If I did that or gave that impression, I apologize. I may state that a line of reasoning is irrelevant to a particular argument; that's a matter of reasoning, not a desire to censor. Like pointing out that the first die roll's result in a 3d6 is irrelevant to the results of the other two.stuffBy talking about the thread subject? Who among the two of us is telling the other what they can or cannot post about?you? you originally started saying peoples posts were irrelevant because they weren't addressing the OP, or at least that's what it felt like.
That's a little closer to something quantifiable but invites accusations of Schrodinger's Wizard and ignores the fact that access to magic items means that much of these things are simply more convenient to casters instead of being exclusive to them. It still doesn't explain why any of this is actually a problem nor why the OP (nor I) see this happening at actual tables.
stuffSo, essentially, casters are better because "they just are"? And when asked for specifics on your metric, you purposefully don't provide any so that it is literally impossible to dispute you?
If you can't back up your claim, why should I take it seriously, much less agree with it?
as shown before through out the thread and numerous others I thought I didn't have to.
teleport is the most efficient movement type you can do.
Fly can just replace several skills.
creating a pit can make most enemies just fall right in and then trap them.
basically just give me some situation that isn't specifically designed to beat a caster. try to keep it non-combat so it doesn't turn into a tactics fight.
edit: my number of typos suggests that it's time for me to sleep, so see you all tomorrow.
G'nite, and see you next thread. : )
Druids are pretty much universally better than most martials at combat while still getting 9th level spells, 2 good saves, 4 skill points per level and a pet that deals more damage than a Fighter till 7th or 8th level.
Summoners maintain a fantastic AC, Saves, HP and are a 9th level caster disguised as a 6th level one with a pet that is distinctly stronger than any martial or can put out ridiculous amounts of fodder that can be then buffed to the gills.
I'd rather have one of these than almost any martial.
Druids can be better at combat.
Fighters are still usually better at hitting things with a sword.
(This probably isn't getting across very well in this medium.)
In any case, what you'd rather have is strictly a matter of personal preference.
A Dawnflower Dervish hits things with a sword. I think the DPR is lower but the Bard archetype brings much better defenses and greater versatility to bear. I'd rather have one as my martial than a Fighter.
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I've read the Song of Roland, and I don't remember Roland being either a magician, or a supernatural being, or God. And yet...Being able to cut through a mountain isn't magical. It is however awesome. And I would like my martials to be awesome.I'd beg to differ on that. Cutting through a mountain is pretty darn magical, or supernatural, or godly. Awesome sure, but it is beyond what even a really good guy with a sword should be doing IMO.And yet, it's a story. It doesn't have game rules applied to it, and could in fact have any number of game mechanics applied to it. Just like other stories. People cannot agree on what level Batman is, or even how things written in the rules should be applied. I'm not sure basing giving martials new abilities based on that is a great idea, any more than basing them on what the Hulk can do.
Stories have interesting scenes and characters have wonderful abilities that do not directly translate to Pathfinder; heck, many of them don't translate well into games written exclusively for them (see Batman).
Every Pathfinder game is a story, one told by the players and GM. That goes triple for Paizo's biggest source of income, their adventures paths.
For Pete's sake, why is it that every time a comparison using Earth mythology or fiction involving a mega-awesome hero comes up and his deeds are laid out, people say that it can't be translated into Pathfinder, even considering mythic rules are out now? It seems a blatant double standard, that the possibility of doing awesome deeds is only ever shouted down for straining the imagination when done without magic, never with it. Why does not one ever ask, "Why SHOULD magic allow you to do that?" Why are there no catches, no pitfalls, no dangers, no uncertainties using energy every single day that warps the fabric of reality to hideous degrees? There's no problem with that, but a dude hitting a giant chunk of rock and dirt with his sword and making it split is somehow an abomination upon the sanctity of the game system? It's a freaking fantasy world, it's not supposed to be 100% realistic. Let my level fighter with 20 ranks in Acrobatics clear a two-story building using Acrobatics already, it's not going to impact the sorcerers ability to fly or the cleric's ability to shift into another plane.
Point of order: the hamfisted attempts at "balance at all costal were exactly what I hated most about 4th edition. And I'm not the only one. Damn thing felt like playing a computer game. ("MMO fallacy!")Which is not what I did. My question was, and still is, why is there such a thorough dislike of 4e when it tries to do what people seem to want Pathfinder to do? Your last few comments lead me to believe you would like some level of balance across all classes, is that not the case?THe reasons are probably not in whatever balance it have. Different people have different reasons.
FOr me it was because 4e butchered the forgotten realms, and that trigger a primal reaction in me that make me dislike the whole edition. Other hate dragonfolks and the fey stuffs, just for example.
That is a valid reason to dislike 4e.
However it was the MMO feeling that ahve the fault here, not hte balance attempt.
The two aren't independent. MMOs, particularly PVP ones, produce a staggering level of obsession with class balance. Before their rise, I saw far fewer debates on "which class is stronger", and the general heat level of those debates was much, much lower. Come to think of it, I know that in the 2E days there were diehards who would argue this stuff, but I can't recall actually being in a single one of those arguments. Granted, the Internet is another thing that kinda happened since then.... But back then, I never cared whether the fighter was stronger than the wizard--only whether _my_ fighter could beat the enemy wizard, and that was largely dependent on the specifics of the game.
In any case, balance for its own sake seems to be a much more popular topic now that an increasing majority of gamers have grown up in a world of competitive class-based computer games. Proving causation would be a freaking dissertation, so I can only hypothesize about the amount of influence one had on the other... but I'm content in my hypothesis until a few folks with more time on their hands get some of that sweet peer review action going on the subject.
The way it was used heavily alluded to it, and there was no talk about 4e before it either.
"4e was balanced, and balance is good, then why didn't people like 4e!"
was my reading, and that, at the very least is Argumentum Ad Populum anyway, and possibly some false equivalence in there somewhere.
@Simon Legrande: if you want the real answer and it really was an innocent question:
-Terrible marketing decisions and not enough respect/pandering to existing players alienated them and led to brutal edition wars, and the old already dug in.
-The firs monster book had screwy math.
-Ugly a$$ book, plus formatting-wise "made all classes look the same".
-Skill challenges were never really well implemented.
-"simple" classes were added late as a desperate attempt to recapture the 3.5 crowd (and QA dropped a bit by then as well)
But really, mostly the terrible marketing and format. If I were them, I'd have tried to make conversion kits for 3.5 Core classed characters that are roughly similar, just to ease people into it.
It's possible that the comparison simply hadn't been made yet. As for ad populum: It's a multiplayer game. Ad populum actually matters in that context. Games exist to be played, and unpopular games, however balanced and whatever their other redeeming features, die. If one posits the premise that an obsession with balance helped kill 4e, then the comparison is apt and not a fallacy at all. Then one merely needs to prove the premise and that the same logic would apply to Pathfinder. Pretty tall orders, but not fallacious.
Anecdotally, none of the stuff you mentioned affected my impression of 4e. I never saw the marketing for it, and I bowed out very early in. And I'm used to ugly RPG books. : ). But I'll take your word for it that they were important factors, as I can't speak much to the state of the player base after that. It just felt too "everyone is the same" to me.
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Off topic, but
** spoiler omitted **
-As they near one another, Achilles takes Hector fatally in the throat with the spear, exploiting a flaw in the latter's inferior armor.
A Dawnflower Dervish hits things with a sword. I think the DPR is lower but the Bard archetype brings much better defenses and greater versatility to bear. I'd rather have one as my martial than a Fighter.
Sometimes I would too. Sometimes I wouldn't. Possible factors may include whether I want to play a scimitar-wielding religious fanatic or a stereotypical Western arms-and-armor type.
I did really enjoy my DD 2/Paladin 1, though. At least until he got one-shot by that sonofa@{]#! in Harrowstone.
Now I'm sad again.
In any case, what you'd rather have is strictly a matter of personal preference.Perhaps, but itis a prefernece based on balance and power.
Personally, I thhink that before start adding a lot of stuff for matial classes the first thing to do is to fix mid to high level spellcasting.
- Remove all the crazyness (simulacrum, wish, planar binding, blood money shenanigangs).
- Add some limiatations (I like the dungeons and castele block teleport houserule from Kirth)
- Make restrictions be truly restrictions. You choose divination as opposed school? no divination spell for you, ever.
Fair enough. My personal preference doesn't give two wet farts about balance, and power is (as mentioned before) subjective.
I like wizards being able to do crazy things. That's what they're meant to represent--masters of the art who gave up the usual mundane pursuits in search of cosmic powers that mere warriors could not possibly imagine. It's magic! Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic--it's why folks in stories sell their souls or pluck out their eye for just a taste of that kind of power. It's why BBEGs tend to be mad sorcerers or wizards, why lichens are so popular, and why even high martial villains like Lord Soth end up defined more by their mystical abilities than their skill with a blade. It's why great fighter heroes tend to be praised and sung about--but might wizard heroes tend to be feared and whispered about. Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsman, or debase it by giving all of its benefits to those too weak or afraid to master it?
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So the truth comes out. Blahpers was a caster apologist the whole time. He knows they're crazy overpowered, on a completely different level from non-caster classes, and is totally fine with it.
End topic.
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Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic [...] Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsman
Yeah, better ask Proteus how his awesome magic made him so much stronger than that base warrior Menelaus.
I like wizards being able to do crazy things. That's what they're meant to represent--masters of the art who gave up the usual mundane pursuits in search of cosmic powers that mere warriors could not possibly imagine. It's magic! Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic--it's why folks in stories sell their souls or pluck out their eye for just a taste of that kind of power. It's why BBEGs tend to be mad sorcerers or wizards, why lichens are so popular, and why even high martial villains like Lord Soth end up defined more by their mystical abilities than their skill with a blade. It's why great fighter heroes tend to be praised and sung about--but might wizard heroes tend to be feared and whispered about. Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsman, or debase it by giving all of its benefits to those too weak or afraid to master it?
Except the wizard doesn't run such risks as losing his soul or sacrificing his organs or going blind / senile or anything like that. It's all benefit, no down-side. What you have in Pathfinder isn't the sort of archetypical 'deal with the devil' magic that comes with a price or requires massive investment, concentration, preparation, or a mix of these that most fiction shows us. Instead, it's a cosmic-powered set of readily-available arts meant to warp reality with little-to-no effort or drawbacks. In the same action it takes a fighter to swing his sword once and maybe, MAYBE make the big bad dragon take notice, the wizard can rip open the fabric of reality straight to Hell. Nobody's saying magic shouldn't be super-powerful. The problem comes when "Because magic" is used as an excuse to justify doing all this with no risk of backlash or other severe costs.
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I've read the Song of Roland, and I don't remember Roland being either a magician, or a supernatural being, or God. And yet...Being able to cut through a mountain isn't magical. It is however awesome. And I would like my martials to be awesome.I'd beg to differ on that. Cutting through a mountain is pretty darn magical, or supernatural, or godly. Awesome sure, but it is beyond what even a really good guy with a sword should be doing IMO.And yet, it's a story. It doesn't have game rules applied to it, and could in fact have any number of game mechanics applied to it. Just like other stories. People cannot agree on what level Batman is, or even how things written in the rules should be applied. I'm not sure basing giving martials new abilities based on that is a great idea, any more than basing them on what the Hulk can do.
Stories have interesting scenes and characters have wonderful abilities that do not directly translate to Pathfinder; heck, many of them don't translate well into games written exclusively for them (see Batman).
Every Pathfinder game is a story, one told by the players and GM. That goes triple for Paizo's biggest source of income, their adventures paths.
For Pete's sake, why is it that every time a comparison using Earth mythology or fiction involving a mega-awesome hero comes up and his deeds are laid out, people say that it can't be translated into Pathfinder, even considering mythic rules are out now? It seems a blatant double standard, that the possibility of doing awesome deeds is only ever shouted down for straining the imagination when done without magic, never with it. Why does not one ever ask, "Why SHOULD magic allow you to do that?" Why are there no catches, no pitfalls, no dangers, no uncertainties using energy every single day that...
There's no mechanical reason--it's just the kind of roles that D&D and it's closer brethren sought to represent. There are third-party settings for these games that represent different visions of these roles. There are other games that do things differently. But it's a historical fact that D&D's roles have always been "guy with no magic hits things hard, guy with magic reshape drops ****ing meteors on your head and creates universes". Complaining about it now is kind of silly--it's D&D, you knew what you were getting into! If you want mountain-choppers and BANKAI!-ing rat-flails, find some third-party rules that accommodate such a campaign or make some up! There are plenty of excellent resources for that. But the core tropes are what led to Pathfinder in the first place, so people drawn to D&D because they like those tropes expect them to be there in some fashion.
As for why you can't represent absolutely everything in Pathfinder: Because Pathfinder wasn't designed to work that way. There's a whole genre of RPGs trying to tackle the "one system for every occasion" problem, and that approach has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Pathfinder didn't go that route, so it is what it is.
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I think you're wildly overestimating what a 2 mile radius is. When I dropped that on Mount Rushmore, it only barely reached the nearest settlement. It's the range a human in full plate covers in an hour, walking. Also, due to the way magic is written, it only hits that 2 mile radius, even if you conjure a tornado. "a spell's range is the maximum distance from you that the spell's effect can occur", from the Range entry of magic. Unless you're dropping it right outside a city you don't want to wreck only the animals get screwed.
I'm failing to see how "with a single spell I can destroy an entire cave network/invading army/village" is balanced in any way by "but we'll have to check to make sure we don't hit anyone we don't want to or else we become the bad guys". Since it takes 10 minutes to cast and manifest and choosing "calm local...
So, now you're not just casting and walking away as the orginal poster of this scenario posted.
Now you're sending out the rest of the party to clear a two mile radius (12.56 square miles) so you can cast a spell to take care of the big bad guy.
Hexes in Kingmaker are 12 miles across, making them around 150 square miles. You'd need over a dozen 2-mile-radius circles to cover one hex.
thanks Jason. my bad. it would still take time though and my other points are still valid.
<blushes>
I like wizards being able to do crazy things. That's what they're meant to represent--masters of the art who gave up the usual mundane pursuits in search of cosmic powers that mere warriors could not possibly imagine. It's magic! Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic--it's why folks in stories sell their souls or pluck out their eye for just a taste of that kind of power. It's why BBEGs tend to be mad sorcerers or wizards, why lichens are so popular, and why even high martial villains like Lord Soth end up defined more by their mystical abilities than their skill with a blade. It's why great fighter heroes tend to be praised and sung about--but might wizard heroes tend to be feared and whispered about. Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsman, or debase it by giving all of its benefits to those too weak or afraid to master it?Except the wizard doesn't run such risks as losing his soul or sacrificing his organs or going blind / senile or anything like that. It's all benefit, no down-side. What you have in Pathfinder isn't the sort of archetypical 'deal with the devil' magic that comes with a price or requires massive investment, concentration, preparation, or a mix of these that most fiction shows us. Instead, it's a cosmic-powered set of readily-available arts meant to warp reality with little-to-no effort or drawbacks. In the same action it takes a fighter to swing his sword once and maybe, MAYBE make the big bad dragon take notice, the wizard can rip open the fabric of reality straight to Hell. Nobody's saying magic shouldn't be super-powerful. The problem comes when "Because magic" is used as an excuse to justify doing all this with no risk of backlash or other severe costs.
Not all wizard tropes have horrific risks associated with spellcasting. On top of that, playing a wizard who risks being drawn into Hell every time they cast magic missile tends to make wizards unpalatable as a character class for campaign-length games. I don't know if Gygax thought of that when 1E came out, but that's the reasoning I would use if I were designing it. So the archetype bends to accommodate fun. There are still aspects of it--calling outsiders and contact other plane come to mind. The risks are very watered down, but they weren't always. Most of the really risky stuff got removed over the last decade or so because designers felt they were unfun to players. (Remember when haste cut years off your life whenever you cast it? Man, THAT was fun!)
Regardless, the tropes are what they are, and they've evolved slowly into the unique brew that makes up Pathfinder's core classes. There's plenty of room for more tropes--heck, Paizo just put out a book full of 'em. But to expect the entire core to change because it doesn't fit your idea of what a fighter is is pretty silly, especially since such a change would alienate a huge portion of the player base.
So the truth comes out. Blahpers was a caster apologist the whole time. He knows they're crazy overpowered, on a completely different level from non-caster classes, and is totally fine with it.
End topic.
Please quote anywhere where I even implied that casters could not do lots of things that fighter could not. That's kind of the entire point of magic. If that's the big reveal to you, then I don't think you've been paying attention.
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I looked up the set of 1st edition spells and I don't see anything on there about creating universes (which, let's be honest, a demiplane is not). In fact, the height of an arcane users power, Wish, left him bedridden if he did anything with it besides healing his party members or ushering them out of danger. Clearly the power level has been amped up since the game first came into being. So no, I don't think that's a 'historical fact'.
It's interesting you say that you can't represent everything in Pathfinder when the developers have been steadily pushing forward year after year, doing just that. We have rules for how robots, lasers, and force fields work now. Just a year before that, performance combat, duels, firearms, vehicle combat, and freaking airships had rules released for them. They've had APs where whole new systems for how to manage travel, upkeep, and combat with caravans have been rolled out. Combat between whole armies on the battlefield had rules released for it just a couple years before that. Valeros and Co. can now fight Great Old Ones from the Lovecraft mythos, beings so powerful that nearby reality cries when they wake up! But please, tell me more about how Pathfinder isn't designed to represent new things. I'd like to hear it.
Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic [...] Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsmanYeah, better ask Proteus how his awesome magic made him so much stronger than that base warrior Menelaus.
Yes, you found a counterexample from a completely different mythology whose culture was obsessed with musclebound men solving all of their problems through wanton pummeling. Well done.
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Yes, you found a counterexample from a completely different mythology whose culture was obsessed with musclebound men solving all of their problems through wanton pummeling. Well done.Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic [...] Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsmanYeah, better ask Proteus how his awesome magic made him so much stronger than that base warrior Menelaus.
If you think Greek mythology is completely different from that inspiring Pathfinder, I invite you to page through any Bestiary.
If you think, alternately, that it is completely different from that surrounding Roland (it is not clear which you mean), I invite you to actually read some of that. If you go into the Orlando works, you can even find out who originally owned that sword with which Roland did his mountain-cleaving.
(hint: Hector)
The two aren't independent. MMOs, particularly PVP ones, produce a staggering level of obsession with class balance. Before their rise, I saw far fewer debates on "which class is stronger", and the general heat level of those debates was much, much lower. Come to think of it, I know that in the 2E days there were diehards who would argue this stuff, but I can't recall actually being in a single one of those arguments. Granted, the Internet is another thing that kinda happened since then.... But back then, I never cared whether the fighter was stronger than the wizard--only whether _my_ fighter could beat the enemy wizard, and that was largely dependent on the specifics of the game.
In any case, balance for its own sake seems to be a much more popular topic now that an increasing majority of gamers have grown up in a world of competitive class-based computer games. Proving causation would be a freaking dissertation, so I can only hypothesize about the amount of influence one had on the other... but I'm content in my hypothesis until a few folks with more time on their hands get some of that sweet peer review action going on the subject.
I do remember a lot of "my thief is usseless in combat"
But to answer you points, do note that in 2e fighters do not have problems with skills. it is not like the bard will outshine him in social sitautions and etc. rembemer also that fighter have a mini army (a fact that I never liked) as a balancing factor.
The fighter could move and attack 5 times, you could disrupt the wizard spellcasting way easier, and several other stuffs.
The game (2e) was, of course, umbalanced, but there were mitigating factors.
I remember not expecting thieves to be good at combat, same as now. The thief skill system was crap, of course--at low levels you couldn't do anything at all because if the pathetically low success rates. But I had zero illusions that the thief was going to be some kind of badass glass cannon--I stayed the heck away from fights and let the meatheads deal with any bad guys.
As for the rest: it was a different system. They changed it when 3.0 came out, for better or worse. Should they have left in easy spell disruption and everybody-gets-pounce? Dunno; it's a matter of preference. Maybe we could get together and house up a better system, but there'd always be someone crying that it didn't represent their vision of what X should be.
It isn't like the tropes Paizo (or Tweet, or Gygax) chose to represent are somehow sacred. But they are Paizo's. If someone's going to complain that fighters can't bisect mountains, I might as well complain that they can't punch planets or crap diamonds. It's equally silly, especially with the wealth of 3pp content made to fulfill exactly those desires (okay, may not the diamond crapping part....but I wouldn't be surprised).
Yes, you found a counterexample from a completely different mythology whose culture was obsessed with musclebound men solving all of their problems through wanton pummeling. Well done.Magic is _supposed_ to be stronger than not-magic [...] Why make magic stoop to the level of a base swordsmanYeah, better ask Proteus how his awesome magic made him so much stronger than that base warrior Menelaus.If you think Greek mythology is completely different from that inspiring Pathfinder, I invite you to page through any Bestiary.
If you think, alternately, that it is completely different from that surrounding Roland (it is not clear which you mean), I invite you to actually read some of that. If you go into the Orlando works, you can even find out who originally owned that sword with which Roland did his mountain-cleaving.
(hint: Hector)
Having a bunch of monsters exported from Greek mythology is a far cry from having classes that directly represent Greek archetypes. Mythic rules were published specifically to address the fact that Core wasn't based on that. If you want to argue that a mythic fighter should be able to bisect a mountain, you may have some better ground to stand on.
As for Roland: Sure, get an artifact sword and go nuts. : )
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So this conversation reminded me of the Inspiring Reading section in the back of the Core Rule Book. It's a list of some literature that "specifically inspired Paizo Publishing in the creation of this version of the fantasy RPG rules". And what do ya know, The Odyssey is right there.
Surprise blahpers, not everything is Lord of the Rings.
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I looked up the set of 1st edition spells and I don't see anything on there about creating universes (which, let's be honest, a demiplane is not). In fact, the height of an arcane users power, Wish, left him bedridden if he did anything with it besides healing his party members or ushering them out of danger. Clearly the power level has been amped up since the game first came into being. So no, I don't think that's a 'historical fact'.
It's interesting you say that you can't represent everything in Pathfinder when the developers have been steadily pushing forward year after year, doing just that. We have rules for how robots, lasers, and force fields work now. Just a year before that, performance combat, duels, firearms, vehicle combat, and freaking airships had rules released for them. They've had APs where whole new systems for how to manage travel, upkeep, and combat with caravans have been rolled out. Combat between whole armies on the battlefield had rules released for it just a couple years before that. Valeros and Co. can now fight Great Old Ones from the Lovecraft mythos, beings so powerful that nearby reality cries when they wake up! But please, tell me more about how Pathfinder isn't designed to represent new things. I'd like to hear it.
The drawbacks were lifted largely because they were perceived as unfun to play. That's why haste doesn't cause progeria and why crafters don't lag levels behind their teammates. 1E wasn't sacred; it just was.
And no, the developers most certainly have not pushed Pathfinder toward becoming a generic system. That's hilariously absurd. They have novelty rules for specific settings, just like many editions before them. That doesn't change what the core of the game is and the fact that deviations into androids and firearms are refreshing alternatives rather than the norm. The baseline is still the Golarion flavor of the standard Tolkien-expy tropes mixed with a much higher baseline magic level. The conversions forum has some fun threads, but Pathfinder still isn't designed to support Bleach. If it ever does have optional rules for that sort of craziness, fantastic, but they won't be the norm.
So this conversation reminded me of the Inspiring Reading section in the back of the Core Rule Book. It's a list of some literature that "specifically inspired Paizo Publishing in the creation of this version of the fantasy RPG rules". And what do ya know, The Odyssey is right there.
Surprise blahpers, not everything is Lord of the Rings.
That's great. I'm inspired by a lot of things when I write music. That doesn't equate with "fighter should equal Hercules". What exactly are you trying to prove here? If you're trying to prove that a game prominently featuring elves, dwarves, and halflings isn't still primarily derived from the same tropes as 1E (with Paizo's spin, of course--alien elves? Awesome!), then you're facing an uphill battle.
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Well, no, no I'm not involving my party. I can, but that's a courtesy. I have animals or other creatures I can get to explore for me. Elementals are common to both list, have a variety of movement modes, and are intelligent enough to be given instructions and a flare or...
Cool, so now you're summoning creatures but making sure you give instructions that aren't "kill your nearest enemy". So you must make sure you're communicating with them, with complex enough instructions that your gonna chew through at least one round of the summoning limits on the critter. Which you can do I'm sure. They of course last one round per level, and while some of them are capable of great movement, but they have to search too. If this is happening in a wide open plain of low grass, too easy. Anything more than this and your time factor is huge. You also alert the enemy (with elementals at least). What's more, if or when they do find things that would be considered collateral damage, how do they get them out of the area. You can talk with them, but they can't talk with the folks they've found.
Also, I am absolutely aware that players can be Evil. I've run one campaign and played in another all the way to level 20 where the PC's were evil. They were great. And when the players did what you suggest, you get exactly the response I originally stated. "Look, I fixed that one problem. Oh. oops, now I've created 2 more."
I also never said it wasn't awesome. I had this situation in my Age of Worms campaign with the evil casters destroying a huge section of Sharn(Eberron setting). They thought it was great. Then they started getting tracked and attacked by vengeful types like I listed above. It was a great part of the game, and it ended up with both the divine caster and the arcane caster spending lots of their resources just trying to keep the new enemies they'd made off their backs.
That one act of "Lets show how powerful we are" made the rest of the campaign ever so much more complicated for the team.
No one in that campaign came away saying "Jeeze, those casters made the rest of us redundant". They did come out of it understanding that using really powerful magic like that had consequences and they sure better be ready for them when the time came.
This is how casters are shown to not be auto win, which is what the OP was about.
Cheers
So you really don't think it's unfair that one set of classes is absolutely beneath a certain mythology, while another one is incredibly above?
Yeah, martials can't reproduce what Hercules can do, but then why can casters go beyond what most gods did? You REALLY don't see the problem with that?
No, I don't. And we just talked about the whole "using Greek archetypes as your point of comparison" thing.
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Last time I checked, being able to fall from orbit and get up and walk away none the worse for wear is already well within superhuman or even demigodlike power.
For those of ya curious. Barbarians can get an (Su) power that lets them fly a distance of their move speed once per rage. It requires that lame Raging Leaper rage power, but it's an interesting rage power on Skalds to grant to his party.
Sheesh, is it late. Have a good evening, folks. Remember that this is a game, and you as players are empowered to change it to suit your desires. That doesn't mean Paizo should have to do another print run to accommodate it at the expense of their own vision.
Last time I checked, being able to fall from orbit and get up and walk away none the worse for wear is already well within superhuman or even demigodlike power.
For those of ya curious. Barbarians can get an (Su) power that lets them fly a distance of their move speed once per rage. It requires that lame Raging Leaper rage power, but it's an interesting rage power on Skalds to grant to his party.
The falling thing still gets me. It's pretty silly that a level 5 fighter has a very good chance of surviving terminal velocity. But them's the rules, and I haven't seen much reason to change them. Besides, I could always put spikes or lava at the bottom.... : D
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Having a bunch of monsters exported from Greek mythology is a far cry from having classes that directly represent Greek archetypes. Mythic rules were published specifically to address the fact that Core wasn't based on that. If you want to argue that a mythic fighter should be able to bisect a mountain, you may have some better ground to stand on.
As for Roland: Sure, get an artifact sword and go nuts. : )
Pathfinder also has a number of classes rather closer than a "far cry" to the mythologies we've been discussing. I'm sure Roland wouldn't have any idea what the heck a paladin is, right? There is more Greek (and Greco-Roman) in the classes than I care to list at the moment, too. I suppose if you insisted I would give some examples.
And I'm not sure I wouldn't want it as a mythic ability, but hey, mythic champions can't do it either, so, moot point.
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Sheesh, is it late. Have a good evening, folks. Remember that this is a game, and you as players are empowered to change it to suit your desires. That doesn't mean Paizo should have to do another print run to accommodate it at the expense of their own vision.
Yeah, my penance for falling asleep in the afternoon is staying up all night talking about Pathfinder.
It's a heavy cross to bear. ;)
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A CR 15 fighter can be every bit as dangerous as a CR 15 wizard when used as an enemy. Challenge is heavily situational. A CR 2 mosquito swarm can be far more dangerous than a CR 5 cleric in some situations. If you have a beef with he challenge rating system, I understand completely, but it's existence does not necessitate the need for all classes to be equally dangerous. The GM is responsible for providing appropriate challenges to their party, not yawning and throwing in something CR 7 and expecting it to work exactly like any other CR 7 challenge.
A CR 15 fighter is not going to equal a CR 15 wizard unless the wizard is gimped. Even if the fighter is gets a jump on a level 15 party he will at most kill 1 party member barring something crazy like the PC's rolling a string of nat 1's. A CR 15 wizard might kill the entire party if he gets a jump on them, and the GM is playing for keeps. Not all CR's are equal. I am sure a GM can contrive a situation to make the fighter seem more dangerous, but if you just go by their abilities that fighter is not a threat to TPK most APL=CR parties.
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The drawbacks were lifted largely because they were perceived as unfun to play. That's why haste doesn't cause progeria and why crafters don't lag levels behind their teammates. 1E wasn't sacred; it just was.
So let me get this straight: magic gets better = fun, while non-magic gets lots of restrictions placed on it and loses features = also fun? I must confess, there's something about this logic I don't get. Why is one hero getting a bigger piece of the pie not only justified but necessary for the 'Tolkein-expy' theme of the game to be appropriate?
And no, the developers most certainly have not pushed Pathfinder toward becoming a generic system. That's hilariously absurd. They have novelty rules for specific settings, just like many editions before them. That doesn't change what the core of the game is and the fact that deviations into androids and firearms are refreshing alternatives rather than the norm. The baseline is still the Golarion flavor of the standard Tolkien-expy tropes mixed with a much higher baseline magic level. The conversions forum has some fun threads, but Pathfinder still isn't designed to support Bleach. If it ever does have optional rules for that sort of craziness, fantastic, but they won't be the norm.
Never said generic, I said it expands to accompany new ideas. You need to remember, Pathfinder is designed to be a game framework that works outside of Golarion. You could apply it to Eberron, Athas, Earth, Endor, Kronos, any number of new worlds and it would still work, just so long as a few new races and some tweaks to existing 3.5 material were made. And besides, nothing about the Roland instance or a general increase in the level of versatility that's possible without magic has anything to do with making the system more 'generic'. I'm really not sure where that train of thought started.
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A CR 15 fighter is not going to equal a CR 15 wizard unless the wizard is gimped. Even if the fighter is gets a jump on a level 15 party he will at most kill 1 party member barring something crazy like the PC's rolling a string of nat 1's. A CR 15 wizard might kill the entire party if he gets a jump on them, and the GM is playing for keeps. Not all CR's are equal. I am sure a GM can contrive a situation to make the fighter seem more dangerous, but if you just go by their abilities that fighter is not a threat to TPK most APL=CR parties.[
A CR 15 fighter can be every bit as dangerous as a CR 15 wizard when used as an enemy. Challenge is heavily situational. A CR 2 mosquito swarm can be far more dangerous than a CR 5 cleric in some situations. If you have a beef with he challenge rating system, I understand completely, but it's existence does not necessitate the need for all classes to be equally dangerous. The GM is responsible for providing appropriate challenges to their party, not yawning and throwing in something CR 7 and expecting it to work exactly like any other CR 7 challenge.
The CR 15 fighter in the NPC Codex falls pathetically short of the damage benchmark set by the Monster Statistics by CR table, despite having several buff potions written into his stats. The CR 15 wizard in the same actually has several points higher DCs than the table suggests for primary ability DC, and many points higher for secondary ability DC.
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The CR 15 fighter in the NPC Codex falls pathetically short of the damage benchmark set by the Monster Statistics by CR table, despite having several buff potions written into his stats. The CR 15 wizard in the same actually has several points higher DCs than the table suggests for primary ability DC, and many points higher for secondary ability DC.A CR 15 fighter is not going to equal a CR 15 wizard unless the wizard is gimped. Even if the fighter is gets a jump on a level 15 party he will at most kill 1 party member barring something crazy like the PC's rolling a string of nat 1's. A CR 15 wizard might kill the entire party if he gets a jump on them, and the GM is playing for keeps. Not all CR's are equal. I am sure a GM can contrive a situation to make the fighter seem more dangerous, but if you just go by their abilities that fighter is not a threat to TPK most APL=CR parties.[
A CR 15 fighter can be every bit as dangerous as a CR 15 wizard when used as an enemy. Challenge is heavily situational. A CR 2 mosquito swarm can be far more dangerous than a CR 5 cleric in some situations. If you have a beef with he challenge rating system, I understand completely, but it's existence does not necessitate the need for all classes to be equally dangerous. The GM is responsible for providing appropriate challenges to their party, not yawning and throwing in something CR 7 and expecting it to work exactly like any other CR 7 challenge.
PC classes, and I don't mean PC's, tend to not follow that table, but a PC classed martial NPC should be putting out pretty good damage. I have not checked the Codex, but if the fighter fell short, then I would remake him.
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The two aren't independent. MMOs, particularly PVP ones, produce a staggering level of obsession with class balance. Before their rise, I saw far fewer debates on "which class is stronger", and the general heat level of those debates was much, much lower. Come to think of it, I know that in the 2E days there were diehards who would argue this stuff, but I can't recall actually being in a single one of those arguments. Granted, the Internet is another thing that kinda happened since then.... But back then, I never cared whether the fighter was stronger than the wizard--only whether _my_ fighter could beat the enemy wizard, and that was largely dependent on the specifics of the game.
In any case, balance for its own sake seems to be a much more popular topic now that an increasing majority of gamers have grown up in a world of competitive class-based computer games. Proving causation would be a freaking dissertation, so I can only hypothesize about the amount of influence one had on the other... but I'm content in my hypothesis until a few folks with more time on their hands get some of that sweet peer review action going on the subject.
I do remember a lot of "my thief is usseless in combat"
But to answer you points, do note that in 2e fighters do not have problems with skills. it is not like the bard will outshine him in social sitautions and etc. rembemer also that fighter have a mini army (a fact that I never liked) as a balancing factor.
The fighter could move and attack 5 times, you could disrupt the wizard spellcasting way easier, and several other stuffs.
The game (2e) was, of course, umbalanced, but there were mitigating factors.
Not to mention that 2e got it's start in the pre-internet age, and in fact one of TSR's many terrible policies was actively suppressing any online discussion of D&D.
I think most of the debate over things like balance is a product of the internet taking the debate beyond people's local gaming groups.
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Huh, another caster vs martial great debate.
My opinion is, yes wizard/caster is overpowered. Yes, spellcaster = win. But does it brings problem to the table? depends on the player.
If the player knew about this and powergame the hell out of it, then it will bring problem to the table, and probably make the encounter boring in the long run for everyone else. But what if, the wizard is a nice generous guy?
One of my favorite movie of all time has a party consist of:
- a Gunner
- a Barbarian/fighter
- a rogue
- a cleric/druid
- a wizard
In the movie, the wizard has all kinds of spell in his arsenal, that could obliterate every encounter they met. But instead of doing just that, he chooses to use his spell to help buff his teammate. Instead of flying like a jerk alone, he uses his spell so all of them could fly together. he give his wish spell to his teammate (mostly for the gunner though). He also give many magical weapons to his teammate. He made each of his teammate shine.
Is the wizard overpowered? I think so. But will this wizard brings problem to the table? No, instead, people LOVE the wizard. They love him so much he even became a mascot for the country that made him. And yes, I also love Doraemon :D
I've read the Song of Roland, and I don't remember Roland being either a magician, or a supernatural being, or God. And yet...Being able to cut through a mountain isn't magical. It is however awesome. And I would like my martials to be awesome.I'd beg to differ on that. Cutting through a mountain is pretty darn magical, or supernatural, or godly. Awesome sure, but it is beyond what even a really good guy with a sword should be doing IMO.
What is pictured here is not a mountain. Notably you can already do this with your adamantine longsword, just not with one swing. A Barbarian or Viking with Strength Surge and Smasher could probably do it with one swing (assuming that chunk of rock is considered a single "object"). A monk could hop that pile of rocks.
I'm generally not on the side that thinks that there isn't a caster/martial disparity but I am against "cutting mountains in half" and producing effects that are overtly supernatural on the auspices of "skill". There is a difference between being unrealistically skilled and doing things which are conceptually unrelated to the skill in question.
Cutting through miles of rock with the stroke of a 3" blade of a pen knife is akin to using your awesome martial skills to Create Food and Water, or summon a horde of celestial super beings for that matter. There is a huge distinction between, "I'm really good with a sword to a level that it's literally unbelievable" and "I wield a suite of arbitrary powers that are ostensibly a result of my swordplay but are more or less indistinguishable from magic, but are I assure you not magic". Poking your rapier into some foothills and the Alps splitting in half before you is definitely in the latter category.
You could take the Sorcerer and change all of their abilities from Su to Ex and call it a "martial" all you wanted, but I don't think the vast majority of players that like playing martial characters would be at all interested in this.
The vast majority of players of this game are going to be Westerners, who come from a philosophically dualistic background that separates the material from the supernatural. We've also got a tradition where people can perform absurd feats of skill, but they are still firmly rooted in the material. The kinds of assumptions you see in Wuxia literature and film (as an example) is based on a holistic/monistic tradition where there is no real barrier between material and supernatural for anyone. Pathfinder: Wuxia Edition is never going to happen for the reason that the audience is largely only ever going to be Western dualists and so are the writers.
There is a distinction between a guy that can standing jump a dozen feet straight up and a guy who can control his own body weight through martial arts practice to be able to walk on water and fly. Neither is at all realistic, but the really good jumper is still a materialist concept and the latter is definitively supernatural.
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Cool, so now you're summoning creatures but making sure you give instructions that aren't "kill your nearest enemy". So you must make sure you're communicating with them, with complex enough instructions that your gonna chew through at least one round of the summoning limits on the critter. Which you can do I'm sure. They of course last one round per level, and while some of them are capable of great movement, but they have to search too. If this is happening in a wide open plain of low grass, too easy. Anything more than this and your time factor is huge. You also alert the enemy (with elementals at least). What's more, if or when they do find things that would be considered collateral damage, how do they get them out of the area. You can talk with them, but they can't talk with the folks they've found.Also, I am absolutely aware that players can be Evil. I've run one campaign and played in another all the way to level 20 where the PC's were evil. They were great. And when the players did what you suggest, you get exactly the response I originally stated. "Look, I fixed that one problem. Oh. oops, now I've created 2 more."
I also never said it wasn't awesome. I had this situation in my Age of Worms campaign with the evil casters destroying a huge section of Sharn(Eberron setting). They thought it was great. Then they started getting tracked and attacked by vengeful types like I listed above. It was a great part of the game, and it ended up with both the divine caster and the arcane caster spending lots of their resources just trying to keep the new enemies...
Let me see if I can break this down.
The fact that my wizard/cleric/druid can, completely by himself, scout an area, determine if it's clear, and utterly destroy a marching army/village/camp/whatever with the wrath of nature is not a problem because working out the logistics will take time? This is even the Good one, who wants to avoid collateral. The evil one kills them with no effort but the one spell. By the way,...
Let me see, any army that could be destroyed by said spell could be destroyed by said martial as well. Probably in the same time given all the stuff from above, without collateral. However, he would take some damage doing it. Natural 20s occur after all.
In so doing, he actually hasn't brought down the wrath of other parties that were heretofore not even interested in the group.
My point has never been that magic can be powerful. My point has always been that casters don't ='win. They try to win, but create more problems instead.
The narrative was my example of letting power come in to the game and working with it.
The reason why the vast (I would even hazard to say majority) of people don't see casters dominating games is because they create games where casters can't use this awesome power effectively.
Casters go " if only x were true here I could do yand destroy this. Damn this situation limiting me"
Martials go " meh" and kill it/solve it any way.
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Wanting realistic martials isn't a Western thing.
Pecos Bill ate dynamite, used a rattlesnake as a whip, lassoed a tornado, and shot all the stars from the sky except one. His wife/girlfriend bounced her head off the moon.
Ditto Paul Bunyan and even John Henry to a certain extent. Some of it was realistic (if we accept Paul Bunyan was 20 feet tall) but still pretty out there.
High level Martials could eat dynamite and survive. They'd need to be healed afterwords, but they'd live.
Rattle snake as whip is easy peasy. Probably not as effective as a real whip, but really just an improvised weapon or maybe exotic weapon. Some easy feats for that.
Probably not able to lasso a tornado without magic gear though.
Shooting stars out of the sky can't be done by anyone in pathfinder.
Cutting down trees with one swing is easily in the realms of a fighter.
Not really sure about the other stuff bunion did, something about the Grand Canyon?
Those are American Folklore and I'm an Aussie so not too familiar with them.
I think the Arcanist comes pretty close to Schrödingers Wizard. Was that class really necessary? :-/