I would hope... *hope* that people would have a problem with the idea that an ordinary human could survive a fall from the stratosphere as unbelievable. But we are getting far a field. The big problem again is that Magic has options. Reality changing options. Fighters can only interact with reality on the terms of "smack if with stick". When an airship gets hit with Lightning and needs repaired... you know what the Fighter can contribute? He can hold a rope. And fulfill his life goal of being a Wharf. (OoTS reference!)*sigh* Okay. Okay. I'm just gonna add two things, then can we get over the comic book contests, please?
1st -- If Batman, without his gear, was dropped from orbit, would he die from the impact? If yes, he's not level 20.
I've never seen it in the comic, so I can't answer what would happen there.
By the game rules, maximum falling damage in M&M is 16 ranks. But Batman has an Acrobatics skill of +15 and reducing falling damage by tumbling is DC 5. Assuming Batman's player rolls an 11 that's 11+15=26, or 5 successes which reduces the falling damage to 11 ranks. That makes Batman's toughness save DC = 11+15 or also 26. Batman's Toughness, including his Defensive Roll is 8. So if he again rolls an 11 that makes a total of 19, or 2 degrees of failure. That is defined as, "the target is dazed until the end of their next turn and has a -1 circumstance penalty to further checks against damage." So yes, Batman easily survives falling naked from orbit using his incredible acrobatic skill and ability to roll with damage.
2nd -- Supes goes off-planet for a bit, finds a convenient meteorite, proceeds to fling it at the Batcave, with Batman inside (which Superman can indeed check from space). There, dead bat.Now can we please drop this tangent? Please?
Superman doesn't kill people. (Except that one time.)
Poor fighter... granted, he works as a very good ancor.. doesn't even notice.
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2nd -- Supes goes off-planet for a bit, finds a convenient meteorite, proceeds to fling it at the Batcave, with Batman inside (which Superman can indeed check from space). There, dead bat.Now can we please drop this tangent? Please?
Superman doesn't kill people. (Except that one time.)
And honestly boyscout heros are just plain dumb. Seriously. Murder is the solution. Just off the Joker already. The net number of lives saved would be astronomical. Seriously, this whole "If you kill them, you become them is nonsense." To quote my Malconvoker: "You say we’re not so different and that’s probably true, but apples and oranges are pretty similar and I hear you shouldn’t compare the two." Killing a person to prevent them from going on (yet another) massacre, is not at all the same as killing a person because you are on (yet another) massacre.
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Just a reality check here for a second.
Batman and Superman are both imaginary people who do imaginary things in an imaginary world. Does anybody else think it's pretty silly to try and use the real world to define what either of them can or can't do?
verisimilitude
Good stories are internally consistent.
I would hope... *hope* that people would have a problem with the idea that an ordinary human could survive a fall from the stratosphere as unbelievable.I certainly don't believe an ordinary person could to that. So Batman pretty obviously isn't ordinary. That's not surprising, though; he lives in a fantasy world where people can have extraordinary abilities that are impossible in reality.
In his fantasy world though, he is supposed to be the pinnacle of what an ordinary human is. Your going to have to really stretch some definitions to make that work.
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Repeat after me: Author Fiat. And willing suspension of disbelief. Mechanics make willing suspension of disbelief not work. If you can't do something, you can't do something. No matter how cool it might be in a book.
Unless, of course, you're using the Fate System, where fiat is built into the mechanics.
If you're playing Batman in a game of Fate, you can literally declare that your contingency plans anticipate and counteract all of Superman's high-speed, long-range attacks by spending a Fate point and invoking, "I'm Batman."
*sigh* Okay. Okay. I'm just gonna add two things, then can we get over the comic book contests, please?
1st -- If Batman, without his gear, was dropped from orbit, would he die from the impact? If yes, he's not level 20.
2nd -- Supes goes off-planet for a bit, finds a convenient meteorite, proceeds to fling it at the Batcave, with Batman inside (which Superman can indeed check from space). There, dead bat.
Now can we please drop this tangent? Please?
You obviously haven't read any comics.
1st-Batman dropped from orbit.... never hits the ground, because of his crazy preparedness his AI Batplaned, or flown by his ever ready Butler rescues him, whether it's in the air, or in space, or underwater. Because he's Batman, he's the guy takes down powerhouses because he's 10 steps beyond where everyone thinks he is . If you want someone that's equivalent to Batman, you won't find him in D20, you find him in Amber Diceless, because Batman is Benedict.... with two arms.
2nd Crazy Insane Superman hurls a meteor at the Batcave and he reduces it to slag. Two weeks later laughing at his triumphs with the world at his feat, he's brought low by Bruce Wayne, who anticipated the strike and let the mad Kryptonian think he succeeded until he brings him down with his plan of crazy contingencies. or a planet full of OMACs.
Because he's Batman. And those are the kind of stories that make Batman.
Except the only things Superman is weak to is Kryptonite and Magic...
Oh and Batman is not completely omnipotent.. his plans has failed before... a lot...
and agian, I am just going to bring up Injustice... Batman definetely DID NOT stop sups on his mad rampage... Hell the only being that could match supes is The hulk... and he is in a different universe...
So here is something odd. Via mass combat rules a lvl 20 fighter with full gear could reliably slay 100 Hezrou. So could a rogue...
I know Batman is pretty cool, but I don't think he could slay an army of demons and neither could superman with his magic weakness. Perhaps PF doesn't run on the same logic as the DC universe?
So here is something odd. Via mass combat rules a lvl 20 fighter with full gear could reliably slay 100 Hezrou. So could a rogue...
Mass combat rules aren't (and don't try to be) particularly accurate for this sort of tactically complicated battle, as the introduction to the mass combat rules states.
The Mass combat rules are there own system. You are intentionally not to use a normal Pathfinder character and pit him against an army with mass combat stats.
If you wanted that to do something like that, you would either need to create a bunch of troop type stat blocks, and have your character fight through those, or figure the mass combat stat block for a single character.
Also, there have been people who have survived accidents when their parachutes don't open. Presumably a high level fighter just is really good at ensuring those incidences.
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If you don't accept the premise that the pinnacle of purely human achievement in a fantasy world is limited to the pinnacle of purely human achievement in the real world, the conceptual problems with both high level martial characters in PF and with Batman go away.
This.
Also, a RL peak athlete human whose hundreds of foot freefall was arrested by a relatively inelastic grappling line would almost certainly be maimed or killed by the line itself (such as Batman is seen doing every other scene in JLU). Such would seem to indicate that while Batman represents the pinnacle of non-superpowered comic universe (IE, fantasy) humanity, he functions well above peak RL human abilities not as a matter of rare author fiat, but as a matter of course.
Since Pathfinder high level humans can also (in at least some respects, though not as many as I would like) function well above peak human RL abilities without magic or supernatural powers, I think that's an indication he is higher level in Pathfinder terms.
Um.. that would hurt MARTIALS a lot... good luck iwht that Haste+Good Hope.... or haste and fly....True but it would hurt casters more. No more stacking defences like mirror image/overland flight/elemental body for the arcane types. No more divine favour/blessing of fervour/righteous might for the cleric making Bab and raw physical stats more important. It would give the rogue the shaft but there is nothing new with that.So how would a melee martial deal with flying things...
In our game he either pulls out his bow or my Sorc casts Fly on him. No problem.
*sigh* Okay. Okay. I'm just gonna add two things, then can we get over the comic book contests, please?
1st -- If Batman, without his gear, was dropped from orbit, would he die from the impact? If yes, he's not level 20.
2nd -- Supes goes off-planet for a bit, finds a convenient meteorite, proceeds to fling it at the Batcave, with Batman inside (which Superman can indeed check from space). There, dead bat.
Now can we please drop this tangent? Please?
What evidence do you have to prove that level 20 characters do not die when dropped from orbit? (aka when they hit the ground at terminal velocity)
Falling damage ranges from 20-120 dmg at that range, and being dropped from orbit (rather than just 200+ feet) possibly inflicts fire damage as well from reentry.
Hit points of 20th level human characters (without ability boosting gear or magic) ranges from 20-348.
Ergo, many 20th level characters might in fact, die from terminal velocity hits. In the real world, we have examples of people (rarely) surviving those falls as well.
The entire nonsense of the Alexandrian article is based around the fallacious claim that high level characters are always capable of surviving massive amounts of damage. A 20th level Albert Einstein could very well possess 20 hit points.
All this before we even get to the fact that there is no one on our planet, even a combination of peaks, for agility, strength, fighting prowess, etc, that can match what Batman has been displayed doing on a regular and constant basis. It has no more connection to our 'real world' than Lucy and her 'unlock 100% of the brain's potential' power has to our real world.
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Relevant to my earlier posts about my Five Moons RPG, the kickstarter for the game is now live!
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As for the whole Caster Supremacy Argument, there are ways a fantasy RPG can rein in the spellcasters - the problem is that D&D 3.X used NONE of them except finite spell slots. D&D-style magic is, for the most part, fast, convenient, cheap, and safe. Heck, at least in AD&D, some spells could backfire badly. (Haste aged you, Polymorph could kill you, Teleport had a small risk of teleporting into solid rock...) So we're stuck with wizards with no limitations, and non-casters with no useful abilities because REEEEEAAAALISM.
So, if we actually want the
snivelling peasantsmartial classes to stay relevant after level whatever, we have two unpalatable options:1: Beat spellcasters with the nerfbat until they scream for mercy, then beat them some more.
2: Give up in the futile and wrongheaded pursuit of 'realism', and give martial classes the sort of abilities seen in Exalted, some of the whackier myths, or at least a high-budget kung-fu movie.
Realism applies to magic too. You can call it "nerfing", but it's really just getting rid of the insane lack of verisimilitude that 3.x magic introduced. Magic is the stuff of great power, and the idea that it can be wielded without care or possible consequence is, to me, the very height of unrealism. So in a sense, we can also solve the problem by adding more realism, rather than less, if only we can get past the idea that it's equivalent to "nerfing" the superpowers 3.x players have come to feel entitled to.
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Have we really started discussing whether one magic system or another is "realistic"?
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Have we really started discussing whether one magic system or another is "realistic"?
Consistent with other system/class expectations would be a better term.
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Removing aging for Wish - there was no need to do that besides the 3.x dev team saying that they like magic over everything else and didn't want it to have consequences.
Going back to 2nd ed (or earlier) limitations on magic would go a long way back to making this game functional.
Though, I think it's a waste of time trying to fix this game.
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Zard, if you want my AD&D3 notes I'd be more than willing to email you them. What I was working on was closer to a 2nd ed AD&D than wotc take on 3rd ed.
I just gave up on PF and started running 2nd ed again. I have also have conversion notes for making 3rd ed/PF compatible with 2nd ed.
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Comics and pathfinder don't mix.
Batman's ability to work just fine with the Justice League without being overshadowed has nothing to do with his physical capabilities. It's because he's a brilliant, cunning, downright devious person. A master tactician.
In pathfinder terms, he's the player with absolute system mastery. Or the guy at the table who is always coming up with the creative solution that make the DM throw out pages of notes. You know the guy I'm talking about. That's what makes him Batman.
And that can't be replicated in Pathfinder. You can't make system mastery or creativity into class abilities or feats or attributes. It's just something the player either has or he hasn't.
But while we're talking about comics I just wanna set this straight. I don't think Batman has ever beaten Superman in the main continuity. Even in Miller's TDKR comic that everyone thinks is the whole history of their fights Batman lost that one too. He used up all his tricks to get his hand on superman's throat, (Superman by the way held back the entire fight so as to not kill him), and then faked his death while superman was ready and able to go round 2.
As far as I know, in the main continuity (no elseworlds) their record is Batman:0 Superman:2
Ok back to pathfinder. Martial vs Magic will never be solved because of exactly what Zalman said.
the superpowers 3.x players have come to feel entitled to.
He hits the nail on the head here. Paizo inherited the martial/magic problem when they made pathfinder backwards compatible with 3.5. This was smart at the time to snap up the player base left behind by 4e but now they're stuck. 3.X has many die hard fans that like their magic toys, a lot even believe that magic should be just straight up better then a normal guy. We've seen the posts in the martial/magic debate threads where people say that they like the class imbalance.
And Paizo can't fix it because they can't afford to split their customer base. They need these people to buy product.
There have been many threads pop up to talk about Pathfinder 2.0 or Pathfinder Next and in each thread a LOT of people say "No, I like the current system" or "No, the system works with my 3.5 collection". These guys have spent hundreds on bookcases full of 3.5 material that they will not let go of. If Paizo fixes the martial magic problem they will lose the "must work with my huge 3.5 collection" fans and the "Magic FTW!" fans and I don't think they can afford that. They're not a big company.
TLDR: Paizo inherited the 3.5 customer base and can't change without losing a lot of it which they are unwilling (or can't?) do.
Comics and pathfinder don't mix.
Batman's ability to work just fine with the Justice League without being overshadowed has nothing to do with his physical capabilities. It's because he's a brilliant, cunning, downright devious person. A master tactician.
In pathfinder terms, he's the player with absolute system mastery. Or the guy at the table who is always coming up with the creative solution that make the DM throw out pages of notes. You know the guy I'm talking about. That's what makes him Batman.
And that can't be replicated in Pathfinder. You can't make system mastery or creativity into class abilities or feats or attributes. It's just something the player either has or he hasn't.
He sounds like a guy with plenty of hero points.
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Actually the problem is that people can't accept nonmagical people doing extraordinary things. They limit bar is set much lower in people's minds.
See how much people "love" Tome of Battle. -_-
My objections to Tome of Battle revolve around my dislike of "Encounter Powers" and "X/Arbitrary Time Period" for anything I can't easily explain with "Yep, that's just how magic works in this setting".
I can't make much sense (in-character) as to why a barbarian/swashbuckler can no longer rage, but isn't too tired to keep using Grit points. I would be much happier if everything was moved to a single pool of "stuff you have limited access to" because then it could at least be "when you're too tired/you've used up your mana/ki/chakra"; or even better, keep making some kind of Save vs Fatigue rolls when you do stuff, and the DCs go up if you haven't had a breather/have done too many things without rest. Failed roll means you start taking gradually increasing fatigue penalties.
Obviously that isn't going to happen. But my point is that ToB took the part of the game I had the most problems with, and made that the mechanical premise of an entire book. That, for me, is the bulk of why I did not like ToB. It's also one of the major reasons I did not enjoy playing 4e (not the only reason, but definitely top 3).
Did it make the Fighters able to keep up with the Mages better, mechanically? Yes.
Did it go far enough that my suspension of disbelief wouldn't suspend far enough for me to enjoy it? Also Yes.
One of the only things I really like about the 5th edition of D&D is how certain abilities recharge (or regain a daily use) when initiative is rolled. In my mind, that takes what is essentially an encounter-based mechanic and gives it an elegant little twist; no arguing about what does and doesn't constitute an encounter (or about how long an encounter lasts), just...rolling initiative (which, from what I've gathered, can only be called for by the GM). Moreover, it could be thought of in-game as the character getting an adrenaline rush from the prospect of battle. I could see an initiative-based mechanic (or a series of class features across the different martial classes) being implemented as such in PF. Whether or not designers would choose to implement such a thing is another matter entirely.
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Actually the problem is that people can't accept nonmagical people doing extraordinary things. They limit bar is set much lower in people's minds.
See how much people "love" Tome of Battle. -_-
My objections to Tome of Battle revolve around my dislike of "Encounter Powers" and "X/Arbitrary Time Period" for anything I can't easily explain with "Yep, that's just how magic works in this setting".
I can't make much sense (in-character) as to why a barbarian/swashbuckler can no longer rage, but isn't too tired to keep using Grit points. I would be much happier if everything was moved to a single pool of "stuff you have limited access to" because then it could at least be "when you're too tired/you've used up your mana/ki/chakra"; or even better, keep making some kind of Save vs Fatigue rolls when you do stuff, and the DCs go up if you haven't had a breather/have done too many things without rest. Failed roll means you start taking gradually increasing fatigue penalties.
Obviously that isn't going to happen. But my point is that ToB took the part of the game I had the most problems with, and made that the mechanical premise of an entire book. That, for me, is the bulk of why I did not like ToB. It's also one of the major reasons I did not enjoy playing 4e (not the only reason, but definitely top 3).
Did it make the Fighters able to keep up with the Mages better, mechanically? Yes.
Did it go far enough that my suspension of disbelief wouldn't suspend far enough for me to enjoy it? Also Yes.
There's nothing in Tome of Battle that is actually limited to an encounter though. Each of the classes has a "recharge" mechanic, so they can do the same maneuver multiple times in the course of one encounter. They just can't spam one move over and over (outside of idiot crusaders). Which actually increases versimilitude, since outside of Mortal Kombat, when was the last martial arts media where a guy did low kick 18 times in a row?
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3 pages and still talking about supers.....might I recommend a snack?
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3 pages and still talking about supers.....might I recommend a snack?
Eat a Snickers
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(ignoring batman/superman arguments cause yeah relevant) Caster martial disparity is sorta built into the system, and part of that is that with each subsequent iteration of the game magic has become more prevalent/easily accessible while martial power has gotten split up so that you have to choose a path to be good at it (in AD&D this was also the case), when really what should be happening is that about level 6 you should be a master of one style and branching into a separate style So that at high level you had multiple options in combat instead of either melee full attack or ranged full attack. Instead at level 6 we have maybe half the feats we need to really master a style of combat and while good at it and getting better, the wizard is starting to fly and port in baddies.
I think that the 3.5 rules create a great skeleton around which to build a game, and I do love the pathfinder rules/setting, but if I had more gumption I'd take a crack at overhauling the game from the ground floor, keeping BAB, Saves, and skills as is, but changing the way feats/magic/magic items work.
But, as a caveat, I also have never seen a campaign that started at level one ever make it past level 12 in 10+ years of gaming, mostly because of the amount of time it takes to level as the game progresses most groups just can't stay together with conflicting schedules/moving going on. So I haven't felt the disparities of high level play as often, only when we created high level characters for a one off or module.
One of the big problems with casters is that 3.X casters have no equivalent.
For instance, super martials have equivalents in other games and fiction. Heck, other folklore and fiction have stories of heroes beyond the capabilities of high level martials.
3.X casters though are the exact opposite. No where outside of the D&D world do you see casters who can do the absolutely bonks crap that a wizard can pull off. The ability to create whole new dimensions? The ability to striaght CHANGE the universe as you see fit (Wish)? The power to create clones of Cthulhu (Simulacrum)? Most high level casters would put dieties to shame...
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No where outside of the D&D world do you see casters who can do the absolutely bonks crap that a wizard can pull off.
<Glances at his autographed copy of The Chronicles of Amber series, shakes head sadly>
DPR is not the only measure of character ability. A halfway-smart caster can completely short-circuit a LOT of plots in a way that no mundane character ever could.Murder plot? "Speak with dead" (And possibly Raise Dead, if anyone cares enough.)
Someone's poisoned, and we need the anti-"Neutralize Poison" oh, never mind.
You must cross the Desert of Woe and reach the Forbidden Temple of - "Teleport" DAMMIT, STOP IGNORING ALL MY ADVENTURES!
DPR may not be the only measure of ability, but it is generally when it comes to "power".
I can't remember ever seeing someone get upset because of the gamebreaking power of Speak With Dead, Neutralize Poison, Create Food/Water etc. Teleport is a big deal, but it is also a 5th level spell, has capacity limitations, and destination limitations.
Compare that to the....
Ranger wins initiative, declares quarry, favored enemy, clustered shot and proceeds to pump a demon full of arrows at d8+15-20 per shot which largely ignore DR and averages a crit a round.
Odds of a Ranger beating a caster's initiative: Low.
Odds of them being taken out by a Swift Action Save or Die at 10+: High.Odds of them being taken out by a standard action Save or Die at 10-: High.
Huh? Neither of those even look like full round actions... weird. It's like casters can subdue opponents with less action use then martials. Odd that.
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Ah yes, because those Paladins and Archers really seem to be struggling. I have seen more dragons and demons get one rounded by archers than I have by casters.... true story.People have survived falls from miles in the air in real life.
Just throwing that out there.As for the whole Caster Supremacy Argument, there are ways a fantasy RPG can rein in the spellcasters - the problem is that D&D 3.X used NONE of them except finite spell slots. D&D-style magic is, for the most part, fast, convenient, cheap, and safe. Heck, at least in AD&D, some spells could backfire badly. (Haste aged you, Polymorph could kill you, Teleport had a small risk of teleporting into solid rock...) So we're stuck with wizards with no limitations, and non-casters with no useful abilities because REEEEEAAAALISM.
So, if we actually want the
snivelling peasantsmartial classes to stay relevant after level whatever, we have two unpalatable options:1: Beat spellcasters with the nerfbat until they scream for mercy, then beat them some more.
2: Give up in the futile and wrongheaded pursuit of 'realism', and give martial classes the sort of abilities seen in Exalted, some of the whackier myths, or at least a high-budget kung-fu movie.DPR is not the only measure of character ability. A halfway-smart caster can completely short-circuit a LOT of plots in a way that no mundane character ever could.
Murder plot? "Speak with dead" (And possibly Raise Dead, if anyone cares enough.)
Someone's poisoned, and we need the anti-"Neutralize Poison" oh, never mind.
You must cross the Desert of Woe and reach the Forbidden Temple of - "Teleport" DAMMIT, STOP IGNORING ALL MY ADVENTURES!
While I agree with the general thrust of your argument, it's worth pointing out a few details here.
A) Murder plot: Speak with Dead is fantastically easy to get around, just smash the head to bits. Should take all of six seconds, max. Raise Dead is an option, but only at level 9 at the earliest, plus it costs 5,000 gp.
B) Poisoned: there's a caster level check involved with Neutralize Poison. If it's a very high DC, then the chances are about as good that the caster will fail as the average PC would fail additional saves anyways.
C) Travel: Greater Teleport is safe, it's level 5 cousin is not always so. The shenanigans that can happen with a bad d100 roll are not to be ignored when considering this as a travel method.
Magic does not always solve the problem without risk, without cost, and without conditions.
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DPR may not be the only measure of ability, but it is generally when it comes to "power".
DPR is not the only measure of character ability. A halfway-smart caster can completely short-circuit a LOT of plots in a way that no mundane character ever could.Murder plot? "Speak with dead" (And possibly Raise Dead, if anyone cares enough.)
Someone's poisoned, and we need the anti-"Neutralize Poison" oh, never mind.
You must cross the Desert of Woe and reach the Forbidden Temple of - "Teleport" DAMMIT, STOP IGNORING ALL MY ADVENTURES!
Actually, DPR is explicitly not the basis of the tier system.
I can't remember ever seeing someone get upset because of the gamebreaking power of Speak With Dead, Neutralize Poison, Create Food/Water etc. Teleport is a big deal, but it is also a 5th level spell, has capacity limitations, and destination limitations.
Perhaps you've not been reading the boards very long. People complain about these all the time, because they break adventures. It's almost impossible to have a desert survival Lawrence of Arabia themed adventure precisely because your cleric can create enough water to fill a swimming pool and enough food to send an army into hypoglycemia.
It's almost impossible to run a break-the-siege adventure when the cleric can bind a planar ally to bring anything and everything in from the Elemental Plane of Supplies.
It's almost impossible to run a locked room murder mystery when the cleric can simply cast speak with dead and ask the murder victim how he was killed and by whom. ("So, Mr. Ackroyd, who killed you?" "Well, I'd tell you, but that would keep people from buying Agatha Christie's otherwise excellent The Murder of Roger Ackroyd available at any large chain bookstore!")
It's almost impossible to run a find-the-MacGuffin adventure when the cleric simply casts is way out of it. ("I need you to find my favorite tea cozy." "<locate object> It's over there. I'll get it for you <dimension door>")
An archer ranger can easily wreck a badly-planned encounter. But a cleric (or any other tier 1 caster) can easily wreck even a well-planned campaign simply by choosing to do the wrong thing.
Perhaps you've not been reading the boards very long. People complain about these all the time, because they break adventures. It's almost impossible to have a desert survival Lawrence of Arabia themed adventure precisely because your cleric can create enough water to fill a swimming pool and enough food to send an army into hypoglycemia.
That's a slightly ridiculous amount of hyperbole right there. Don't get me wrong, Create Food and Water is nice, but that must be one fantastically small army if Mr. Cleric can give them all type II diabetes without breaking a sweat.
It's almost impossible to run a break-the-siege adventure when the cleric can bind a planar ally to bring anything and everything in from the Elemental Plane of Supplies.
Can you explain this one? Because I don't follow your logic as to how this is a guaranteed way to force an entrenched army to pack up and leave.
It's almost impossible to run a locked room murder mystery when the cleric can simply cast speak with dead and ask the murder victim how he was killed and by whom. ("So, Mr. Ackroyd, who killed you?" "Well, I'd tell you, but that would keep people from buying Agatha Christie's otherwise excellent The Murder of Roger Ackroyd available at any large chain bookstore!")
Why is the assumption here that the spell will automatically work? Or that the victim will cooperate? Or that they even know who killed them? Seems like there's a fair bit of presumption going on.
It's almost impossible to run a find-the-MacGuffin adventure when the cleric simply casts is way out of it. ("I need you to find my favorite tea cozy." "<locate object> It's over there. I'll get it for you <dimension door>")
Is that the best idea? You have no clue what else might be in that area, like traps/hazards, a pissed-off ghost, etc. Plus, if someone wants to hide an object, why the heck isn't Nondetection or something similar in use? What competent adventure writer fails to take such options into account in a high-magic game system / campaign setting?
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Perhaps you've not been reading the boards very long. People complain about these all the time, because they break adventures. It's almost impossible to have a desert survival Lawrence of Arabia themed adventure precisely because your cleric can create enough water to fill a swimming pool and enough food to send an army into hypoglycemia.That's a slightly ridiculous amount of hyperbole right there. Don't get me wrong, Create Food and Water is nice, but that must be one fantastically small army if Mr. Cleric can give them all type II diabetes without breaking a sweat.
Er, that's not what hypoglycemia is, to begin with.
It's almost impossible to run a break-the-siege adventure when the cleric can bind a planar ally to bring anything and everything in from the Elemental Plane of Supplies.Can you explain this one? Because I don't follow your logic as to how this is a guaranteed way to force an entrenched army to pack up and leave.
Sieges work because the besieged can't get supplies (largely food and medicine) and so takes casualties from hunger and disease to the point where they're willing to surrender. If you could take a castle by force main, you have done that already. Since you can't take the castle by force, and you can't starve them out, you'll simply taking casualties yourself with no benefit.
It's almost impossible to run a locked room murder mystery when the cleric can simply cast speak with dead and ask the murder victim how he was killed and by whom. ("So, Mr. Ackroyd, who killed you?" "Well, I'd tell you, but that would keep people from buying Agatha Christie's otherwise excellent The Murder of Roger Ackroyd available at any large chain bookstore!")Why is the assumption here that the spell will automatically work? Or that the victim will cooperate? Or that they even know who killed them? Seems like there's a fair bit of presumption going on.
Because it's trivial to repair a damaged skull (make whole will do it, as will the mending cantrip under most conditions), because most people don't like being murdered (and dislike their murderers) so will be happy to cooperate with the bringing to justice of their murderers, and because it's very difficult to kill someone in such a way as to leave no trace of your identity. I did cite Ackroyd for a reason. It's a standard literary trope, one that is almost impossible to bring into a well-played Pathfinder game.
So, yes, there are some assumptions there, but the GM is the one who has to really strain credibility to make the assumptions not hold.
It's almost impossible to run a find-the-MacGuffin adventure when the cleric simply casts is way out of it. ("I need you to find my favorite tea cozy." "<locate object> It's over there. I'll get it for you <dimension door>")Is that the best idea?
If not, augury will tell me.
Plus, if someone wants to hide an object, why the heck isn't Nondetection or something similar in use? What competent adventure writer fails to take such options into account in a high-magic game system / campaign setting?
Not all missing objects were deliberately hidden.
And you're inadvertantly proving my point. If you need to "take such options into account" when you're writing the adventure, it's because those options break adventures. There's nothing, by contrast, that a fighter can do that will render the entire planned adventure irrelevant.
Rangers and other tier 4 characters break encounters.
Clerics and other tier 1 characters break adventures.
You must cross the Desert of Woe and reach the Forbidden Temple of - "Teleport" DAMMIT, STOP IGNORING ALL MY ADVENTURES!
Oh gosh, that's not a issue at all|
1. They can't tepeport to a unknown place.
2. If they skip the desert,they skip two levels and 50k of loot.
3. If they skip the desert, they fail to find the macguffin needed to get into the temple.
So...
... I totally started this when the post was "2 minutes ago"
... then I went shopping...
... then I picked my son up from school...
... so I don't know how badly, exactly, I've been ninja'd.
BUT I'm going to put this here anyway.
*Ahem*
No where outside of the D&D world do you see casters who can do the absolutely bonks crap that a wizard can pull off.<Glances at his autographed copy of The Chronicles of Amber series, shakes head sadly>
Well, then, exceedingly few series, then. :)
DPR may not be the only measure of ability, but it is generally when it comes to "power".
... what? No, it's not. You quoted this post, so let's look at it again:
DPR is not the only measure of character ability. A halfway-smart caster can completely short-circuit a LOT of plots in a way that no mundane character ever could.
Murder plot? "Speak with dead" (And possibly Raise Dead, if anyone cares enough.)
Someone's poisoned, and we need the anti-"Neutralize Poison" oh, never mind.
You must cross the Desert of Woe and reach the Forbidden Temple of - "Teleport" DAMMIT, STOP IGNORING ALL MY ADVENTURES!
I can't remember ever seeing someone get upset because of the gamebreaking power of Speak With Dead, Neutralize Poison, Create Food/Water etc. Teleport is a big deal, but it is also a 5th level spell, has capacity limitations, and destination limitations.
You haven't been paying attention to the forums, then.
Speak with Dead: murder plot, lost item plot, ancient history-mystery plot, all eliminated, so long as there's a body.
Create Food/Water can eliminate hunger and thirst. It singlehandedly has the power to alter entire campaign settings, especially when associated with magic item creation (and even more so with magic trap creation).
Neutralize Poison makes what could be deadly into a minor problem.
The capacity limitations of teleport are often easily eliminated by bags of holding, handy haversacks, and the like.
Compare that to the....
Ranger wins initiative, declares quarry, favored enemy, clustered shot and proceeds to pump a demon full of arrows at d8+15-20 per shot which largely ignore DR and averages a crit a round.
That's nice. That's one demon down.
Let's compare a trick I call, "Let's win Wrath of the Righteous (the easy way)."
-------------------------------------
Take one (1) gem worth 30,000 gold. Eh, let's make it 35k, just to be on the safe side.
(There are a number of ways you could acquire this. Candle of Invocation, or some combination of effects related to Blood Money, Magic Jar, Planar Binding, Magic Circle, Planar Ally, True Creation, or Fabricate, depending on GM interpretation. Note: you do not need all of these. Any of group of "it works" out of the list will do.)
So! Let's make some magic!
We want continuous. It doesn't have to be, but it's a nice touch, really.
As the duration of "permanent" is (arguably) greater than "24 hours or greater", we can hypothetically divide the price by half. But, let's say that the GM (rightly) finds this suspiciously cheesy and decides to leave the price alone.
8th level spell, 17th level caster (though, in reality we want it higher. Good thing for us, we have limitless funds!), and 2k for the spell effect. Choosing an arbitrarily higher level... say, 30th... makes the final price:
8*30*2k = 480k
Infinite funds to the rescue! (see above for details)
It'll take 330k-worth of stuff to actually work... but, again, we have limitless funds via the above tricks.
If we really wanted to be evil good, we could add sympathy... so, sure, why not? Constant sympathy all up on this thing.
So, we add constant trap the soul, constant sympathy, and the material focus is the gem (having sacrificed 330k of other gems to function as the cost of crafting).
It'll take a while, but we can form our own rapid-time demiplane, and, you know, we could make replicas of ourselves to do that for us while we adventure.
So, we go as far as we have to the mundane way, and then, when it's ready, our little us' inform us, and we pick up the shiny rock.
Welcome to "walk through the rest of the game holding this rock".
Every once in a while, we'll (probably, I'm guessing) run into something that's not a demon.
That's when we summon free evil-thing-slayers (which we can).
The rest of the game is just literally walking around holding a rock.
(And some divination.)
At the end boss, or whatever, when it's time, we just break our magic rock and let loose all the hordes of demons against whoever the main bad guy is at the end.
AP: SOLVED!
---------------------------------
Of course, that's all just tongue-in-cheek.
It's not meant to be taken seriously, and, naturally, there are ways for the GM to shut it down.
But the fact that, within the rules, that potential exists, means that a GM has to actively alter how the game works to accommodate the power of the character.
Said character deals 0 DPR, but wins all of the encounters by the nature of his innate power... his innate power to call upon other creatures to do his bidding. That is ludicrously potent.
On the other hand the ranger - who is pretty awesome, and, bear in mind, I'm not denying that awesomeness - simply takes down the one enemy, and on top of that, uses limited resources to do it.
(Of course, in an AP like Wrath of the Righteous, I'd hope it'd be obvious that the ranger take Favored Enemy (outsiders [evil]), thus maintaining a high DPR, so long as he doesn't run out of arrows*...)
The other has the potential to, at very little cost (only the cost to start the project, and thereafter the chain of abilities takes care of any hypothetical cost that arises as a result), take down [i]all of the enemies within a given round - however quickly they can touch the thing, they're gone, regardless of how powerful they are. (That is, if they blow a will save. If they don't blow a will save, oh well, we'll just have to wait another round. Also, augmenting the will saves on this puppy would be good. Maybe make it sentient or mythic or something, since we're making it. :D)
That's... ludicrous.
You do not need to adjust for high DPR other than throwing a few more enemies into the mix (knowing that some will automatically be fodder).
(Incidentally, there are also a lot of ways to almost completely shut an archer down... many of which come from being a caster.)
Again, High DPR is great.
Rangers, Paladins, and Barbarians are pretty awesome.
There is a discrepancy between what they can accomplish and what mages can accomplish.
I don't generally have a problem with this - when you're with people who don't try to abuse the system, things work pretty well. (I also make it clear: anything you can do, I can do better. 'Cause, you know, GM.)
I love the magic system (well, okay, I love the spells, and what they're able to accomplish).
But there are plenty of people who do have problems with this for these kinds of very valid reasons.
* The GM could easily (and, from what I can tell, it's quite common to) hand-waive mundane arrows as "limitless", however that's actively working to grant a non-rules benefit to a character to increase their effectiveness.
Odds of a Ranger beating a caster's initiative: Low.
Odds of them being taken out by a Swift Action Save or Die at 10+: High.
Odds of them being taken out by a standard action Save or Die at 10-: High.Huh? Neither of those even look like full round actions... weird. It's like casters can subdue opponents with less action use then martials. Odd that.
Sure sure, I am sure you are about to compare the initiative of that Divination specialist, with improved init, the greensting scorpion, and walks around all day with moment of prescience, right? How about the average wizard with the dex of 14 against the ranger with the dex of 18 or 20?
Again, you are talking about level 11+ wizards who are just waiting for this encounter. Your arguments every time on these are so myopic. You clearly have a hard on for casters, that's fine, when you run a game just have everyone play fighters and be done with it.
You realize there are spells that raise your initiative right? Like... it's a thing. I don't really favor any class. I acknowledge casters are stronger then martials because well... they are. If martials were stronger then casters, I'd say that. And the average Wizard in that scenario is still getting a +4 initiative from their familiar in addition to bonuses from their spells.
Er, that's not what hypoglycemia is, to begin with.
Well, your statement didn't seem to make a lot of sense. A complaint about how it's impossible to do a desert survival adventure because of Create Food and Water is somewhat undermined when you then say the spell would contribute to low blood-sugar in the army. Typically, you think that having LESS food available to you would do this, since the inverse, an abundance of food in the short term, contributes to a spiking in glucose levels. In fact, after reading up on the possible causes of hypoglycemia, I'm even more confused as to how you intentionally decided to use that term in conjunction with this scenario. Ergo, I made an assumption about what you meant. Apologies, I won't do so again.
Sieges work because the besieged can't get supplies (largely food and medicine) and so takes casualties from hunger and disease to the point where they're willing to surrender. If you could take a castle by force main, you have done that already. Since you can't take the castle by force, and you can't starve them out, you'll simply taking casualties yourself with no benefit.
No, I mean how does a single casting of Planar Ally break a siege in that way? Obviously, a single outsider isn't going to break any but the most mild of sieges, but I don't see how they'll supply your allies with food and water either. Outside of using a LOT of bound genies for their 1/day use of Create Food / Water, all the major outsider with prepared divine spellcasting that can be reconfigured over a long haul to do this many times per day to shore up the defenders are stuck under the greater version of Planar Ally. By the time you're 15th/16th level, I don't think we should be worried about how casting a few spells will help turn the tides of a siege slightly in one side or the others favors.
Because it's trivial to repair a damaged skull (make whole will do it, as will the mending cantrip under most conditions), because most people don't like being murdered (and dislike their murderers) so will be happy to cooperate with the bringing to justice of their murderers, and because it's very difficult to kill someone in such a way as to leave no trace of your identity. I did cite Ackroyd for a reason. It's a standard literary trope, one that is almost impossible to bring into a well-played Pathfinder game.
So, yes, there are some assumptions there, but the GM is the one who has to really strain credibility to make the assumptions not hold.
It still seems like an unwise amount of assumption is at hand. For starters, what if it's just plain dark? Y'know, like happens approximately 50% of the time in roughly 100% of all places in existence. Plenty of people in fiction are killed without seeing their murderers because it's nighttime or something. That's assuming it was even a violent death and not poisoning or something, another classic means of doing the dastardly deed. Also, are you sure you'll be able to get all the bits of blood and bone and brain back in the skull after it's been smashed? Because mending / make whole won't work on it otherwise, it's written right into the spell. Heck, simply taking the head with your or dissolving a sufficient quantity of bone with a vial of acid seems like it'd do the trick.
If not, augury will tell me.
Well, it'll give you a decent chance of knowing if it's a good idea or a bad idea. Or maybe a good AND a bad idea. Or neither. Good luck interpreting all the relevant details out of that kind of vagueness.
Not all missing objects were deliberately hidden.
And you're inadvertantly proving my point. If you need to "take such options into account" when you're writing the adventure, it's because those options break adventures. There's nothing, by contrast, that a fighter can do that will render the entire planned adventure irrelevant.
Not always, but it does happen often enough. Theft is a thing, after all. Also, the scenarios you mention very often have ranges greater than 400 ft. + 40 ft. / level. In other words, outside the range of a single casting of Locate Object. So there's all kinds of reasons that this spell might not immediately solve the problem that have nothing to do with the writer saying, "How can I make sure this spell absolutely does not wreck everything" and everything to do with "How do I use this general idea to make an interesting and fun adventure"?
Nothing a fighter can do to render a entire adventure irrelevant? Ha. " while he's talking I fire an arrow at him. Hmm, natural 20, confirmed." BBEG is dead, one shot, one kill.
Adventure over.