Name one Pathfinder rule or subsystem that you dislike, and say why:

[haremlord]

Ross Byers wrote:

I think the issue there might be semantics. If a 'full round action' was instead of a 'full turn action', it becomes much more clear that it's taking the entirety of your turn not the entire round.

I totally agree. If it was:

Free Action
Swift Action
Move Action
Standard Action
Full Action
Full Round

I would totally understand and not be confused. Again, I understand it's a hold over, but considering that I've been gaming (mostly D&D and variants) several years and I just figured this out maybe a few months ago? I mean... I'm not THAT stupid, right? :(

[kyrt-ryder]

Ross Byers wrote:

HeHateMe wrote:

Personally, I hate that channeling heals everything within the radius, including the bad guys. It's ridiculous to me that the channeler can't control who gets healed. That forces players to either be very careful with their positioning when channeling, or spend a feat on Selective Channeling, which rivals Combat Expertise for the title of most ludicrous feat tax.

I don't really like channeling at all. The 'present your holy symbol and affect a radius' thing makes sense for turning undead (and therefore to some degree for harming undead), but it isn't really a visual that I associate with healing. (It also makes the mass cure spells really underwhelming. Mass cure light wounds is a 5th level spell. But level 1 clerics basically have it multiple times per day.)

Mass Cure Spells have always been underwhelming. The extra targets are pretty much never worth the sacrificed combat potential of a spell several levels higher.

Heck the Cure Spells in general are pretty underwhelming, even more-so regards the characters with higher hit points that in theory are the ones who are going to take the most beating anyway.

[Otherwhere]

Kthulhu wrote:

Yeah, everyone knows that the proper way to enforce WBL is by using WBL fairies...invisible, intangible socialist fey that redistribute wealth while characters are sleeping.

Oooohhhh!! That just gave me a great idea for a scenario! Socialist faeries!

[Bill Dunn]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

Mass Cure Spells have always been underwhelming. The extra targets are pretty much never worth the sacrificed combat potential of a spell several levels higher.

Heck the Cure Spells in general are pretty underwhelming, even more-so regards the characters with higher hit points that in theory are the ones who are going to take the most beating anyway.

The problem is, compared to damaging spells, they scale weirdly. They offer a little scaling based on caster level, but most of their scaling is by spell level - which, thanks to wand cost calculations, means that there is no healing wand more efficient than the wand of cure light wounds. They also, as a result of their scaling, generally scale poorly compared to the damage a PC is likely to take in a fight.

Their singular major positive factor is the ability of most PC clerics to spontaneously cast them so they don't cost a pre-planned resource.

I think there could be a better scaling for healing spells - I'm just not sure what it should be yet. I haven't put too much effort to it.

[Imbicatus]

Otherwhere wrote:

Kthulhu wrote:

Yeah, everyone knows that the proper way to enforce WBL is by using WBL fairies...invisible, intangible socialist fey that redistribute wealth while characters are sleeping.

Oooohhhh!! That just gave me a great idea for a scenario! Socialist faeries!

I think they are related to the Underpants Gnomes.

[Ross Byers]

Bill Dunn wrote:

I think there could be a better scaling for healing spells - I'm just not sure what it should be yet. I haven't put too much effort to it.

It should be like damage spells - a die per level (or die per multiple of levels), instead of a point per level.

I mean, a cure critical wounds (3rd level) shouldn't fix all the victims of a fireball, but it should be able to fix a victim. This would make the cure spells all function the same except for higher caps, which is a problem (why cast cure moderate at 3rd level when cure light also fixes 3d6?) But that can be be remedied by taking a page from Lay on Hands and adding rider effects. Cure light might only fix damage. Cure moderate could also include a lesser restoration. Cure critical could also remove blindness. And so on, which also reduces the number of 'reactive' non-cure healing spells that clerics have to prepare/keep on scrolls. Inflict spells also become more worth casting offensively because inflict critical wounds could also inflict blindness (instead of blindness/deafness being a separate spell.)

Bill Dunn wrote:

They offer a little scaling based on caster level, but most of their scaling is by spell level - which, thanks to wand cost calculations, means that there is no healing wand more efficient than the wand of cure light wounds.

Even if they scaled based on caster level, cure light wounds is going to be cheapest on wands and potions - cure moderate would have to deliver twice as much healing at the same caster level.

[Balgin]

Ross Byers wrote:

But it ignore the cumulative damage the armor incurs (dented armor with holes in it is much less protected.) And your armor shouldn't really do much against a Frost Giant's greataxe that's bigger than you are.

Oh man, if we wanted realistic armour degradation then we'd be playing Cursed Empire where every single attack involves six different dice rolls and up to 3 different pieces of bookkeeping.

Step 1: Attack roll.
Step 2: Defence roll.
Step 3: Hit location roll.
Step 4: Roll armour's percent to block damage chance.
Step 5: Roll damage.
Step 6: If armour blocked damage roll to see how much it blocks.
Step 7: Apply any remaining damage to the appropriate hit location.
Step 8: Apply the same amount of damage to the target's total life hp as well (obviously).
Step 9: If armour prevented any damage at all then reduce that piece of armour's 3 soak percents (slashing/blunt/piercing) by the total ammount of damage done. If armour soaked no damage then the percentages don't go down.
Step 10: Ask yourself if you really want to go through all that just to make a second attack.

Yeah... Combat in Cursed Empire is technically a good simulation but so clunky that the rules aren't worth the paper they're written on. Essentially the defence penalties that armour imposes are so large that their small soak percent isn't enough of a trade off to be worth it until you start to take rapidly rising penalties for being ganged up on. Your defence chance plummets but your armour soak remains the same (ideally balanced at about 2-3 foes).

Quote:

So, yeah, I see where you're coming from here, but I also see why fixing it for 'realism' would not be good for the game.

Yep. Trying to fix it would be more trouble than it's worth. I know there's an attempt in Ultimate Combat (based on something from an old Star Wars rpg) but it basically seems to work out about the same but with people getting hit a lot more often than they used to (which messes with game balance).

[kyrt-ryder]

Ross Byers wrote:

Even if they scaled based on caster level, cure light wounds is going to be cheapest on wands and potions - cure moderate would have to deliver twice as much healing at the same caster level.

Which they probably should be. Heck every +2 CR is categorized as twice as powerful anyway.

Sure it doesn't quite ring true in terms of blasting spells, but in general the best spells do have a very rapid and potent degree of escalation between levels.

I'd also like to see healing magic heal a value relative to the amount of hit points the target has, its silly that a High HP damage soak is so much more expensive to heal than a High AC tank when both are doing the same job.

[Imbicatus]

The problem is 3rd edition in general kept the same cure scaling as 1st & 2nd edition, but massively buffed HPs. The cure spells were not likewise increased in compensation.

[Chengar Qordath]

Balgin wrote:

Quote:

So, yeah, I see where you're coming from here, but I also see why fixing it for 'realism' would not be good for the game.

Yep. Trying to fix it would be more trouble than it's worth. I know there's an attempt in Ultimate Combat (based on something from an old Star Wars rpg) but it basically seems to work out about the same but with people getting hit a lot more often than they used to (which messes with game balance).

Armor-as-DR could definitely work. Plenty of other systems use it, after all. But it only works if the entire game system is built with that in mind. Basically, Pathfinder would have to rework all the math for attack bonuses, damage, defense, and damage reduction to account for the new system. That's a lot of work.

[Ross Byers]

Yeah, and balancing monsters, because all of a sudden a monster with one attack for 40 damage and a monster with four attacks for 10 damage don't have the same output.

[Snowblind]

Chengar Qordath wrote:

...

[X] could definitely work. Plenty of other systems use it, after all. But it only works if the entire game system is built with that in mind. Basically, Pathfinder would have to rework all the [Y] for [A], [B], [C], and [D] to account for the new system. That's a lot of work.

Fill in X, Y, A, B, C and D and you can apply it to almost all the problems in this thread.

[Otherwhere]

Personally, I like Armor-as-DR, but - as others have pointed out - the system needs to be designed with that in mind.

I do allow a DR1/- and DR2/- for medium and heavy armor respectively in my games. Minimal, but it's there.

[Imbicatus]

I love armor as DR. In GURPS. It just doesn't work in Pathfinder because the game isn't designed for it.

[M1k31]

Imbicatus wrote:

The problem is 3rd edition in general kept the same cure scaling as 1st & 2nd edition, but massively buffed HPs. The cure spells were not likewise increased in compensation.

It could be better to just change how much higher level spells cure... like instead of healing hit points, the higher level spells heal portions or full hit die based on what you roll, which would then also scale on the targets Con. That way Clw is still often useful for squishy builds while Cmw and higher would be better for tanks

[Skylancer4]

M1k31 wrote:

Imbicatus wrote:

The problem is 3rd edition in general kept the same cure scaling as 1st & 2nd edition, but massively buffed HPs. The cure spells were not likewise increased in compensation.

It could be better to just change how much higher level spells cure... like instead of healing hit points, the higher level spells heal portions or full hit die based on what you roll, which would then also scale on the targets Con. That way Clw is still often useful for squishy builds while Cmw and higher would be better for tanks

1) It removes part of the "fun" of the game (rolling dice).

2) it involves more calculations (which Paizo said they wanted to remove to streamline the game).

[Ravingdork]

Feats and abilities that don't expand on player options, but limit them instead.

An example would be the Strike Back feat, which many assumed was possible without the feat. Same with the Interplanetary Teleport spell. Greater Teleport worked just fine for planet hopping before that came along.

[Imbicatus]

Skylancer4 wrote:

M1k31 wrote:

Imbicatus wrote:

The problem is 3rd edition in general kept the same cure scaling as 1st & 2nd edition, but massively buffed HPs. The cure spells were not likewise increased in compensation.

It could be better to just change how much higher level spells cure... like instead of healing hit points, the higher level spells heal portions or full hit die based on what you roll, which would then also scale on the targets Con. That way Clw is still often useful for squishy builds while Cmw and higher would be better for tanks

1) It removes part of the "fun" of the game (rolling dice).

2) it involves more calculations (which Paizo said they wanted to remove to streamline the game).

It also goes against a design element, which is cure spells are not supposed to scale as quickly as incoming damage. In an effort to speed up play, in-combat healing was designed to not be able to keep pace with incoming damage. It can give you a buffer of a few rounds, but it's not usually enough to keep you alive for more than one or two rounds when you would have died without it.

[DrDeth]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

Ross Byers wrote:

HeHateMe wrote:

Personally, I hate that channeling heals everything within the radius, including the bad guys. It's ridiculous to me that the channeler can't control who gets healed. That forces players to either be very careful with their positioning when channeling, or spend a feat on Selective Channeling, which rivals Combat Expertise for the title of most ludicrous feat tax.

I don't really like channeling at all. The 'present your holy symbol and affect a radius' thing makes sense for turning undead (and therefore to some degree for harming undead), but it isn't really a visual that I associate with healing. (It also makes the mass cure spells really underwhelming. Mass cure light wounds is a 5th level spell. But level 1 clerics basically have it multiple times per day.)

Mass Cure Spells have always been underwhelming. The extra targets are pretty much never worth the sacrificed combat potential of a spell several levels higher.

Heck the Cure Spells in general are pretty underwhelming, even more-so regards the characters with higher hit points that in theory are the ones who are going to take the most beating anyway.

Heck, Mass Cures work really well when attacked by hordes of undead- you rparty gets healed and the monsters get hurt.

Ross, I agree- Selective Channeling should be part of Channeling.

[Chengar Qordath]

Snowblind wrote:

Chengar Qordath wrote:

...

[X] could definitely work. Plenty of other systems use it, after all. But it only works if the entire game system is built with that in mind. Basically, Pathfinder would have to rework all the [Y] for [A], [B], [C], and [D] to account for the new system. That's a lot of work.

Fill in X, Y, A, B, C and D and you can apply it to almost all the problems in this thread.

Certainly all the ones that go deeper into the system. I don't think game balance would be too horribly thrown off by something like giving clerics Selective Channel for free or removing a few of the worst feat taxes.

[Atarlost]

Daily abilities. Encounters are balanced on a per encounter basis while most player abilities are balanced on a per day basis.

The 4-5 encounters per day assumption doesn't work. A typical dungeon that cannot be split into multiple days without teleport cheese has far more encounters than "should" be in a day while overland travel has far fewer.

[kyrt-ryder]

Atarlost wrote:

Daily abilities. Encounters are balanced on a per encounter basis while most player abilities are balanced on a per day basis.

The 4-5 encounters per day assumption doesn't work. A typical dungeon that cannot be split into multiple days without teleport cheese has far more encounters than "should" be in a day while overland travel has far fewer.

Could you explain how these dungeons 'cannot be split into multiple days without teleport cheese'?

I've read tons of tales of parties either fortifying a room in a dungeon and resting there or falling back outside the dungeon [but in a position to intercept incoming reinforcements] and then plunged back in the next day.

[M1k31]

Skylancer4 wrote:

M1k31 wrote:

Imbicatus wrote:

The problem is 3rd edition in general kept the same cure scaling as 1st & 2nd edition, but massively buffed HPs. The cure spells were not likewise increased in compensation.

It could be better to just change how much higher level spells cure... like instead of healing hit points, the higher level spells heal portions or full hit die based on what you roll, which would then also scale on the targets Con. That way Clw is still often useful for squishy builds while Cmw and higher would be better for tanks

1) It removes part of the "fun" of the game (rolling dice).

2) it involves more calculations (which Paizo said they wanted to remove to streamline the game).

I'm not sure you understand my meaning... I was referring to:

Cure Light Wounds: Cures 1d8 damage + 1/level (max +5).

Cure Moderate Wounds Cures 2d8 damage + 1/level (max +10).

being changed to something like:

Cure Light Wounds: Cures 1d8 damage + 1/level (max +5).

Cure Moderate Wounds Cures 1d4 (1/2 x target base hit dice) + 1/caster level (max +10).

To clarify by math this would equate to healing a cleric about the same on average(as they are d8's), however healing a fighter(D10) would increase by about 1-4 hp on average, and a barbarian would be healed by 2-8 more, meanwhile a wizard(d6) would be only healed by about 2d6 instead of the 2d8 Cmw currently heals them.

[DM_Blake]

Stereofm wrote:

After reading the thread, there is a rule that I really don't like, and I have not seen it mentioned here : CORNERS !!! (And the rules for cover of concealment in general, but corners are the worse case IMO).

Corners give you basically +4 AC cover from all kind of attacks, and negate AOOs, and give you a +2 bonus to reflex saves.

This seems really unrealistic, but also it rewards idiot behaviour, like the mage putting itself in the front of the party, but in a corner, because he does not get AOOs.

This slows combat on both sides, as people do not always compute well the variations in AC.

And also, the corner cover punishes BOTH sides of the fight : it could make sense for some defenders to establish a bottleneck in a room at the end of a corridor, where they can block the mobility of the enemy, and stall them, and benefit from the fact they are more numerous than the attackers, but no, they are as handicapped as the attackers when they want to roll their attack.

I will grant that it makes sense to seek cover against missile weapons, but against melee attack, I do not think so, especially as the fights occur over an abstract grid with an already large size for the squares.

It also hardly seems heroic to win a fight by hiding in a corner, but then that's me. Sorry for the rant.

To me, the "corners" rules make perfect sense.

Are you possibly thinking of inside corners instead of outside corners?

Maybe an illustration:

W = Wall, M = Monster, P = PC, I used dots to represent some empty squares but not all of them (there is no difference between a dot square and an empty square; I just needed dots for formatting)

Scenario 1 (inside corner):

WWWWWWWWWWWW
WP. . . . .M
W. M
W
W
WM

In this scenario, the PC is in a corner but it does not protect him in any way so he doesn't get ANY benefit against the 3 monsters. No AC, no REF save, and no protection from AoOs.

Scenario 2 (outside corner):

. W
. W
. W
PWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
. M . . . M
.
M

In this scenario, the PC uses the corner of the wall to gain some protection from the two monsters standing near the wall. He gets all the benefits listed for corners against these two monsters. The PC gets no benefit regarding the third monster (straight south, or below the PC) still has a clear line of effect to the PC.

I hope that clears it up.

[Chengar Qordath]

Atarlost wrote:

Daily abilities. Encounters are balanced on a per encounter basis while most player abilities are balanced on a per day basis.

Which leads to the eternal debate over issues like the 15 minute adventuring day, how many encounters are appropriate, and all the balance issues around classes that don't have daily limits on their abilities, and thus get weaker powers.

[Crimeo]

Ravingdork wrote:

Feats and abilities that don't expand on player options, but limit them instead.

An example would be the Strike Back feat, which many assumed was possible without the feat. Same with the Interplanetary Teleport spell. Greater Teleport worked just fine for planet hopping before that came along.

Greater teleport STILL works for planet hopping. Just because there's a totally redundant spell 2 levels higher doesn't change the fact that the text of the lower spell unambiguously allows interplanetary travel.

But totally on board with your opinion. Not only did they try to limit options, they didn't even do so competently. It's like extra bad.

[Rhedyn]

Full attack mechanic.

It's cancer. The root of nearly every flaw in the game comes from the full attack mechanic.

[DrDeth]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

Atarlost wrote:

Daily abilities. Encounters are balanced on a per encounter basis while most player abilities are balanced on a per day basis.

The 4-5 encounters per day assumption doesn't work. A typical dungeon that cannot be split into multiple days without teleport cheese has far more encounters than "should" be in a day while overland travel has far fewer.

Could you explain how these dungeons 'cannot be split into multiple days without teleport cheese'?

I've read tons of tales of parties either fortifying a room in a dungeon and resting there or falling back outside the dungeon [but in a position to intercept incoming reinforcements] and then plunged back in the next day.

We did this for decades before 'teleport cheese". And it not really cheesy, it's one of the best uses for Teleport. We also used Rope Trick, etc.

[DrDeth]

Chengar Qordath wrote:

Atarlost wrote:

Daily abilities. Encounters are balanced on a per encounter basis while most player abilities are balanced on a per day basis.

Which leads to the eternal debate over issues like the 15 minute adventuring day, how many encounters are appropriate, and all the balance issues around classes that don't have daily limits on their abilities, and thus get weaker powers.

Oddly we had the same debates with Runequest, which has no daily uses and uses Spellpoints. And with other systems.

[N. Jolly]

Guns: Guns are for the most part worthless without the gunslinger class, and barely serviceable WITH it. Too many flaws for not enough payoff, although gunslinger gave us bolt ace, so thanks for that.

Full attacks: I'm with everyone else who has a problem with these, they really kill a lot of viable builds.

Poison rules: Yeah, really no way for PCs to make these viable without some hard rules manipulation.

Combat Expertise: STOP BEING NEEDED FOR EVERYTHING!

Martials being painfully boring mechanically: Put me on team TOB, martials should have real abilities instead of number increases that ever only matter on full attacks since single attacks aren't a viable style (RIP vital strike)

Standard action spells and concentration rules: Magic should need more time to go off than a standard action, even/especially for combat spells, and the concentration rules are borked.

Summoners: LOVE the idea, the execution was flawed and poorly explained, this was such a great class though, and honestly showed a lot of the flaws in fighters. The fact that being able to pick limbs, pounce, and flight as for what was the most part a pure martial creature made them straight up better than fighters (even with all of the fighter's bonuses) was hilarious, and showed just how lackluster martial classes really are.

There's more, but that's all I can think of for now.

[Buri Reborn]

That you, RAW, can't take any damn common sense responses to obvious, in your face, you know it's coming guaranteed danger because you're flat-footed before the first normal round of combat.

[Imbicatus]

Buri Reborn wrote:

That you, RAW, can't take any damn common sense responses to obvious, in your face, you know it's coming guaranteed danger because you're flat-footed before the first normal round of combat.

Imagine you are a rebel soldier in the opening scene of Star Wars. You know you are about the be boarded. You have prepared an ambush at the breach point. You know they are about to blow the door. You are nervous, maybe you blink as you ready your weapon. You wonder when are they finally going to come? Suddenly the door explodes and you can't see through the smoke, and it take a few second to adjust. In that time you are flat-footed. Even though you knew they were coming, you didn't know exactly when they were coming, and the second or two that it takes you to react is your initiative roll.

[iambobdole1]

Spell materials. While it does lend a little color to the game, using this stuff as written seems like it would be impossibly time consuming and annoying.
Example: wizard - "I cast fireball!"
Gm- "sorry, you don't have any sulfur or a bat guano pellet, so you can't do jack!"

[Imbicatus]

iambobdole1 wrote:

Spell materials. While it does lend a little color to the game, using this stuff as written seems like it would be impossibly time consuming and annoying.

Example: wizard - "I cast fireball!"
Gm- "sorry, you don't have any sulfur or a bat guano pellet, so you can't do jack!"

Does anyone actually use this anymore? All of that (literal) crap is assumed to be in a spell component pouch, or replaced entirely by Eschew Materials.

[Crimeo]

I have never heard of anybody tracking bat guano, but I do know of people expecting you to pay for new pouches occasionally, and certainly people tracking specific costly materials (i.e. you have to invest while in town in ruby dust ahead of time if you want ruby dust for a spell later, and it does not serve interchangeably with diamond dust)

[hiiamtom]

BAB is a plague, 5e's proficiency is much better with separate attack actions added based on class and only class (meaning dipping something as a fighter means less attacks, etc.)

Saving throws. I like the idea of a saving throw for each ability score more than Fort, Ref, Will - but I like them as skills more with spell DCs bumped a little.

Skill point penalties. Unchained have much, much better options with background skills, but tying skills to INT is incredibly video game like and breaks logic. "I gained 2 INT from this magic headband, I now know about plants!"

Tying ability scores to everything. One thing AD&D does right is break ability scores from class abilities for the most part. I'm fine with getting better sized pools of arcane energy or Ki or getting more uses out of some feature, I'm not fine with swimming wholly dependent on strength, knowledge of being a soldier on INT or WIS, etc. plenty of dumb people are experts on what they know and a big dumb fighter should be a tactician still. The whole idea of the ability to cast spells being tied to an ability score also sucks. With MAD being a thing it's just not good to be so tied to numbers when things should be more class and skill outside of your stats.

Metamagic. None of it is any good or brings a lot to the table.

Combat maneuvers. I maintain the system was a good attempt to bring some interest from 3.5 maneuvers - but it is the worst set of crunch in the game. It could have been well supported options for martials, but instead is mostly ignored by players and only used by the GM.

Favored Class. I know you were avoiding prestige class hopping by design but no need to make them just not worth it without a flat gestalt. It would have been better to just say "one prestige per character" and give the favored class bonus for either class.

VMCs. Fantastic idea, the worst execution. We already knew the class tier system is a problem without highlighting it with VMCs. When you can get crummy sneak attack die or a hex, the choice is obvious. At least craft them to allow a wizard to be a Arcane Trickster or at least get more than +1d6 SA for a feat.

Kingdom Building. Exploitable accounting.

[Crimeo]

Quote:

"I gained 2 INT from this magic headband, I now know about plants!"

Intelligence as an ability IS just rote facts and muscle memory. That's like the whole ability. It should really have been called "Knowledge" not intelligence, and then wisdom should have been called intelligence. That would be more accurate in terms of what they actually do.

And when you think about it that way, it then makes perfect sense that a +2 headband of knowledge makes you suddenly know about plants.

Thinking of it that way also well accounts for soldiers and people even if dumb to have skills in their specialties. Because the dumbness would be their low INT (was WIS) and their knowledge would be the thing they have to not dump.

[Firewarrior44]

hiiamtom wrote:

Kingdom Building. Exploitable accounting.

What you mean if I go into politics I can cheat the system and make mad cash?

[Barathos]

I may have skipped someone already saying what I'm about to say, I jumped ahead when I realised how old this post is, and I can't really quote people since I had to switch browsers to log in.

HP
People who say non-HP systems don't work clearly haven't played M&M.

Natural armour scaling arbitrarily to meet CR expectations
I agree. I have recently been considering implementing a hoiserule that gives a dodge bonus to AC equal to half your BAB, I would increase the cost of magical AC items to compensate (x1.5), reduce Natural Armour of some monsters. It should make Touch AC scale reasonably and make firearms less b%!$@%*+.

firearms
I hate pathfinder's firearm rules with a passion. I'm OK with firearms treating armour as a lower value, but it's b$&+@+++ that it ignores 50 points of natural armour like it was tissue paper.

[hiiamtom]

If only real life politics were solved by murdering the opposition and then being handed a massive sack of cash.

[Buri Reborn]

Imbicatus wrote:

Imagine you are a rebel soldier in the opening scene of Star Wars. You know you are about the be boarded. You have prepared an ambush at the breach point. You know they are about to blow the door. You are nervous, maybe you blink as you ready your weapon. You wonder when are they finally going to come? Suddenly the door explodes and you can't see through the smoke, and it take a few second to adjust. In that time you are flat-footed. Even though you knew they were coming, you didn't know exactly when they were coming, and the second or two that it takes you to react is your initiative roll.

Imagine you're talking to someone you strongly suspect of being a grade A bad guy. You're talking to him and sensing his motives and s!++. You get the sense he's about to strike or act out violently. You can do NOTHING per RAW. You can't ready, you can't take immediate actions if he tries something... nothing. No, it's a dumb straight-jacket on common sense scenarios.

The real life analogy would be cops with weapons drawn taking down a suspect. Suspect draws a knife and charges. If it were Pathfinder, they'd be f#!+ed. At least one cop would have a mortal wound. What would really happen? We'd have another headline to read about and a couple cops get to go home to their families.

[My Self]

Buri Reborn wrote:

Imbicatus wrote:

Imagine you are a rebel soldier in the opening scene of Star Wars. You know you are about the be boarded. You have prepared an ambush at the breach point. You know they are about to blow the door. You are nervous, maybe you blink as you ready your weapon. You wonder when are they finally going to come? Suddenly the door explodes and you can't see through the smoke, and it take a few second to adjust. In that time you are flat-footed. Even though you knew they were coming, you didn't know exactly when they were coming, and the second or two that it takes you to react is your initiative roll.

Imagine you're talking to someone you strongly suspect of being a grade A bad guy. You're talking to him and sensing his motives and s*@@. You get the sense he's about to strike or act out violently. You can do NOTHING per RAW. You can't ready, you can't take immediate actions if he tries something... nothing. No, it's a dumb straight-jacket on common sense scenarios.

The real life analogy would be cops with weapons drawn taking down a suspect. Suspect draws a knife and charges. If it were Pathfinder, they'd be f#!+ed. At least one cop would have a mortal wound. What would really happen? We'd have another headline to read about and a couple cops get to go home to their families.

I think that would count as having made your perception check to avoid a surprise round, as they're very clearly in front of you and still there.

[Ravingdork]

Imbicatus wrote:

iambobdole1 wrote:

Spell materials. While it does lend a little color to the game, using this stuff as written seems like it would be impossibly time consuming and annoying.

Example: wizard - "I cast fireball!"
Gm- "sorry, you don't have any sulfur or a bat guano pellet, so you can't do jack!"

Does anyone actually use this anymore? All of that (literal) crap is assumed to be in a spell component pouch, or replaced entirely by Eschew Materials.

I did it once when, while infiltrating a pirate ship, one of my players lost his component pouch. He had to scour the ship for such esoteric things as butter or a firefly in order to use spells like grease or light, respectively.

[Buri Reborn]

My Self wrote:

I think that would count as having made your perception check to avoid a surprise round, as they're very clearly in front of you and still there.

Doesn't matter. The luck of the initiative roll could give the perp a higher initiative. In no game system should that be allowed in that scenario. It makes zero sense. The entire transition from noncombat to combat makes zero sense in all but the most uncommon scenarios.

[My Self]

Buri Reborn wrote:

My Self wrote:

I think that would count as having made your perception check to avoid a surprise round, as they're very clearly in front of you and still there.

Doesn't matter. The luck of the initiative roll could give the perp a higher initiative. In no game system should that be allowed in that scenario. It makes zero sense. The entire transition from noncombat to combat makes zero sense in all but the most uncommon scenarios.

I guess.

You can go and live your life in a combat style and never need to spend a swift action to use it at the beginning of a combat.

[TriOmegaZero]

Buri Reborn wrote:

Doesn't matter. The luck of the initiative roll could give the perp a higher initiative. In no game system should that be allowed in that scenario. It makes zero sense. The entire transition from noncombat to combat makes zero sense in all but the most uncommon scenarios.

You're describing the classic gunslinger duel as making no sense. Which I don't see as being too different from your cop example.

[Buri Reborn]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

You're describing the classic gunslinger duel as making no sense. Which I don't see as being too different from your cop example.

In any scenario other than extreme ineptitude, the cops would fire the moment the perp took a step in their direction. The in-game representation of that is a readied action which you can't do, at all, outside of active combat. That's what makes zero sense. Also, the scenario is melee vs. firearms. How is that anything like the classic gunslinger duel?