For the purposes of this thread, I'd like people to just assume (or accept for the sake of the argument) that casters are "better" than martials rather than debating that point.
I wondered how that translates at the table for those groups who feel this way? Do you find that nobody plays rogues or fighters?
I ask because in the posts where people list their parties, there often seem to be martial classes around. I wondered whether people are houseruling those classes, whether the players of casters just "play nice" and dont tread on the toes of the martial players or what other solutions people have found.
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Martial/caster issues are a thought experiment ive never seen in actual play. any real power issues are usually a clash of playstyles or an extreme difference in system mastery.
in my home game the party is dwarf rogue, half orc paladin, human wizard human cavalier.
when i play PFS about 50% of the other PC's are martials.
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I've never had much of an issue with full casters in any game I've been in, but I get the feeling that's mostly because all the people with real system mastery aren't inclined to play them, or if they do, don't care enough to play them to their full potential... it's funny but it seems only idiots play Wizards in the games I'm in.
Martial/caster issues are a thought experiment ive never seen in actual play. any real power issues are usually a clash of playstyles or an extreme difference in system mastery.
in my home game the party is dwarf rogue, half orc paladin, human wizard human cavalier.
when i play PFS about 50% of the other PC's are martials.
Cheers. I'd kind of expected casters to be more prevalent in PFS. I dont suppose there are any publically available statistics about classes/races/levels and so forth for PFS are there?
I see more martials that I do casters. Has been that way since I started the game, at least for me. Even in PFS it was mostly martials and rarely did I get a team of mostly casters.
I see casters as having a lot of narrative to plan around and martials not having enough options personally, if that matters.
In PFS play I see about as many martials as casters, but I almost never see fighters. I do see rogues. I EXPECT to see fewer rogues and more swashbucklers and slayers.
The biggest issue I still see resolves around players getting lucky with save or suck spells on "boss" type fights. When players of martials see that happen more than once a campaign they tend to come back to the table with casters.
In my game with friends we currently have a barbarian, a bard, a magus, a sorcerer, a witch, and an inquisitor. The barbarian, magus and sorcerer players are just playing their favorite class without any regard to power level. The bard and witch have about half the experience of the rest of the party and are just trying new classes. Anyway, I am the one that really likes to play martials in my group anyway.
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Cheers. I'd kind of expected casters to be more prevalent in PFS. I dont suppose there are any publically available statistics about classes/races/levels and so forth for PFS are there?
Martial/caster issues are a thought experiment ive never seen in actual play. any real power issues are usually a clash of playstyles or an extreme difference in system mastery.
in my home game the party is dwarf rogue, half orc paladin, human wizard human cavalier.
when i play PFS about 50% of the other PC's are martials.
one other thing the forum seems to push is that the game is harder than it is.
15 14 13 10 8 before racial mods is the assumed stat array for the games design. what this means is that a fighter who starts with say 17 str 10 dex 14 con 13 int 10 wis 8 cha after mods for human. is this char optimal? no.. can you finish any published adventure without alot of difficulty? yes.
What this means, is the game has alot more room for characters that are sub optimal either from a class or mechanic point of view. The area where players should get hit is in things like tactics.
The other thing is, alot of the wizards are god threads seem to treat the player of the wizard as omnicient like somone in a video game whos played that section of the game 12x. ive never once played with a player who could predict encounters that well to always have something prepared.
One thing though, a Player with alot of system mastery playing a wizard with people with low system mastery can ruin the game. But a 2h barbarian cin the same situation can also.
at the end of the day Pf is a social game and alot of the math breaks down when exposed to human behaviour.
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I once played a Pathfinder game with a sorcerer, a...rogue or bard or something, and myself, a fighter (with a crossbow, no less!).
It was fine. We started around 5th level and made it to somewhere like 16th. I never felt useless. I stayed conscious the longest, did great when days stretched out long, and had enough Skill Points to easily be the sneakiest guy in the party.
I kind of wonder if power discrepancies become less troublesome when there are fewer PCs?
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Time for a high level campaign story (this isn't the Monk one although that is relevant). This involves a high level Samurai. Sure when he could get a full attack in he usually splattered an enemy. The problem was that enemies rarely gave him this opportunity (because I play my enemies with their given INT. In particular a Huge Half-Fiend Elder Fire Elemental (The Hellpyre) was able to grapple him easily to give him a lavabath that tore chunks off his hitpoints (the Cleric was able to use Heal to prevent death). The other characters were not in melee range and thus did not have to contend with AoOs and while I use Half-Fiend elementals thanks to their high SR (for their CR), they could rely on conjurations to reduce the HellPyre's effectiveness without ever putting themselves at much risk.
Unlike the Monk from my other example, the Samurai never realized that his contribution was solely his ability to splatter an enemy and that only really kicked in when he could get in a full attack which was very rare. Meanwhile, the Cleric, Wizard and Ranger (Archer based) had no such problems. The Archer didn't deal as much damage as the Samurai did when full attacking, but he did it more frequently and the damage output was still high, while the casters mostly focused on SoS/Buffs. I should note his CHA was low and he didn't do much outside of combat, though the player did not seem very interested in that. The Cleric meanwhile helped to promote a minor goddess and the Wizard started his own sellsword organization. The Ranger was mostly gathering information about the West (where he was originally from) as it has been being significantly restructured after a demonic incursion 20 years prior to the campaign, with Hextor (I use 3.5 Gods) gaining a significant foothold there.
Rarely, and typically among those players who find the PF spell system annoying/cumbersome/complicated.
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had enough Skill Points to easily be the sneakiest guy in the party.
You had... at least one per level?
I play martials because I don't like playing casters. At most I'll play a Bard or a Magus.
Of course, when I play a martial I usually try to make it a point to contribute in ways other than doing damage even if it isn't the most optimized choice (for example, my Barb is built around Terrifying Howl). I find it curiously difficult to accomplish that with a Fighter, though...
I play martials because I don't like playing casters. At most I'll play a Bard or a Magus.
Of course, when I play a martial I usually try to make it a point to contribute in ways other than doing damage even if it isn't the most optimized choice (for example, my Barb is built around Terrifying Howl). I find it curiously difficult to accomplish that with a Fighter, though...
Half-casters are very popular in my group, along with full casters. Despite the rather significant nerfs PF made to Clerics, interest in them has not dropped and I see oddly few Oracles (I'm the only one who has played on in our group). Wizards show up quite frequently as well (this is part because the other GM likes to play Wizards).
Half-casters are very popular in my group, along with full casters.
I usually go to a half-caster of some sort if I want a martial as a sort of compromise with the game. I do like whacking things sometimes.
I don't see any Fighters or Rogues (without the help of house rules). I do see some Paladins and Barbarians. We had a Rogue on an earlier game, but the campaign stopped at 8th level.
had enough Skill Points to easily be the sneakiest guy in the party.You had... at least one per level?
Good Intelligence gave me about 6 per level, in fact. Add in being a Dex-based kobold and it worked out nicely. :)
Good Intelligence gave me about 6 per level, in fact. Add in being a Dex-based kobold and it worked out nicely. :)had enough Skill Points to easily be the sneakiest guy in the party.You had... at least one per level?
The joke is to have good stealth in this game you only need one point.
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Also "Good Int" is not a Rogue/Fighter class feature, nor do those classes benefit from it any more than any other class. In fact, it's a solid dump stat for both of them*.
*Unless the player is like me and hates dumping Int.
The joke is that that means it doesn't matter how low a fighter's skill points are—all he needs is one per level to fill his niche.
Lemmy, I think you're missing the point. The point is not "Look how powerful fighters are!" The point is, it doesn't really make a difference to how the PC plays out.
That's why fighter remains my favorite class, weak as it is. It's the swiss army knife—I don't have to look through five dozen books to track down the right archetype for my dual-shield-wilder/bull rusher/whip-trip-whirlwind combo. The fighter has the feats to make even the dumbest idea work.
Will it work as well as another class? No. Will it work well enough? Hell yes. I can't speak to rogues, but the fighter is a truly stellar "good enough" class.
EDIT: Int is not a good dump stat for rogues, though. Skills are the one thing they're arguably still best at (if only a little). Why squander that?
EDIT: Int is not a good dump stat for rogues, though. Skills are the one thing they're arguably still best at (if only a little). Why squander that?
Ideally, because they have so many skill points they can afford to lose a few, and they don't actually get any super powers out of their skill points, so instead you actually reduce it so you can push up the things you do need, like a good will save, to hit, or constitution, all of which the rogue severely lacks.
Its not intuitive no.
That's why fighter remains my favorite class, weak as it is. It's the swiss army knife—I don't have to look through five dozen books to track down the right archetype for my dual-shield-wilder/bull rusher/whip-trip-whirlwind combo. The fighter has the feats to make even the dumbest idea work.
Well, it has the option so long as it has enough feats for to do all it can and someone else might reach it later than him, and possibly earlier if its a ranger or similar 'lol I skip prereqs' class/archetype, and the feats have to exist in the first place and possibly you might ask that their reasonable which may be a longshot, at which point you might just switch to another game where getting whirlwind is actually a basic thing instead of an overly complicated thing that requires unrelated abilities.
So... derailing. Probably best not to.
I won't argue the Fighter part... Not because I agree, but because I'm tired so., whatever. I'll clarify my opinion, though.
EDIT: Int is not a good dump stat for rogues, though. Skills are the one thing they're arguably still best at (if only a little). Why squander that?
1- They aren't. 2 - Because even with Int 7 they got enough skill points (especially if they are human and/or take skills as their FCB) but even with Con/Wis 14 their defenses suck, so lowering Int to squeeze an extra bonus to HP, Fort and/or Will can help them survive past 6th level.
Yeah. For the record, I didn't start it this time. Just saying that because Chris Lambertz is giving me the look again.
I won't argue the Fighter part... Not because I agree, but because I'm tired so., whatever. I'll clarify my opinion, though.
EDIT: Int is not a good dump stat for rogues, though. Skills are the one thing they're arguably still best at (if only a little). Why squander that?1- They aren't.
Simple question, then: Who has more base skill points than the rogue? I'm not familiar with the archetype, though I'm sure it's out there.
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In my group of 4 we have 2 who play martial and 2 who play casters on pretty consistent bases. I like casters because well magic is cool and I'm a min maxxer when it comes to creation of characters and I often wonder at the amazing amount of damage my martial counter parts can achieve. I think as long as everyone has a moment to shine it doesn't matter what people play.
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I've seen a mix of martials and casters in my group and in the PFS groups I've played in.
As a general rule, the first thing you see influencing character effectiveness is system mastery. A player who doesn't know what they're doing will be equally ineffective regardless of what they play. It's when the players with greater system mastery start running casters as opposed to martials or gish that you start seeing the gap.
Two of my friends played their characters Jeff the mage and Urch the half-orc barbarian. Urch was not terribly well built, though he had a couple good combat tricks. Jeff was the Batman caster with a tool for nearly everything and a carefully constructed spell list designed to handle almost any situation.
Urch routinely found himself in situations where his ability to deal weapon damage were ineffective. He also failed [I]a lot[I] of will saves.
Jeff was never even touched by an enemy, but was killed by a dominated/possessed/confused Urch like 7 times. When not being killed by Urch, Jeff was basically THE problem solver in the group, proving the pivotal force in almost every encounter.
Jeff's player will often play simpler classes intelligently to put himself closer to the other players, or routinely play down to give everyone a chance to shine. He almost always seems like the best player at the table regardless of what class he plays, but that's representative of the gulf in system mastery between him and the other players. Having seen the difference between him pulling out the stops with a caster and a martial, I know how much more dangerous he is with a full toolbox of spells. When playing in PFS he and I even agreed between ourselves to stop playing our characters to their full potential because of the fact that other players just weren't getting the chance to do stuff.
People don't always see the disparity because sometimes the people who know how to maximize their skills play a class with fewer options to try and level the field, or play down so as not to undermine the other players. It doesn't mean those same players couldn't run the table from the wrong side of the screen if they wanted to. The tools are all there, the difference is the attitude and maturity of the person who knows how to use them. With great power and all that.
Simple question, then: Who has more base skill points than the rogue? I'm not familiar with the archetype, though I'm sure it's out there.I won't argue the Fighter part... Not because I agree, but because I'm tired so., whatever. I'll clarify my opinion, though.
EDIT: Int is not a good dump stat for rogues, though. Skills are the one thing they're arguably still best at (if only a little). Why squander that?1- They aren't.
Bard comes out on top, 6+5 with versatile+5 per lvl bardic knowledge(12 with PoP)+int.
Simple question, then: Who has more base skill points than the rogue? I'm not familiar with the archetype, though I'm sure it's out there.
More base skill points doesn't necessarily mean "better at skills". I'd argue Alchemists, Bards, Inquisitor, Ninjas, Rangers and Wizards make better skill monkeys than Rogues.
Bards is the simplest and easiest comparison, but I won't go further into it because,as I said, I'm tired... And there are like, a million different threads talking about this particular subject. I'm sure you can even find some of my posts about it.
Hey, you're the one who didn't like my "I like swords fighters" post. I'm all in favor of keeping the basher bashing to the basher bashing threads and leaving the rest of us in peace. ;)
Me, I've made many posts stating my positive views on fighters. I'm kind of tired of having to defend my playstyle, honestly. This is why I stay the hell away from those "basher bashing threads" nowadays.
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Simple question, then: Who has more base skill points than the rogue? I'm not familiar with the archetype, though I'm sure it's out there.
Well the bard for one. Auto ranks in every Knowledge skill, 2 or even 3 for 1 investment with abilities like Versatile Performance, and only 2 less floating skill points per level. He finishes with something like 3 times as many skill points as the Rogue. Similarly, the Ranger gets bonuses to survival checks and numerous bonuses from his favored ability, additional skill points via his animal companion, numerous skill enhancing spell options, and only 2 less floating skill points per level than the Rogue.
Third time's the charm, I guess. But bards and rangers will never be as good at Appraise, the most useful skill in the game. :)
Okay, I apologize for getting snappy. I'm gonna un-Watch this thread and leave it to the target audience.
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Hey, you're the one who didn't like my "I like
swordsfighters" post. I'm all in favor of keeping the basher bashing to the basher bashing threads and leaving the rest of us in peace. ;)Me, I've made many posts stating my positive views on fighters. I'm kind of tired of having to defend my playstyle, honestly. This is why I stay the hell away from those "basher bashing threads" nowadays.
Defend your playstyle? Look these are mathematical things we're discussing. It's not something that needs defended. Rogues are never going to outskill Bards or INT focused casters. Or Alchemists. Or Rangers. That's just a fact. Its something that simply is. There's nothing to get emotional about. Just run the equation and receive the answer. That'd be like people getting emotional about scientific facts that they don't like.... oh. Never mind. Carry on.
In my groups people seem to prefer the martial melee characters (me included). On my Kingmaker campaign we have a both a high-level fighter (who is the Ruler of the kingdom) and a rogue, and both are real strong at skills and melee combat.
The rogue deals damage enough to trivialize most encounters, is capable of sneak attacking by himself, and has insane AC if he manages to get a hit in. The fighter (tactician/swordlord) deals a good amount of damage and has strong defenses (including an unbeatable AC for most enemies). Between the wizard's haste and the oracle's blessing of fervor, it's pretty rare for anything to survive a full attack from either of them.
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Simply put, playing a caster within the top 20% of their potential is a lot of work. Playing them in the top 5 percentile of their potential is downright annoying.
Thus, martials- being a lot more fun/casual/plug and play (ontop of the fact that they don't bust open campaigns or require the GM to plan around them) see a lot of play in campaigns I'm involved in.
Cheers. That's not something I'd really thought about before.
I see a reasonably even mix. From the pathfinder campaigns i've played in or DMed so far there's been:
1)
Fighter
Sorcerer
Rogue/Psion
Cleric
2)
Barbarian/Ranger Gestalt
Wizard
Sorceror
Cleric
3)
Monk
Rogue
Paladin
Druid
4)
Paladin
Druid
Rogue/Witch/Arcane Trickster
The full casters have always been the strongest party members and most difficult to DM around, and in 2) campaign which was heavily optimised and high level, we had to let the barb gestalt in order to remain relevant. They've never 'broken' the campaign, but i've had to think quick a few times. I quite enjoy DMing for optimised casters because it forces me and the players to think laterally instead of a 'apply sword here' mentality.
Of course I do. Everyone does.
Because the martial characters are fun as hell, despite most of their pure power deficiencies.
Though, I've never seen a Fighter besides myself (and even then, "Fighter" is a loose description since it usually looks like a Monk, acts like a Monk, and plays like a Monk when I deign to take Fighter levels).
I have seen a few Rogues though. Never had one make it past 5th without dying and the player being too frustrated and annoyed to consider Raising him or EVER making another Rogue.
One was so frustrated with how annoying it was to play his Rogue that he thought a PALADIN would be less annoying to play. In a game with a GM who interpreted laying traps and ambushes as lying to your opponent.
Plenty of Barbarians and Rangers though, along with a lot of half casters. Full caster players are rare-ish, IME, usually never more than one per game at a time.
Except our Rise of the Runelords game. We've got a Sorcerer, a Wizard (formerly Witch), an Oracle, a Zix*, and my Barbarian.
SOP in that game is "Slap Greater Heroism, Haste, Air Walk, and Stoneskin on the Barbarian, watch him rip through everything forever" (Proudest moment was single-handedly taking down a Mythic Nalfeshnee at level 14 in 1 full round and an attack in the previous *wipes tear*), but the casters rock a whole ton of things too.
Icy Prison? It's a badass spell. Our Sorcerer has taken significant damage exactly once since I joined the game, because he usually has a mixture of several defensive buffs up and a Contingencied Dimension Door that pops him to the opposite side of the battlefield if he gets smacked.
Witchzard is an odd duck in that she never does much spell-wise besides buffs, but she also has an Iron Archer construct that does a good bit of heavy lifting.
The Oracle generally ends up untouchable because of rolling like a 76 on Stealth or some s#$@ like that with Hide in Plain Sight (Dark Tapestry Oracle) and slaps stuff like heal on people who need it or the occasional Plane Shift on a creature just for shiggles.
All three of them have a lot of fun with Feeblemind. We have a zoo made up of former spellcasters on an Abundant Timeless Demiplane. There's about 6-8 guys in there as of last count, including Mokmurian.
Zix is basically equal and opposite of my Barbarian combat wise. He can walk through things just as hard, but whereas my Barbarian has 4-5 big hits, he has like 12 somewhat smaller hits. My Barbarian beats him in damage by a good bit, but that's because my Barbarian will often end up doing 100 damage more than is necessary. Zix kills things just as quickly. Unfortunately he hasn't been able to make it to the last few sessions. =(
But yeah, I may not have made it sound like it, but the casters rule that game. My Barbarian is pretty baller but he wouldn't make it nearly as far without those guys' buffs (even Air Walk, if only for action economy since I have Winged Boots). Throw in the fact that each one of them have spell DCs in the "Good luck with that" range and at least one good spell that can utterly screw at least one target (Icy Prison, Feeblemind, Plane Shift, etc.) and they would do pretty well if I wasn't there (and did so for a while, I showed up at level 10, and they were still a Druid, a Witch, a Sorcerer, and a Zix* at that point), though they'd have a bit harder time with big melee focused enemies (though the Iron Archer would help).
Zix is hard to classify (heh). He's a Magus/Alchemist/Monk/Fighter.
He is ludicrously effective.
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Defend your playstyle? Look these are mathematical things we're discussing. It's not something that needs defended. Rogues are never going to outskill Bards or INT focused casters. Or Alchemists. Or Rangers. That's just a fact. Its something that simply is. There's nothing to get emotional about. Just run the equation and receive the answer. That'd be like people getting emotional about scientific facts that they don't like.... oh. Never mind. Carry on.Hey, you're the one who didn't like my "I like
swordsfighters" post. I'm all in favor of keeping the basher bashing to the basher bashing threads and leaving the rest of us in peace. ;)Me, I've made many posts stating my positive views on fighters. I'm kind of tired of having to defend my playstyle, honestly. This is why I stay the hell away from those "basher bashing threads" nowadays.
Actually the OP asked this that this thread be about how often you see martials in play, and specifically asked that people don't get into "X class is weak for X reasons"
Kobold Cleaver described how things worked in his game, and only after others questioned his conclusions did it go off on any tangent. That doesn't cancel out Kobold's original answers.
Actually the OP asked this that this thread be about how often you see martials in play, and specifically asked that people don't get into "X class is weak for X reasons"
Kobold Cleaver described how things worked in his game, and only after others questioned his conclusions did it go off on any tangent. That doesn't cancel out Kobold's original answers.
Yeah... I will take my share of blame on this one. I apologize for further derailing the thread.
In my defense, I was participating in 2 different threads about game balance with some of the same people who posted here, so it's easy to get confused. :P
Defend your playstyle? Look these are mathematical things we're discussing. It's not something that needs defended. Rogues are never going to outskill Bards or INT focused casters. Or Alchemists. Or Rangers. That's just a fact. Its something that simply is. There's nothing to get emotional about. Just run the equation and receive the answer. That'd be like people getting emotional about scientific facts that they don't like.... oh. Never mind. Carry on.Hey, you're the one who didn't like my "I like
swordsfighters" post. I'm all in favor of keeping the basher bashing to the basher bashing threads and leaving the rest of us in peace. ;)Me, I've made many posts stating my positive views on fighters. I'm kind of tired of having to defend my playstyle, honestly. This is why I stay the hell away from those "basher bashing threads" nowadays.
Actually the OP asked this that this thread be about how often you see martials in play, and specifically asked that people don't get into "X class is weak for X reasons"
Kobold Cleaver described how things worked in his game, and only after others questioned his conclusions did it go off on any tangent. That doesn't cancel out Kobold's original answers.
That's not how the thread title reads though. Hard to explain that I'm both someone who thinks caster are overpowered *and* see martial classes in my games without discussing why the first is true, despite (or because of) the latter. If the op was merely looking for Yes/No answers, a poll would have been more effective. If he was looking for answers on "Do those people who consider casters overpowered see martial classes at their table?" then class balance is a natural part of that question. Also, in his OP he asks people to accept that casters are better (which I do), nothing about not discussing class balance. He even asks to translate table experience, which is naturally going to involve discussion of a class' effectiveness.
In short, I have no idea what you talking about here.
"Do those people who consider casters overpowered see martial classes at their table?"
I'm no English major but this does look like a yes or no question. The the OP said this "For the purposes of this thread, I'd like people to just assume (or accept for the sake of the argument) that casters are "better" than martials rather than debating that point."
So yeah. Not about who is better. Just a question to see if people with that belief don't see martials in their games.
For the purposes of this thread, I'd like people to just assume (or accept for the sake of the argument) that casters are "better" than martials rather than debating that point.
I wondered how that translates at the table for those groups who feel this way? Do you find that nobody plays rogues or fighters?
I ask because in the posts where people list their parties, there often seem to be martial classes around. I wondered whether people are houseruling those classes, whether the players of casters just "play nice" and dont tread on the toes of the martial players or what other solutions people have found.
The OP wonders if people house rule those classes or play nice and asks that we translate our experience. Since we find casters OP, obviously translating our experience involves discussing why.