that didn't work) and we also posted guards. We defending in a area with the best choke points so we could mount a good defense while still keep the option of a breakout if they found us and we had to flee (you might not know what that word means – it’s to run away from an encounter).
But we could have continued on, even in our battered state. It was a tough and long thought out discussion as to what course we were going to take.The DM in question sent out patrols looking for us, and he also had time to beef up the final encounter (as the leader was getting prepped to leave but didn't want to by going topside). In the end we rested the night while hiding out, we continued on and it was a brutal fight....
I'm confused. Are you sayng they spent 8 hours looking for you and didn't find you, or that they knew where you were and left you alone?
It's a good thing the BL didn't have another 8-10 encounters worth of men waiting outside your door. If 8-10 encounters tired you out the first time, imagine having to fight that again only all at once with probably less than full health.
When you say flee, did this room have a back exit that BL didn't know about?
And even though he got away, it's a good thing he stuck around instead of just leaving in the 8 hours he had to do with as he pleased. "Sorry you stopped to take a nap. The princess is now in another castle."
I think it's more heroic if the heroes are doing it on their own, instead of doing it via wand crutches.
Me too. As I said, CLWW are annoying. It's a lesser evil, a convenience needed to avoid playing snail-crawling dungeons.
I'd rather have reserve hit points like Iron Heroes, or Healing Surges. But this game doesn't have those mechanics, and importing them will need a rehaul of the rules and, specially, of the NPC in the adventure paths. I'd just bite the bullet, and use CLWW as a substitute. I'd use whatever the game gives me, instead of making a suspension of disbelief with sleeping in the middle of the evil dungeon, travelling back and forth from the town, using townportals, or whatever other similar mechanic.
You don't like that gimmick (the CLWW), and that's fine. I use it, because it's what the system use. If they remove it, without substituting it with something else (like healing surges or whatever), I'd rather play some other game.
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Spoiler:Nualia's plan has no clock on it. Yes, she's trying to release the barghest, but there's nothing in the adventure that says when it will happen. You can attack Thistletop, retreat, regroup, attack again... and the barghest still won't be released. (It never does get released. Well, not unless you the DM decide that it should.)
And how in hell does your PC now that without:
a) reading the adventureb) metagaming that the DM will make it happen at the plot's speed?
That's exactly my suspension of disbelief.
But that's something that I, as a player, know. My character thinks he is in a race against time. And I feel an urge to roleplay it as such.
Incidentally, since Thistletop is a good-sized dungeon, and the PCs are only second level when they get there, it is really quite difficult to clear it in one go. I've run it once and seen others run it... oh, five or six times. Everyone did it in two or three bites. I'm sure there's some group somewhere that did it in a single go, but given the total number of encounters, that would be a pretty lucky and unusual group.
Try it with a group with a couple of martial characters and someone with a pair of wand of cure light wounds then.
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It doesn't matter if there's a clock or not.
If there is a clock, and the encounters are tough enough, of course the adventure and/or GM has to find a way for a suitably skilled group to complete the mission.
I'll restate this: until PFS, I never played in a group that used wands of cure light wounds the way players in this thread routinely use them. We enjoyed the game, we didn't suffer from the 15-minute adventuring day, and the world didn't end.
Using wands as described in this thread is a choice of play-styles, and that's all it is: it's isn't mandated by game design, by adventure design, or by living campaign design. It's a choice, and in my experience it's not a choice that occurs to most players who don't scout the Internet for optimization options.
The OP doesn't like this particular playstyle choice. (Nor do I, in my limited experience with it in PFS.) Other people apparently like it.
Both of those are fine.
But these claims that constant purchase and use of wands of cure light wounds is somehow required by game design, adventure design, or whatever ... those claims are just increasingly bizarre.
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Um...you are just wrong
Well, no. Go back and look again.
** spoiler omitted **
Doug M.
Actually yes,
The AP specifically spells out what happens if the PCs dawdle regarding the glassworks. Things that can make running Jade Reagent difficult...
And the AP has a "what if the PCs fail" section regarding the Barghast, because, you know...Not to mention fleeing and coming back will likely change the defenses of the fort. That is what happened when I ran it.
If your GM doesn't follow the logical consequences of the AP and delay, that is on the GM, not the AP.
And the next book is even more on the clock, with specific events that occur based on how quickly others are resolved, and penalties for leaving dungeons unfinished...
So again, your assertion about AP's is incorrect.
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I'm confused.No, you are feigning being confused in an attempt at being snarky.
Are you sayng they spent 8 hours looking for you and didn't find you, or that they knew where you were and left you alone?
Didn't find us, but since he already lost more than half of his men he still needed to hold back some to:
A) Defend his position –since he wants to liveB) Ready their escape with copious amounts of stuff they had stolen and then depart from the ruins
And as such he was limited in who or what he could send out. At first the patrols were barely noticeable (since they were being cautious) – they weren’t sure if the attackers who hit their base had fled, were waiting outside the ruins to see if their group was going to flee, etc.
I have to remember that in the 3rd ed mindset we don't deal with realistic or logistical problems, sorry forgot about that.
It's a good thing the BL didn't have another 8-10 encounters worth of men waiting outside your door.
Since it was a pre-made difficult module, yeah it was a good thing.
Luckily we decimated his top level forces (as in got it right while using caution, something PF players don't need to do) the first time around. Oh yeah, the DM did add more guys to the bandit groups forces than listed in the module to make them tougher.If 8-10 encounters tired you out the first time, imagine having to fight that again only all at once with probably less than full health.
Wouldn't have been impossible and we would have done it better than most here with less hp and without the gamer crutch of a CLWW. CLWW wasn’t even an option since it did not exist in that game, and if it did it would have made the module laughably easy.
When you say flee, did this room have a back exit that BL didn't know about?
No, there were a few ways to exit and only a few ways they could have gotten in - one of our escape paths was through a ruined passageway where he could have only sent in one guy at a time, with the outside area in rubble (poor footing). We would have cut any single stream of losers down to size if they were in that bottleneck (a bottleneck is when you force a large mass through to smaller area). I feel I need to explain things like bottlenecks and chokepoints since these are non-existent/needed to the PF lexicon, sorry if I seem redundant.
In any case they didn't know where we were at because the top level had some areas they didn't completely control (i.e filled with monsters), so those bandits didn't want to check every room and hope to not get eaten (Giant snake, spiders and a few other things).
And even though he got away, it's a good thing he stuck around instead of just leaving in the 8 hours he had to do with as he pleased.
Again, he wasn't sure if he could even flee (see previous post for definition) in the first place. He lost control and communication with his men on top.
And because he didn't control the top level of the ruins - an unknown force did – he was very cautious. There were no sounds of fighting, we didn’t light fires and we left a very small footprint. As far as he was concerned it could have been a small force sent to (finally) dispatch him, another bandit group or some other unknown –who may or may not have already left. He was supposed to stay posted there (agent of evil church) and he was working on one last effort of trying to regain control of the top (with limited resources he had left) while getting his stuff and important npcs ready to bail. So he vacillated on staying or leaving, while checking to see if he even had the option of leaving without getting wiped out. Even though he couldn’t find us in the night he still had decided to leave since the base was already compromised/discovered, he did his best to increase his chance of survival when he did leave – and that’s when we struck. He still did escape – so his planning worked for him and his lead henchman.This may involve too many realistic thought processes and considerations for what amounts to an npc, but that’s how it played out.
"Sorry you stopped to take a nap. The princess is now in another castle."
And that's what the next adventure is for - I know it's hard to get across here sometimes but things do not always work out in the players favor.
Umm... you're kind of making my point for me, here. "Why mess around with a traditionally mixed party? With the CLWW, all you need are martials!"
Doug M.
That was not even a half decent strawman. You can do much better than that. I didn't say all you need is martials, I said all you need is a couple of them. The traditional party has a couple of martials. Being a fighter, a rogue, a wizard and a cleric, or some variants of those. Plus you need someone to use the CLWW, so I fail to see what does have to do with anything. And to be honest, you don't even need them to be martial. You need them to be characters that can do damage without spending spells. A magus can do it. A cleric of Gorum with chain mail and greatsword, or a druid with a combat pet will work too. As long as you have a few characters that can do most of the damage at will, without spending spells, and a CLWW with someone to use it, you can keep going.
My point is that Thistletop isn't doable IF you don't use CLWW (or some other way to heal back to top, like reserve points, strain/damage system, or whatever). That's why you need to go in and out of the dungeon. Try again it, with a mixed party, and your group spending resources in a CLW wand, and you'll see it's doable.