Crane Wing Errata in latest printing


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Aelryinth wrote:

Wait, wait.

So, your CW fighter ran up, tanked a bunch of attacks, got hit by ranged attacks, and died.

Your other fighter played it smart, let the cleric summon up a fire elemental, sat back and plinked, and didn't take any damage to speak of.

Uh, what?

And the enemy casters and ranged combatants focused on the CW fighter, instead of the rest of the party, who amazingly didn't help the CW fighter at all in his fight.

Furthermore, the CW fighter didn't bother to ignore the melee combatants who could do no damage to him if he played smart, and go for the casters who could. The goblin meleers, on the other hand, somehow managed to get lucky and land multiple attacks on him at precisely the right time.

And hey, no summoned fire elementals to bail him out.

So, what I'm seeing here is officially the worst comparison test, ever.

Now, I want you to take that switch hitter and put him through the same exact tactics as the CW guy, with the same rolls and everything.

he's dead in one round because, by my count, he'll eat two attacks he can't crane wing, (dying on the AoO from suddenly getting his bow out in the middle of a fight),his AC is lower so he should be hit more (seriously, why does the Crane Wing have a low dex mod and heavy armor?), and his party will be standing around like lumps with their thumbs up their bum as the goblins concentrate all fire on the melee, instead of, you know, working with him, or being targeted by the enemy spellcasters like, you know, smart casters and ranged combatants do. Like they let the CW crash and burn.

Uh huh.

===Aelryinth

If I were playing it fairly, the CW fighter would have taken 28 points of damage the first round. I rolled max damage on those when I did a roll, and instead fudged in the fighter's favor. I also ignored the intelligence bonus alchemists get to bomb damage.

So what you're seeing is a comparison test where I outright cheated in the favor of the PCs and the CW fighter still died.

Also, actually, there was a fire elemental in favor of the CW fighter. Here's the text from my post that shows it:

Quote:
Pretty much, first round of actual combat after everyone has move into position (no damage done yet due to the PCs getting a GM-granted surprise round; I was actually trying to give them advantages), the CW fighter engages the fighters, laughs off their attacks, and then gets hit by an explosive alchemist bomb. That's 2d6 +1d6 fire damage, fails save and ends up on fire for 1d6 per round. Then eats an acid arrow for another 2d4 per round. The goblin fighters simply eat the splash damage and make their saves to avoid being on fire. Using a result of 4 per d6 and 2 per d4... he's already taken 16 points of damage. Party wizard magic missiles one of the goblins (failed his spellcraft check to allow him to counterspell the acid arrow), ranger fires a shot at the alchemist and misses, cleric summons a fire elemental to harass the goblin wizard.

Note the bolded text... the cleric summoning a fire elemental to harass the goblin wizard. You know, the same goblin wizard that was pounding on the CW fighter with spells.

So what you have there is the cleric trying to aid the fighter by drawing the goblin wizard off him, the wizard trying to help kill a goblin fighter, and the ranger aiding the fighter by trying to draw the alchemist off him. And if you really want to get technical, the goblin fighters were being stupid as well; they kept their focus on the guy they could only hit on a lucky break instead of rushing past him once he switched to range to deal with the wizard. Pretty much, the CW guy was keeping two opponents locked down from attacking other party members AND attacking a credible threat.

As for our run where he plays smarter... that went worse for him.

Here's how it went:

First round of actual combat after everyone has move into position (another GM-granted surprise round), the CW fighter engages the fighters, laughs off their attacks, and then gets hit by an explosive alchemist bomb. That's 2d6 +1d6 fire damage, fails save and ends up on fire for 1d6 per round. Then eats an acid arrow for another 2d4 per round. The goblin fighters simply eat the splash damage and make their saves to avoid being on fire. Using a result of 4 per d6 and 2 per d4... he's already taken 16 points of damage. Party wizard magic missiles one of the goblins (failed his spellcraft check to allow him to counterspell the acid arrow), ranger fires a shot at the alchemist and misses, cleric summons a fire elemental to aid the fighter in engaging the goblin fighters.

Notice it went mostly the same?

Second round. Fighter moves away from the goblins, ignores the failure of AoOs from the goblins (player even sang "You Can't Touch This" while moving), then (under GM fiat) drops his sword and pulls out his bow (note: this is not actually allowed under combat rules; I'm cheating in his favor to make him more effective, much like I'm cheating by not giving the alchemist the damage bonus). Goblin fighter moves to engage the cleric, eats an AoO from the fire elemental and another from the cleric, smacks the cleric. Other one engages the elemental. Goblin alchemist targets the wizard, slams him with a bomb, and the goblin wizard follows up with an acid arrow to the same target. Ranger manages to hit the alchemist, doing some damage, and the wizard slams the alchemist with a fireball. Even with his racial alternative fire damage resistance, the alchemist is hit hard. Cleric and fire elemental continue to engage fighters.

Third round. Fighter fires at alchemist... misses. Goblin fighters continue to engage their opponents, the one engaging the cleric actually manages to hurt him. Goblin alchemist engages cleric with a bomb, leaves the cleric in bad shape, and the goblin wizard provides the finishing blow on the fire elemental. Ranger manages to hit the alchemist again, wizard fires a magic missile at the fighter engaging the cleric, cleric uses the chance to heal up without being threatened. Wizard down due to being on fire fire and acid damage from previous round.

Fourth Round. Fighter fires at goblin wizard, does some damage. Goblin fighter charges the cleric and does some damage. Goblin alchemist tosses a bomb at the cleric, while wizard slams the fighter with magic missile. Fighter is down to 19 hit points. Ranger fires at alchemist, misses. Cleric downs the goblin fighter.

If you're keeping track, at this point the goblin wizard has a single first level spell left (he's a universalist), the goblin alchemist has 5 bombs left (I mentioned earlier taking Extra Bombs for him), the goblins are down two party members, and the party is down one. Oh, and the fighter has been doing jack-all in the way of contributing for the most part. At this point, he probably would have been more useful if he had just stuck to melee and chased the alchemist around the map.

Round five. Fighter picks up sword and charges; at this point, I pretty much toss the official rules out the window, just in hopes of giving him some capacity to be useful, and allow him to move the entire distance between him and the alchemist. Despite it being slightly more than twice his movement range. His single attack leaves the alchemist pretty close to death; next attack and the alchemist is down. The alchemist takes a five foot step back and then hits the fighter with another bomb, downing himself in the process and setting the fighter on fire again. Goblin wizard slams the fighter with another magic missile. Fighter has 3 hp left, one enemy to fight, and no chances of being healed before he's dealt enough damage to die. Ranger fires at the goblin wizard and does some damage.

Round six... CW fighter charges wizard, kills him, downed by fire damage.

Players then point out I cheated too massively on Round 5 and demand it be replayed from that point. Given the fact they won the battle (barely), I'm more than a little dumbfounded.

So, rewind back to Round 5... fighter fires bow at wizard, leaves him close to death. Alchemist moves closer and manages to hit the fighter with a bomb, then wizard slams him with that last magic missile. Fighter is down to 3 hp... but is also on fire. Ranger then kills the wizard.

Round 6... Fighter fires at alchemist, is downed by fire damage.

When I asked why they pulled such tactics, they asked me why I gave them a build that was obviously intended to die.

As for the other group... the ones with the switch-hitter... they did the same exact tactics as last time, except the cleric saw more melee combat. Outcome exactly the same.

So, end of the day, the CW fighter pretty much was dragging the rest of the party down due to his weaker ranged options that resulted from overspecialization.

Edit: Also, if you remove the cheating I did on the alchemist damage... the fighter would have been downed in round 5. We're now doing a test without the cheating.

The CW fighter still isn't doing well. Even with moving every round and firing his bow, he's taken some pretty bad hits. I suspect playtesting it under the errata version is only going to be worse.


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Those headbutt AoOs probably aren't too great though if you primarily are a weapon-user (I know my Aldori Swordlord's Snake Fangs leave much to be desired compared to her Crane Ripostes, but she does get a barrel more of the Fangs). Also, I believe (but am not 100% sure), that only monks can make unarmed strikes with any part of their body, so it does mean that you need monk levels if you want to keep full hands.

Leaving aside deliberately ignoring that just about everyone who takes these has a couple of levels of monk anyway...

The first line on unarmed strikes in the book says 'Striking for damage with punches, kicks, and headbutts...'
But sure, baseline they're probably not going to be up to much. But it's not unreasonable to assume that if you're investing in the feats, you'll buy an item or two that supports them (increased damage, Agility to unarmed attacks, whatever).
And that piercing damage works nicely with the Duelist's precise strike ability, too.

Shadow Lodge

This fixes Crane Riposte (which CW errata broke), but it in no way address the whole CW issue which 95% of the posts are about. Jason did say though that it's just a bit of progress and they don't consider it a closed issue yet, so that's good.

Also P.S. Snake Style >(defensively) than Crane Style by an insanely large margin. lol


Felix Gaunt wrote:
Also P.S. Snake Style >(defensively) than Crane Style by an insanely large margin. lol

Now anyways. Before they seemed to be about on par with one another. (Crane wing and snake style I mean).

Shadow Lodge

Petrus222 wrote:
Felix Gaunt wrote:
Also P.S. Snake Style >(defensively) than Crane Style by an insanely large margin. lol
Now anyways. Before they seemed to be about on par with one another. (Crane wing and snake style I mean).

True.


Kudaku wrote:
Rynjin wrote:
Mind rephrasing for me? Especially what you were trying to say with that first bit?

Let's see...

In order to take the full chain of feats allowing you to deflect an attack in the edited and homebrewed version I posted earlier, you needed the following feats: IUs, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Crane Riposte. Previously many would ignore Crane Riposte since they wanted to get Crane online early for the defensive benefit and didn't particularly care about an AoO.
In the post I was outlining how the advantage of the MoMS dip would be affected by this change.

A two-level dip in MoMS allows you to pick up two style feats early, clearly in this case you want Crane Wing and Crane Riposte. However one of the requirements of Crane Style is Monk 1 or BaB 2. The point with the sentence you quoted was that since you can't take levels in two different archetypes of Monk in the same build, and you wanted to save the MoMS dips for when you already had Crane Style in place (allowing you to pick up Crane Wing and Crane Riposte with the first two bonus feats from MoMS), you needed Crane Style to already be in the build before MoMS entered. The BAB requirement would therefore be a firm limiter on how early (level 2) Crane Style could be picked up , since you couldn't dip monk to sidestep it. This would mean that MoMS could enter at level 3 at the earliest. The change I suggested seemed to delay the early onset Crane problem to level 4 or 5 since the fastest build would then be something like:

Fighter 1: Dodge, IUS
Fighter 2: Crane Style
MoMS 3: Crane Wing (MoMS bonus feat)
MoMS 4: Crane Riposte (MoMS bonus feat)
or
Ranger 1: Dodge
Ranger 2: No feat available
Ranger 3: Crane Style
MoMS 4: Crane Wing (MoMS bonus feat)
MoMS 5: Crane Riposte (MoMS bonus feat)

My mistake was not considering how the human bonus feat would leapfrog the changes I had implemented - Like Throne pointed out, a human MoMS monk could do the following:
MoMS 1: Dodge (basic feat), IUS (monk bonus feat), Crane...

An Unarmed Fighter archetype can take a Style feat and ignore the prerequisite. So...

Level 1: Unarmed Fighter 1 Dodge (regular feat), Imp. Unarmed Strike (bonus feat), Crane Style (Unarmed Fighter bonus feat).
Level 2: MoMS Crane Wing (bonus feat)
Level 3: MoMS Crane Riposte (bonus feat)

Also, I'm not understanding where you're getting this idea that you can't combine two archetypes of the same class in the same build, when you clearly can.

Archetypes wrote:
A character can take more than one archetype and garner additional alternate class features, but none of the alternate class features can replace or alter the same class feature from the core class as another alternate class feature.

These are all the possible Archetypes that can be combined with MoMS:

Drunken master
Hungry Ghost Monk
Ki Mystic
Monk of the Lotus
Monk of the Sacred Mountain
Sohei
Drunken master/Monk of the Lotus
Drunken master/Monk of the Sacred Mountain
Hungry Ghost Monk/Monk of the Sacred Mountain
Ki Mystic/Monk of the Lotus
Ki Mystic/Monk of the Sacred Mountain


Jason Bulmahn wrote:

Hey there everybody,

We have just posted up an errata to Crane Riposte. You can find it HERE.

While this does not, I am sure, fix the problem with Crane Wing that many of you are having, it does bring Crane Riposte in line with the changes. Nor does this mean that we consider this a closed issue. Its just a bit of progress.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

[[Link should work now.. that last one was bogus, all better.. I think]]

Thanks Jason.

To be honest I'm still really disappointed with the change. That said, this does make the feat at least interesting and worth taking again, and as Rogue Eidolon said, you can now get potentially more AOO because of it.

Now here's keeping my fingers crossed that the Advanced Classes book gives some martial love.


Felix Gaunt wrote:

This fixes Crane Riposte (which CW errata broke), but it in no way address the whole CW issue which 95% of the posts are about. Jason did say though that it's just a bit of progress and they don't consider it a closed issue yet, so that's good.

Also P.S. Snake Style >(defensively) than Crane Style by an insanely large margin. lol

I'm not seeing it with my character builds in front of me. How are you building these characters that have so much higher Sense Motive bonus than their fighting defensively AC + 4? Generally, I'm not seeing those numbers without also buying Skill Focus (Sense Motive) and being primary Wisdom, and even then not by much.


Throne wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Those headbutt AoOs probably aren't too great though if you primarily are a weapon-user (I know my Aldori Swordlord's Snake Fangs leave much to be desired compared to her Crane Ripostes, but she does get a barrel more of the Fangs). Also, I believe (but am not 100% sure), that only monks can make unarmed strikes with any part of their body, so it does mean that you need monk levels if you want to keep full hands.

Leaving aside deliberately ignoring that just about everyone who takes these has a couple of levels of monk anyway...

The first line on unarmed strikes in the book says 'Striking for damage with punches, kicks, and headbutts...'
But sure, baseline they're probably not going to be up to much. But it's not unreasonable to assume that if you're investing in the feats, you'll buy an item or two that supports them (increased damage, Agility to unarmed attacks, whatever).
And that piercing damage works nicely with the Duelist's precise strike ability, too.

Huh, so a Fighter with IUS and a reach weapon threatens adjacent squares? I didn't think so, but it's good to know if so.

As for Agile AoMF, yeah, my Snake/Crane Aldori had that, but she didn't have the cash to make it +1 and Agile in addition to enhancing her main weapon, so it didn't penetrate DR/Magic, which was an enormous pain.


Tels wrote:
I'm not understanding where you're getting this idea that you can't combine two archetypes of the same class in the same build, when you clearly can.

...I mean that you can't take a level of Monk and then a level of monk (MoMS). Specifically I'm debating how you want to delay your MoMS level so that you can get the bonus feats at the right time. Is that not clear from the context?


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Generally, I'm not seeing those numbers without also buying Skill Focus (Sense Motive) and being primary Wisdom, and even then not by much.

Alertness and some traits go a long way on top of Skill Focus. (Half elf can start with it for free too)


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Huh, so a Fighter with IUS and a reach weapon threatens adjacent squares? I didn't think so, but it's good to know if so.

I'd say so, just so long as he didn't try taking the AoO with the reach weapon.

But then maybe not, because Fighter.

Oh yeah, there's also a robe-slot item that'll give your unarmed attacks 1d8 base if you're not a monk, too (or 5 levels higher if you are, but that's still only 1d8 for the usual 2 level MoMS dip).


Petrus222 wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Generally, I'm not seeing those numbers without also buying Skill Focus (Sense Motive) and being primary Wisdom, and even then not by much.

Alertness and some traits go a long way on top of Skill Focus. (Half elf can start with it for free too)

Yep, it's a very neat build, and I've been messing around with a few of them for a few minutes. I'm looking at it and I can't possibly deny that you can build for it if you spend enough feats and traits, but even then you've spent several additional feats and also your potentially-precious immediate action on Snake that you needn't spend on Crane, and Crane protects somewhat from all attacks whereas Snake only helps for the one.

This doesn't match up at all with the claim that

Felix Gaunt wrote:
Snake Style >(defensively) than Crane Style by an insanely large margin. lol


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Scavion wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:

It's actually better than Fang for those who don't use unarmed strikes (and let's be fair, the intermediate feat in the Snake chain is pretty useless anyway, since it eats your immediate and prevents the other Snakes).

In fact, this newest version is often offensively more powerful than the original pre-errata Crane Riposte, since it now allows a Riposte even if every enemy misses you (whereas before, if that happened, which was fairly common for me thanks to Crane's +4 to AC, I didn't get a riposte that round which lowered my damage).

The most "overpowered" use of Crane Wing was by folks who used the dip from MoMS. This meant they have an unarmed strike of 1d6 anyways. Then you remember that MoMS lets you ignore steps in a chain so you can get Snake Style and Fang right at level 2.

Now Snake Style is better offensively and Defensively.

Defensively, I'm not certain. It depends on what your AC is compared to your Sense Motive modifier. Since you have to declare Snake Style and Crane Wing both before the attack roll is made, if your AC with the +4 on top of fighting defensively is better than what you would usually get from a Sense Motive check (this is true for all Snake/Crane characters I have ever built, and it was even true for my max-Wis max-Sense Motive Zen Archer so much so that I didn't take the feat with her, but I could certainly imagine a build for which it isn't true), then Snake Style is less helpful than Crane Wing.

An unarmed Inquisitor with the travel domain and a dip into MoMS to have two styles active was a very good defensive class that got lots of AoO from misses once Snake Fang came into play.

Inquisitors gain a morale bonus equal to 1/2 their inquisitor level on Sense Motive checks from Stern Gaze. Travel Domain gives you Silver-Tongued Haggler which lets you use a free action to add half their cleric level as an untyped bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy or Sense Motive checks. I have a MoMS 2/Inquisitor 10 character that has a Sense Motive of +32 when using Silver-Tongued Haggler for Snake Style, his bonus is +27 normally. With a standing AC of 35, he has a pretty decent chance of deflecting the attack even without using STH, and is all but assured of doing so when he does use it. He also hasn't bothered to do something like take Skill Focus (Sense Motive), which would net a +6 bonus, or any of the number of magic items that give +5 competence bonus to Sense Motive.

It's really not all that hard to get your Sense Motive up higher than your AC, as long as you pay some attention to it and don't trash your Wisdom Score.

As a side note, I look forward to building a Warpriest (ACG) of Irori that uses Unarmed Strikes as his Divine Weapon in conjunction with Snake Style.

Also, Off-Topic.


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Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Yep, it's a very neat build, and I've been messing around with a few of them for a few minutes. I'm looking at it and I can't possibly deny that you can build for it if you spend enough feats and traits, but even then you've spent several additional feats and also your potentially-precious immediate action on Snake that you needn't spend on Crane, and Crane protects somewhat from all attacks whereas Snake only helps for the one.

It's worth noting that Crane Style requires you be attacking, while Snake does not. For this reason, Snake Style synergizes with the Antagonize feat, while Crane does not.

Snake Fang also can grant a ton of AOs, while Crane Riposte can only grant one.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

-Matt


Tels wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Scavion wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:

It's actually better than Fang for those who don't use unarmed strikes (and let's be fair, the intermediate feat in the Snake chain is pretty useless anyway, since it eats your immediate and prevents the other Snakes).

In fact, this newest version is often offensively more powerful than the original pre-errata Crane Riposte, since it now allows a Riposte even if every enemy misses you (whereas before, if that happened, which was fairly common for me thanks to Crane's +4 to AC, I didn't get a riposte that round which lowered my damage).

The most "overpowered" use of Crane Wing was by folks who used the dip from MoMS. This meant they have an unarmed strike of 1d6 anyways. Then you remember that MoMS lets you ignore steps in a chain so you can get Snake Style and Fang right at level 2.

Now Snake Style is better offensively and Defensively.

Defensively, I'm not certain. It depends on what your AC is compared to your Sense Motive modifier. Since you have to declare Snake Style and Crane Wing both before the attack roll is made, if your AC with the +4 on top of fighting defensively is better than what you would usually get from a Sense Motive check (this is true for all Snake/Crane characters I have ever built, and it was even true for my max-Wis max-Sense Motive Zen Archer so much so that I didn't take the feat with her, but I could certainly imagine a build for which it isn't true), then Snake Style is less helpful than Crane Wing.

An unarmed Inquisitor with the travel domain and a dip into MoMS to have two styles active was a very good defensive class that got lots of AoO from misses once Snake Fang came into play.

Inquisitors gain a morale bonus equal to 1/2 their inquisitor level on Sense Motive checks from Stern Gaze. Travel Domain gives you Silver-Tongued Haggler which lets you use a free action to add half their cleric level as an untyped bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy or Sense Motive...

OK, he has +27 Sense Motive and AC 35 standing. So his full Crane Wing AC would have been 43. For Snake Style to do better (with an immediate action you don't have to spend for Crane, an absolutely ENORMOUS deal for inquisitors, who use Swift to activate judgment and bane and to cast hideously overpowered litany spells), you need to roll a natural 16 or above, so Crane was probably better even for a class adding half its level to Sense Motive.


Mattastrophic wrote:


Snake Fang also can grant a ton of AOs, while Crane Riposte can only grant one.

Just thought I'd throw that out there.

-Matt

Well yeah. I've obeen talking defense here in my last few posts when comparing the two styles this evening. I think I made it explicit, didn't I? Sorry if I didn't.


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Tels wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Scavion wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:

It's actually better than Fang for those who don't use unarmed strikes (and let's be fair, the intermediate feat in the Snake chain is pretty useless anyway, since it eats your immediate and prevents the other Snakes).

In fact, this newest version is often offensively more powerful than the original pre-errata Crane Riposte, since it now allows a Riposte even if every enemy misses you (whereas before, if that happened, which was fairly common for me thanks to Crane's +4 to AC, I didn't get a riposte that round which lowered my damage).

The most "overpowered" use of Crane Wing was by folks who used the dip from MoMS. This meant they have an unarmed strike of 1d6 anyways. Then you remember that MoMS lets you ignore steps in a chain so you can get Snake Style and Fang right at level 2.

Now Snake Style is better offensively and Defensively.

Defensively, I'm not certain. It depends on what your AC is compared to your Sense Motive modifier. Since you have to declare Snake Style and Crane Wing both before the attack roll is made, if your AC with the +4 on top of fighting defensively is better than what you would usually get from a Sense Motive check (this is true for all Snake/Crane characters I have ever built, and it was even true for my max-Wis max-Sense Motive Zen Archer so much so that I didn't take the feat with her, but I could certainly imagine a build for which it isn't true), then Snake Style is less helpful than Crane Wing.

An unarmed Inquisitor with the travel domain and a dip into MoMS to have two styles active was a very good defensive class that got lots of AoO from misses once Snake Fang came into play.

Inquisitors gain a morale bonus equal to 1/2 their inquisitor level on Sense Motive checks from Stern Gaze. Travel Domain gives you Silver-Tongued Haggler which lets you use a free action to add half their cleric level as an untyped bonus to Bluff,

...

My mistake, his AC is 35 with Crane Style active. Considering the fact he's on his first turn he always activates his styles, I consider Crane Style as a part of his standing AC.

I also use the original Crane Style mechanics and refuse to allow the errata (as my group agrees with me, we all ignore it).


Tels wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Tels wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Scavion wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:

It's actually better than Fang for those who don't use unarmed strikes (and let's be fair, the intermediate feat in the Snake chain is pretty useless anyway, since it eats your immediate and prevents the other Snakes).

In fact, this newest version is often offensively more powerful than the original pre-errata Crane Riposte, since it now allows a Riposte even if every enemy misses you (whereas before, if that happened, which was fairly common for me thanks to Crane's +4 to AC, I didn't get a riposte that round which lowered my damage).

The most "overpowered" use of Crane Wing was by folks who used the dip from MoMS. This meant they have an unarmed strike of 1d6 anyways. Then you remember that MoMS lets you ignore steps in a chain so you can get Snake Style and Fang right at level 2.

Now Snake Style is better offensively and Defensively.

Defensively, I'm not certain. It depends on what your AC is compared to your Sense Motive modifier. Since you have to declare Snake Style and Crane Wing both before the attack roll is made, if your AC with the +4 on top of fighting defensively is better than what you would usually get from a Sense Motive check (this is true for all Snake/Crane characters I have ever built, and it was even true for my max-Wis max-Sense Motive Zen Archer so much so that I didn't take the feat with her, but I could certainly imagine a build for which it isn't true), then Snake Style is less helpful than Crane Wing.

An unarmed Inquisitor with the travel domain and a dip into MoMS to have two styles active was a very good defensive class that got lots of AoO from misses once Snake Fang came into play.

Inquisitors gain a morale bonus equal to 1/2 their inquisitor level on Sense Motive checks from Stern Gaze. Travel Domain gives you Silver-Tongued Haggler which lets you use a free action to add half their cleric level

...

Wow, I'm impressed that he activates his styles before judgements or banes. That's a significant sacrifice. Also, it takes two rounds to get up both styles unless you have that other feat to always start with one. Also, even so, current Crane Wing is (barely) better than Snake Style on average for your character even if Snake didn't cost an immediate (you have to roll a natural 12 on the d20 to beat current Crane Wing).


I find it strange that Jason and Stephen have made multiple repetitive posts responding to ill-mannered posters,
yet have ignored the posters who simply objectively engaged with the subject, offering specific fixes or analyses of the true problem.
Why not engage those who are participating as (I presume) Paizo would wish them to?
Offering explicit feedback is positive reinforcement which may even prod ill-mannered posters to "get with the program".
As-is, there is no positive feedback related to objective engagement, so there is no motivation against unproductive rants.

This kind of reponse from Paizo has happened previously:
Ignoring objective productive posting in favor of spending effort on posters who demonstrate the least productive, toxic discourse.
Of course, we can believe in good faith that Paizo is internally acting upon useful points raised,
but when the actual responces ignore that, then those helpful productive tendencies are marginalized from the thread discussion.
If given direct feedback, their presence is strengthened, because anybody can see that tendency is actually getting things done.
If those posters really are to change, they need both negative and positive reinforcement: a carrot and stick.
Not just clamping down on the most egregious of unproductive toxic discourse, but being led to positive discourse, by that being shown to have results.
I personally believe that positive objectively helpful engagement is effective, but not everybody does clearly, and they need evidence.

Paizo Employee Lead Designer

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Quandary wrote:

I find it strange that Jason and Stephen have made multiple repetitive posts responding to ill-mannered posters,

yet have ignored the posters who simply objectively engaged with the subject, offering specific fixes or analyses of the true problem.
Why not engage those who are participating as (I presume) Paizo would wish them to?
Offering explicit feedback is positive reinforcement which may even prod ill-mannered posters to "get with the program".
As-is, there is no positive feedback related to objective engagement, so there is no motivation against unproductive rants.

I know that I appreciate the constructive posters, engaging with this issue in a meaningful way. We have been reading these posts and taking some notes. We are more than happy to let the community discuss this without interfering too much, except of course, to try and keep it on track.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Tels wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Tels wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Scavion wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:

It's actually better than Fang for those who don't use unarmed strikes (and let's be fair, the intermediate feat in the Snake chain is pretty useless anyway, since it eats your immediate and prevents the other Snakes).

In fact, this newest version is often offensively more powerful than the original pre-errata Crane Riposte, since it now allows a Riposte even if every enemy misses you (whereas before, if that happened, which was fairly common for me thanks to Crane's +4 to AC, I didn't get a riposte that round which lowered my damage).

The most "overpowered" use of Crane Wing was by folks who used the dip from MoMS. This meant they have an unarmed strike of 1d6 anyways. Then you remember that MoMS lets you ignore steps in a chain so you can get Snake Style and Fang right at level 2.

Now Snake Style is better offensively and Defensively.

Defensively, I'm not certain. It depends on what your AC is compared to your Sense Motive modifier. Since you have to declare Snake Style and Crane Wing both before the attack roll is made, if your AC with the +4 on top of fighting defensively is better than what you would usually get from a Sense Motive check (this is true for all Snake/Crane characters I have ever built, and it was even true for my max-Wis max-Sense Motive Zen Archer so much so that I didn't take the feat with her, but I could certainly imagine a build for which it isn't true), then Snake Style is less helpful than Crane Wing.

An unarmed Inquisitor with the travel domain and a dip into MoMS to have two styles active was a very good defensive class that got lots of AoO from misses once Snake Fang came into play.

Inquisitors gain a morale bonus equal to 1/2 their inquisitor level on Sense Motive checks from Stern Gaze. Travel Domain gives you Silver-Tongued Haggler which lets you use a free action to add

...

I don't 'Nova' with him like other Inquisitors do. I don't need to activate Judgements (or Bane) in every fight unless they are needed. It's a part of resource management as we avoid the "5-minute workday" problem that other GMs do that allows classes like Inquisitors or Magi put some of the martials to shame.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

MagusJanus wrote:
Aelryinth wrote:

Wait, wait.

So, your CW fighter ran up, tanked a bunch of attacks, got hit by ranged attacks, and died.

Your other fighter played it smart, let the cleric summon up a fire elemental, sat back and plinked, and didn't take any damage to speak of.

Uh, what?

And the enemy casters and ranged combatants focused on the CW fighter, instead of the rest of the party, who amazingly didn't help the CW fighter at all in his fight.

Furthermore, the CW fighter didn't bother to ignore the melee combatants who could do no damage to him if he played smart, and go for the casters who could. The goblin meleers, on the other hand, somehow managed to get lucky and land multiple attacks on him at precisely the right time.

And hey, no summoned fire elementals to bail him out.

So, what I'm seeing here is officially the worst comparison test, ever.

Now, I want you to take that switch hitter and put him through the same exact tactics as the CW guy, with the same rolls and everything.

he's dead in one round because, by my count, he'll eat two attacks he can't crane wing, (dying on the AoO from suddenly getting his bow out in the middle of a fight),his AC is lower so he should be hit more (seriously, why does the Crane Wing have a low dex mod and heavy armor?), and his party will be standing around like lumps with their thumbs up their bum as the goblins concentrate all fire on the melee, instead of, you know, working with him, or being targeted by the enemy spellcasters like, you know, smart casters and ranged combatants do. Like they let the CW crash and burn.

Uh huh.

===Aelryinth

If I were playing it fairly, the CW fighter would have taken 28 points of damage the first round. I rolled max damage on those when I did a roll, and instead fudged in the fighter's favor. I also ignored the intelligence bonus alchemists get to bomb damage.

So what you're seeing is a comparison test where I outright cheated in the favor of the PCs and the CW fighter still died.

Also,...

Dude, you don't know how to run a playtest to compare different builds. If you want to see the mechanical power, you have to have ONLY the changes that involve the mechanical power between the two builds.

in short, you made a lousy CW fighter, deliberately. You also made horrible choices for the goblins (the goblin wizard killing the fire elemental, when he could have shot the cleric, and got rid of a PC AND the elemental at the same time stands out), and you metagamed the range stuff for the missile attacks. You also deliberately ran the CW into a ranged fight with a build (stats) that wasn't designed for ranged combat, and wondered why he sucked.

You need to equip both your fighters with the exact same gear and exact same stats. You'll notice instantly the CW improves in his AC and his ability to shoot things, as well as his Touch AC going up.

You then need to punish your spellcasters with the melee goblins. Note that the goblins can run right past the ranger when he's shooting, since he doesn't threaten. They can't run past the CW guy, who does. Both goblins should immediately head for the party wizard, since he's a hated thought-stealer, and unless the melees can get in the way and guard him with a charge lane, he's going to get mobbed. The goblin alchemist and wizard should concentrate fire on the wizard.

Now the two melees have a choice. Sit there in ranged combat and get alchemical bombs and fire all over themselves, or at least one of them get over there to mess up that alchemist. I'll note that the fire elemental somehow could not stop the goblin wizard from casting, so it was totally ineffective.

======
What you had was not a situation where you were testing out Crane Wing. What you had was a situation where you were illustrating the divide between melee and ranged combat.

As so many people have proven over the years, archers do more and more consistent damage then melees because they can sit there and get more attacks off. That's it. You should always do ranged combat if you can, and aren't threatened in melee.

And then to further drive the point home, you made one of the builds deliberately adept at ranged combat, and the other deliberately inferior (to the tune of what, -3,-4 relative?)

it's a bad comparison. The two Crane Wing deflections in your first example alone proved the CW was a better melee combatant then your switch hitter. By simply moving stats around, he becomes a decent ranged combatant in the same situation. If the goblins back up 10 feet, they're out of 30 feet precise shot range, and the penalty for 40 feet is the same as 30 feet for the goblin.

Your CW build is slow (in heavy armor without the mastery for full speed? for a skill that excels with Spring Attack?!), low on Dex (so will never take advantage of a fighter's armor training?), and tactically dumb. You don't need archery feats to be decent at archery, in terms of being able to hit stuff. You need a good Dex stat.

Try it again with a build a real CW player might use, aye? And in a situation where ranged combat is an inferior option. Like, say, putting all the goblins behind cover (-4 to hit them) and have ALL of them plinking at the party, so you've no choice but to charge). And do remember that the alchemist throwing bombs when he's in melee range is provoking.

==Aelryinth


Quandary wrote:

I find it strange that Jason and Stephen have made multiple repetitive posts responding to ill-mannered posters,

yet have ignored the posters who simply objectively engaged with the subject, offering specific fixes or analyses of the true problem.
Why not engage those who are participating as (I presume) Paizo would wish them to?
Offering explicit feedback is positive reinforcement which may even prod ill-mannered posters to "get with the program".
As-is, there is no positive feedback related to objective engagement, so there is no motivation against unproductive rants.

At the risk of sounding overly negative... what sort of response would you like or expect for that?

Offering specific fixes or analysis of the true problem isn't getting feedback because, as far as they're concerned, they've fixed it already. No more analysis needed.
I don't think 'thanks for your feedback. Your opinion is important to us, and we truly honestly listen... but we don't care what you're saying, the nerf stands' is going to encourage the sort of constructive participation you envision.
Quandary wrote:
If given direct feedback, their presence is strengthened, because anybody can see that tendency is actually getting things done.

Except when 'getting things done' amounts to being told 'decision's made, and that's it for now. We might revisit it sometime in the future...'.

There needs to be a willingness for discussion on both sides that we're not seeing for that to work.


Tels wrote:
I don't 'Nova' with him like other Inquisitors do. I don't need to activate Judgements (or Bane) in every fight unless they are needed. It's a part of resource management as we avoid the "5-minute workday" problem that other GMs do that allows classes like Inquisitors or Magi put some of the martials to shame.

Sounds awesome! Our group likes that too. We try to do as much of a dungeon as possible in one day, implementing realistic penalties for resting.

I don't mean the fights where you don't activate judgment and bane though. I mean the fights where you do use them. Do you still take two rounds to get the styles up first? It seems like those would also be the fights you need the styles more than ever (and if you do put styles on first, activating Snake is a pain because it delays judgment and bane yet another round each time). Then again, I've never tried this build out, so I could be wrong?

Either way, I think from what you're saying that you're with me on the fact that new Crane Wing is very slightly better for your inquisitor than Snake Style (even the action cost notwithstanding) from a perspective of the probability of preventing an attack, but that both together are even more effective.


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Aelryinth wrote:

Dude, you don't know how to run a playtest to compare different builds. If you want to see the mechanical power, you have to have ONLY the changes that involve the mechanical power between the two builds.

in short, you made a lousy CW fighter, deliberately. You also made horrible choices for the goblins (the goblin wizard killing the fire elemental, when he could have shot the cleric, and got rid of a PC AND the elemental at the same time stands out), and you metagamed the range stuff for the missile attacks. You also deliberately ran the CW into a ranged fight with a build (stats) that wasn't designed for ranged combat, and wondered why he sucked.

I didn't make the CW build. Shisumo did. My entire point this entire time has been that an overspecialized build like what he came up with is not a good example. After all, even you admit it's a lousy CW fighter.

And, no, I didn't wonder why he sucked. I knew why he sucked before I even ran the tests. He's overspecialized to melee; in any instance where he must focus outside of that, he's pretty much useless to the party as anything except a meatshield.

My entire point is that using an overspecialized build to prove a point is utterly the wrong way to do it. I didn't need the builds to be similar because that was not part of my point; I simply needed to demonstrate just how bad of an idea thinking that overspecialized build is good actually is. So, yeah, I intentionally compared it to a more generalized build that is more likely to see actual play. I then had to metagame the missile roles and use horrible goblin tactics just to keep that build alive long enough for a true test to be run. That alone is enough to show just how bad Shisumo's example is.

That you call it a bad build is just icing on the cake.

So, yeah, it was a bad series of tests for determining actual balance... but, then, those tests were never about balance. They were about demonstrating that people really need to stop with the bad builds and completely unrealistic builds (silver dragon PC from another thread comes to mind) to prove CW is broken and instead focus on posting real evidence.

Now, I have a group of players who are wanting me me to run this again, only with equal builds and their side having a gunslinger. Next time I post evidence, it will be on the actual balance, not on showing someone that their example is not actually evidence of what they're saying.


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MagusJanus wrote:
Aelryinth wrote:

Dude, you don't know how to run a playtest to compare different builds. If you want to see the mechanical power, you have to have ONLY the changes that involve the mechanical power between the two builds.

in short, you made a lousy CW fighter, deliberately. You also made horrible choices for the goblins (the goblin wizard killing the fire elemental, when he could have shot the cleric, and got rid of a PC AND the elemental at the same time stands out), and you metagamed the range stuff for the missile attacks. You also deliberately ran the CW into a ranged fight with a build (stats) that wasn't designed for ranged combat, and wondered why he sucked.

I didn't make the CW build. Shisumo did. My entire point this entire time has been that an overspecialized build like what he came up with is not a good example. After all, even you admit it's a lousy CW fighter.

And, no, I didn't wonder why he sucked. I knew why he sucked before I even ran the tests. He's overspecialized to melee; in any instance where he must focus outside of that, he's pretty much useless to the party as anything except a meatshield.

My entire point is that using an overspecialized build to prove a point is utterly the wrong way to do it. I didn't need the builds to be similar because that was not part of my point; I simply needed to demonstrate just how bad of an idea thinking that overspecialized build is good actually is. So, yeah, I intentionally compared it to a more generalized build that is more likely to see actual play. I then had to metagame the missile roles and use horrible goblin tactics just to keep that build alive long enough for a true test to be run. That alone is enough to show just how bad Shisumo's example is.

That you call it a bad build is just icing on the cake.

So, yeah, it was a bad series of tests for determining actual balance... but, then, those tests were never about balance....

Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.


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One of the interesting fundamental truths of PF is that as you get to be a higher level, bonuses to defenses are intentionally outpaced by bonuses to hit. This is done, simply enough, so that characters, and enemies, hit more often and deplete more expensive resources. This, in turn, is so that the higher level play doesn't just become a slogfest, where everyone attacks, finally rolls well, and still misses. This generally slows down gameplay, and isn't particularly fun for those involved.

The old version of the feat kinda ... throws that whole philosophy out the door, and does it in an inexpensive way.

Lantern Lodge

Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.

I seem to recall reading at least a portion of the thread you did on that in the PFS forums. For my consideration and potential commenting, what levels did you playtest run through?


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.

I remember reading about that. That's actually a combination I need to test. Now that I have victi... er, willing players, I can do so. In fact, your evidence spawned my idea of us having an online playtesting group.

I also need to run a test involving animals...


Lormyr wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.
I seem to recall reading at least a portion of the thread you did on that in the PFS forums. For my consideration and potential commenting, what levels did you playtest run through?

It was PFS, so that would be 1 to 7. This included playing up nearly every session, even at level 1, and only when the party was playing up massively too (this was back when you could choose) with as few PCs as possible, usually 4. (Exceptions being one time to save a really poorly leveled party from TPK playing as level 4 in the 4-5 of in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment, which he basically soloed, and Bonekeep, which he played on-level)

I did this not by forcing other players to play up but simply by my own character selection, pulling him out only when it was a massive play-up situation (I was going to play someone else in ToEE for that reason until my conscience twinged and I played him). As it turned out, the main thing that slowed down my playtests were the new rules for playing up, since they meant it's harder to get the data I wanted.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

The reason why monsters hit is so that the game keeps moving. The reason why high level PC's have so many bloody hit points is so they can survive being hit.

Being 90% invulnerable and 10% squashed flat means after 10 fights you're squashed flat. It's the same thing which makes people hate save-or-die or save-or-suck spells. All or nothing is a lousy way to game.

Crane Wing removes the gradual erosion aspect of an entire play style away. Played tactically, it can be almost impossible to threaten the character in melee combat, all he has to do is keep the enemy to a standard action.

at least with the revision it doesn't work 100% of the time, or automatically when you want it to. It's a big shift in power. But if the BBEG is still coming with one attack, a +4 Dodge to AC is huge...but justifiable.

And if all you want is the riposte, just select an attack that's going to miss, and you get the riposte without effort.

Crane just became more tactical and balanced. I don't see a problem with it now, especially with riposte fixed.

==Aelryinth

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Aelryinth wrote:
MagusJanus wrote:
Aelryinth wrote:

Wait, wait.

So, your CW fighter ran up, tanked a bunch of attacks, got hit by ranged attacks, and died.

Your other fighter played it smart, let the cleric summon up a fire elemental, sat back and plinked, and didn't take any damage to speak of.

Uh, what?

And the enemy casters and ranged combatants focused on the CW fighter, instead of the rest of the party, who amazingly didn't help the CW fighter at all in his fight.

Furthermore, the CW fighter didn't bother to ignore the melee combatants who could do no damage to him if he played smart, and go for the casters who could. The goblin meleers, on the other hand, somehow managed to get lucky and land multiple attacks on him at precisely the right time.

And hey, no summoned fire elementals to bail him out.

So, what I'm seeing here is officially the worst comparison test, ever.

Now, I want you to take that switch hitter and put him through the same exact tactics as the CW guy, with the same rolls and everything.

he's dead in one round because, by my count, he'll eat two attacks he can't crane wing, (dying on the AoO from suddenly getting his bow out in the middle of a fight),his AC is lower so he should be hit more (seriously, why does the Crane Wing have a low dex mod and heavy armor?), and his party will be standing around like lumps with their thumbs up their bum as the goblins concentrate all fire on the melee, instead of, you know, working with him, or being targeted by the enemy spellcasters like, you know, smart casters and ranged combatants do. Like they let the CW crash and burn.

Uh huh.

===Aelryinth

If I were playing it fairly, the CW fighter would have taken 28 points of damage the first round. I rolled max damage on those when I did a roll, and instead fudged in the fighter's favor. I also ignored the intelligence bonus alchemists get to bomb damage.

So what you're seeing is a comparison test where I outright cheated in the favor of the PCs and the CW fighter

...

My apologies, then.

Well, if you were going to do a Mechanics Test, you should have used a fighter with the same stats and gear, and just swapped feats, that's how you do a test.

And part of the point of a CW is to get a good dex so you ARE a good switch hitter. It's an intelligent playstyle, not a one trick pony.

And throwing a melee fighter into a ranged combat scenario where he can't take proper measures is asking for trouble.

Also, this is supposed to be about comparing viable melee bui8lds. Why don't you just take the two builds and throw them up against some standard minotaurs or ogre barbarians, and see what happens? That's how you really test things. Give them the exact same dice rolls, and see what happens. Moreover, see how long each will last. I think it will not surprise you how much longer the Crane Wing fighter will endure then a switch hitter.

==Aelryinth


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Aelryinth wrote:

The reason why monsters hit is so that the game keeps moving. The reason why high level PC's have so many bloody hit points is so they can survive being hit.

Being 90% invulnerable and 10% squashed flat means after 10 fights you're squashed flat. It's the same thing which makes people hate save-or-die or save-or-suck spells. All or nothing is a lousy way to game.

Crane Wing removes the gradual erosion aspect of an entire play style away. Played tactically, it can be almost impossible to threaten the character in melee combat, all he has to do is keep the enemy to a standard action.

at least with the revision it doesn't work 100% of the time, or automatically when you want it to. It's a big shift in power. But if the BBEG is still coming with one attack, a +4 Dodge to AC is huge...but justifiable.

And if all you want is the riposte, just select an attack that's going to miss, and you get the riposte without effort.

Crane just became more tactical and balanced. I don't see a problem with it now, especially with riposte fixed.

==Aelryinth

God forbid a martial character gets an option where the workaround isn't just 'Stab him harder!'

I don't see a problem with a defensive feat providing a solid defense that requires a little tactical thought to work around (because there is no problem). That's not overpowered, that's what a good feat should do. People are too used to martials getting s**t for options and settling on 'well that's just how it should be'. Because a heavy feat investment should be overruled by a level 1 spell?
The game needs more options like old Crane Wing, not less.

Lantern Lodge

Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Lormyr wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.
I seem to recall reading at least a portion of the thread you did on that in the PFS forums. For my consideration and potential commenting, what levels did you playtest run through?

It was PFS, so that would be 1 to 7. This included playing up nearly every session, even at level 1, and only when the party was playing up massively too (this was back when you could choose) with as few PCs as possible, usually 4. (Exceptions being one time to save a really poorly leveled party from TPK playing as level 4 in the 4-5 of in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment, which he basically soloed, and Bonekeep, which he played on-level)

I did this not by forcing other players to play up but simply by my own character selection, pulling him out only when it was a massive play-up situation (I was going to play someone else in ToEE for that reason until my conscience twinged and I played him). As it turned out, the main thing that slowed down my playtests were the new rules for playing up, since they meant it's harder to get the data I wanted.

Understood, thank you for the information. Before I comment further I'd like to ask two more questions if I may.

First, have you employed any builds using Crane Wing past 12th level? How about past 16th level? I believe that when examining a feat's power level it is important to attain a broad perspective, not just an early to early-mid game one.

Second, while I love PFS and have nothing ill to say of it whatsoever, we both know from playing it that scenarios are not the best set up for testing due to the standard of most NPC/BBEG design (this statement is a general one, and by no means all encompassing). Did you run that test character through any sanctioned modules by chance?

Thanks for the discourse RE.


Lormyr wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Lormyr wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.
I seem to recall reading at least a portion of the thread you did on that in the PFS forums. For my consideration and potential commenting, what levels did you playtest run through?

It was PFS, so that would be 1 to 7. This included playing up nearly every session, even at level 1, and only when the party was playing up massively too (this was back when you could choose) with as few PCs as possible, usually 4. (Exceptions being one time to save a really poorly leveled party from TPK playing as level 4 in the 4-5 of in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment, which he basically soloed, and Bonekeep, which he played on-level)

I did this not by forcing other players to play up but simply by my own character selection, pulling him out only when it was a massive play-up situation (I was going to play someone else in ToEE for that reason until my conscience twinged and I played him). As it turned out, the main thing that slowed down my playtests were the new rules for playing up, since they meant it's harder to get the data I wanted.

Understood, thank you for the information. Before I comment further I'd like to ask two more questions if I may.

First, have you employed any builds using Crane Wing past 12th level? How about past 16th level? I believe that when examining a feat's power level it is important to attain a broad perspective, not just an early to early-mid game one.

Second, while I love PFS and have nothing ill to say of it whatsoever, we both know from playing it that scenarios are not the best set up for testing due to the standard of most NPC/BBEG design (this statement is a...

PFS was for a standardized experience because it's easy to dismiss home game experiences due to differences in play style (for instance, like Tels, our group does a ton of encounters each day, and we use surgical bans to remove toxic options from the game that people might expect to be included, like chains of light and other auto-wins). So PFS is actually ideally suited for a playtest, in that it's a solid common baseline so people don't talk past each other. If one person thinks Crane doesn't matter because chains of light and highly metamagicked snowball cause conjurers to break the game and the other person has banned those two spells, while a third person has a 3rd party class that negates Crane style, and a fourth has a strange houserule that benefits martial characters who have an off-hand free, the true results may be narrow enough to be lost in the substantial noise you will see because of those other changes.

The 12th level Crane character is actually even more paradigm-changing for our 14th level home campaign party than the low-level PFS guy.

My 12th level Crane playtest character in a 14th level campaign (she's a cohort) is in a home game (she came in at level 5).

However, I wouldn't put much credence in anyone's playtests after a certain level, including my own. As a GM who has gone from 1-22 in 3.5 epic and played plenty of high level 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder, the one rule of high level is that every party is vastly different and standardized stuff doesn't work any more. The same 3.5 party of level 21s that just beat the CR 40 encounter easily might fall to the CR 22 encounter with no chance of living. It doesn't take much more than my Swashbuckler playtests of soloing ridiculous CR monsters to see a recent example of that (with Crane Style even!).

It's still very possible to provide fun, memorable games in 3.5 and Pathfinder all the way up to 20 (I've done it myself many times), but you pretty much have to balance and playtest everything with your particular group in mind. What I threw at my high level PCs would likely kill >75% of parties at their level and perhaps not challenge at all some number of the remaining parties.

This is a long-winded way of saying that level 16+ playtest sessions, while I would have had them soon if the errata didn't happen (since we'll be using it), are not going to be very helpful at all, since the results will vary so wildly by that level.


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Mikaze wrote:
No matter what one may have thought of the original Crane Wing, it was simple and fast. For a class as complicated as the monk, that alone added a lot of appeal.

This!

I'm probably going to be disengaging from this debate because I've said what I have to say, based on my previous experience with the feat and my general opinions about the rules, and I won't likely be accruing particularly more playtest experience going forward to say new things with.

However, I just want to say that aside from balance, ease of play is also a big concern to me, playing at high levels as I do where there is already more than enough to track. Before anyone says that it's easy to remember one more fiddly little conditional modifier that applies to some attacks but not others - it might be, but the more of these sorts of mechanics you have (especially for one character) the more of a burden it becomes to track each one.

And even if it is not too hard to track, it is also more of a pain to apply since it interrupts the turn to a greater degree than the old Crane Wing did. Before, your GM would likely have your AC handy, come back to you with however many hits with damage, you'd take one of those away and move on. Now the GM has to inform you of how many attacks he's targeting you with, wait for you to decide which one you're applying your feat to, figure out if it hit by less than 4, then come back to you with hits and damage.

I would see someone possessing this feat rendering turns 1-2 minutes longer in my group's play medium (mIRC), which is about +120-140% increase over the baseline typical turn time, unless he turned the feat over to the GM to track and apply according to a general guideline (such as "always boost against the first attack").

Which would avoid adding several communication steps to resolving each turn, but, with all he has to track already, the GM is also probably the last person who wants to be tracking the PC's ability too.

Even if the feat weren't restored to some of its power, I'd love to see the errata version made less onerous to actually use. And I'd love to see general care taken, across the board, for ensuring ease of play when writing these sorts of mechanics.


Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Lormyr wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Lormyr wrote:
Rogue Eidolon wrote:
Just to let you know, my playtest Crane dude has both Deflect Arrows (to deflect the first ranged attack) and Evasion, so from the sound of this, he would have "invincibled" (his terminology, not mine, since obviously he is capable of failing his Ref) through this playtest just like the 20 entire adventures I used to playtest him.
I seem to recall reading at least a portion of the thread you did on that in the PFS forums. For my consideration and potential commenting, what levels did you playtest run through?

It was PFS, so that would be 1 to 7. This included playing up nearly every session, even at level 1, and only when the party was playing up massively too (this was back when you could choose) with as few PCs as possible, usually 4. (Exceptions being one time to save a really poorly leveled party from TPK playing as level 4 in the 4-5 of in Temple of Empyreal Enlightenment, which he basically soloed, and Bonekeep, which he played on-level)

I did this not by forcing other players to play up but simply by my own character selection, pulling him out only when it was a massive play-up situation (I was going to play someone else in ToEE for that reason until my conscience twinged and I played him). As it turned out, the main thing that slowed down my playtests were the new rules for playing up, since they meant it's harder to get the data I wanted.

Understood, thank you for the information. Before I comment further I'd like to ask two more questions if I may.

First, have you employed any builds using Crane Wing past 12th level? How about past 16th level? I believe that when examining a feat's power level it is important to attain a broad perspective, not just an early to early-mid game one.

Second, while I love PFS and have nothing ill to say of it whatsoever, we both know from playing it that scenarios are not the best set up for testing due to the standard of most NPC/BBEG

...

Tyali, a Lyrakien Swashbuckler the playtest mentioned in this post. I should mention that Rogue Eidolon did some fantastic playtests for the ACG, many swashbucklers were made, and if I recall, I think they all had the Crane Style chain and were of varying levels and builds.

Of course, Crane Style and Swashbuckler also happen to synergize stupidly well together.


Tels wrote:

Tyali, a Lyrakien Swashbuckler the playtest mentioned in this post. I should mention that Rogue Eidolon did some fantastic playtests for the ACG, many swashbucklers were made, and if I recall, I think they all had the Crane Style chain and were of varying levels and builds.

Of course, Crane Style and Swashbuckler also happen to synergize stupidly well together.

Yup, that one! So while I didn't have a level 16 character, I did kill a CR 25 Balor Lord and CR 25 Treerazer in the same day at least.

And I was sort of also referencing Grace vs the Pit Fiend and whoever fought all those Grendels.

Also, Rhiana the Swashbuckler was actually a rebuild of the aforementioned 12th level cohort.

It's no accident they all had Crane Style. The only antisynergy there is that the -1 to hit fighting defensively hurts Parry.


magnuskn wrote:
I have a masters degree in socio-economic history. Cheap appeals to authority like yours are just as meaningless as me mentioning that title.

The idea that "appeal to authority" is somehow a fallacy is an invention of the Internet. The original appeals, laid out by Aristotle, are logos, pathos, and ethos. Loosely translated, they are appeals to logic, appeals to emotion, and appeals based on the character of the speaker. Ethos is given extensive treatment in his works, and has been an important aspect for understanding persuasion throughout the millennia since.

On a more practical note, I'm confused by your statement. You seem to be rejecting the idea that authority gives credibility while claiming your own ("playing and tinkering ... for close to 14 years"). Either you're even because you have the same authority--you both understand the system--or that doesn't matter at all, which discarding "appeals to authority" would seem to imply.


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Master of Rhetoric wrote:
The idea that "appeal to authority" is somehow a fallacy is an invention of the Internet.

Would you like to know more?


Aelryinth wrote:

The reason why monsters hit is so that the game keeps moving. The reason why high level PC's have so many bloody hit points is so they can survive being hit.

Being 90% invulnerable and 10% squashed flat means after 10 fights you're squashed flat. It's the same thing which makes people hate save-or-die or save-or-suck spells. All or nothing is a lousy way to game.

Crane Wing removes the gradual erosion aspect of an entire play style away. Played tactically, it can be almost impossible to threaten the character in melee combat, all he has to do is keep the enemy to a standard action.

at least with the revision it doesn't work 100% of the time, or automatically when you want it to. It's a big shift in power. But if the BBEG is still coming with one attack, a +4 Dodge to AC is huge...but justifiable.

And if all you want is the riposte, just select an attack that's going to miss, and you get the riposte without effort.

Crane just became more tactical and balanced. I don't see a problem with it now, especially with riposte fixed.

==Aelryinth

See I still disagree, but I doubt I can convince you at this point when many others have not, but I will simply say the following.

You mention the tactical use of the feat, limiting an opponent to a Standard. Typically that involved a move action. Infering the Monk/Whatever has moved away from the BBEG. I don't see why the BBEG wouldn't just move away and switch to an alternative means of combat. Most APs I've played have BBEGs who can cast, and if they can't cast they can at least use a ranged weapon. They can take the opportunity to heal, focus on someone else, etc. I can't help but think that the impulse to Melee alone, even on Melee specialized builds is a mistep.

Also, I shall continue to shout this from the rooftops, if you feint the monk you deny them their crane benefits in melee. In fact anything that denies dex does, all dodge/dex AC goes out the window. Why does everyone ignore this fact when talking about crane?

Edit: For example, A level 5 monk, whom hasn't specialized in sense motive, because he say dumped INT on an already MAD character has a fient DC of 16 to 18 WIS(10 + 3 BAB + 3 to 5 Wis). A 1 HD Warrior with a neutral CHA and no bluff ranks has a 25% to 15% chance of denying the Monk a lot of AC for their next attack. COmbined with some Aid Other actions, the feints will hurt guys.


Marthkus wrote:
How can we serious be expected to believe that this change was not for the premium PFS players?

If it's any consolation, it's not unheard-of for PFS players to feel like the redheaded stepchild of Pathfinder players. I wonder why that could be?

Cairen Weiss wrote:
The PFS GM is not a Game Master, he's a narrator, a living DVD player. Personally, if someone only GMs for PFS, his opinion is worth less than that of someone who GMs home games.

Oh right, that's why.

Cairen, I GM both PFS and at home, and you're mistaken.


MrSin wrote:
Master of Rhetoric wrote:
The idea that "appeal to authority" is somehow a fallacy is an invention of the Internet.
Would you like to know more?

I think Thales was the first to bring up this logic flaw and he predated the quantification of logic.

So no, the internet did not invent the idea.

Lantern Lodge

Tels, RE, thanks for posting that. Here's my thoughts, in no particular order:

1). Awesome choice of race/class/feat combination. I approve heartily from a min-maxing perspective.

2). That character is in no way a "standard" character. Playing a Lyrakien, for a build of this sort, is far stronger than 2 character levels due to all the abilities synergizing perfectly.

Now, that said, you built the character very well. If you replaced the race with a standard one and added two levels, you would no doubt still be extremely effective. But that said, I have read enough of your posts to know that your system mastery is strong, and because of that you know your numbers on that build are hyper inflated from that race alone. Examining only the pertinent combat stats, simply by choosing a standard race we'd be knocking off:

- 6 to 8 points of Dexterity
- 1 to 2 points of attack bonus from size
- 1 to 2 points of AC from size
- 4 to 6 points of Wisdom
- 8 to 10 points of Charisma
- 1 HD/level

So let's take a hafling to compare, since that race would synergize well with your build. As a halfling, you would be down:

6 points of Dexterity, 6 points of Wisdom, 8 points of Charisma, and 1 size catagory. Including your use of Osyluth's guile, that is a net loss of:

- 11 points of AC
- 4 points to hit
- 3 points of Ref save
- 3 points of Will save
- at least 3 points of damage, possibly more? I am not sure how that McFarland feat works, nor I am intimately familiar with Swashbuckler for class feature knowledge

Now, I have no doubt you could design a CR 16 character that could kill a balor lord and/or treerazor. But that is not because Crane Wing is grossly OP - it is because you have a very good grasp of system mastery. Like myself, Crane Wing is a tool that helps with that goal, but we would still succeed at that task whether it was in our tool box or not.

Playing a very powerful, non-standard race will certainly change the dynamics of the game. Just some points to consider. Thanks for sharing that with me.

PS: For the record, I approve of the build. :p


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Marthkus wrote:
MrSin wrote:
Master of Rhetoric wrote:
The idea that "appeal to authority" is somehow a fallacy is an invention of the Internet.
Would you like to know more?

I think Thales was the first to bring up this logic flaw and he predated the quantification of logic.

So no, the internet did not invent the idea.

[digression]

It's been brought up numerous times over history, though it did not begin to be widely accepted as a formal fallacy until the generation of scholarship following the publication of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

Thus, you see it appearing in logic treatises as a fallacy beginning in the 1700s.

So, it's a development closely linked to the philosophy of the Enlightenment era. The Internet had nothing to do with it.

[/digression]

Lantern Lodge

Rogue Eidolon wrote:
PFS test stuff

I fully agree with you as far as the common baseline. The only point where I diverge is that in my personal opinion, for the most part, the scenario encounters are not designed with vs. party tactics in mind. I say that because, until around season 4, most of the end boss's were one BBEG, who may or may not performed his role well. However, that is not to say that your experiences were not valid. Some of the scenarios can be quite challenging for certain group compositions, and from your retelling it seems like you did have a handful of those instances. But yes, I agree that PFS baseline certainly makes comparing notes much easier.

Moving on, I can't disagree with your sentiment about testing varying wildly at higher level. The point I wished to make in bringing the subject up was this, though: Crane Wing was unbalanced at low level play, but not for mid-high play. This was primarily for two reasons:

1). Most enemies make fewer attacks.

2). Most enemies have fewer options to work with.

As you increase in game play level, both of those gaps close and close the higher you go. My 1st PFS character and only Crane user ended as a 19th level Monk. For most of his career, Crane Wing did nothing because my AC was so high it was unnecessary. Occasionally I batted off a natural 20 with it. When you are facing an enemy that needs 19s or 20s to hit you, you have already trivialized and won the combat, Crane Wing or no. There were two times when I really needed it, but clever tactics prevented it's use. The first time was against a really good feint rogue, who effectively cut my AC in half and stuck me but good. The second time was against a pouncing dire tiger who just beat me initiative.

Thank for your thoughts, though. I was mainly curious to learn if you believed it to be unbalancing at high level play by itself. Obviously players like you and I can and will find ways to combo anything into insanity. But I still strongly believe that, as a stand alone, Crane Wing the 1st was a strong but perfectly acceptable feat in comparison to it's offensive competition and defensive cousins.


Patrick Harris @ MU wrote:
Cairen Weiss wrote:
The PFS GM is not a Game Master, he's a narrator, a living DVD player. Personally, if someone only GMs for PFS, his opinion is worth less than that of someone who GMs home games.

Oh right, that's why.

Cairen, I GM both PFS and at home, and you're mistaken.

A DVD is a story that is played the same way every time, no deviation. A PFS scenario is designed to give the same play experience for everybody world wide with no deviation.

A DVD player allows you to play DVDs and bear witness to the story contained on the DVD. A PFS GM runs the story contained within a PFS scenario so everyone can have the same experience.

Considering the PFS GM can't replace enemies, alter their feats, alter their skills, alter their classes, increase or decrease the enemies, change the spell selection etc. The comparison between a DVD player and a PFS GM is pretty apt in my book.

The variation of the stories in PFS are based upon the actions of the player and the dice being rolled, not the PFS GM.

Webstore Gninja Minion

This is another warning to keep this thread on-topic and civil. Agree to disagree folks, and walk away from the keyboard.

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