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LN Cleric of Dispater with Negative Channel (Variant) – Rulership
Sources:
Ultimate Magic – Variant Channel – Rulership allowing for (Harm) to cause Daze
Inner Sea – Dispater God (LE w/Rulership)
Makes it trivial to build a cleric with at least a DC 17 repeatable daze affect usable enough times a day to basically just lock low level fights down. This includes Selective Channel to avoid hitting party members.
Seems like in your typical low level Kobold or Goblin encounter – might as well just not bother running it as a Will Save of +0 is not going to mean they are doing a lot.
On the other hand running a Scenario/Module heavy in undead makes the character concept worthless, at least at low levels until they acquire control undead.
I'm just wondering if any GMs have dealt with this and what if anything they did about it?
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Oh no, a build that neglects to defeat enemies itself in favor of instead making it easier for everyone else at the table to beat the bad guys! Next thing you know, players will be talking about "teamwork" and "letting everyone have a chance to play" or some such nonsense. We've got to nip this in the bud!
/sarcasm
Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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meh. 30 foot radius. Needs selective channel or your fellow PCs are hosed. Past 5th level a lot of the NPCs seem to have no trouble making a DC 17 save. Doesn't work on several of the most common enemies.
Let them have their fun now. They will suffer later.
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If this was a home game I would just slap on the normal condition that most other Daze affects have like the level 0 spell - only once per minute.
Basically this appears to be a 4th level spell - Mass Daze, except it has a wider area of effect and no restrictions on level or number of times a person can be affected.
But agreed they can have fun - but I know if I built an enemy cleric with that the party would hang me up by my feet and throw the cat at me.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I know if I built an enemy cleric with that the party would hang me up by my feet and throw the cat at me.
Or they'd thank you for guaranteeing only half damage compared to the negative channelers that are already famous for TPK-ing low level parties, and those who made their saves would bum-rush the cleric and splatter him into next week.
Also, your DC 17 hypothetical is a bit ridiculous. It requires a starting CHA of 20, and nobody's going to do that with a cleric. Or if they did, then they pretty much sacrificed everything else for that one trick. Players getting a return on significant investments is a GOOD thing.
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Two options:
1) Know that they are going to lock down every encounter. Live with it as it lies. Play up the social encounters all you can. Put as much emphasis on describing how creatures act while you can. Make the (pushover) fight come to life as much as possible.
2) Know that they are going to lock down every encounter. Let it happen. Don't put any emotion into it. Let the players say to each other "that's the third encounter in a row where we haven't felt remotely challenged. This really isn't much fun."
I heartily recommend 1. The only time I would do 2 is if the players are likely to all be playing together for a lot of scenarios together (a game in someone's home for example) and it's clear that the channeler is going to keep anyone else from having a chance to shine.
Even then, I probably wouldn't do it until I've had a chance to talk to the player after the game and say "you're very effective, but you're cutting into other players fun." Every time a local player shows up at a game day with a "lock-down" combo, both GMs and players are generally good about saying something. 95% of the time the "offending" player will take a step back and only pull out the nuke once per scenario (or when needed for survival).
Pretty much everyone looked around the table and said "No, we can do it. We'll pick it up."
The next fight the controller, summoner, and blaster let loose at full power. Eight minutes later the melee are mopping up the remaining virtually helpless enemies and the GM says "OK, I guess we can do the optional."
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I know if I built an enemy cleric with that the party would hang me up by my feet and throw the cat at me.Or they'd thank you for guaranteeing only half damage compared to the negative channelers that are already famous for TPK-ing low level parties, and those who made their saves would bum-rush the cleric and splatter him into next week.
Also, your DC 17 hypothetical is a bit ridiculous. It requires a starting CHA of 20, and nobody's going to do that with a cleric. Or if they did, then they pretty much sacrificed everything else for that one trick. Players getting a return on significant investments is a GOOD thing.
There is a huge difference between teamwork leading to easier challenges, and one guy negating all challenge.
Now we all know that it doesn't always work that way once the characters get to the table and meet the badguys.
However, DC 17 at 1st level is pretty much guaranteed to get 95% of the badguys.
As a GM, I don't find it much fun if EVERY fight turns into:
Player X: Channels
Badguys: Can't GO
Everyone Else: Kills Badguys
Kinda boring.
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Ehh like every min/max build it is powerfull agaisnt the things it is meant to fight and weak against others. As you are aware it is worthless in other places. So let them be one dimensional. Now keep in mind they still have spells that can help in areas where their daze is worthless. Also in darkness or areas they can not see they can not selective channel to choose who to avoid.
In all honesty trhough they built that character because they want to play it. If the other people are not having their fun wrecked by this character doing this then let people have their fun.
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Being uber against 75% of all encounters is kinda not the point of this game though.The point of the game is to have fun. No one can define what is fun for everyone.
The majority of people who play this game have fun when their characters get to interact with the world in a dynamic way.
If your characters don't get to interact in a meaningful way, because some other character has a ridiculous Initiative modifier and can essentially end the encounter on their turn before anyone else gets to go, then fun is not being had.
You can sit there and talk about this or that being fun for this or that person.
But as a coordinator of a game day, I've heard tons, and tons of complaints about particular characters and/or players that GM's won't GM for anymore, and other players don't want to sit at their table anymore.
Because those players completely destroy the fun at the table, because they suck the life out of the world by making it not dynamic or meaningful for any other character and player.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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We had a player with this exact build in our area. I'll direct him to this thread so he can tell you how his games were.
As a GM, I don't have a problem with min/max or specialized builds. My only goal is to ensure that everyone at my table is having fun. If people are enjoying the fireball spamming bloatmage winning every fight, or the droves of summoned monsters ripping apart the BBEG, that's perfectly fine.
I will say that, from my experience, the chances that everyone else enjoys playing alongside a character that effectively solos the entire scenario are few and far between.
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Being uber against 75% of all encounters is kinda not the point of this game though.
Hmmm.....I seem to recall someone having a rogue doing a ton of sneak attack damage that would shred the bad guys in one round, while the other melee people just twiddled their thumbs. Until the bad guys couldn't be flanked and stuff, which was pretty rare.
Now who's the one making the uber characters? Just sayin'...
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Being uber against 75% of all encounters is kinda not the point of this game though.The point of the game is to have fun. No one can define what is fun for everyone.
The majority of people who play this game have fun when their characters get to interact with the world in a dynamic way.
If your characters don't get to interact in a meaningful way, because some other character has a ridiculous Initiative modifier and can essentially end the encounter on their turn before anyone else gets to go, then fun is not being had.
You can sit there and talk about this or that being fun for this or that person.
But as a coordinator of a game day, I've heard tons, and tons of complaints about particular characters and/or players that GM's won't GM for anymore, and other players don't want to sit at their table anymore.
Because those players completely destroy the fun at the table, because they suck the life out of the world by making it not dynamic or meaningful for any other character and player.
I played at tables were non-optimized characters took away other players at the table chance to interact. I walkaway from a table because a VL DM allowed a 5 star GM as a player to move my character through the encounter despite my arguements.
Titles, positions, power build of the character is not what wrecks people fun. It is jerks not letting other play that is no fun. If I had that channel build I would not use it every fight, but at the same extent I would use it to protect and save other players so they could keep playing.
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Being uber against 75% of all encounters is kinda not the point of this game though.Hmmm.....I seem to recall someone having a rogue doing a ton of sneak attack damage that would shred the bad guys in one round, while the other melee people just twiddled their thumbs. Until the bad guys couldn't be flanked and stuff, which was pretty rare.
Now who's the one making the uber characters? Just sayin'...
what? A rogue bring called uber?
Praise be to Cayden Cailean! Someone is calling me over-powered now! W00t!
Finally, the recognition that me and my twin Gladii deserve. Who would have thought attacking twice for 6d6+7 and twice for 7d6+1 (nonlethal) would be so broken?
Time to celebrate with the nectar of the gods... Beer me!
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Being uber against 75% of all encounters is kinda not the point of this game though.Hmmm.....I seem to recall someone having a rogue doing a ton of sneak attack damage that would shred the bad guys in one round, while the other melee people just twiddled their thumbs. Until the bad guys couldn't be flanked and stuff, which was pretty rare.
Now who's the one making the uber characters? Just sayin'...
Yes, getting to shine in one out of 10 scenarios equals creating an uber build, then every build is uber.
If you actually looked at Vendel Naughton's build, you'd consistently ask me why I didn't make other more powerful choices.
He's actually a fairly under-optimized fighter/rogue build.
The key was, we had two rogues that were working in concert with one another, specifically to get the flanks.
I also blew about 30 charges of my wand and very nearly dropped in the combat where I had negative 3 levels.
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Being uber against 75% of all encounters is kinda not the point of this game though.The point of the game is to have fun. No one can define what is fun for everyone.
The majority of people who play this game have fun when their characters get to interact with the world in a dynamic way.
If your characters don't get to interact in a meaningful way, because some other character has a ridiculous Initiative modifier and can essentially end the encounter on their turn before anyone else gets to go, then fun is not being had.
You can sit there and talk about this or that being fun for this or that person.
But as a coordinator of a game day, I've heard tons, and tons of complaints about particular characters and/or players that GM's won't GM for anymore, and other players don't want to sit at their table anymore.
Because those players completely destroy the fun at the table, because they suck the life out of the world by making it not dynamic or meaningful for any other character and player.
I played at tables were non-optimized characters took away other players at the table chance to interact. I walkaway from a table because a VL DM allowed a 5 star GM as a player to move my character through the encounter despite my arguements.
Titles, positions, power build of the character is not what wrecks people fun. It is jerks not letting other play that is no fun. If I had that channel build I would not use it every fight, but at the same extent I would use it to protect and save other players so they could keep playing.
Not every player I've run into, that has made very effective builds, ruins the fun for others at the table.
But the majority of those who ruin the fun for others at the table, have a propensity for doing so by creating builds that dominate action.
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Yes, getting to shine in one out of 10 scenarios equals creating an uber build, then every build is uber.
If you actually looked at Vendel Naughton's build, you'd consistently ask me why I didn't make other more powerful choices.
He's actually a fairly under-optimized fighter/rogue build.
The key was, we had two rogues that were working in concert with one another, specifically to get the flanks.
Ah, that's always the best... Two rogues, working together as flank-buddies. Like the times that Tyiez and I tormented a Vrock to death. And when Mara and flanked that giant stone golem (so sad that Mara did not survive that fight)
Rogues rule!!!
Evasion is the best ability EVAH!,
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Andrew Christian – You hit on one of my issues with this – others have mentioned that the whole point is for the players to have fun, but the GM is a player – not in the traditional PC sense to be sure, but if the GM is not having fun I can more or less guarantee that the players are not.
Guess I will find out if this is as a crazy ability as it looks to me. It just tripped my internal gaming alarm. I'm going to be GMing my first PFS game this coming weekend with four new PFS players and one veteran.
The one veteran PFS player, one game under his belt, is the one with the channel character build. They are also asking me if the scenario chosen contains a lot of undead cause if it does they want to play an archer ranger instead of the channel cleric.
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Andrew Christian – You hit on one of my issues with this – others have mentioned that the whole point is for the players to have fun, but the GM is a player – not in the traditional PC sense to be sure, but if the GM is not having fun I can more or less guarantee that the players are not.
Guess I will find out if this is as a crazy ability as it looks to me. It just tripped my internal gaming alarm. I'm going to be GMing my first PFS game this coming weekend with four new PFS players and one veteran.
The one veteran PFS player, one game under his belt, is the one with the channel character build. They are also asking me if the scenario chosen contains a lot of undead cause if it does they want to play an archer ranger instead of the channel cleric.
Do not tell them. To me I consider it cheating to know what you are up against in anyway. The only time I change the character I want to play is if the group dynamics do not match. Such as level or abilities.
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Lie back and think of england. If the monsters and their tactics are locked there's little else you can do.
One caveat about that particular ability is that you need a charisma bonus high enough to exclude the entire party, or blasting the rest of them is PVP. That can be a bit challenging in larger group or with pets.
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Channeling for harm is interesting and starts off strong because it targets Will, but DC's scale badly and the effect area is very restricted until a) Channel Force feats or b) Malleable Symbol. Trust me, I've played a channeler till 16th level.
Wizards with dazing rods though, those are horrid. Boo, vade retro!
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I will agree with the scaling badly as far as DC goes. Unless I'm missing something they have already taken most feats for increasing DC besides just pouring on more Charisma. Which given that they skimped a little on wisdom might not be doable. The number of times per day does not increase either without Charisma bump or the spending of additional feats.
Still seems powerful for something that mimics a 4th level wizard spell – Mass Daze.
Guess I will just see how it runs, if it really bugs me or others during play, I will talk to the player about it and either get him to use caution in its ability or to just locate another GM/players that will not care.
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RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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But as a coordinator of a game day, I've heard tons, and tons of complaints about particular characters and/or players that GM's won't GM for anymore, and other players don't want to sit at their table anymore.
Because those players completely destroy the fun at the table, because they suck the life out of the world by making it not dynamic or meaningful for any other character and player.
I think it would be interesting to compile this data.
How many "I don't want to be at the table with X" requests are from players? How many from GMs? Is the ratio 6:1, as we might expect? How much overlap in which players/PCs are being avoided by GMs versus players?
How many such requests are connected to a specific PC? A specific player?
In the case of specific PCs, what sorts of PCs are being avoided? Damage-dealers? Debuffers/slumber witches? Uber-skill guys (auto-detect/disable traps, everyone's your friend via epic diplomacy, etc)? Specialists (super-good at X, don't do much else)? Generalists (can do everything themselves)? Stigma (gunslingers/ninjas, get out of my Tolkien)? Thematic disruption (paladin vs necromancer, FIGHT!; whip-wielding dominatrix making female players uncomfortable; etc)? Under-optimization ("they'll cost us our 4-player adjustment without contributing and get us killed")? Something else?
For specific players, what are the reasons? Spotlight hog? Table habits (don't have any numbers pre-calculated, slow turns, etc)? Hygiene? Unpleasant attitude? Constant errors that have to be corrected? Doesn't work as a team ("I stab the diplomat!"/"I walk away from the current encounter and open this door...")? Something else?
What about requests to not be at specific GMs' tables? Could a similar breakdown of reasons be compiled there, too?
Somebody math-y, get on it!
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Self-Policing is generally the best policy, otherwise we end up with endless discussions about banning particular rules elements. I've seen many players try out something broken, get bored with it, and stop doing it.
I disagree that it's the best policy or way to handle it. I'd prefer more extensive playtesting of things, followed by re-design/rewrites upon the publisher's part. I'm not sure why Paizo doesn't do this, but I'm guessing there may be economic factors at work.
That said, I think the idea of self-policing is a good one. We have a handful of powergamers down here in Arizona ... I'd say a couple are very good at 'dialing it back' and also they tend to get bored if they see what they've put together is too dominant. Sadly, we have a couple that don't seem to get bored of making the challenges in PFS scenarios trivial. One of them is a pretty nice guy away from the table, but I avoid sitting with him knowing the way he builds and plays his characters will suck some or all of the fun out of the scenario. I wish he'd evolve past this behavior, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
EDITED: for poor spelling on my part.
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The build becomes even better/worse when the cleric starts dipping into Diabolist to get an imp that can use a Wand of Ill Omen to get a misfortune on that channel.
It's very strong. If the cleric exclusively focuses on channeling by pumping their charisma, the saves can become very gross at higher levels. Feats like Improved Channel make it that much better, as do effects such as Desecrate (with portable altars).
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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I played this character to level 10, retiring after chain dazing a rune lord 3 rounds in a row.At level 10 you are looking at a maximum DC of around 25. That assumes you start with a Charisma of 20, pick up Improved Channel, put both level ups into it and buy a +4 headband. You are very unlikely to be able to afford a +6 one at this level and still have much useful gear.
In the upper tier the rune lord you are talking about has a will save of +19 if you disable the relevant object. At the lower tier it is +16. So he needs a 7 or a 9 to avoid the daze which means if you managed it three rounds in a row you got exceptionally lucky.
Imp familiar toting a wand of Ill Omen, for roll twice take lowest on said saves.
Regarding lower-levels using this as the go-to tactic - Use the tools at the GM's disposal - imagination and brainpower.
Slimes, oozes, fungi, surprise attacks that have sustained or automatic effects; there are a *few* things out there daze will not affect or affect in time. If GMed creatively, it could equalize things.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Regarding lower-levels using this as the go-to tactic - Use the tools at the GM's disposal - imagination and brainpower.
Slimes, oozes, fungi, surprise attacks that have sustained or automatic effects; there are a *few* things out there daze will not affect or affect in time. If GMed creatively, it could equalize things.
That's good advice, and when monsters with those abilities turn up in scenarios, this specific build will be unable to handle them as effectively as usual.
However, this is the PFS forum, and in PFS the GM has to run the encounters as written.
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A construct is not affected by positive or negative energy channels as they are neither living or undead, and therefore could not be dazed by the variant channel. Similarly, an undead creature cannot be harmed by a negative energy channel, so the daze effect would not trigger.
Creatures that would normally ignore the effect of a particular channel (such as undead with respect to a positive energy channel used to heal) ignore the variant effect of that channel.
Nonetheless, there are other feats that can be taken, such as command undead, that can offset ineffectiveness against undead or constructs. This channeler in the vast majority of situations is still very strong.
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So, how did this turn out for the first game?
It did not go bad after the Cleric died. The rest of the party succeeded in the scenario just fine.
Cleric dazed some monsters, they recovered got enraged and just focused on him as being the biggest threat, after one critical charge the cleric was on the ground. Next round the same monster finished him.
In PFS play with running the module "as written" changing creatures are not allowed or changing rules for that matter.
Otherwise the simplest fix would be to just disallow players from worshiping evil deities, fairly effective since almost all parties, scenarios, modules, campaigns, etc. tend to be good vs evil.
In my past experience when someone wants to play an evil character or worship and evil deity it usually indicates trouble for the party and causes strife among the players. Sooner or later they always seem to want to pull one over someone in the party and claim their alignment or deity demanded it.
Course on the flip side if they do not and they play nice – shouldn't their evil deity smite them for not following his tenants?
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Assuming other characters were up and threatening, why did the monsters finish the cleric (I mean besides the fact that you hate his character.)
Lets see -
1. intelligent monster
2. pissed about the dude harming all of his friends
3. cleric was still alive and closest target
4. lives in a world where magical healing is available so by #1 knows that all it takes is someone to wave their hands and the cleric is standing again but beheading stops that from happening.
technically no one else in the party had the ability to heal the cleric, but the monster did not know that
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Venture-Captain, California—Sacramento
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On the other hand:
1. Intelligent Monster
2. Clearly didn't hurt them much, as they were then able to dogpile the cleric.
3. How did they know that? Without deathwatch, they would need to stop and check to see if he was still alive. Did they make their heal check? Or did they just magically know when he was dead and stop attacking him after that?
4. And yet most healing requires touch, and no one else was close to him. For that matter, without a heal check, they don't know if he is dead, or just close.
when is it okay to attack a downed character.
It sounds like you walked perilously close to the edge of the don't be a jerk rule.
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On the other hand:
1. Intelligent Monster
2. Clearly didn't hurt them much, as they were then able to dogpile the cleric.
3. How did they know that? Without deathwatch, they would need to stop and check to see if he was still alive. Did they make their heal check? Or did they just magically know when he was dead and stop attacking him after that?
4. And yet most healing requires touch, and no one else was close to him. For that matter, without a heal check, they don't know if he is dead, or just close.
Opinions can differently be different on what a monster would or would not do.
My take on touch healing would be
1. party members could approach cleric without suffering opportunity attacks
2. monster was not a spell casting - no spellcraft - so while it would know that magical healing exists it would not necessary know the details of such healing.
As to not hurting them much - this particular enemy would not have survived another hit from that cleric.
I'm not aware of a heal check needed to determine dead or not - can your provide the rule page for this for future reference? I'm most certainly not a master of all pathfinder combat rules - heck they are a lot of them.
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Im making some assumptions here that you were the GM ... if you wernt please disregard anything referencing you as the GM
sorry what scenario was this ?
and TBH I dont think the Dont be a jerk rule was Skirted IMHO ... it was crossed
Beating an unconscious PC on a subsequent round when there are other targets available is by definition being a jerk ... not to mention you came to the boards specifically to complain about this build -
I admit I have very little faith in humanity - but this sounds premeditated to me - an Assassination as it would seem
I pray this was not a new to PFS player because chances are they wont be returning to the game
also in your statment "the Monster did not have spellcraft so would not know the details of such healing" the same Idea goes for channeling negative energy ....without Knowledge religion the Monster isnt going to know who did it ... and an argument could be made that he wouldnt even know how it was done without it
Furthermore I would love to hear this players take on the events