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That's not "worst excesses", that's design paradigm. And devs did outright state that absolute balance is not something that's gonna happen.
There are a lot of games out there that do things differently and make sure everything is balanced. Might I interest you in one major offering from Wizards of the Coast?
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That's why 4E is now where it is (on the way out). It tried to change the paradigm and failed at oh so many levels. Turns out, folks don't want absolute balance. They mostly don't care for it. I strongly believe (that's my opinion, not statement of a fact, before somebody flips out) that 90% of D&D/PF player base doesn't give a flip about the things we're nerdraging here about. If an average D&D customer would mind the difference between axes and swords as much as we do, the game would die in a year and we wouldn't even be having this convo, because D&D would be a faint memory of past.
Yes, this makes us special snowflakes, I guess that's a consolation of sorts.
That's a useless statement.
If you read the discussion between Thomas Long and Khazrandir, you'll see where the statement is coming from. Thomas Long started out with an inflated and unnecessary comparision between an unarmed strike and an exotic weapon, and Khazrandir stated that the falcata isn't always better in every situation - it might usually be, but depending on what you want to do the unarmed strike do have benefits that the falcata doesn't (leaves hands free, cannot be disarmed, many abilities are uniquely useful with unarmed strikes, can benefit from certain spells, doesn't alarm your enemy you have a drawn weapon, etc).
If your explicit goal is to trip someone, a khopesh is better than a falcata. That may be a niche case, but it exists.
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Wouldn't that mean a commoner could kill someone by throwing a tea cozy or two at him? Just a thought...because who in their right mind is going to take Weapon Focus (tea cozy)?depends, what special weapon qualities does "tea cozy" have?
- Torger
Absorbent: +1 vs water elementals
Embroidered: +1 to diplomacy at tea partiesIt also has a ranged increment of 15.
Probably. Dangerous things, tea cosies!
Personally, I think swords are overrated. If I want to cut things, I'll take an axe. Generally though...
Can't touch this. (cue half-elf Paladin of Sarenrae pulverizing everything)
That's why 4E is now where it is (on the way out). It tried to change the paradigm and failed at oh so many levels. Turns out, folks don't want absolute balance. They mostly don't care for it. I strongly believe (that's my opinion, not statement of a fact, before somebody flips out) that 90% of D&D/PF player base doesn't give a flip about the things we're nerdraging here about. If an average D&D customer would mind the difference between axes and swords as much as we do, the game would die in a year and we wouldn't even be having this convo, because D&D would be a faint memory of past.
Yes, this makes us special snowflakes, I guess that's a consolation of sorts.
Yes! Insert reality check here.
Well, I have to admit I didn´t read it all up to here.
Swords vs. Axes: It probably has a reason why swords were some of the most successful melee weapons in real history for several centuries. Some weapons are better than others in killing people. Now, this is fantasy, yes - but the weapons are mostly based on real-world weapons last time I checked.
Also, it is a matter of preference for the character one is playing, of course.
OTOH, axes are very dangerous weapons. Take a CR 9 frost giant:
greataxe +18/+13 (3d6+13)x3. With Power Attack, it is greataxe +15/+10 (3d6+22)x3, which is 32-33 hp damage on an average hit. I´m sure you can do the math for a crit yourself here. Taking a barbarian NPC of level 10 from a recently published adventure, he has AC 21, 115 hp while raging, and AC 23, 95 hp when not raging. So, when the giant crits the barbarian while he is not raging, the barbarian is probably from healthy to dying in one hit... (with average damage rolled, mind you)
A CR 10 fire giant has greatsword +21/+16/+11 (3d6+15)(19-20/x2), or greatsword +18/+13/+8 (3d6+24)(19-20/x2) with power attack. Thats 34-35 on an average hit, about as much as the frost giant. But the crit does less damage. So, the axe crit is much deadlier.
Granted, this does not matter at all if your lvl 10 wizard gets the crit - he is dead no matter what...
Axes: Because it's not Axe-Murder if you use a sword.
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If you're arguing that no weapon is strictly better then you're arguing they're all equal.
Didn't do too well in math class, did you?
Here's a puzzle for you. I have two boxes. One is a cube, 12" by 12" by 12". Another is a poster tube, 8" in diameter and 36" long. Which one is bigger?
The answer, of course, is that it depends upon how you measure. If I'm trying to fit it into the overhead compartment of an airline, the cube is too big, but the tube will fit easily. In terms of volume, of course, the tube is substantially larger by a factor.
A shopping mall ten miles down the freeway can be closer (in terms of travel time) than a clearing in the woods a mile away that I need to walk to.
Lots of things in mathematics are neither bigger nor smaller in absolute terms, because "bigger" depends purely on how you measure it.
It makes no sense to say that one weapon is "better" than another until you've defined a scale of "better." And if your scale of "better" is simply expected damage, then I can give you a great custom weapon. It does no damage at all unless you get a critical hit (on a 20), in which case the opponent must make a DC 0 Fortitude saving throw or die instantly. Spell resistance, DR, immunity to death effects (such as the tarrasque) do not apply. All other hostile creatures in the current encounter also die instantly.
Since a 20 auto-hits, and a 1 on a saving throw automatically fails, you have one chance in 8000 of doing an unbounded amount of damage. If I hit the right orc with the right die roll, the entire army in front of Helm's Deep dies. This weapon far exceeds the expected damage of any other weapon in the Pathfinder rules.
And yet you would consider it a terrible weapon in actual play. Because expected damage isn't the be-all and end-all of weapon evaluation.
Would you trade 0.5 points of expected damage for the ability to hit at reach? Most people would, and certainly anyone who wanted to go for the battlefield-control aspects of a polearm would.
Would you trade a point of expected damage for the ability to do any of the three types of weapon damage, so you don't need to worry about enchanting a mace, an axe, and a punching dagger? How much expected damage would you be willing to exchange for a +1 shield bonus to AC? For twenty more feet of range increment? For the ability to ignore shield bonuses on your opponent's AC (which is something I've seen in some variant flail rules)? For immunity to disarming? For a +2 competence bonus to Acrobatics because it mundanely enhances your balance?
If the answer to all of these is, "no, expected damaged trumps everything else, " you've not thought very deeply about what you actually need from your weapon...
@Orfamay Quest
Well said.
I really wish weapons were balanced, but they aren't entirely so. I enjoy having a 15-20 critical over a 20/x4.
The fair comparison here would be 19-20/x4 and 15-20/x2.
I am going to be the obligatory OSG poster.
This thread is what is wrong with gaming. The concept that people are really crunching the numbers in order to have a slightly better chance of doing a little more damage is disgusting.
What I gather from this is that people on this thread would not build a barbarian with an axe, even though everyone knows that barbarians have axes (ask any 6 year old), because the axe has a slightly lower percentage to cause as much damage on a regular basis...for a character that is basically "Hulk. Smash!"
I miss the days when we built characters because we wanted to see if they'd be interesting. I'll bet none of you have an 8 or 9 as an ability score!
Being a min-maxer is not exclusive to MMO's, and it happened just as much in the old days as now. Now with the advent of the internet, so many people have put their heads together that it's just easier to find the mechanically best choice.
Knowing what the best mechanical choice is doesn't force you to take it. It just makes you a good planner. If you choose to use a suboptimal weapon because you want it for flavor, that's great.
Ignorance is not bliss. Knowing things is better than not knowing things.
Also, picking the mechanically best item doesn't suddenly make you a bad role-player. How powerful your character is mechanically has no bearing whatsoever on how well you role play.
I am going to be the obligatory OSG poster.
This thread is what is wrong with gaming. The concept that people are really crunching the numbers in order to have a slightly better chance of doing a little more damage is disgusting.
What I gather from this is that people on this thread would not build a barbarian with an axe, even though everyone knows that barbarians have axes (ask any 6 year old), because the axe has a slightly lower percentage to cause as much damage on a regular basis...for a character that is basically "Hulk. Smash!"
I miss the days when we built characters because we wanted to see if they'd be interesting. I'll bet none of you have an 8 or 9 as an ability score!
Being a min-maxer is not exclusive to MMO's, and it happened just as much in the old days as now. Now with the advent of the internet, so many people have put their heads together that it's just easier to find the mechanically best choice.
Knowing what the best mechanical choice is doesn't force you to take it. It just makes you a good planner. If you choose to use a suboptimal weapon because you want it for flavor, that's great.
Ignorance is not bliss. Knowing things is better than not knowing things.
Also, picking the mechanically best item doesn't suddenly make you a bad role-player. How powerful your character is mechanically has no bearing whatsoever on how well you role play.
true. and in PF, swords are the superior option for up close and personal, especially curved swords, but superior to them in general, are polearms and longbows, not due to damage, but due to reach.
so many badass magic swords, but no real love for magic glaives.
That goes all the way back to basic and AD&D. Like 70% of magic weapons were swords :P
true. and in PF, swords are the superior option for up close and personal, especially curved swords, but superior to them in general, are polearms and longbows, not due to damage, but due to reach.so many badass magic swords, but no real love for magic glaives.
yeah. never played 1e. but i do have a set of hand me down books. i hated how 70% of the magic weapons were longswords, 20% were other swords, and 10% was everything else.
meant you had to be a longsword specialist to be viable.
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no one remembers the pc who did solid average damagebut that x4 crit on the bbeg in that one session is legendary
YES! Playing a ranger (inorite) in a homebrew, at level 1 I did decent damage, thought I was doing well, until a Barbarian with a great axe, crit and confirmed while raging. 45 point damage was the result, on a mob with 25 HP. No one remembers the ranger's 18 points of damage in the encounter.
Although, they do remember the 3 points of damage I did with a sling after my first ranger died and the GM brought my new ranger in as a captive, so sling was all I had. And it killed the CR 3 BBEG who was about to drown another player while in grapple.
Axes. Because some of the specific axes are really awesome