Help! Inequality in the Group: Players outshining others during play.

[Weslocke]

blackbloodtroll wrote:

It was reprinted in Ultimate Campaign.

Also, the Aram Zey's Focus spell gives you it.

Then there is the Investigator, Slayer, and a mass of archetypes.

Hi BBT,

Listen, I know we often butt heads, but I am genuinely curious about that trait being reprinted in UC. I just checked and could not find it. What type of trait is it in UC? I have a first printing copy of UC from May 2013. My understanding was that particular trait was from the Mummy's Mask Campaign guide released May 2014. I am headed off to check and see if there is an update for a second printing of UC that I missed now.

Edit: Yeah, I just checked and there is no second printing errata for UC yet. I double checked my physical copy of UC and could not find the Trap Finder trait anywhere in there. Are you 100% on that? Because I cannot find it anywhere except the Mummy's Mask Players Guide.

[ElementalXX]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Rogue is getting a Rewrite in Pathfinder Unchained. As are the Barbarian, Summoner, and Monk. Not the Fighter though, unless they give him some really good Fighter only feats we can see him going right down the hole as still worse than Monk.

I really would have wished they rewrite the fighter instead of the barb. The barb is fine i really feel it just works as intended, i guess you cant have everything , ow well

[Bandw2]

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Why would they redo barbarian? It's the only pure martial that even comes close to closing the M-C disparity gap.

they want to stop the need for 2 stat blocks if I'm not mistaken. one for rage, and one for non-rage. basically they just see the need to recalculate that often as a problem.

[thegreenteagamer]

Hmph, better redo the druid then. Wildshape is just so much more work than rage. And while you're at it, any class with any polymorph type spells.

[Dead Phoenix]

I was gonna say something, but then I remembered this topic isn't about Unchained. Might wanna take this to one of the many Unchained topics.

[Bandw2]

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Hmph, better redo the druid then. Wildshape is just so much more work than rage. And while you're at it, any class with any polymorph type spells.

yeah, but it's a martial. :D and we know what paizo likes to do to them.

[Scorpioni]

Mmmm... I don't get that logic. When I play any kind of gish character I have to deal with any combination of up to 10 buffing spells that affect my sheet.... I don't see how RAGE of all things makes a class too "fiddly and complicated"....

[Auren "Rin" Cloudstrider]

it is easy to manage a barbarian or gish. you keep the effects of your commonly used buff combinations on an index card and factor hours per level buffs into your stats kinda thing.

[Blackwaltzomega]

Scorpioni wrote:

Mmmm... I don't get that logic. When I play any kind of gish character I have to deal with any combination of up to 10 buffing spells that affect my sheet.... I don't see how RAGE of all things makes a class too "fiddly and complicated"....

Well, yes, but...that's...erm...that's magic, of course!

We can't very well go holding martial abilities and magical ones to the same standards in the hopes it might allow them to hold up better when directly compared. Ha! That'd be a bit daft, wouldn't it?

In all seriousness, the Barbarian really doesn't need to be adjusted as much as Fighty McGee. I mean, when you ask about problem classes, what are the ones that tend to come up the most?

Summoner, Wizard, Druid on the too good side, in my experience. Some people that have very low system mastery will try to lump anything that can do really high burst damage in there but we're discussing the problem classes from a more advanced perspective.

The Rogue, Monk, and Fighter on the not good enough side. This is very, very, very well established considering that the Core Rulebook Only Monk is considered a joke character and there are abundant arguments for why a number of classes are Fighter+, Rogue+, or BOTH AT THE SAME TIME (mostly Ranger and Slayer, both of which are like one or two class features away from being strictly better at BOTH classes' jobs than they are.)

Summoner, Rogue, and Monk are all getting reworks in the book, but I'd honestly say the Druid or the Fighter needs an unchained version more than the Barbarian. As someone else said, a polymorph-focused class is more confusing than the rage shifts in stats and Fighty McGee needs some attention so that his claim to fame isn't being the best in the game at wearing armor, a line of defense that is useful but also way too easy to utterly trivialize.

[blackbloodtroll]

Weslocke wrote:

blackbloodtroll wrote:

It was reprinted in Ultimate Campaign.

Also, the Aram Zey's Focus spell gives you it.

Then there is the Investigator, Slayer, and a mass of archetypes.

Hi BBT,

Listen, I know we often butt heads, but I am genuinely curious about that trait being reprinted in UC. I just checked and could not find it. What type of trait is it in UC? I have a first printing copy of UC from May 2013. My understanding was that particular trait was from the Mummy's Mask Campaign guide released May 2014. I am headed off to check and see if there is an update for a second printing of UC that I missed now.

Edit: Yeah, I just checked and there is no second printing errata for UC yet. I double checked my physical copy of UC and could not find the Trap Finder trait anywhere in there. Are you 100% on that? Because I cannot find it anywhere except the Mummy's Mask Players Guide.

My bad. It was People of the Sands.

[Bandw2]

yeah, i'm in no way saying this was great logic, it's just what I heard as why. I mean why else would they ignore the fighter?

[Dabbler]

Insain Dragoon wrote:

Rogue is getting a Rewrite in Pathfinder Unchained. As are the Barbarian, Summoner, and Monk. Not the Fighter though, unless they give him some really good Fighter only feats we can see him going right down the hole as still worse than Monk.

At least the fighter can do his role (hit things and take damage), as can the rogue (sneak around and disarm traps), the monk is notable as the only core class that cannot do his own role.

To be honest all the fighter needs as a "fix" is a few more skill ranks and a boosted Will save. Edit: I agree the fighter should be revamped in Unchained, too, rather than the barbarian.

The rogue is a tougher problem, because the rogue's role can be done by other characters who can do other stuff as well as the rogue stuff. As has been pointed out, the Bard is the best skills-monkey because while he gets less skill-ranks, they are able to go further (thank you versatile performance). Quite a few classes get Disable Device (and you can get it on a trait as a class skill anyway) and disarming magical traps is easy with detect magic and dispel magic. That's assuming that traps are important, and in 8/10 cases they aren't.

On the other hand, with skill you can build a rogue that is, frankly, a DM's nightmare. My party has one who's using a combination of class features, items and feats to get double his normal sneak attack dice in damage at +4 damage per dice in temporary damage with a sling. If he moves ten feet, he treats anything he's aiming at as flat-footed. That gives him one shot per round that is practically a guaranteed kill on anything not immune to temporary damage. So yes, rogues can do evil damage if they are built right, and can really shine if you know what you are doing.

[Neal Litherland]

Chaco Rockhammer wrote:

Howdy. I'm currently GMing a mid-high level (11-15) campaign right now. This is my first ever campaign at these levels (I've GMed a few low to mid low games) and I hit a rock patch that I can't seem to work around and I'm turning to the pathfinder community for advice. So here is the story:

I have a game with my roommates that consist of three players, a Warpriest (ACG), Arcanist (ACG as well), and a vanilla Rogue. The other night they just killed a boss fight and after the Arcanist player voiced his opinion about it after the fact that he felt his character didn't shine in the fight. What this means is that the boss had high SR and stats were he was resisting a lot of the spellcaster's power. Our rogue however was the main damage dealer and torn into the boss with her sneak attacks and the like. The Arcanist player told me that he and the Warpriest felt that the rogue has become overpowered (which was interesting because the Arcanist was originally the overpowered one earlier in the campaign when the characters where mid-low levels) and this has made the game for the others not fun anymore because the cannot do as much damage as the rogue.

I expected this because I know our party's abilities (not their actual ability power but what the players themselves are capable of) pretty well. The Rogue specifically made herself the assassin, high damage output but weak in other areas. I geared the encounter best to all their abilities as I could. The Arcanist and Warpriest did really well before the boss fight with his henchmen and I thought they were out shinning the Rogue. The Rogue just happened to work best against the boss because she could focus her hits with flanks and sneak attacks. This made the others feel less glamours in the main battle.

So I guess my question to everyone is this: How do I resolve this issue? It seems that no matter what I do, someone feels under accomplished in my campaign. I've tried going over rules and strategies to even it out but nothing is working. Help me out people of...

Point #1:

My first question, and one I didn't see anyone ask, is does the party work together as a unit? One of the best ways to avoid the "Why does Jim ALWAYS get to do the awesome stuff?" complaints is to try and make everyone feel like they're part of a team. Part of this is mindset, and part of this is character abilities that mesh well together.

I'll give an example. I've running a 12th level magus/rogue in Curse of the Crimson Throne right now. He's no slouch in combat, but his real skill lies in debuffing his opponents and always having something he can do in a given situation. As such he tends to take the position of team coordinator. We're currently in Castle Scarwall (spoiler alerts from here on out) where everything is undead and everything is evil. The summon-focused cleric is partially gimped because she can't bring in her allies, and my magus's necromancy and large portions of his debuff spells are also useless. Even Majenko, the cohort/familiar is not as useful since everything's immune to his sleep poison. The one member of the party, the Corpse Hunter (ranger variant with major undead slaying powers) is having a blast. Why? Because this is what he was MADE to do.

The Corpse Hunter is putting out huge damage. The cleric shifted her focus and provides buff spells and protections like death ward, contributing to combat via searing light and flamestrike when she can. The rogue/magus dipped into his bag of tricks and is using Glitterdust to make sure enemies don't stay invisible long, and Hold Undead to try and hinder the opposition. Disrupt Undead is his friend, especially when he puts it through his scimitar (using the arcana that turns rays into touch spells). The ranger does his thing and brings the pain, but we all communicate and attack as a team rather than a bunch of individuals trying to steal the spotlight. It's great for your RP, and it really cuts down on the animosity players might feel.

Point #2:

The other question is does the player know his role? This was said more eloquently by a lot of others, but no one character can shine all the time.

So what is his JOB? What did he make his character to DO?

Rebuilding a character that isn't functioning is good, but it sounds like what you have is a case of pettiness because someone else got a moment in the sun. Unless the rogue has been wiping the floor left and right with the other encounters (I'll admit, I've been that guy on occasion because the DM gives us nothing but X kind of combat and the character I bring is the master of that particular enemy)? That said, you know your PCs; is the Arcanist achieving his purpose? If he doesn't know what his purpose is I'd say that's a good spot to work with him on. Lots of players pick a class or a collection of feats, but they don't stop and ask what their bag of tricks really is. More importantly they don't plan for what to do when they come across a situation that really is not what they're meant to go up against.

[Umbranus]

I see it that way: The rogue (this one) is a souped up motorcycle with an expert rider (or is it driver?) while the other two are james bond super-cars who have oil spray, jump jets, can swim, have run-flat tires and diverse other gimmicks.

In the fight described they were on a curvy racing track with bridges over chasms or rivers. It allowed to motorcycle to show its strength by being fast and agile. The other two just tried to outrun it by pushing their engines to their limits instead of using their jump jets or their swimming ability.
If they try to beat the rogue at what he specialized in they will have a hard time. But there are so many more things they could to.

Well played NO situation short of antimagic zones would make the arcanist worse than the rogue. At least not if he does his stuff instead of trying to beat the rogue at her stuff.

[Weslocke]

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Weslocke wrote:

blackbloodtroll wrote:

It was reprinted in Ultimate Campaign.

Hi BBT,

Listen, I know we often butt heads, but I am genuinely curious about that trait being reprinted in UC. I just checked and could not find it. What type of trait is it in UC? I have a first printing copy of UC from May 2013. My understanding was that particular trait was from the Mummy's Mask Campaign guide released May 2014. I am headed off to check and see if there is an update for a second printing of UC that I missed now.

Edit: Yeah, I just checked and there is no second printing errata for UC yet. I double checked my physical copy of UC and could not find the Trap Finder trait anywhere in there. Are you 100% on that? Because I cannot find it anywhere except the Mummy's Mask Players Guide.

My bad. It was People of the Sands.

Ahh, I see. That is where I got confused. The Trap Finder trait is in a list of Mummy's Mask Campaign Traits in People of the Sands (released Jan. 2014) on page 31. It was also in another list of Mummy's Mask Campaign Traits in the Mummy's Mask Players Guide (released May 2014).

Thanks for the help tracking that down and have a Happy Thanksgiving!

[Aleron]

This thread made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Good for you, rogue player, good for you!

[Serisan]

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Why would they redo barbarian? It's the only pure martial that even comes close to closing the M-C disparity gap.

The stated reason is that a lot of the rage powers have unintuitive mechanics, like Raging Swimmer, and they were planning on moving those to straight swim speed, etc.

I would have liked the Fighter in there instead of the Barbarian, but it's pretty well set at this point.