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Yeah, I was wrong on that, Turns out my GM has been using that spell wrong since 3.5 and I didn't look into until you pointed it out.
But hey, I didn't publish Prone Shooter, either.
Sure, no probs. But, that means designers are perfectly qualified to make the same mistakes that you do, eg. writing the original Prone Shooter. And those mistakes shouldn't really surprise or rile you, because you're making them yourself.
I can be rather acrimonious on forums, but I promise I'm not as riled up as I come across.
My issue is that Steve Geddes is saying that we should defer to the devs and basically assume we're wrong until proven right.
To be perfectly honest, I don't give half a d*nm about sheltering peoples egos from my opinons, and I resent essentially being told not to rock the boat.
Im not telling you not to rock the boat and it has nothing to do with egos. In fact, I specifically said that people who disagree with the developers should argue their case and challenge them. The admonition to assume you're most likely the one in the wrong is simple statistics - if the person you're arguing your hobby with does it for a living you're probably the one who has missed something.
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My issue is that Steve Geddes is saying that we should defer to the devs and basically assume we're wrong until proven right.
And to be blunt, the burden is on the person making the claim to prove they are correct.
If you and a Dev are on opposite sides of a debate on the rules of the game, I'm going to side with the person who actually wrote the rules until quality evidence is produced that I should do otherwise.
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There's a lot of stuff on the Giant in the Playground forum that is better put together than a lot of the stuff Paizo or WotC developed and published. There are many people here who wouldn't be caught dead publishing something like Prone Shooter, Vow of Poverty, Elephant Stomp, etc.
Pathfinder itself is little more than a big mod released for d20 D&D, putting them pretty much on the same level as everyone else. I realized a long time ago that designing something good is as simple as doing it. It can take practice, it can take time, and it might require you to learn something new.
Agreed. To a point.
I publish games. I know how early stuff gets locked in and can't be changed without blowing your release schedule. I know exactly how important that release schedule is for making sure everyone gets paid.
The reason why fan-made stuff is often MUCH better is because the fans don't have to worry about "If this slips two weeks, we have to lay people off..." in their iterative solutions to design problems.
There is no sacred voice from on high mountains spreading the secrets of gaming truth down to the ignorant masses.
I disagree. :)
That's like saying chess is simpler than PF. It's not, it just has simpler rules. Generally, the simpler the rules, the greater the complexity of play in a game.
Weiqi has extremely simple rules, but is one of the deepest and most sophisticated games humanity ever devised.
It's not saying that, at all. It's pointing out that one can become an expert even in a field where the basics are easy to pick up. Like rpg design.
Im not telling you not to rock the boat and it has nothing to do with egos. In fact, I specifically said that people who disagree with the developers should argue their case and challenge them. The admonition to assume you're most likely the one in the wrong is simple statistics - if the person you're arguing your hobby with does it for a living you're probably the one who has missed something.Yeah, I was wrong on that, Turns out my GM has been using that spell wrong since 3.5 and I didn't look into until you pointed it out.
But hey, I didn't publish Prone Shooter, either.
Sure, no probs. But, that means designers are perfectly qualified to make the same mistakes that you do, eg. writing the original Prone Shooter. And those mistakes shouldn't really surprise or rile you, because you're making them yourself.
I can be rather acrimonious on forums, but I promise I'm not as riled up as I come across.
My issue is that Steve Geddes is saying that we should defer to the devs and basically assume we're wrong until proven right.
To be perfectly honest, I don't give half a d*nm about sheltering peoples egos from my opinons, and I resent essentially being told not to rock the boat.
I think the issue in that case, is that for me it doesn't make sense for anyone to argue anything if they are assuming that they are in the wrong.
Basically, people argue because they think they're right.
It's not saying that, at all. It's pointing out that one can become an expert even in a field where the basics are easy to pick up. Like rpg design.
I know, but I already noted this in my original post.
In any case, while I don't think that arguing while assuming you're probably incorrect makes sense, I most likely read things into your post that may not have been intended.
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Since I've actually worked in distribution(I was a salesperson for a major game distributor when 3e hit...And I've seen a lot of people who thought they were smarter than the people who actually get paid to do the job, really suck at the job.
The point is that the logic of "Non-professionals do a better job" is ridiculous. This isn't to say that non-professions can't on occasion come up with something really good, in the way that I can hit a 3 pointer every once in a while while playing basketball.
And here's your refutation, from someone who wins industry awards for game design:
Publishing in the games industry is a LOT like writing for pulp magazines. Or turning in term papers on a regular schedule in college, or writing computer code, but having it locked in place by your management before you can seriously debug or refactor it.
The reason why "amateur" stuff often rocks is because writing games has five phases.
Phase 1: Come up with COOL IDEA. This is the sexy smexy part that gets people excited to do it.
Phase 2: Playtest the COOL IDEA. This is the part where about a third of would-be game designers quit, because they don't get someone saying "Hey, man, that was cool. Lemme buy you a beer for that" as a feedback mechanism.
Phase 3: Rewrite the COOL IDEA because of how playtesters broke it. Or because your friend with a lot of system mastery showed you that while it sounded cool, it was about as effective as the Prone Elephant Stomp feat - you can do Elephant Stomp but only while laying prone.
Phase 4: Take your rewritten rule and put it before someone else and let them play it without you, or anyone else who "knows how it works" in the room. In particular, their job is to also compare that rule to every other rule in the game system and look for conflicts or gray areas. Note that as the number of rules in the game system increases, this job takes more and more time.
Phase 5: Take your re-re-written rule and lay it out, put in art, and locking it down so that it fits the right number of pages in the final book.
Every step in this process, up until Step 5, creates a better, more consistent rule. Once the rule is in Step 5, you can change commas, but you probably can't add an extra explanatory paragraph.
Fan made products and house rules get to iterate through Phases 2 and 3 multiple times. Working against an actual "publish or nobody gets paid" deadline means you're lucky if you get to do Phase 3 twice...and we've all seen games where Phase 3 wasn't done once. With no deadline pressure, fan-made products can iteratively solve for the best possible solution; this takes time. Time is the enemy of all publishers.
For publishers, Phase 4 is problematic, especially as a system gets larger and bloats more, because it's incredibly time consuming. It's not JUST time consuming, but the person whose does that job is usually being asked to do seven other jobs that are each, individually, a smaller chunk of time and make a coworker happy immediately. Burnout on the "check this rule against all the other rules" guy in the office is very, very, very real. Paizo breaks it up among multiple people, but...even then, new rules are incredibly labor intensive. They also sell about 3 to 5x as many copies as setting materials because there are five times as many players as GMs in most groups, and there's usually someone there who gets a systems-mastery boner from "Look! I can kill a Balor in the surprise round!"
When you see the Paizo rules in beta, you usually see them in Phase 5. Which means that SERIOUS changes have a huge barrier to implementation.
Oh, and you're trying to put out two or three 400+ page books each year, plus maintain AP lines...and missing your release schedule means your friends and coworkers get laid off.
So, no, I don't accept it as axiomatic that the Devs Know Best. I know some of these guys. They know how to get product out the door that's Good Enough. They also know the Russian adage "Better Than is the enemy of Good Enough."
They don't have the luxury of making things "perfect." It'll cost the jobs of their friends if they try.
People do argue because they think they are right.
And people respond to that argument based on if they agree or disagree.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, not the person refuting it.
Of course it is. I never said anything to the contrary.
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@AdAstraGames - Before we go further, my point is not that there isn't an occasional "Diamond in the dung" but that there is a lot more dung than diamond, and too many people think they are putting out undiscovered diamonds when they are actually shoveling piles of dung.
Do you disagree with that point? If so we disagree. If not, we don't.
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I think the issue in that case, is that for me it doesn't make sense for anyone to argue anything if they are assuming that they are in the wrong.
Basically, people argue because they think they're right.
One of my degrees included a large chunk of philosophy. It was essentially nothing but argument (and the non philosophy stuff was maths). My later academic study (accounting) included a bunch of law. Both of those involve the ability to argue positions you disagree with, so perhaps my perspective is unusual.
Nonetheless, one often sees people overly confident in their own position. A little self doubt is a good thing, in my view. It helps avoid the situation you often see where people continue to pursue an obviously lost argument.
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I thought Ciretose and AdAstraGames were saying the same things. -->The amatuer has no time restriction, and even with one they "might" come up with something really good, but the professional due to limitations is better not only because of their ideas, but because they do it on a deadline.
Ciretose - I agree the slush-lagoon is broad, nearly bottomless, and full of bad ideas. I see it regularly and have to put on the hip waders.
However, NONE OF THE PEOPLE starting this thread are talking about the slush-lagoon full of turd-elementals.
They are pointing out that the game that the dev team is writing for isn't exactly the game that shows up at the table.
In particular, they're pointing out that full attacks, and full attacks at range, are enough better than the majority of mobility builds that they're the only thing you'll see. Any ability that lets you do a full attack is better than any ability where you're expecting to move, attack and move. A GM can winkle this a bit by having his NPCs do a very limited range of tactics, and we're all acknowledging this.
What they're saying is that the "striker" and "movement builds" need something, and ideally that something should put conditions or states on opponents rather than just Do Moahr Damage because, hey, states and conditions are generally cool.
However, these are unlikely to happen because the developers either prefer the "5' step and buzz-saw" combat style, or don't have the same gamut of experience that playing a few hundred PFS games will show.
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I think the options are there, but at a certain point if you move to effects and away from damage you increase the rocket-tag aspect. At this point, you can get basically 25% status effect with damage with the crit stuff (or rogue talents if you go that way). Plus "the" mobility class (monk) has status effects as part of the attack currently.
I also don't agree with the premise that casters were made to be blasters, and while I do understand the issue presented, I'm not sure I'm seeing enough evidence that it is actually a problem.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
I think the options are there, but at a certain point if you move to effects and away from damage you increase the rocket-tag aspect. At this point, you can get basically 25% status effect with damage with the crit stuff (or rogue talents if you go that way). Plus "the" mobility class (monk) has status effects as part of the attack currently.
I also don't agree with the premise that casters were made to be blasters, and while I do understand the issue presented, I'm not sure I'm seeing enough evidence that it is actually a problem.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Stunning fist has really bad DCs and actually hitting is a special event with the monk so I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.
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I suspect their Playtest sessions are both more effective and efficient, as well.
THis post is pretty conclusive. Whypeople continued arguing afther this?Every year RPG Superstar proves this theory wrong.
MOST of the people who post on this site, or any gaming site have the chops to be successful game designers.
I've never even heard of RPG superstar. Is it a development convention or something?
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I suspect their Playtest sessions are both more effective and efficient, as well.
In my experience, generally not.
One of the things that happens in small game companies is that the days are long, and you're *staring* at this stuff for hours every day. By the time your "recreational" time comes around, all of your co-workers are also a little crispy around the edges.
What usually happens is someone says "I've got a mod for rule X."
And everyone else is too busy doing the thirteen other jobs they have to do around the office to really give a good sounding board. There will be company-mandated playtest times, often unpaid save for company provided pizza. You get more sounding board time when you're the amateur.
Playtesting isn't as fun as just playing. Playtesting with the guys at the office is a great way to get a serious case of "everyone I know plays it this way" blinders, too. Because everyone "knows" the rules and how they're supposed to work, and the guy who goes "Look! I can kill a Balor in the surprise round!" generally isn't hired by the game company at all, so isn't present in the game company playtest sessions.
Every playtest group needs a small salting of annoying pricks. Not just "power gamers" but actual annoying pricks who get their ego boo out of proving they're "smarter" than the asshat dev who wrote the rule.
Every playtest group also needs a handful of village idiots, the guys who'll read rules and go "OK, what does that mean?" You know, the player in your group who you swear never reads the rules based on what they do.
Fair enough. We're definitely going to approach these kinds of discussions from a different perspective (I think balance, consistency and completeness are not terribly important traits in a ruleset, for example - I'm willing to bet that view wouldnt sit well with you).
Well it kinda depends. I don't have any innate hatred towards a game that's unbalanced. I played 3.x for about a decade before Pathfinder came out. 3.x was horribly unbalanced before you even included splatbooks (just with the stuff you can do within the core rules). This is actually what led to me appreciating things that were more balanced more and more.
See, I've ran games from 1st-20th+. I'm the GM who actually enjoys high level play. I'm the GM who watched players who picked certain classes begin dropping off in effectiveness at key milestones along the way until they weren't really having fun anymore. I've watched a fighter get annihilated by an enemy that was significantly under his CR in 3.x (and not a custom monster either, just one out of the core MM which most people tended to agree were pretty consistent).
From both a GM and a player perspective I don't want anyone who is supposed to be a hero to be the aquaman of the superfriends. From my own enjoyment as a GM, I want everyone to be able to have fun and contribute to the game no matter where they go or what they meet. Classes can have their Achilles' heel, but ultimately I believe that good balance makes for a better game. Especially if it's done well.
I would suggest we hold off on applying labels of foolish or 'understood by a nine year old' as it's hard not to take those things personally. If we engage again, I'll try and make wordier posts - I hardly went to much effort to be complete with rather a lot of 'reading between the lines' being implied. Sorry about that.
S'cool. I apologize again as well. :o
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I know when it comes to myself, I love to experiment. I haven't experimented with pathfinder yet, but I tinkered with 3.5 until it barely resembled the original system. I've added and removed races and classes, changes the progression of the bab charsts, also the saving throw charts. I've literally changed the ability score chart to this. See below.
Score Mod
1-3 -4
4-6 -3
7-8 -2
9 -1
10 0
11 1
12-13 2
14-16 3
17-19 4
20-22 5
23-25 6
26-29 7
30-33 8
Surprisingly this fixes some of the issues with high levels. I've also used a d30 in lieu of a d20. Tried a vs. die system for attack rolls and saving throws, had a version of the 3.5 rules that played to level 40, and much more. However in my experience someone always hates these changes, cant stand them, and will ask for a return to the original rules. It splits the audience, and well the hobby is too small to do so.
If there is to be a Pathfinder 2.0 it's better to be a revision, history proves as much. If a kirthfinder is needed, it my be up to a fan to do so. So be it.
By the way I don't care for kirthfinder personally, and don't see what all the fuss is about.
I think the whole quality is real or not goes back to the fact it is at it's heart subjective. Ashiel labels some feats as "non-functional", while some posters have also referred to the Rogue, Monk, and Fighter as. But obviously some people don't mind those classes and play them, which means that by there definitions those classes are functional.
Actually at least two of the feats I mentioned were basically nonfunctional, and the third was just a gross and unholy thing. Also, I'd like to note, that at least 1 of those feats received revisions making it functional (though no longer anything like it was described) by Paizo because of forum feedback.
If anything, I think the fact Paizo reads their forums is a sign that the company may continue to improve.
I also feel it's a bit unfair to call out individual feats as if they were independent entities. They were packaged within a 200 + page rulebook. Really you should be judging these products at the level of the book, in which case I would say the developers probably do come off much better than an amateur.
I judge rules based on rules. I've recommended books to people that were 2/3 absolute crap because of some incredibly good rules for something buried in the 3rd portion. As an actual company Paizo has more reasons to not include craptastic nonfunctional stuff. Because it reflects on their standards, and it is a waste of time, money, and space.
But I'll admit it's probably difficult. See, more than likely they probably have a few in house writers working on some things and then get a lot of freelancers. Now freelancers are "professionals" but the quality of their work can vary drastically from writer to writer. I'm fairly certain that this is how a lot of the stinky stuff gets through. On the other hand this is also how a lot of truly golden stuff gets through (the Juju Oracle for example gave many players something they have been longing for since Pathfinder launched, but the devs said they wouldn't have published it if not by accident).
Well, Sunbeam, that's depressing.
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Stunning fist has really bad DCs and actually hitting is a special event with the monk so I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.I think the options are there, but at a certain point if you move to effects and away from damage you increase the rocket-tag aspect. At this point, you can get basically 25% status effect with damage with the crit stuff (or rogue talents if you go that way). Plus "the" mobility class (monk) has status effects as part of the attack currently.
I also don't agree with the premise that casters were made to be blasters, and while I do understand the issue presented, I'm not sure I'm seeing enough evidence that it is actually a problem.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Stunning fist save DC is your 10 + your wisdom modifier + 1/2 your monk level.
Normal spells save DC is 10 + spell level (which for full casters is 1/2 level give or take on the highest level spell, less for 3/4 casters) + caster's ability score.
A 10th Level monk with a 20 Wisdom has a save DC of 20
A 10th Level Wizard with a 20 Int has a save DC of 20 on the highest level (5th) spells they cast that day, lower on lower level spells
A 10th Level Bard with a 20 Charisma has a max of 19 on the highest level (4th) spell they can cast.
If you have low Wisdom, yes it has a low save. If you don't, it doesn't.
Plus, it still counts as an attack that does damage when you use it.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Because MAD classes are well known for starting with a 20 in all the stats they need, or at least raising them all to 20 by level 10. In the meantime, the wizard from a mile away does something with his 24 intellect...
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I suspect their Playtest sessions are both more effective and efficient, as well.In my experience, generally not.
One of the things that happens in small game companies is that the days are long, and you're *staring* at this stuff for hours every day. By the time your "recreational" time comes around, all of your co-workers are also a little crispy around the edges.
What usually happens is someone says "I've got a mod for rule X."
And everyone else is too busy doing the thirteen other jobs they have to do around the office to really give a good sounding board. There will be company-mandated playtest times, often unpaid save for company provided pizza. You get more sounding board time when you're the amateur.
Playtesting isn't as fun as just playing. Playtesting with the guys at the office is a great way to get a serious case of "everyone I know plays it this way" blinders, too. Because everyone "knows" the rules and how they're supposed to work, and the guy who goes "Look! I can kill a Balor in the surprise round!" generally isn't hired by the game company at all, so isn't present in the game company playtest sessions.
Every playtest group needs a small salting of annoying pricks. Not just "power gamers" but actual annoying pricks who get their ego boo out of proving they're "smarter" than the asshat dev who wrote the rule.
Every playtest group also needs a handful of village idiots, the guys who'll read rules and go "OK, what does that mean?" You know, the player in your group who you swear never reads the rules based on what they do.
It is a relative measure of efficiently. Not that it is good, but that it is better than what most people have, that being not an office of people who game professionally to give feedback.
Although you also have described the people of the messageboard well...
Now if we could just get some of them to actually playtest rather than lecture...
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Because MAD classes are well known for starting with a 20 in all the stats they need, or at least raising them all to 20 by level 10. In the meantime, the wizard from a mile away does something with his 24 intellect...
Miles away...the Save DC is 22.
The Bard with the 24 charisma...save DC 21.
Miles...
Stunning fist has really bad DCs and actually hitting is a special event with the monk so I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.I think the options are there, but at a certain point if you move to effects and away from damage you increase the rocket-tag aspect. At this point, you can get basically 25% status effect with damage with the crit stuff (or rogue talents if you go that way). Plus "the" mobility class (monk) has status effects as part of the attack currently.
I also don't agree with the premise that casters were made to be blasters, and while I do understand the issue presented, I'm not sure I'm seeing enough evidence that it is actually a problem.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Stunning fist save DC is your 10 + your wisdom modifier + 1/2 your monk level.
Normal spells save DC is 10 + spell level (which for full casters is 1/2 level give or take on the highest level spell, less for 3/4 casters) + caster's ability score.
A 10th Level monk with a 20 Wisdom has a save DC of 20
A 10th Level Wizard with a 20 Int has a save DC of 20 on the highest level (5th) spells they cast that day, lower on lower level spells
A 10th Level Bard with a 20 Charisma has a max of 19 on the highest level (4th) spell they can cast.
If you have low Wisdom, yes it has a low save. If you don't, it doesn't.
Plus, it still counts as an attack that does damage when you use it.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
He spells hit automatically. Then the enemy has a save.
But The fist has a chance of failure. Then the enemy has a save.Monks have average BAB (3/4th), need Dex/wisdom for good DC and AC, and that usually leaves little Str.
You can skip AC boosting by focus on Str and hit reliably, but then you DC and AC are low.
Because MAD classes are well known for starting with a 20 in all the stats they need, or at least raising them all to 20 by level 10. In the meantime, the wizard from a mile away does something with his 24 intellect...Miles away...the Save DC is 22.
The Bard with the 24 charisma...save DC 21.
Miles...
Well, the DC is going to be 10+5+x+f, x being the stat and f being feats. So the bard will have DC 22 if he hasn't invested feats, and the wizard may have invested spell focus or some other feat that's likely to increase the DC by 1 or 2 or possibly more, its also likely to have a more devastating effect and it may not require hitting any AC at all(in fact it may be touch), however the monk has to hit with his 3/4 BAB if he moved, and while stunning fist is devastating for a humanoid foe, many NPCs are immune to it. It also happens to attack fort, which almost anything in melee has a good save against.
This is probably all off topic however.
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Monks don't need Dex. I can link to the threads if you like, but this has been laid out pretty clearly in other threads. A 10th level monk with a 20 wisdom starts with a base +7 to AC before you add in bracers, rings, amulets, etc...
Con is nice, but no more so than any other class. Less actually, because they get enough bonus feats where toughness isn't an issue.
Monks need Str and Wisdom. Which is primary is personal preference.
So a 20 Wisdom at 10th level is not a problem. If you like I will link to builds showing this, I don't mind skepticism.
You will have this attack 10 times a day, and it still does damage if you hit. You can also go sickened or fatigued if you prefer.
Full casters don't get their highest level spell 10 times a day. Do you still have to hit? Yes. It isn't as good as a 5th level spell. It isn't supposed to be as you have it 10 times a day and it also does damage, and you are a 3/4 bab class with d8, all good saves, fast movement, improved evasion, immunity to disease, etc, etc, etc...
It is a nice thing to have against low fort enemies, who also tend to be low AC enemies (casters) and not so great against high fort enemies who tend to have high AC.
The point for these purposes is that what was asked for actually exists in the game.
So for the third time I ask:
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Okay, answer this for me then: Why does anyone want this job at all? My impression is you really aren't going to be raking in big bucks, or even average middle class money. You are lucky to get full time and 30k a year.
If it isn't a "fun" job, if there is any iota of pita to it, why stay in it? I mean what happens when you get old, and you have bounced from company to company...
That could be said of any job really. I suspect working in a successful DnD company is more fun for the people working there than working in insurance or medicine would be, but that doesn't mean it isn't stressful or cause the occasional burnout. There are elements of Academia I hate and loath, but I love research and have kept at it. I am sure the same extends to people working at WotC or Paizo.
I suspect their Playtest sessions are both more effective and efficient, as well.In my experience, generally not.
One of the things that happens in small game companies is that the days are long, and you're *staring* at this stuff for hours every day. By the time your "recreational" time comes around, all of your co-workers are also a little crispy around the edges.
What usually happens is someone says "I've got a mod for rule X."
And everyone else is too busy doing the thirteen other jobs they have to do around the office to really give a good sounding board. There will be company-mandated playtest times, often unpaid save for company provided pizza. You get more sounding board time when you're the amateur.
Playtesting isn't as fun as just playing. Playtesting with the guys at the office is a great way to get a serious case of "everyone I know plays it this way" blinders, too. Because everyone "knows" the rules and how they're supposed to work, and the guy who goes "Look! I can kill a Balor in the surprise round!" generally isn't hired by the game company at all, so isn't present in the game company playtest sessions.
Every playtest group needs a small salting of annoying pricks. Not just "power gamers" but actual annoying pricks who get their ego boo out of proving they're "smarter" than the asshat dev who wrote the rule.
Every playtest group also needs a handful of village idiots, the guys who'll read rules and go "OK, what does that mean?" You know, the player in your group who you swear never reads the rules based on what they do.
Okay, answer this for me then: Why does anyone want this job at all? My impression is you really aren't going to be raking in big bucks, or even average middle class money. You are lucky to get full time and 30k a year.
If it isn't a "fun" job, if there is any iota of pita to it, why stay in it? I mean what happens when you get old, and you have bounced from company to company...
Unfortunately there is a lot of truth here. Even if someone can be a designer there are generally better means out there. Especially if you're working for WotC.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?
Well starting at sixth, you run into this problem if you have full BAB where you lose an attack(possibly half your possible damage!) from anytime you move more than 5 feet in a round. If you use two weapons this can start even earlier, and might possibly be a worse problem.
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Because MAD classes are well known for starting with a 20 in all the stats they need, or at least raising them all to 20 by level 10. In the meantime, the wizard from a mile away does something with his 24 intellect...Miles away...the Save DC is 22.
The Bard with the 24 charisma...save DC 21.
Miles...
Well, the DC is going to be 10+5+x+f, x being the stat and f being feats. So the bard will have DC 22 if he hasn't invested feats, and the wizard may have invested spell focus or some other feat that's likely to increase the DC by 1 or 2 or possibly more, its also likely to have a more devastating effect and it may not require hitting any AC at all(in fact it may be touch), however the monk has to hit with his 3/4 BAB if he moved, and while stunning fist is devastating for a humanoid foe, many NPCs are immune to it. It also happens to attack fort, which almost anything in melee has a good save against.
This is probably all off topic however.
It is on topic, if you want to post a build with all of these things included and we can compare it to a monk build of the same level.
I'm not interested in playing schrodinger, but I suspect the monk will have higher AC, Saves, Immunities, Movement, hit points, etc...
The value of the offsets is 100% debatable, but I don't really want to get into a Schrodinger's Wizard discussion if I can cut it off at the pass.
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At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?Well starting at sixth, you run into this problem if you have full BAB where you lose an attack(possibly half your possible damage!) from anytime you move more than 5 feet in a round. If you use two weapons this can start even earlier, and might possibly be a worse problem.
This is helpful.
So what are we looking for at 6th level. I personally think pounce or the like is excessive.
Actually at least two of the feats I mentioned were basically nonfunctional, and the third was just a gross and unholy thing. Also, I'd like to note, that at least 1 of those feats received revisions making it functional (though no longer anything like it was described) by Paizo because of forum feedback.
If anything, I think the fact Paizo reads their forums is a sign that the company may continue to improve.
I also feel it's a bit unfair to call out individual feats as if they were independent entities. They were packaged within a 200 + page rulebook. Really you should be judging these products at the level of the book, in which case I would say the developers probably do come off much better than an amateur.I judge rules based on rules. I've recommended books to people that were 2/3 absolute crap because of some incredibly good rules for something buried in the 3rd portion. As an actual company Paizo has more reasons to not include craptastic nonfunctional stuff. Because it reflects on their standards, and it is a waste of time, money, and space.
But I'll admit it's probably difficult. See, more than likely they probably have a few in house writers working on some things and then get a lot of freelancers. Now freelancers are "professionals" but the quality of their work can vary drastically from writer to writer. I'm fairly certain that this is how a lot of the stinky stuff gets through. On the other hand this is also how a lot of truly golden stuff gets through (the Juju Oracle for example gave many players something they have been longing for since Pathfinder launched, but the devs said they wouldn't have published...
It's very very difficult. From what I can tell here, the developers are in a constant state of catch up with the product line. I just don't think you can expect each book to be 100% perfect...There are too many deadlines and too much stuff to write/oversee. The fact that most people seem to think the books are generally solid (with a few duds here and there) to me says a lot. I would hazard a guess that if you created a team of amateurs from this forum to produce a hardcover book under the same development constraints as the Paizo Publishing team has, most teams would fail spectacularly.
At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?Well starting at sixth, you run into this problem if you have full BAB where you lose an attack(possibly half your possible damage!) from anytime you move more than 5 feet in a round. If you use two weapons this can start even earlier, and might possibly be a worse problem.This is helpful.
So what are we looking for at 6th level. I personally think pounce or the like is excessive.
Well, most solutions end up being a pile of dice, or unreasonable. Its likely a problem with the way melee attacks scale and function. Personally, I like the idea of doing special abilities in that can be used place of an attack at the end of a movement such as tome of battle's maneuvers, or just giving melee more options beyond just hitting it. Pounce is pretty powerful, I've only used an ubercharger once and it was only because it was a PbP and I didn't want to mess with combat.
@Mr Sin - The thing is, I would argue that is exactly what combat manuevers are, at least at that level.
Kind of, but they require an investment to be worth your time and aren't really built into the classes. They also many times just don't work on the foe because they are outright immune. Mountain Hammer from ToB on the other hand, always works, and has nifty bonuses and utility for being used.
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On Monk Stunning Fist DC
Ciretose makes a good argument for his view of theorycrafting. He only looks at one tiny facet of whatever he's arguing. For example, he notes that the save DC for Stunning Fist is 10 + 1/2 level + Wisdom modifier, which on paper equals out to the save DC of spells assuming all things being equal. He then declares it fine.
In Reality: Monks are more starved for ability score modifiers so they tend to have a lower modifier by a few points. Monks have to hit their opponents so AC becomes a new form of saving throw against the attack (if you your opponent has a 60% chance to ignore your attack and a 45% chance to successfully save against the attack means you only have around a 22% chance to land your stunning fist), and their effect is wasted on a miss (contrast to a held touch spell which is not expended if you miss on an unarmed attack). Effects that provide evasive benefits such as concealment, cover, mirror image, blur, displacement and so forth can push the chances down even further; where most of these things have little to no effect on most spells. For example, if you have a 40% chance to hit, a 25% chance to save, and a 20% static miss chance (such as from a blur spell or mundane concealment) then your chance to successfully land a stunning blow looks more like 17.6%. With displacement or similar, you're looking at more like 11%.
From a meta-perspective we note that any situation where the monk has to move means that the monk's to-hit chances are lowered. We also can examine and see that the high statistic on most enemies who are going to be willing to engage the monk on his terms (in melee making full attacks) will generally have superior fortitude saves than those that would not. So while this isn't something that is directly within the monk's mechanics it is another common mechanic that influences the monk (these associated mechanics are often where you find the phenomena of the "stealth buff" or "stealth nerf").
What's amusing about this is that in this scenario the monk has a 75% chance of successfully landing the saving-throw effect based solely on whether or not our hypothetical opponent can save against it or not. However the devil is in the fact he's testing multiple times (testing to hit, testing to save, potentially testing to be negated).
In a similar fashion, let's pretend that a caster allowed 2 saving throws for their spell. Even if they have a 75% chance of the enemy failing their saves, allowing the enemy to test twice actually looks something like a 56.25% to actually land their spell.
The Dazing metamagic feat does this in reverse to the enemy by making them test twice to succeed which hits their successful saving % pretty harshly. The lower their chance to save the worse it is too. For example, if you're fighting a caster pushing their save DCs or targeting a weak save (say you have a 40% chance to successfully save) then you double-success or fail will actually look closer to a 16% chance to succeed.
When we're breaking down things in a testing format it is important to look at a lot of different things. When I compared monks vs rangers, I showed the initial formula, explained what I was doing, then once we had the results I ran it again and again and again, making tweaks and notes to show at what point the monk catches up with the ranger.
Those who break down the mechanics behind the games they play who actually respect their own tests and the game will look at it from many, many different angles. They'll look at what effects certain common buffs, conditions, and so forth have on their results. They'll test equipment, ability scores, feat opportunities, investment difficulty, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.
Well, most solutions end up being a pile of dice, or unreasonable. Its likely a problem with the way melee attacks scale and function. Personally, I like the idea of doing special abilities in that can be used place of an attack at the end of a movement such as tome of battle's maneuvers, or just giving melee more options beyond just hitting it. Pounce is pretty powerful, I've only used an ubercharger once and it was only because it was a PbP and I didn't want to mess with combat.At what level and at what expectation do we have for what can be done?Well starting at sixth, you run into this problem if you have full BAB where you lose an attack(possibly half your possible damage!) from anytime you move more than 5 feet in a round. If you use two weapons this can start even earlier, and might possibly be a worse problem.This is helpful.
So what are we looking for at 6th level. I personally think pounce or the like is excessive.
Frankly I don't put a lot of stock in pounce myself. Pounce doesn't mean a lot in a ton of situations. It relies on charging and there are lists of situations where charging is not viable. Some of the more common ones are situations where you are downhill, on difficult terrain, in the snow, in a swamp, caltrops scattered everywhere, stuff is in your way (even things like tables, chairs, barrels, etc).
One of my groups is preparing to play Reign of Winter and we've all pretty much made peace with the fact charging is going to happen very rarely and our movement speed is going to blow. :P
EDIT: Actually this is exactly what I mean~! Pounce looks good on paper if you're only looking at the DPR in the situations you will get to pounce. Good theorycrafting looks at the environmental rules, the lighting rules, the charge rules, and the combat rules and weighs how frequently you are actually going to get to do this. In any situation where you A) cannot charge in a strait line, B) have hampered movement, C) have a broken path you have to jump over, D) have something between you and your opponent; suddenly Charging is not an option and thus pounce is dead in the water.
That may be worthwhile to know if your GM tends to run games with dynamic environments! :O
