|
What should people who've always had options expect from playing mid- to higher-levels of PFS using the CRB only?
Archers are not as much all powerful - they are still powerful, but without ghost salt, durable adamant arrows, abundant ammunition, gravity bow spells they do not shred all things all the time. Indeed a lot of what made Archers more powerful came from outside of Core.
I think some/many of the ways people rage cycle and avoid being fatigued are gone in core - so that also may be a concern on damage done by barbarians.
swarms are a concern again -with few classes able to handle them well and the cross-blooded dip not available to blasters on damage spells in general.
Spring-loaded wrist sheaths are gone, first aid gloves are not allowed - so if you want to use a breath of life scroll have it out. Actually if you want breath of life cast - bring a cleric.
Those first come to mind
|
Generally, expect things to be harder. You'll need to play smart and not rely on the bad guy going down before his initiative comes up.
Defenses become more important, healing becomes a little more important.
You have fewer options and the options you do have are often going to be somewhat more expensive (in gold, feat cost, higher level spell, etc).
Definitely you should be a lot more careful about playing up, you should strive harder for a balanced party, season 4 and some 5 scenarios with unbalanced parties of 5 may well turn out to be killers.
But the game is still very, very playable. A barbarian was always close to the most powerful melee character (certainly, more than powerful enough), wizards are still very verstatile power houses, etc.
|
|
Archers are not as much all powerful - they are still powerful, but without ghost salt, durable adamant arrows, abundant ammunition, gravity bow spells they do not shred all things all the time. Indeed a lot of what made Archers more powerful came from outside of Core.
I actually sort of disagree with this. Archers just simply cost more money now.
Ghost salt - Backup +1 ghost touch bow seems to be the answer to this now. Or ghost touch ammunition. Sure, doesn't apply at low levels but it is still Core. Again, things cost more.
Durable Adamantine Arrows - Just fire normal ones. More expensive, but works just fine. My archer bard went through his whole career never firing a durable arrow. And while it sounds very expensive...how often do you use these consistently?
Abundant Ammunition - Not required for an archer, really. Again, money saver. Many archers I know do not use this at all.
Gravity Bow - Most archers I know do not use this spell and are still effective. +1.5-2 damage per hit is not game-breaking.
What you still have:
Rapid Shot, Deadly Aim, Arcane Strike, Precise Shot, Manyshot, Improved Precise Shot, Weapon Focus.
|
|
Archers are not as much all powerful - they are still powerful, but without ghost salt, durable adamant arrows, abundant ammunition, gravity bow spells they do not shred all things all the time. Indeed a lot of what made Archers more powerful came from outside of Core.I actually sort of disagree with this. Archers just simply cost more money now.
Sure with more money you can cover all the things that are cheaper not Core, but in doing that, you are taking away money you could spend on other things to cover the basics.
When we had never heard of durable arrows, 61 GP a shot for adamantine was just required - one you know about durable it almost feels like a burden.
And no swarmbane clasp means the archer does not devastate swarms in core.
clustered shot, point blank master, snap shot (and its nastier cousin) - things that an archer could be more versatile with are all gone.
|
Archers are not as much all powerful - they are still powerful, but without ghost salt, durable adamant arrows, abundant ammunition, gravity bow spells they do not shred all things all the time. Indeed a lot of what made Archers more powerful came from outside of Core.I actually sort of disagree with this. Archers just simply cost more money now.
And no swarmbane clasp means the archer does not devastate swarms in core.
clustered shot, point blank master, snap shot (and its nastier cousin) - things that an archer could be more versatile with are all gone.
To be fair, as a player of a high level archer the swarmbane clasp, weapon blanches, and clustered shot are really the only things that I'd miss. Point-Blank Master is good, but generally unnecessary. And the Snap Shot chain is not as good as other options that you could take IMO (then again, unlike most people I believe a vanilla fighter to be the best archer over a PFS career (at high level Zen Archer catches up/passes (maybe) the fighter, and the only real advantage to Ranger is 6th level access to Improved Precise shot))
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
My opinion, a return to classic tactics. Scouting ahead, rogues for traps, sneaking, clerics being the best healers, tactical positioning playing a much bigger role.
Nothing has really gotten harder, but with so many fewer ways to completely break characters (and create parties of 1) you have to work together better to survive.
(Also, expect adventuring to get more expensive on the consumable side, with things that are missing, spell casting services, and certain potions will be much more common purchases)
|
|
When we had never heard of durable arrows, 61 GP a shot for adamantine was just required - one you know about durable it almost feels like a burden.
It's really not that bad unless you are consistently playing season 6's because of how little you use them. Most of the time, I bought them and they sat around for like 6 or 7 sessions.
And no swarmbane clasp means the archer does not devastate swarms in core.
I do concede this point. Swarms are a lot more deadly in general without a swarmbane clasp, and high level swarms essentially will require a caster to take care of. This is actually kind of a scary problem considering some of the scenarios I've played...
clustered shot, point blank master, snap shot (and its nastier cousin) - things that an archer could be more versatile with are all gone.
Clustered shots isn't really that great if you can bypass the DR. There are very few enemies that have DR/-. Point blank master and snap shot aren't really that great IMO.
|
Hmm, I recall our parties had the most trouble with the suckitude of combat healing. If things started to go south, healing only lengthened the suffering rather than offsetting it. Table turners like elemental gems, necklaces of fireballs, etc would have been most welcome for those times we didn't have the luxury of the Fire domain negative channeler or our utility druid.
Incorporeals were a b*tch, though blessedly rare. Those required the full attention of everyone instead of just the resident ghost-salter. Kiting them while oils were applied, etc, was integral to survival.
Darkness was so prevalent in seasons 1 and 3 that I'm going to play a Sun domain cleric as my main Core peep. Using summons with tremorsense, blindsight or daylight worked awfully, but work it did.
Demons were plentiful so using a cold iron weapon for half your career wasn't unheard of. See also: darkness, lack of healing, incorporeal.
So yeah, usually a high-charisma paladin was needed.
|
|
Be prepared to heave to deal with all sorts of random crap, luckily a lot of the best tools for getting out and dealing with trouble are still there in core and a great deal at 2pp.
Things like:
Potion of Fly
Potion of Gaseous Form
Potion of Cure Serious Wounds
Scroll of Freedom of Movement
Scroll of Lesser Restoration(x5)
|
|
Don't expect much difference in challenge. The strong options are as strong as in Standard. Really the only exceptions are swarms.I suspect that most of the challenge will come due to have a larger proportion of classes which struggle to contribute, especially in the higher tiers. A number of those classes also lose some important archetypes such as Quingong for Monk or Scout for Rogue.
A Fighter/Rogue/Bard/Monk group is likely to have a far rougher ride in 5-9 and 7-11 than Wizard/Druid/Cleric/Paladin.
Partly. But even the strong classes have lost lots of options. No Create Pit, snowball, Saurian Shamans, Aasimars, etc etc etc etc.
And at least the rogue has SOME use now (trapfinder and disabler). But I agree that the stronger classes lose less than some of the weaker classes
|
Partly. But even the strong classes have lost lots of options. No Create Pit, snowball, Saurian Shamans, Aasimars, etc etc etc etc.
Create Pit is a noticeable loss at low levels I guess. Snowball I haven't seen a lot, saurian shamans I've never seen, and aasimar are marginally too powerful at best - not anywhere close to simple differences in class, feat, or spell selection in impact. (Frankly, most aasimar builds would be better as a plain old human.)
And at least the rogue has SOME use now (trapfinder and disabler).
Meh. Trapfinder can be anyone with Perception, trap disabler isn't even a thing in the vast majority of scenarios. Magic traps have too high a DC for a rogue to be likely to succeed on even CR-appropriate ones till late (for PFS) levels, and really there's tons of other ways to deal with them anyway. Also, at best this justifies a 1-level dip into rogue for a character of some other, actually useful, class.
|
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
|
Don't expect much difference in challenge. The strong options are as strong as in Standard. Really the only exceptions are swarms.
No Tetori monk, no summoner, no musket master, no cavalier, no warpriest--a lot of powerful options are missing from Core. That's the nature of the campaign when you allow less at the table.
While the strong options from the CRB are still strong in a core only environment, not everyone wants to play those pcs. I personally find pounce kitty Druids to be boring, along with conjuration wizards. So I will instead be playing other characters, like monks and rogues. So while six Druids with animal companions playing up might not have difficulty, a typical table of different characters will find Core to be more challenging.
|
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
|
A lot of core for us has been forcing us to use good teamwork and tactics. Get that flanking, deny that sneak attack by getting concealment, spread out if expecting a fireball, etc.
My last core fight by the numbers should have ravaged our party. Instead we walked out without a death. Two babaus and a shadow demon against a party of six core only characters, levels 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3. Our party consisted of a wizard 3/rogue 3, monk 5, bard 5, ranger 5, cleric 5, barbarian 2/bard 1. Not a traditionally "strong" party. But we played intelligently and worked with one another to succeed.
The shadow demon cast detonate on himself. We bullrushed him away from the party before he could explode.
The babaus cast darkness. Our cleric cast daylight.
The babaus dispelled the daylight. The characters with darkvision moved to protect those without.
The cleric went unconcious. The party disabled the shadow demon to prevent the demon's aqueous orb from rolling onto him.
The wizard/rogue was about to be flanked by the babaus. We used a smokestick to negate their +2d6 sneak attack.
These are things that can always be done in regular PFS, you just see less of it these days because characters are always getting stronger. There are consistently more powerful options. When those options are no longer available, you have to fall back into better tactics and teamwork. That's how we've survived thus far.
|
|
A lot of core for us has been forcing us to use good teamwork and tactics. Get that flanking, deny that sneak attack by getting concealment, spread out if expecting a fireball, etc.
Which does open up one rather interesting issue. Those tactics largely rely on player ability. Having a smokestick to eliminate sneak attacks is pretty darn advanced (very well done, mind :-) ). Not all experienced players are that good and fairly few beginner players (one of the main targets for CORE) are.
If CORE requires good tactics and good item selection then it IS substantially harder.
Which is arguably a very good thing, mind.
|
Utility gets a foothold. No omnipotent characters capable of multiple roles. Charactes often have to concentrate on one thing if they wish to be very good at it. You'll need more balanced parties, that's basically it.
I remember tales from Season 0 when a four PC team consisting of a wizard, cleric, sorcerer, and another sorcerer wandered to the Qadiran desert in Murder on the Silken Caravan. They didn't die, but took so much pounding they had to forfeit midway.
And archers have good dex and admirable BAB. Throwing them splash weapons shouldn't be a problem.
|
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
|
The shadow demon cast detonate on himself. We bullrushed him away from the party before he could explode.How did you bullrush an incorporeal creature given...
An incorporeal creature’s attacks pass through (ignore) natural armor, armor, and shields, although deflection bonuses and force effects (such as mage armor) work normally against it. Incorporeal creatures pass through and operate in water as easily as they do in air. Incorporeal creatures cannot fall or take falling damage. Incorporeal creatures cannot make trip or grapple attacks, nor can they be tripped or grappled. In fact, they cannot take any physical action that would move or manipulate an opponent or its equipment, nor are they subject to such actions. Incorporeal creatures have no weight and do not set off traps that are triggered by weight.
It was possessing a corporeal one.
|
|
A lot of core for us has been forcing us to use good teamwork and tactics. Get that flanking, deny that sneak attack by getting concealment, spread out if expecting a fireball, etc.
My last core fight by the numbers should have ravaged our party. Instead we walked out without a death. Two babaus and a shadow demon against a party of six core only characters, levels 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3. Our party consisted of a wizard 3/rogue 3, monk 5, bard 5, ranger 5, cleric 5, barbarian 2/bard 1. Not a traditionally "strong" party. But we played intelligently and worked with one another to succeed.
The shadow demon cast detonate on himself. We bullrushed him away from the party before he could explode.
The babaus cast darkness. Our cleric cast daylight.
The babaus dispelled the daylight. The characters with darkvision moved to protect those without.
The cleric went unconcious. The party disabled the shadow demon to prevent the demon's aqueous orb from rolling onto him.
The wizard/rogue was about to be flanked by the babaus. We used a smokestick to negate their +2d6 sneak attack.These are things that can always be done in regular PFS, you just see less of it these days because characters are always getting stronger. There are consistently more powerful options. When those options are no longer available, you have to fall back into better tactics and teamwork. That's how we've survived thus far.
I have to give it to you guys, you really pulled it out. I was certainly worried when I figured out the APL. Nice work all told.
I would hope to see more discussion of tactics and plans. Currently I see what I consider too many extreme glass cannon builds that rely on high initiative and doing a bajillion points of damage immediately so they don't have to worry about anything else.
A lot of those weird stacking abilities for the EGC's are gone. So I am expecting people to gradually realize (possibly dying for enlightenment) that they have to think about something other than charge-smack.
.
.
...
And archers have good dex and admirable BAB. Throwing them splash weapons shouldn't be a problem.
Often a group won't have enough vials of 'whatever' to kill many of the higher level swarms. I personally was astonished at how many it can take when you only have the mundane and no magic to work on them.