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Find a new GM.
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I play like you do - restrictions like that should come from the player, in my view rather than be imposed (or encouraged stick-and-carrot style).
Having said that, I think a DM can run whatever game they like. At least he's upfront about his expectations/approach. If I were to play with him, I'd ask him explicitly what kinds of role he thought the various classes "should" fill and play one where I'd be happy meeting his expectations. I think trying to out-compete/out-maneuver/out-wit the DM just leads to heartache and I'd rather just cut my losses and play something he wont feel the need to curtail.
EDIT: Also, I'd veer away from labelling his position 'dishonest'. If he really does think clerics should sit at the back healing (which is how I play them, to be frank) then seeing someone with a cleric being effective as a frontline fighter might be interpreted as powergaming on the grounds that they are, in his mind, fulfilling two roles.
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Clerics can "tank" just fine. They are proficient with shields after all.
In fact, depending on what domains you chose, they can be rather good melee combatants.
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How much of your GM's intentions behind the combat are your suppositions and how much did he actually clarify at the table?
As a GM myself, I try to make sure that - all other things being equal - particularly challenging monsters lay their destruction on the PCs that can take a few hits, i.e. the ones who are buffed to the gills. Normally, one might think that would be the 'front liners'. If you've made it clear through your choices and your buffing that you're a front liner, too, then naturally you would get a good taste of the foe's savagery.
Now your GM said he was targeting power gamers. I don't know what that means in his opinion but again, if you were in my game and you enhanced your Constitution so that your hit points rivaled our front liners and your Strength so that your attacks and damage rivaled our front liners and perhaps your AC so that you're defenses rivaled our front liners, my monster would treat you like a front liner. Most of my monsters pick one target for various reasons and stick with it - unless they have low-ish Wisdom, in which case I let them be easily distracted and change targets, especially if other players taunt it or try to get its attention. If the target wisely moves out of hitting range, some monsters will follow and others will pick a different target. That variety is what keeps things interesting.
That's all combat-design related. Taking a step backward, there might be a clear disjunction between your style of play and your GM's style, or at least his expectations. In my own experience, no one likes to change their style of play, except for a few beginners who can be guided in one direction or another through steady, encouraging feedback. You've clearly already talked with your GM about style of play and you still don't agree, so I'd look for another game if I was in your place.
Tell him to read a cleric guide. Eventually self buffing clerics put fight many other classes, including fighters. To me that's like saying a sorcerer can only blast and a wizard has to specialize in conjuration. I don't know, but it really sounds like he's putting his (wrong) interpret your character for you. I had a gm once who told me paladins couldn't be archers. I didn't play in his game very long.
My primary decision would be to find a new game. It is highly unlikely that he will change his opinion, and even if he does he probably has a lot of other odd interpretations of the game. This will likely rub off on you and you will be a problem at the next table your at due to wrong rule knowledge. that's not an option just because it's socially awkward, there aren't any other games around or a myriad of other reasons you'll have to talk to him. I would ask for a rebuild into something that's acceptable and make sure it's something he agrees with.
Personally I love players who make characters against the grain, though battle clerics aren't even against the grain so this makes very little sense.
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Find a new GM.
This right here. Remy Balster ended the thread before it even began.
Homebrew monsters that can be hurt by a weapon the GM gave a specific player just reeks of terrible GMing.
Honestly, the issue of "tanking" is silly anyway, since no one can do it in PF and the people that intelligent monsters/enemies should target all things being equal are those who have revealed themselves to be casters. And outside of maybe an AoO, there's very little that a "tank" can do to stop that.
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Stat im for decent str n dex, grab a longspear and combat reflexes, then see how bad he is in melee.
Added bonus if you grab the Growth subdomain for swift action Enlarge person starting at 1st level. Or the Ferocity subdomain, for added melee damage on your attacks. Both grant Enlarge as your 1st level domain spell, for regular ol fashion casting.
Fate's Favored trait is a nice bonus, makes it so at level 1, your Divine Favor adds +2 attack and damage.
20 pnt buy human lvl 1 clrc
(W/ regular longspear and breastplate)
Str 18 (16+2), Dex 14, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 14, Cha 12
Hp 10, AC 19 F+3, R+2, W+4 Init +4
Feats: Weapon focus: Longspear, Combat reflexes (3 aoos)
Traits: Fate's Favored, reactionary
Domain: Growth, Ferocity
Longspear (unbuffed) +5 1d8+6 (reach)
Start of combat - surprise/1st round: cast Divine Favor
Next round, swift enlarge + ferocious strike @ +7 2d6+10 you threaten out to 20ft, take any aoos @ +7 2d6+10
next rnd, repeat
Welcome to martial godhood at level 1. It only gets crazier as your buffs get mighty powerful from here on out. And you can afford to spend standard on your turn casting if you need to, and using aoos for attacking, since you threaten a huge area, just position right and dominate.
@ 3rd, pick up a +1 longspear, power attack, and bull's strength for a buffed +11 2d6+17. You'll be exploding enemies with your spear of doom.
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He's literally told me he's targeting people he perceives are powergaming.
This right here is why you should find a new GM. GM's control the entire world; if he wants to kill you he can. Punishing you in game because your philosophies are different is wrong. In fact punishing at all is wrong. He's not respecting your sense of fun or even thinking of it. He seems to just want to show that he's right and force you to play how he wants you to.
If you can't think of someone else's fun then you shouldn't be a GM. Making the game fun for your players IS your number one priority....not teaching your players lessons.
This guy is vindictive. Find a new GM.
Link him to this thread, too. Specifically to the post right above mine.
so the GM is going around tell players how they should play their PC?
tell him NO and if it doesn't change, find a new game or run one yourself.
Sounds like he broken the golden rule of DMing
Be impartial at all times and in all things game related
Or as we call it in are game he's being a bit of a tosser
You need to tell this guy you won't tell him how to play his monsters and he CAN'T tell you how to play your character
If that don't work get a new game if you can
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Have to agree, one of the first rules of GMing is to never punish (or reward) people in-game for things that aren't part of the game world.
If the cleric is required to be played as a box of band-aids, I wouldn't play a cleric.
If he's determined to punish anyone he considers a power-gamer, I wouldn't play in his game. Starting another - possibly with a RPG other than PF to avoid saying directly that you're better than him - seems like a good idea.
You could ask for a free rebuild if he doesn't like the way you play your Cleric. Rebuild into an almost identical Oracle of Battle. Point out the Battle mystery. Hit stuff in the face.
About half the people on these forums will tell you that a cleric can fill the role of a frontline fighter just fine. The other half are in shock that anyone would think they can't and are unable to speak.
Hell, I've seen WIZARD builds that focus on what amounts to 'get a big stick and wail on the bad guys until they cry uncle'. I've theorycrafted martials who focus primarily on inflicting status effects (Dirty trick, disarm, trip, ect) designed to pair off with a rogue. I'm currently playing a wizard set up as a face with not a blasty spell in sight. Hell, our current frontline fighter IS our cleric (3 man team, wizard cleric rogue, and we're all REALLY sneaky thanks to co-ordinating on everyone getting stealth skill and stealth synergy as our first level feats).
Anyone who pigeonholes a class into a single role is, and I don't normally say this, DOING IT WRONG!
Either teach this guy the error of his ways (a large project, to be sure) or find another GM.
Left that GM, if that isn't an option because u all are a group of friends, just try to speak with the other players for a game change. Lastly, change character to somenthing he lets play for fun if you aren't going to be retaliated for it, and let the "clerics only heal" to a cohort. Was going to say change to paladin, but my fear to his "that must behave like this" is thats going to be unplayable as well.
Whith not friendship in place, just find a new GM.
As someone noted above, a GM must control all but the PCs, or better play himself in privacy.
If leaving isn't an option and the GM's being an arse you could ask to swap to a Warpriest from the ACG playtest. They're more specifically frontliners and you do lose a good deal in terms of casting, but if it means you get to play the role you want to then it might be worth it.
I know - you should be able to play the character you want as you want to play them. But if your GM is going to say "you can't do that" then he needs to allow you to change up if he expects you to stay.
You're a cleric - how about a bit of Wisdom: "The wind does not break a tree that bends."
He wants you to buff the group. Maybe he has a good reason for that - perhaps to deal with the threats he's throwing you, you need a buffed Fighter, not a Fighter and a buffed Cleric (roughly equal, depending on how much time is burned buffing). Just as likely it's just his own opinion getting in the way. Regardless of why, it's causing you both stress, so why not do both?
Switch up your spells a bit, focus on group buffs instead of personal ones. At 13th level you can put out mass bear's endurance, mass bull's strength, and mass owl's wisdom (Will saves), depending on what items your group already has. Quickened bless, and a quickened divine favor for yourself.
If you don't have Quicken Spell, see if he'll let you swap a feat for it so you can better meet his expectations. It's pricey on the spell slots, but having the option to do a quickened cure serious wounds spontaneously is nice.
I'm not suggesting you change your character concept, just try a more balanced approach and see how it works.
You could ask him to supply you with healing wands or staffs so you don't have to sacrifice options to fit his concept.
If I wanted t' play an MMO I'd log on t' WoW or SW:TOR or somethin like dat. Do yerself a favor an find a new GM
I've never been a fan of the self-buffing cleric role. To me the cleric is supposed to be the party buffer & healer. That doesn't mean they can't also defend and pack a wallop, but if they build what the 3.x community use to refer to as a "battle cleric," I wouldn't like it.
That being said, just because I wouldn't like it doesn't mean I would target the player that chooses to build one, I'd probably just throw in some snarky comments about using a "build" and "optimizing", etc, etc.
Long story short, this is on the GM and he needs to change. Instead of allowing players to select options he feels are powergaming, he should just ban them if he won't be able to resist metagaming to kill those PCs he thinks are breaking the gamer's code of conduct.
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this is what world of warcraft has done to pen and paper games...
you dont play a cleric, a fighter, a paladin or whatever. you're playing a character with a history, a set of goals and many other things. the class you pick is just the one that comes mechanically closest to the kind of character you want to play.
maybe try that route: "im not playing a cleric, im playing a guy with this history, this kinda goals, he is pretty religious, drawing strength from his faith and his chosen fighting style is heavyly armored close combat."
I always find the concept of "powergaming" to be amusing. When someone accuses you of power gaming, you can point out that the most optimized character concept in the game at higher levels is an Arcane Bloodline Sorcerer specced in just about any school. Their DCs will just naturally be so high that they will wreck everything, and all they need to do is throw up Mirror Image(a second level spell) and they have most of the defense they will ever need.
The most powerful concept at low levels is usually just a Barbarian or Fighter with their most basic stuff (Power attack, weapon focus, weapon spec).
All of this is out of the core book...
You aren't a powergamer for playing your class, taking spells off your Core spell list, and casting them on yourself.
Have you stacked multiple classes to gain ridiculous benefit? Have you searched obscure reference material to find the most powerful rare powers in the game just to gain a greater edge? Probably not, you sound like you are just playing a core class, using core spells, and doing anything they can do out of the core...that's hardly going out of your way to optimize (though I could be wrong, maybe you have spread sheets of optimized spells and powers from every corner of the cosmos).
Any GM who gets vindictive against his players for any reason is probably not a very good GM. Taking anything your players do as a personal insult against yourself as a GM is bad idea. Your players just want to have fun, and you want to have fun as GM...but it's not fun to GM a game when your players aren't also having fun, so your fun is their fun.
You might have some luck in changing his mind if you can remind him of this truth...though if he doesn't agree that GMing a game where your players aren't having fun isn't fun for the GM either...then you really do need to move on.
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Imagine if you critiqued how he ran every single monster, and NPC.
Constantly telling him that he is "playing them wrong".
He introduces a good Drow NPC? Well, it looks like you have to kill it, and make a very big deal about, with lots of complaining about how he can't run "good Drow".
Is that how everyone in the group should play?
Is that how everyone is going to have fun?
Does everyone, including the DM, realize that having fun, is the entire point?
People saying to just find a new game is a pet peeve of mine, but here's some advice that might be just as obvious.
Play how you want to play, because if you don't have fun, then what's the point?
Arguments about what something should do vs what it can do are different, and a cleric definitely can go in and stay there. I don't see what's stopping you from having a decent ac to not be able to tank if you wished.
Prove him wrong by doing it in his game, and if things aren't optimally effective then so what? It's just a game, so have fun, and play your characters. Show him guide books to building a front line cleric and maybe he'll acknowledge this is a practical thing.
I think his reply to my statement like that was something along the lines that Fighters can use Heavy Armor, and Clerics can't. I've taken a feat, however, that lets me use Tower Shields, so I don't much see what prevents me from taking a feat to use Heavy Armor, personally. :P
Fighters and Clerics have the exact same armor proficiencies, I think. Your GM is quite the goofball.
Based on how you describe this GM's game, I wouldn't even bother trying to explain to him how wrong he is and why. He sounds like a vindictive control freak who treats his players like rats in a maze.
That is not a good time in my opinion.
Clerics get heavy armor in 3.5 and not in pf. It's horrible.
Ps
I'm human fighter, and I never use heavy armor.
Imagine a world where you want to play a game and your options to do so are limited, and actual constructive advice to help your predicament was given so you could continue to actually be able to play the game in an enjoyable fashion with your only available option to do so... sadly, that's only a fantasy.
Find a new gm I usually compare to someone saying
"What are some ways to improve my kill death ratio in call of duty"
"Don't die"
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Well, yes, that remains as the nuclear option. But I'd rather not resort to that until I'm either ripshit pissed or just utterly sickened.
That's just it though, you don't want to wait UNTIL that point where you are pissed or utterly sickened. That will do no one any good including yourself, your GM, and your other friends/players.
Discuss with the DM that if she wants the players to play a certain way then she can play your characters herself and then you all can go on and start a new campaign. I know it's rough giving up a game when you've invested so much in it but that's just how it has to be sometimes.
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Every class can be a tank. I think your GM will realize this if he saw my wizard tank.
Clerics get heavy armor in 3.5 and not in pf. It's horrible.
well that is a goofy change. I wonder why they took that away in PF? Clerics needed some love, and they got it, but what's the harm in letting them use heavy armor? In my old-school mind that is one of the defining features of the cleric class.
In my current campaign my buddy is playing a cleric in plate armor. We both played 3.0/3.5 heavily before PF, so I guess that's one change neither of us noticed! *hand wave*| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
he conceded to targeting people who he thought weren't playing their characters the way he thought they should be played;
Leave.
That is BULLCRAP.I can't even fathom this line of thought. I would have gone off on him at top volume, wherever we were. This guy is a total complete and utter sham of a GM, a massive clueless craphead, and I hope he never gets another player again in his life, because this douchebag doesn't deserve any.
I can only imagine his reaction to my gnoll cleric of Gorum with the Greatsword. "Heal? Pfft. Later, there are bowels in need of disemboweling first."
A lot of this comes down to a class/player filling the role they sign up for. If no one wants to play the healer, then the group will have to figure out what they're going to do when someone gets hurt/poisoned/diseased/etc. There are options - from the GM tweaking rules to make healing easier, to throwing in an NPC that heals, to showering the group with healing items, and others.
The problem comes in when someone agrees to play the healer, but then spends a lot of their character resources on optimizing other parts of their character instead of healing.
This is one of the reasons that I think that the healing mechanic of any class should not be connected to their other mechanics. While spontaneous casting sounds good on the surface, what it actually does is set up a dynamic where any non-healing spell that is cast is viewed as a "wasted" spell.
Channel energy avoids this - there's not a lot that it can be substituted for (that I'm aware of.) If I were redesigning the classes, I would part all healing and restoration type spells into a channel energy pool. Then you spend points to either channel energy or restore things.
Your other spells can't be traded for healing, and so there's no pressure on the character to conserve their spells only for healing - they can self buff and wade into combat or stay back and throw a few blasts out, etc.
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Meh ... buffing and kicking ass is better. It's like pre-emptive healing. If you kill something two rounds faster than it would have been if you hadn't participated, that's two rounds worth of damage your party isn't taking.
And, IMFAO, it's a LOT more fun.
A Cleric needs next to no optimization to be able to throw out on-demand heals, and poison/disease/restoration etc is more about spell selection than how you play a character. Realistically you're not going to be doing that sort of thing in combat.
Caster Clerics are more usually based more on effective summoning, batlefield control and buffing than maximizing heals. In terms of comparing healing between a typical Caster Cleric and a Melee Cleric the biggest difference will usually be bonus spells per day from Wisdom unless one specifically has the Healing domain. Healing in combat is only worthwhile in some specific circumstances, and building to be good at it makes a character much less flexible.
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There are no rules in metagaming party roles. You do what you want. If you're all barbarians and want to do that, then do it.
I'm in the camp to invest in not getting hurt in the first place so you don't need to heal and stuff. Crush your enemies before they crush you.
It sounds like the GM is having a bit of a power trip. Playing a game is for everyone to have fun, and he's trying to force his vision of fun on everyone else. I think you should find a new GM, from in the group or from elsewhere. However, it probably would be a good idea to have a group discussion so you can all decide on what is and isn't allowed. Personally I find that one of the best parts of RPGs is that you aren't shoehorned into specific roles.
There is no reason a Cleric can't be a front-liner, even one or two feats can help them survive and be effective in front line combat. That's hardly power gaming. Like others have said, you could point him at some of the super-optimized builds in the forums here to show him what power gaming looks like.