What's always the "last guy's job" in your group? Mine tends to shirk the cleric entirely and I was wondering if that is common.
We have one group entirely made up of arcane spellcasters. At one point we were considering an all wizard party, but that seemed a bit too silly.
I was jumping up and down to be a Life Oracle in one of our parties, but I can see the whole healer thing being pretty low excitement for some.
arcane primary casters are usually last pick in my groups for some reason. It doesn't help that I suck at daily spell selection prediction.
What?!? But Wizards are so ultra-godly powerful, and yet no one wants to play them...weird.
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What's always the "last guy's job" in your group? Mine tends to shirk the cleric entirely and I was wondering if that is common.
Is it because everyone wants to avoid being the 'heal bot'?
Because it is perfectly possible to not be that. Heck, worship Asmodeus to make sure everyone knows 'no'.
I have a guy that only plays unarmed fighter types; Monk, Pugilist (3PP class), etc. His last three characters were pretty much all the same.
I've consistently been the only real, head lopping martial in my groups. Lots of nerds can't put themselves in the shoes of a meathead. Other than that, people usually shy away from support roles.
I think when we started out it was healbot aversion, now it's more of an issue of everyone wanting to be the primary damage dealer.
Here's another one: we almost exclusively played sorcerers until a year or so ago when one of us brought wizard back with a necromancer in RotRL
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My group doesn't have a collective last class since we have a large group, but we all have a personal last class.
For me it's wizard. I don't like prepared casting and I don't like being squishy. Ironically I am playing a witch but they have hexes they can use at anytime so even if I pick the wrong spells I can still be useful. Note that we don't use published APs so I can't look ahead to know what to prepare.
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I think when we started out it was healbot aversion, now it's more of an issue of everyone wanting to be the primary damage dealer.
This is my party dynamic too, except it's never been healbot aversion, it's just cleric/oracle aversion in general. Our Oracle just switched characters to a barbarian because he wasn't "doing enough damage", which is a real bummer, because now it's all just DPR.
The group I DM is both half-elf and ranged-fighter-heavy.
Gunslinger(HE), Ninja(E), Magus(HE), Cleric(H), Barbarian(H), Fighter(H), Ranger(HE)
So... no arcane casters - that is the aversion.
And they are on an AP, so they *WILL* have problems if someone does not dip, and soon, to build up the levels.
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A dip will not fix any Arcane casting lacks, so it doesn't really matter.
Almost nobody I play Pathfinder with seems to like playing prepared casters. I haven't seen a cleric since like 2010, and I've never seen a wizard at all with this group. There have been a couple witches, and one druid. (The 5e groups don't have this aversion.)
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Almost nobody I play Pathfinder with seems to like playing prepared casters. I haven't seen a cleric since like 2010, and I've never seen a wizard at all with this group. There have been a couple witches, and one druid. (The 5e groups don't have this aversion.)
Druids can burn bad spells for summons while witches have hexes. I'm surprised clerics aren't on the exception list since you can burn bad spells for heals.
We have a guy in our group who absolutely INSISTS that the standard four (fighter-type, rogue-trapfinder-type, wizard-type, cleric-healbot-type) be represented in every group...yet refuses to play any character that relies heavily on magic. He's been playing D&D through editions since the 70s, yet myself (life oracle) and the shaman will pull out fairly simple core rulebook spells and get "Wow, there's spells that can do that?! *small head shake* Magic..." It's actually kind of adorable, especially since I've only been playing since last August and yet I can surprise him constantly.
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Almost nobody I play Pathfinder with seems to like playing prepared casters. I haven't seen a cleric since like 2010, and I've never seen a wizard at all with this group. There have been a couple witches, and one druid. (The 5e groups don't have this aversion.)
I haven't been playing long, but I can already tell that's probably going to be my biggest quirk. I know it actually gives higher long-term flexibility, but I might need that second remove paralysis or bestow curse that day...
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I haven't been playing long, but I can already tell that's probably going to be my biggest quirk. I know it actually gives higher long-term flexibility, but I might need that second remove paralysis or bestow curse that day...
Likewise - I hate playing Wizards because, even though they are theoretically more powerful, it's extremely dependent on spell selection. I can deal with druids and clerics because they have spontaneous spell substitution to at least not have the slot be useless. But I generally prefer sorcerer and oracle.
I haven't been playing long, but I can already tell that's probably going to be my biggest quirk. I know it actually gives higher long-term flexibility, but I might need that second remove paralysis or bestow curse that day...Likewise - I hate playing Wizards because, even though they are theoretically more powerful, it's extremely dependent on spell selection. I can deal with druids and clerics because they have spontaneous spell substitution to at least not have the slot be useless. But I generally prefer sorcerer and oracle.
Exactly my problem as well
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I don't really like playing straight martials, meaning no spell access, though that's not usually an issue.
We'll all start out saying "Oh, I'll play whatever. What does everyone else want to play?" After about 5 minutes of this sentiment, the guy who always plays a heavy melee will decide to play a heavy melee. Then the girl who likes rangers will play a ranger, or at best some other archery character with skill points. Then me and another guy will play a full arcane caster and a full divine caster, though we'll trade off between them. The last guy will just pick whatever he thinks the group needs to be balanced. Usually either myself, the other caster player, or the last guy will GM.
I kinda want to try a game where we somehow randomize the types of characters we each play, at least mechanically.
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Two of my regular group (including myself) *love* the healer / support role above all others. Half the time, when I start playing something else (like a druid or paladin), I end up frustrated that they just don't have the healing bang that a cleric has.
Fortunately, one or the other of us is usually GMing, so we rarely fight over it (and clerics are good enough at other stuff that it's never a problem if two people play 'the cleric'). One of our more fun long-lasting groups was two clerics, a druid and a ranger. The 'pets' did the tanking (although the ranger went through three of them in as many levels...).
So, we're the weird ones who shake our heads when we hear about people 'having' to play the 'healbot' or RPGA rules that grant special bonuses for a player willing to 'take one for the team' and play the healer. It's like, 'I get to eat chocolate, and get special bennies because everyone else the table hates chocolate? Sign me up!' (This carries over to MMOs as well. I've got maxed out Priests and Shamen and Druids and Defenders and Jedi Sages/Sith Sorcerers and whatnot in a half-dozen online games. Everyone else dependent upon me? The highest of high pressure? That's where I live, online. Even the classes that aren't focused exclusively on healing, like Controllers/Masterminds, Troopers/Bounty Hunters, Imperial Agents, etc. I choose those healing trees.)
The second most common option is some sort of arcane spellcaster, usually a wizard, as nobody seems to like the delayed access or limited spells known of the sorcerer.
We almost never have any sort of thief/rogue, and usually any new person we've got in the group goes for the fighter/ranger/barbarian/paladin tanking role, since none of our regulars are much into that either. (Indeed, both have been thin on the ground since 3rd edition got rid of elven and half-elven fighter/magic-users and magic-user/thieves, since it seems like the only way to get some of us to play a thief or fighter is to give it a side of magic-user!)
When we do have tanks, they almost always seem to be of the ranger/paladin/barbarian variety, rather than standard fighters. (I've played all three of those, for instance, and I am pretty sure that I've never played a Fighter in 3.X or PF.)
The last time anyone played a monk, Oriental Adventures had just come out. And I'm talking about the one published in 1985. :)
I'd love to play a bard in a *big* group someday, but we rarely have more than four players.
I'm going to be playing a 3pp class where I could, if need be, switch into a healing role on the fly. I refuse, however, to just constantly use the healing aspect throughout even though I can. Not just because I don't want to be a "healtbot", but also because I don't want the party relying on me constantly healing them, changing the concept of the character I intend to play. So I guess I don't want to play healer, but I will if it means saving the party. Just don't expect it all the time.
None of my party, myself included, ever touches the bard for some reason.
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Good on you for avoiding the healbot role. Reliance on a healbot makes parties weak. Only a party able to function just fine without a healbot truly benefits from one. A party that relies on a healbot is using a crutch, and is therefore handicapped.
Interesting quirk that your group avoids Bards, when they are so effective.
I despise the whole idea of the heal-bot, along with the heavily meta-gamed party-plan. Turning a respectable game into tabletop WoW is just... nauseating to me.
Now, a divine caster who can fulfill multiple functions like casting some prime arcane spells or helping crush the opposition at the right moment, and who can occasionally heal when it's not just a crutch for Killcrazy Jr.'s flailing circus... that's a great role.
For me it would be martial characters.I have a strong preference for arcane casters, so much so that that I had a friend label me 'The Forever Wizard'. I seem to be a bit of a masochist as this far I've only played prepared casters. Fortunately our group is quite large and currently contains myself as a wizard, an oracle, warpriest and a converted spellthief (the non-casters are a gunslinger and swashbuckler)so if I don't have the spell for the situation someone will. In this party we don't have a dedicated healer so that would be the least desired role though we also lack a trapper/lockpicker as the spellthief is rping as a Lawful trader so despite having six players we lack two of the traditional four person party roles.
Interesting quirk that your group avoids Bards, when they are so effective.
They are indeed, and I feel like most of us know this, yet we don't. Perhaps its in our minds that they're solely a support class and none of us just wants to be support (even though they can be more), perhaps we simply want to play other classes, or maybe there's a stigma of being a guy singing and dancing as the others battle (despite them being so much more).
I'd have to agree with others, martials are far less interesting to me if they only do the mundane things. The only reason I'm going to be playing one with the 3pp class is because they can do a bunch of spell like things also.
Taking into account that there are no women on the internet... I'd be interested to know if its just mine and surrounding groups that have female players never to hardly ever roll-up stereotypically male classes. E.g. fighter, wizard, paladin, etc.
I've been through a couple of groups and frankly, all I ever saw were archery focused rangers, life oracle and witches.
As for myself, I personally was a wizard junkie for a very long time until recently when building a few NPCs for the game I'm currently running and have now gained a very high appreciation for Cleric and inquisitor.
My groups often lack a cleric, but thats usually to do with a misconception that clerics are only heal bots.
I don't usually find it a particularly harsh burden to prep my spells because I waste a retarded amount of money in making scrolls at early levels before I get the hang of predicting the DM.
I didn't realize it was a stereotypically male class, but we had a girl who pretty exclusively played wizards for a while.
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I haven't been playing long, but I can already tell that's probably going to be my biggest quirk. I know it actually gives higher long-term flexibility, but I might need that second remove paralysis or bestow curse that day...Likewise - I hate playing Wizards because, even though they are theoretically more powerful, it's extremely dependent on spell selection. I can deal with druids and clerics because they have spontaneous spell substitution to at least not have the slot be useless. But I generally prefer sorcerer and oracle.
I'd definitely recommend the Arcanist for the "I like the long-term flexibility but hate the short-term inflexibility of the wizard" crowd. Dat Quick Study Exploit.
Taking into account that there are no women on the internet... I'd be interested to know if its just mine and surrounding groups that have female players never to hardly ever roll-up stereotypically male classes. E.g. fighter, wizard, paladin, etc.
I've been through a couple of groups and frankly, all I ever saw were archery focused rangers, life oracle and witches.
As for myself, I personally was a wizard junkie for a very long time until recently when building a few NPCs for the game I'm currently running and have now gained a very high appreciation for Cleric and inquisitor.
My groups often lack a cleric, but thats usually to do with a misconception that clerics are only heal bots.
I don't usually find it a particularly harsh burden to prep my spells because I waste a retarded amount of money in making scrolls at early levels before I get the hang of predicting the DM.
My girlfriend is usually the smashiest person on the table. She really digs barbarians.
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Taking into account that there are no women on the internet... I'd be interested to know if its just mine and surrounding groups that have female players never to hardly ever roll-up stereotypically male classes. E.g. fighter, wizard, paladin, etc.
I've been through a couple of groups and frankly, all I ever saw were archery focused rangers, life oracle and witches.
I sincerely hope that that first comment was meant in jest.
As a female player - and having seen many other female players - I can safely say that I have seen many female-run smashy types and Wizards. Personally, Wizard is one of my favourite classes, as is a Fighter with a two-level Metal Oracle dip (mainly for +10' extra speed and the Lead Blades spell to make the Fighter even more smashy).
Less commonly chosen classes in my groups (most of which are mixed): Rogue (we have two PF newbies who are experimenting with Rogue, but both dipped their Rogues into Fighter), Bard (we only have one Bard-loving player but even he doesn't play them exclusively), Cleric (so far, only one player tends to go for that class), Druid (only one ever so far and it's certainly not a CoDzilla). I have seen no Alchemists, Cavaliers, or Witches (although one Magus is a Hexcrafter). Gunslingers and Summoners are currently banned, and the ACG is stil new enough that no one has used its classes for character creation.
Group favourites: Barbarian, Paladin, Inquisitor, Monk, Magus, Wizard, Sorcerer. The other classes lie in between the two extremes.
Getting people to play support characters who don't have a lot of "flash" seems to be the least desired role. Of course I understand because even when support characters are really useful they are less likely to have "that moment".
Almost nobody I play Pathfinder with seems to like playing prepared casters. I haven't seen a cleric since like 2010, and I've never seen a wizard at all with this group. There have been a couple witches, and one druid. (The 5e groups don't have this aversion.)5e doesn't have Pathfinder/traditional-D&D style vancian magic, but something more akin to AE-style readying. I wonder if that makes the difference.
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glass.
I don't think so, although it's true the PF group might behave differently if playing 5e. The 5e groups played 3.5 before with no aversion to wizards/clerics/druids so I think it is more just a personality quirk thing.
The last role picked in our group is almost always the scout/trapfinding/generic thief character. Not an archetype that appeals to most of the players I game with.
Taking into account that there are no women on the internet... I'd be interested to know if its just mine and surrounding groups that have female players never to hardly ever roll-up stereotypically male classes. E.g. fighter, wizard, paladin, etc.
I've been through a couple of groups and frankly, all I ever saw were archery focused rangers, life oracle and witches.
As for myself, I personally was a wizard junkie for a very long time until recently when building a few NPCs for the game I'm currently running and have now gained a very high appreciation for Cleric and inquisitor.
My groups often lack a cleric, but thats usually to do with a misconception that clerics are only heal bots.
I don't usually find it a particularly harsh burden to prep my spells because I waste a retarded amount of money in making scrolls at early levels before I get the hang of predicting the DM.
Here and female :)
It's a long time since I've played (1st ed) but my first PC was a wizard, the second a druid, then an assassin (to see how it worked out my DM allowed her to be Neutral), a split class cleric-magic user (who worshipped Dionysus - if we were at a loose end, she went on a bender), and so on. As the GM mostly these days, I have to able to play any class. From playing a lot of PCs in crpgs (Neverwinter and Baldur's Gate) I've concluded that I lose interest without a spell list to play with. I've not played a pathfinder monk, though. Ki might be good.
I pretty much never play anything without some spellcasting. It's kind of funny because fighters are near and dear to my heart, and I love statting up NPC fighters, but I don't think I would want to play one over the course of an entire AP. The one fighter I did make as a potential replacement character had a jacked UMD score and ran around with wands and scrolls anyway.
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I'd definitely recommend the Arcanist for the "I like the long-term flexibility but hate the short-term inflexibility of the wizard" crowd. Dat Quick Study Exploit.I haven't been playing long, but I can already tell that's probably going to be my biggest quirk. I know it actually gives higher long-term flexibility, but I might need that second remove paralysis or bestow curse that day...Likewise - I hate playing Wizards because, even though they are theoretically more powerful, it's extremely dependent on spell selection. I can deal with druids and clerics because they have spontaneous spell substitution to at least not have the slot be useless. But I generally prefer sorcerer and oracle.
Yeah, my -3 is an Arcanist with Quick Study and I love it. Honestly, if they rebooted the whole thing into Pathfinder 2.0, I'd be perfectly content if they got rid of both Wizard and Sorcerer and made Arcanist the default arcane casters, with an archetype to allow getting rid of spellbooks/material components to emulate sorcerers.
What's always the "last guy's job" in your group? Mine tends to shirk the cleric entirely and I was wondering if that is common.Is it because everyone wants to avoid being the 'heal bot'?
Because it is perfectly possible to not be that. Heck, worship Asmodeus to make sure everyone knows 'no'.
True, I prefer doing Heal role while doing something else.
Like a Monk/Vitalist: Can heal while punching.
Or a ToB martial adept like a Crusader can heal while striking with his swords.
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A reach cleric can also heal while doing something else. It's more an issue of expectations and doctrine than what a class can actually do..
In my group it's usually about a full arcane caster, i think because most in my group are lazy.
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Yeah, our Age of Worms group still doesn't have a full arcane caster. The first and only one died, and she was going to be a mystic theurge anyways. We've since had two other PCs die/retire and still, none of them have picked a full arcane caster. But a bard plus a summoner sorta equal a wizard, right?
Whenever a friend of mine actually plays and isn't GMing, he focuses more on classes that don't have to roll dice. The less he has to roll, the better, because rolling means you can mess up (and with my dice rolling history, I feel like that should be my logic.) In my campaign, he plays a control witch with a focus on forcing penalties on enemies, making them reroll, etc. We'd all be shocked to see him play a full martial.
His girlfriend is the exact opposite. Barbarian is her all time favorite class. In a 5th edition campaign, she's playing a Paladin, and in a Gestalt campaign she's a Barbarian/Martial Artist (3pp version). She has never played a caster type and I highly doubt she ever will.
I personally put prepared casters as my bottom choices. I dont trust myself to have super good foresight to know what to prepare every day. I'd rather let my party know what I will take and what I can do to help so they can keep it in mind. I've also never played a full caster, because I enjoy the idea of mixing martial and magic together too much. Magus fits my needs pretty well for that, but I've been dying to try the Warlock variant of the Oracle from the Into the Breach series.
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I once (regrettably) had to play a one off dungeon with two rogues and a fighter (I was the fighter). The most shocking part was despite TWO rogues, the best method they had too look for traps was "let the fighter (me) walk in front, he's got twenty hit points". And the best method they had for opening locked doors was let the fighter bash them down.