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How about optimizing for fun?
Did anyone say you shouldn't do that? I thought we all did that.
Your game clearly happened, but because the playstyle involved is so... unique, it is best discarded as an outlier, as it is far from representative of the average game.I think this very thing every time I read your posts. Perhaps one day I'll get to play in a game where these assumptions I can only read about hold true.
I'm talking about the consequences of the math of the Pathfinder system. If you would like to play in that kind of game you need only take the following steps:
Step 1: Play Pathfinder.
Step 2: Make sure your group of 4-5 people invests in their most important stat, keeps up with WBL, and takes 1-2 critical feats.
Step 3: Get to high level. 12+ (Though Cheapy's thread indicates it really happens at level 11)
There you go have fun.
And for serious, at minutes per level and being only a 3rd level slot with the wizard using overland flight (that they cast yesterday!) there's no reason that people should be going into the fight without fly (unless the dragon snuck up on you, presumably outside its lair, since you would hope that if you were going to the lair you'd have handled that...)There were a number of fights that started with the whole party using overland flight, and also wearing rings of featherfall, in preference to almost any other sort of ring. For reasons that, if you think about them for very long, should be obvious.Overland Flight
School transmutation; Level sorcerer/wizard 5
Components: V, S
Range personal
A ring of spell storing contains up to 5 levels of spells (either divine or arcane, or even a mix of both spell types) that the wearer can cast. Each spell has a caster level equal to the minimum level needed to cast that spell. The user need not provide any material components or focus to cast the spell, and there is no arcane spell failure chance for wearing armor (because the ring wearer need not gesture). The activation time for the ring is the same as the casting time for the relevant spell, with a minimum of 1 standard action.
:)
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There's nothing wrong with that, but I don't think the math should require you to make sub-optimal decisions for the game to not devolve into rocket tag.Eh, I'm not here to make optimal decisions. I'm here to have fun.
If things look grim, then I pull out the optimal stuff.
The only time I can recall that Fiachra actually needed to cast spells for us to overcome a challenge was in that arena game. I probably could have locked down a few more things, but most of those encounters were opportunities for other characters to show off their stuff. Spells weren't required to overcome the encounters, so why waste resources when others were competent to handle them? Encounters like that allowed me to build the arrogant, self-centered, bitter and disconnected persona, searching for whatever, ignoring (within safe reason) the combat, and generally thinking the "help" should dust up the small stuff.
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In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). You may not be just trading blows, but nonetheless full use of the action economy will lead to these 1-2 round kills, especially if the PCs outnumber an opponent. In the standard group that means 2 sets of attacks and 4 spells directed at a single opponent.
And if the Gm and players all take that attitude, you end up with rocket tag. If the enemy actually uses their defensive abilities, their magic items, and resources and forces the party to use theirs, you get more comprehensive fights that extend more than 2 rounds.
If I were an intelligent dragon with massive flight speed, a trove of magical resources to draw upon, a slew of spells and spell-like abilities, etc. I know I wouldn't stand around trading claw swipes for sword swings with a 'roided out gorilla; I'd drag him and his buddies around slowly draining away their resources and trusting in my massive trove of magic, both inherent and acquired, accumulated over the course of a millenia to outlast them.
Rocket tag is only a thing when everyone at the table has decided that the only way to play high level games is for everyone to stand toe to toe and use the hardest hitting attack they have until only one side is left standing. When the enemy actually fights like a creature with millenia of experience and a genius level intellect, things tend to be a bit more cinematic and entertaining.
I defy anyone to craft a high-level scenario that can end in 1-2 rounds more efficiently than a group of elf sorcerers with sleep spells fighting orcs armed with falchions.
As far as optimization go, I think in a long-running campaign, the optimization gap narrows considerably. I wouldn't run a high-level game with new players; I don't even like running high-level games where players haven't settled into their characters, level by level. My wife is a very casual player, but she had no problem being the major damage dealer in fights that favored her character's strengths. She may not have been fully a match for the party's tricked out wizard, but there were scenarios where he was shut down and she wasn't. Most importantly, they functioned as a team. People who went off-script usually died.
Of course in-combat healing is inefficient. That's why a good bad guy makes the party do it as often as possible. In general, I plan on cunning opponents like liches and dragons to intentionally make their opponents burn resources, and then moving in for the easy kill. There is no level at which cone of cold is a bad spell; unless your opponents resist cold, you can simultaneously damage several opponents while interrupting a spell. If nothing else, it's a great rooms-sweeper against summoned monsters. At high levels, quickened or empowered cone of colds are pretty standard ordinance.
I've spent nearly as much of my gaming career running superhero games as I have fantasy. To be really frank, the challenge of balancing encounters for party members of roughly the same level of ability is child's play compared to your typical superheroes game. Almost every combat in Pathfinder comes down to either killing something or shutting it down; in a superhero game, characters can have ways of "winning" that are completely unique to them.
In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). You may not be just trading blows, but nonetheless full use of the action economy will lead to these 1-2 round kills, especially if the PCs outnumber an opponent. In the standard group that means 2 sets of attacks and 4 spells directed at a single opponent.And if the Gm and players all take that attitude, you end up with rocket tag. If the enemy actually uses their defensive abilities, their magic items, and resources and forces the party to use theirs, you get more comprehensive fights that extend more than 2 rounds.
If I were an intelligent dragon with massive flight speed, a trove of magical resources to draw upon, a slew of spells and spell-like abilities, etc. I know I wouldn't stand around trading claw swipes for sword swings with a 'roided out gorilla; I'd drag him and his buddies around slowly draining away their resources and trusting in my massive trove of magic, both inherent and acquired, accumulated over the course of a millenia to outlast them.
Rocket tag is only a thing when everyone at the table has decided that the only way to play high level games is for everyone to stand toe to toe and use the hardest hitting attack they have until only one side is left standing. When the enemy actually fights like a creature with millenia of experience and a genius level intellect, things tend to be a bit more cinematic and entertaining.
Umm... somehow you seem to be completely deaf to what I'm saying. A GM *should* use enemies that make use of their defenses and clever tactics. THIS will LEAD TO Rocket Tag. As stated above, a clever and intelligent opponent does not heal in combat (outside rare occasions) because damage recovered it going to be less then damage taken. Rocket Tag is a consequence of people playing intelligently not "standing toe to toe". Please read my posts more thoroughly as this would be clear to you if you had.
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Umm... somehow you seem to be completely deaf to what I'm saying. A GM *should* use enemies that make use of their defenses and clever tactics. THIS will LEAD TO Rocket Tag. As stated above, a clever and intelligent opponent does not heal in combat (outside rare occasions) because damage recovered it going to be less then damage taken. Rocket...
I've read your posts, I just think you're wrong. You think that playing intelligently is gambling that spending your entire action economy trying to carpet the enemy out of existence won't get you killed if it doesn't work. I think that playing intelligently involves hit and run, terrain control, and resource burn so that your enemies run out of effective spells, the roid-monkeys can't fly anymore, and you can pick them off at your leisure.
I think you've decided that the only way something can be intelligent is if ti uses the strategy "Biggest hit wins! All in or nothing!"I think a creature with millenia of experience is going to be smarter and more subtle than that.
No it *IS* the best strategy, both logically and numerically. Just like focusing fire on a single target is the best strategy (again some exceptions apply) or being a caster. And a creature with ages of experience is probably smart enough to agree.
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If both the players and the GM think "rocket tag" is the best strategy then it is no wonder that those games devolve into rocket tag.
Sounds like user error to me.
No it *IS* the best strategy, both logically and numerically. Just like focusing fire on a single target is the best strategy (again some exceptions apply) or being a caster. And a creature with ages of experience is probably smart enough to agree.
That isn't a strategy, it's a goal. A strategy is something that works. According to Sun-Tzu, if you have not already planned for victory before your opening move, your strategy has failed. In that sense, "rocket tag" isn't a strategy, it's wishful thinking.
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No it *IS* the best strategy, both logically and numerically. Just like focusing fire on a single target is the best strategy (again some exceptions apply) or being a caster. And a creature with ages of experience is probably smart enough to agree.That isn't a strategy, it's a goal. A strategy is something that works. According to Sun-Tzu, if you have not already planned for victory before your opening move, your strategy has failed. In that sense, "rocket tag" isn't a strategy, it's wishful thinking.
Rocket Tag doesn't just work, its literally a consequence of the system, check Cheapy's math thread.
@ Marthkus - Player/GM input have nothing to do with a mathematical consequence of the system. I mean they could choose to play sub-optimally (not be confused with playing "average") but thats a failure of the system not the players.
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A fight with a Dragon is more of an endurance fight from my experiences. The idea of challenging a powerful creature like that is about as iconic as you can get and going in with a mindset of doing as much damage as possible without any regard to safety is disturbing.
When we would face such a trial, our healer knew that the best support they can offer is damage control, keeping his/her friends alive and in the fight. Our Arcane caster(s) would focus on stripping away any active magical defenses, buffs against breath weapon damage to help mitigate damage which makes life a bit easier on the healer.
Melee and ranged types start chipping away at the beast and just generally getting into a rhythm. The situation of how the encounter goes down can vary so party options will have to adjust accordingly.
Not a criticism, just a basic overview of how we approached that type of encounter.
My GM almost wiped our party with a goblin druid who could walk through brambles and had a wand of produce flame.
I can't imagine him playing a dragon or a balor as creatures who trade full attacks with the parties melees all at once.
Much like how high level druids don't rush into melee before they try to cripple the enemy with spells first.
I also don't see why the fighter isn't softening up targets with his bow before rushing in.
EDIT: Most things get more dangerous the closer you are. Maybe your games are rocket tag because everyone starts 30ft away from each other. The scale of your fights should increase with level.
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Playing Rocket Tag is a good way to die like a chump.
Unless the adventurers were kind enough to approach the dragon in a tight little cluster, there's no way to kill them all and the dragon should have a fair idea of what people who carry around the kind of potent magic items a party like that would be carrying can do. I'd really hate to think that 1000 years of experience has taught dragons that their best chance is to suicide bomb the enemy. That's just stupid. A dragon of that age should strafing, teleporting, dispelling and generally making a nuisance of himself until the party is so low on resources that they either retreat or try something desperate.
Cheapy's math thread is great but it ignores the most important part of the system, roleplaying. Dragons of that age could very well have their own demiplanes to retreat to, have access to tons of magical goodies and potentially even artifacts, and know how to use all of their resources.
Rocket tag is the product of an inability to see the game world in more than 2 dimensions, and a fixation on numerical superiority.
You know what? According to math the British defeated the American Revolutionaries. But math would be wrong, because we didn't make the chump move and fight a war. We ran away when appropriate, we used guerilla tactics, we forced the British to overextend their supply lines, etc. Smart high level play uses similar tactics.
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That's because you don't have millennia of experience. If you want to live to have millennia of experience you need to do whatever maximizes your chance of survival.
I bow to your... millenia of experience?
Every round a fight lasts is a chance to screw up and die like a chump because someone who should barely threaten you scores two arrow crits in a round or you flub a save that you can only fail because of the 1s autofail rule. If you're the underdog dragging out the fight might be a good move.
The goal is not to drag out the fight. The goal is to avoid dying like a chump. So, if you start the round adjacent to a fighter, you probably move. It prolongs the fight, incidentally. But primarily, you are trying to fend off instant death.
[
In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). Y
This is a myth. Healing can indeed keep up with damage, as healing doesn’t worry about being reduced by to hit, saves, ER, DR or SR.
This is a myth. Healing can indeed keep up with damage, as healing doesn’t worry about being reduced by to hit, saves, ER, DR or SR.[
In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). Y
Indeed. "I think we can finish him off" -- famous last words. :)
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Your game clearly happened, but because the playstyle involved is so... unique, it is best discarded as an outlier, as it is far from representative of the average game.I think this very thing every time I read your posts. Perhaps one day I'll get to play in a game where these assumptions I can only read about hold true.I'm talking about the consequences of the math of the Pathfinder system. If you would like to play in that kind of game you need only take the following steps:
Step 1: Play Pathfinder.
Step 2: Make sure your group of 4-5 people invests in their most important stat, keeps up with WBL, and takes 1-2 critical feats.
Step 3: Get to high level. 12+ (Though Cheapy's thread indicates it really happens at level 11)There you go have fun.
We have a 12th level Mythic game. 4 of five PC's are mostly Optimized. There is no rocket tag, as we have a good DM who knows how to balance encounters. Why is it that of my four games, from levels 7-12 there is no Rocket tag? Why is it that my 17th level 3.5 game still doesn't have rocket tag? We're ALL playing "wrong"?
You may say it has to happen, but many people disagree with you. And, few people have said they play a game where 'rocket tag" is normal. In fact no one here has chimed in to say their actual game is a "rocket tag' game. Are you talking IRL or theorycraft?
Is your game all Rocket tag? What sort of game do you play?
A dragon of that age should strafing, teleporting, dispelling and generally making a nuisance of himself until the party is so low on resources that they either retreat or try something desperate.It sounds nice in theory but when the Dragon gets 1 action and the groups gets 6 or more and each member of the group is potentially capable of taking it out that doesn't really work very well.
Each member individually is capable of taking out the dragon? Sounds like Kiddieland to me.
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A dragon of that age should strafing, teleporting, dispelling and generally making a nuisance of himself until the party is so low on resources that they either retreat or try something desperate.It sounds nice in theory but when the Dragon gets 1 action and the groups gets 6 or more and each member of the group is potentially capable of taking it out that doesn't really work very well.
Dragons of that age could very well have their own demiplanes to retreat to, have access to tons of magical goodies and potentially even artifacts, and know how to use all of their resources.Whenever people bring this sort of stuff up I also begin to wonder where shroedinger's dragon gets all of these goodies. The Bestiary 1 black dragon tops out at level 5 spells, the blue at 6th, the green at 6th, the red at 7th and the white at 4th.
Only the red is actually capable of creating such a plane at which point its other spell needs to be plane shift to actually get there. Also I seem to recall many dragons enjoying sleeping on great hoards of looted coinage rather than converting it to magical traps etc.
Dragon hoards include any number of magical items. These are weapons in the dragon's arsenal. Every scroll, wand, and magical knick-knack is something a dragon can use in its fight against the party. And dragon's have more than one action. They have 3, a swift, a move, and a standard (and free actions of course...). They should probably be using them.
This is a myth. Healing can indeed keep up with damage, as healing doesn’t worry about being reduced by to hit, saves, ER, DR or SR.[
In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). Y
It really isn't. Just look at the values on the cure spells. Cure Critical is doing 4d8+10 at level 10. Lets say you have the Healing Domain so you are getting 6d8+10 (the static isn't multiplied in the same way magic missiles static isn't). That's an average of 37HP and you have maybe 3 or 4 of them total. That is next to nothing compared to damage values of equal level monsters. A full attack from a CR10 Fire Giant is looking at over 100 damage, 35 damage or so from a single attack.
After about level 12 the only "healing" spell which is generally worth bothering about is Heal and Breath of Life. Before then you are almost always better off finishing something off or buffing than casting a spontaneous cure spell.
You don't have to heal it all. You just have to heal enough to survive one more hit.
Or possibly like a group of people who understand how the mechanics of the game work and make use of them. The fact that Bestiary monsters generally don't hold a candle to characters which make use of the rules available to PC's is a well known bug and one of the primary complaints of 3.x, the need to do a lot of work generating useful opposition.Each member individually is capable of taking out the dragon? Sounds like Kiddieland to me.A dragon of that age should strafing, teleporting, dispelling and generally making a nuisance of himself until the party is so low on resources that they either retreat or try something desperate.It sounds nice in theory but when the Dragon gets 1 action and the groups gets 6 or more and each member of the group is potentially capable of taking it out that doesn't really work very well.
I'm going to ask you flat-out: have you ever participated in a long-term, high-level Pathfinder campaign?
You don't have to heal it all. You just have to heal enough to survive one more hit.This is a myth. Healing can indeed keep up with damage, as healing doesn’t worry about being reduced by to hit, saves, ER, DR or SR.[
In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). Y
It really isn't. Just look at the values on the cure spells. Cure Critical is doing 4d8+10 at level 10. Lets say you have the Healing Domain so you are getting 6d8+10 (the static isn't multiplied in the same way magic missiles static isn't). That's an average of 37HP and you have maybe 3 or 4 of them total. That is next to nothing compared to damage values of equal level monsters. A full attack from a CR10 Fire Giant is looking at over 100 damage, 35 damage or so from a single attack.
After about level 12 the only "healing" spell which is generally worth bothering about is Heal and Breath of Life. Before then you are almost always better off finishing something off or buffing than casting a spontaneous cure spell.
The math on in combat explicitly does not work this way.
You don't have to heal it all. You just have to heal enough to survive one more hit.Which you are still failing to do. You simply cannot keep up with the Fire Giants full attack meaning that your front liners cannot go toe to toe with the enemy and expect to be kept up by the Cleric.
I meant to live long enough to escape.
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This is a myth. Healing can indeed keep up with damage, as healing doesn’t worry about being reduced by to hit, saves, ER, DR or SR.[
In fight Healing is criminally action inefficient (though on some rare occasions required), because that action could have spend dealing enough damage to drop whatever your fighting (a consequence of again, things being able to kill things in one or two rounds). Y
Try saying that to the Barbarian who took the Superstitious Rage Power...
I'm going to ask you flat-out: have you ever participated in a long-term, high-level Pathfinder campaign?Yes, have you? Because you seem to be remarkably oblivious to the sorts of options available to high level PC's which are often not accessible to much of their opposition due to a range of factors mostly due to a lack of spellcasting ability.
I have run a 1st to 20th level Pathfinder campaign. Out of dozens of high-level fights, I can think of maybe three against serious opposition that lasted less than three rounds.
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No it *IS* the best strategy, both logically and numerically. Just like focusing fire on a single target is the best strategy (again some exceptions apply) or being a caster. And a creature with ages of experience is probably smart enough to agree.
I believe that you believe that. And if all combats involved sticking the participants in a small box and seeing who walked out, you might be right. But it shouldn't. Combat should be dynamic and involved and the enemy should have a vested interest in, you know, surviving.
If it isn't, that's not a failure of the system, that's a reflection of the mindset of the GM and players participating in that game.
I have run a 1st to 20th level Pathfinder campaign. Out of dozens of high-level fights, I can think of maybe three against serious opposition that lasted less than three rounds.And you think that the only reason for this is that rocket tag does not exist? It couldn't possibly be one of:
1. Social contract. Your players want to be challenged so intentionally choose not to make use of all of the options available to them and so you don't need to up the ante.
My players had a spreadsheet for their planned uses of the permanency spell, as gold became available.
2. Incompetence. Your players are simply not very familiar with the rules and so you don't need to use much more than base bestiary opposition.
They accounted for themselves pretty well when they weren't overconfident. As for the base bestiary options, it serves well enough for most fights.
3. Disinterest. Many of the more powerful effects require a certain amount of trawling of splat books and reading of message boards which many players are not interested in. They pick something that sounds interesting and go with it.
The cleric's player was a forums haunt and a HeroLab maniac. I set a quota on the number of new spells from splats I was willing to review on a weekly basis for inclusion in the game.
4. Few challenging fights (I use this one a lot). Personally I don't see much value in small side encounters. I want fights to be major significant events so I tend to throw everything at my players and force them to respond likewise. It allows a certain amount of nova tactics from the casters but makes for a more interesting game from my and their point of view.
Mostly very challenging fights, APL +3 and up. The biggest disparity I saw was APL 15 party versus CR 23 dragon, which they brought on themselves, and to my surprise, actually won with only one fatality.
5. Jiggling the system. You want to challenge your players and therefore choose encounters and opposition with that specifically in mind without paying much regard to how the CR system actually works in the books.
I'm not sure I get exactly what this means, but you seem to be saying that if I was successful in balancing encounters, I was somehow cheating or making stuff up.
All of these are perfectly reasonable responses to rocket tag which doesn't mean that it does not exist. Many people probably never come across it but plenty of us have. Pretending it doesn't or cannot exist because you haven't experienced it doesn't really help anyone.
I think I have been helpful in talking about how to deal with these issues, insofar as they negatively impact having fun.
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This is one of the flaws of the system. 3.x combat is anything but dynamic for non spellcaster classes. Martial characters want to be able to get their full attacks in but that generally means standing pretty much still. It is also extremely difficult for such characters to actually do something like retreat as the movement rules make it very hard to get outside of an opponents charge range. Opportunity attacks also make repositioning often a real pain.
I personally rather like the 13th Age retreat rule where you are generally assumed to be able to retreat if you need to but you will suffer some form of campaign story based loss for doing so.
What you detail are not flaws of the system, they're flaws of the player believing that they can only fight a certain way. Maybe instead of full retreating right away, you move, switch to a reach weapon and then ready a maneuver to trip the opponent who charges you. Maybe you put a piece of terrain between you and the enemy so they can't charge.
I have yet to see a breakdown in high level play that is actually a flaw of the system; generally the "flaw" is in the playstyle of the group.
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So, you move and now you have provoked because making the required acrobatics check is difficult, especially for strength primary characters. So now you may well be tripped or swallowed whole or grappled or just flat out dead. You draw your reach weapon as part of your move but need to drop your other one to use it. Hmm, not terribly keen on dropping items worth tens of thousands of gold. You cant sheathe it as that's a move action and you need to ready and it would also provoke.
The Fire Giant steps towards you bringing you within reach without provoking and continues to pound on you. Well done, you have disarmed yourself of your primary weapon and taken two attacks while doing precisely nothing during your turn.
I listed one possible avenue of options other than simply using the withdraw action. Didn't realize we were fighting fire giants now, my bad. What level is this schroedinger's character and situation? Because if you're just going to drop in wahtever monster helps you break the situation and assume that I'm going to fail all the time, we can't really have this conversation.
Did the Fire giant provoke from my buddy when he came after me? If so, he's a flowing monk who succeeded on his trip attempt without even trying and the giant had to waste his standard action standing up which pretty much eliminated his entire turn. Then the cleric dropped a Heal spell on me and I flung my spear/harpoon/etc., critting on the evil wizard and dropping him dangerously low on health, at which point his contingency kicked in whisking him away to his extra-dimensional tower to regroup.
See what happened there?
You've got a team that you're a part of. Combat isn't a bunch of one on one duels happening in a vacuum, in a nice square room with perfectly flat floors. If it is, then I feel really bad for how dull your game sessions are.
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Pick whatever situation you want but the reality is that you will regularly be facing enemies which are far larger than you and have significantly greater reach. Manoeuvring around them is hard. That's just a fact of life in 3.x for which martial characters have limited options to deal with. Clever and tactical play will only take you so far before you face plant into the limitations of your own creativity
Fixed that for you.