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They are not perfectly balanced but they don't suck, just that it's not your turn to shine, or your GM sucks.
That's a bug, not a feature: you need a very good DM just to get the game to function at all at a baseline level. Just think of how awesome the game would be if that same DM could put all that effort into running the adventure, instead of wasting it by working furiously against the rules just so that half the characters don't feel like caddies.
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See, here is the thing, each class does certain things, it's up to your GM to make sure each classes get their chance to shine.
Wizard sucks early levels if you don't know what spells to pick, or your team is unreliable. However, you get to bend the world while still be what you are. You don't have to chance, the world change for you.
Sorcerer, not too much better than wizard in low levels, but you get to change into things that you like. Also each bloodline gives your different stuff. Elemental immune to critical hit, Draconic a little more AC and blasting power. And they don't get scared by monk as much.
Rogue is not the best at anything except sneak attack. But when your group got imprison in the dungeon with guards, only rogue can get you our. Bard can't kill all those guards in one hit without them alarming others, only the best rogue can.
Ranger sucks when not fighting his favorite enemies in his favorite terrains, but what if they do? Enough said. PS: one of the best tracing class out there.
Paladin only good when fighting evil things. But it got so much auras!!!! Immune to so many things with very good saves and some spells! Hardly anything evil can kill you.
Monk can't hit... What are you hitting? A full plate? Why would you even do that? Monk are one of the fastest, yet potentially the tankiest class there could be, only to be matched by few like Dragon Disciple with both Wings, class feat and bloodline. Have a monk charge 180ft and Quivering Palm you in the face is the scariest thing that could happen to any wizard. Also with those good saves and SR, how many spell can you use on them really?
Fighter sucks. Yea? When your team now trapped in the room in the dungeon with only one door way, no way out. Outside filled with thousands of goblins. How suck can a fighter be when he is the only class that can stand in that door way all day long? It's not very realistic but I guess in fantasy, fighters train so hard they don't feel tried from fighting.
Druid is not good in spell casting like Wizard. Wildshape at will plus level spells already allow you to be able to survive almost anything. Don't spellsling with the wizard, it's not your job. Shambler!
Cleric are only good as a healbot and their healing sucks. Really? Implosion, True Resurrection and Miracle. What can't you do?
Bard sucks at everything other than singing. Well, it's their job. Do a bit of this, do a bit of that. Just enough to survive so they can perform and make everyone better. By everyone, it's not just your team. Raise army, start war! Think bigger! Also counter song! If you GM never give you a chance to use it when you played a bard, you know he isn't very good.
Lastly, barbarian. They do run out of rage, and they can't do much once it's out. Well, at level one, it's the strongest class of all. What do you expect? Beside, they still kick ass when they rage. Can fighter dodge those touch attacks? Don't think so. Can paladins? No. Can any class that that bad ass +8 morale bonus to strength? No!!!
So there you have it, that's what I think about each classes. They are not perfectly balanced but they don't suck, just that it's not your turn to shine, or your GM sucks.
Wow! You got everything so wrong, I'm not sure you even read the Core rulebook.
Ok, Wizard and Sorcerer can suck at early levels if you completely suck at selecting spells, but that is not fault of the class or GM it's yours for being dumb. Sleep and Color Spray and whatever you want for flavor. Done.
Rogue can't kill anything in a sinlge attack after level 3, maybe 4, except some very optimized builds.
You know who can be just as good as the rogue at freeing the group from a jail cell? The Ranger. Forget favored enemy, favored terain: urban makes you better at being stealthy than the rogue could ever hope to be. And even without favored enemy they still have a wolf to do some extra damage, get some feats earlier than the fighter, and has some really nice spells (lead blades, longstrider, etc.)
Hardly anyithng can kill a paladin. Fullstop. Not just evil, neutral, lawful, chaotic and even good would have a hard time killing this guy. Also even when not fighting evil he has divine bnd to make his weapon better than what the fighter could buy, and he has spells. Anyone that thinks a fighter is the best in that door scenrio of yours has never seem a pally with Deadly Juggernaut, Weapon of Awe and Righteous Vigor going.
Wizards are going to fear charging quivering palms as soon as monks learn to fly. Quivering Palm and Stunning Fist are worthless against melee enemies because the save is just too low. Thta SR is actually a bad class feature since it stops the monk from receiving beneficial buffs. The monk also has abilities like slow fall (worse than a first level spell) and Tongue of the Sun and Moon (worse than a second level spell). He does have some good archetypes tough.
Fighters are very good at DPR noone against that. But they're not so good that a paladin, barbarian or ranger, even with all their resources spent, couldn't do the exact same thing. And if there is a single goblin shaman in that endless horde, the fighter would be the worst to have in that place, since he has the worst chance of resisting mindcontrol.
Druids are not as good at spells as a wizard but that is still better than not being a level 9 spellcaster. Also don't forget the animal companion. You know who else can stand in a doorway and kill thousands of goblins? A buffed up tiger.
Bard sucks at everything except singing? In 3.5 maybe, but not in PF anymore. PF bard outrogues the rogue. He is as good at skills and he has spells to back it up. The rogue has a little more damage but not enough to kill enemies before they sound an alarm, unless the enemies are very low level, in which case even the wizard could probably kill then in a single round.
Barbarians only run out of rage in the early levels. At high levels he has more rage rounds than he knows what to do with. And even without rage the barbarian is only a little worse at DPR than the fighter. Not a significant enough difference to really make the fighter shine.
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I find with a bard there is rarely a combat where you can't contribute by being able to drop something useful in almost every category whenever more of it is needed. No, you aren't necessarily the best at any one thing, and yes, a lot of your powers are subtle, and it can take a certain type of person to find it useful ... But I can say my bard archer contributes plenty to combats, from picking off opponents that the barbarian or paladin didn't quite take out so they can move on to new ones, to, with good hope and bardage adding the equivalent of a plus five weapon and bonus damage types, to useful spells here and again, etcetera. If you find a bard useless outside of singing, you just aren't trying very hard at all.
Some of the most effective characters I've ever seen have been bards. I've seen an Arcane Duelist bard throw down damage comparable to a Fighter while buffing the whole party and protecting a plot-critical NPC, then heal up the group afterwards before negotiating a peace treaty with an evil draconic warlord.
Seriously.
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that is true, whoever designed the bard really work hard to make sure the class to be really solid. A shame for fighter, monks and rogues that did not happened.
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I find with a bard there is rarely a combat where you can't contribute by being able to drop something useful in almost every category whenever more of it is needed. No, you aren't necessarily the best at any one thing, and yes, a lot of your powers are subtle, and it can take a certain type of person to find it useful ... But I can say my bard archer contributes plenty to combats, from picking off opponents that the barbarian or paladin didn't quite take out so they can move on to new ones, to, with good hope and bardage adding the equivalent of a plus five weapon and bonus damage types, to useful spells here and again, etcetera. If you find a bard useless outside of singing, you just aren't trying very hard at all.Some of the most effective characters I've ever seen have been bards. I've seen an Arcane Duelist bard throw down damage comparable to a Fighter while buffing the whole party and protecting a plot-critical NPC, then heal up the group afterwards before negotiating a peace treaty with an evil draconic warlord.
Seriously.
Can confirm. Have arcane duelist bard in our RoW game. Is OP. Ranger jealous.
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that is true, whoever designed the bard really work hard to make sure the class to be really solid. A shame for fighter, monks and rogues that did not happened.
I said this over in another similar thread, but I'll say it again here-
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say you can't successfully play one, but the issue is a matter of comparison.Imagine that every class was given 100 points that could be spent on their build, to buy things like Sneak Attack, Favored Enemy, 1/2 casting, 3/4 casting, full casting, etc.
The Monk actually has like 120 points worth of stuff, but he pulled it from like 20 different buckets, so it doesn't all piece together well. Fortunately, the monk has some bad-ass feats and great archetypes, so you can start trading out those wonky pieces that don't click well with the others and end up with something that's pretty hardcore.
The Rogue has exactly 100 points, but he bought a bunch of stuff that sounded really good at the time but won't always work out so well. It's like he's Batman, but all of his toys are battery powered and he ran out of cash before he actually got around to buying extra batteries. Skills are good at low levels but start trailing off quickly in effectiveness as he levels up, and more and more people get various tricks that make his hard-earned abilities kind of redundant. He's also got to work harder to do the things he wants to do. The Rogue using Sneak Attack is like a 12 year old building these elaborate structures designed to drop a bowling ball on a burglar's head when everyone else just defends their homes with a shotgun.
The Fighter only got 75 points. He rolled up to buy his stuff and some shady merchant decided to charge him double for all of his feats because of their "potential". All of the Fighter's abilities are "balanced" against their "potential". Armor Training requires you to keep pumping resources into your DEX to actually scale. Bravery is a small bonus that only clicks in against one specific effect. Weapon Training, and many Fighter-specific feats, lock you down into a narrow choice for options. How many times have you seen a sweet piece of loot shw up in a monster's horde and the Fighter goes "Sorry, not a polearm/bow/heavy blade/etc. go ahead and stick it in the sell pile"? Because I've seen it happen a lot, and I almost never see it happen with Rangers, Barbaraians, Cavaliers, etc.
Lay a Fighter side-by-side with a Ranger sometime. The Fighters 5 extra feats, and the mutability of them, is weighted at a ratio where a single feat is considered as valuable as 1/2 casting, or Hide in Plain Sight, or Evasion. His Bravery ability is given the same weight as another class getting an extra good save, or Uncanny Dodge.
It's not that the Fighter's bad, it's that he's incomplete. They forgot to give him as much stuff as they gave everybody else. He's still good at doing one thing, but it's something that everyone else is pretty good at too, and when that thing isn't the best option for the situation, he doesn't have a good alternative, nor is he finding a lot of opportunities to pitch in elsewhere.
Another way to look at it:
A class like the bard has the potential to be very effective in combat while also buffing the party, and out of combat he can be a master of various social, knowledge, and other skill-related situations. He can contribute some healing and if he isn't the master of a particular skill, he can make the party member who is better at doing it.
A ranger can be very effective in combat, with either an animal companion helping him impact the battlefield or his Hunter's Bond aura buffing his allies. He's got a limited selection of spells that can boost his effectiveness , add control options, etc. Outside of combat he can track down enemies, has enough skills to handle a variety of situations, and can sneak with the best of them while passing effortlessly through the wilderness.
A Fighter can be very effective in combat.
Notice the issue?
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There aren't a lot of people here who have actually attempted a full Fighter re-write. You very quickly run into problems when you try the full project.
Almost nobody bothers to fix DPR, because DPR doesn't need to be fixed. What a fighter lacks is versatility outside of combat, defenses, and narrative power.
If none of those things are issues with you, then no re-write is needed.
If they are, then you not only need to overhaul the fighter, you need to overhaul feats, and you probably need to overhaul spells. Because the main problem with the fighter is the ease with which he is replaced by something that does his job as well as he does, and brings so much more to the table.
Then you have to determine how much you are going to deviate from the norm - do you ditch it all and start over, or build on what is present? Do you change combat entirely? How do you handle the inherent contradictions in the system? Where's the bias? How do you give the fighter stuff others can't have?
Ramping the fighter up to the point where he has great versatility; narrative power; abilities others don't get; and many choices that are excellent requires throwing out a lot of inbuilt restrictions to fighters, and making them much more complex.
To say it was something of a task to do so is not an understatement. Doing so without overpowering the result was a delicate balancing act.
I found I simply could not do it without changing feats entirely. The 'half-strength' of feats just loomed over the whole build and torched everything. I had no choice but to introduce a class of scaling, full-power feats that were the equal of rage powers and lesser spells. The fighter simply didn't work without it. It was simply too easy for any other class to gain the key feats central to the fighter, and then surpass the fighter at using them.
Doing so made the 'simple' fighter much more complex, interactive, and robust in builds and ability to adapt, however.
Making a new fighter is a big job. Try it some time.
==Aelryinth
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I've done it, and can wholeheartedly agree with Aelrynith on all counts. I did end up redoing feats, weapons, combat, and ultimately the whole game.
Aye, because the core of problems with the fighter starts with melee combat. And that right there starts snowballing the issue.
Forget the other melee classes, or rope them in...when you don't want casters able to replace the melee classes, that means you're changing the casting system, spells, and other stuff.
Boom. Explodes on you.
Then you move outside of fighting to mechanical effects on non-combat activities, and you want melees to shine like casters.
Boom. We've now got a nuclear explosion.
==Aelryinth
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Why do wizards get are save or dies at level one? it's total nonsense
Imo, no one should be getting save or dies...
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Without getting into changing combat rules, I recommend you make the following simple changes to a fighter to shore up his defenses:
1) House rule that you only get armor and weapon profs at level 1. If you want to multiclass, you don't get these after 1st.
This makes armor and weapon profs valuable, because now you must spend feats to get them if you don't start with them.
at level 1, let him remove heavy armor and tower shield prof for increase to 4 skill points/level.
AND let him remove medium armor/shields for +Int as a dodge bonus to AC (not to exceed fighter level). This lets any fighter become an instant swashbuckler.
Let him determine his strong save.
Let him pick two class skills as part of his fighter training.
Add the Save Feats to the Combat feat list.
If the fighter takes Iron Will, let him also add his Bravery bonus to all Will Saves.
If he takes Lightning Reflexes, ditto his Armor Training Bonus to Reflex saves.
Great Fortitude, his weapon training bonus.
Let him add a class skill and gain an extra skill point with every point of his Bravery bonus. He will eventually end up with more skill points then a ranger.
IF he takes weapon focus at level 1, let him do +1 Weapon Training damage with the weapon, so he actually gets a combat bonus at level 1.
Weapon Spec doubles his Weapon Training bonuses with the weapon. Done. No more Greater weapon focus/spec. Just let it scale.
Turn Armor Training into a +1 Dodge bonus and +1 Dr x/- that stacks with Adamantine Armor and feats, in addition to armor movement and AP reduction. Surprise, it culminates nicely with the level 19 capstone.
Dwarves, who don't need it, should get a +5 movement bonus instead of Armor Mastery.
Turn the level 20 capstone from increasing crit multiplier, which is really an improved critical/weapon spec tree thing, to granting a unique thing, a 5th iterative, and change the iteratives to go off at -3 instead of -5.
LEt Vital Strike auto-scale without the Fighter needing to spend feats. Let his weapon training/spec multiply with it.
Give him leadership at level 7 or 9 automatically. At level 18, double the bonuses provided by Leadership...he doubles his followers and has two henchmen.
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These are fairly simple changes, but they can really change how the fighter plays.
I made a whole list of feats that played off a fighter's class abilities, calling them Techniques, and removed the reliance on high stats for ANYTHING almost entirely. The Barb is the high stat melee. The fighter gets his bonuses from his feats and his class. He may start out less then the others, but he grows into his power through training, training, training.
I let the fighter automatically take double bonuses from training, or half the time, because training is his thing.
I doubled his base favored class bonus choices, to reflect the additional training he does.
I gave him stat advances to his lowest ability scores every 4 levels.
I gave him a warlord ability that is doubled for his personal followers, that he could change every day.
I quadrupled the number of feats he could get, but only doubled the number active at one time, i.e. gave him a swappable 'feat pool'. After all, you don't need Mounted Combat when dungeon diving, or skill focus (swim) if you're in the desert.
Lots of Technique feats. I actually enjoyed writing them. Barb takes Dash, gets +5 move. Fighter takes Dash, gets 5' move x Armor Training. Eventually, the fighter will be faster then the Barb!
Etc.
==Aelryinth
There aren't a lot of people here who have actually attempted a full Fighter re-write. You very quickly run into problems when you try the full project.
There's actually a very simple fix for feats sucking:
Advanced Training: At first level and every single level thereafter the fighter receives any one feat with "improved" or "greater" in the name or skill focus in any trained skill. He must qualify for this feat.
Combined with the existing bonus feats the fighter gets actual versatility.
How does this actually make feats not suck? It looks like it just says "here, now fighter has 20 more feats!"
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For the 'improved' line of feats, I used your Expertise bonus. I made Expertise a VERY powerful Technique that modified a lot of other feats positively. If you weren't going for the -1/+1 AC thing, you could instead add the Expertise bonus to any combat maneuver you were a master of, mastery being that you didn't provoke an AoO when using the maneuver.
Then I made a feat that allowed you to add a number of normal combat feats equal to your Bravery bonus to your feat pool, which made it easy to grab a bunch of maneuver feats all at once, if you were of a mind to.
I did something similar to Atarlost, there. He got bonus non-combat feats, Training feats, every other level, which included things like Skill Focus and all the Save feats, etc. Skill Focus feats got additional bonuses from Bravery, Armor or Weapon training depending on what stat the skill used, too.
But the key unique things were scaling feats no other class could get; the warlord ability; automatic followers if he wanted them; the ability to train NPC's up in level; enhanced training bonuses for himself; and a complete and total non-reliance on ability scores.
He started off slow, but late game all that extra training really started to stack up, and the fighter just got more and more awesome, until the barbarian was wondering if he should reroll.
I'm of the mind if you aren't magical, then you're doing something more extraordinary then any magic-user in order to even the odds. That was the entire premise.
I suppose I could post what I have to Google docs. Hrm de drm. Have to figure out how to open it up to others.
I've been thinking about how to do a rogue re-write, and take the skill crown back from the bard. I was thinking of a talent that let him use his Dex mod for ALL saving throws, for starters...hehe.
==Aelryinth
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Nerfing spells goes a long way to helping the fighter as well.
Well, it wouldn't help the fighter too much, just help close the gap maybe. Spells happen to also help keep the fighter alive.
Nerfing spells goes a long way to helping the fighter as well.Well, it wouldn't help the fighter too much, just help close the gap maybe. Spells happen to also help keep the fighter alive.
Oh look we agree on something!
Wow! You got everything so wrong, I'm not sure you even read the Core rulebook.
Ok, Wizard and Sorcerer can suck at early levels if you completely suck at selecting spells, but that is not fault of the class or GM it's yours for being dumb. Sleep and Color Spray and whatever you want for flavor. Done.
Rogue can't kill anything in a sinlge attack after level 3, maybe 4, except some very optimized builds.
You know who can be just as good as the rogue at freeing the group from a jail cell? The Ranger. Forget favored enemy, favored terain: urban makes you better at being stealthy than the rogue could ever hope to be. And even without favored enemy they still have a wolf to do some extra damage, get some feats earlier than the fighter, and has some really nice spells (lead blades, longstrider, etc.)
Hardly anyithng can kill a paladin. Fullstop. Not just evil, neutral, lawful, chaotic and even good would have a hard time killing this guy. Also even when not fighting evil he has divine bnd to make his weapon better than what the fighter could buy, and he has spells. Anyone that thinks a fighter is the best in that door scenrio of yours has never seem a pally with Deadly Juggernaut, Weapon of Awe and Righteous Vigor going.
Wizards are going to fear charging quivering palms as soon as monks learn to fly. Quivering Palm and Stunning Fist are worthless against melee enemies because the save is just too low. Thta SR is actually a bad class feature since it stops the monk from receiving beneficial buffs. The monk also has abilities like slow fall (worse than a first level spell) and Tongue of the Sun and Moon (worse than a second level spell). He does have some good archetypes tough.
Fighters are very good at DPR noone against that. But they're not so good that a paladin, barbarian or ranger, even with all their resources spent, couldn't do the exact same thing. And if there is a single goblin shaman in that endless horde, the fighter would be the worst to have in that place, since he has the worst chance of resisting mindcontrol.
Druids are not as good at spells as a wizard but that is still better than not being a level 9 spellcaster. Also don't forget the animal companion. You know who else can stand in a doorway and kill thousands of goblins? A buffed up tiger.
Bard sucks at everything except singing? In 3.5 maybe, but not in PF anymore. PF bard outrogues the rogue. He is as good at skills and he has spells to back it up. The rogue has a little more damage but not enough to kill enemies before they sound an alarm, unless the enemies are very low level, in which case even the wizard could probably kill then in a single round.
Barbarians only run out of rage in the early levels. At high levels he has more rage rounds than he knows what to do with. And even without rage the barbarian is only a little worse at DPR than the fighter. Not a significant enough difference to really make the fighter shine.
Okay, a wizard can use sleep and color spray on Iron Cobra? Don't think so.
Who else other than rogue would stand better chance against a Will-o'-Wisp? It's CR 6, but a good rogue can still one shot it without optimise.
Yes, ranger is better than rogue at freeing the party, if they aren't enough levels and ememies for the ranger to run out of spells.
Hardly anything can kill Paladin, but likewise when paladin isn't fighting anything evil.
Even a wizard with +5 con, +11 fort from both base class and cloak of resistance + 10 from takings all the boost for con, he will still have
20% chance of dying, that is when monk has +5wisdom and did have any items, didn't boost wisdom up through level. Also assume the wizard took those items without giving it to the barbarians or fighter in their team. A surprise attack like this, wizard in theory should be flat-footed so shouldn't be hard to hit.
If after all those casters ran out of spells and still can't take out those goblin shaman after the boss fight, not really the fighter's fault, is it?
A buffed up tiger. will run out of buff when the time's up. Also the tiger doesn't get to wear magical items that are always active. For fighter, he could.
Again, wizard and bard will run out of spells.
Yes, barbarain at 20th level do have so many round of rage, but still, it's doesn't last them anywhere near an hour. So they still will run out of rage. When they do they still do decent melee damage, but a fighter will always crit. Which means staggering critical will be effective and he will not fail nor miss.
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Who else other than rogue would stand better chance against a Will-o'-Wisp? It's CR 6, but a good rogue can still one shot it without optimise.
Will O' Wisp isn't the best example. Its an invisible foe, which shuts down sneak attack hard. It also has 26 AC, and rogues aren't the best at hitting things and are at least 2 behind full BAB, full BAB class hitting harder and usually have a bonus to hit in some way by then. Even using a 2 handed weapon, 22 str, and getting sneak attack, 5D6+9 isn't going to do 40 damage to it. It actually comes up 1 short. A raging barbarian with 24 str can one round it with 2 swings of 2D6+10.
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Okay, a wizard can use sleep and color spray on Iron Cobra? Don't think so.
So one creature, and for 2 levels. After that, create pit comes in and solves most problems.
Who else other than rogue would stand better chance against a Will-o'-Wisp? It's CR 6, but a good rogue can still one shot it without optimise.
Are we talking at 1st level? Because a Rogue has no way to actually SEE a will-o-wisp at really any level, so how's it beating anything?
Yes, ranger is better than rogue at freeing the party, if they aren't enough levels and ememies for the ranger to run out of spells.
Rangers have spells basically as icing on the cake. Full BAB and nearly as many bonus feats as the Fighter ensure they can do the job, and with an animal companion (with scent too, for that last challenge).
Hardly anything can kill Paladin, but likewise when paladin isn't fighting anything evil.
Have you SEEN the Paladin's spell list? Or their Divine Bond? Paladins shred normal encounters, and double ultimate shred evil encounters.
Even a wizard with +5 con, +11 fort from both base class and cloak of resistance + 10 from takings all the boost for con, he will still have 20% chance of dying, that is when monk has +5wisdom and did have any items, didn't boost wisdom up through level. Also assume the wizard took those items without giving it to the barbarians or fighter in their team. A surprise attack like this, wizard in theory should be flat-footed so shouldn't be hard to hit.
That's assuming they hit. And if they miss, the Wizard 5 foot steps away and cast...basically anything. As for 'surprise attack', anything's good in a surprise attack scenario, so that's just not worth talking about.
If after all those casters ran out of spells and still can't take out those goblin shaman after the boss fight, not really the fighter's fault, is it?
One long duration debuff (Glitterdust for example) can last the entire fight, and make clean up silly easy, so unless they're just casting Blood Money in the middle of battle to make victory statues with Fabricate, I doubt they're running out of magic.
A buffed up tiger. will run out of buff when the time's up. Also the tiger doesn't get to wear magical items that are always active. For fighter, he could.
The tiger is a CLASS FEATURE. The Fighter is a PLAYER. One should be better than the other, and the fighter will run out of buffs at the same time, not like they're a better buff sponge. In fact they're worse due to the Druid's Share Spells feature, which makes said tiger a better buff recipient. Also animals have item slots.
Again, wizard and bard will run out of spells.
I'll take a bard that's out of spells over a fresh Rogue any day.
Yes, barbarain at 20th level do have so many round of rage, but still, it's doesn't last them anywhere near an hour. So they still will run out of rage. When they do they still do decent melee damage, but a fighter will always crit. Which means staggering critical will be effective and he will not fail nor miss.
...who's fighting for an hour straight? And if they are, they almost certainly don't need to be raging during it. Barbs can swing a sword slightly worse than a Fighter all day, and swing it infinitely better X amount of time per day when they need to, unless you force Barbs to rage all day.
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Feats aren't worthless. They're just worth less. They're half to a third of a class feature. Going from double the feat supply of a barbarian barbarian or paladin to quadruple the feat supply is a huge gain in versatility.How does this actually make feats not suck? It looks like it just says "here, now fighter has 20 more feats!"There's actually a very simple fix for feats sucking:
Advanced Training: At first level and every single level thereafter the fighter receives any one feat with "improved" or "greater" in the name or skill focus in any trained skill. He must qualify for this feat.
Combined with the existing bonus feats the fighter gets actual versatility.
Right, but you never actually fixed feats sucking, which hurts everyone in the long run. You just gave him more feats because they're that bad. That's actually kind of sad, isn't it?
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...who's fighting for an hour straight? And if they are, they almost certainly don't need to be raging during it. Barbs can swing a sword slightly worse than a Fighter all day, and swing it infinitely better X amount of time per day when they need to, unless you force Barbs to rage all day.Well, technically at level 20 the fighter outdamge the barbarian when raging and will outdamage him by far if the barb is not raging.
But that is just a minor point.
The Barbarian is still fighting the enemy while the Fighter has fallen under the effects of Dominate Person though, which frankly is a bit more important than a few more digits.
The Barbarian is still fighting the enemy while the Fighter has fallen under the effects of Dominate Person though, which frankly is a bit more important than a few more digits....who's fighting for an hour straight? And if they are, they almost certainly don't need to be raging during it. Barbs can swing a sword slightly worse than a Fighter all day, and swing it infinitely better X amount of time per day when they need to, unless you force Barbs to rage all day.Well, technically at level 20 the fighter outdamge the barbarian when raging and will outdamage him by far if the barb is not raging.
But that is just a minor point.
Good point, but do note that at level 20 the diference is not a few point in damage.
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Okay, a wizard can use sleep and color spray on Iron Cobra? Don't think so.
Oh no! He can't affect a single creature with ONE of his spells!
WHATEVER will he do!?!?!
Oh right, use one of the OTHER 300+ spells he has in his spell list.
Phew, that was a close one.
Who else other than rogue would stand better chance against a Will-o'-Wisp? It's CR 6, but a good rogue can still one shot it without optimise.
Reaaaaaaaallly?
I'm wondering how he manages that.
Because Will o Wisps are Naturally Invisible.
Invisibility grants Concealment.
And Sneak Attack doesn't work on creatures with Concealment.
Yes, ranger is better than rogue at freeing the party, if they aren't enough levels and ememies for the ranger to run out of spells.
You do realize that the Ranger is not primarily a spellcaster, right? Running out of spells mildly inconveniences them. They're still a full BaB character who can wear Medium armor (and thus focus less on Dex for AC, getting higher Str and therefore higher damage...even when TWFing since they can grab those Feats with a 10 Dex if they really wanted).
Hardly anything can kill Paladin, but likewise when paladin isn't fighting anything evil.
Again...even when not fighting an evil creature, a Paladin is still a full BaB, heavy armored character who can swing a big stick as well as any of the other full BaB characters.
Even a wizard with +5 con, +11 fort from both base class and cloak of resistance + 10 from takings all the boost for con, he will still have
20% chance of dying, that is when monk has +5wisdom and did have any items, didn't boost wisdom up through level. Also assume the wizard took those items without giving it to the barbarians or fighter in their team. A surprise attack like this, wizard in theory should be flat-footed so shouldn't be hard to hit.
So, your argument is a Wizard is weak because a 15th+ level Monk can have a 20% chance of killing him if he manages to get in melee range and land a hit?
Lol 'kay.
I
If after all those casters ran out of spells and still can't take out those goblin shaman after the boss fight, not really the fighter's fault, is it?
Why are they running out of spells?
And why are you mentioning spells at all since he said Paladin, Ranger, and Barbarian?
You DO realize that Rangers and Paladins aren't reliant on spells, right?
And that Barbarians can't cast at all?
A buffed up tiger. will run out of buff when the time's up. Also the tiger doesn't get to wear magical items that are always active. For fighter, he could.
Errr, yes, the tiger can use magic items with continuous effects. There's even a handy table showing the different item slots for non-humanoid creatures. Among those slots is an armor (barding) slot, the neck slot, rings, etc.
Again, wizard and bard will run out of spells.
A Bard with no spells still has more skills per level than the Rogue (with Lore Master and Versatile Performance shoring up his mere 2 point deficit at the start), and Bardic Performance will boost his damage output a bit and have the added bonus of helping his team too.
A Bard in the group will always be better than a Rogue, since Bards make EVERYONE better.
Yes, barbarain at 20th level do have so many round of rage, but still, it's doesn't last them anywhere near an hour. So they still will run out of rage. When they do they still do decent melee damage, but a fighter will always crit. Which means staggering critical will be effective and he will not fail nor miss.
1.) Why are you fighting for over an hour? What could you possibly fight for that long that won't kill you?
Mooks? Like CR 1/2 goblins or some s&&$?
Why are you stupid enough to even waste your rage rounds on that? It doesn't matter that the Fighter can crit every time (even though that's untrue since it's only one archetype of the Fighter that can do that starting at 19th level...) because you'll be killing them in one shot with a minimum damage hit from either of them anyway.
And THAT'S assuming they decide to wade in instead of just going "Wizard? Fireball them pl0x."
Against a will o'wisp the MVP is the sorcerer who can cast glitterdust. Came up in my most recent game session (Tuesday) believe it or not.
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Will o Wisps are the original reason you always memorized magic missile. In 1E, that -8 AC was practically untouchable except to a magic missile.
ONe Detect Invisible or Glitterdust, and you can MM it to death over a few rounds.
==Aelryinth
Okay. If fighter and Rogue are not good at anything like you all said, than what is the point for the to exist? Why not just play a ranger for fighter? Why not play a bard for rogue? Why we even playing this game? It sucks! I quit!
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Okay. If fighter and Rogue are not good at anything like you all said, than what is the point for the to exist? Why not just play a ranger for fighter? Why not play a bard for rogue? Why we even playing this game? It sucks! I quit!
Why indeed.
The reason we bring it up is so the game can evolve and develop further to be a more rich experience for everyone involved.
Keep in mind that the Fighter still has a use sorta. They are pretty good at dealing damage. Are they great at combat in general? Not really, but they're pretty good at dealing damage.
Okay. If fighter and Rogue are not good at anything like you all said, than what is the point for the to exist? Why not just play a ranger for fighter? Why not play a bard for rogue? Why we even playing this game? It sucks! I quit!Why indeed.
The reason we bring it up is so the game can evolve and develop further to be a more rich experience for everyone involved.
Keep in mind that the Fighter still has a use sorta. They are pretty good at dealing damage. Are they great at combat in general? Not really, but they're pretty good at dealing damage.
pretty much this
Then play Thieves' World! Far better than Pathfinder, Caster is still powerful but takes reasonable amount of time to cast spells. Fighter are strong but can't do much. Thief is good in thieves' world! I'm quiting pathfinder.
Then play Thieves' World! Far better than Pathfinder, Caster is still powerful but takes reasonable amount of time to cast spells. Fighter are strong but can't do much. Thief is good in thieves' world! I'm quiting pathfinder.
A bit extreme. I'm waiting on the ACG to have my final decision.
Then play Thieves' World! Far better than Pathfinder, Caster is still powerful but takes reasonable amount of time to cast spells. Fighter are strong but can't do much. Thief is good in thieves' world! I'm quiting pathfinder.
Have you tried Legend yet?
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I rather like this game.
All the classes still do things even the rogue.
Really the game works quite well in dungeon crawls. Cramped spaces do a lot to balance things.