it is probably good that somebody mentioned Leadership. It can have its place in certain games, but it can be too powerful or too distracting in others.
@Weirdo - If I took Snake Fang it would probably be on a frontline PC with a high AC of around level+20 or up. Snake Style seems like it could still be useful for stopping touch attacks. It would be great against a specter, for instance.
it is probably good that somebody mentioned Leadership. It can have its place in certain games, but it can be too powerful or too distracting in others.
@Weirdo - If I took Snake Fang it would probably be on a frontline PC with a high AC of around level+20 or up. Snake Style seems like it could still be useful for stopping touch attacks. It would be great against a specter, for instance.
A Monk (best user of the Style) should have most of his AC as touch AC anyway, so you would still be able to dodge touch attacks more often than not.
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In theory, Snake Style is useful against touch attacks, if you take it with a non-monk or a monk who gets buffed with Mage Armour + Barkskin. Then you run into an enemy with a surprise round and high initiative who hits you before your style is active. >_> Serves me right for delaying Combat Style Master until level 9.
If you've got a super high AC for Snake Fang, or some kind of miss chance that's great. I'd expect opponents to stop attacking you real fast when they realize that it's hurting them about as much as it's hurting you.
Main point with relation to OP is that some things might look better on paper than they are in play - like Snake Style + Fang which are good feats but not game-changers - and others like Fortune's Favoured might look minor but have surprising effects when combined with other elements. I recommend keeping an eye on things in game. It helps if your players will accept adjustments partway through a game if something becomes disruptive - though make sure it really is disruptive to justify that adjustment.
What is Fortune's Favored?
What is Fortune's Favored?
Combines very well with things like Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier for AC, Divine Favor for attack and damage, and the Half-orc's Sacred Tattoo for saves.
Ah, that was what I found. I just assumed it was something else because Fortune =/= Fate
Yeah I could see how that is useful but it is only a +1, that doesn't seem particularly gamebreaking.
Ah, that was what I found. I just assumed it was something else because Fortune =/= Fate
Yeah I could see how that is useful but it is only a +1, that doesn't seem particularly gamebreaking.
Its more like that with that trait, a half-orc or halfling gets an addition +1 to all saves, and another +1 AC from that Jingasa. One trait netting you that is quite a lot for a trait.
Fair enough, but that A: Requires you buy a Jingasa (so that takes a while to achieve) and B: that you play a Halfling/Half-Orc.
In my opinion Helpful is one of the most Broken traits in existence for a Defender build but you have to be a halfling to get it.
Honestly I am fine with anything that buffs races that aren't Humans. Humans are soo good its rather silly.
You can build a character around it, though.
Acheologist bard gets a pool of luck bonus uses for skills, attacks, and damage in place of bardic performance. It's strong at +1, +2 makes it that much better. +2 to all saves (half-orc sacred tattoo) is as strong as three feats, albeit weak ones. Jingasa of the fortunate soldier doubles in effectiveness, and so on. It can be a force multiplier -- if you have a character built to utilize it, it ends up being a +1 to nearly everything: AC, attack, damage, saves, skills.
I would define too much as something that either bogs down the game speed (like master summoner) or does something too well for its cost (my example being snake style: +2 to sense motive and lets you use your sense motive roll as your ac. The cost being improved unarmed strike, 1 rank in acrobatics, and 3 sense motive.)I'm going with nothing that cannot also be done with just core and apg, perhaps just in an easier, more exotic or different way.
So, instead of such an open question, a bit more information about what you consider too much?
In that case: All summoning spells. All save or die spells. Slumber hex.
And wizards. Definitely wizards. Or clerics. Or any spellcasters.
Or any PC classes, really.
All characters must be first-level commoners. That's the only way to keep players from doing something too well. Unless of course you allow skill points. Maybe use a d6 for all rolls instead of a d20.
Just like you can build a character around anything else that gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Choices are allowed to be strong, if everything was weak Pathfinder wouldn't be fun to play. It's all about finding these choices and using them that makes for fun and interesting characters.
Just ask the players not to break the game by power gaming? If players try they can be OP or you'd have to ban an awful lot. Combining blood money with fabricate, building a elemental dazing fireball slumber witch and Maxing dominate person to claim every npc and destroying the storyline on purpose are (in a normal setting) not fun friendly for your game nights. Just ask your players to have an adventure all players and the gm can enjoy seems more do-able than banning everything that could be OP.
I do like roleplaying correct restrictions; no leadership except for the actual leader etc,
And time gaining restrictions;
Master summoner in a 6 man party?
But these are overruled by the fun at table rule
Note; if al players are power gamers there is no problem to begin with, but a roleplaying heavy kobold rogue can be fun and a maxed out caster can be fun. As long as your players are on the same page.
Regarding Snake Style and Snake Fang, I’d be as likely to use them on a heavily armored PC as an unarmored one. The touch attack boost would certainly be more useful that way, and somebody with a high AC in general is more likely to be missed and trigger Snake Fang. Even somebody in mithral full plate can pop off 3 AoOs per round plus an extra attack as an immediate action.
I don’t think that’s necessarily overpowered, but I could imagine it seeming like a really big deal to some DMs. I know that when I recently started making 2 AoOs and a free attack as a swift action using Greater Trip+Vicious Stomp+Enforcer+Hurtful the DM and one of the other players howled and protested that my PCs are always overpowered.
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OP is relative and situational.
For Snake Fang, the situation is "enemies missing you at close range." If you fight a lot of enemies with ranged attacks or enemies can target your friends instead it's not so useful.
For Trip/Stomp, the situation is "trippable enemies." It's less useful against creatures that fly, are huge or larger, or have lots of legs.
Likewise, Enforcer/Hurtful doesn't work if your enemy is immune to fear or nonlethal damage.
How powerful something is depends on how many enemies you face who are susceptible to the tactic. A paladin fighting undead is going to appear much more powerful than one fighting golems. Ideally the enemies you face are varied.
@ShroudedInLight - I'm not saying Fortune's Favoured is OP and should be banned, just that for an apparently innocuous trait it offers a surprising amount to certain builds.
Perhaps it wasn't clear, but I wasn't the one saying that my trip/stomp build is overpowered. It was the DM and one of the other players. I think they were mostly upset that I was managing to do the highest DPR in the party while also having the highest AC. My PC was a Monk 2/Fighter 7 "competing" with a Barbarian 2/ Scarred Witch Doctor 7 and a Ninja 9. We're not exactly an All-Star party.
We've all since gained a level, and now the Ninja is invisible pretty much all the time in combat and nearly matching my damage output in most cases (say 90 to 100 when I can trip and 90 to 70 when I can't). I still have 2-3 AC on him though, and the player seems to think that's a pretty big deal despite his 50% miss chance.
Charisma as a dumping is one reason why a tough DM of ages past instituted the "Luck Check", which is a d20 based Charisma check you make when you want to see who gets the extra arrow, who the shambling mound shambles towards, or maybe whether there are some coins or a poisonous spider in the couch cushions that a PC decided to check for treasure. When the DM wants to know which PC a really nasty monster should randomly attack he or she will sometimes call for an "Ugly Off". I guess we're getting way off the original topic though.There are enough penalties for low charisma.
This kind of stuff falls in to "dick behavior", in my opinion.
What are the penalties for low charisma? If your character doesn't care about social skills, I don't see any downside at all.
All the other stats have some kind of side effect (carrying capacity, HP, skill points, will save, etc.). As far as I know, charisma is only used for social skills and UMD.
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Perhaps it wasn't clear, but I wasn't the one saying that my trip/stomp build is overpowered. It was the DM and one of the other players. I think they were mostly upset that I was managing to do the highest DPR in the party while also having the highest AC. My PC was a Monk 2/Fighter 7 "competing" with a Barbarian 2/ Scarred Witch Doctor 7 and a Ninja 9. We're not exactly an All-Star party.
We've all since gained a level, and now the Ninja is invisible pretty much all the time in combat and nearly matching my damage output in most cases (say 90 to 100 when I can trip and 90 to 70 when I can't). I still have 2-3 AC on him though, and the player seems to think that's a pretty big deal despite his 50% miss chance.
I got that, I was trying to address your group's POV while also being general enough to be relevant to the OP. Perhaps I should have been more direct.
If your character appears OP, it might be because the rest of the party isn't very powerful (OP is relative) or because you're running into a lot of enemies that are vulnerable to your trip & enforcer tactics (OP is situational). They might consider adjusting one of those two things before complaining about your build.
Alternatively it now sounds like the way they're measuring power might be a bit off. Not all characters are supposed to focus on direct DPR, and AC is only one of many defensive measures. It's better to compare the amount of damage the two of you take in combat.
Though really I'd suggest measuring power with 3-4 questions:
1) How often do I feel useless?
2) How often do I feel awesome?
3) How often do I feel like things are too easy?
4) How often do I feel pushed to my limit?
These are a bit subjective but that's a feature since it's less about what your numbers are and more about how those numbers contribute to your fun. Ideally, (1) and (3) should be low for all players and (2) should be high. If answers are unsatisfactory you can dig a bit deeper to see if it's easier to adjust encounters or characters. If (1) and (3) are both high it's likely the character is too specialized, breezing through things in their niche and otherwise falling flat. (4) varies from player to player - some want most encounters to be super-challenging while others prefer to dominate things - so the most important thing is making sure everyone is satisfied with that answer.
Note that both in and out of combat experience should be considered.
Would your group be interested in discussing the issue in that light?
I don't think the group is interested in a lengthy discussion, but I'm also not really that upset by their hazing. Perhaps I'll start another thread regarding the whole thing though I'm not really looking for help, just sharing a tale of OP claims I find kind of amusing taking all things into consideration.
Our last GM used Cha as a modifier to the buying and selling. Yeah, we all loved our Bard.
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Charisma as a dumping is one reason why a tough DM of ages past instituted the "Luck Check", which is a d20 based Charisma check you make when you want to see who gets the extra arrow, who the shambling mound shambles towards, or maybe whether there are some coins or a poisonous spider in the couch cushions that a PC decided to check for treasure. When the DM wants to know which PC a really nasty monster should randomly attack he or she will sometimes call for an "Ugly Off". I guess we're getting way off the original topic though.There are enough penalties for low charisma.
This kind of stuff falls in to "dick behavior", in my opinion.
What are the penalties for low charisma? If your character doesn't care about social skills, I don't see any downside at all.
All the other stats have some kind of side effect (carrying capacity, HP, skill points, will save, etc.). As far as I know, charisma is only used for social skills and UMD.
Those are also skills used in combat, and Use Magic Device.
Making Charisma overtly important, with a fetishistic demanding approach, is needless.
In a point buy game, it's really important to find one stat, that is not a focus.
Some people actually like roleplaying a lower stat.
Nobody seems to have "rocks fall, you die, doody head" to Wisdom, or Intelligence.
I just don't see why this happens with Charisma.
extreme stat dumpers can be easy to deal with from a DM standpoint, and they'll fix that s##& fast. They should be dealt with as soon as inconveniently possible.
There are entire arsenals of stat-draining things, not the least of which is Bestow Curse (which is permenant). Once your character drops below 3 in Int/Wis/Cha, the DM should be asking to hold on to your sheet for you. You're done for now. Things are better for physical stats, but the consequences are pretty straightforward.
The big things to remember as a DM:
1. Don't reward Chaotic Stupid. Remove players who insist on disruptive characters. It's not your job to fix people.
2. Don't feed the party gear because 'the numbers say so'
3. Don't let the Players shop the magic items like it's a Walmart
4. Don't let players pull in content from material you're not familiar with.
5. Don't include material you're not familiar with.
Do this, and you're well on your way to keeping your players in check, and hopefully a fun ride as long as you're not a vindictive a*!&&&&.
I would suggest taking things slowly. Add new elements and see if they are problems. If they are such problems that it spoils the fun of others, then try to fix it later. Until then, it is not an issue.
Everyone has a different level of system mastery, and every player is different. I'm certain that someone probably has enough system mastery and lack of consideration of others that they can make a spotlight hog of an expert NPC. Granted, Master summoner, Zen archer, and a few archetypes can be abused, there are some players that can reign it in and play such PCs while keeping it fun for everyone.
With that said, there are some archetypes and prestige classes that can actually weaken a PC more than taking a solid class. Sometimes a solid class has such wonky features that archetypes are almost vital.
example - Warpriest. With the exception of a few archetypes, I can't see much more of advantage to taking a core Warpriest over simply taking a cleric and level dipping one level into a full BAB class - any of them. Some of the Warpriest archetypes are wonderful builds though.
In the end, it is more important to know the players than the system mechanics. The trouble makers will be trouble no matter what they play. With that said, always take it slow with new material.
i suggest banning prepared casters with the exception of classes like the arcanist because it is easier to run a game for spontaneous casters like sorcerers and oracles due to them being more predictable
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2. Don't feed the party gear because 'the numbers say so'
3. Don't let the Players shop the magic items like it's a Walmart
YMMV.
You don't have to stick to WBL but keep in mind that wealth is power in this game and if your party has less wealth than normal they will be less powerful. Also some options become relatively more powerful in a low-wealth game. Magic Vestment, for example, is very handy if you can't easily afford magic armour or shields.
Players being able to get the items they want has never caused problems in my games. I could see people getting nervous about non-Core stuff (I don't, I trust my players not to abuse stuff) but you shouldn't have balance problems because the magus can count on buying a +X keen scimitar; the game assumes this is possible. If you don't like the flavour of magic items being readily available for purchase that's something else entirely.
I have a Cha 5 PFS Tiefling that I insist on bringing to every diplomatic session possible. Its a ton of fun to roleplay. For some reason I've noticed that my Cha is either very high or very low on most of my characters. Probably because I love bards, and when I'm not playing a bard I like having the foot-in-mouth class feature...
Stat dumping isn't really an issue. If somebody really wants to run a 7 Cha, 7 Wis, 7 Int Fighter... well, I imagine they'd get bored pretty quickly. Even without the GM explicitly targeting them, they have basically no way to contribute to any problem that isn't "Smash" and will be eating their terrible Will saves to get dropped on their backs the moment somebody bothers to aim Sleep their way.
I've actually played with a guy who dumped all his mental state on his fighter and worked it really well. He wanted to play, but often had too much homework (this was back when we were late high school and early college, depending on the person). So he would show up, put on his headphones, and do his homework. When it came time for his character to do something in game, the person next to him would let him know. Then he'd take his headphones off, state that he'd attack the nearest person threatening any of his friends characters, roll the dice, put his headphones back on, and go back to his homework. He had no idea what was going on in game (and nether would his character!) and no idea if his character's actions were helping or hindering the party. But he got to play the game and get his homework done at the same time.
Naw, the fun of playing a low Cha/Wis/Int character is putting them in social situations and seeing what they do XD
For example, I have a handless fighter that TWF with Hookhands. Do you have any idea how fun social situations are?
They are the best.