But neither do we want to create an impression that you have to "Pay to Play" our games. If we explicitly said "We assume your players use ALL the options for ALL of our products in order to survive our adventures," that's basically the same as saying "We require all of your players to buy every book we publish." That type of stance would not work well for us.
It is not unreasonable to assume that a play group has access to the material that is given away for free on this very site. By maintaining the PRD, Paizo is able to set it as the expectation. There is no need for Paizo to confine itself to the Core Rulebook.
Also... it's worth noting that Pathfinder Society can, and arguably should, mirror the APs when it comes to expectations. Why is it that Pathfinder Society expects six-person tables with 20-point characters, while the APs continue to only expect four-person groups with 15-point characters? Shouldn't these two sets of expectations have converged?
The reason I bring this up is because both of my AP groups so far have used the 20-point option... because that is what were taught by PFS and what we grew comfortable with within PFS. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into. My Jade Regent GM has elected to toss out every single stat block in Books 4-6 and build his own from scratch, and we are having a great time. However, would the AP not have been a more useful product if he did not have to make that choice? What is a GM to do if he does not have the time to make such extensive adjustments, or crawl through the forums for suggestions which may or may not even work and are incredibly difficult to compile into a useable form?
-Matt
But neither do we want to create an impression that you have to "Pay to Play" our games. If we explicitly said "We assume your players use ALL the options for ALL of our products in order to survive our adventures," that's basically the same as saying "We require all of your players to buy every book we publish." That type of stance would not work well for us.It is not unreasonable to assume that a play group has access to the material that is given away for free on this very site. By maintaining the PRD, Paizo is able to set it as the expectation. There is no need for Paizo to confine itself to the Core Rulebook.
-Matt
I dunno, I think the expectation that a new group is going to use the CRB and nothing else is fine. Not everyone wants to use an online resource, and many groups don't want the complexity of anything more than the CRB. The majority of players don't necessarily even visit the Paizo site.
In the grand scheme of things, experienced players ought to be more comfortable with changing the printed material to fit their game, while you want a group of brand new players to move through an AP with the minimum of additional work if you want them to keep playing.Getting into the realms of "It's out there, lets just assume everyone is using it" could set a bad precedent.
Getting into the realms of "It's out there, lets just assume everyone is using it" could set a bad precedent.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that Pathfinder Society, the "gateway to the APs," assumes that every GM has access to the material that is given away on the PRD.
-Matt
The reason I bring this up is because both of my AP groups so far have used the 20-point option... because that is what were taught by PFS and what we grew comfortable with within PFS. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into.
Characters built using 20-pb and 15-pb don't really differ much, so the challenge in the APs should be virtually the same for both methods.
On the other hand, it's worth noting that Pathfinder Society, the "gateway to the APs," assumes that every GM has access to the material that is given away on the PRD.
Since all PFS scenarios (AFAIK) are PDF-only, and only available through this site, I think it's a fair assumption that PFS GMs both know of and have access to the PRD. The same assumption won't necessarily be the case for other GMs.
You'd be surprised at how many players only use or own the Core Rulebook. Don't forget, each rulebook costs money. Even if they're available online through the PRDs, a lot of people don't bother. Why should they, the Core Rulebook has everything they need.
My Skype game? Three players built their characters with the Core Rulebook. They branched into other rulebooks for Feats and the like because I would offer suggested Feats that I saw on Hero Labs. (Mind you, I own all of the official rulebooks. I'm a nerd, what can I say?) The last player actually went on the PRD and found a Sorceress archetype she liked (Imperious), and went with Ninja for her Cohort after we joked about her having a ninjamaid. :) (Admittedly I built the Ninja cohort and sent it to her, but I did that as a joke. She liked it and went with it.)
My "Skyrim" (RoW) game? Well, that one is trickier, because the game started out as a 2nd/3rd edition D&D Hybrid that I converted over to Pathfinder when we recruited a third player (I didn't want to have two confused new players, and seeing there were no 3.5 rulebooks to be found anywhere I went Pathfinder and fell in love with a superior system). So we essentially started out with JUST the Core Rulebook, from which all of the characters are built.
So of two gaming groups (six players in all) and two campaigns (two of the players are in both campaigns), one player built a character using rules not from the Core Rulebook. (I don't count the GMPCs as I built those myself and had access to multiple books. And had fun with them.)
How many other groups are like that? Probably a goodly number. After all, people want to have fun. Learning lots of rules is only fun for the geekiest of us. ;)
(Are and Tangent101 pretty much covered everything I was going to answer between them, and more, and probably more eloquently too!)
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@everyone talking about point buy.
The problem isn’t really based on the stats, it is based on other factors, low stats just make certain builds very very hard - to the point where you have to take those dump stats.
(And to be honest my group uses 20 pts point buy, no stats below 10, and pretty much all enemies gain the advanced or another +1 or +2 templates to compensate, or I just increase the hp)
While it is true that the mythic stat increases can be more powerful for certain abilities like divine grace, they are frankly necessary. Otherwise, a mythic which would have no way to increase the DC of their hexes, or any mythic character would be quite limited in their options to increase their health (HP, fort save..).
I finally found what I forgot in my initial post:
Enemies lack protection against certain tactics
This may overlap a bit with my previous posts, but I feel it is worth mentioning. Certain tactics are extremely useful at most or all levels of the game, and enemies are often utterly unable to respond. A clever GM can and should allow enemies to counter all or some of these tactics, since published adventures can anticipate only so much.
So here are some rather effective tactics:
Ranged Combat:
Usually archery, since thrown weapons and crossbows have some distinct disadvantages. Archers have the distinct advantage, that they do not have to be close to the enemy to make a full attack, and since rapid shot and manyshot (which stack :( ) are very good choices, full attacks are much more devastating.
It requires a number of feats, and archers have to try to get some sort of bonus damage (bane, smite evil, favored enemy..) but they are incredibly effective combatants. That is core rulebook only, once you allow access to all paizo published feats, they can pretty much ignore DR (clustered shots) or shot in melee without getting an attack of opportunity.
They are good, and most enemies have no defense against their attacks and powers that punish melee attacks like unholy aura have no effect on them. While there are some effects, that can help against those enemies, giving every enemy a protective spell against ranged attacks tends to get old really fast.
Surprisingly this is one of the areas, where WotR is actually better than any previous AP. With abilities like fleet charge, melee characters have it easier than ever to get full attacks, and with the insane mythic power attack (especially considering mythic furious focus) their damage output quickly reduces enemies to mince.
I admit, that some of the more effective ways to stop or weaken ranged combatants involve areas of concealment (fog, darkness), strong wind, very good cover or very limited spaces - and that is very constraining to adventure design.
To reiterate another point, AC is not a sufficient defense against those characters, miss chance, concealment and combats with against a greater number of enemies can sufficient.
Scry and Die:
The tactic is old, but pretty hard to beat as a GM, the players just use magic to locate the creature, then use a teleportation effect to surprise it and kill it before it can react.
There are ways to discourage this tactic, but most of them are magical (like permanent teleportation cages) and thus not available to certain enemies.
I guess this is one of those tactics, where players only stop one it has proved disastrous one to many times.
Buff, Buff then Buff some more:
This “tactic” is a hard one, I think that players should be rewarded for appropriate preparations, like casting protection from cold before engaging a white dragon. Casting spells that are pretty much like class abilities (mage armor for the wizard, magic fang for the druid) seems reasonable too.
The problem arises, when you consider that buffs tend to represent a nonlinear increase in power, in other words, when it comes to buffs 1+1 does not result in 2.
Some mythic examples: mythic heroism gives +4 to attack rolls, saves and other things, for 10 minutes per level, that spell can last for hours (extend spell) and thus would be available for several encounters every day.
Add to that a +4 courageous weapon and that bonus rises to +6.
Now let’s add haste (or augment the heroism) and/or magic weapon or maybe bull strength and the bonus to attack rolls can easily reach +10 or higher - of course depending on the level of the group.
With this level of support (and we are only talking about 2-3 buffs) character usually have little trouble to hit the AC of their enemies. And even with a low ( i.e. your GM hates you 10 pts. point buy) you will have little trouble to deal with most enemies.
I do appreciate, that WotR features a lot of enemies with greater dispel magic, but nothing prevents players from buffing the group with lots of low level spells to soak up dispelling.
Enemies could use Antimagic field, but that spell makes it very easy to create a TPK, and might not even be effective (depending on the non-magical defensive abilities of the user).
Instead enemies could use the tactic themselves, I am a huge fan of spells like tactical acumen and ablative barrier.
Sufficiently buffed, even lower level enemies have a reasonable chance to hit and deal a little damage (just rolling to see if you roll nat 20s is a bit unrewarding IMO).
Invisible Sneak:
Invisibility is a good spell, it can be very useful for scouting, or on the party healer so she can heal in combat while protected. greater invisibility however is a beast, cast on a rogue, ninja, slayer… pretty much everyone with a precision based ability like sneak attack and it will destroy the vast majority of encounters between level 9-14, after that quite a number of enemies gain some ability to detect them.
It is worth mentioning that a lot of classes can access this spell by level 7, and only a select few enemies can cope with that.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that this AP is any more effective against this tactic than any other, arguably less, since players can become invisible with a mythic power.
Carry:
If you don’t know what a “carry” is, it is a term from MOBA games like league of legends. It refers to a character that starts weak, but with enough magic items, buffs and enough levels she becomes extremely effective.
For example, I am sure, that I am not the only GM who had players, who were tempted by the impressive theoretical damage of a rogue/ninja fighting with two weapons. Of course this often results, in fewer damage, since the rogue is already cursed with a less than stellar attack bonus.
Of course once you add good group tactics, that seemingly bad choice can become very effective, without necessarily requiring the other characters to make sacrifices.
Battle against a large demon:
- The witch uses her evil eye hex on the enemy, to lower his saves against her own effects and to help the group.
- The cleric cast blessing of fervor on the group to help the group
- The magus casts slow on the enemy and moves to set up a flanking opportunity for the rogue.
Best case scenario, the rogue now has a much higher chance to hit, can deal sneak attack damage and has more attacks than a rogue with 1h weapon and shield or a two handed weapon.
This is a case where a “weaker” choice can be leveraged to be very powerful, this is another argument against single enemy fights, they are more vulnerable to debuffs, flanking and other tactics.
Of course adventure design, can make use of these tactics, but it usually takes up more space in the adventure. I encourage GMs to toy with the stat blocks and and tactics, so that they are on par, or even better than the player tactics (learning a useful tactic from a previous encounter can be quite entertaining - watch literally any anime, they do this all the time).
For examples, you could add a couple of low level casters to the Storm King fight, to hit him and the group with electricity based attacks.
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Of course some powers and tactics are just not very fair for anybody, and I would actually suggest a gentlemans agreement with your players not to use them.
Expecting a published adventure to prevent them seems unreasonable, just like giving every enemy see invisible, fortification, spell like glitterdust ….
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And to repeat myself: Most or all of the problems are rooted deeply in the CRB, expecting additional rules like Mythic Adventures, spat book like UM and UC, or adventures to fix them seems unreasonable.
At this point in the game, Paizo can add new material but a lot of the problems with pathfinder will not be touched until we get a new edition. Until that day comes we will just have to houserule and adapt, and even with another edition, unless we solve the problem with limited word count completely (maybe by using some kind of ebook format) some GMs will always have to make changes for their players.
And while the GM doesn’t have an easy job, having a GM is one of the greatest advantages and resources this hobby has.
Oh, small note about the difference between a 15- and 20-point build. Someone pointed it out to me that a 20-point build is the equivalence to two free Feats minimum - for instance, Iron Will and Persuasive. That said, I honestly don't think it's that big a deal, and there is two things to remember: not all groups are filled with experienced players who are able to outmaneuver GMs, and merely adding +1 to every stat of a monster is the equivalence to a 25-point build. (I did the math for a 15/14/13/12/10/8 build for +1, +2, +3, and +4 for every stat. It gave me a good baseline for rebuilding encounters without the Advanced Template so their stats are essentially the same level as the players.) (That being 25 pts., 37 pts., 52 pts., and 78 pts.)
And while the GM doesn’t have an easy job, having a GM is one of the greatest advantages and resources this hobby has.
So very much this. It's why I prefer this hobby to computer games - which are fun too, but will never (or at least, not for the forseeable future) be adaptive to the point they can change on the fly when I do something they weren't programmed to respond to.
RPG:
I announce I'm going to dive off the balcony, catch onto the dragon's head, and plunge my sword into its head. The GM frantically tries to apply some existing rules, fudges around with them a bit, and tells me to roll some die or other.
Computer Game:
I run towards the edge of the balcony, and hit an invisible wall while the dragon proceeds to toast the village in a cut-scene.
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I just moved my entire RPG collection into a new bookshelf (Expedit from Ikea if anyone seeks a nice one) and while looking through a stack of adventures, I noticed that the premade characters (at the end of the older adventures) are sometimes quite unoptimized.
Is that the baseline ?
I wouldn't say it's necessarily the baseline... but it's certainly close.
..
The "baseline" is, more or less, a 15 point character built with as many core options as possible, with a goal of being good at the core strength of the class while having variety and breadth and not deliberately hyper-specializing in any one area. But even that is assigning more of a process to it.
Put another way... we at Paizo are more invested in presenting tools for you to use in your game, be they monsters or character building options or settings or adventures or whatever. One area we're specifically NOT all that interested in going into is the area of building characters for you. We'll do it, as we have for pre-generated characters in adventures or PFS before... but it's not a core goal.
Oh I don’t expect Paizo to create characters for the players, even if I enjoy a well crafted NPC. I just mentioned them, since I have seen players make less than optimal choices and wondered how much bad decisions the adventures expect.
But when it comes to the creating new and fun options part, I always hope that new options are properly balanced. And while it is unreasonable even for Paizo to anticipate every combination (of course playtest are an option here) it sometimes feels a bit disappointing to allow an option (as a GM) and learn only later how powerful it is.
I would not have given
You can move through the space of any creature two or more size categories larger than you without provoking attacks of opportunity, and you can share such a creature's space. When sharing a larger opponent's space, you gain cover against all melee and ranged attacks made by the creature, and it is considered flat-footed for the purposes of any melee or ranged attacks you make against it.
a second glance, but as one poster on this board pointed out to me, a halfing (core race) rogue (core class) can use this to reliably sneak attack large sized enemies.
With a reduce person, such a character can sneak attack pretty much everything.Now as a rather experienced GM I can counter this reasonably well, but if I were a novice GM, afraid to change to much ….
We all appreciate and understand, that things like this happen, but we do want to point out where the game is unbalanced - to make it better.
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I find the easiest way to deal with balance issues in APs is to go the no-XP route, and also to ignore the recommended level-up points. Just level up the party when they start to struggle, and suddenly the entire AP becomes a near-perfectly-balanced challenge no matter how good or bad the party is.
Yes quite a number of the GMs don’t use XP these days, in my Kingmaker campaign I intentionally kept them 1 or 2 levels below the suggestions, it didn’t really stop them (Kingmaker 4-5 was quite easy for my group with the exception of one combat against a daemon), but almost resulted in a TPK when I dominated the archer.
Isn't the simple answer to that "Look at the iconics"? Yes. That's a much more elegant way to put it, in fact.
-Matt
I actually really like the iconics in the NPC guide, but I would love to see the iconics from the other books.
And again, even the inconic get a serious power boost out of the rules from mythic adventures. Maybe if I find the motivation I will stat my version of some of them, as some sort of benchmark for other GMs.
Since the warnings we would need to give each GM would vary every time... that's not really an option, I'm afraid. What you're asking for is a different product entirely—a "Guide to Running Published Adventures" or something like that. Which would be a cool product, I think... but it's not really one that fits well into our line of books at this time. And one that I doubt would be as quick to offer advice as everyone sharing their experiences here on these boards already does.
To a certain extent the entire Core...
While these boards are a superb resource (particularly because of the friendly and constructive atmosphere and various paizo customers and employees ready to help new players/GMs), a reasonably short product (not hidden within the pages of the Complete Koblods Guide to Game Design or the Pathinder GMG ) could have a pretty large effect, for some reason a printed product carries quite a bit of weight for some GMs. But it would be hard to find a book to delay, so yeah, unlikely. But maybe a short article on the Paizo blog would be nice, at least if would give us something comprehensive to link to new GMs^^
How would you want them to describe the expected level of optimization?To start, from above:
-How can I know whether my character is too far outside of that guideline?
-Which classes are included in that guideline?
-Which classes are too far outside of it?
-Does the baseline assume crafting magic items?
-What about wealth expectations?
-Which feats, spells, magic items, archetypes, etc. fall within Paizo's baseline?-How can I look at my players' sheets and know whether their characters are too far outside? What are the warning signs?
-How can I know whether my own PC is too far outside without having to replicate an iconic?To add:
-How high of an attack bonus will cause problems?
-At what point does a characters' save DCs become problematic?
-If crafting is expected, how much of a character's wealth is expected to be devoted to crafting?
-If my play group has more than four players in it, what can I do as a GM?The less we know about the answers to these sorts of questions going in, the more headaches we have later when we go in with the wrong expectations.
-Matt
MY opinions:
You can created devastating combinations with pretty much anything.
Once a character is disruptive to your game, or outshines all other characters all the time you might have to do something.
All classes should be possible, but it is well within your rights as a GM to ban classes, and archetypes, that will be disruptive to your game (or things you can’t deal with). Examples some GMs ban are summoners (the class and other classes that summon a lot) since they can eat up a lot of time.
The suggested wealth per level guidelines are in the core rulebook, and please not the percentages that players are supposed to have in each area e.g. a player is not supposed to invest 90 % of his wealth into his weapon.
Ultimate campaign has excellent guidelines when it comes to crafting magic items, and how it should interact with wealth per level.
To give you some guidelines:
-Usually a character that can do other things than fighting (cleric, rogue) should have to roll a 14 or higher on his attack roll to hit an enemy of his CR, it is reasonable for fighters and barbarians (and similar characters) to hit on a 8-10. Buffs tend to push those numbers, but you should be a bit worried when players hit an an attack roll of 5 or below (or only miss on a natural one).
These numbers exclude the use of power attack, combat expertise and other feats.
If your group has more than 4 players, consider increasing the number of enemies first, and the power secondary. The CR system is anything but an exact science, and depending on your group composition, a 5th or 6th character can increase their power by up to 25 -75 %. in rare optimized cases even more.
But consider that increasing enemy damage might not be the optimal solution, as this tends to reduce players to a red mist.
Also learn to cheat, it is well within your purview to change a roll or two to normalize a streak or crits/misses.
But neither do we want to create an impression that you have to "Pay to Play" our games. If we explicitly said "We assume your players use ALL the options for ALL of our products in order to survive our adventures," that's basically the same as saying "We require all of your players to buy every book we publish." That type of stance would not work well for us.It is not unreasonable to assume that a play group has access to the material that is given away for free on this very site. By maintaining the PRD, Paizo is able to set it as the expectation. There is no need for Paizo to confine itself to the Core Rulebook.
Also... it's worth noting that Pathfinder Society can, and arguably should, mirror the APs when it comes to expectations. Why is it that Pathfinder Society expects six-person tables with 20-point characters, while the APs continue to only expect four-person groups with 15-point characters? Shouldn't these two sets of expectations have converged?
The reason I bring this up is because both of my AP groups so far have used the 20-point option... because that is what were taught by PFS and what we grew comfortable with within PFS. We did not know what we were getting ourselves into. My Jade Regent GM has elected to toss out every single stat block in Books 4-6 and build his own from scratch, and we are having a great time. However, would the AP not have been a more useful product if he did not have to make that choice? What is a GM to do if he does not have the time to make such extensive adjustments, or crawl through the forums for suggestions which may or may not even work and are incredibly difficult to compile into a useable form?
-Matt
Sorry, but while I find it admirable that Paizo products are essentially open source (d20pfsrd makes my life sooo much easier, even with hero lab and pdfs), it is unreasonable for a GM/player to have the time to familiarize himself with all the available rules.
And access on the gaming table is really not guaranteed, it is fine for the adventure to feature nonstandard enemies and spells (the GM can prepare that ahead of time) but using a monster from bestiary 3 is not the same as a complex inquisitor with feats and spells from 7 different books.
You as the GM can use all those sources, but they have to consider, that a lot of players still prefer to use the physical books.
And you kinda have to consider new players/GMs, the CRB is a heavy book and if the APs required knowledge of all those books…. well our hobby is already far less accessible than World of Warcraft - which frankly offers a very good beginners experience.
It is quite possible the find 6 players to do something together for 4-6 hours, finding the same number of people willing and capable to find the time in their schedules to play an AP for months at a time….. not that easy ^^
And I think 4 players might very well be the average.
If your read the boards, you will find that GMs have to change stat blocks all the time, it is pretty hard to avoid, and frankly some GMs like it. Now I would love to have the statblocks preloaded into hero lab, but that is another topic.
And even if he has to remake the NPCs the stat blocks and tactics are still usefull.
20 pts point buy aren’t the problem, I would argue that it could reduce stat dumping.
Getting into the realms of "It's out there, lets just assume everyone is using it" could set a bad precedent.On the other hand, it's worth noting that Pathfinder Society, the "gateway to the APs," assumes that every GM has access to the material that is given away on the PRD.
-Matt
Yes, but Pathfinder Society adventures are only offered as pdf, and rather short, so the amount of research isn’t that big.
And of course society play does ban quite a number of options.|
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You'd be surprised at how many players only use or own the Core Rulebook. Don't forget, each rulebook costs money. Even if they're available online through the PRDs, a lot of people don't bother. Why should they, the Core Rulebook has everything they need.
My Skype game? Three players built their characters with the Core Rulebook. They branched into other rulebooks for Feats and the like because I would offer suggested Feats that I saw on Hero Labs. (Mind you, I own all of the official rulebooks. I'm a nerd, what can I say?) The last player actually went on the PRD and found a Sorceress archetype she liked (Imperious), and went with Ninja for her Cohort after we joked about her having a ninjamaid. :) (Admittedly I built the Ninja cohort and sent it to her, but I did that as a joke. She liked it and went with it.)
My "Skyrim" (RoW) game? Well, that one is trickier, because the game started out as a 2nd/3rd edition D&D Hybrid that I converted over to Pathfinder when we recruited a third player (I didn't want to have two confused new players, and seeing there were no 3.5 rulebooks to be found anywhere I went Pathfinder and fell in love with a superior system). So we essentially started out with JUST the Core Rulebook, from which all of the characters are built.
So of two gaming groups (six players in all) and two campaigns (two of the players are in both campaigns), one player built a character using rules not from the Core Rulebook. (I don't count the GMPCs as I built those myself and had access to multiple books. And had fun with them.)
How many other groups are like that? Probably a goodly number. After all, people want to have fun. Learning lots of rules is only fun for the geekiest of us. ;)
I have to admit, that I have spoiled myself and my players with hero lab. I create and plan all their characters with them, so I am always partly to blame, I tend to be “good at Pathfinder “ ^^ But if the player has a concept, he gets what he wants. My paladin player wanted to be the group tank and leader, so he is a sacred shield paladin / guardian/marshal^^
And I consider myself quite the prime geek^^
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Remember, a well built Core Wizard/Sorcerer is still basically as powerful as anything out there, except maybe a non-Core Wizard/Sorcerer. It's not that non-Core content is inherently more powerful than Core content, it's that more options allow more combinations and more stacking and thus more optimization.
The last four questions are more useful, but the answer of course is "It depends". DPR is more useful a gauge than attack bonus, for example.
Great suggestions, it is worth mentioning, that the NPCs got a little bit better since the days of the 3.5 adventures. The versions in the NPC Guide are quite reasonable.
Oh, small note about the difference between a 15- and 20-point build. Someone pointed it out to me that a 20-point build is the equivalence to two free Feats minimum - for instance, Iron Will and Persuasive. That said, I honestly don't think it's that big a deal, and there is two things to remember: not all groups are filled with experienced players who are able to outmaneuver GMs, and merely adding +1 to every stat of a monster is the equivalence to a 25-point build. (I did the math for a 15/14/13/12/10/8 build for +1, +2, +3, and +4 for every stat. It gave me a good baseline for rebuilding encounters without the Advanced Template so their stats are essentially the same level as the players.) (That being 25 pts., 37 pts., 52 pts., and 78 pts.)
Very interesting, but it doesn’t really apply to my players, they would be decidedly unhappy with a charisma score under 10^^.
And while the GM doesn’t have an easy job, having a GM is one of the greatest advantages and resources this hobby has.
So very much this. It's why I prefer this hobby to computer games - which are fun too, but will never (or at least, not for the forseeable future) be adaptive to the point they can change on the fly when I do something they weren't programmed to respond to.
RPG:
I announce I'm going to dive off the balcony, catch onto the dragon's head, and plunge my sword into its head. The GM frantically tries to apply some existing rules, fudges around with them a bit, and tells me to roll some die or other.Computer Game:
I run towards the edge of the balcony, and hit an invisible wall while the dragon proceeds to toast the village in a cut-scene.
I agree, but games have other advantages. They can give me (alone) a challenge, that I can beat and that usually involves me outthinking the challenge (loved doing the Starcraft 2 and Starcraft 2 Heart of the Swarm campaigns on the hardest difficulty).
The really big advantage we have, is that our brains tend to fill the empty spaces quite well. If the GM tells me “You see a 10 by 10 room with a treasure chest, and an orc guarding it”. Thats pretty much all you need to know, in a computer game you would have to specify all kinds of details.
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Damn, Sebastian, stop writing posts that I wanted to write, only that you do it better. :p
I'd add one point to your list of powerful player options, which is:
Debuffing: This takes either the form of casting Dispel Magic/Greater Dispel Magic on enemy spellcasters or using spells which hinder the opponents action economy, like Stinking Cloud, Terrible Remorse, Slow and so on. Both are extremely effective tactics, since they both play to the advantage groups enjoy in their action economy against opponents (since Paizo insists on throwing single opponent boss encounters at us).
With buff dispelling, this makes enemy spellcasters, which are traditionally some of the better type of opponents, much less of a threat. Since they are limited in their action economy by (very often) being pitted alone against four (or more) characters, they can't effectively re-cast those buffs once they have been dispelled and you can count on about 2 casters with access to Dispel/Greater Dispel being in your group, so their action economy isn't hurt that badly in comparison. Even if those two casters did have to spend their actions to dispel the defensive buffs of that enemy wizard, now the martial characters don't have to deal with his Mirror Image, Fly and Displacement spells.
Spells which hinder the enemies action economy are also something which trivialize many of Paizo's written encounters. The core options often have some sort of drawback (i.e. Stinking Cloud and Black Tentacles close off an area to the melee portion of the player characters, too), but a lot of the newer options don't suffer from this problem and also have a second component which activates after the affected members of the opponents make their saves, i.e. Wandering Star Motes jumps to the next enemy, Terrible Remorse still staggers on a successful save for one round.
Here I want to call out the AP writers a bit, because many of them don't use those action-denial spells and rather go for horrible tactic blocks and spell selections for their spellcasters. If you guys insist on throwing single opponents at us, the ones which actually have the power to deal with their action economy disadvantage should please do so, and not have spells prepared which seem better suited for duels. Too often, when I did not have time to re-write statblocks in the past, I've been struck at what a terrible spell selection was given to us GM's to try to deal with the player characters.
And I know that "single boss fights an entire group" is somewhat iconic, but while this is certainly cinematic, it definitely runs into the very mechanical problems of a huge action economy disadvantage and thus very often falls flat on its face, especially at the higher levels, where PC's have much more resources to burn.
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I would like to point out that greater dispel magic works top down, so having a bunch of low level buffs doesn't really affect it
Of course they can be clever about it, just cast all your good spells 1 CL lower than the dummy spells. Since Dispel magic goes for the highest caster level first - I assume that the same is true for the "greater" version (I could be wrong here).
As the order of the stick characters have pointed out, someone should have consulted a thesaurus at some point. The word level is used when it comes to class level, character level, dungeon level, spell level, caster level...
Thanks to paizo at least when it is in the context of a class is usually class level.
Err, no. If you target your Greater Dispel Magic, it goes through every spell the targeted person has on him, so no matter how you cast your spell, the player dispelling you gets to roll if it is dispelled. Which is why groups which routinely do this (that's mine included, I fear) are so annoying, the targeted opponent will statistically lose a bit less than half his buffs, if he is higher level than the party. That's a lot of defense gone and a lot of on-the-spot recalculating for me to do.
I really don't know what Paizo thought when they elevated that combat style to the best one of the martial styles in the game. ^^
In what version of D&D was archery ever weak? We used to be able to add the magic bonus of a bow to the magic bonus of an arrow, get 2 attacks a round even at 1st level, and avoid being clobbered by melee-oriented opponents.
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Damn, Sebastian, stop writing posts that I wanted to write, only that you do it better. :p
I'd add one point to your list of powerful player options, which is:
Debuffing: This takes either the form of casting Dispel Magic/Greater Dispel Magic on enemy spellcasters or using spells which hinder the opponents action economy, like Stinking Cloud, Terrible Remorse, Slow and so on. Both are extremely effective tactics, since they both play to the advantage groups enjoy in their action economy against opponents (since Paizo insists on throwing single opponent boss encounters at us).
With buff dispelling, this makes enemy spellcasters, which are traditionally some of the better type of opponents, much less of a threat. Since they are limited in their action economy by (very often) being pitted alone against four (or more) characters, they can't effectively re-cast those buffs once they have been dispelled and you can count on about 2 casters with access to Dispel/Greater Dispel being in your group, so their action economy isn't hurt that badly in comparison. Even if those two casters did have to spend their actions to dispel the defensive buffs of that enemy wizard, now the martial characters don't have to deal with his Mirror Image, Fly and Displacement spells.
Spells which hinder the enemies action economy are also something which trivialize many of Paizo's written encounters. The core options often have some sort of drawback (i.e. Stinking Cloud and Black Tentacles close off an area to the melee portion of the player characters, too), but a lot of the newer options don't suffer from this problem and also have a second component which activates after the affected members of the opponents make their saves, i.e. Wandering Star Motes jumps to the next enemy, Terrible Remorse still staggers on a successful save for one round.
Here I want to call out the AP writers a bit, because many of them don't use those action-denial spells and rather go for horrible tactic blocks and spell selections for...
Well if you like huge walls of text, you will love the my posts about my WotR game ^^
But seriously, after reading Treantmonk's Guide to Pathfinder Wizards: Being a God several times, I should not have forgotten debuffing.
And you are absolutely right on all counts, spellcasting enemies will have to do quite a lot of casting before the encounter, to be a serious threat in the encounter.
When it comes to the dreaded single enemy encounter, well 4th Edition tried to fix this, and I hated the idea^^
So, I guess I am making a new thread, something like “How to fix single enemy encounters with the mythic rules”, since this will cover a lot of the WotR boss encounters, it will be in this part of the forum. I won’t add it here, since that topic will require a lot of examples and details, that stuff should be easy to discover for other GMs.
It will take me some time to set it up properly, but it should be a worthwhile topic.
In what version of D&D was archery ever weak? We used to be able to add the magic bonus of a bow to the magic bonus of an arrow, get 2 attacks a round even at 1st level, and avoid being clobbered by melee-oriented opponents.
I really don't know what Paizo thought when they elevated that combat style to the best one of the martial styles in the game. ^^
I did not say that archery was weak before, but rather that now it is the best martial combat style.
Well if you like huge walls of text, you will love the my posts about my WotR game ^^
But seriously, after reading Treantmonk's Guide to Pathfinder Wizards: Being a God several times, I should not have forgotten debuffing.
And you are absolutely right on all counts, spellcasting enemies will have to do quite a lot of casting before the encounter, to be a serious threat in the encounter.
When it comes to the dreaded single enemy encounter, well 4th Edition tried to fix this, and I hated the idea^^
So, I guess I am making a new thread, something like “How to fix single enemy encounters with the mythic rules”, since this will cover a lot of the WotR boss encounters, it will be in this part of the forum. I won’t add it here, since that topic will require a lot of examples and details, that stuff should be easy to discover for other GMs.
It will take me some time to set it up properly, but it should be a worthwhile topic.
Well, I'm quite looking forward to that post, then. :)
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@Skeld: I maintain a thread where I post my impressions of how combats went each week in my campaign. It's not a proper campaign journal, but you can see a bit what tactics my guys prefer and how I stat out encounters. You can find it here.
Yes, I've seen your thread and i have scanned it, although I currently lack the time to go through your posts there very thoroughly. My (long-term) plan is to revisit it if/when I run my group through WotR. The idea behind your thread is a very good one.
On the subject of dispelling. Dispel magic has always bothered me as a GM because it's such a game-slowing pain. During the Alpha/Beta, I had advocated changing how it worked to make it more table-friendly, but those ideas didn't stick. I houserule it to make it quicker and easier to adjudicate during gameplay, which also makes it a little less effective as a tactic.
-Skeld
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Err, no. If you target your Greater Dispel Magic, it goes through every spell the targeted person has on him, so no matter how you cast your spell, the player dispelling you gets to roll if it is dispelled. Which is why groups which routinely do this (that's mine included, I fear) are so annoying, the targeted opponent will statistically lose a bit less than half his buffs, if he is higher level than the party. That's a lot of defense gone and a lot of on-the-spot recalculating for me to do.
What I meant, is that while greater dispel magic can dispel several spells, it tries to dispel the spells with the greatest caster level first, so your party ranger can try to protect his aspect of the falcon,gravity bow,heroism and protection from outsiders, by getting the party wizard (with a slightly higher CL) to cast things like communal resist energy, communal protection from evil, mage armor (the mythic version might be worth it for the +6 armor bonus and the fortification) and other cheap spells on him.
When he gets targeted by a greater dispel magic, the caster first has to try to dispel the spells with the higher CL, so he might use up all his dispel attempts on unimportant spells.
Arguably you could even bestow curse a player to get the same effect (“I curse you take a +4 penalty against the spells of good creatures” or something like that) but that is stretching it.
The recalculation can be a pain, and while I am thinking about it, spell turning should be quite nasty, since you automatically succed on dispel checks against your own spells.
Dude, no. A targeted Greater Dispel Magic on one person goes through all spells on that person one by one, there is no limit. So no matter how many buffs you have on yourself, the person Greater Dispel Magic'ing you gets to roll a dispel check against every single one of them. It doesn't stop until all buffs have been checked against.
Not so in PF:You make one dispel check and compare that to the spell with highest caster level. If successful, that spell ends. If not, compare the same result to the spell with the next highest caster level. Repeat this process until you have dispelled one spell affecting the target, or you have failed to dispel every spell.Greater Dispel can do 1 spell for every 4 levels.
Note that it's one roll for Dispel Magic. If you roll a 1, you're probably not dispelling anything.
It's not clear to me if the multiple rolls from Greater use a single roll to dispel multiple spells or if you get 1 roll/4 levels. Probably the first.
Crikey, that's one huge change everybody in my two groups seems to have missed since PF came out. oO
Sorry, Sebastian, I was quite off-base here. This will change the metagame quite a bit later on for my group. That's one change I am definitely in favor of. :)
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Not so in PF:You make one dispel check and compare that to the spell with highest caster level. If successful, that spell ends. If not, compare the same result to the spell with the next highest caster level. Repeat this process until you have dispelled one spell affecting the target, or you have failed to dispel every spell.Greater Dispel can do 1 spell for every 4 levels.
Note that it's one roll for Dispel Magic. If you roll a 1, you're probably not dispelling anything.
It's not clear to me if the multiple rolls from Greater use a single roll to dispel multiple spells or if you get 1 roll/4 levels. Probably the first.Crikey, that's one huge change everybody in my two groups seems to have missed since PF came out. oO
Sorry, Sebastian, I was quite off-base here. This will change the metagame quite a bit later on for my group. That's one change I am definitely in favor of. :)
And I was juuuuuust about to quote it to you ^^ No problem, it happens to the best of us, I completly missed/had forgotte the mind blankchanges until recently.
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dispelling
That option is actually quite problematic, since most enemies do not have arcane sight, or sight
knowledge or spellcraft skills to recognize specific spells. Of course since a great number of enemies in this AP have telepathy its is entirely reasonable for characters to anticipate the buffs.The option seems balanced, in exchange for the chance to dispel a specific spell per 4 CL, you give up the chance to dispel any of the other 20 million spells on the target (quite a trade when you fight against a target with plenty of permanent spells).
This actually works pretty well for my DM style, a player that takes the time, actions, and spells per day to study his enemy should benefit from a more effective dispel magic.
And one more thing, does greater dispel magic refer to caster level or spell level (dispel magic calls it caster level ), you last paragraph seems to argue that is it spell level.
And btw there is a mythic dispel magic, but no greater mythic dispel magic - however the product [url=http://paizo.com/products/btpy91ry?Mythic-Magic-Core-SpellsMythic magic:Core spells[/url] rectifies that situation (really have to write more reviews, but it deserves the 5 Stars).
Crikey,
)It is soooo weird :P , to hear the words dude and crikey from a fellow german, I guess the message boards have utterly ruined us ^^
Not so in PF:You make one dispel check and compare that to the spell with highest caster level. If successful, that spell ends. If not, compare the same result to the spell with the next highest caster level. Repeat this process until you have dispelled one spell affecting the target, or you have failed to dispel every spell.Greater Dispel can do 1 spell for every 4 levels.
Note that it's one roll for Dispel Magic. If you roll a 1, you're probably not dispelling anything.
It's not clear to me if the multiple rolls from Greater use a single roll to dispel multiple spells or if you get 1 roll/4 levels. Probably the first.Crikey, that's one huge change everybody in my two groups seems to have missed since PF came out. oO
Sorry, Sebastian, I was quite off-base here. This will change the metagame quite a bit later on for my group. That's one change I am definitely in favor of. :)
I've been surprised multiple times by changes to the rules that Pathfinder initiated but that I had no idea about. And that even includes having read through a bit of the rules already; apparently I had so ingrained the 3rd edition rules into my head that I missed rules alterations. Heck, the alterations to Fireball and Lightning Bolt alone are significant (I mean, no more bouncing lightning bolts? Or having it go between two walls for several bounces and incinerate anyone unlucky enough to have been caught in them?).
I have grown cautious these days and try to double-check stuff. I do know that the one player I've got from the D&D days hasn't realized quite a few of the changes, despite my warnings.
So it's not just you.
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@ Sebastion:
Dispel Magic goes against the highest caster level spells first.
Greater Dispel Magic goes against the highest level spell first, and only one per 4 caster levels (as noted above) - so typically 3-4 spells.
Mythic Dispel magic gets two spells (instead of 1)It's not clear how "ties" are broken. If I have five caster level 10, third level spells, I imagine it is random which one is dispelled, but in the case of Dispel Magic, I could see it hitting the highest level spells (of the same highest caster level) first. YMMV
This is why I like the "name your targets" option. Remember, that even if a badguy has no spellcraft, and no arcane sight, he can still say "targeted dispel magic: mage armor" for the same reason a Fighter with no knowledge Planes might swing a cold iron sword at a demon. It's reasonably likely to work. Now if the target doesn't actually have mage armor active, the dispel is completely wasted, but that seems like a fair trade.
When I ran a simulation of Baphomet, he had greater arcane sight up - and used his quickened greater dispels to wipe the fire resistance off the party so the exploding balors could hurt them (as well as armor class buffs so the Balors could hit the PCs a few times before they died).
A Mage's Disjunction wipes everything, so that's another option. However, many gaming groups hate this spell as written. I have house-ruled the spell into what amounts to a Superior Dispel Magic, building on what greater dispel does.
The name your targets option is pretty damn powerful, but maybe that is exactly what is needed here, after all if a significant subsection of your enemies can use (greater) dispel magic, players might decide, not to use every buff available, since they might have to save the spell slots to rebuff later.
Thank you for reminding me about another nice weapon in my GM arsenal^^
It still think that you could make a good cases, that greater dispel magic works like dispel magic, but I am not even totally sure which option is better:
-using low spell level high caster level spell, could result in the paradox situation, that a lower CL dispel magic is actually better, since it has a lower chance to successfully dispel the dummy spells, and then dispel the good ones.
-using high spell with a lower CL level dummy spells cost more resources, but without targeting individual spells, it it might be easier to catch a greater dispel magic with the dummy spells.
Hmmm. That's weird. I expected them both to work the same way, using caster level, butTargeted Dispel: This functions as a targeted dispel magic , but it can dispel one spell for every four caster levels you possess, starting with the highest level spells and proceeding to lower level spells.I wonder if that was just sloppy wording and the intent was caster level? FAQ worthy?
I assume it still uses the same mechanic ("functions like dispel magic"), so you roll one check (per spell you can dispel?) and test that against CL+11 until something dispels?
Isn't if funny to discover sooo many "new and interesting facts" about basic spells ^^
Heck, the alterations to Fireball and Lightning Bolt alone are significant (I mean, no more bouncing lightning bolts? Or having it go between two walls for several bounces and incinerate anyone unlucky enough to have been caught in them?).
The bouncing lightning bolt was a thing of the past as of 3.0 and was already being nerfed in 2e. From how far back are you carrying forward some rules?
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First Edition, my friend. First Edition. =^-^=
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First Edition, my friend. First Edition. =^-^=
Good times:)
Reaper Miniatures
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I don't know about the OP, but I know when i begin an AP I always start by going to these boards and seeing what encounters are muy lethal, and which ones are cakewalks, and what plot holes have been discovered, or what advice means changing one paragraph in the book makes it 10x cooler.
The Paizo team do a great job, but it's never perfect, and I learned form Kingmaker (the first AP I ran) that to expect to be able to open the book and just read it and do not adjustments of events, monster stats, or tactics would be very unsatisfying.
I'm not telling anybody how to play their game, but at my table, I assume an AP is a very well fleshed out outline of suggested events, encounters, and interconnected backstories and motivations, and sometimes I need to move, add, or delete things to make it fit better, and to make it fit the events of previous sessions.
Which was all relevant in response to the OP's concerns about the AP not being flexible enough to cope with various things, but not so relevant to the above discussion.
I'm not telling anybody how to play their game, but at my table, I assume an AP is a very well fleshed out outline of suggested events, encounters, and interconnected backstories and motivations, and sometimes I need to move, add, or delete things to make it fit better, and to make it fit the events of previous sessions.
I've always figured "runtime encounter modification" into my role as GM on any adventure I haven't put together myself (and to be honest, even then.)
Even back in the days where a L10 Fighter was a L10 Fighter was a L10 Fighter there was no guarantee on group size meeting the suggested number, or player ability being the expected level. With something as complex as Pathfinder, the possible gap between the upper and lower group power levels is kinda huge. That can't really be reduced without simplifying the game to the point where there's far less chance of synergistic effects coming in and messing things up. Pathfinder tends to be somewhat of a victim of its own complexity in these cases.