|
It's no secret that casters in Pathfinder have access to a plethora of spells that can make skills almost completely obsolete. There are spells that grant swim speeds and climb speeds, which are basically grant auto-success in most instances by granting +8 and the ability to take-10 in almost all conditions, even those that would normally prevent doing so. Fly ends up completely negating climb in all but contrived stormy weather (which would also make climbing difficult be making the climbing surface wet). Tongues and to a lesser extent Comprehend Languages largely invalidate the Linguistics skill.
One house rule I'm considering is removing spells like these to make investment in such skills potentially much more useful as it would be much more difficult to solve problems when "I rest 8 hours then spend 1 studying" does not give a resolution.
I'm wondering if there are any other spells which have this particular impact on the game, and if long-range teleportation spells or certain divination spells should be included as well.
Alternatively, I could increase the spell level at which certain spells can be used.
Please ignore me, because I'm not answering the question.
But, as a player: utility is one of the primary reasons to play a wizard (and one of the fun things about it). I like having a scroll of comprehend languages, detect traps, knock, fly, that's part of the fun. Those are options I have, choices I can make.
Does a player successfully climbing down a pit grumble if my witch can feather fall down it without a climb check? Maybe. If he grumbles in character, and I snark back in character, then fun was had. And in the middle of a fight, sure, I could fly around, but does it matter if I can skip that climb check and get to that upper level? Maybe not. Maybe the player doing the climbing needs to do it and I'm doing something else. I can't be everywhere at once (at least not at this level, mu-hu-hahahah!)
If he genuinely feels cheated as a player, and we change the game to fix that, we'll run into another problem. Will my witch be able to climb that wall without falling to his death? Maybe not. Of course, I could play a small race and make the big, strong fighter carry me on his back, but now I still don't have to make the climb check and we have the same scene. He grumbles, I snark, fun is had.
To answer the question, sure, there's lots of spells that negate other choices. For instance, several crowd control spells negate the need to have the fighter wade in and cleave a bunch of mooks. Do we need to take away that option for the fighter to have fun?
Case(s) in point, last weekend, fighting a souped-up GM goblinoid race in a fort, they have the high ground, cover, artillery and magic. At one point, a group storms our "front line". It's my witch's turn. Should I cast cloudkill on the approaching squad of (souped-up) goblins? No. Our new player, the Warpriest, will hold the line. He'll get to use his position, his cleave feat, and he can ding his weapon with that neat power Warpriests get to make sure he hits and kills. I will do something else (like attack the artillery or the wizards...) In the other case, maybe the Warpriest needs to be tanking somewhere else and I need to stop a wave of enemies from flanking our position - that's what the spell is for. It's not a question of *replacing*, it's a question of using resources well.
Later, the new trapfinder (Slayer! Go ACG!) did the trap sweep. I do have Find Traps prepared - because ever since the last rogue died (not in a trap) I've felt it was my duty to have a backup. Did I use it? No. I was busy examining a portal. She was being careful and taking 20 on some parts of a ruined fort. The spell would have run out before I could check half of them (and didn't I say: I was busy doing knowledge checks on interesting holes in reality). Now, with that same witch, while we were trapfinderless, I cast Find Traps two times over the course of three sessions. There were still traps I didn't find that went off (because I'm not a dedicated trapfinder, and I was busy doing something else when someone touched something they shouldn't have!).
tl/dr: the existence of utility spells allow wizards to play useful when needed, but they are no substitute for actually skilled characters using skills in a well-designed adventure. If you reduce magic in this way, eh, I'd rather play a rogue.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If you reduce magic in this way, eh, I'd rather play a rogue.
I believe that is the point.
OP: I think you'll find a strong backlash when it comes to removing/limiting spells in this way from your players, as seen above. If you don't have a backlash, chances are you never needed to limit them in the first place because your players already understand that there is a line.
Instead of trying to limit these classes in an artificial manner, why not just ban all tier 1 and 2? Easier to do, easier to balance, less arguments.
Wow, I feel like I just stepped on a venemous snake.
Clockstomper, what then would you suggest in a campaign to increase the value of having characters with genuine investment in skills that very often can be sidelined by spells?
I certainly wasn't trying to hiss... I was simply saying that I don't think this is so much a problem of what spells are available in the game as to how players are challenged.
The easy magic is in the word "often". In the same way that a wizard can blow out a room of mooks with one spell (one action), and a fighter cannot - it's balanced by the fact that there's that spell and that's it. The fighter can keep swinging that sword on the other room. So if there's only room, the fighter doesn't get to play.
It's the same thing with skills. Sure, many skills can be replaced, but that doesn't mean that any one wizard in any one game can replace all of them.... if they can, then the problem is likely that the wizard player, for some reason, isn't being challenged to make choices. If there's a rogue, the wizard shouldn't be being a rogue. He should be doing something else.
I've GMd for lots of different party make ups (and I've made my share of mistakes trying to challenge them appropriately, believe me). I've prepared huge trap heavy dungeons and not have the rogue player show up. You know what I do in that case? I pretend some of the traps aren't there and I make complex tricks I've invented rely on some other checks (like intelligence checks or etc.) that the party can somehow figure out/etc...
But here's my strategy: look at the character sheets, see what players invest in and build those things into encounters. I had a Zen Archer monk who put a lot in Acrobatics (for jump checks). Many maps specifically had outcroppings, chasms, platforms, partial roofs, etc., so that this character could jump over or onto things as part of his tactical positioning. Someone having "Fly" in the party didn't matter because that character couldn't cast it on that Monk every fight all the time - so that skill was useful and flavorful to him a lot.
I put a lot of character interactions into adventures that don't make them straight fights. Fight four monsters? Boring. Fight four monsters in the middle of town, while they have a hostage, and you're trying to keep the tavern from sliding into a pit, etc. - that's going to take skills (anyone with Kn: Engineering, got a rope and block? Wedge that Earth Elemental in there...)
Worried your wizard can charm too many people? Well, he can't charm that whole angry mob outside. Your character with high diplomacy is going to do that (maybe the wizard or the bard has a fascinate that helps calm a few angry protestors - but the real check is on that diplomacy).
Worried your wizard can do all the traps? Well, you're in a malfunctioning laboratory, and the wizard is busy counterspelling all the wild magic with Spellcraft checks - but the only person who can stop that clockwork monstrosity of planar nonsense is the rogue - start disabling device - and if anyone in the party not fighting the monsters could please pick up that book and give me a linguistics check to get a +2 on my next disable...!
tl/dr: throw a complicated, difficult world at your players... give them chances to use those skills a lot, and make sure the players have enough to do that no one character - even the all powerful wizard - can hope to do (action economy!) Be creative, ask for lots of checks...Just make sure that one failed skill check isn't going to kill everybody... (which is the key to making traps interesting).
I share much as the original posters sentiments on this topic. Personally though, I don't like removing entire spell, so maybe a limit on max bonuses such as +1 per caster level so certain spells are less effective but not removed?
Removing these spells or altering their level won't adversely affect the game, regardless of what people claim. I've ran games with and without them depending on what we want to do with a particular campaign.
If your group is okay with it, by all means do so. Remember, what forum goers think isn't really important (no matter how much they think otherwise) - they're suggestions and occasional insights into potential issues. It is what sits well with you and your group that matters.
Just make sure you're removing, adding, or adjusting for the right reasons and don't be afraid to "retcon" the changes, particularly if you and your players find them problematic.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Wow, I feel like I just stepped on a venemous snake.
Clockstomper, what then would you suggest in a campaign to increase the value of having characters with genuine investment in skills that very often can be sidelined by spells?
My characters invest in skills so their spells can be used for more important things.
While magic can solve many problems, it is a limited resource. If you're packing utility spells, you're giving up something else.
My suggestion to increase the value of skills, get rid of the 15 minute adventuring day. The more a character has to stretch his resources, the higher the value of unlimited abilities.
My characters invest in skills so their spells can be used for more important things.
While magic can solve many problems, it is a limited resource. If you're packing utility spells, you're giving up something else.
My suggestion to increase the value of skills, get rid of the 15 minute adventuring day. The more a character has to stretch his resources, the higher the value of unlimited abilities.
This.
In a perfect world PCs would get 8 hours of rest after every single encounter. That however is completely infeasible in anything even remotely resembling a real world. You never know what's going to come up when. In a "realistic" world casters should always be running in "ammo conservation" mode. Only casting a spell when they feel it's really necessary.
Wow, I feel like I just stepped on a venemous snake.
Clockstomper, what then would you suggest in a campaign to increase the value of having characters with genuine investment in skills that very often can be sidelined by spells?
Longer adventuring days, more surprises, and an environment that discourages spellcasting. If absolutely necessary, steal or sunder the spell component pouch.
As you point out, the issue is "I rest 8 hours then spend 1 studying"; if you don't have eight hours to rest, you're stuck with the spells you have. Similarly, if you don't know going into the adventure that you're going to need a spider climb spell, you probably didn't think to prepare it. And, of course, if you need to be quiet, shouting "carthago delenda est!" in the necessary strong voice may not be tactically advisable.
I'm a huge opponent of the 15 minute adventuring day. Fixing that fixes most of the problems (IMHO) with unbalanced wizards, because it makes spells-per-day an actual limitation as it was designed to be.
As Artanthos points out, the opportunity cost for preparing a skill spell is often too high for a wizard to bother with it. If a wizard is using his precious spell slots to do something the rogue can do at-will, he's doing it wrong.
I think wands are the bigger problem because they give you the skill spells cheaply and in a way that does not encumber you. I've been brainstorming ways to remove wands entirely from my game.
I really disagree with the idea that spells are balanced by their infrequency if only because they aren't that infrequent. Most of the time the fighter will run out of hp before the wizard runs out spells. A possible fix to this would be to allow some classes to heal equal to their level after each combat, or just severely cut down on spell slots period to something like 2 per spell level. However that wouldn't get to the crux of the problem, which is a division of spotlight time. If you're saying the wizard is only able to be the problem solver a small fraction of the time you're creating a solution that isn't fun. You're giving one player permission to upstage the others in return for not having fun for the rest of the play session. That's bad game design and detrimental to collaborative storytelling.
I'd be in favor of removing all spells that give flat buffs to skills without doing anything else. However I think a better solution would be to allow spells to increase the utility of existing abilities. Say have the jump spell half the DC on all jump checks instead of just giving a flat bonus and count all jumps as having a running start. This results in a spell that allow joe shmoe to jump reasonably well and turns someone invested into acrobatics into a super smash brothers character. It keeps the spell as a strong utility option without invalidating either the wizard or the acrobat. Unfortunately such and approach will require going through and adjusting each and every spell on the list. Though at least for skill bonus spells halving the DCs is a fairly easy quick fix.
For another instance I'd have knock half the DC on unlocking any lock with a DC higher than 15 and simply automatically open any lock with an unlock DC 15 or lowwer.
I think wands are the bigger problem because they give you the skill spells cheaply and in a way that does not encumber you. I've been brainstorming ways to remove wands entirely from my game.
I think removing the 15 minutes adventuring day goes a long way to solving this problem as well. Wands aren't that cheap and if you start to rely on them to make the rogue bored, you'll run out long before the rogue runs out of skills.
I really disagree with the idea that spells are balanced by their infrequency if only because they aren't that infrequent. Most of the time the fighter will run out of hp before the wizard runs out spells.
Sounds like a problem with the fighter to me. Possibly investing in more survivability would be a good thing. And, again, if the fighter knows that she's not operating on a 15 minutes and then back to bed, that might provide some incentive to fight a little differently. (Groucho Marx: "From the day of our arrival we led an active life. The first morning saw us up at six, breakfasted, then back in bed at seven. This was our routine for the first three months. We finally got so we were back in bed at six-thirty.")
If you're saying the wizard is only able to be the problem solver a small fraction of the time you're creating a solution that isn't fun. You're giving one player permission to upstage the others in return for not having fun for the rest of the play session. That's bad game design and detrimental to collaborative storytelling.
I disagree. It's acknowledging that the wizard has to pick which problems to solve, which has been a traditional aspect of the caster classes since the 70s, since you don't have the spell slots to do everything. If you take fly, you can't take fireball. If you take overland flight, you can't take teleport, magic jar, or wall of force.
And if you're really worried about the fighter's survivability, maybe you should take the wall of force spell so you can protect the fighter and let the rogue climb walls if it's necessary to get into a high place.
I've honestly never run into 15-minute adventuring days. We roll until the gang is out of HP and healing magic and it's "rest, run away, or die" time.
Yeah, but the problem is that sometimes the gang is out of HP and healing magic at 6:30 in the morning. I remember one published adventure I ran where the party was advancing into the dungeon at the rate of -- literally -- one room every one to two days, because the party would nova ineffectively at the first sign of trouble, slam and wedge the door shut, and then try again the next morning.
Sounds like a problem with the fighter to me. Possibly investing in more survivability would be a good thing. And, again, if the fighter knows that she's not operating on a 15 minutes and then back to bed, that might provide some incentive to fight a little differently. (Groucho Marx: "From the day of our arrival we led an active life. The first morning saw us up at six, breakfasted, then back in bed at seven. This was our routine for the first three months. We finally got so we were back in bed at six-thirty.")
I can't tell if I roll with very bad fighter players or you roll with very bad wizard players.
Well with my group we do tend to roll with around 8~ encounters between rest points. Though I do design an occasional 16 to 20 encounter marathon location/dungeon. As they grow in levels the latter becomes more the norm than the former. Due to what people find fun and what is mutually agreed upon by the party we tend to have more focused casters (dread necro and the like) and bards than wizards and more path of war initiators and paladins than actual true blue fighters. All such classes are able to participate pretty evenly throughout the day even without having any sort of "15 minute work day". Occasionally we'll have someone take a fighter to qualify for some prestige class early or grab a wizard. In the former case the player's sustaining power always seems to come from sources other than fighter like selecting a weapon with life stealing, a prestige class, or the bard's wands of cure. The wizard on the other hand always seems to cause problems either by having story breaking spells like teleport or character invalidating spells like knock.
By level 10 that wiard has 22 spells per day. Which means that he has more than enough on a short (8 encounter) day to burn through spells like it was nothing and on long days simply prepares spells most suited to loner engagements like summoning, longer duration spells, spells with multiple charges, or battlefield control spells. Now as the GM I have the option of springing something completely unexpected on the players. From time to time their info is just completely wrong, divinations were misled, informants lied, and bases were disguised. Usually only some of their information is wrong, but from time to time all of it is. Almost 100% of the time it is the non-wizards who are harmed most by this. They tend to feel the tension and dwindling resources in a trapped situation, but the wizard doesn't have to care. He's breaking the mood of the story simply by having safe reliable solutions to problems at all times just by using his class as intended.
Now in general the wizard players and I just talk over the issues and they change up their class to something with a similar feel and it fixes the problem. Which is why I really like the occultist having only up to 6th level spells and in general being a toned down wizard.
It just feels like there is a different more permissive design philosophy for wizard spells than for all other elements of the game. It's irritating that with a few exceptions fighter-exclusive feats like weapon specialization aren't as strong as a new spell level. With the way they're sectioned off greater weapon focus should affect a fighter's overall performance as much as getting 4th level spells affects a wizards. This simply is not the case. Getting a +1 to hit is something that is shamefully bad and replicated by permanencying a single first level spell.
I really disagree with the idea that spells are balanced by their infrequency if only because they aren't that infrequent. Most of the time the fighter will run out of hp before the wizard runs out spells. A possible fix to this would be to allow some classes to heal equal to their level after each combat, or just severely cut down on spell slots period to something like 2 per spell level. However that wouldn't get to the crux of the problem, which is a division of spotlight time. If you're saying the wizard is only able to be the problem solver a small fraction of the time you're creating a solution that isn't fun. You're giving one player permission to upstage the others in return for not having fun for the rest of the play session. That's bad game design and detrimental to collaborative storytelling.
Breaking the healing economy to fix a spherical cow scenario sounds like a really awful idea.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
spherical cow scenario sounds like a really awful idea.
Why is it that every time someone brings up legitimate criticisms of the game they are accused of not playing the game? I play pathfinder on average twice a week, almost exclusively as a GM. I don't build my games to cater to this mythical "15-minute workday" that is bandied about as the drug of these darn kids not playing RPGs right. Running a game that is enjoyable for all your players can be hard, and I'd appreciate it if the system wasn't working against me.
The healing economy won't be broken by giving fighters and barbarians a bit of sustain. Besides wasn't that whole article about how the sacredness of balance was unimportant. Relax and ignore any mechanical implications becuase that makes you a filthy wargamer.
spherical cow scenario sounds like a really awful idea.Why is it that every time someone brings up legitimate criticisms of the game they are accused of not playing the game?
Possibly because the criticisms aren't seen as legitimate. Indeed, that was one of the points of the cited article, that (e.g.) "Irrational Spotlight Jealousy" (among others) is not a legitimate criticism. But that's also exactly what you were indulging in earlier: "You're giving one player permission to upstage the others in return for not having fun for the rest of the play session. That's bad game design and detrimental to collaborative storytelling."
Why is it that every time someone brings up legitimate criticisms of the game they are accused of not playing the game?
I made no such accusation. On that note, playing the game doesn't necessarily mean you understand it. I played Pathfinder for only a couple of years, and yet I understand its core mechanics better than some people who have played D&D games for nearly a decade. I'm not implying they're stupid or anything. This is because you don't have to be a game designer to know how to play the game for the same reason a person doesn't need engineering experience to drive a car or change a tire.
This holds true for gamemastering as well. The rules don't tell the gamemaster how the game works under the hood. It simply gives guidelines on how to run it. The CR system serves as an example of this. CR merely gives the GM a tool on how to measure the difficulty of an encounter with the rules providing recommended CRs without explaining how the game designers arrived to those recommendations.
Besides wasn't that whole article about how the sacredness of balance was unimportant.
That's not the argument Justin Alexander makes in that article. He argues that a flawed a problem statement leads to a flawed solution that lead to bad and unintended consequences, especially if the designer takes a heavy-handed approach to solving the problem.
Relax and ignore any mechanical implications becuase that makes you a filthy wargamer.
Making mechanical changes to fix a problem and ignoring the mechanical implications sounds like an unwise approach to game design.
Except that is a legitimate problem in my experience as a GM. When a player spends five times as long on their turn because of summons, or accidentally turns out to completely invalidate another with one spell it's definitely causing people to have less fun. Just because a blog post says the problem doesn't exist doesn't make it so.
No offense to Justin Alexander but most of the article is bunk. Knock is a single spell off of a wizard's spell list at 2nd level, a slot that isn't very valuable in high level play in the first place. Disable Device checks are a representation of several skill points which the rogue only gets 20 times in their entire career. It's only a problem that consumes no resources if the rogue has already invested into disable device. Same thing with tongues, it's free for the bard if one assumes he already has spent points on linguistics for this very specific language. It's like calling water from a well you purchased free. While that is technically true in turns of immediate cost you still paid for the well to be dug in the first place. Why must the rogue invest a finite permanent resource into something that a wizard can do just as well or better using a finite but easily renewable resource?
It all has to do with valuing spellslot too highly in design compared to skill points and feats. You have absurd things like the overhead chop feat from the playtest being deemed too strong and turned into an archtype power. Now admittedly Paizo has gotten much better at balance as time has gone on. Take the Advanced Class Guide for instance. It has ten new classes only one of which really has any balance problems and that's due to it's use of the wizard/sorcerer spell list.
I made no such accusation. On that note, playing the game doesn't necessarily mean you understand it. I played Pathfinder for only a couple of years, and yet I understand its core mechanics better than some people who have played D&D games for nearly a decade. I'm not implying they're stupid or anything. This is because you don't have to be a game designer to know how to play the game for the same reason a person doesn't need engineering experience to drive a car or change a tire.
This holds true for gamemastering as well. The rules don't tell the gamemaster how the game works under the hood. It simply gives guidelines on how to run it. The CR system serves as an example of this. CR merely gives the GM a tool on how to measure the difficulty of an encounter with the rules providing recommended CRs without explaining how the game designers arrived to those recommendations.
CR is a good example of a part of the ruleset that isn't exactly great. It's very vague and shows how difficult it is to balance an encounter. You're completely right that adhering to it as gospel is wrong.
That's not the argument Justin Alexander makes in that article. He argues that a flawed a problem statement leads to a flawed solution that lead to bad and unintended consequences, especially if the designer takes a heavy-handed approach to solving the problem.
I think a part of the problem is that he is making this argument but uses 4th edition D&D as a starting point. 4th edition is one of the most mechanically sound combat heavy games on the market. It's just that it's focused way too narrowly for some people's tastes. Thus it's playtesting worked in producing what was desired, but what the company desired wasn't necessarily what the customers wanted. That's a failure of market research not a failure of design or playtesting.
Making mechanical changes to fix a problem and ignoring the mechanical implications sounds like an unwise approach to game design.
That is completely true. Though I play with Path of War, Tome of Battle, and other books that allow for similar self healing by the martial types. It works really well and still can lead to resource shortages in tense siege scenarios. The only real difference is that the martials hp isn't dangerously low until the gunslinger is running out of grit, the alchemist is running out of bombs, and the bard is running out of spells. All of this without another party member using all their available spells as a heal sponge.
I'm afraid doing this would just take too much work. There are two many workarounds in the magic system. For instance, you can ghetto fly with summon monster 2 and a buffed air elemental.
If you want wizards and sorcerers to do nothing other than blast, then you will need to buff their damage, because their spell damage isn't really competitive.
It's no secret that casters in Pathfinder have access to a plethora of spells that can make skills almost completely obsolete. There are spells that grant swim speeds and climb speeds, which are basically grant auto-success in most instances by granting +8 and the ability to take-10 in almost all conditions, even those that would normally prevent doing so. Fly ends up completely negating climb in all but contrived stormy weather (which would also make climbing difficult be making the climbing surface wet). Tongues and to a lesser extent Comprehend Languages largely invalidate the Linguistics skill.
One house rule I'm considering is removing spells like these to make investment in such skills potentially much more useful as it would be much more difficult to solve problems when "I rest 8 hours then spend 1 studying" does not give a resolution.
I'm wondering if there are any other spells which have this particular impact on the game, and if long-range teleportation spells or certain divination spells should be included as well.
Alternatively, I could increase the spell level at which certain spells can be used.
<@><@>
Ok, then do that :
Re-port back to use how it went.
...........................
Did more people rely on the rogue ??
Did the party Wizard Quit or change class ??
Did the party have more fun ??
Did the party just turn around and walk away from problem ??
Did the party hunker down, and find other way to do there class ??
Let know know how it went
Utility spells are generally low level (maybe 3?) and the caster level doesn't matter much, so quite cheap on scrolls. So a wizard isn't often going to run out of Knock, Spider Climb, Detect Secret Doors, Levitate and so on.
Quite honestly, I'd just concentrate on making skills better, especially for skillmonkey classes, especially rogues. You can certainly nerf a few spells or bump them up a level, but that's not tackling the root problem.
Here is my take on utility spells. I hate them. I'm with the OP and feel they are a cop out and part of why we have seen such an imbalance creep in the D20 system. Ok. That said, there were a couple of others that pointed out something REALLY significant: Not everyone has the extra skill points necessary to ensure that really needed skills would be available to everyone. Example: a team of SF / Rangers / Navy Seals would all have certain skills for a recon team or fire team.
The other side of the argument however would be is it fair to assume that 4 - 6 members of completely different classes even SHOULD have such a similar skill set?
My answer i used in the campaign was #1) I completely BANNED generalist spell casters for being too versatile and making everyone else obsolete. Specialize or play something else. #2) Keep in mind that caster run out of spell #3) limit the amount of item creation feats available #4) limit the amount of single use magic items like potions, scrolls, etc that are commonly found in the campaign world #5) campaign assumption: there are FAR FEWER Casters in the world (especially so with Arcane users) #6) campaign was based on E10 #7) adjust encounters so you are not throwing monsters and crap at the players that they cant over come, such as a ghost only hit by Ghost Touch weapons and Force spells but none of these effects are available in the campaign.
In the end, what I found happened was the Caster classes could still completely outshine the rogue (or whomever) but they were very limited by how often they could do so vs how much spell power they had. Conserve spell power and focus on your area of specialization and they are amaze-balls! Try to be a walking walmart of one off answers to every problem in the world, well...not so much.