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I "venue-hop" in my local area based on which place is running a scenario I can play on a given weekend. Even so, I feel like there's an ongoing story with my PCs...
Which is totally cool and I wouldn't want to take that away from anyone. And it's not like I don't have that feeling at all with my characters. I guess it's just that for someone steeped in home games, the "ongoing story" experience you get from organized play feels pretty weak. But like I said, I would never want to hinder anyone's ability to have that.
If I rebuilt, I would absolutely do whatever I needed to to maintain internal story/world consistency and suspension of disbelief.But I do get what you're talking about. There's a guy locally who plays this sorcerer named Sanchez. He's pretty awesomely gross and inappropriate (the character, not the player). My inquisitor/monk hated Sanchez, so I'd always try to play her whenever that guy was playing Sanchez, just so I could be his foil (you don't play a disgusting character unless you want someone to be disgusted by you, right?). Later, I brought in a new character who I decided just loved Sanchez and his antics, and was always delighted whenever they got to be in missions together, always goading him on to be grosser and more insulting.
Now, let's say this guy is always playing Sanchez, and I think "Oh, it would be so cool to play a character who (loved/hated/whatever) Sanchez because he/she is an (X) who (Y)," but I don't have anybody like that in play. If none of my current characters have any equally interesting interactions going on, it serves the story better for me to rebuild and bring in a totally new character that fits the interaction template I imagined. It enforces as opposed to diminishing the suspension of disbelief and the illusion of reality for the characters.
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Now, let's say this guy is always playing Sanchez, and I think "Oh, it would be so cool to play a character who (loved/hated/whatever) Sanchez because he/she is an (X) who (Y)," but I don't have anybody like that in play. If none of my current characters have any equally interesting interactions going on, it serves the story better for me to rebuild and bring in a totally new character that fits the interaction template I imagined. It enforces as opposed to diminishing the suspension of disbelief and the illusion of reality for the characters.
Sure. And imagine how disappointed you'd be if you showed up with that character and Sanchez was now a clean-cut, no-nonsense Fighter.
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Only if we institute mandatory training for GMs to learn the difference between "trivializing" and "successfully overcoming". :/2. You will not play characters that regularly trivialize encounters at your appropriate CR.Oh, that would be such a wonderful rule.
Lol, yes. Obviously, this is the problem. My ideal world, you see, is one in which everybody more or less agrees with my idea of what is reasonable ;)
That said, it's actually not totally impossible. Hero System, for instance, explicitly accepts that you can break its system during character creation, and gives rough guidelines as to, basically, the appropriate upper limit of things like AC, attack bonus, damage, hit points etc at the various levels. There's no perfect system for this kind of thing, and at the end of the day, yes, it relies on a lot of discretion on the part of the players/GMs.
Either that or Paizo could just, you know, make the rules balanced in the first place and errata all the stuff that isn't. But what am I saying? That's crazy talk ;)
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Now, let's say this guy is always playing Sanchez, and I think "Oh, it would be so cool to play a character who (loved/hated/whatever) Sanchez because he/she is an (X) who (Y)," but I don't have anybody like that in play. If none of my current characters have any equally interesting interactions going on, it serves the story better for me to rebuild and bring in a totally new character that fits the interaction template I imagined. It enforces as opposed to diminishing the suspension of disbelief and the illusion of reality for the characters.Sure. And imagine how disappointed you'd be if you showed up with that character and Sanchez was now a clean-cut, no-nonsense Fighter.
Well that's why I'd obviously talk to the Sanchez player about it first :p
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Lol, yes. Obviously, this is the problem. My ideal world, you see, is one in which everybody more or less agrees with my idea of what is reasonable ;)
Well, you can always just make it a local-community decision. It's the gamers that the PC will be spending the majority of his or her adventuring time with, not just the GM, who suffer when a PC doesn't show restraint and stomps everything by playing on Easy Mode. Different communities have different standards about what is okay and what is overpowering, and it would be nice to have a mechanism for dealing with overpowered characters by allowing them to retrain, thus making each community happier.
Cue the inevitable "But what about conventions?" reply.
-Matt
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Lol, yes. Obviously, this is the problem. My ideal world, you see, is one in which everybody more or less agrees with my idea of what is reasonable ;)Only if we institute mandatory training for GMs to learn the difference between "trivializing" and "successfully overcoming". :/2. You will not play characters that regularly trivialize encounters at your appropriate CR.Oh, that would be such a wonderful rule.
Naturally.
Problem is, one of the main "perks" of PFS (that is, one of the main things we tell people when they ask "why PFS?") is portability. That is, someone should be able to start a character in one city, and then move across the country or even overseas and keep playing the same character.
Some folks are in active service, and get deployed and need to find a new game. Others travel for work. Some people are in college in one state most of the year, and living in another state during the summer and part of winter. Sometimes people just move. My brother got his start while visiting me from out of state. PFS is designed such that—thanks to a unified standard of rules—those people can all take their characters with them in their travels and keep on having fun.
That ideal is undermined enough as it is just due to "not at MY table" crap, even among issues that aren't actually legitimately unclear in the rules. Now imagine that when someone moves/finishes school/comes home from deployment, they not only have to wonder if they'll hit that, but also might hit "around here, that's considered over/underpowered; you need to rebuild".
Is that really good for the campaign?
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That ideal is undermined enough as it is just due to "not at MY table" crap, even among issues that aren't actually legitimately unclear in the rules. Now imagine that when someone moves/finishes school/comes home from deployment, they not only have to wonder if they'll hit that, but also might hit "around here, that's considered over/underpowered; you need to rebuild".
Is that really good for the campaign?
My suggestion is that you have to worry about that stuff anyway. If you take your min-maxed character somewhere where they don't like that kind of play, you may be allowed to play but you will not be warmly received (and not without good reason). If, on the other hand, your group has a tacit understanding that hard core min-maxing should be avoided and then you take your reasonable character into a place where everybody turns it up to 11, you also will not have a good time as you will be overshadowed and obsolete.
I think a far better approach would be for the administration to acknowledge this inevitable reality and work with rather than against it. One thing they seriously need to face is the fact that min-maxing, power creep and class/character disparity are real and serious issues with their game. To be honest, it's starting to look increasingly ridiculous (to me, at least) that they have not done anything to address these problems, and don't seem to plan on it.
EDIT: Well, what they've done is errata Crane Wing, lol. Which blew everybody's mind with good reason. Because it's like...ok, so you suddenly realized that game balance is a thing you need to worry about, but you decided to address it by arbitrarily selecting this one feat chain, which is primarily used by a low-tier class, nerfing the crap out of it, and then not letting people rebuild their characters? Umm...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG7LjVCj50Y
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I've posted it elsewhere, but my solution would look something like the following...
A. A tiered classification system for character classes would be officially recognized by Paizo, as follows-
Tier 1: Arcanist, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch, Wizard
Tier 2: Alchemist, Bloodrager, Magus, Oracle, Paladin, Shaman, Warpriest
Tier 3: Bard, Barbarian, Brawler, Hunter, Inquisitor, Ranger, Skald, Slayer, Swashbuckler
Tier 4: Cavalier, Fighter, Gunslinger, Investigator, Monk, Ninja, Rogue, Samurai
• The Gunslinger is tier 4 only if the suggested errata listed below are made. Otherwise, it is tier 2 due to its sheer capacity to trivialize many encounters with its ranged touch attacks, especially when multiclassed with certain other classes, like the Paladin.
B. All Society scenarios (and preferably all published scenarios) would include sidebars for adjusting the game to “casual” or “hardcore” settings. The non-altered mode of play would be known as “standard.” Difficulty increases for larger parties (as we’ve seen starting in season 4) would continue to be in effect in any case.
C. Pathfinder Society GMs would state the tier and difficulty setting that they were running their table at (for instance, I might post that on Wednesday I will be running scenario 5-11 at the tier 2 hardcore setting). A PC at the table could have a maximum of 5 levels from classes one tier above that of the table, and no levels from classes two or more tiers above. Prestige class levels would always be considered one tier above that of the table (meaning their effective tier would shift depending on the situation).
D. The following (at least) would be banned or errata'd for PFS play: Master Summoner, Zen Archer, Oath of Vengeance, Deadeye deed, Clustered Shots, Manyshot, Ricochet Shot, composite bows, firearms, slumber hex, rage cycling stuff, color spray, create pit, dominate person, fly, haste, mirror image, paragon surge. Also any class abilities that become too effective when paired with ranged builds, namely smite, bane and arcane pool (you'd just have to make them only work on melee attacks).
Doing anything short of this (or some similar approach) does not seriously address the problem. And yes, this way you would have to be concerned that you might take your Wizard character somewhere and be unable to play him because they are running at the tier 3 setting, for instance. But hey, that's the tradeoff for using a powerful class, in that case. That seems reasonable to me.
Anyway, they're not going to do anything like this, which is why I'm currently on hiatus from PFS (have been for about a month now- I usually played once or more a week) while I take stock and think about how or if I want to continue to engage with the system as it is.
EDIT: Oh, and also if they did implement anything like this, they obviously ought to let everyone affected rebuild to at least the sort of degree we've been discussing regarding Crane Wing characters.
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Some of those tier listings are pretty far off in left field. Have you ever seen the sorts of things an adequately well made ninja is capable of pulling off, for example? Whole encounters become little more than a laugh by one's mere presence beyond a certain point. A ninja in a setting where the GM can't adapt encounters to limit their abilities is pretty much unstoppable nine times out of ten. Another thing I would point out is that limiting classes by "tiers" would seriously cut into the fun; we aren't here to whip out a ruler and have a measuring contest, though I'm sure some do see the game that way. PFS is not about optimization or absolute victory, but a combination of enjoyment and the social interactions between players that are sure to come with playing the game. Besides that, those tiers are not even remotely close to absolute. There are fighter characters that could feasibly solo some gods with the sheer amount of broken you can milk out of that class, for example.
Overall this just looks like you disagree with some long standing mechanics of different classes (and have an abject hatred of anything able to use composite longbows to great effect). Removing all the things you've listed would absolutely destroy the fun of a very, very large portion of the playerbase. Is it really worth doing that just to fix some perceived holes, not that those builds listed (other than gunslingers; we all know those are broken) actually create holes in the first place. Furthermore someone should not be effectively punished because oh hey, their build more effective than X or Y! That is called player diversity and it's a good thing. You shouldn't expect the game to be "fair." So what if someone has a better class or is better at building characters? See it as an opportunity to learn instead of expecting a ban.
I think maybe the most confusing thing you're calling for is a ban being placed on composite bows. ... Why would anyone do that? The degree to which it would destroy ranged builds that don't rely on guns is ridiculous, not that some of the other proposed changes wouldn't be equally disastrous. Martials are easily the highest damage dealers in the game; amongst casters only the cross-blood sorcerer has a reasonable chance of keeping up with their magic, and even then only with a very specific build. Wizards happen to be good at battlefield control; they should not suffer for this. It has always been their schtick, being as sorcerers have always outclassed them as damage dealers. The ninja can move undetected in all but the most extreme circumstances, walk on walls, can stay invisible pretty much as long as they damn well please, and generate a wide variety of other, equally powerful effects. Should they be nerfed out of that as well? A good ninja is going to do damage comparable to any barbarian, fighter, gunslinger or sorcerer; it may even go higher in some cases. They can't aim at touch AC but good luck stopping them from hitting you. Unlike the rogue, they have tools to boost their hit chance.
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...alot of stuff...
If you say so. But it certainly seems you and I are playing a very different game.
Furthermore someone should not be effectively punished because oh hey, their build more effective than X or Y! That is called player diversity and it's a good thing. You shouldn't expect the game to be "fair." So what if someone has a better class or is better at building characters? See it as an opportunity to learn instead of expecting a ban...
Optimization does not enable but kills player, or anyway character diversity. If you want to keep up with the optimizers, you are forced to adopt their methods and techniques (what you call "learning"), which are in many cases the most bland, uninspired, aesthetic-minimizing builds/tactics around. Typically the optimizer did not even really "build" the character at all. He or she just copy/pasted from some thread with the sole goal of doing the most damage, having the highest AC, or something equally banal.
Finally, optimized builds in organized play lead to combats that end in an average of two rounds, wherein the enemies have literally no chance of defeating or even significantly hindering the PCs. That is just not enjoyable to any sensible person.
However, as I have said many times, the optimizers are just using what they've been given. So, no, the optimizers should not be punished. That's why I suggest allowing rebuilds. But everything that can be done to prevent their antics should be done. The above suggestions are just one possible set of solutions, and if what you're saying is true (though actually I disagree with pretty much all of your evaluations), all it means is that they do not go far enough.
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D. The following (at least) would be banned or errata'd for PFS play: Master Summoner, Zen Archer, Oath of Vengeance, Deadeye deed, Clustered Shots, Manyshot, Ricochet Shot, composite bows, firearms, slumber hex, rage cycling stuff, color spray, create pit, dominate person, fly, haste, mirror image, paragon surge. Also any class abilities that become too effective when paired with ranged builds,...
So this is going to sound kind of rude, but I'm not sure at this point whether you're trolling here. This list of things that should be banned is really just unjustified and unnecessarily discriminates against ranged builds.
You're advocating the banning/nerfing of things that are either a) so widely used that banning them would result in a greater backlash than the crane wing errata you're complaining about (haste, fly, many shot, clustered shots, composite long bows), b) are really not even that powerful in the first place (rage cycling (I really, really don't get why people insist on complaining about this, it makes 0 sense to me), clustered shots, composite bows, create pit). There's not really a lot of rhyme or reason behind eliminating them, and virtually (or at least damn near close to) every PFS player out there would have at least one character impacted.
The idea of scheduling scenarios based on tier is also, to be blunt, terrible. Do you have any idea how much of a scheduling disaster this would cause? It would also increase the difficulty of writing scenarios because you have to cater to different levels of difficulty.
Also, Master Summoner is already banned, so not sure why that was included. Do you have someone in your area that's rocking a Master Summoner? They have an illegal character.
The point of this whole topic was to advocate flexible rebuilds in case something was erratad, and now it's turned into advocating for a huge number of decent build options to be erratad or banned. Counter productive, much? Also, the majority of these things are super common build options. Who are we punishing here? Power gamers who make obscure build combinations to great effect? Or newer/non-power gamers who just take the obviously good things?
Very first character I ever made for a table top game was a PFS Ranger. Among other things, he had a Composite Long Bow, Clustered Shots, Many Shot, Boots of Speed. I was pretty far from an optimizer, these options were just stupidly obvious to take because they were effective. Your idea destroys the basic ranged character.
I always find this kind of way of thinking very frustrating.
EDIT: I also think this whole thing is blown way out of proportion. I've still not seen any examples where a character concept was utterly destroyed by the Crane Wing errata. And this is coming from a guy who made a tank monk centered on Crane Style. The cases where a character concept was definitely destroyed by an errata/banning (Synthesist, Grave Walker, Master Summoner, Undead Lord banning) were met with full character rebuilds. It's good to do those conservatively, when appropriate. This is not one of those times.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Finally, optimized builds in organized play lead to combats that end in an average of two rounds, wherein the enemies have literally no chance of defeating or even significantly hindering the PCs. That is just not enjoyable to any sensible person.
Oh goodie, now anyone who does enjoy that isn't 'sensible'. Nice to know there's something wrong with anyone enjoying the game differently than you.
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Finally, optimized builds in organized play lead to combats that end in an average of two rounds, wherein the enemies have literally no chance of defeating or even significantly hindering the PCs. That is just not enjoyable to any sensible person.Oh goodie, now anyone who does enjoy that isn't 'sensible'. Nice to know there's something wrong with anyone enjoying the game differently than you.
Of all the pages of things he wrote you pick that one part out and you use sarcasm to make a point?
Venture-Lieutenant, Washington—Pullman
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I've posted it elsewhere, but my solution would look something like the following...
A. A tiered classification system for character classes would be officially recognized by Paizo, as follows-
Tier 1: Arcanist, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Summoner, Witch, Wizard
Tier 2: Alchemist, Bloodrager, Magus, Oracle, Paladin, Shaman, Warpriest
Tier 3: Bard, Barbarian, Brawler, Hunter, Inquisitor, Ranger, Skald, Slayer, Swashbuckler
Tier 4: Cavalier, Fighter, Gunslinger, Investigator, Monk, Ninja, Rogue, Samurai<and a bunch more stuff>
Erick, I feel that this is not your original issue. Yes, there is an issue of powergaming, but your original post wasn't referencing this.
I agree that errata-based rebuilds should be more flexible, and that sort of thing, but going massively off-topic here won't help at all. This is something you should start a new topic regarding.
This was brought up before and the thread was locked.
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Finally, optimized builds in organized play lead to combats that end in an average of two rounds, wherein the enemies have literally no chance of defeating or even significantly hindering the PCs. That is just not enjoyable to any sensible person.Oh goodie, now anyone who does enjoy that isn't 'sensible'. Nice to know there's something wrong with anyone enjoying the game differently than you.
Well, I mean...sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. Or are you defending the culture/practice of unbelievably easy, 2 round fights? I'd be interested to hear what you think is good about this sort of thing.
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Twice actually.
This was brought up before and the thread was locked.
That confuses me. Why would they lock threads that discuss the possibility of tiered classes? Btw, the tier system, as I detail it, anyway, is not as simple as "higher tier classes are 'better' than lower tier ones." Obviously, a lot of this depends on build and player experience. We don't need to have that argument, because no one would ever disagree with that. The tiers are, in my eyes, merely a relative indication of the likelihood of the different classes to trivialize one or more types of encounters. It's as simple as that.
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Erick, I feel that this is not your original issue. Yes, there is an issue of powergaming, but your original post wasn't referencing this.
I agree that errata-based rebuilds should be more flexible, and that sort of thing, but going massively off-topic here won't help at all. This is something you should start a new topic regarding.
Just read this post, and Mekkis is correct. Sometimes it's difficult to stay "on topic" since I view the issues with this game very holistically. That is, all of them relate to each other so it becomes hard at a certain point to arbitrarily box them off. And it is also quite odd to me (and telling, really) that they actually lock threads that begin to discuss class disparity. Because that issue is absolutely central and will inevitably be brought up eventually in any significantly in depth discussion of how the game ought to work. But I'll say no more on all of this here.
Mekkis is right, but the fact that he is right probably also means there is no more to be said about this issue without essentially "going massively off-topic."
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That confuses me. Why would they lock threads that discuss the possibility of tiered classes?
Off topic and fighty is usually worse than either alone. You could make a thread for "class tiers" (kind of like you could import tea to india) without any problems, but its a bit off topic for PFS strictness and not really a PFS question.
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I cannot resist, and will say one final thing (which is far less than I'd like to say on the matter) in response to several comments people made about some of what I suggested.
Regarding ranged builds: A lot of my suggestions do indeed probably seem weirdly or arbitrarily targeted at ranged builds, unless of course you have seen, as I have, their capacity to utterly dominate almost every type of remotely standard combat encounter. They do this even when not particularly well optimized. When combined with certain class abilities like bane and smite, fuggedaboutit. Just play, off the top of my head, a 9th level inquisitor archer with boots of speed, and see how many combats you basically end on round one (maybe round 2 if you had to take a move action to get into position, but then of course you probably just made it worse by also casting divine power) with a hasted, baned, judgemented, many-rapid-clustered shot full attack, without even having to move towards the enemy. This is possibly the most uninspired and most ruthlessly efficient combat tactic around. It is boring and repetitive. It requires no particular system mastery, no creativity, and no tactical acumen to pull off. No good can come of this.
But ok, I'm really going to stop now.
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Off topic and fighty is usually worse than either alone. You could make a thread for "class tiers" (kind of like you could import tea to india) without any problems, but its a bit off topic for PFS strictness and not really a PFS question.
Actually, I disagree that it is not a PFS question. As many people have pointed out, class disparity is far less of an issue in home games, where GMs have tremendous latitude and elasticity for nudging the game towards whatever will fit best for his or her group, and for targeting combats towards his or her players. Organized play is the arena where class/build disparity, power creep and similar issues come starkly into focus.
EDIT: That said, it is also, as Mekkis pointed out, probably not sufficiently directly relevant to the original topic to warrant continuing to discuss it here. I mean, It's definitely not entirely off-topic considering the nature of the Crane Wing controversy was mostly directed towards caster/martial disparity, but still...better to leave off for now.