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Based on this definition of Roles. (fairly simplistic i know)
I would say the "arm" followed by the "anvil" and obviusly the "hammer"
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This is pretty much the equivalent of breaking things down into the 4E equivalent roles of Controller (anvil), Leader (arm) and Striker (hammer). It leaves out 4E's Defender but it can be argued that the 4E Defender is simply another type of Controller (anvil).
But, yes, the Hammer is always going to be the most common of these even if that means less efficient parties. Hammers are easier to play, easier to build and grab a disproportionate amount of glory, so they will always be the most attractive role.
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The percentage of certain roles vary drastically between regions of play, and character generation.
The Northeast US might favor melee and arcane types, and the Southwest might favor divine and skill based classes. The regional variance might even be smaller and centralized around specific venues.
Now skip ahead a few months and each group starts up secondary characters, and they might see a influx of the classes they were lacking before.
I dont see alot of healers TBH. The most I see are people who bring a wand of CLW when they have it.
I see alot more archers then I do melee.
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I think the availability of wands of cure light wounds and infernal healing (two prestige points) has significantly reduced the need for a dedicated healer. Seems these days all you really need is one player at the table with a level-dip into a divine class or any of the support (bard) or more militant classes (paladin, ranger, etc) that gain access to those spells, but don't even need to be able to cast them right away. Even someone with a moderate UMD can serve as the party healer, albeit out of combat.
Course, that can change significantly in high level play where an enemy can do significant amounts of AoE damage or outright kill a PC in one round, but since the majority of gameplay is low-mid level, it is not as evident.
I'm not really a 4E guy so cannot give a role-equivalence to Pathfinder. IME, glass-cannon and tank are the most common archetypes, with buff/de-buff caster, controller, utility caster, and skill monkey being common, but less so.
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I see very few rogues, especially trapfinding rogues, at my tables. There are so few scenarios with traps that players have been trained out of running rogues.
I also thing the lack of healers comes from A) the fact that players have learned not to depend on having a healer in the party, so the need for healers isn't as pronounced; B) there are so many horror stories about abuse of healing characters by tables ("You're the healer: you have to supply all the costly materials to heal me!") than many players have been scared off, and C) there is so much discussion on the boards about how useless healers are and how healing is the absolute worst strategy, etc., that new players wouldn't even think of playing a healer.
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I was stunned by being chastised for NOT having a CLW wand. Having players and GM's tell me I shouldn't expect someone to play a healer because I would be demanding and limiting that person's play. Or being in parties with Channelers all of whom are negative channerlers. Why is it any more unreasonable to want a healer than to want a Barbarian or Front Line Fighter or Arcane Caster in the party?
It isn't unreasonable to want a healer. It is unreasonable to expect someone to heal you just because they chose to play a cleric. If the guy wants to take on the role of party healer, that's fine, but that is also his choice. This expectation that you must heal me because you are a cleric is exactly why many people don't want to play a cleric.
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I see very few rogues, especially trapfinding rogues, at my tables. There are so few scenarios with traps that players have been trained out of running rogues.
It's not just that. It's also because bypassing traps is no longer the sole purview of rogues. Finding and removing non-magical traps can be accomplished by anyone with the right skills, and Trapfinding appears in several non-rogue archtypes now. Traps can also be bypassed by magic or even simply by having a character tough enough to survive them. Non-fatal damage from traps triggered out of combat is mostly irrelevant if you have a Wand of Cure Light Wounds.
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Finding and removing non-magical traps can be accomplished by anyone with the right skills, and Trapfinding appears in several non-rogue archtypes now.
Which is why I wish finding traps was restricted to those with either trap sense (detect, but not disable) or trapfinding to restore rogues to a more desirable class rather than a dip for a bit of sneak damage, a specialized talent, or a boost in skills. Yes, I know why the designers did it, but I just don't like it.
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Finding and removing non-magical traps can be accomplished by anyone with the right skills, and Trapfinding appears in several non-rogue archtypes now.Which is why I wish finding traps was restricted to those with either trap sense (detect, but not disable) or trapfinding to restore rogues to a more desirable class rather than a dip for a bit of sneak damage, a specialized talent, or a boost in skills. Yes, I know why the designers did it, but I just don't like it.
I find the "finding traps" issue to be the most annoying. Since Wisdom is, at best, a tertiary stat for most rogues, and many classes have Perception as a class skill, the rogue is commonly not the best person in the party at finding traps.
I think melee characters are pretty rare. Also i'm not sure it's a traditional role but Stealth characters are very VERY rare...as in it almost never comes up.
((By stealth I mean scouts))
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I find arcane casters to be the rarest among my tables, which made today's table including two wizards and a witch unusual.
I was a sorcerer :)
I think melee characters are pretty rare. Also i'm not sure it's a traditional role but Stealth characters are very VERY rare...as in it almost never comes up.
((By stealth I mean scouts))
I have seen a couple try in pfs, it was a deterrent to others.
The percentage of certain roles vary drastically between regions of play, and character generation.
The Northeast US might favor melee and arcane types, and the Southwest might favor divine and skill based classes. The regional variance might even be smaller and centralized around specific venues.
Now skip ahead a few months and each group starts up secondary characters, and they might see a influx of the classes they were lacking before.
I find this regional breakdown VERY interesting, merely from anthropological/sociological curiosity, and as a non-USA poster.
A) Do you have evidence for the possibility of this supposed breakdown, or are you talking hypothetically?
B) Why do you think it pans out like this? Or to put it another way, why might the different play styles appeal to a particular region and are there greater socio-cultural resonances affecting those style choices, or is it merely a random thing??
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My cleric started off is as a quasi-war priest build, but the cleric is such a powerful caster, he's pretty much full time casting now. I have no trouble being the healer when asked. I like making NPCs attacks futile. Oh, and summoning Azatas to help out.
My magus, ironically enough, is a horrible hammer. This is out of my desire to not be a glass hammer. Instead, he's a support magus and is kinda both arm and anvil and often throws haste and has trip feats and trips with mirror strike. Let's be honest, the damage from frigid touch is irrelevant anyway. If it crits, that target is completely hosed.
That being said, I see precious few anvils in general. Lots of hammers, and this is a reason why I didn't build a hammer magus.
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Stealth is very problematic in PFS. At BEST it means 1-2 characters getting to do stuff while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.
Since no two DMs do stealth rules the same way, it can be easy to run afoul of a problem while trying to stealth.
It gives the stealthy and more mobile people at best, one extra surprise round action. At the cost of making the tanks spend 2-3 round doing nothing but double moving.
I have a faux rogue druid with stealth synergy with his companion now in retirement. I think stealth was useful once.
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My wife has a pure rogue that spends most of the scenario trying to not die. A local player has a ninja that does the same only she gets more sneak attack thanks to the vanish trick. My rogue usually only comes out in social type scenarios and has middling effectiveness during combat. He has had some nice Assassin's Creed-style moments of coming out of stealth and ganking people, but not often. He also has one level of fighter to help with survivability.
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I agree with Brian that there are regional differences. I began playing pfs on the west coast and later moved to the east coast and noticed a difference in play style and character choice. I think it's because the pfs community is small enough that there are some large influential personalities that set trends in their local groups.
I think theres a disproportionate number of strikers in pfs because every game will have combat and if you don't know who you will be playing with then you play it safe and make something you know will always be needed. Not having a skill might loose you a prestige point, but not being able to kill the monsters will leave you dead.
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And to join everyone else on the rogue tangent, they're not seen much because they are redundant. They can't do anything that another class can't do at least as well as them, so who wants to play a character when half the time someone else will just show you up? It's a team based game, so being a jack of all trades means that all you do is contribute a +2assist bonus to one of your other 5 teammates who can do the same thing better than you can. /rant.
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Stealth is very problematic in PFS. At BEST it means 1-2 characters getting to do stuff while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.
On top of that, the real world time you save by being able to ambush the monsters seldom exceeds the real world time spent scouting, planning the ambush and setting it up. That's a bad thing when you have timed slots.
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They can't do anything that another class can't do at least as well as them
Exactly! And why most people I talk to HATE that anyone can find and disarm traps. It was kinda the rogue's thing, their key identity. By stripping that away, they lose the only real reason to play one for more than a level dip or two for some specific ability like evasion or a rogue talent.
I think Paizo generally did a great job with their class updates. You never really saw a fighter past level four in v3.5, but their reigned in the druid/cleric a bit. Bards got really cool. Unfortunately, with everything awesome that was added (talents, etc.), the loss of being the trap specialist kinda killed the rogue. You might see more of the them in a home game, where their stealth skills can be mroe useful, but for PFS, I doubt you'll see many/any straight rogues. And when you do, they'll probably be spending most of their time trying to find something interesting to do or avoiding a quick dirt nap. YMMV
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They can't do anything that another class can't do at least as well as themExactly! And why most people I talk to HATE that anyone can find and disarm traps. It was kinda the rogue's thing, their key identity. By stripping that away, they lose the only real reason to play one for more than a level dip or two for some specific ability like evasion or a rogue talent.
I'm actually really hoping that the new traits from People of the Sand are PFS legal so my rogue can get back trapfinding after trading it for Knife Master. Otherwise I will be spending prestige to drop the archetype.
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I find this regional breakdown VERY interesting, merely from anthropological/sociological curiosity, and as a non-USA poster.
A) Do you have evidence for the possibility of this supposed breakdown, or are you talking hypothetically?
B) Why do you think it pans out like this? Or to put it another way, why might the different play styles appeal to a particular region and are there greater socio-cultural resonances affecting those style choices, or is it merely a random thing??
If you follow the forums long enough you will see the patterns pop up during different threads. Especially the ones that deal with balanced table composition.
Basically one poster will say in there area there is a shortage of divine casters, while another poster says their area is overrun with divine casters. Similar posts cover the full gambit of party roles.
Then in those same threads you will see remarks about how when a certain community first got off the ground everyone was playing a fighter or wizard. Then all of a sudden 6 months or a year down the road they are swarming with bards and clerics.
The cyclical nature of the second part is usually people want to offer something unique to the party, so they tend to make secondary characters to fill certain gaps in their area.
Rather than base all this information off of specific area demographics how about at the big cons? I feel like at GenCon I saw more cheese builds than generic role specific stuff, hardly any full wizards or clerics.
At big cons I think people would be more tempted to run their most powerful death roller machine instead of a backup support character.
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I don't think I've seen a pure rogue build past L3 except when the pregen rogue is selected by someone.
If archetypes count, you've seen at least one, my friend. :D
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@Mike: haha, I always thought that was a fighter or ranger archetype you were playing :)
Consider yourself the exception that proves the rule.
Oh, I know. :-D I love playing the character, from a personality and skill set standpoint, but at 9th level, she's become an utter glass cannon in combat. Not sure how often I'll be playing her anymore.
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The rogue offers utility. And, yes, allowing other classes to perceive traps sort of makes one of their main utilities much less useful.
Please don't get me started on the inability to use scouting in PFS. I've found in this, and other organized play campaigns, that the author and/or the GM don't like the rogue or ranger to be able to scout ahead, spy, and sneak back to the party, as it spoils 'the surprise' of the ambush you'll be walking into. I have encountered a few scenarios and GM's that buck this trend. To the scenarios' authors and those GM's, I offer a hearty, "Thank you and well done." For the most part, though, as someone earlier in the thread indicated, I've been 'trained out of' even trying to scout.
Often my rogue fills in whatever roll is abscent from the table (in my area, that's usually 'face man'). Even with well-balanced tables, being able to offer that +2 assist bonus on many things is helpful.
In regards to combat, spring attack is your friend. Sure you're not getting off those full attacks, but you're liable to live a lot longer. Another key is to time it right so that when you do step in to take a full attack (or your attack plus the attacks of your friends that go before the big bad), your damage takes the big bad down before he can unload on you. A high level, two weapon fighting, hasted rogue, can do quite a lot of damage with a full attack. NO, you likely will never do as much damage in a combat as the gunslinger or archer who, in most battles can full attack every round (except the surprise round). That said, I find it much more satisfying to have to strategize on how to make sure I can get my sneak attacks off. Fortunately, I play with a lot of people that know that providing flanking for the rogue can lead to good things for the party.
TLDR: playing an effective rogue in PFS is much harder than playing effective characters of most other classes, but it's not impossible -- and it's a fun challenge for the tactically-minded.
EDITED: Because English defeats me.
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I'm actually really hoping that the new traits from People of the Sand are PFS legal so my rogue can get back trapfinding after trading it for Knife Master. Otherwise I will be spending prestige to drop the archetype.They can't do anything that another class can't do at least as well as themExactly! And why most people I talk to HATE that anyone can find and disarm traps. It was kinda the rogue's thing, their key identity. By stripping that away, they lose the only real reason to play one for more than a level dip or two for some specific ability like evasion or a rogue talent.
you can grab a level of trapmaster ranger to grab trapfinding, that's what I did on my ninja.
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you can grab a level of trapmaster ranger to grab trapfinding, that's what I did on my ninja.It's a thought, but he's already dipped Lore Warden, so I don't want to delay my advanced talent to retirement levels.
ahh, yeah I wouldn't want to drop 2 levels. I'm both happy and sad trapfinder didn't make it though. It's insanely too powerful for a trait, but I'd like to be able to disarm magical traps without specific class levels.
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ahh, yeah I wouldn't want to drop 2 levels. I'm both happy and sad trapfinder didn't make it though. It's insanely too powerful for a trait, but I'd like to be able to disarm magical traps without specific class levels.you can grab a level of trapmaster ranger to grab trapfinding, that's what I did on my ninja.It's a thought, but he's already dipped Lore Warden, so I don't want to delay my advanced talent to retirement levels.
also check out Pathfinder Delver for Trapfinding...