If the entire party is so incompetent as to require the GM to either grossly dumb down the encounters to having to arbitrarily save them from themselves, then I'd say you've got a problem.What's the problem? It seems to me it's only a problem if it isnt the entire party.
I dont mean an NPC sweeping in to save the day or a BBEG suddenly missing all the time. What's the problem if a level 8 party struggle to overcome anything beyond a level 6 module? So they go through life surmounting challenges other tables would roll their eyes at. If they (we) dont know any better, what's the big deal? We still die. We still struggle. We're just struggling against something your table wouldnt but it probably feels the same, doesnt it?
ahhh, there's the rub, you must be the bestest mostest optimized characters ever or you not playing the "right" way.
btw full sarcasm on
Not exactly an honest representation there, sarcasm or not. Weaksauce characters drag the party down until someone else has to pick up the slack or cause more work for the GM while the GM tries hard to not break the egg-basket.
A party doesn't have to be the most optimized to succeed. It's nice however when the party members aren't liabilities, because making a weaker character puts more pressure on the other players to pick up your slack. It's for this reason that when I'm doing something a bit unusual I try to ensure I'm not going to be a liability to my party. I don't want to be just an XP/treasure draining handicap because it's not fair to them. Because of this, I try to make competent characters.
This is a team game and you need to be able to rely on your team. If two of the party are playing Rumplesnout the basketweaving fighter who insists on being in melee with no armor, a 13 strength, and fights with twin daggers and Sparky the sorcerer who insisted that his known spells must be mount, identify, and detect secret doors, then the other two guys are going to have to make up the difference or else the lowly goblins are going to have fun playing music on their collective bones later. >.>
If everyone's at least modestly responsible with their characters then everyone can probably afford to do a bit of goofing around until high levels come along (at high levels, stuff will wreck yo ****, end of story).
If the entire party is so incompetent as to require the GM to either grossly dumb down the encounters to having to arbitrarily save them from themselves, then I'd say you've got a problem.What's the problem? It seems to me it's only a problem if it isnt the entire party.
I dont mean an NPC sweeping in to save the day or a BBEG suddenly missing all the time. What's the problem if a level 8 party struggle to overcome anything beyond a level 6 module? So they go through life surmounting challenges other tables would roll their eyes at. If they (we) dont know any better, what's the big deal? We still die. We still struggle. We're just struggling against something your table wouldnt but it probably feels the same, doesnt it?
ahhh, there's the rub, you must be the bestest mostest optimized characters ever or you not playing the "right" way.
btw full sarcasm on
Not exactly an honest representation there, sarcasm or not. Weaksauce characters drag the party down until someone else has to pick up the slack or cause more work for the GM while the GM tries hard to not break the egg-basket.
A party doesn't have to be the most optimized to succeed. It's nice however when the party members aren't liabilities, because making a weaker character puts more pressure on the other players to pick up your slack. It's for this reason that when I'm doing something a bit unusual I try to ensure I'm not going to be a liability to my party. I don't want to be just an XP/treasure draining handicap because it's not fair to them. Because of this, I try to make competent characters.
This is a team game and you need to be able to rely on your team. If two of the party are playing Rumplesnout the basketweaving fighter who insists on being in melee with no armor, a 13 strength, and fights with twin daggers and Sparky the sorcerer who insisted that his known spells must be mount, identify, and detect secret doors, then the other two guys are going...
Yeah, I think you're right about a mixed group (both ends of the spectrum could easily get irritated/frustrated). I was mainly curious why you thought it was a problem if everyone was sub-par. I don't see any issue then.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My point is that (in our world) being level eight means doing the kinds if things level sixes do in your world. I don't see any normative scale - it's not like "level" has a real world analog or that adventures would all come conveniently packaged for a particular party level "in reality".That breaks down as soon as you use anything with most or all of its HD from class levels. When your PCs are weaker than their equal level humanoid adversaries they're not very heroic.
It's certainly less heroic at any given character level (we generally are less heroic than most tables, I suspect). But it doesn't really change the story - we don't know what level that really tough BBEG was, so it doesn't affect anything if, behind the screen, they were actually the same level as the four of us. It's still a tough fight and equally thematically appropriate.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's certainly less heroic (we generally are less heroic than most tables, I suspect). But it doesn't really change the story - we don't know what level that really tough BBEG was, so it doesn't affect anything if, behind the screen, they were actually the same level as the four of us. It's still a tough fight and equally thematic.My point is that (in our world) being level eight means doing the kinds if things level sixes do in your world. I don't see any normative scale - it's not like "level" has a real world analog or that adventures would all come conveniently packaged for a particular party level "in reality".That breaks down as soon as you use anything with most or all of its HD from class levels. When your PCs are weaker than their equal level humanoid adversaries they're not very heroic.
it would actually be more heroic for the underdogs to take on adversaries of greater strength and experience than themselves or large groups of similarly powerful adversaries
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
it would actually be more heroic for the underdogs to take on adversaries of greater strength and experience than themselves or large groups of similarly powerful adversariesIt's certainly less heroic (we generally are less heroic than most tables, I suspect). But it doesn't really change the story - we don't know what level that really tough BBEG was, so it doesn't affect anything if, behind the screen, they were actually the same level as the four of us. It's still a tough fight and equally thematic.My point is that (in our world) being level eight means doing the kinds if things level sixes do in your world. I don't see any normative scale - it's not like "level" has a real world analog or that adventures would all come conveniently packaged for a particular party level "in reality".That breaks down as soon as you use anything with most or all of its HD from class levels. When your PCs are weaker than their equal level humanoid adversaries they're not very heroic.
Yeah, I think that was atarlost's point and I agree. Our table at level eight is doing the kinds of things ashiel's level six party is doing. Our level eight PCs are less heroic than ashiel's level eight PCs, but the story plays out the same. Level doesn't have any real world analog, so there's no expectation of what a level eight should be doing based on "reality". That's my opinion, anyhow - it's just a function of the particular group's history/culture.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Not all character need to be optimized to the hilt, but I don't think it's too much to ask that all characters be reasonably capable. Complaining about a character only having a +16 when an obscure splat book fear could give a +17 is obviously unreasonable. Complaining about level six fighters with a negative attack bonus, or level twelve melee characters with AC in the low teens, on the other hand...
The big issue with playing down/low system mastery is that it makes the GM's job that much harder. The problem with low system mastery is that it doesn't always result in characters that are evenly worse in all categories. The glass canon builds a lot of low-mastery players make are a good example, since they do plenty of damage for CR-appropriate encounters, but have no defense if the enemy hits back. Unless the GM homebrews up all his monsters, it's hard to make a balanced encounter for a heavily unbalanced party.
The other issue that tends to arise is when players get classes that are hard to screw up, like a Summoner or a Zen Archer. Or just stumbles on some good gameplay either in by improving in the course of gaming or by pure accident.
Finally, sometimes players with a poor understanding of the system go on to become GMs with a poor understanding of the system. That tends to end very badly for everyone involved.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Level in the game actually IS a measurable thing as Atarlost points out. Level determines where you are in the pecking order and/or the potential for your capabilities. Level determines the baseline for your statistics.
There are other aspects that levels are involved in. If you have to keep fighting weenie monsters with the chance for death there's less feeling of growth or improvement. In fact, the game can begin to lag behind a bit as XP needed to reach higher levels increases steadily but the amount of XP that you earn from encounters isn't going up much because your GM has to keep sandbagging you rather than letting you go on heroic adventures and fighting things like harpies, wyverns, and wizards, you get to stick with the dire rats, spiders, and the goblins who are probably still mostly murdering you.
If you're dealing with homebrew, you're creating more work for the GM and limiting the range of potential enemies and encounter scenarios that you can reasonably do. It's okay for the game to have tiny skirmishes and such at low level but after a while it's kind of nice to have enemies who use more complex tactics or include larger groups.
If you're dealing with published material then the issue is exacerbated. Here you're purchased and adventure and likely the majority of the adventure is useless to you and needs to be re-written from scratch. If you're paying a lot of money for premade adventures that follow the standard expectations for the game then you're not going to get your money's worth when you have to replace key characters or monsters with some alternative or re-write half the encounters to deal with the fact that even with more or less full WBL and obscenely overpowered ability scores half the party refuses to have saves higher than +3.
Perhaps my issue with this is that I prescribe to the theory that it's better to treat the disease rather than the symptoms. Going through the extra work to try and coddle PCs who refuse to prioritize their survival is a waste of time and effort when you could just show them how to not be scarecrows. And if they already know and then they just refuse to do so...
Natural selection.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Level in the game actually IS a measurable thing as Atarlost points out. Level determines where you are in the pecking order and/or the potential for your capabilities. Level determines the baseline for your statistics.
There are other aspects that levels are involved in. If you have to keep fighting weenie monsters with the chance for death there's less feeling of growth or improvement. In fact, the game can begin to lag behind a bit as XP needed to reach higher levels increases steadily but the amount of XP that you earn from encounters isn't going up much because your GM has to keep sandbagging you rather than letting you go on heroic adventures and fighting things like harpies, wyverns, and wizards, you get to stick with the dire rats, spiders, and the goblins who are probably still mostly murdering you.
If you're dealing with homebrew, you're creating more work for the GM and limiting the range of potential enemies and encounter scenarios that you can reasonably do. It's okay for the game to have tiny skirmishes and such at low level but after a while it's kind of nice to have enemies who use more complex tactics or include larger groups.
If you're dealing with published material then the issue is exacerbated. Here you're purchased and adventure and likely the majority of the adventure is useless to you and needs to be re-written from scratch. If you're paying a lot of money for premade adventures that follow the standard expectations for the game then you're not going to get your money's worth when you have to replace key characters or monsters with some alternative or re-write half the encounters to deal with the fact that even with more or less full WBL and obscenely overpowered ability scores half the party refuses to have saves higher than +3.
Perhaps my issue with this is that I prescribe to the theory that it's better to treat the disease rather than the symptoms. Going through the extra work to try and coddle PCs who refuse to prioritize their survival is a waste of time and effort...
Okay. I still don't see it, but thanks. We run our eighth level PCs through unmodified sixth level modules and it works fine. Been awhile since we've played PF, tbh (and never beyond about tenth level). Speaking from memory, so perhaps I'm misremembering some issue.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The glass canon builds a lot of low-mastery players make are a good example, since they do plenty of damage for CR-appropriate encounters, but have no defense if the enemy hits back.
That's not something I'd thought of. Cheers.
Finally, sometimes players with a poor understanding of the system go on to become GMs with a poor understanding of the system. That tends to end very badly for everyone involved.
I think this is definitely dependant on how you play. I've been role playing since the late seventies and have gamed with a total of maybe a dozen people (and since the late eighties with the same half dozen). The fact we all suck at playing and DMing isn't a problem. I think that's probably part of how we get away with it.
For those who play with lots of different groups (or who switch groups a lot) I dare say DM variability is a serious issue.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Level corresponds to measurable and quite obvious things, at least for spellcasters. If you're fighting the (humanoid) BBEG and his top spell level isn't higher than yours it looks like someone who should be his equal needs to bring a pack of goons to handle him.
You don't notice that kind of thing if you're not very good at system mastery though. He's just hard to hit or not and does lots of damage or doesn't.
To be clear though, I didn't mean level doesn't mean anything in the game. I meant there isn't a real world concept of level - so I don't see any "common sense" reason for level four PCs to fight ogres and level six PCs to fight giants. It doesn't bother me if level six PCs do the ogre adventures and leave the giant problem til when they're level eight.
If the entire party is so incompetent as to require the GM to either grossly dumb down the encounters to having to arbitrarily save them from themselves, then I'd say you've got a problem.What's the problem? It seems to me it's only a problem if it isnt the entire party.
I have to agree. When I come across this as a DM its never really a problem unless half the players are way more powerful than the rest. When everyone sucks I just nerf their encounters and it works out fine. In fact it lets me get a little goofy with my NPC designs and use archetypes no one ever uses.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Level in the game actually IS a measurable thing as Atarlost points out. Level determines where you are in the pecking order and/or the potential for your capabilities. Level determines the baseline for your statistics.
There are other aspects that levels are involved in. If you have to keep fighting weenie monsters with the chance for death there's less feeling of growth or improvement. In fact, the game can begin to lag behind a bit as XP needed to reach higher levels increases steadily but the amount of XP that you earn from encounters isn't going up much because your GM has to keep sandbagging you rather than letting you go on heroic adventures and fighting things like harpies, wyverns, and wizards, you get to stick with the dire rats, spiders, and the goblins who are probably still mostly murdering you.
If you're dealing with homebrew, you're creating more work for the GM and limiting the range of potential enemies and encounter scenarios that you can reasonably do. It's okay for the game to have tiny skirmishes and such at low level but after a while it's kind of nice to have enemies who use more complex tactics or include larger groups.
If you're dealing with published material then the issue is exacerbated. Here you're purchased and adventure and likely the majority of the adventure is useless to you and needs to be re-written from scratch. If you're paying a lot of money for premade adventures that follow the standard expectations for the game then you're not going to get your money's worth when you have to replace key characters or monsters with some alternative or re-write half the encounters to deal with the fact that even with more or less full WBL and obscenely overpowered ability scores half the party refuses to have saves higher than +3.
Perhaps my issue with this is that I prescribe to the theory that it's better to treat the disease rather than the symptoms. Going through the extra work to try and coddle PCs who refuse to prioritize their survival is a waste of time and effort when you could just show them how to not be scarecrows. And if they already know and then they just refuse to do so...
Natural selection.
level 8 PCs with only +3 in their bad save, deserve a TPK for not prioritizing their survival
not that a shield is needed, but a lot of PCs, especially with Weekly William, make poor prioritizations
it upsets me, when the dwarven fighter of the party, at 8th level, only has a +4 will save when not factoring his dwarven bonus. after traits on a 25 point allotment, but has mountains of strength and hit points.
said dwarf by the same player, forever recycled, always has a dwarven waraxe and heavy steel shield, always tries to start with the breastplate, usually has a 9 wisdom, 7 int and 5 cha, so he can have his
18 Str (17 points)
16 Dex (10 points)
18 Con (10 points)
7 int (gain 4 points)
9 wis (gain 4 points)
5 cha (gain 4 points)
hell, he doesn't even buy perception
mediocre climb and swim though alternating every other level
he never buys a backup weapon with the exception of a composite longbow he rarely upgrades
and expects monsters to focus on dealing with his High AC meatbag in mithril plate with a mountain of HP who does axe and board without 2WF or shield bash feats. expecting enemies to fight him, hell, he takes power attack but never uses it
complains when a barbarian or ranger whom did, take power attack and a 2handed weapon, outdamages him. but when he complains, he tries to sound polite and civilized with his complaints, like he was wearing a monocle and top hat with a tuxedo.
he can climb or swim fairly well
just don't expect him to do much else
9 of the other 15 players use similar hyperspecialized builds
i'm one of the 6 who don't
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Finally, sometimes players with a poor understanding of the system go on to become GMs with a poor understanding of the system. That tends to end very badly for everyone involved.I think this is definitely dependant on how you play. I've been role playing since the late seventies and have gamed with a total of maybe a dozen people (and since the late eighties with the same half dozen). The fact we all suck at playing and DMing isn't a problem. I think that's probably part of how we get away with it.
For those who play with lots of different groups (or who switch groups a lot) I dare say DM variability is a serious issue.
Very true, at the end of the day, the most important thing is that everyone at the table is having fun.
However, I daresay that relatively stable gaming groups which have lasted for decades are the exception. Most gaming groups have a fairly high turnover rate, in my experience.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You're probably right. It can be hard not to extrapolate one's own experiences as "normal".
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Steve Geddes, you are the voice of reason!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think low system mastery across a group is any more disruptive to play than high system mastery. In my last campaign, for the latter half of the adventure, if there was a saving throw to be made, in most cases everyone made it. I'd lure them into a cunning trap and have a treacherous enemy cast Confusion on them at the worst possible time. Nothing happens. Then they kill the enemy. Not very exciting.
I send a boss against them, and they kill it in one round.
I attack them with a large group of weaker enemies, and they can't hit the PCs AC, and then a PC catches them all in a devastating area effect spell.
Either way, it means adventure paths need to be reworked to make them satisfactorily challenging, but otherwise the GM can just use higher or lower level material to keep things interesting.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
My 2CP on the subject of system mastery and optimization:
I work in Customer Service. It's a service industry, so there's not a TON of hardware and systems, but there's some stuff I need all the time. One of my last employers had an ordering software that was updated, modern and windows-based. That system was optimized for my job.
Furthermore I was given the opportunity to cross-train even after learning the job. I took that opportunity. Over the years I sat with, shadowed and learned from many people in my dept, in marketing and sales, and even field nurses. This increased my product and business knowledge which in turn helped me understand my customers' needs better. I got some raises, a promotion and felt successful.
Unfortunately I had to leave that company. Over the years I've had other employment but my current company has outdated software, no cross-training and not even that much initial training. Everyone there complains about these things but no one feels they have the money, time or resources to do anything about it. As a result they feel sub-par. I myself have taken the opportunity handed to me, even with sub-optimal gear and training, to exceed expectations and in just 2 years received a promotion.
Some of the people in my dept said "why you and not me?" My response? Optimization and system mastery.
Let's face it: everyone wants to be good at their job. We go to school, get the right equipment, the best software and hardware, etc. We ALL strive to be great at SOMETHING and take steps to ensure that.
If your job were to be an adventuring rogue in a medieval fantasy setting, you'd get all the gear and training to make you the best at that. Now while initially you'd think "I don't need a Will save to pick a lock. Everyone can't be the best at EVERYTHING!" eventually you'd miss a critical save and if you lived you'd say "I don't want THAT to happen again" and you'd realize that your Will save, while initially sub-optimal due to your chosen profession is still VITAL to your performance in the field; it's still part of your job, so you should make sure it's as up to par as you can get it like your other job skills.
In short: system mastery is needed, it is rewarded, and it is completely natural. This does not mean spearhead one strength of your character to the detriment of all others; this way lies madness. No, you want a strong chance of surviving and enduring through any encounter.
To wit: I have a character who is not overly optimized in a weekly game. Even though we gestalted and I rolled decent stats (one stat is 10, everything else is a 13+) he still seems to lag behind. Then we got into combat. Turns out that yes, I do very little damage w/my Ranger/Cavalier Halfling on a wolf with a sling-staff and built for ranged, but then I started using tactics and ended up never taking a single point of damage and helping to take down EVERY enemy we've come across with consistent damage. No, I'm no powerhouse w/a lance - I have one but I don't do that much w/it and use it sparingly. But here at low levels (level 1 and 2 so far) I'm delivering at least 3 damage to every opponent, in every combat round, while I haven't yet taken any damage or failed a save.
Lest we say "this game isn't ALL combat" my Halfling Bucky also took traits to help w/his social skills and knowledges; he's used his skill ranks wisely. As a result he's a good talker, tracker, provides food, water and shelter in the wild, has helped train some animals for Capital, and has a bit of skill with crafting weapons and alchemy so that my GM is now working w/me on creating alchemical bullets as well as keeping the party in smokesticks. Oh, and he and his wolf are both really good at stealth and perception, so his scouting runs have gone very nicely.
Encourage everyone you know who plays these games to optimize and gain system mastery. It's not "dirty pool" and they will be rewarded in a richer experience. It will not detract from their roleplaying unless they are poor roleplayers. This is a game, and games are built as much on skill as they are on chance.
This is a grab bag of thoughts pertaining to the OP and various other posts:
I've got to say, in the case of many RPGs, system mastery is hard to gain. I've been playing pathfinder for a few months now, and thanks to the forums here, I've gained "decent" system mastery, IE I know the minimum to be survivable in most encounters, and to mitigate my weaknesses. I frequently ask the boards to help me optimize a character for survivability.
But in most other RPGs I've played, there simply isnt the same community dedicated to improving system mastery. Unless you've got other dedicated players/masters next to you, you aint getting much help. Especially when you only see the various books (expensive books) once a week (or less).
Then again, the definition of system mastery seems to vary wildly. I like to build balanced characters (and most of the posters here seem to encourage this), while most guides reccomend min-maxed builds (trentamonks wizard guide is the worst for that).
As a final not (and a moderate rebuttal to Mark Hoover's comment) is that this is a GAME. People are here to have fun/mess around/power trip (at the very least). Do they necessarily want to be messing around optimizing at all? I'm not talking about being the best, I'm just talking about being somewhat optimal. While I LIKE the tactical side of things (a holdover from my love of videogames) many people simply dont want to bother with that stuff. Yes, system mastery is advantageous (in both life and games), but many folks gain little pleasure from the act of gaining mastery, and considering the time required, may not be ready to use it for a game.
Still, this seems to connect with a problem I observed playing normal (competitive) boardgames: IE, it's funnest when nobody understands the rules well. Otherwise, whoever hasn't taken the time to get good game mastery gets CRUSHED (usually me, because I didnt exactly get any pratice), and it sucks out all the fun. I thought it wouldn't be the case with pnp RPGs (since they are collaborative) but apparently this still causes problems.
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
There's always Deus Ex Machina involved. It's what makes your opponents in virtually every encounter come conveniently packaged in groups that happen to have an "appropriate" CR for your APL as determined by the designers of the game. I don't really think it's any more or less "Deus Ex Machina" if the GM ends up adjusting what counts as an appropriate encounter for the party based on their capabilities. (That goes both ways, by the way. I don't see anything wrong with the GM scaling down encounters for unoptimized PCs OR scaling up encounters for optimized PCs.)
"What the Hell?"
"Those children beat my minions? Again?"
"Send out another wave of my weakest remaining minions!"
"No, not you, Shadow Demon. You might actually hurt them. You stay here, with me."
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
That GM genius!
Big shiny GM rule is Let PCs play with their toys!.
SPCDRI make strong PC who can save the day in fight demon. GM give party such encounter.
Rogue instead pick feats Skill Focus (Diplomacy) and My Name Has Enough Vowels. Next encounter is palace mystery. Who get gilt invite and dance with Cinderella and save kingdom?
Fighter pick feats Cleave and Great Cleave and Homebrew Awesome Cleavesauce. Third encounter knee deep in zombies.
Everyone play with their toys and have fun. Win Pathfinder! Big Six only tool for make real life smiles and fist bumps.
Is it really optimization to talk about the Big 6 and say they are system assumptions when Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder AUTHORS OF THE RULES OF THE GAME say that they are?
That is...
+X Enchantment weapons
+X Enchantment Armor and Shields
+X Items to Natural Armor and Deflection Armor
+X Stat boosting items
+X Save boosting items (cloak or vestment of resistance)
Best mobility booster possible with an eye to flying, teleportation
and taking extra actions.Potential Candidates: Any cheap way in GP, 3.5 or Pathfinder, to
heal HP. Everybody buys a wand or two of Cure Light Wounds, Faith Healing, Infernal Healing or Vigor(Lesser) in about that order.Even if they personally can't use it, they hand it off someone who
can. Magical Bedrolls to double healing when sleeping only cost
a couple hundred GP I think. Miscellaneous item healing.The game really doesn't WORK if people don't realize this. That is Pathfinder Equipment 101.
I think the game works even without focusing on the Big 6. It just works better for the players if some consideration is made. They don't have to maximize every one of them, but some eye to progressive improvement in equipment complements level progression.
That said, I would argue that over-emphasis is as damaging to a game (maybe even more) than under-emphasis.
If people think Cloaks of Resistance and feats like Iron Will and Will save boosting traits are "wastes" no matter how many Will saves they drop the ball on, what can you do to reason with them?
Remind them that the floggings will continue until morale improves? I have noticed two kinds of players who tend to make this decision (to not improve a revealed weakness): 1) players so focused on their theorized build that they won't deviate from it, 2) players who aren't particularly focused on the mechanics of their PCs at all. Me, I usually try to make sure that I balance my long term goals with stuff going on and react accordingly and I nudge my own players in that direction when I'm running my games.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think the big six is necessarily that big of a deal most of the time. I do think that utility and defensive items are more important than hemorrhaging gold pieces for another +1 on your weapon. :P
I don't think the big six is necessarily that big of a deal most of the time. I do think that utility and defensive items are more important than hemorrhaging gold pieces for another +1 on your weapon. :P
I'd have to agree that pouring all your WBL into the Big Six and only the Big Six leads to problems. With the way price-scaling works, you can quickly hit a point where you'll get a lot more value from a couple utility items than you would from one more +1.
However, I've often found myself facing the opposite problem of people ignoring the Big Six to focus on stuff that's 'more interesting.' For example, the dual-wield fighter I've mentioned earlier in the thread burned all of his WBL on things like a couple necklaces of fireballs, slippers of spider-climbing, sovereign glue, a sustaining spoon, and a bag of holding because he thought the big six were boring.
Personally, I would say there needs to be a reasonable balance between the Big Six and other useful items. Where that balance point is varies depending on personal preference, build, and campaign circumstances.
[somewhat joking] Maybe it's because you compared druid to rogue? ;P
the druid, has 2 whole class features, that each one individually, are stronger than the entire rogue class.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sure. But a PC doesn't suffer the risk of a "verisimilitude problem", the player does. And if you're relatively clueless about system mastery, you don't draw deductions about whether the BBEG is the same level as you or not based on an evaluation of what spells they cast (I can't even imagine being able to do that) - you just struggle with an encounter or you don't.
So our sixth level party adventuring through a module paizo puts out for fourth level characters don't feel any less heroic (to us) when they fight the evil, seventh level wizard at the end in a nail biting climax. We don't notice that "he's about the same level" since he feels tougher (being better built than us). It's still a climactic, fitting end to the adventure, because that feel is all about the players' experience, not about whether the party can deduce that the evil warlock didn't know any more powerful spells than the party magicuser (which may be true but isn't something that would even occur to us to consider).
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
But there is an the topic a lot of the thread is devoted to, what to do when a players favorite build always has a poor will save? Some players expect the GM to make will DCs easier to beat, rather than spend a feat or magic item to improve the weak area.
Some DCs can't be reduced; they are what they are.
A level 4 spell requires a 14 in the casting stat, so the minimum DC is 10+4+2=16.A PC with a +0 save is going to fail that 75% of the time, without the GM making any attempt to shore that DC up with stat boosters or Spell Focus.
To stop things being dull a 2 on a roll should be fail. As should a roll of 5 or less.
With the OP playing a druid, and the outset player playing a rogue, system mastery can only go so far. The thing top do is start at the beginning: remind the player of the rogue that he's playing an inferior character class, and that he should be playing a vivisector alchemist. Every chance you get, take the time to point out that playing a rogue is wrong from an optimization point of view. Similarly, point out to the fighter's player that he should be playing a superstitious barbarian. Offer to redo their characters for them, if they lack the mental capacity to create proper characters.
Your friends may seem a bit rough and resistant to new ideas at first, but that comes with the inferior gamer mentality. Persist, because it's for their own good. They WILL thank you. Someday.
There are many kinds of mastery in this game.
System mastery simply means knowing the rules of the game and being aware of how the game generally plays as levels progress. It's about knowing how martial classes rule the roost in early levels why spellcasters begin to reign supreme at levels 12+.
Character optimization is about building characters based upon these known facts. You knwo the game favors offense so you make sure your character is good at it. You know that spells and abilities become much more ruthless in the later levels so you build to ensure it can survive reasonably well. It's about using the rules you know to build a character that can see.
Tactical mastery is about actually using the above. Afterall an optimized wizard is as good as a flashy commoner in the hands of someone who doesn't know what they're doing (only how to make good wizards).
The unfortunate part in all this is the only way to get people to master any of these is to get people to play, read, and learn. Plenty of people will play, some will read, but few will choose to learn.
Tactical mastery is about
HEY! No one is MY master, you tyrannical je-!
Oh.
Tactical!
Oh.
I see.
Oops.
How embarrassing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are many kinds of mastery in this game.
System mastery simply means knowing the rules of the game and being aware of how the game generally plays as levels progress. It's about knowing how martial classes rule the roost in early levels why spellcasters begin to reign supreme at levels 12+.
It’s nice to hear someone else say this. I am so tired of “Rogues/monks/fighters are teh suxxor’ and how overpowered and broken Spellcaster are, when in fact for most of the levels where actual game play occurs on a real table, the classes are either balanced or the warriors have a edge.
It’s nice to hear someone else say this. I am so tired of “Rogues/monks/fighters are teh suxxor’ and how overpowered and broken Spellcaster are, when in fact for most of the levels where actual game play occurs on a real table, the classes are either balanced or the warriors have a edge.There are many kinds of mastery in this game.
System mastery simply means knowing the rules of the game and being aware of how the game generally plays as levels progress. It's about knowing how martial classes rule the roost in early levels why spellcasters begin to reign supreme at levels 12+.
I would be careful about saying "where gameplay actually takes place at a real table" type stuff. Some people prefer higher level games and start out at higher levels. Occasionally I start campaigns at 10, because i don't' want to be bothered by the low level play for the story I'm telling. The players like that because they can make a different sort of character rather than an organic one that has to be viable across all levels.
Also I've found that about 90 percent of rogues suck at lower levels. Same thing for monks. Its hard to screw up a low level fighter, but I've seen it done (yippe, you have 23 AC at level 1, now do some damage? Oh, you have a shortsword and tower shield... good luck with that) When the 1/2 BAB character can deal more damage with his sling with a higher to hit your character sheet probably needs to be crumpled up and thrown in the bin. It actually requires more system mastery to play the 3/4 martials at any level than other classes (though I have seen wizards, clerics, and druids played horridly, healbots are useless and touch wizards require system mastery)
The only benefit to AC a tower shield gives is if your Dex is made of fail, but the -2 to attacks and the check penalty is just too horrible to make it work. It's akin to giving all of your enemies a free +2 to AC versus you at what is probably no real AC gain on your end compared to a heavy shield.
Design Manager
|
Tower Shield isn't necessarily a trap option, it's just highly situational. If you happen to need your way into range to whack at a high level archer or gunslinger, total cover can be a life saver. Plus, there's the ol' Tower Shield Specialist.
Prone Shooter before they fixed it, that was a trap option.
Tower Shield isn't necessarily a trap option, it's just highly situational. If you happen to need your way into range to whack at a high level archer or gunslinger, total cover can be a life saver. Plus, there's the ol' Tower Shield Specialist.
Prone Shooter before they fixed it, that was a trap option.
No, tower shield is straight up a trap option. Its suboptimal from the get go, and to make it not suck you need to expend non replenishing resources (feats and class abilities). The opportunity cost for a narrow range of situational advantages is just not worth it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
No, tower shield is straight up a trap option. Its suboptimal from the get go, and to make it not suck you need to expend non replenishing resources (feats and class abilities). The opportunity cost for a narrow range of situational advantages is just not worth it.Tower Shield isn't necessarily a trap option, it's just highly situational. If you happen to need your way into range to whack at a high level archer or gunslinger, total cover can be a life saver. Plus, there's the ol' Tower Shield Specialist.
Prone Shooter before they fixed it, that was a trap option.
I wouldn't say it's a trap option. More like an enemy option. I once built a phalanx of hobgoblins with tower shields and feats to help each other... it was not popular with the PCs.
Tower Shield isn't necessarily a trap option, it's just highly situational. If you happen to need your way into range to whack at a high level archer or gunslinger, total cover can be a life saver. Plus, there's the ol' Tower Shield Specialist.
Prone Shooter before they fixed it, that was a trap option.
I think you're using a different definition of 'trap option' than what is normally see used.
Pre-errate Prone Shooter wasn't a trap, it was a feat that did nothing. Trap options are things that look decent on the surface, but don't actually work when you take a proper look at them.
Tower Shields tend the suffer in that regard, on account of the massive penalties you take for the added AC. Tower Shield Specialist has a couple big issues that immediately spring to mind:
1: Towwer Shield Training. This looks very nice, but there's one flaw so that's so big it feels like an oversight. It explicitly only effects the max dex and armor check penalties on your armor. So you're still stuck with +2 Max Dex from the tower shield, and a -10 armor check penalty. This means that by medium levels you'll actually get more AC from using a lighter shield that won't hurt your dex bonus.
2: The loss of offensive potential. Only having a single one-handed weapon hurts, and not getting any form of weapon training is just icing on the cake. The only real offensive boost the class gets is not taking the penalty from using a tower shield, which seems a bit underwhelming to me. It doesn't help that the only real game mechanic for tanking is attacks of opportunity, which lose a lot of their sting when your character is pillow-fisted.
Personally, if I wanted to make a tankier fighter I'd be more inclined to start with the Shielded Fighter, whose abilities are just generally more useful, plus with the right feats his defenses are better without sacrificing his ability to do damage.