Kobold Catgirl |
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1. GLaDOS. Did you think Grimtooth was scary? That's adorable.
2. The Sniper from TF2. Now, at first, I was thinking—"The Sniper? Seriously? He's just a rogue. And sniping rogues suck, anyways.
Then I realized. He attacks from a distance...and has a "jar of urine" attack.
Alone, he's not that dangerous. But think about how the players react to something like that. It won't mattr if the sniper has ten dragons, a hundred demiliches and a million Grimtooth traps between him and the PCs, they will do their damnedest to reach him. And they will die. Stupidly.
3. Yelps from Runescape.
4. Endermen. Basically immune to ranged attacks, immediate action dimension door, and the best part is? Even if you teleport away, they can teleport after you, and they will remember you.
5. Fellow wizards in Magicka.
Rynjin |
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The Sniper is actually VERY dangerous.
He, essentially, has a ranged Coup de Grace whose only criteria for use is standing still for a few seconds to charge his Sniper Rifle.
d6 HD (equivalent to Light 125 HP classes like Spies, Engineers, and other Snipers) classes he can scope, fire, and kill instantly with a single headshot.
d8 HD (equivalent to Medium 175 HP classes like Demoman and Pyro) classes only take about a second to Charge (so a Swift action, basically).
d10 HD (the Soldier, 200 HP) takes a bt longer, so maybe a Move to charge, Standard to fire.
And then d10/d12 HD with ridiculously high Con (the Heavy or overhealed Soldier, 300 HP) takes 3.3 seconds, so we'll be generous and say a Standard to Charge.
Regardless, he can kill most characters with one headshot, instantaneously, in a single round.
God help you if you happen to be in a marching line and he's using the Machina. Two, three, four of your teammates drop and an obnoxiously loud sound plays while he whispers insults at you.
And you think "Well, maybe I can catch him in melee!". NOPE!
He spends an attack action splashing the whole party with Jarate, and then he whips out his Bushwhacka and starts throwing around instant x4 crits at you, with an attack interval that's the equivalent of a Hasted character with 20 BaB.
Piece of piss!
Rynjin |
You have to.
At the very least, it deals 450 damage on a headshot.
And he's really no squishier than a d6 HD character with 14-16 Con.
But hitting isn't really an issue. In-game the character is an excellent shot ("All your heads look bloody 12 feet tall!"), and even adjusting for player error the Sniper class has a theoretically infinite skill ceiling.
I've played competitive Steel Highlander games with really skilled Snipers and they're a big pain in the ass, and I spent my entire time as the Spy of the team making sure he didn't pick off our key members. Imagine someone who's actually SKILLED, like an Invite 6's player. They're TERRIFYING to play against. The only thing that really counters the class is another player of the class with equal skill.
Kobold Catgirl |
Where do we get 450? Tell me we aren't actually using the video game hit points numbers. Video games use bigger numbers because they can process them, because they look cooler—tons of reasons. We have to assume a certain level of translation here.
The funny thing about the sniper, though, is you have to adjust for player error. That's what makes him different from the spy or heavy. Ultimately, a mediocrely-played spy can usually manage at least one kill. A poorly-played Heavy still has a ton of Hit Points.
A poorly-played sniper is pretty much worse than useless. A mediocrely-played sniper is mediocre. A well-played sniper shoots well. I've had awful experiences with skilled snipers. They're insane. But the thing is that the sniper's skills are purely derived from the player's. Otherwise, he's no more special than any guy with a pee-shooting sniper rifle.
This actually makes him somewhat hard to stat out, because his to-hit bonus has nothing at all to do with the actual character—and for the sniper, hitting is the entire goal. So when statting him, do we assume a good player? A great player? An average player? It's going to matter.
Rynjin |
Where do we get 450? Tell me we aren't actually using the video game hit points numbers. Video games use bigger numbers because they can process them, because they look cooler—tons of reasons. We have to assume a certain level of translation here.
I would agree if these numbers didn't easily line up with potential HP bonuses a 10th+ level character can achieve. This isn't like "Final Fantasy boss with millions of HP", these are achievable numbers.
The funny thing about the sniper, though, is you have to adjust for player error. That's what makes him different from the spy or heavy. Ultimately, a mediocrely-played spy can usually manage at least one kill. A poorly-played Heavy still has a ton of Hit Points.
This is sorta wrong, though. A mediocre-ly played Spy is pretty much worthless against equally skilled players. You actually have to outplay the enemy to get anything done with Spy. And killing one guy (unless it's an important pick, like a Medic or Demoman) is not getting something done.
And poorly played Heavies don't exist. They have a skill floor of "Know how to WASD and press M1+M2". (And a basic level of situational awareness, but that's not skill.)
But that's off topic.
A poorly-played sniper is pretty much worse than useless. A mediocrely-played sniper is mediocre. A well-played sniper shoots well. I've had awful experiences with skilled snipers. They're insane. But the thing is that the sniper's skills are purely derived from the player's. Otherwise, he's no more special than any guy with a pee-shooting sniper rifle.
This actually makes him somewhat hard to stat out, because his to-hit bonus has nothing at all to do with the actual character—and for the sniper, hitting is the entire goal. So when statting him, do we assume a good player? A great player? An average player? It's going to matter.
You ALWAYS balance towards the average...and the average skilled Sniper Player can hit a headshot at least half the time, and a body shot nearly 100% of the time.
But as we're balancing around the CHARACTERS, the Sniper as a character in-canon is an incredibly skilled shot. Very much above average.
Rynjin |
How are you getting 450HP with a 10+ character?!? My 13th level Dragon disciple has only like 130 when he's not raging. I venture to guess a min-maxed barbarian wouldn't hit those numbers.
Not 450. The Sniper Rifle does a max of 450 damage.
BUT, the characters have 125 (the majority), 175, 200, and 300 HP without Overheal (extra Temp HP on top, basically).
125-200 are very definitely possible.
Bandw2 |
Kel'Thuzad, from
HearthstoneWorld of Warcraft.You go in, expecting to fight a lich - when he busts out a deck of cards and calmly informs you that the only way to beat him is in a children's card game.
for what ever reason that made me think of kingdom hearts.
lord, sephiroth would be interesting, an attack that can kill you instantly if he hits?
a ton of the bosses across the series would definitely be interesting.
Rynjin |
Kel'Thuzad, from
HearthstoneWorld of Warcraft.You go in, expecting to fight a lich - when he busts out a deck of cards and calmly informs you that the only way to beat him is in a children's card game.
With all this TF2 talk and DualJay dere-railing things with talk about Yu-Gi-Oh Hearthstone World of Warcraft Yu-Gi-Oh it's like I really AM back on SPUF.
I'm Hiding In Your Closet |
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On the subject of Pokemon, Abras are pretty annoying in a non-hostile sense, especially if the party needs to get one for something and can't cast dimensional anchor yet.
Imagine a mage or other villain who has one as a familiar/minion and keeps sending it to steal things from the party. Missing weapons, missing gold, missing spellbooks/spell component pouches, missing holy symbols... and attempting to catch something that can teleport at-will despite being worth almost nothing in a straight-up fight.
You *can* do this with some existing D&D/PF critters, but they're usually high-enough level to have better/more interesting/less annoying tricks up their sleeves.
The Leprechauns of Rogue: If you kill them, they have gold. That's nice...but all THEY need to do is hit you ONCE, then "your purse feels lighter", and just like that, they vanish without a trace...with the gold they stole from you. Bye-bye, gold. It's not coming back.
The Sideromancer |
Didn't have time to read the whole thing, but
*Territorial Rotbart, or anything else that TPKs you in the first area if you don't run the instant it notices you. Low-level death can be cheap in video games, it isn't in PF
*If you're going with pokemon, base damage has nothing on how much you can get debilitated into the ground: You don't have the option of switching out of the fight. Meaning you need to spend resources to remove that 0.25 damage you can deal and 4* more damage you take just from rats, etc. spamming growl and tail whip. Oh, and PF lets you stack conditions easier, so you can be taking damage from both burn and poison at the same time, while also being paralyzed.
*Flash/Bright/Centaur Man, because At-will (nonmagical?) Time Stop that they can still attack through
Dullahan from Golden Sun. The equivalent of disabling class features and casting your strongest spells against you using your own spell slots would be completely ridiculous when he isn't locked into a set pattern.
The Sideromancer |
Had time to catch up, I see that the pokemon discussion is mostly complete.
In other news, buffing weak mooks can be a pretty good technique. And it's hard to argue with the terrifying ability of one of the best in that business: Sturm from Advance Wars. +20% offence and defence on everything, arbitrarily large range, plus they ignore difficult terrain. Oh, and killing enough of the minions lets him knock off 80% of your team's health as a free action (unless your group of ~4 PCs is more spread out than the area of a circle with a radius of three cities). Caulder from the same series at least needs to put himself within a few miles, but cranks that buff up to 50% and heals all of his allies half health while he's at it.
Edward the Necromancer |
Since many of the obvious options have been brought up all ready (pokemon and Final Fantasy) I am going to say any boss fight from the Mega Man/Mega Man X games.
Imagine a Construct that is fast, has a lot of HP, can leap around and/or fly, and has multiple supernatural at will attacks/abilities, many of which can cover most if not the entire battle field.
BlarkNipnar |
Poison Headcrabs, and more so, the Poison Zombies that carry them. (Half life 2)
Those things man. Poison you to 1HP so that anything (other than the headcrabs) will instantly kill you? Brutal and scary. And what's worse? They can be hiding under just about anything.
Then the poison zombie? Hucking them at you from 50ft away or so. blech.
The Sideromancer |
Oh yeah, there's also the kirby series. Teleport spam is enough of a pain in a small 2d area when you can counterattack in real time. Also, full-battlefield AoEs (because of course the swordsman has at-will stormbolts), the kind of spatial tearing you usually only see in bag of holding/portable hole incidents, and the literal wish machines that have been used at least twice. And then there's the final bosses that sure look like they have an Unspeakable Presence aura.