
Barroth |
Hello. I am a player within a group and the character I built turned out to be overpowered in comparison to the rest of the group. I have spoken with my DM and we have nerfed a few things, but I was looking for more suggestions as to make my character more balanced. I started with the Suli race and added the Half-Dragon race template. Due to the way I like to play, High damage and very much a tank, I tend to build characters to fit this description. I tend to play such that I tank things when my health is high enough but deal heavy damage if things get hairy, i.e. when a teammate goes down.
My Character: (Level 1 Fighter)
Str: 19
Dex: 12
Con: 19
Int: 12
Wis: 14
Cha: 18
The way these stats were created was that everything started at 10. racial bonuses would be added, a d6 would be rolled to find a stat to decrease, and a d4 would be rolled to edit all of the stats either increasing them or decreasing them based on the d6 roll.
AC: 16 (This was nerfed as my character cannot wear any more armor than the armored kilt he wears.)
Touch and flat footed ac are both 15 due to natural armor being included in both, touch having the +1 from dex and the flat footed having +1 from the kilt.
Fort: +6
Reflex: +1
Will: +2
HP 14
speed 30ft/ fly 45ft (nerfed from 60)
Base attack bonus +1
CMB: +5
CMD: 16
Weapons:
60 ft line of acid (black dragon) usable once per day dmg: 3d6 (nerfed from 5-6d6) reflex save for half damage: 16 (nerfed, will not scale with level for a while)
Greatsword
Claw
Bite
Skills:
Climb +4
Craft Weapons +1
Fly +2
Handle Animal +4
Intimidate +5
Knowledge Dungeoneering and engineering +1
Profession Gladiator +2
Ride +1
Sense Motive +5
Survival +2
Swim +4
Languages: Common, Ignan, wasn't sure if I got draconic or not
Feats:
Fly By Attack
Power Attack
Special Abilities:
Elemental Assault (Suli racial spell)
Low Light Vision
Darkvision 60 ft
Resistance 5 to cold, lightning, fire
Immune to: Acid, sleep, and paralysis
I was thinking about either a level adjustment or not able to critical strike anything.
Are there any other suggestions you may have to make this character more fair?

chbgraphicarts |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I started with the Suli race and added the Half-Dragon race template.
That right there is where you and your DM made an absolutely horrendous mistake. Moreso your DM than you - your DM should have REALLY known better than to allow you to take a template like Half-Dragon.
Templates are NOT supposed to be assigned to characters in Pathfinder - in 3.5 they had Level Adjustments assigned to them, and Half-Dragon was either an LA +2 or +3 (I can't remember). That means, according to 3.5, you are effectively a lv3 or lv4 character in terms of power.
The asinine manner in which your DM had you determine stats aside, your Stats are actually fine - powerful, but fine.
The problem you're facing is that you have something that makes you extraordinarily strong - your Template.
Regardless of what you do, you need to lose it. It's just too overpowered, and your DM needs to learn to not allow things like that unless you're playing at mid- to high-levels (meaning you shouldn't be using something like that unless you're around lv15+)
However, I can understand the desire to want to make a Dragon-based warrior
SO, you have a few options open to you:
1) Completely remake the character as a Suli Bloodrager with the Dragon Bloodline, specifically a Primalist Bloodrager, so you can take Animal Fury and potentially Lesser Fiend Totem at lv4, thus giving you 2 Claws, a Bite, and a Gore Attack.
2) Drop some Feats in order to gain Skill Focus and Eldritch Heritage in order to gain Claw Attacks from the Sorcerer's Draconic Bloodline.
3) Change your Race entirely to a Wyvaran, which is basically a playable Half-Dragon, or the Dragon version of an Aasimar/Tiefline/Fetchling. You can take Eldritch Heritage in time in order to gain some Djinni Bloodline abilities of the Sorcerer.
---
Personally, I think Option 3 is the best, since the Suli is already a 16RP race, and the Wyvaran is 17RP, meaning they're are within the same tier of power. You'll STILL be a bit stronger than the rest of your group until you hit lv2, but not as glaringly; instead, you'll basically just probably be the front-line tank, and then once everyone hits lv2+, you'll be on-par with everyone else, and you'll still have the whole "descended from Dragons" thing going on.

Barroth |
This character is overpowered because this character can one shot most things at this level. We were in an encounter with 5 wolves and he took out 3 (edit from 33... darn keyboard) in one shot by blowing his daily breath weapon. no one else was able to deal any damage except for the ranger who was able to hit but not kill one of the other wolves. All of the other characters are within 5 of the base stat of 10 so max stat of 15. they do have their strengths and weaknesses but my character tends to have the solution to everything outside of combat given that I am experienced with RPG's and not everyone is as experienced as me. we have several all around characters and some who were made simply for the purpose of trolling the rest of the group (we had encountered wisps which put my character to sleep and another player kept me in that state nearly killing the others) Most of these characters only work in certain situations and are nowhere near my character's ability. We have two stryx characters, an elf, a goblin, an orc who can shapeshift into a tiger, and me. The other people have told me several times, and I agree, that my character is too overpowered for this group at this level. My character is the equivalent of "Hey look a boss and a bunch of minions! You guys get the minions, I got the boss" when compared to the rest of the group.

captain yesterday |

would it be better to hold off from leveling until the rest of the group hits level 3 or 4?
Ha! Classic! Uhh... no, you're better off dropping the template and slum it through the gutters of mediocrity with the others :-)
Take heart tho, you'll get to higher levels eventually, be patient :-)

captain yesterday |

Flight on low level characters always seems like it ends up being a problem. There is a reason why most classes lack options to fly until level 5 (either spells, or things like the flight hex's full effect).
It can present quite a problem for dungeon design, particularly against low level enemies.
great point, never mind me :-) I guess I'd sorcerer/Dragon Disciple :-)

Bob Bob Bob |
So there's several things wrong. At a minimum you should be two levels behind everyone else. While I don't think the Pathfinder recommendation of CR=LA is accurate in many cases (nymph, most outsiders) the level adjustments go up, not down. Since Half-Dragon is CR+2 you should at a minimum be two levels behind everyone else in the party. Probably more like three.
Next, natural armor does not add to touch AC.
Your breath weapon does no damage and has a DC of 14. It refers to racial hit dice, not class hit dice. Suli do not have racial hit dice, they only gain hit dice through class levels.
Your list of skills is wrong. As far as I can tell you put a rank in Fly, Intimidate (should be +8), and Sense Motive. You can't make Handle Animal, Knowledge (above DC 10), or Profession checks without ranks in them (which you do not have).
You don't get Draconic as a language because it doesn't say you do.
The other stuff seems correct.
Now, as for your GM's adjustments. There's no reason to deny you armor, the only AC benefit you're getting is +4 Natural Armor (something barbarians can get at level 12 and pass at level 16, alchemists can also pick up some, ditto druids, anyone who casts polymorph spells, the list is pretty long). You get a boost at low levels, that's it. Reducing the fly speed is similarly pointless, Strix have no level adjustment and start with a fly speed of 60 feet.
Now, as to the solution.
Everyone else has to be level 3 or willing to play sidekick to you. Period. Otherwise you're way more powerful than them for a while but you'll never level up while they're getting new and interesting things. If you want a Draconic themed character there's several options (dragon bloodline sorcerer, bloodrager, dragon disciple prestige class) that don't completely unbalance low levels.

chbgraphicarts |

would it be better to hold off from leveling until the rest of the group hits level 3 or 4?
No. The way Level Adjustments worked in 3rd/3.5, you couldn't actually take those Races until your party was high-enough level.
To follow that antiquated method, your Party would need to be CL4 while you had only one level of Fighter, and trust me - that is NOT the way to balance things.
There's a reason that Paizo completely threw out the Level Adjustment rules in Pathfinder: they do not work.
You take an overpowered race/template, and then make the whole character absurdly UNDERpowered by denying him Feats, Skill Ranks, Hit Dice, etc.
You'll be a Fighter in a Party with an APL of 4 and 10+ Con Hitpoints, along with hilariously bad saves, piss-poor skills for a class that's ALREADY starved for skill points, and fewer Feats than your other party members, thus basically negating the entire reason for you taking Fighter in the first place.
Your character will be one-shotted, and it'd be all your DM's fault for trying that stupid method of "fixing" a character that never should have existed in the first place.
Simply put: no, you should NOT take a Level Adjustment.
You should either be a Suli with a Draconic Bloodline via Feats or a Class, or a Wyvaran with maybe a Djinni Bloodline through the same means. You should under no circumstances be allowed to have a Half-Dragon Template until you are so high a level that the powers of it are rendered mundane (that being, not before lv14-15), and you should not suffer a Level Adjustment penalty.
---
Sorry but not sorry - your DM is a bit of an idiot.
Firstly, the ass-backwards way of determining stats is just overly complicated, and reeks of him trying to be "clever". No-one who tries to be "clever" ever succeeds or really is.
I can understand Point-Buy being a bit confusing, and not liking the randomness of Rolls, but seriously, that garbled mess of choosing Stats makes them both look preferable.
Would it really have been too hard for him to go "everyone can have a total value of +11 among all Modifiers of all Stats before Racial Modifiers are chosen (i.e. 10 is +0, 11 +0.5, 12 +1, 13 +1.5, etc.)"?
Either that, or simply say "everyone gets 18, 17, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10 for stats, to be applied as you choose".
He's obviously trying to "fix" a system that he has very little understanding of if he'd allow a Half-X Template to be applied to a Character, especially one who already has a VERY powerful base Race.
Secondly, his "answer" to fixing your character is to say that you can't wear Armor beyond an Armored Kilt, which is only going to create MASSIVE problems for you later, and cause you to go from being Overpowered to Underpowered in the blink of an eye.
Thirdly, your Wisdom and Reflex saves are absolutely god-awful, honestly, and smacking your character with Will- and Reflex-Save based spells and effects would have pretty much IMMEDIATELY rendered your character obsolete; and yet, he seems to have been focused on the "HIT IT WITH A STIIIIIIIIIIIIICK!!!" method of encounters, which CAN work reasonably well in it's own right, but is not the one and only method at all, especially when you have a glass cannon of a character like yours who can easily suffer effects worse than simply losing HP.
Finally, as I've harped on, he should have known better from the get-go to not allow a Template on a Character at all. Not allowing non-CRB races is a bit harsh, but at least is understandable - without experience, a DM might not know how races like Elves and Dwarves stack up against races like Catfolk and Tengu (basically on-par), Aasimar or Drow (slightly weaker, but nothing horrendous), or races like Suli or Wyvaran (weaker at lv1 but not enough to warrant an LA, but by lv3, they're even).
But Half-Dragon is a Template that adds CR+2, which should IMMEDIATELY be an indicator of power, considering that it's common knowledge that adding Class Levels to a Monster increases its CR on a 1:1 basis - meaning that any Template which adds +2 to CR, according to Pathfinder, is worth at LEAST 2 Class Levels, if not more.
He should really learn how to properly manage and referee the system as-written before trying to make radical changes to it, especially with unnecessarily complicated "fixes".

lemeres |

Now, as for your GM's adjustments. There's no reason to deny you armor, the only AC benefit you're getting is +4 Natural Armor (something barbarians can get at level 12 and pass at level 16, alchemists can also pick up some, ditto druids, anyone who casts polymorph spells, the list is pretty long). You get a boost at low levels, that's it. Reducing the fly speed is similarly pointless, Strix have no level adjustment and start with a fly speed of 60 feet.
Well, not necessarily. Besides the fact that barbarians lose half of that natural armor to rage at that level, and alchemists' natural armor bonus stacks with the one from the template (which can be particularly relevant, since there is a fighter archetype that has alchemist mutagens, and it is also rather nice for getting flight at level 7), there is the assumption that those classes are not using heavy armor.
Barbarians and alchemists have to pay a price to use heavy armor (barbarians typically have to use an archetype, and alchemists have to multiclass or waste 2 feats), but fighters can use them from the get go. And With flight like that...you lose a lot of the disadvantages of heavy armor (your speed would be....35? 30? On par with everyone else at least; I am always fuzzy with natural flight and armor).
Natural armor like that puts you above a sword and board player with similar armor for a long time. All the while, you can use 2 handed.
Is it fair for the GM to remove armor as an option? Probably not. But he shouldn't have allowed a template with that much power at such a low level anyway. Bad decisions to cover bad decisions.
Also, using strix as an example about LA just shows that there is no LA in the system. Going off the race builder, their flight alone is worth 10 rp (that is the same as the cost of all the traits put together for any one of the core races). I am fairly sure that the combined total of a strix's rp go into the 'monstrous' range, along with Centaurs and Ogres (or they cheat for a lower score with silly things like xenophobic)

![]() |

Oh good grief. Anyone can one-shot things at level 1. I can make a Halfling Fighter that pulls that off (albeit less frequently). A human fighter, or anything with a strength bonus, can pull that off.
It's not that bad. Don't worry about it, and enjoy the ride. Remember, a high base damage at level 1 doesn't do jack against a couple of bear traps.
Oh, and Natural Armor doesn't apply to touch AC.

![]() |

So, there is a simple solution. Allow all the players to add a half-X template, then the GM must up the CR of the encounters appropriately. If the other players are not accustomed to that, you are in the wrong party to have a template and I would advise dropping it. There are ways to build a Draconic character (as mentioned by others in this post) without taking the fun out of it for the rest.
It simply does not work when you build an overpowered character then remove certain aspects of the build to make it fit in.
Also, try and use your experience as player to guide the rest of the players rather than tell them what to do. And remember, player knowledge vs. character knowledge.
As far as the level adjustment goes, do you really want to be a fighter with 14hp when the rest hit level 3, being out-healthed by the party wizard? No? Well, there is your answer.

![]() |

I am not particularly skilled at optimization, but I remember one golden rule from 3.5:
Never go above LA+3 unless you get the ability to buy it back off.
Never go LA unless everyone goes LA.
Yep. You cannot balance LA against non LA. It is like balancing rocket fuel and diesel. Theoretically they are the same. They both make things go, but one has a heck of a lot more bang.
Most builds are dependent upon some arrangements of feats or class abilities. Some even involve needing (or strongly desiring) certain items. Chopping out the ability to gain those items or to complete those feat chains is castrating your build. At low levels, this is generally fine. If you are losing Power Attack, for example, to gain a +4 strength, you are win-win. You have the same damage, and more to-hit. On the other hand, when you really need that last one, two, or four feats to be effective in your niche, and you will never ever get them in exchange for the +4 strength. . . well that sucks. You could have just purchased a Str. belt. You just crippled your entire concept for an item worth less than 20,000 gold.
Drop LA.
Go Point Buy or some universal Array. (Everyone get the same stats to distribute*)
*This really REALLY sucks for multi-attribute dependent classes, like Monks.
Also, you should not be dominating. Consider:
You will save is +2.
Pretend you run into a caster of similar (ish) Stats.
Daze Person will have DC 10 (Base) + 0 (Spell Level) + 4 (Caster Stat Mod.) = 14
Assuming nothing else, you have a 60% chance to be dazed.
Color Spray: DC 10 (Base) +1 (SPell Level) + 4 (Caster Stat Mod) = 15.
You have a 65% chance to be unconscious, drooling, blind, etc. for the duration of the combat.
Sleep: Same DC, you are done with the fight
Murderous Command: Now you are attacking your allies!
What's the point? Even against a single BBEG, your saves will prove detrimental. They may well cause you to become the BBEG for the rest of your party.
The same applies to your Reflex Save, but swap in spells like Grease.
I find that most people are loath to dump Con. This fear of dump does not seem to apply to any other stat. You regularly see 8-10 dex and wis. These are the two saves I generally do my best to target at low levels.
Short version:
1) Although you are OP compared to your party, you are not too OP to deal with.
2) Ditch the +CR template
3) Use a more balanced method of Stat distribution