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Lore Warden is a broken archetype that ignores all the rules of making balanced archetypes...Lore Warden is one of the few BALANCED archetypes out there.
If by balanced you mean "not even remotely in line with the core class, breaking standard archetype creation rules, and granting overly inflated numbers that provide a poor band-aid and only serve to mask the issues it pretends to address" then you're absolutely correct.
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If by balanced you mean "not even remotely in line with the core class...
Lore Warden is a broken archetype that ignores all the rules of making balanced archetypes...Lore Warden is one of the few BALANCED archetypes out there.
Keeping an archetype as weak as the core fighter is a joke. I'm happy at least one designer figured it out and moved beyond that antiquated notion.
So I've been thinking about ways to improve combat maneuvers. I feel like some of them should be combined. Maybe reposition and bull rush. Steal and dirty trick. Grapple should have a cling feature for big opponents. And I want to remove combat expertise as a prerequisite.
What else could be combined?
I also think that if a fighter beats an opponent's AC by 5 or more, they should get a free CM attempt of their choice. Still playing with this one, though.
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126 posts before the "But, wizards!" argument was brought up in a post about martial combat.
Maybe the forums are starting to get better about that.
Well its actually a legitmate question especially since Shisumo was talking about how they hated disarm because it made the encounter boring.
My counter argument was simply how is it any different than when a Wizard casts any spell other than a blasting or buffing Spell? Maybe giving martials options to be able to do things like disarm would actually be quite nice!
And my answer was that GMs hate those spells too, and reducing either sides' options for interaction makes encounters boring. Save or lose is boring. Disarms and grapples are boring. (I am a fan of repositioning, though.) Making save or lose maneuvers better makes the game worse, for the same reasons why adding more save or lose spells does.
Save or suck and battlefield control aren't nearly as obnoxious. They actually do make the game more interesting. But save or lose really doesn't.
The assassin could have withdrawn and come back later with extra weapons and thugs, could have tumbled to her weapon and regained it, could (if it's who I think it is) have cast any number of effective spells, or a variety of other options.
2) The rogue had already picked it up.
3) She doesn't have any spells, so it's apparently not whoever it is you're thinking of. In fact, she's a gunslinger and we'd taken away her gun. Her melee option is literally an AoO-provoking unarmed strike, she has no other listed weapons beside some grenades - in fact, no other listed equipment at all besides the grenades and some batteries. And before you mention it, she tried to use a grenade, and I disarmed that too.
4) Such as? Because I'm not really coming up with anything.
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Keeping an archetype as weak as the core fighter is a joke. I'm happy at least one designer figured it out and moved beyond that antiquated notion.If by balanced you mean "not even remotely in line with the core class...
Lore Warden is a broken archetype that ignores all the rules of making balanced archetypes...Lore Warden is one of the few BALANCED archetypes out there.
Yay, one designer recognized the Fighter's flaws... and attempted to fix them in a way that showed they didn't know anything about what they were trying to fix. Slapping more numbers onto combat abilities the Fighter can already add lots of numbers to doesn't fix anything, it just shifts where the break is. It's as moronic a fix as Paizo's poorly thought out Stamina system: "Gee, there's a very vocal set of our community that thinks the fighter needs more mobility and out of combat tools; let's give him more combat tools and the ability to skip one feat that never made sense to begin with by taking a different feat".
Or another analogy: "Gee, our tank can deliver a lot of damage but has trouble getting around the battlefield into firing positions and has no usefulness except as a moving cannon; let's turn some of the armor plating into two extra barrels and add a GPS"; the tank being the Fighter, the extra barrels being the Lore Warden's maneuver bonuses, and the GPS being the 2 extra skill points they tossed in there to distract people from the fact that they didn't actually fix anything.
Thinking the Fighter can be fixed by adding more numbers to things he's already got lots of numbers to shows a failure to do the math, and actually comprehend where the problems lie in the first place.
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126 posts before the "But, wizards!" argument was brought up in a post about martial combat.
Maybe the forums are starting to get better about that.
Well its actually a legitmate question especially since Shisumo was talking about how they hated disarm because it made the encounter boring.
My counter argument was simply how is it any different than when a Wizard casts any spell other than a blasting or buffing Spell? Maybe giving martials options to be able to do things like disarm would actually be quite nice!
And my answer was that GMs hate those spells too, and reducing either sides' options for interaction makes encounters boring. Save or lose is boring. Disarms and grapples are boring. (I am a fan of repositioning, though.) Making save or lose maneuvers better makes the game worse, for the same reasons why adding more save or lose spells does.
Except for the fact that disarm and trip aren't save or lose abilities unless you've got a GM who just gives up when the thing they thought was all cool doesn't immediately work out the way they planned. Phantasmal killer is a save or lose; the enemy has to make two saves, or they die, and dead people generally can't do anything (with a few exceptions). Disarm takes away your weapon; your only option then is to attempt an acrobatics check to get to your weapon without provoking an AoO, or withdraw and come back later, or pull your backup weapon, or use a spell if you happen to know some, or counter with a maneuver of your own, maybe disarming them back and taking their weapon, or using an unarmed strike against the guy with a ranged weapon or a wand in his hand, or use a magic item/potion/scroll if you have one (which you should and pretty much all Paizo enemy NPCS do), or attempt to negotiate with the enemy, or... Gee you know what? There's actually a lot of things you can do after being disarmed, so not really a save or lose ability at all. Viable combat maneuver options increase either side's options for interaction, they don't limit them.
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The lore warden is a well balanced archetype, I can not even imagine how someone could think it was a moronic design.
If that was bad design, then I prefer that bad design, than the "balanced against a core class" dozen of horrible rogues archetypes.
People who can do math recognize it as moronic design. Blah blah blah Rogue archetypes has nothing to do with it. A Fighter archetype that actually provided tools to address the Fighter's real problems, like the Mutation Warrior, or the Eldritch Guardian, or the Dirty Fighter, or even the Martial Master are examples of good design; Lore Warden is an example of someone not knowing the system they're attempting to fix, and masking that with big shiny bonuses that show all they did was pander to people who didn't understand the system any better than they did. Had they focused on only a few smart areas, like letting him count as having Combat Expertise automatically, increasing the maximum size creature he could affect with size-limited maneuvers, opening up the maneuvers he can apply his Weapon Training to, and giving him 4+Int real skill points instead of removing his only reason to invest in INT and then limiting him to INT-based bonus skills, there could have been something there. Instead we got a poorly conceived archetype that just reverses the direction the system is broken in and pretends to listen with some placebo bonuses.
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Viable combat maneuver options increase either side's options for interaction, they don't limit them.
...that literally makes no sense, as everything you said before was possible without the disarm, plus there's also the option to actually attack with the weapon you still have.
And as for the rest, as I noted in the spoiler above, not a single one of your suggestions was "viable" in that fight. Including negotiating, since she only spoke a language that neither the rogue nor I understood.
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Viable combat maneuver options increase either side's options for interaction, they don't limit them....that literally makes no sense, as everything you said before was possible without the disarm, plus there's also the option to actually attack with the weapon you still have.
And as for the rest, as I noted in the spoiler above, not a single one of your suggestions was "viable" in that fight. Including negotiating, since she only spoke a language that neither the rogue nor I understood.
And I assumed were still a lot of questions to be answered before that statement was sufficient because you'd given me no reason to believe otherwise. Why couldn't she withdraw? Or throw the grenade? Did you have some ability that allowed you to threaten with that whip? You'd need at least 4 feats for that, feats that should probably pay off once in a while, and even then it's only a 10 foot threatened range. She couldn't take a step back before drawing and throwing it? Why did a gunslinging assassin even get that close to you to begin with? Either you invested in a niche ability that managed to pay off against a poorly played opponent, or you weren't actually following the rules to begin with.
Luck also sounds like a major factor, since a character of a class that should be very good at acrobatics failed their acrobatics check (against your CMD by the way), and then you managed to roll and confirm a crit (with the whip?).
Even in your best case scenario where everything was done legitimately and had valid mechanics backing it up, the story still boils down to "I used a combat maneuver I'don't invested resources to perform and got really, really lucky once" which is in no way evidence that maneuvers took away from the encounter.
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Viable combat maneuver options increase either side's options for interaction, they don't limit them....that literally makes no sense, as everything you said before was possible without the disarm, plus there's also the option to actually attack with the weapon you still have.
And as for the rest, as I noted in the spoiler above, not a single one of your suggestions was "viable" in that fight. Including negotiating, since she only spoke a language that neither the rogue nor I understood.
I believe he's referring to two possibilities, the first being viable maneuver options exist, therefore a whole slew of options are added (bull rush, overrun, disarm, trip, etc), while disarm takes away only one option (attacking with current weapon). The second possibility is the opposite, where attacking with current weapon exists as an option, but viable maneuver options don't, and thus the sum total options available decreases.
I also think you're a little too focused on one particular example. Just because whoever designed the AP didn't think to give the character something as simple as a backup weapon doesn't mean disarm is akin to a save or lose. It's much more akin to a save or suck, the NPC was just poorly made in this case. When's the last time you were dumb enough to make a PC without a backup weapon?
Assuming a modest Str progression (starting at 17 with racial bonus included), here are the chances of success at the different levels of play (low level, mid level, high level)
1-6: 64.1%
7-12: 46.6%
13-20: 19.3%
I went through the NPC Codex and worked out average CMDs for a selection of levels:
CR 5: Average CMD 17.1 (Bestiary average, 21.8)CR 10: Average CMD 24.9 (Bestiary average, 32.2)
CR 15: Average CMD 29.7 (Bestiary average, 43.5)
Which means the chances of success are 23.5% higher, 36.5% higher and 69% higher at those levels. Treating your averages as correct for those levels, that gives us:
Level 5: 87.6% success
Level 10: 83.1% success
Level 15: 88.3% success
Combat maneuvers are very reliable against appropriate opponents: humanoids.
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I also think you're a little too focused on one particular example. Just because whoever designed the AP didn't think to give the character something as simple as a backup weapon doesn't mean disarm is akin to a save or lose. It's much more akin to a save or suck, the NPC was just poorly made in this case. When's the last time you were dumb enough to make a PC without a backup weapon?
The only character from Iron Gods whose description matches what he's saying has a tactics block saying she stealths and observes the party, has a weapon with a 50 foot range increment, and runs for backup if things go poorly. I'm not convinced there's anything particularly wrong with the character, just that there was a situation where the group got extremely lucky and/or the character herself was underplayed (given the information provided, it pretty much has to be the android from page 19 of the Choking Tower). Also of some note, a desperate android who's disarmed of her firearm should have used nanite surge on the acrobatics check, giving her a +24 on the Acrobatics check to retrieve the pistol. Given that the party should be about 7th level at that point, that should have been near auto-success.
Assuming a modest Str progression (starting at 17 with racial bonus included), here are the chances of success at the different levels of play (low level, mid level, high level)
1-6: 64.1%
7-12: 46.6%
13-20: 19.3%
I went through the NPC Codex and worked out average CMDs for a selection of levels:
CR 5: Average CMD 17.1 (Bestiary average, 21.8)
CR 10: Average CMD 24.9 (Bestiary average, 32.2)
CR 15: Average CMD 29.7 (Bestiary average, 43.5)
Which means the chances of success are 23.5% higher, 36.5% higher and 69% higher at those levels. Treating your averages as correct for those levels, that gives us:
Level 5: 87.6% success
Level 10: 83.1% success
Level 15: 88.3% successCombat maneuvers are very reliable against appropriate opponents: humanoids.
Exactly, a system that requires huge investment to use competently is useless against a huge chunk of opponents. That's pretty much the point.
It's like if weapon specialization could only apply to one type of enemy from the ranger favored enemy list. Heck, even two or three. Sure seems like a crappy feat at that point, doesn't it?
Humanoids constitute twelve types of enemy from the rangers' favored enemy list, not two or three.
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Humanoids constitute twelve types of enemy from the rangers' favored enemy list, not two or three.
Yes, and those specific types are individually far less prevalent than something like undead, or evil outsiders. Even if weapon specialization worked only against humanoids, it would still suck. You understand that, which I'm sure is why you didn't actually address the point.
The combat maneuver system was designed to give a single, coherent system to use when the situation called for it. It works against the main opponent of the game, classed humanoids. I'd say that it has a point to its existence.
The bestiaries disagree with you on who the main opponent of the game is, especially as you get higher in level. If you're running a game where your primary enemies past level 10 are still nonflying humanoids who use weapons and armor that's great, but I doubt that it's representative.
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The bestiaries disagree with you on who the main opponent of the game is, especially as you get higher in level. If you're running a game where your primary enemies past level 10 are still nonflying humanoids who use weapons and armor that's great, but I doubt that it's representative.
Unless your GM is building encounters using just the bestiaries, then that fact is pretty irrelevant. I could just as easily hold up the NPC Codex and Game Mastery Guide to say that the main opponent is classed humanoids. A walk through any published adventure shows a mix from both, and is quite representative.
The bestiaries disagree with you on who the main opponent of the game is, especially as you get higher in level. If you're running a game where your primary enemies past level 10 are still nonflying humanoids who use weapons and armor that's great, but I doubt that it's representative.Unless your GM is building encounters using just the bestiaries, then that fact is pretty irrelevant. I could just as easily hold up the NPC Codex and Gamemaster's Guide to say that the main opponent is classed humanoids. A walk through any published adventure shows a mix from both, and is quite representative.
I've played through Rise of the Runelords, and the CMD as you increase in level skyrockets just as it does in the bestiary. Currently playing through Jade Regent, and it appears to do the same. Heck, in both those adventure paths the majority of encounters come from the bestiary IIRC, especially later on.
To say that GM's won't heavily draw from what is generally the main source of ready made antagonists (just compare the amount of NPC codexes to the amount of bestiaries, and a fifth one is expected in November) seems disingenuous.
Even presuming a 50/50 split encounter wise, that still leaves a huge chunk of encounters where a massive investment in your character is useless. Not to mention any NPC's that aren't vulnerable to your chosen maneuver(s), of which there will be plenty, especially spellcasters (who generally only worry about grapple). Compare this to a character who invested in bonuses to his to hit and damage. When are those not useful again?
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Zero Investment Combat Maneuver Barbarian
Initial Strength: 20
No CMB-specific feats
Has allies with buff spells
At level 10:
BAB 10. Raging with Bull's Strength or Belt +4: Strength 30
Weapon Focus in a +2 Furious Reach weapon.
Raging CMB with weapon-based maneuver: +25, rising to around +30 with some combination of Haste, Bardic Performance, Prayer, Heroism, charge, flanking...
Average CR10 Monster CMD: 32. Chance of success while buffed: 95%.
Average CR10 NPC CMD: 25. Chance of success while buffed: 130%, capped at 95%.
Against armed humanoids without reach he can trip or disarm them easily from an unthreatened square. Against casters, he sunders their component pouches or (if they have no melee attack) grapples them. Against monsters with reach, he intentionally provokes an AoO during movement so he can make CMB rolls without provoking.
Against monsters that are resistant to maneuvers in general, he just makes regular attacks, since he has not compromised his combat effectiveness in any way.
Of course, if he was willing to use a rage power to make himself more effective at maneuvers, he'd have a higher success rate and be less reliant upon his allies, but I wouldn't want to have to make a massive investment...
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And yet this does not make the system pointless. After all, you still need something to resolve the actions, even if it heavily favors one result.
Have you ever done the numbers on the 3.5 maneuver system?
I'll admit adding pointless to the title was done solely for clickbait. That the system is broken as you level is more my point.
Also, the fact that a more broken system exists does not preclude this one from being broken.
Zero Investment Combat Maneuver Barbarian
Initial Strength: 20
No CMB-specific feats
Has allies with buff spells
At level 10:
BAB 10. Raging with Bull's Strength or Belt +4: Strength 30
Weapon Focus in a +2 Furious Reach weapon.
Raging CMB with weapon-based maneuver: +25, rising to around +30 with some combination of Haste, Bardic Performance, Prayer, Heroism, charge, flanking...
Average CR10 Monster CMD: 32. Chance of success while buffed: 95%.
Average CR10 NPC CMD: 25. Chance of success while buffed: 130%, capped at 95%.
Against armed humanoids without reach he can trip or disarm them easily from an unthreatened square. Against casters, he sunders their component pouches or (if they have no melee attack) grapples them. Against monsters with reach, he intentionally provokes an AoO during movement so he can make CMB rolls without provoking.
Against monsters that are resistant to maneuvers in general, he just makes regular attacks, since he has not compromised his combat effectiveness in any way.
Of course, if he was willing to use a rage power to make himself more effective at maneuvers, he'd have a higher success rate and be less reliant upon his allies, but I wouldn't want to have to make a massive investment...
(Just as a quick aside, only Wizards without eschew materials or backup spell pouches are vulnerable to having their spell pouches sundered. This is a super specialized tactic that people seem to think is way more widely applicable than it is.)
So if we take a character who intentionally provokes AOO's for no benefit, forget that the non weapon based maneuvers don't get the bonuses from weapons, focus on combat vs medium sized humanoids without reach weapons, give him a ridiculous boatload of buffs from outside characters, start him with a 20 strength so the rest of his stats are super gimped, and forget the existence of the fighter, monk, ranger, swashbuckler, paladin, inquisitor, and various other martial classes that would not get a barbarian's bonuses, which are not even impressive without outside help...
Yeah sure, I see your point. Investment in maneuver feats is stupid and combat maneuvers should be limited to a select few classes vs a select few opponents, and otherwise ignored. I disagree however, combat maneuvers should have a more general place in the game, for those who seek to use them.
Please note that his basic numbers give him a CMB of 20 while raging on non weapon based maneuvers, needing a 12 against the average, equal CR opponent. That's less than 50%, and it only gets worse as you level. Much worse. And he provokes for every single one. But I'm sure you'll be able to trip that flying/multi-legged monster, or disarm that natural attacker, so it's not really a concern, right? Those don't exist, they're certainly not common, especially amongst higher CR's.
I'm well aware the numbers for weapon based maneuvers are much better. There's a reason one of the proposed solutions is making all maneuvers capable of getting weapon bonuses.
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I believe he's referring to two possibilities, the first being viable maneuver options exist, therefore a whole slew of options are added (bull rush, overrun, disarm, trip, etc), while disarm takes away only one option (attacking with current weapon). The second possibility is the opposite, where attacking with current weapon exists as an option, but viable maneuver options don't, and thus the sum total options available decreases.
Interaction, by definition, require multiple parties to be able to do things. Any action that decreases options on either side reduces interaction and makes combats more boring.
I also think you're a little too focused on one particular example. Just because whoever designed the AP didn't think to give the character something as simple as a backup weapon doesn't mean disarm is akin to a save or lose. It's much more akin to a save or suck, the NPC was just poorly made in this case. When's the last time you were dumb enough to make a PC without a backup weapon?
Being overfocused is definitely something I'll cop to; that has more to do with my friend and GM being unfairly and inaccurately maligned than anything else. (By the way, Ssalarn, the answer to basically all your questions is not "we weren't playing by the rules" but "she lost initiative and got flanked.") But the point still remains, whether it's an extreme edge case or not: one disarm removed about 85% of the threat and a second disarm took care of the last 15%. The rest of the combat became a tedious grind of hammering away at hit points.
You're at least partially right, too, that disarms are more akin to save or suck, but it depends heavily on the character that gets disarmed. Gunslingers are probably the worst, which contributed to the "edge case" factor of the assassin fight, but fighters, swashbucklers and warpriests also have strong reasons to overspecialize in a weapon and a consequent loss of interactive ability if they lose that weapon (if I can't hit and don't do appreciable damage, I'm not going to feel like I'm doing anything whether I'm rolling dice or not). In the game environment as it exists, the action-denial maneuvers - grapple in general and disarm and sunder somewhat more specifically - are not things I want to just broadly make easier to do, no matter which side of the maneuver I'm on.
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Sure, GM how you like.
My point is that at least I seldom use way lower enemies that often, nor do I suspect many others do.
I might use 4-6 enemies of roughly the same CR as the party, and I *might* use a sizeable band of enemies CR 1 lower than the party, but aside from that?
Any time the party encounters enemies lower than that I'm expecting a curbstomp by the party, it's not expected to be a challenge at all.
I'm not talking about my GMing, your GMing, or anyone's GMing. I'm talking about the guidelines for encounters laid out in the GMG. Encounters with CR from APL-1 to APL+3, doubling the number of creatures increases the CR by 2 (and a table from 2 creatures to 16).
That you don't follow those guidelines means nothing except for games you run. I would never presume to guess how other people run their games or even that I've met the tiniest fraction of people who run games. The GMG is on its third printing, I think? How many thousands of people is that? All I can use for determining encounters is the listed guidelines Paizo has provided, which include allowances for up to 16 lower CR creatures in a battle.
The question I'm trying to have answered is if combat maneuvers are significantly more effective against CR=APL-2 or CR=APL-4 monsters and therefore encounters with twice as many monsters two CR lower or four times as many monsters four CR lower would be a possible solution to make combat maneuvers more viable (while still keeping the difficulty scaling of higher and lower CRs). I don't know what CMDs Cheapy was comparing to, I guessed CR=APL and was hoping to get CR=APL-2 and CR=APL-4.
Your assumption about using CR equal was correct.
Amusingly enough though, I actually have a bit better numbers than that. When balancing a class I wrote, I tried to determine the average number of creatures in an encounter*. The numbers worked out to about 2-3 creatures per encounter for a given CR.
Which means for the average encounter, it's better to use not CR equal, but a CR equal to APL - 2 as the target numbers. Not that the numbers aren't entirely fair: if the party is level 15, a CR 17 encounter could be composed of 2 CR 15 critters, but for the numbers below, it's using level 17 CMB numbers for that. However, the original numbers already cover that case.
So, starting at 20, using a maneuver that can replace attacks but doesn't use a weapon, as a full BAB class that only uses things from the CRB:
1-6: 89%
7-12: 94.16%
13-20: 92.5%
Starting at 17 Str, other assumptions untouched:
1-6: 83.5%
7-12: 89.16%
13-20: 87.5%
Also, noticed a small issue in my formulas. Subtract about 5% from the level 1-6 range for all previous numbers. The other ranges are unaffected by it, and this post uses the corrected numbers.
Here are the numbers for against CR = APL+1 targets. Keep in mind that as CR overtakes APL, there's a much greater chance that we're getting into single target territory, and then the creature is going down fast anyways. This does not include the flanking that will generally happen in a single target situation.
Starting Str: 20
1-6: 61%
7-12: 66%
13-20: 58%
Starting Str: 17
1-6: 53.66%
7-12: 55%
13-20: 47.5%
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Gunslingers are probably the worst, which contributed to the "edge case" factor of the assassin fight, but fighters, swashbucklers and warpriests also have strong reasons to overspecialize in a weapon and a consequent loss of interactive ability if they lose that weapon (if I can't hit and don't do appreciable damage, I'm not going to feel like I'm doing anything whether I'm rolling dice or not).
Except that all such characters should have backups of their main weapon.
My character with Fencing Grace (so deals crap damage with anything else) - has a back-up masterwork rapier. In part it's in case he gets disarmed. (and it's also cold iron)
A fighter super-specialized in Greatsword should have at least one back-up greatsword. So all he'd be losing by drawing it instead is a move action and the enchantments from his main one. Or he can just eat the AOOs and pick it up.
A gunslinger should have several backup guns past the first couple levels - and in many ways he loses less than most as accuracy is mostly a non-issue for them anyway, so the loss of enchantment to hit is negligable. Even at level 1 - he should have a few javilins for 'just such an emergency'. (Though manuvers tend to suck for the first couple levels as everyone dies so quickly to just getting hit.)
People apparently hate the idea of martial doing fun or cool things.
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Uhmm... No.
I just don't think it should be so easy that it becomes "The only thing a martial can do is grapple and pin opponents. How bogus is that?!? Why can't martials have nice things?"
I also acknowledged the desire to make those tactics better than they probably should be for reasons of player desire/fun. I can understand that and really don't have a problem with it.
But a lot of the early posts were saying that it should be and only makes sense that those maneuvers should be easy and work nearly all the time.
I can see a reason for them to be a little bit easier, but I think making it as easy as many people suggest is an even bigger error.
I also think much of the magic stuff is too easy in the current system and the way that many GM's apply it, but that is a completely different discussion.
For fun and/or diversion, I took the CMDs from the NPC Codex' fighters for each CR, and compared against those. I have no clue how representative those are.
Starting Str 17, maneuver that can be replaced by an attack, not weapon based:
1-6: 58.16%
7-12: 85.16%
13-20: 97.375%
Starting 20 Str, same other assumptions:
1-6: 65.66%
7-12: 90.83%
13-20: 98.875%
Starting Str 17, maneuver that can't be subbed for an attack (I think it's important to mention those those Quick <Grapple, Dirty Trick, Bull Rush, Reposition> feats here. They won't increase the chance of hitting, but they mean even if you fail, you'll probably do something helpful).:
1-6: 55.83% (Different from above because the iterative attack at 6th level apparently adds about 3% chance of success.)
7-12: 68.33%
13-20: 75%
Starting Str 20, Same assumption as above one.
1-6: 63.33%
7-12: 76.67%
13-20: 82.5%
Taking the CMDs of the Barbarbian as well, and averaging the fighter's and barb's, we get this:
Starting Str 17, maneuver that can be subbed for attack, no weapon:
1-6: 59%
7-12: 87.73%
13-20: 98.375%
Starting Str 20:
1-6: 66.5%
7-12: 93%
13-20: 97.5%
Starting Str 17, maneuver can't be subbed, no weapon:
1-6: 56.67%
7-12: 71.87%
13-20: 81.875%
Starting Str 20:
1-6: 64.19%
7-12: 80%
13-20: 63.9875%
And these will be the last set of numbers, but running them against the average NPC Codex Fighter/Barb CMDs for 2 enemies that total to equal CR = APL:
Starting Str 17, maneuver can be subbed, no weapon (noticed how this assumption text got shorter over time?)
1-6: 68.16666667%
7-12: 95.83333333%
13-20: 99.625%
Starting Str 20:
1-6: 75.5%
7-12: 98.5%
13-20: 99%
Starting Str 17, maneuver can't be subbed, no weapon:
1-6: 65.83333333%
7-12: 85.83333333%
13-20: 91.25%
Starting Str 20:
1-6: 73.33333333
7-12: 91.66666667
13-20: 93.75
Which I think is about to be expected. The 1-6 CMDs of humanoids are a bit higher on average than monsters, but eventually get quite a bit lower.
All in all, I think that math shows that it actually does kind of work out fairly well, especially once the party buffs come into play. There are some issues on the extreme ends of things (size modifiers, while they make sense in some cases, are a bit odd at high levels or against creatures of vastly disparate size).
Before running the numbers, I was expecting much lower percentages, to be honest, so this result kind of surprises me.
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(Just as a quick aside, only Wizards without eschew materials or backup spell pouches are vulnerable to having their spell pouches sundered. This is a super specialized tactic that people seem to think is way more widely applicable than it is.)
Cautious players won't be vulnerable to that, but I suspect quite a lot of enemy wizards in Paizo materials would be.
So if we take a character who intentionally provokes AOO's for no benefit
Except for the benefit of getting to do a combat maneuver without provoking and allowing allies to move safely through the enemy's reach radius.
forget that the non weapon based maneuvers don't get the bonuses from weapons
Or remember that, and don't use them against strong opponents.
focus on combat vs medium sized humanoids without reach weapons
'Focus' implies he has in some way restricted his abilities to fight other enemies. He hasn't.
give him a ridiculous boatload of buffs from outside characters
That's what my Barbarian ally in my current campaign tends to have. If this hypothetical character was willing to make CMB attempts with a less than 95% success rates, he could get by with fewer buffs.
start him with a 20 strength so the rest of his stats are super gimped
A lot of melee types do. Again, if you were willing to accept a lower success rate you could lower it a notch.
and forget the existence of the fighter, monk, ranger, swashbuckler, paladin, inquisitor, and various other martial classes that would not get a barbarian's bonuses, which are not even impressive without outside help...
No, they aren't. This hypothetical barbarian is only getting +3 or so to his CMB attempts from his class. A fighter would be getting Weapon Training bonuses. A Ranger could be getting favored enemy bonuses. A Paladin could be getting smite bonuses. A Magus could use True Strike.
Yeah sure, I see your point. Investment in maneuver feats is stupid and combat maneuvers should be limited to a select few classes vs a select few opponents, and otherwise ignored.
No, my point is that maneuvers aren't necessarily very difficult to pull off. If you're willing to use feats, raging strength surges, etcetera, they become easier and more effective and you don't need to rely so much on buffs, weapon bonuses and maxed out strength.
Please note that his basic numbers give him a CMB of 20 while raging on non weapon based maneuvers, needing a 12 against the average, equal CR opponent. That's less than 50%, and it only gets worse as you level. Much worse. And he provokes for every single one. But I'm sure you'll be able to trip that flying/multi-legged monster, or disarm that natural attacker, so it's not really a concern, right? Those don't exist, they're certainly not common, especially amongst higher CR's.
Yes, there are situations where some (or all) combat maneuvers aren't a good idea. That's why you make a character who can also defeat enemies by killing them.
I'm well aware the numbers for weapon based maneuvers are much better. There's a reason one of the proposed solutions is making all maneuvers capable of getting weapon bonuses.
Fair enough.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a hugantical number of assumptions, shortcuts, and simplifications have been made to give us a playable system that only slightly approximates an abstraction of 'real' combat. It really isn't going to work well all the time in all situations.
That's ok. That's (in my opinion) one of the biggest reasons we have a GM rather than just a random number generator.
As GM, I do NOT try to nullify my players builds. Having said that, let's say I have setup a low level scenario with creature X as the BBEG at the end. Grappling X is stupidly easy (see above). I know my players have a couple of grappling PC's. I don't want the final fight to be just an "I grapple" then roll dice for 10 minutes while they beat it to a pulp, it should be at least a bit of a challenge.
So maybe BBEG's assistant has the spell liberating command or the grease spell prepared to try and set his master free. Or maybe I'll give BBEG max ranks in escape artist.
I haven't shut down the PC's build. Grappling is still using up actions and limited resources, but there is also a bit of challenge to the combat.
Cautious players won't be vulnerable to that, but I suspect quite a lot of enemy wizards in Paizo materials would be.
There are other types of casters than wizards, such as sorcerers, baddies with spell like abilities (hugely common among mid to high cr), etc.
Except for the benefit of getting to do a combat maneuver without provoking and allowing allies to move safely through the enemy's reach radius.
That's not a benefit, it's a lack of further drawback. Your logic assumes AOOs will inevitably be drawn later. It's like intentionally walking into a pit trap and saying there was a benefit, because now someone else won't fall into it. You could've just avoided the trap. Your logic is incorrect.
Or remember that, and don't use them against strong opponents.
Average CMD equal CR opponents are strong? Not according to the rules they're not. Or common sense.
'Focus' implies he has in some way restricted his abilities to fight other enemies. He hasn't.
The focus is in your combat examples, not your character.
That's what my Barbarian ally in my current campaign tends to have. If this hypothetical character was willing to make CMB attempts with a less than 95% success rates, he could get by with fewer buffs.
And that's your group. I tend to give the rogue in my group greater invisibility. Does that mean the class should be balanced around that buff? No, that would be silly. Dependency on other classes contributing resources and actions to your character is a sign of brokenness. And for non weapon maneuvers you're not reaching 95% even with the buffs. You're not even coming close.
A lot of melee types do. Again, if you were willing to accept a lower success rate you could lower it a notch.
Yes, a lot of characters are built as glass cannons with glaring weaknesses. Doesn't make it smart.
No, they aren't. This hypothetical barbarian is only getting +3 or so to his CMB attempts from his class. A fighter would be getting Weapon Training bonuses. A Ranger could be getting favored enemy bonuses. A Paladin could be getting smite bonuses. A Magus could use True Strike.
Fighters don't get weapon training on non weapon maneuvers. Ranger bonuses are situational and thus unreliable. Same with paladins. Magus uses truestrike to essentially bypass the system entirely, that means nothing as to the brokenness of the system. Even with these bonuses the numbers are still stacked against you, as shown by your barbarian needing a 12 or more while raging.
No, my point is that maneuvers aren't necessarily very difficult to pull off. If you're willing to use feats, raging strength surges, etcetera, they become easier and more effective and you don't need to rely so much on buffs, weapon bonuses and maxed out strength.
If you're willing to invest all of that in addition, the numbers become barely adequate. For a couple levels past 10, where the scaling catches up with you again and now you're in the same bad spot, but you've invested a bunch of now wasted resources.
Yes, there are situations where some (or all) combat maneuvers aren't a good idea. That's why you make a character who can also defeat enemies by killing them.
Yes, and those situations are average opponents for your level, starting at about level 10 and getting increasingly worse from there. Investing anything at all into maneuvers is a waste of time, thats the point. That's why the system is broken.
The monk was ultimately killed when a cyclops crit him with a greataxe and Power Attack (the character's player was absent, and the "babysitter" made an unfortunate decision and ended up surrounded).Dude that is totally not cool.
It happens often enough at our table that the idea of leaving your character in the hands of another is starting to be considered taboo/cursed/a very bad idea.
It's almost become a running gag because none of us ever set out to have that happen, it's usually just from bad luck and what not that the characters end up dying. For some reason, it's almost always when they are ran by another.
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By the way, Ssalarn, the answer to basically all your questions is not "we weren't playing by the rules" but "she lost initiative and got flanked."
A high stealth android who's tactics specifically say that she surprise attacks you from 50 feet away with a death attack and who has a +10 to her initiative was so completely overcome that she was completely surrounded and disarmed and couldn't get far enough way to do anything?
I go back to my earlier statement: either your GM didn't properly understand the encounter, or you got ridiculously lucky. If she was just flanked and not completely surrounded, you still haven't answered why she couldn't Withdraw, or use 1 of the other 4 grenades, or make another acrobatics attempt since it's one of her best skills.There's no reason to be insulted because I'm questioning your friend's GM skills in this instance; GMs mess up all the time. Players only have to know how to play one character at a time, a GM may need to know how to run 20+ in a night, and an android Techslinger/Assassin that's intended to be used for 1-3 encounters certainly isn't going to be an easy one to remember everything for,
But the point still remains, whether it's an extreme edge case or not: one disarm removed about 85% of the threat and a second disarm took care of the last 15%. The rest of the combat became a tedious grind of hammering away at hit points.
While it's possible that your party got very lucky, or that the gunslinger was poorly designed or poorly played, it's also true that the GM had numerous options beyond standing around getting pummeled. He could have had her attempt her own combat maneuvers with her +7 CMB to try and wrestle a weapon from one of you, spit in someone's eyes to blind them so they couldn't keep beating/disarming her, bull rushed or repositioned her way out of flanking, tried another acrobatics check to escape... There were so many options other than crying because her toys were taken away. Gunslinger's are a full BAB class with martial weapon proficiency, taking their gun away should be a challenge, not a game-ender. Of course, if you don't actually use combat maneuvers, then yeah, there wouldn't be a lot of options in that situation, but it wouldn't have come up either, so the two facts basically counter each other out.
But the point still remains, whether it's an extreme edge case or not: one disarm removed about 85% of the threat and a second disarm took care of the last 15%. The rest of the combat became a tedious grind of hammering away at hit points.
How is this any different than a Wizard who cast's Hold Person?
I know you said your GM doesn't like SoS, so does that mean your wizards only play buff, blast, or summon? Seeing as that removes like 50% of the wizard spells that are worth a damn...
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People who can do math recognize it as moronic design. Blah blah blah Rogue archetypes has nothing to do with it. A Fighter archetype that actually provided tools to address the Fighter's real problems, like the Mutation Warrior, or the Eldritch Guardian, or the Dirty Fighter, or even the Martial Master are examples of good design; Lore Warden is an example of someone not knowing the system they're attempting to fix, and masking that with big shiny bonuses that show all they did was pander to people who didn't understand the system any better than they did. Had they focused on only a few smart areas, like letting him count as having Combat Expertise automatically, increasing the maximum size creature he could affect with size-limited maneuvers, opening up the maneuvers he can apply his Weapon Training to, and giving him 4+Int real skill points instead of removing his only reason to invest in INT and then limiting him to INT-based bonus skills, there could have been something there. Instead we got a poorly conceived archetype that just reverses the direction the system is broken in and pretends to listen with some placebo bonuses.The lore warden is a well balanced archetype, I can not even imagine how someone could think it was a moronic design.
If that was bad design, then I prefer that bad design, than the "balanced against a core class" dozen of horrible rogues archetypes.
BEsides the "I can do math you don't" implication, your post is just full of personal opinions. We all have our opinions and that is ok, but the If "if you like lore warden you don't know the system" is just pure BS.
EDIT: And now that you mention it, how in the world are the archetypes you mentioned balanced under you definition? if they fixed something then they are better than the core class and are bad design.
They add what the Fighter is missing, utility and versatility, and don't throw overinflated numbers at a problem that overinflated numbers can't possibly fix. They show that a designer took the time to do the research, see that the problem is not insufficient bonuses but an imbalance in the system, and then offered new solutions that allow for lateral improvement without further spiking numbers that are already sufficiently high.
I'm sorry if you think that facts backed by math that people like Cheapy have painstakingly taken the time to lay out are opinions; that one I can't fix. I never said "if you like lore warden you don't know the system" I said that the designer who made it tried to fix a problem he didn't understand and threw out placebo soutions that don't help the problems they pretend to address, which is just the truth. Lore Warden is poorly designed, something that's been freely acknowledged by some of the best in the business, designers who've been at their craft for decades.
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Minor problem.
If you don't have the feats or a reach weapon, every single maneuver provokes.
Since the gunslinger is presumably getting hammered in melee, this means that all she will accomplish by trying to bull rush is getting smacked again and then fishing for nat.20s on her maneuver roll since the AoO added another +18 to the check.
So long as you are provoking dangerous AoOs, maneuvers are borderline useless.
Which is one of their many problems.
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And yet this does not make the system pointless. After all, you still need something to resolve the actions, even if it heavily favors one result.
Have you ever done the numbers on the 3.5 maneuver system?
I'll admit adding pointless to the title was done solely for clickbait. That the system is broken as you level is more my point.
Also, the fact that a more broken system exists does not preclude this one from being broken.
Never said it wasn't, my friend. My point was that it wasn't useless, even with the brokeness.
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I really like the cmb CMD system and use it for a lot of things when a player asks to do something cool that's not explicitly in the rules. I do think cmb falls a bit behind as you go up in levels a bit. I'd add a magic item to give +1 to +5 enhancement bonus to cmb and call it good. I think cmb checks should fail against colossal giants so I see no issue with them having unbeatably high CMD. For acrobatics though I don't like it. I think size CMD bonuses should be penalties vs tumbling. Running between a colossal giant's legs should not be impossible.
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...Minor problem.
If you don't have the feats or a reach weapon, every single maneuver provokes.
Since the gunslinger is presumably getting hammered in melee, this means that all she will accomplish by trying to bull rush is getting smacked again and then fishing for nat.20s on her maneuver roll since the AoO added another +18 to the check.
So long as you are provoking dangerous AoOs, maneuvers are borderline useless.
Which is one of their many problems.
It's significantly less pointless than standing around crying while you get your butt whipped. I'll take an AoO any day of the week if it has a chance to turn a combat back in my favor.
It's significantly less pointless than standing around crying while you get your butt whipped. I'll take an AoO any day of the week if it has a chance to turn a combat back in my favor....Minor problem.
If you don't have the feats or a reach weapon, every single maneuver provokes.
Since the gunslinger is presumably getting hammered in melee, this means that all she will accomplish by trying to bull rush is getting smacked again and then fishing for nat.20s on her maneuver roll since the AoO added another +18 to the check.
So long as you are provoking dangerous AoOs, maneuvers are borderline useless.
Which is one of their many problems.
Except if you get hit during this AoO you take a penalty equal to the damage you took.