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What is thine favorite starting level in Pathfinder?
Unrelatedly, hast thy magnificent mind utilized Spheres of Power yet? What doth thy think of it?
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A good reference for breasts,
Here
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Those look great, much better than the previous ones.
Thanks! I'm trying! (6-6)
What is thine favorite starting level in Pathfinder?
1st, typically. Though up to 3rd is a pretty good point if everyone's fine with it (gives some leeway with CR-adjusted races and/or multiclassing to fit a concept). I usually run with a house rule that gives 1st level PCs a little more HP-padding which makes it less of a drag.
Unrelatedly, hast thy magnificent mind utilized Spheres of Power yet? What doth thy think of it?
Y'know, I keep hearing about how great it is but I haven't actually seen it yet. :o
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In other news, I'm both excited and terrified by the new WoW expansion. Disc priest is my eternal waifu, and they're not even real healers anymore. O_o
But they look so...interesting. ($_$)
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Unrelatedly, hast thy magnificent mind utilized Spheres of Power yet? What doth thy think of it?Y'know, I keep hearing about how great it is but I haven't actually seen it yet. :o
What about Path of War?
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My players use Path of War a lot, but I don't use them much myself (mostly because with the various recovery mechanics and all the extra abilities and such, I don't find PoW to be very GM-friendly from a standpoint of building NPCs, though a splash isn't so bad). All in all, I think it's a great addition to the game from what I've seen of it, and the mechanics generally seem quite fun.
I feel it's burst damage potential is reaaaally strong at low levels but honestly, that's one of the issues with the way damage vs HP scales at low levels and isn't strictly an issue with PoW.
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Have your players ever destroyed a city? Set one on fire? Turned everyone into undead zombies?
Basically, have your players ever lived long enough to see themselves become the BBEGs?
Have your players ever destroyed a city? Set one on fire? Turned everyone into undead zombies?
Yes.
Yes.No.
Basically, have your players ever lived long enough to see themselves become the BBEGs?
Sort of. In one game, I had a player who started wanting to be a true neutral worshipper of Mystra, wanting to wield the shawdow weave to eventually turn the shadow weave over to Mystra. He wasn't a pleasant character (intentionally a little off-putting, though not explicitly cruel or villainous), but the player had some... surprising... hang-ups about alignment and how PCs interact with each other.
He eventually went evil by:
1) robbing a bank they were supposed to help
2) making undead (and later accidentally unleashing them)
3) consorting with evil spirits
4) thoughtlessly opening a gate to elemental air at the bottom of the ocean and, upon realizing his mistake... left (and left it open)
5) returning to the mansion of the governor who'd originally press-ganged them (evil governor) and sank his mansion (and anyone in it) under the earth... then sealed it over with rock... then sank the rock and mansion, and put up a new house and garden over top.
6) Hire Thayan torturers and reprogrammers to turn a former Sharran into a devout Mystran
By this point, I informed him that he'd headed pretty directly for evil town (he'd done other questionable or evil things, but those didn't actually involve mass criminal negligence, assaulting their allies, or directly aiding evil entities in evil goals for self-gain). He ran some divinations and found out Mystra was displeased. So he (on his own) decided to go to Halruaa and repent there. Though suspicious, the Halruaans were eventually able to prove his sincerity,
So... he heads to the Lawful Good country and swears to prove his sincerity to the LG ruler, and LG cleric of the LG church. He spends 10 years doing an epic project , and recieves an atonement from the LG people and becomes lawful good - and the player lets out a 'Vader-like "Nnnooooooooooo~!" - he somehow hadn't realized that he'd become lawful good. He sulked for a few adventures, the , against my advice, decided to do extreme actions to "regain" his TN alignment. I informed him that if he just acted TN, he'd get there, but no: he decided to CE it up to become TN, which I informed him wouldn't work.
He quickly became CE, what with the
1) murder,
2) waging war against a city by summoning extra planar mercenaries and defaulting on the payment (leaving them to take it out by conquering the city); swaying an ancient red wyrm to attack the city; enticing Githyanki to attack the city; and then sealing all three into the city together, appearing that it was the fault of the other and/or ruler of the city,
3) assistance lent to the clerics of Cyric
4) abandonment of his own followers
5) eventual, "Oh, yeah; I guess I really am evil, now: whoops." realization, followed by immediate conversion to Cyric
Interestingly, despite his terrible deeds, he never actually directly opposed the other PCs, and often helped them, up until the incident with Cyric; at that point, he just left to be a Cyricist, while the party worked on damage control. The player found him "Too evil." and abandoned the character for a slightly-corrupted (LN) hound archon cleric obsessed with a spell that punished non-good people (and sent evil people directly to Hell). This Hound Archon never fully geled with the rest of the party, and, incidentally, effectively ended up in opposition to the original wizard character's goals, though it seemed like (due to campaign events not directly related to the hound archon) it was a trio of original party members.
That Trio eventually did start more directly opposing the now-evil wizard, and their denouement had them (having settled the forests near the Anauroch, and becoming the defacto rulers there) setting out to stop the wizard once and for all.
The wizard's denouement (based on things the player had incidentally set up loooooonnnng ago, without having the trio in mind specifically) basically defeated them, but before they could be destroyed, he, himself, was destroyed by the Hound Archon, with its iconic line to baddies everywhere, "Are you a sinner?" followed rather immediately by the wizard blowing a save and being eternally condemned. (Not-so-coincidentally, that was the Hound Archon's denouement as well.)
In future campaigns, it turned out that the wizard had been broken and, in the end, traded off to the one creature he'd always hated more than anything: Shar. His mate and son had successfully hidden from his searches to trade their souls to Shar for his own freedom.
The Hound Archon hasn't made a reappearance, but he's hypothetically out there, somewhere, unless he was obliterated. The trio have only been mentioned in passing, but they successfully returned to their forests, and have gone on more than a few mythical adventures since then: they have all three become gods in their own right (though one is faking which deity, exactly, he is - he used to be faking two of them, until his illusion managed to "resurrect" as the real thing due to worship).
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Have your players ever destroyed a city? Set one on fire? Turned everyone into undead zombies?
Basically, have your players ever lived long enough to see themselves become the BBEGs?
Now that you mention it, no, I don't think any ever have. They have created cities before. In fact, years ago, my 12yo brother was playing a kobold sorcerer who became a lich, and then built a city for civilized monstrous humanoids (his kobold people he freed, a bunch of lizardfolk, goblins, orcs, etc). He also grew himself a family in a lab. :P
Can't recall them destroying any cities though.
As for becoming the BBEG, I don't remember any incidents like that off the top of my head.
Have your players ever destroyed a city? Set one on fire? Turned everyone into undead zombies?
Basically, have your players ever lived long enough to see themselves become the BBEGs?
Now that you mention it, no, I don't think any ever have. They have created cities before. In fact, years ago, my 12yo brother was playing a kobold sorcerer who became a lich, and then built a city for civilized monstrous humanoids (his kobold people he freed, a bunch of lizardfolk, goblins, orcs, etc). He also grew himself a family in a lab. :P
Can't recall them destroying any cities though.
As for becoming the BBEG, I don't remember any incidents like that off the top of my head.
I know you've mentioned it before, but do you have any more info on that city? Any denouements? Have you ever considered placing that in future games set thereafter?
One of the things we enjoy doing in a coherent, singular Campaign Setting is sprinkling references to our own various games - even direct overlap from previous ones.
ONE
- In FR, a game we played (3.X) used the Deities & Demigods rules to play as gods; one of which was an avatar of Pelor (in-character called his "daughter" - a unique semi-independent persona by Avatar ability, named Basha) who, via trickery of Vecna, was shunted into FR. The campaign centered around her gaining her own worshipers and establishing herself as a viable deity within this alien world, before she wasted away. One of the main complicating problems (and, naturally, there are complicating problems) is that she's a sun god(dess) of purity, light, and healing... who was tainted by shadow, darkness, and death via an artifact-trap created by Shar to ensnare new godlets from beyond and twist them into her image. Eventually, Basha became the primary Patron of Turmish (the place where she first manifested) and a strong influence in the Vilhoun Reach, and eventually became wife of Amaunator (Lathander when he was going through a phase).
- Later in FR, in a 4E game, we played a game starting in Turmish. Several of the PCs chose (for various reasons) Basha as a patron. At one point when they were learning about mythological events from a century or two prior, they were mildly surprised - and when one went to look it up "in the book" they were very surprised: they'd forgotten it was them! But regardless, Basha played a heavy role in that game (although, actually, her chosen Herald, a lawful good pit-fiend who's name is a really dirty swear, referred to by us all - and semi-officially in his texts - only as "Holy <BEEP>" was the "main" actor on the stage; Basha herself staying less in the limelight).
TWO
- In Golarion, we ran CoT as part of a long arc establishment of an ex-succubus named "Angel" as a lawful good demigod in Cheliax (and reincarnate queen of Westcrown), starting from back before Iomedae's rise. She became a supporter of Iomedae, and was accepted into the broader sphere of that deity's allies and servitors.
- We later ran a game in Taldor/Andoran region where a paladin of Iomedae had certain problems with a near-divine fiendish creature she'd only partially tamed, and needed help knowing the right thing to do. She was referred to Angel as an expert on such things, and together, they finished redeeming the creature (at least, insomuch as such a creature can be redeemed).
All that to ask: do you have similar moments in your games? Do you ever revisit settings years later? Recurring (N)PCs across games (one of ours is a tiefling merchant)?
If so, what and how?
(I'm also interested in anyone else - it's Ashiel's thread, but I like hearing stuff, and I'd love a reply - if Ash'd rather us not clutter up his, you could post it on mine or FaWtL or whatever. I love hearing peoples' stories!)
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I'd likely be the last person to complain that someone else was talking in my AMA thread. Stories are nice. :P
Awesome!
Have your players ever destroyed a city? Set one on fire? Turned everyone into undead zombies?
Basically, have your players ever lived long enough to see themselves become the BBEGs?
No, but I have! Well, half destroyed one, because I set it on fire. No zombies though.
It was my first game and I was playing Chaotic Stupid rogue and someone made the poor decision of giving me a necklace of fireballs. It was an orcish city, but either way, pretty bad. But this was also the campaign I died 19 times in, and at level 17 had a +2 weapon and the average sneak attack dice roll of 12 damage more than my 1d8+1. I also rolled 1d19 to hit. Rolls of 20 counted as a 19. Had +5 to all skills though.
Now lived long enough to be the BBEG? Maybe not. But I've accidentally done things worthy of it a lot. I have once accidentally killed ALL the vampires. And then all the undead and construct people and many of the magic peoples, and rekilled all the dragons. All by accident.
Spoilered cus LONG, and that was me cutting out ALOT too.
Now when we first met he handed me his other artifact, an intelligent wooden dagger made by the god of Nature and earth and fire, who really REALLY hates anything "unnatural". Undead being a big one, but especially vampires. This thing let's me sneak attack undead.
So after a long series of events trying to figure out where he went, me murdering a few things and handing the kid who has become the goddess of innocence and psionics to the god of pacifism for safe keeping after trying and failing to stop her from turning a house into a gingerbread house that provides free candy to little girls, I end up falling off a cliff and finding a lady in a forest devouring the flesh of some dead guy raw. See, she comes from a city where the living are second class citizens and she's hoping to be a ghoul and she wants to practice the whole eating the dead thing. My character takes immediate offense to this city and decides to follow along in secret and find out who's running this mess.
Turns out it's the vampire who my friend was controlled by. She's not in at her mansion though, just her consort and four guards and a bunch of servants, and a person locked in a room. So I sneak in, disguise as a maid and slip in the mess. When a guard catches the woman I met in the woods who's a made he beats her. And then doesn't survive the night. I hit on the idea that if I make the consort scared enough he might go running for his vampire lover and I can follow him there. So I start picking off guards, spooking him with warnings of someone lurking about and such. And in the basement I find, well. Blood. Of the gods. And outsiders which are real rare in this setting too.
Things were going well. And then before he runs off, she pops in, with my friend enthralled and in tow. I decide to play it cool and do chores while I figure things out. Turns out that she had some sorta command link to em all, so she had all the maids walk into a room, and slaughtered them all. One of the guards tried to stop her but she killed him too. Then my friend comes in and he recognises me and he fights me. I manage to slice him enough for him to run. So my covers blown and I figure right, she must expect me to run away now. I've got this one use summon idol from my high priest of the god of the Unnatural who I work for. So I crack it open and send the avatar of the god of the unnatural after her, turn invisible and follow after.
She sees it and just seems amused, like it's no big deal and starts tearing into it easily. And then I death attack her from behind. Now this vampire? She's like 10 levels above me. She rolls a 1 on my artifact dagger. Now this artifact dagger is intelligent, and well. Special purpose kicks in.
She promptly ignites in white flame, screaming, and I'm like holy s*~~ yes. And then my friend bursts into flames. See, the ability this Artifact turns out to have, is that it doesn't just kill unnatural things. It kills all the unnatural things it spawned. And I just ganked the first vampire. Needless to say, wasn't thrilled. My character... Took that really hard. He went in to save the day, and in his mind he saved no one. He manages to get a hold of all the blood and bails out before the entire city is sucked into the realm of Chaos by the crazy magic god.
So all put out and miserable he decides to head for this lake which eternally has a giant storm and huge roiling waves in it that anything that goes on the water gets sucked to the bottom never to be seen again. The bloods too dangerous and my characters found out his memory is decaying and he might not even be a person anymore soon. So he figures what better way to spend his last time walking to the bottom of the lake and guarding this crap til he's just a zombie. A traveller joins him on the way, and manages to convince him to just pitch the blood bags in the drink instead of going in.
Good idea in theory. Problem is, the god of insanity kinda reaaaally likes my character, and really hates the other gods. And I'm right beside the god of traveller's right now. So he grabs the blood bag before it hits the water. He spouts off all sorts of crazy plans and then something goes all ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL on him and makes him dump all the blood in the lake, ending all the storms. And then rips the soul out of the god of travel and leaves in a snit over being controlled (The god of arcane magic pretends he's Death. He is not. Death kinda hates him. A lot.).
It reveals an island, I swim out there through the blood and get chatting with the rest of the gods there and inform them what just happened (The gods are ex-mortals in this setting and are definitely not omniscient). I end up leaving after to figure out what to and get kidnapped by a Retriever. Long story short I end up alive again though retaining dead traits and end up fighting a white dragon. Dragons are supposed to be extinct. Somehow I win and kinda turns out well, swimming through a giant pool of deific, angelic and fiendish blood has ascension related side effects.
I end up having to break friends out of an antimagic prison, and discover something is ripping invisible holes between our dimension and the plane of chaos which is letting dragons through and causing random mutations. End up a woman for awhile among other things. Recover the half of the soul of the high priestess I lost to the god of magic and convince him to let me help solve this as turns out the Plane of Chaos is also the plane of magic and is attempting to devour the universe it spawned.
So I get in there. And through pure chance, I end up with control of the entire plane of magic. It does not appreciate being controlled and starts taking everything I say literally. It ends up throwing me several miles in the air and I did a very bad idea. I told it: "Stop that."
So it did. It stopped magic. And flung me back out of it. And without magic... Well. I killed all the things depending on magic to live. All the undead I saved and who were my friends, the warforged type people, I killed them all.
He eventually fixed it and saved the world by pointing out to Chaos that instead of making everything rejoin it to be whole, it could just fuze itself with the existence it made to be whole. The character went on to become the God of Assassins, Shadows and Martyrs, and fell into a state of crippling depression and self doubt after all the deaths he caused of everyone he knew. In his eyes he only saved the once High Priestess of the god of magic, now high priestess of himself, and his wife. He's so down he thinks himself bad as the goddess of Sin.
And such was how I wiped out entire species with a good aligned character by accident. Annnnd sorta caused the creation of like millions of new ones due to the sudden super high saturation of magic in the world. Displacer Beasts for all! And the insane fallout that came after. But that's a diffrent story.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Even if you're not a U.S. citizen, have an awesome day!
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Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Even if you're not a U.S. citizen, have an awesome day!
Ditto!
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Happy 4th of July everyone!
That is not Freedom Harpy. That is not Freedom Harpy at all.
This is superior.| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Happy 4th of July everyone!That is not Freedom Harpy. That is not Freedom Harpy at all.
This is superior.
I've never been as proud to be an American as in this moment. (o_o)
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Have you ever had players who (wherever intentionally or unintentionally) cheated? What did you do about it?
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Have you ever had players who (wherever intentionally or unintentionally) cheated? What did you do about it?
Yes, a few times. I solved it by explaining that each time I caught someone cheating, I would cheat for the NPCs (auto-crit, roll max damage, get a DC increased by 10, or suddenly double in HP, or some other bulls***). Cheating stopped. :)
Usually after I've played a few games with people who've had a habit of cheating, they'll quickly learn that as a GM I abhor cheating and won't do it unless they invoke it by cheating. Turns out, a lot of players are surprised that I won't cheat for or against them by default. So many people have this mindset that the GM is expected to cheat, that I feel like the desire to cheat as a player often stems from this innate sense of unfairness (though at least one player just tried to cheat at everything we played).
But yeah, essentially each time someone cheated, I'd blatantly cheat against them and tell them up front why. And they didn't have any grounds to stand on because it was their fault and everyone knew it.
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Oh, I just realized you also mentioned accidental cheating. I just explained what was the correct way to do something and helped them fix it. It's part of teaching. I made tons of mistakes when I first started as well, it's part of learning.
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What do you think about dropping Craft Wondrous Item as a feat altogether and replacing it's functionality with Craft skill? E.g. Craft(cloth&leather) could be used to make magical boots/clothes/leather armor/anything else out of soft materials, as long as you have, say, 5+ ranks in it. All crafting skills could be used to make items for all slots, but could have bonuses and maluses depending on the skill in question(say, one related to metal would make heavier, but sturdier items, while one related to painting/inscribing runes could give faster crafting times, but magical items produced with it could be easier to damage, and so on)
That's just an idea I had, it's still a bit underdeveloped.
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2 questions,
Have you ever had a player with such bad luck that they roll 6 times more fumbles than d20 rolls of 15+? (I have, literally)
Asking as a designer, what would you like to see changed about d20 and why?
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2 questions,
Have you ever had a player with such bad luck that they roll 6 times more fumbles than d20 rolls of 15+? (I have, literally)
Asking as a designer, what would you like to see changed about d20 and why?
Welcome to the fumble club. I lost my first character to a combination of that and paladin being a jerk.
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What do you think about dropping Craft Wondrous Item as a feat altogether and replacing it's functionality with Craft skill? E.g. Craft(cloth&leather) could be used to make magical boots/clothes/leather armor/anything else out of soft materials, as long as you have, say, 5+ ranks in it. All crafting skills could be used to make items for all slots, but could have bonuses and maluses depending on the skill in question(say, one related to metal would make heavier, but sturdier items, while one related to painting/inscribing runes could give faster crafting times, but magical items produced with it could be easier to damage, and so on)
That's just an idea I had, it's still a bit underdeveloped.
I think pretty highly of it. In a home campaign I was running on MapTools, I axed all the item creation feats entirely and just gave their benefits to anyone with craft/spellcraft skills.
In D20 Legends, I intend to revisit the crafting mechanics to do much the same. Currently I'm intending to write it so that enhancement bonuses from items stem from the item itself (so you could have things like +5 nonmagical swords, or +0 flaming swords), whereas magical effects (like flaming or ghost touch would be magical improvements).
This does imply that weapons & armor would have two different cost tracks (base cost vs magic cost) but I project that it will make the prospect of having cool flashy abilities on your weapons more palatable, since the cost for improving your static modifiers would be separate from the cost of improving your magic abilities (so instead of a +3 flaming weapon being treated as a +4 weapon for cost, you'd instead have the cost of a +3 weapon and the cost of a +1 weapon, which is cheaper).
I've not worked on d20 legends much lately but I'm supposed to be getting some extra time off soonish, so I'm going to attempt to get more writing / drawing done. But first...shower time!
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2 questions,
Have you ever had a player with such bad luck that they roll 6 times more fumbles than d20 rolls of 15+? (I have, literally)
Not sure, but I've seen some pretty terrible luck. :P
Asking as a designer, what would you like to see changed about d20 and why?
On one hand, so little, on the other, so much.
Major things include changes to the combat system and feats that support it, to stop making things hard for martials. The 5ft-step/full-attack prison must be torn down.
Minor things are scattered about. Generally, removing forced fluff is a big deal. There's a surprising amount of things that are hard-coded into the system that really shouldn't be (such as clerics preparing spells at certain times of the day) or isn't accounted for at all (the core magic rules are highly specific to certain classes so there are small missing gaps for each additional casting class not mentioned).
Hey, speaking of enhancements: fighters treating their equipment as if it were "+X" based on their level, regardless of whether or not it's great or crap: yes? No? Maybe?
I'm thinking of adding that into my own rewrite of the fighter chassis - basically, the fighter gets better at using weapons and armor, and those things get better because the fighter is just that awesome.
Also, making weapon training apply to all weapons equally (instead of iterative lower values) - basically making weapon training into enhancement bonuses. While this does lower some of their attack value, for most values of play, I don't think that will be that much of a deal. Miiiiiiiggt be for your table, though. I'm still tinkering with the idea, however, I'm curious what you think.
One variant concept is granting them "+X" at every four levels and allowing it to stack with weapon training. Either way, with "+X" they get better at bypassing DR, hardness, and all that jazz; at every 4th levels, they've still got reason to prize prepare magic stuff, and so on.
Even if it's baked into the crafting mechanics, this might help d20 legends... I don't know. :)
Hey, speaking of enhancements: fighters treating their equipment as if it were "+X" based on their level, regardless of whether or not it's great or crap: yes? No? Maybe?
I'm thinking of adding that into my own rewrite of the fighter chassis - basically, the fighter gets better at using weapons and armor, and those things get better because the fighter is just that awesome.
Also, making weapon training apply to all weapons equally (instead of iterative lower values) - basically making weapon training into enhancement bonuses. While this does lower some of their attack value, for most values of play, I don't think that will be that much of a deal. Miiiiiiiggt be for your table, though. I'm still tinkering with the idea, however, I'm curious what you think.
It would actually reduce their effectiveness in any sort of competent party, which hurts badly because Fighters are already pretty terrible when it comes to team play. In a traditional party (where you've got a some spellcasters) you'll have access to things like greater magic weapon at the very least (clerics and mages get this) and potentially magic vestment (clerics get this), which is a good way of ensuring that even if you can't keep the latest and greatest enhancement bonuses you won't fall behind.
If we make weapon training an enhancement bonus, it wouldn't stack with any cool magic shwag or even masterwork weapons. Oddly, it would place the Fighter who is the most gear-dependent class who's eyes light up when they find magic sharp sticks and make it so that they're better off carrying around tons of mundane gear in most cases, which might be cool for a few concepts (like some sort of super muggle) but it seems odd that the guy who's supposed to really rock with weapons doesn't improve at all when he finds better weapons.
It also places him farther behind the usual suspects, since paladins, barbarians, and rangers still get the benefits of their class features plus enhancement bonuses (and at they can even supply their own enhancement bonuses more often than not).
If your intent is to make them have an easier time bypassing DR, why not just allow them to pierce 5 points of DR / weapon training bonus, or 1 point of DR/- per point? :)
It would make fighters less reliant on golf-bagging lots of exotic materials as well, since most creatures only have DR than ranges between 5-15, which means by mid levels the Fighter wouldn't really care if he was fighting demons, devils, or dragons, everything cuts the same.
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...the Fighter wouldn't really care if he was fighting demons, devils, or dragons, everything cuts the same.
This should be the cornerstone of the Fighter design philosophy. Maybe Paladins are better vs Evil, and Barbarians are better in spurts, but for a Fighter... everything cuts the same.
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...the Fighter wouldn't really care if he was fighting demons, devils, or dragons, everything cuts the same.This should be the cornerstone of the Fighter design philosophy. Maybe Paladins are better vs Evil, and Barbarians are better in spurts, but for a Fighter... everything cuts the same.
Well, kinda. Fighters still need something that allows them to rev-up in a major battle. Their inability to pace themselves is one of their greatest design flaws IMHO. If you look at all of the competent / better designed classes, they're very flexible in terms of pacing. For example, a party consisting of a Cleric, Bard, Wizard, and Ranger will be comfortable during a game where they have 20 battles before rest, 10 battles, 5 battles, or 1 battle, because they can pace themselves or pull out the big guns if they're in a dire situation (such as a single massive ambush where they're grossly outnumbered and have to fight the BBEG and his champions at once).
Classes without the ability to pace themselves have struggled to remain relevant in games that don't follow the 4 ecounters/day baseline, looking good if the party is encountering tons of tiny encounters, and quickly falling behind as the encounters fall in number but rise in difficulty.
A wizard that spends 1 spell every combat for 10 combats, or spends 10 spells for one major combat has still cast 10 spells today. Same for things like Rage dumping, Smite-spamming, etc.
There's also the narrative aspect. Look at how lame Fighters are...
GM:
Paladin: "It may be, but before I rest, I will tear your black heart from your chest Salkovich!"
Ranger: "There will be no escape, Salkovich! I will hunt you to the ends of the earth, and the last thing you will hear is the sound of your soul be stolen by my blade!"
Barbarian: "The Gods will not stop me from what I'm going to do to you, and they will not dare look upon you when I'm finished!"
Cleric: "You're unworthy of the title of Dark Lord, and I've come to educate you on your failure. I can only comfort you with the knowledge that your final moments will be...delicious,"
Wizard: "I'd let you finish but..." *TRUMPETS* "I'm going to go on a second honeymoon with my husband whom I already rescued from your dungeon and replaced with an illusion. I just wanted you to know that when you die, my Night Hag is going to rip your soul from this world, and I'm going to consume it in the creation of a magical dildo that my husband is going to use to give me the diddling of a lifetime while we laugh at your failures."
GM:
Fighter: "By my righteous blade and steel, I'll end you, champion of darkness!"
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...the Fighter wouldn't really care if he was fighting demons, devils, or dragons, everything cuts the same.This should be the cornerstone of the Fighter design philosophy. Maybe Paladins are better vs Evil, and Barbarians are better in spurts, but for a Fighter... everything cuts the same.Well, kinda. Fighters still need something that allows them to rev-up in a major battle. Their inability to pace themselves is one of their greatest design flaws IMHO. If you look at all of the competent / better designed classes, they're very flexible in terms of pacing. For example, a party consisting of a Cleric, Bard, Wizard, and Ranger will be comfortable during a game where they have 20 battles before rest, 10 battles, 5 battles, or 1 battle, because they can pace themselves or pull out the big guns if they're in a dire situation (such as a single massive ambush where they're grossly outnumbered and have to fight the BBEG and his champions at once).
Classes without the ability to pace themselves have struggled to remain relevant in games that don't follow the 4 ecounters/day baseline, looking good if the party is encountering tons of tiny encounters, and quickly falling behind as the encounters fall in number but rise in difficulty.
A wizard that spends 1 spell every combat for 10 combats, or spends 10 spells for one major combat has still cast 10 spells today. Same for things like Rage dumping, Smite-spamming, etc.
There's also the narrative aspect. Look at how lame Fighters are...
GM:
Paladin: "It may be, but before I...
This talk about fighter reminded me of an idea of a quick "fix" of a fighter a friend of mine suggested. Basic idea was to gestalt fighter with unchained rogue. This would actually give them more combat feats in relation to Ranger and other similar classes (through rogue talents), as well as making them more flexible(again through rogue talents), giving skillpoints, and so on. There were some other changes, but that was the main idea. It doesn't seem like it would turn fighter into a great class, but should at the very least make them more useful. Might even give them some pacing options too.
What are your thoughts on this?
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Mixing Fighter & Rogue has been a fairly common attempt at a fix for a long time, though rogues have very little going for them either (rogue talents by the large are steaming piles of ass), and the end result is still a class that's very dependent upon gear to be functional, and still doesn't really pace itself very well (most daily-limit rogue talents aren't worth being at-will, and few do anything impressive in the short term). Fighter's just in a really bad place.
I've pretty much given up on Fighters. I realized a while back there is no point saving them because there's nothing to save except the name.
Personally for fighter, I'd give them greater mobility and more attacks for cheaper. For example, being able to move their speed and still make attacks anywhere along that movement, more attacks on a standard action, make things like cleave class features, etc. Tying them into stats would be nice too, so a fighter can lean towards power, precision, or speed, or even strike a balance. Basically allow a fighter to dance or march through the battlefield attacking left, right, and center.
Maybe include a few of Joanna's feats (from The Gamers: Dorkness Rising).
Also, it doesn't make sense to reach demigod levels of ability yet remain completely mundane, so try including at mid levels and above try including a few "raw magic" type of abilities, like arcane strike that advances or a similar effect for ac, temporarily allow their armor to work against the etherial, become fatigued then exhausted to recover some hp on their own, those sorts of things.
I'm curious as to why you think that, about fighters and magic schwag, beyond intuition. Not so much calling you out, but curious what you mean in terms of "they get magical stuff for free; this puts them behind the curve" - especially in light of my clarification or second idea that 'Training stacks. It seems like it fits with your concept of fighters doing magic items better by giving them "free" magic items. If a magic weapon is +1 higher than their own, that's great - but if not, there's no reason not to carry grandpa's old trusty they've had since first level. This makes it so a + isn't the main concern - nifty things like flaming and such are. It also allows a group to spend its resources elsewhere - that magic weapon spell is nice, but it the fighter doesn't need the buff, the rogue could get it instead, or a different (more generally useful) spell could go into the slot. Similarly, crafting can be a thing that's good for fighters, but doesn't need to be - they've got their own ways of saving WBL. Also: their favorite weapon sundered? No real problem: see, there's a piece of crap made by a kobold nearby...
This, ultimately, lessens their reliance upon schwag without leaving them not needing it. A higher + is nice, as noted, but not necessary. This allows minimal rules alterations to hit the same balance point of "everything cuts the same" - the only difference is that it frees up space for spending on more interesting effects.
Is there a math or rules element beyond that? As I noted - I'd expect it wouldn't work as well in your games as your characters are often ahead of the curve on defense, but as you're already reducing AC stacking (ex: natural AC and Armor), I was curious about a different balance point that you'd be looking at.
Always interesting to hear those insights!
Something else I'd like to see, is more levels within a tier, as well as the ability to gain great versatility in a single tier.
For example, anything past lvl 5 is superhuman. It'd be really neat if those 5 levels could be stretched out with advancement gaining breadth and versatility instead of numbers. That way, you can play entire APs in a single tier and still feel like you are growing in ability throughout.
One of the things I dislike about Galorion is all the mid and high level people running, demigods and supermen so prevalent that you could armies from them, yet somehow you still get nobles that are normal people, rulers that are mundane, and other such nonsense.
It'd be nice to gain 20 levels and for all the skill and power still be relatable to actual human beings.
On the flip side, it'd be nice to forgoe starting at lvl 1 mundane weakling when supers are desired, thus perhaps splitting tier from level, allowing the game to start at lvl 1 and decide separately what tier to play, so you could be a lvl 1 mundane human, or a lvl 1 superman, or a lvl 1 demigod.
Also, with martial vs caster issues, it might be nice to alter magic so the limited number of uses is no longer the balancer, allowing for settings with commonplace magic such that even commoners use magic all day long.
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Something else I'd like to see, is more levels within a tier, as well as the ability to gain great versatility in a single tier.
For example, anything past lvl 5 is superhuman. It'd be really neat if those 5 levels could be stretched out with advancement gaining breadth and versatility instead of numbers. That way, you can play entire APs in a single tier and still feel like you are growing in ability throughout.
One of the things I dislike about Galorion is all the mid and high level people running, demigods and supermen so prevalent that you could armies from them, yet somehow you still get nobles that are normal people, rulers that are mundane, and other such nonsense.
It'd be nice to gain 20 levels and for all the skill and power still be relatable to actual human beings.
On the flip side, it'd be nice to forgoe starting at lvl 1 mundane weakling when supers are desired, thus perhaps splitting tier from level, allowing the game to start at lvl 1 and decide separately what tier to play, so you could be a lvl 1 mundane human, or a lvl 1 superman, or a lvl 1 demigod.
>It'd be nice to gain 20 levels and for all the skill and power still be relatable to actual human beings.
What do you need levels for then? Just start the game at the same level you want to end it. Problem solved. Why introduce a progression system if you don't want progression?
>you could be a lvl 1 mundane human
That is just called "lv 1"
>lvl 1 superman
That is called "lv 5 character"
>lvl 1 demigod.
That is called "lv 10 character"
--
>Also, with martial vs caster issues, it might be nice to alter magic so the limited number of uses is no longer the balancer, allowing for settings with commonplace magic such that even commoners use magic all day long.
I believe Ashiel posted a skill-based magic system a while back, it is somewhere in my favourites.
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I'm curious as to why you think that, about fighters and magic schwag, beyond intuition. Not so much calling you out, but curious what you mean in terms of "they get magical stuff for free; this puts them behind the curve" - especially in light of my clarification or second idea that 'Training stacks. It seems like it fits with your concept of fighters doing magic items better by giving them "free" magic items. If a magic weapon is +1 higher than their own, that's great - but if not, there's no reason not to carry grandpa's old trusty they've had since first level. This makes it so a + isn't the main concern - nifty things like flaming and such are. It also allows a group to spend its resources elsewhere - that magic weapon spell is nice, but it the fighter doesn't need the buff, the rogue could get it instead, or a different (more generally useful) spell could go into the slot. Similarly, crafting can be a thing that's good for fighters, but doesn't need to be - they've got their own ways of saving WBL. Also: their favorite weapon sundered? No real problem: see, there's a piece of crap made by a kobold nearby...
This, ultimately, lessens their reliance upon schwag without leaving them not needing it. A higher + is nice, as noted, but not necessary. This allows minimal rules alterations to hit the same balance point of "everything cuts the same" - the only difference is that it frees up space for spending on more interesting effects.
Is there a math or rules element beyond that? As I noted - I'd expect it wouldn't work as well in your games as your characters are often ahead of the curve on defense, but as you're already reducing AC stacking (ex: natural AC and Armor), I was curious about a different balance point that you'd be looking at.
Always interesting to hear those insights!
Probably because you said this:
...basically making weapon training into enhancement bonuses...
If a Paizo fighter has +1 Weapon Training and a +1 sword they swing at +2 to hit and damage. If this hypothetical fighter has +1 Weapon Training and a +1 sword, they swing at +1 to hit and damage. You're usually going to have those enhancement bonuses in most parties (since groups where nobody can cast greater magic weapon are few and far between) even when using weapons that are mostly special abilities, so having their +hit/damage class feature not stack with something they're really likely to already have kinda stings.
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>It'd be nice to gain 20 levels and for all the skill and power still be relatable to actual human beings.
What do you need levels for then? Just start the game at the same level you want to end it. Problem solved. Why introduce a progression system if you don't want progression?
>you could be a lvl 1 mundane human
That is just called "lv 1"
>lvl 1 superman
That is called "lv 5 character"
>lvl 1 demigod.
That is called "lv 10 character"
Basically this, though it could be useful to hard code those benchmarks. If a hypothetical 10th level character is actually referred to by the system as a "demigod", design intent is more clear and you'll have fewer people running fantastically powerful characters through amped up "escort the caravan through the goblin forest" quests and junk.
>It'd be nice to gain 20 levels and for all the skill and power still be relatable to actual human beings.
What do you need levels for then? Just start the game at the same level you want to end it. Problem solved. Why introduce a progression system if you don't want progression?
>you could be a lvl 1 mundane human
That is just called "lv 1"
>lvl 1 superman
That is called "lv 5 character"
>lvl 1 demigod.
That is called "lv 10 character"
In addition to being more clear as above, there is the enjoyment of advancement. I like learning new abilities, new spells, etc. However, I prefer having characters that stay within the realm of real humans.
I want to learn a dozen feats and gain better spells without becoming superhuman.Most combat feats are things that can be done by real humans, so there isn't really a reason to deny them to characters of natural level of power save mechanical balance.
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That's a limitation borne of most d20 combat feats being terrible, pointless wastes of time. When your feats are things that define your character in a meaningful way (as opposed to "+1 to X" or "existing attack option is slightly less of a waste of time"), having massive amounts of them is more of a problem for character dilution (beyond just option paralysis and too many fiddly bits to mess with).
A character with a handful of special abilities and qualities can be cool and interesting. A character with dozens of them is a mary sue/stu.
I'm curious as to why you think that, about fighters and magic schwag, beyond intuition. Not so much calling you out, but curious what you mean in terms of "they get magical stuff for free; this puts them behind the curve" - especially in light of my clarification or second idea that 'Training stacks. It seems like it fits with your concept of fighters doing magic items better by giving them "free" magic items. If a magic weapon is +1 higher than their own, that's great - but if not, there's no reason not to carry grandpa's old trusty they've had since first level. This makes it so a + isn't the main concern - nifty things like flaming and such are. It also allows a group to spend its resources elsewhere - that magic weapon spell is nice, but it the fighter doesn't need the buff, the rogue could get it instead, or a different (more generally useful) spell could go into the slot. Similarly, crafting can be a thing that's good for fighters, but doesn't need to be - they've got their own ways of saving WBL. Also: their favorite weapon sundered? No real problem: see, there's a piece of crap made by a kobold nearby...
This, ultimately, lessens their reliance upon schwag without leaving them not needing it. A higher + is nice, as noted, but not necessary. This allows minimal rules alterations to hit the same balance point of "everything cuts the same" - the only difference is that it frees up space for spending on more interesting effects.
Is there a math or rules element beyond that? As I noted - I'd expect it wouldn't work as well in your games as your characters are often ahead of the curve on defense, but as you're already reducing AC stacking (ex: natural AC and Armor), I was curious about a different balance point that you'd be looking at.
Always interesting to hear those insights!
Probably because you said this:
...basically making weapon training into enhancement bonuses...If a Paizo fighter has +1 Weapon Training and a +1 sword they...
Sure! Yeah!
That's why I was asking about the follow-up post. Sorry if it wasn't clear, as I was mixing and matching. :)
A character with dozens of them is a mary sue/stu.
I disagree with this, insomuch as I understand the general concept of Gary/Mary S(t)u(e).
I would never consider either a fighter, nor anyone of high E6-games one of those characters, as they have definitive, exploitable flaws, no matter how many feats you give them. Unless you meant something else - based on wording, you may have either changed topic or focus mid-post (something that I did above, so certainly understandable), in which case I look forward to being corrected! :)
(It looks like you're equating feats to myriads of special abilities. I could be mistaken - you may be segregating the weakness of feats and then tackling myriads of special abilities. That said, the latter sounds like a typical D&D wizard.)
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On the subject of the fighter's weapon training adding enhancement bonuses, even stacking ones...
1. Weapon training would need to become a supernatural ability to remain consistent if it's actually making your weapon more magical, which would be the case.
2. It would have to affect the weapon itself to gain benefits of bypassing DR, and you'd have to write it so that despite being the same kind of bonus it stacks with the existing thing (which feels clunky).
3. If the objective is help them pierce DR faster, or deal more damage earlier, a flat modifier would be more elegant in most every case and would provide benefits immediately and regardless of DR.
4. It would need to be explained at least mildly in the narrative why fighters make their weapons more magical (otherwise you end up with the weird disassociated mechanics like in 4E where blood on a wall deals damage to your PCs because reasons).
5. Interestingly, Paladins actually have a few abilities that let them do the whole "this is a stick, but it's my stick, so it's a magic stick" in various forms. Paladins have bless weapon (weapon becomes a magical good-aligned weapon that auto-confirms crits vs evil), Spiritual Bond [Weapon], and holy sword (any random piece of crap becomes a +5 holy piece of crap). But the most important part of this is that while it provides a magic item without buying one (as proposed for the Fighter), the Paladin has class features that stack with having magic items (Smite, divine favor/power, etc).
Similarly, Rangers and Barbarians have class features that stack with magic items. Whatever the Fighter gets, it really needs to be better than "has a magic item", because magic items are assumed.
6. Paizo added a stupid rule where you can't stack enhancement bonuses and effects beyond +10, no matter how it's happening, which was not a thing in 3.5. Basically this means that the Fighter would get less mileage out of having free +X enhancement bonuses on their weapons and focusing instead on special abilities, because nothing can make a weapon go above +10 in Pathfinder. Paizo in their infinite wisdom neglected to mention what happens when you try (such as which abilities take priority, etc). Bad rules are bad.
Because of this, if the Fighter's weapon bonus added +4 to the enhancement bonus of the weapon, the fighter can't add more than +5 total special abilities to the weapon (where a normal fighter can get up to +9 total). If weapon training went to 5 or 6 (such as with gloves of dueling) you'd only have 3 or 4 points on your weapon to play with.
In short, if the goal is to...
1. Help the fighter penetrate DR.
2. Have a bonus to hit & damage that stacks with enhancement bonuses.
It'd be easier to make every level of weapon training add +X to hit and damage and ignore Y DR. It's simple, strait forward, and doesn't deal with all the fiddly bits. It means that it's totally better for the Fighter to be wielding Glamdring the Foehammer as opposed to a rusty fork he found in the goblin lair, but it also means he could pierce the DR of the darnedest things with said rusty fork so that's kinda cool.
But as Integra Hellsing said, that's step one. Now we need 2-10. Fighter's still play catch up with the rest of the martials who have plenty of +hit/damage/stacking/awesome/you're-already-dead bonuses, and they also have real class features to go along with those bonuses, so once we've given Fighters some sort of mean of qualifying for the martial olympics, you'd need to make sure they're ready for the triathlon (which means adding class features that help them function on adventures, do special things, etc).
However, it's hard to give them cool niche abilities when their entire class is built around having no centralized theme or focus.
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A character with dozens of them is a mary sue/stu.I disagree with this, insomuch as I understand the general concept of Gary/Mary S(t)u(e).
I would never consider either a fighter, nor anyone of high E6-games one of those characters, as they have definitive, exploitable flaws, no matter how many feats you give them. Unless you meant something else - based on wording, you may have either changed topic or focus mid-post (something that I did above, so certainly understandable), in which case I look forward to being corrected! :)
(It looks like you're equating feats to myriads of special abilities. I could be mistaken - you may be segregating the weakness of feats and then tackling myriads of special abilities. That said, the latter sounds like a typical D&D wizard.)
I think what Aratrok was saying was that if you've got a lot of different abilities that are their own themes, and you start piling tons of seemingly unrelated abilities on the same character it begins to dilute the character.
Thanks! I still feel like there's some amount of miscommunication happening on the first, but that's probably my fault. I appreciate the thought process, though!
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I admit to having been quite confused. ^~^
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Completely unrelated sidenote.
I've discovered that in Corruption of Champions...
Anemone Hair + Naga Body = Success.
My naga has been wrecking everything. Anemone hair gives you poisonous tentacle hair that debuffs your foe's Strength and Dexterity in addition to poisoning them. Naga can constrict (an opposed Str/Dex vs Str/Dex thing, or something like that) and incapacitate foes while taking them apart.
It's awesome.
I admit to having been quite confused. ^~^
Probably because I'm still suffering from motion sickness - back of a car 106+ degree weather and a bumpy ride =/= a coherent Tac. Maybe I'll try again later, but suffice it to say, I think we're missing the base concepts - nonetheless, it's good to hear your insight.
Related side-question: in d20 Legends, are you changing buffs to attack due to lowering ACs via non-stacking natural/armor ACs, or just cutting losses and going forward? Regardless of which: why? What is the design thought process? Are there any other places where stacking does or doesn't happen? Have you even considered this, over-all? (I imagine you have, but I'm curious.)
Thanks!