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Are there any players out there who do not plan out their characters level progression?
I've grown tired of players who have every skill and feat planned to 20th level. It leaves no scope for the character to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face.
A common example is the "I must wield one type of weapon and commit all my feats to it!" then a nice piece of gear is found and they PCs just sell it.
I'd love a game system where you don't know what you get at the next level, of course this would only work once per player per class.
Maybe a more gestalt approach would work. You build a base character who can fight and as she progresses in levels she seeks out things she'd like to do - become a mage, a rogue, join a church etc
Thoughts?
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1. PF rewards specialization. It's better to be very good at a small handful of things than decent at a lot of things. Plus, since every damned thing under the sun has prerequisites, it's important to know when you can actually qualify, and make sure you don't miss anything.
2. Not your dude, not your problem. If you don't want to do it, don't, but other folks get to run their dudes their way.
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Oftentimes, new players will do this for their first couple of games until they get to deciding they want their character to be good at something. This might work better in other games, but the scaling of threats rewards teamwork between a group of specialists investing in their schticks and becoming good at them, and punishes overly broad characters who aren't also packing big class features like high level casting. You can roleplay growth as a character while also sticking to a track that makes them mechanically viable/useful/superior, the two things aren't linked. Not all priests cast spells, not all street thieves take levels in rogue (Most are better off not doing so.)
Your character mechanics don't limit your roleplay, and your roleplay should only limit your character mechanics so far as you and your DM are comfortable with.
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if you don't have a build in mind it's very easy to fall behind the curve and not be good, especially if the others in your group are sticking with a plan. But I'm curious as to what kind of things you mean when you say, "character to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face." what would you consider developing and growing because of the encounters and experiences, what's an example of doing that?
And since many of the attack feats are tied to 1 weapon/maneuver if you're going to take that feat you're kinda stuck with that choice. And then you need to continue down on that path to stay good at it.
example, I'm a fighter and I have weapon focus and weapon specialization and weapon training at lv 5 for my +1 sword. Now I find a +2 axe, it's not worth it because using my sword is still better than using that axe.
I want to be a tripper, so I need to make my trip CMB as high as I can to make it useful, otherwise I'll have no chance of pulling it off and not be able to do something I wanted my character to do.
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Maybe instead of lamenting that your players don't leave themselves room to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face, you should think about where the PCs would like to take their characters and design a story that will help the PCs realize their character concepts? Just a thought, but when someone complains of rigidity, its typically a two-way street. If you're a GM who is playing an AP, then you're also a hypocrite because in using an AP, you basically have your entire adventure mapped out in advance.
Personally, I'm a planner. I want my character to be cool and effective. However, the best laid plans of mice and men are often lead astray, and I usually end up revising my build based on my experiences in-game (Oh man, my GM is really pushing this "leader" thing. Maybe having Leadership would be a cool idea!) or mechanically (I keep getting wrecked by Fortitude saves. Maybe I should take a level in a class with a good Fortitude bonus). But having a build idea already in place helps me have a starting ground from where I am and where I want to be going.
You know I love having responsive character growth based on their experiences. My witch ended up putting ranks into profession siege engineer because she had a ton of fun operating a catapult on one occasion. I doubt she'll ever need the skill again.
On the flip side on the balance I agree Zhayne, Pathfinder can be very punitive if you get too flexible with your build sometimes. If I'm playing a monk I won't ever use a weapon that I can't flurry with even if it is substantially better than anything my character owns at the moment because it invalidates a central class feature. Likewise if I've gone to the effort of investing in a number of feats to get to a certain point suddenly changing tracks could potentially be quite painful for the character.
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My players typically do both. The majority will have a general plan on a 1-16 or so progression. Feats, spells, Multiclass/PrC's, etc. Yet they don't see it as a straightjacket. Many times as a campaign unfolds they find themselves tweaking those plans or incorporating alternate choices as the adventures develop.
"I'd planned to get empower spell at this level, but because the huge majority of what we have encountered has had fairly solid SR against me, i'm taking Piercing Spell instead." as a recent example from a PC sorcerer.
Another recently from the PC druid. "that organization i am part of has some previously unknown dark shadows in it. I'm going to be raising my Bluff and Sense Motive this level and the next few, as well as buy some booster magic items with my WBL. Damn you Illuminati."
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Yep, it's perfectly possible to do both. I like to plan out my characters, but will readily adapt my build to a) the needs and weaknesses of the party, and b) the style of the GM.
For example, if I have a GM who never has the bad guys take a 5 foot step, there's no point in adding Step Up to my build. Might as well go with something else.
I don't think I've ever 'planned' out a character. I've gone into a campaign with an idea of how I want my character to develop, and it usually never ends up that way. I always try to justify every leveling decision, based on the experiences and problems encountered during that level - but at the same time, am a fan of selectively justifiable use UC's Retraining rules.
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It's a playstyle thing for sure. And to the OP - I feel your pain.
Personally I consider "planning a build" akin to having some sort of communicable disease or plague, but I do see it useful for those that like to be more effective. Which is fine. Some of my best roleplayers are optimally mechanic'd.
As long as we all know it's ok to think others are having badwrongfun and that we are smallhearted individuals that need to grow and evolve we should be on par by about 5th level.
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I know some who plan out 1-20 but I only write down a few levels ahead. And it's mostly 'sketchish'. For example if there are a few feats I want to get, I need to know what the prereq's are and what level they are available.
However, things DO get moved around, skipped, or postponed... My rogue in serpent skull ended up with Iron will just BECAUSE of the multitude of will saves he was failing in that AP... certainly never planned on that ahead of time...
One thing about Pathfinder, is that there ARE good and bad options... and a lot of the good options have prereqs and specific trees to get them... Also, there are a lot of trap feats that LOOK good on paper but simply do not work together in an actual game...
Having SOME level of system mastery is expected here and its hard to criticize people for trying to plan something out ahead of time.
As for finding awesome gear and just selling it? I see that as a wholely different issue. 1) Feats shouldn't be so 'weapon specific'. I'd prefer if the game allowed a little more flexibility between the adventures. 2) If the DM wants the super cool weapon to see play... then it should be reskinned into whatever the players may actually use. UNLESS it's EXTREMELY specific to the plot... a +4 Holy Bastard Sword can just as easily be a +3 Holy Two handed ax...
If you don't have an arcane caster... then why toss in a super-powerful staff? Throw in gear that will actually get used.
Another thing to look out for is new material that could give you different ideas about where you want to take your character. Still -- while I do try to plan out my character's development, I do look out for feedback from the way the campaign is going -- perhaps I find that I have devoted enough resources to something that I was going to pile onto for the next few levels, or I had neglected something that was proving to be a real weakness. The purpose of the planning is basically to show that the most obvious path forward is theoretically viable.
In any case, I generally find that there are three futures for any player character:
1) What the character wants to be.
2) What the player wants the character to be (yes, this can be different from the first option).
3) What the character actually becomes.
I tend to have a vague idea from level 1 to 20, and the next 3-5 levels planned... but the specifics on that 5 level plan seems to change every time I go up a level.
I'll have particular feats, skills, spells, whatnot noted as things I want to get, but what happens in play often changes what my plans are.
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My players typically do both. The majority will have a general plan on a 1-16 or so progression. Feats, spells, Multiclass/PrC's, etc. Yet they don't see it as a straightjacket. Many times as a campaign unfolds they find themselves tweaking those plans or incorporating alternate choices as the adventures develop.
That matches with my experience. Having a plan is a must thanks to how Pathfinder rewards specialization and filling out feat chains, but your plan should be so rigid that you can't adjust to changing circumstances.
Here's the deal: each player character only has so many resources. If in order to stay viable as a hero, with those resources, they may want (or need) to specialize.
If you want player characters abilities to be more fluid, you really can only do one thing, and that's make the challenges which the players face balance with characters who use resources in non-optimal ways (well, you can also force everyone to be non-optimal - see below). If a Rogue 1/Monk 1/Wizard 1 is fun to play on the battle-mat in your world, then people may go with it...
The problem with this strategy is that it only takes one player to make a more optimal choice, and the balance is gone. Now that hero is the best at what they do, and everyone else is meh, but is also barely meh at something else.
In game design terms, you want something where specialization is balanced ("punished"), i.e., getting better at something you're already good at costs more.
Now, this wouldn't really work with Path because of how the BAB and Saves math works, but imagine if taking a level in your highest class cost two levels. Imagine if once you were tenth level, you could take take three levels in another class instead of taking your eleventh level. What will work better with Path is doing something like putting a ceiling on class levels (say somewhere 8-12) and then forcing players to multiclass after that (but you better tell players that ahead of time - some of them may even like the idea because their build falls apart at X level, who knows?)
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Are there any players out there who do not plan out their characters level progression?
[stuff]
Thoughts?
As others have said, Pathfinder heavily rewards players for specialization and mechanically punishes people for generalization. To further elucidate this point there are specialized "power" builds that more or less unlock the limits of legal PC power at higher level, so much so that key classes, such as the Magus, were implemented to give a more balanced option to these builds.
Your better bet is to implement story feats as bonus feats based on what the PCs do in the game world. This is similar to disadvantages in Shadowrun.
Honestly, however, this is just an issue with players wanting to "win" the game. This is not to say such a mentality is bad, quite far from it, but instead is to say that the system itself is a necessary evil designed to facilitate RP.
Let me offer you this. I ran a group through Crypt of the Everflame a few months back. One person brought an optimized human archer paladin who spent his feats, skills and traits to be the best he could be as well as having his character planned out in the "ultra-done" style that I typically encourage. The other players did not do this, and they were all over the place: A bard who was "equally as good with a bow as he is his short sword (So, Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Cha 14), a rogue (nuff said) and an alchemist who built his character to throw bombs without any foresight as to where he wanted to go beyond just throw x bombs and then do nothing else.
The Paladin had his tactics already decided: Stand in the back and shoot stuff to death. He was also built to be as effective as possible, and in terms of the rest of the party was the most effective—so much so that the other players started to complain—at doing what he was purpose built to do.
The other players struggled with the dungeon to a major degree. The bard died, the alchemist ran out of bombs then left the dungeon and the rogue hid in the shadows to occasionally shoot his shortbow at something.
The point is: the Paladin knew where he was going and planned for that. I know this isn't particularly fantastic for writing a story, but we're playing a game when it comes to combat instead of roleplaying even if we try to add RP to the combat elements.
You are more or less complaining that someone is attempting to optimize a character to win at the Win/Lose mechanic that exists in the system. This is not going to serve you well. You are asking your PCs to potentially castrate their characters just to satisfy your desire for them to grow as the story goes on.
If you want to encourage story elements and adapting to the story then give them story feats. If they fight a villain who escapes give them all or a specific person (potentially who the villain is modeled after) the Nemesis feat. When everyone has the nemesis feat it becomes a Nemesis party VS PC party battle sooner or later, and you more or less seed mechanically encouraged story into the game.
TL:DR: Don't be mad that people are building their character ahead of time to be the best at what they are built to do. That is like being upset that someone seeking a degree in college has planned out their classes. Instead seed story feats into the lives of the PCs.
I plan 2-3 levels in advance, with multiple options available at each level.
With different paths in mind, I can adapt as I progress.
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Are there any players out there who do not plan out their characters level progression?
I've grown tired of players who have every skill and feat planned to 20th level. It leaves no scope for the character to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face.
A common example is the "I must wield one type of weapon and commit all my feats to it!" then a nice piece of gear is found and they PCs just sell it.
I'd love a game system where you don't know what you get at the next level, of course this would only work once per player per class.
Maybe a more gestalt approach would work. You build a base character who can fight and as she progresses in levels she seeks out things she'd like to do - become a mage, a rogue, join a church etc
Thoughts?
Have you considered other game systems? Frankly, Pathfinder punishes players for not having some degree of planning to the character. What you've described works better in other games, like Numenera.
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I make a detailed plan, and a few more to be sure. And then i never manage to follow any of them.
The amount of build planning I do varies pretty sharply based on the type of character.
At the top end, I've been playing a (now fairly high level) fighter for the last several years, and I produced a general outline quite soon after starting. I haven't stuck to it terribly closely though, for a number of reasons including changing campaign circumstances and that the original was produced before even the APG was out :p
A fighter just doesn't work very well without some sort of plan, even if it's a plan with wiggle room.
At the bottom end, playing a witch recently I didn't actually get around to picking a level up feat until about three games after leveling up.
I just didn't really feel any particular need for a new feat, or to run a tight ship with regards to my build - you could have taken away all that character's feats, and spells and hexes would still have served just fine to keep her useful.
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The simple reality is that D&D 3.5 and therefore Pathfinder are built to emulate epic and romance stories of badasses being badasses. Much like reality, if you want to be a badass at something you have to train to be just that—you need a specific plan to make it happen.—
Seriously, let your players plot out their characters however they wish, let them make their characters uber badasses of doom, and even allow them to take leadership to make a tricked out cohort as well.
Then, give them all the nemesis story feat, photo-copy their characters and cohorts and everything else and have their nemesi be more or less the exact same builds.
Do not punish planned specialization in a game that heavily rewards planned specialization. Your players will resent such behavior, and, instead of telling you everything, they will withhold character information from you.
One major option is to make retraining ~"FREE"~, as well as allowing point buy to be retrained. So, if they find that cool sword you threw in, Bob can retrain to use it if it is better than his old gear.
The simple reality of Pathfinder is that there is a finite amount of XP until max level, and a finite amount of gold that can be gathered if going by WBL. This means that if the game progresses by the player characters power E.G., lvl 19 PCs that go to fight goblins will end up fighting the Demons they are worshiping instead of the goblins themselves, that it is an arms race to do what you can as well as you can. If the world is not based around the PCs, E.G., the level 19 party can run into a level 1 dungeon with goblins who don't stand a chance of even hitting the Wizard, then the rewards in XP and Gold are negligible to the party.
You might be better off just encouraging them to do other things, instead of just being adventurers. Kingmaker does a fairly good job of this, since the PCs found their own country starting in book 2.
I've never planned out a character, but honestly I wish I committed to some choices even 3-4 levels out. I'll decide on some things I would like to do when I think I'm close to levelling up, but I literally do not make any of my final choices until the GM tells us to level up. Aside from an archer I played years ago, the only times I have ever been three feats into a feat chain has been when I began play at a level higher than 1st.
Are there any players out there who do not plan out their characters level progression?
I've grown tired of players who have every skill and feat planned to 20th level. It leaves no scope for the character to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face.
A common example is the "I must wield one type of weapon and commit all my feats to it!" then a nice piece of gear is found and they PCs just sell it.
I'd love a game system where you don't know what you get at the next level, of course this would only work once per player per class.
Maybe a more gestalt approach would work. You build a base character who can fight and as she progresses in levels she seeks out things she'd like to do - become a mage, a rogue, join a church etc
Thoughts?
Actually the game having you need prerequisites kinda calls for it.
With that aside you are wrong on two points.
1. Characters can still grow. Their growth is just preplanned mechanically and growth is not just mechanical. How the character approaches situations and his outlook on the world is also growth.
2. Just because a character is preplanned that does not set the choices in stone. I always preplan and I have optional feats in place. Even before I had alternate feats written in things would happen in the game that might affect my feat/skill/etc choices. If your players never alter from their main choice they could just be stubborn or maybe your stories are not varied enough to push them n a different dirrection. That is not a bad thing, just an observation.
An important question:
OP, do you allow for retraining?
Something just tells me the answer is 'no'.
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The nature of feat chains and specialization will always make it so that planning out characters is the best choice to make a mechanically strong character. If you want to put in the effort you could adapt a system that doesn't have a lot of features and feats with prerequisites and reveal different options the character can choose as the game progresses, but that's quite a lot of effort to quell such a minor role playing offense.
There are many character personalities that are unwilling to advance down specific paths which are presented in the campaign because "it's not their schtick." Sometimes a player's unwillingness to diverge from their character's predetermined path is a reflection of the DM's inability to entice the player into choosing something different, which means the DM is at fault as well.
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There are characters who don't need to plan. Any full prepared spellcaster, especially wizards, can throw 100% of their skill points and feats away and still be effective. Banning planning just makes life relatively harder for the fighting types.
There are characters who don't need to plan. Any full prepared spellcaster, especially wizards, can throw 100% of their skill points and feats away and still be effective. Banning planning just makes life relatively harder for the fighting types.
Spoken like someone who's never played a Wizard.
Have you noticed that a lot of the people that say you have to plan to be effective are usually the same people who say published materials, like modules and scenarios, are too easy?
Are there any players out there who do not plan out their characters level progression?
I've grown tired of players who have every skill and feat planned to 20th level. It leaves no scope for the character to grow and develop because of the encounters and experiences they face.
A common example is the "I must wield one type of weapon and commit all my feats to it!" then a nice piece of gear is found and they PCs just sell it.
I'd love a game system where you don't know what you get at the next level, of course this would only work once per player per class.
Maybe a more gestalt approach would work. You build a base character who can fight and as she progresses in levels she seeks out things she'd like to do - become a mage, a rogue, join a church etc
Thoughts?
In my group there is one guy who plans a rough outline like when he is going to pick up a level of a PrC, another guy who plans more detailed but just through 6th or 7th, and the rest do not plan at all whatsoever.
+1 on D&D 3.5/PF enforcing planning due to limited resources, but this also occurs due to the restricted way classes and archetypes work. Once you choose one of these you have made a lot of other options permanently worse. Free or at least cheap retraining would help, but is not enough. Another big help would be to allow you to snag alternate class features with feats -- that is, make class features available more a la carte so that you aren't almost automatically hosed by archetype clash. Unfortunately, this doesn't really address class clash, which is harder to deal with and would require more changes, since in most cases loss of class levels to get other class levels really hurts, especially for spellcasting. This would be hard to fix without going to a full point buy system such as Hero or Mutants & Masterminds (by the way, a team-up between Paizo and Green Ronin could be really awesome). The combination of restrictions and limited resources makes the system really unforgiving of mistakes, so planning is essential unless you're so good at optimizing that you can do it and redo it on the fly.
I tend to have certain feats or goals that fit the character, but beyond those I tend to choose whatever makes sense at level up.
One thing I do a lot, though, is choose a single weapon and keep that for the whole campaign, upgrading it as I go. I'll often blow feats to get something like the 3.5 Ancestral Weapon feat to do it, too. It's just a personal quirk.
There are characters who don't need to plan. Any full prepared spellcaster, especially wizards, can throw 100% of their skill points and feats away and still be effective. Banning planning just makes life relatively harder for the fighting types.Spoken like someone who's never played a Wizard.
Have you noticed that a lot of the people that say you have to plan to be effective are usually the same people who say published materials, like modules and scenarios, are too easy?
Um, I have played wizards. You're wrong there. You can spend your feats and skills on stuff you find interesting rather than useful and still contribute to the game as often as the optimized magus. The magus can probably kill your character in such a case, but you're just as useful to the party.
You might find it useful or informative to look up the tier system.
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When some DMs see a PC who takes Weapon Focus (Falchion) and maybe Weapon Specialization (Falchion) their gut reaction is to drop a magic longsword and then get upset if the PC doesn't "grow with the story".
I always have a plan for my PC. Heck, I usually have two or three plans. I also have plans for dozens of PCs I'll probably never play. Some become NPCs. Some just adventure in the realm of theory.
The thought struck me that some similar complaints could be made about real life. Some people plan carefully, focus their efforts, and become specialists. Others are more spontaneous and just kind of "go with the flow".
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There's nothing wrong with planning your build, but you need to be able to adapt to the situations as they present themselves to optimize your build for the circumstances.
I'm currently playing a Half-Orc Wizard/Bloodrager going into Eldritch Knight. We're running through Mummy's Mask right now, so I picked up some good traits for it, snagged Heavy Flail as a bonus proficiency for thematic reasons and being a decent weapon, and have altered my spell selections ever so slightly accordingly for the scenario. I've utilized the retraining rules a fair bit to make sure that I am what our group needs, changing from a character focused on buffing his familiar to being a threat myself, mostly because at low levels we didn't have any bruisers capable of causing serious damage.
The game requires both planning and fluidity on the part of the player, and you typically can't build a successful character without both.
Skills and feats are one thing (not every one of them, but deciding you want X feat down the line and thinking what you need to do to get it is okay). The really sets me off is when people plan what items they "need" for some build they looked up and is completely crippled without them.
I think it is a bad idea to base a build around an item unless it is a weapon. Feats such as weapon focus(longsword) tend to assume you can reliably get one. If a GM runs a game where such a thing is unlikely then I would never choose that feat. Even if you get the weapon in his longsword rare campaign it could be sundered or stolen. Then you have a feat you can't use.
I plan out simply because I build so many different characters for so many different reasons.
However it's like having a game plan for your life when you are 18 -- sure it might be what you intend to do, but there is no guarantee that it's what you'll actually be doing when you are 30.
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There are characters who don't need to plan. Any full prepared spellcaster, especially wizards, can throw 100% of their skill points and feats away and still be effective. Banning planning just makes life relatively harder for the fighting types.
I would not state that as a universal truth. It really depends on the GM and how he runs his games. If the GM runs on easy mode then sure, but if he runs a moderately difficult or harder game then some planning could be required even if every feat or spell is not chosen in advance.
There are characters who don't need to plan. Any full prepared spellcaster, especially wizards, can throw 100% of their skill points and feats away and still be effective. Banning planning just makes life relatively harder for the fighting types.Spoken like someone who's never played a Wizard.
Have you noticed that a lot of the people that say you have to plan to be effective are usually the same people who say published materials, like modules and scenarios, are too easy?
Actually the common idea is that they are too easy for really optimized players and/or those with a high system mastery. That is different from saying they are overall to easy.
I am GM'ing two groups right now. One of them would stomp most AP's IMO, and the other would likely struggle.
There are characters who don't need to plan. Any full prepared spellcaster, especially wizards, can throw 100% of their skill points and feats away and still be effective. Banning planning just makes life relatively harder for the fighting types.Spoken like someone who's never played a Wizard.
Have you noticed that a lot of the people that say you have to plan to be effective are usually the same people who say published materials, like modules and scenarios, are too easy?
Actually the common idea is that they are too easy for really optimized players and/or those with a high system mastery. That is different from saying they are overall to easy.
I am GM'ing two groups right now. One of them would stomp most AP's IMO, and the other would likely struggle.
Quite. The difficulty curve on APs is generally aimed at casual players who only make the most baseline competent builds. The pregens/iconics are the sorts of characters APs are built around, because that's what the most profitable target audience. It's not like its hard for a GM with a highly optimized group to crank up the difficulty a couple notches. When I ran Rise of the Runelords for an optimized group I just added a few more goblins/ghouls/ogres/giants/whatever to battles that were supposed to be challenging.
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+1 for allowing free retraining.
Taking risks with non-optimal feats, etc. is much less of a gamble if you know that if the going gets too tough, you can switch around a feat at your next level-up.