I shouldnt have to limit myself, just so someone can feel special

[Srtz]

BradPitt wrote:

Good, god. You spend all your money on a golem and the bloodrager feels outclassed. As a conjurer you can walk in with multiple dinosaurs and cast chains of late on the largest creature not immune to paralysis and coup de gras it.

This is nothing compared to the damage any full caster can do; it's just different, and I think that's just fine.

All this boils down to the fact that he's a new player. This is his first campaign, and he's been playing since lvl 1. As we all know all to well theres a learning curve with this game. The fact they started at base lvl was beneficial due to the fact he could learn the game as it scales up.

But now me, and the Shaman are really starting to get some stuff he has never heard before, and its a little confusing considering he's only played martial before.

[Rynjin]

Create Mr. Pitt wrote:

Good, god. You spend all your money on a golem and the bloodrager feels outclassed. As a conjurer you can walk in with multiple dinosaurs and cast chains of late on the largest creature not immune to paralysis and coup de gras it.

This is nothing compared to the damage any full caster can do; it's just different, and I think that's just fine.

There's a difference here.

For one, he can ALSO still do that, so it's twice the issue.

For two, it's more a psychological thing. For everything a Wizard can do, martial characters can at least rest assured that despite Waves of Ecstasy ending a fight before it even begins, or other such shenanigans they will always be the best at whackin' it with a stick.

Except here we have a construct with 4 extra sticks, and they're all bigger.

[Arachnofiend]

I'd like to point out that 6-10 is pretty much the sweet spot for the Bloodrager, it's where the class is at its most powerful. Level 7 is not where the full casters should be able to completely supplant him in his role, and this is only happening because the GM broke wealth by level.

[gustavo iglesias]

Quote:

All this boils down to the fact that he's a new player.

Nah, all this boils down to the fact that your GM fumbled it when he gave you enough gold to build CR 15 constructs at CR 7. Keep your gold back to sane levels and problem solves itself. (a bit over or under WBL is fine, no need to use it as a hard code, but at least use it as a guideline).

He gave you a game-breaking amount of gold, and the game broke.

[Cap. Darling]

Srtz wrote:

Laziness. Here he is

** spoiler omitted **

Now, i did make him tank as you see. I cant increase his HP yet, due to the fact im CL 7, meaning 7HD cap atm. I made him as tough as i could, which is a total of 14 CP points purely spent on that. I only added 6 CP points of offense due to the fact they are crazy effiecient for what they give you.

I am sorry but Does it say that you made a huge animated object out of adamantine? How much gold did the GM give you?

[Srtz]

Cap wrote:

I am sorry but Does it say that you made a huge animated object out of adamantine? How much gold did the GM give you?

Short answer. Too much

[Chess Pwn]

Cap. Darling wrote:

Srtz wrote:

Laziness. Here he is

** spoiler omitted **

Now, i did make him tank as you see. I cant increase his HP yet, due to the fact im CL 7, meaning 7HD cap atm. I made him as tough as i could, which is a total of 14 CP points purely spent on that. I only added 6 CP points of offense due to the fact they are crazy effiecient for what they give you.

I am sorry but Does it say that you made a huge animated object out of adamantine? How much gold did the GM give you?

Either 160k or 200k, I don't remember exactly which.

[Turin the Mad]

The OP's character is so hosed when his animated object runs across ... oh, malfunction or disable construct. Given the amount of swag, I'd advise expecting the OP's construct to eat a disintegrate.

[Bob Bob Bob]

So, first off, need to agree with everyone that "I made it a tank" and "I gave it 6 slam attacks and increased damage" don't agree with each other, at all. You should have given it Exceptional Reach, because that's actually helpful in tanking.

Now to the weight problem. The listed example for a huge object is a wagon. I honestly can't find a weight for it. The best I can do is assume it's made out of Iron (which probably costs more than wood) and then cost the difference. Since the ratio between Iron and Adamantine is 3,000 per lb, a huge adamantine light wagon would cost 50 gp * 3,000, or 150,000 gp. So the crafting cost (the raw materials) would be at least 50,000 gp. That's one way of guessing (which is almost certainly wrong, simply because a light wagon is 10 feet by 10 feet). The other way is to look at the monster guidelines and grab the lowest end of the numbers for Huge creatures, in this case 2-16 tons. So 4,000 lbs of adamantine at 300 gp a lb gives us 1,200,000 gp minimum. What numbers did you use for your cost and where did you get them from? Because I'm not finding anything that's not a wild guess (and regardless would eat up a huge chunk of your money).

[knightnday]

Chess Pwn wrote:

Cap. Darling wrote:

Srtz wrote:

Laziness. Here he is

** spoiler omitted **

Now, i did make him tank as you see. I cant increase his HP yet, due to the fact im CL 7, meaning 7HD cap atm. I made him as tough as i could, which is a total of 14 CP points purely spent on that. I only added 6 CP points of offense due to the fact they are crazy effiecient for what they give you.

I am sorry but Does it say that you made a huge animated object out of adamantine? How much gold did the GM give you?

Either 160k or 200k, I don't remember exactly which.

That's a lot of money. And a lot of adamantine.

[Blackwaltzomega]

Fruian Thistlefoot wrote:

Yeah I can understand his Salty feelings.

But you full casters is what wins the Late game. He needs to let yall do your thing as well Because you did not have this opportunity in the lower levels. Your characters are coming into power.

This is a good Learning lesson for him. He should also learn to browse the forums and read some guides...Expand his out of game knowledge might help him come to terms with this power shift.

I'm sorry, but that's really, really dumb.

"Geeeeeez, Bob, stop being such a wet blanket that I used a feat and some windfall to completely invalidate your contribution to the team while still doing my own thing! Your turn to be important to the group's success was back when we were in rusty dagger shanktown! We're past level 7 now, so your role now is to be leftovers in case we casters need to plug a gap our summons and constructs won't fill!"

How about, I don't know, taking steps to keep EVERYONE RELEVANT?

The "casters are magikarp" line of reasoning is self-serving bullcrap. Casters are fully capable of contributing in the low levels, their only restriction is stamina. Are you saying a guy who was knocking out entire goblin encounters with his color spray at level one is ENTITLED to entirely shove his non-casting teammates out of the spotlight once he's at higher levels and can just summon minions to do the martials' job for him?

If a class is irrelevant past the first couple levels of the game, then bad design is to blame. If players are exacerbating this by trying to muscle in on their teammate's roles as they acquire more magical abilities, bad teamwork is to blame.

You can't go "it's teamwork design that the rogue has terrible saves because that means the cleric goes to help him" AND go "it's fine that the wizard is using spells that make the rogue irrelevant past level 7 because the rogue got to be important before!"

It makes for a really crappy group experience if you treat being relevant to the team's success as a ball that gets passed one way as the group grows and never gets passed back. Eventually you'll just get people not rolling anything but casters because nobody wants to be told it's "just how the game works" that your character will be overshadowed by design for more than half the levels in the game and there is nothing they can do about it.

[gustavo iglesias]

Yep, I'm still waiting for the cost of the thing. I guess Adamantine golem (wich cost 600,000 in total, including 4,000 pounds of adamantine, and is also Huge) is a good starting point.

On the other hand, if the GM gave huge amount of gold per PC, and is fine with the whole "wizards should rampage the world, because that's the rules", I think it's very sensible for the OP to build just an adamantine construct. I mean, imagine what would happen if he spend 1,000,000gp in simulacra of Tarrasque. That's like a army of 100 tarrasques.

You can roleplay your PC as a farmer of aberration creatures of annhilation, so it's a roleplaying thing :P

Or even better, an army of 100 Baba Yagas, casting spells and all that crap. It's legal and stuff too.

[kestral287]

+5 Slams.

Scizore on all slams.

That is not a beefcake.

[swordfalcon]

Gotta say after reading this thread and your previous one, gotta say the one thing that broke your guys' game was your gm gave you to much money. There is a reason why there is a Wealth by Character lvl system in the game. Your character build may be legit, but the fact your gm ignored one of the basic guidelines for the game is what broke your character. This seems to have been echoed by some of the other posters as well.

[Create Mr. Pitt]

I still think multiple rods of quicken, persistent and maximize would be far more disruptive than a golem.

[Srtz]

kestral287 wrote:

+5 Slams.

Scizore on all slams.

That is not a beefcake.

I realize this, but the fact is he is a beefcake. Most all the money is spent on making him tough. If you really think about it, the additional slams and scizore mods are an extremely cheap mod. Why cant i spend 80% of my gold on beefcake with 20% on wep. I dont see why i cant do both

[Taenia]

One place you could reasonably assume a price is too look at the cost of a suit of adamantine full plate, which adds 15000 gp to the cost.

A suit of large adamantine full plate, which costs double, would add 30000 gp to the cost. For humanoids, 60000 gp for non humanoids, which something with 6 slams attacks would probably be.

At huge its 4x/8x so you are looking at a suit of heavy armor, like full plate, making it huge and humanoid and animating it, the initial armor cost is 60000 gp for a huge humanoid. For something with 6 slams, therefore beyond the humanoid listing reasonably, you are looking at 120,000 gp.

Now this is for hollow armor, if its solid then you could reasonably double it but since it doesn't have to be, I would assume 60,000 gp minimum.

Also this line from crafting constructs seems to have been completely ignored. New constructs should stick fairly close to the Monster Statistics by CR table.

[Srtz]

im trying to get ahold of the GM right now

[knightnday]

Ask the GM why the key was worth 800,000 -- or more than that, since someone paid you that much for it. Also ask if you should have made your thingy more powerful considering what that expensive key opens.

[kestral287]

Srtz wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

+5 Slams.

Scizore on all slams.

That is not a beefcake.

I realize this, but the fact is he is a beefcake. Most all the money is spent on making him tough. If you really think about it, the additional slams and scizore mods are an extremely cheap mod. Why cant i spend 80% of my gold on beefcake with 20% on wep. I dont see why i cant do both

No... no he is not a 'beefcake'.

Pecentage of wealth spent is irrelevant, results are.

If I manage to buy a bazooka for $1, does that invalidate the fact that I own a bazooka? Of course not. How cheap you got the thing for is immaterial compared to results, which are that this thing is not a meatshield.

As defensive melees go, it's a terrible design. It's rather bad at actually defending things compared to what you could do-- more on that one later.

As offensive melees go, it's ridiculous at your level.

So ultimately, that gives us two real choices. We either assume that the min-maxer who spent a lot of time talking to his GM about how to build this and "doesn't make mistakes" is actually really, really bad at min-maxing a tank, or we believe that you're actually pretty decent at building a hammer.

You had a lot of options on how to spend that money. You chose to spend it on five slams + increased damage. Let's evaluate.

Price of an animated object is as determined by CR (specifically, CR^2*500). The Slams + increased damage are 6 CP, or +3 CR.

So your base animated object is a CR7. You spent 20 CP. At a base CP of 4, you had to jack the CR up to 15 to support that. That's a buy tag of 112,500.

If you'd gone with one slam, no increased damage, you'd save 6 CP, so it'd be CR12. That's a buy tag of 72,000.

So-- first off, your 20%/80% was wrong. 36% of wealth, discounting the Scizores, is devoted to offense.

If you'd gone with the CR9 version, you'd have an actual beefcake. Still not a good one, mind, but it'd be something. Of course, you'd also have 40,500 gold still in the bag. That would allow you to immediately up the AC by a huge margin. You can craft a Ring of Protection for it, as well as upping its inbuilt armor. By putting a +4 enhancement bonus (16,000) and giving it a +5 Ring (25,000), you'd have spent 500 more gold (minus Scizore cost) to up AC by nearly 50% (almost doubled Touch AC, incidentally, though everything will still hit it)

More realistically, to build an actual tank that has an offensive presence, you'd also drop the four energy resistances (terrible value, those) and add in a second Slam (1 CP), Trip*2 (4 CP), Extended Range*2 (2 CP), and Grab (1 CP).

See how easy it was to leverage your wealth for greater defenses? Now you have a construct with a 15' reach who can trip and grapple anything moving through it, two different things when actually attacking, and your AC is nine points higher. It cost me 500 more gold, before factoring in the cost of six Huge Scizores.

It only has a third of the direct offensive presence of your current setup, which means it's still high, but now it only matches the Bloodrager instead of beating him three times over. On the flip side, it's far better at supporting him and defending itself and you.

That's how you build a tank. That took me half an hour. Are we really to believe you're not capable of something like that? Or are we to believe that you wanted something that could kick the Bloodrager to the curb three times over.

Also, from the first post of your other thread:

Quote:

Like one bot i have planned, could easily 1v1 the strongest martial class in my party(even with all his money spent)

Are we still to believe that you didn't know the results of this? You told us that you didn't really run the numbers... but apparently you knew enough to know this.

[gustavo iglesias]

Srtz wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

+5 Slams.

Scizore on all slams.

That is not a beefcake.

I realize this, but the fact is he is a beefcake. Most all the money is spent on making him tough. If you really think about it, the additional slams and scizore mods are an extremely cheap mod. Why cant i spend 80% of my gold on beefcake with 20% on wep. I dont see why i cant do both

Nah. You are taking advantage of the fact that it's extremely cheap to increase the damage a lot under those rules.

I don't know why you aren't sincere to yourself. I mean, I understand why you wouldn't want to admit it to the Bloodrager, but why lie to yourself? You say you don't want to steal his thunder. You want a tank that defends yourself. Fine. Then build one. Remove the 6 slams, give him the "armor" property (or however is called the ability to put your character inside the construct, Ironman style), make it a shield guardian, give him a tower shield, give him some area control, like reach and trip... There are a lot of options. You instead give him 6 slams, building the bot version of Kali the goddess of death.

Your speech says one thing, your acts say a different thing, as somebody else has metioned.

You say you didn't want to build an offensive melee monster. Then you came to the forum, and open a thread, where you ask, specificially, ways to make it a better melee combatant.
You say you don't want to steal melee spotlight or do damage with it, but you make a 6 armed monster with blades instead of hands.

[Srtz]

I had so much hope for this PC. Roleplaying wise, thematically, and i dont get to play full spellcasters all that often either.. I was having fun, and not just in session. My character took alot of planning and brainstorming because i have more moving parts then im used to dealing with. I was having a blast, it sucks it turned out like this.

oh well

I've been called a hypocrite, a prick, and idiot enough. I give up

I've talked with the GM and im thinking of either switching him out with another character or ducking out completely. I dont want to take peoples fun, and if thats what its turned into, then i want to let the new players play.

I just truly enjoy this game for everything involved. Never had drama like this before though.

-peace

[gustavo iglesias]

You don't have to drop the PC if you don't want to. It's not like we play in your campaign, so the emotional blakcmail vs the people in this thread isn't needed. We don't have a vote in your campaign.

If you really want to have a bodyguard that protects your character, without stealing the spotlight of other chars, you can, easily. Drop the 6 slams, and you're done. Kestral287 gave you a quick blueprint for an interesting build that helps your team (including the bloodrager, who can now hit prone people if the golem trips them), keep your character safe (much safer, as this golem actually controls the battlefield and can keep your PC free of enemies), and you don't have to steal that spotlight you are saying you don't want to steal.

If your desire is different, though, keep the 6 slams. But be honest about it, to you, your GM, and the rest of the players.

[Chess Pwn]

Why not just tone down the construct and make it truly defensive like suggested? That seems like a far less dramatic response than what you're proposing.

[gustavo iglesias]

Chess Pwn wrote:

Why not just tone down the construct and make it truly defensive like suggested? That seems like a far less dramatic response than what you're proposing.

Exactly because that.

[Turin the Mad]

I had a GM once, in a modern-day game with "Cthulhu light" elements, hand our PCs a big fat stack of cash, $1 million U.S. per character or something analogous back when a million bucks was still some serious cash.

One guy bought a Barret .50 with all the trimmings, a thousand rounds of custom super-death ammo, all that good stuff relating to being a sniper.

The second character bought all manner of drones and explosives.

The third character ordered a custom "RV" (think APC without a gun turret, a converted British AFV if memory serves) with enough durability to stop nearly anything. And a very illegal machine gun that he stored in the "RV" along with 10 belts of ammo for it.

My character paid off his house and debts, had his car thoroughly overhauled and invested the remaining $500k into an annuity that (should the character survive long enough) would support him comfortably for the rest of his natural life. For gear that PC bought some really nice concealed body armor (and some spare trauma plates and such), several boxes of hollow point ammo, a few drop pieces, a spare handgun and a shotgun with a box of .00 buckshot for it.

Needless to say, when the hosing commenced, it was while my character was at the newspaper microfiche archive (back when such things existed). The rest of them went out bad.

However the game plays out, have fun with it.

[LazarX]

Srtz wrote:

That was the WHOLE points of the last thread. I didnt want to overshadow anyone, and needed some help on how to make it fun. This was supposed to be a tank, and lets recap. THIS HASNT HAPPENED YET

The only effective form of "tanking" in Pathfinder IS doing tremendous amounts of damage, especially with constructs which don't have a taunt feature.

You're a crafter, which by itself alone meant that you were going to get twice the mileage of this windfall of gold the GM showered you with. You also have system mastery and a compliant GM to let you build a custom item which no doubt makes the best use of RAW mechanics.

You also knew who you were playing with as a group. So it's quite understandable that the bloodrager player saw this as you setting yourself up to grandstand his role in the climactic moment. And quite frankly, so would I in his shoes.

[kestral287]

LazarX wrote:

Srtz wrote:

That was the WHOLE points of the last thread. I didnt want to overshadow anyone, and needed some help on how to make it fun. This was supposed to be a tank, and lets recap. THIS HASNT HAPPENED YET

The only effective form of "tanking" in Pathfinder IS doing tremendous amounts of damage, especially with constructs which don't have a taunt feature.

Eh. Generally I'd more-or-less agree, but here the claim is specifically to defend the Wizard. That's easily accomplished with area control, which something with a 15' reach and Trip+Grab on its attacks... is pretty damn good at.

[WPharolin]

It seems to me the heart of this discussion SHOULD have been whether or not we should limit ourselves or hold back in anyway if it means not offending other Pcs. His story should have been an anicdote added to clarify his meaning and possition. It's a shame that the anicdote became the focus because I think a discussion could have been worth something. Why does anyone care how much money his DM throws at them? It isn't remotely relevent. "But his CP cost was too high!" Who cares? He's claiming he shouldn't have to cater to the feelings of the group. Shouldn't we address that...like...at all? I mean it is the thread title after all.

[LazarX]

WPharolin wrote:

It seems to me the heart of this discussion SHOULD have been whether or not we should limit ourselves or hold back in anyway if it means not offending other Pcs. His story should have been an anicdote added to clarify his meaning and possition. It's a shame that the anicdote became the focus because I think a discussion could have been worth something. Why does anyone care how much money his DM throws at them? It isn't remotely relevent. "But his CP cost was too high!" Who cares? He's claiming he shouldn't have to cater to the feelings of the group. Shouldn't we address that...like...at all? I mean it is the thread title after all.

The money thrown at the group is EXTREMELY relevant. A lump sum of gold has, as demonstrated twice the impact on a crafter player as opposed to a non-crafter, and without the gold windfall, this situation would not exist.

[kestral287]

WPharolin wrote:

It seems to me the heart of this discussion SHOULD have been whether or not we should limit ourselves or hold back in anyway if it means not offending other Pcs. His story should have been an anicdote added to clarify his meaning and possition. It's a shame that the anicdote became the focus because I think a discussion could have been worth something. Why does anyone care how much money his DM throws at them? It isn't remotely relevent. "But his CP cost was too high!" Who cares? He's claiming he shouldn't have to cater to the feelings of the group. Shouldn't we address that...like...at all? I mean it is the thread title after all.

Title yes, but the first post directed the conversation.

I mean, to address the title... how much do you like playing alone?

If it's a lot, overshadow everybody and make them feel like they're not needed.

If it isn't, understand that there's a social contract and that dominating the party doesn't make you friends.

You can run a strong character among weaker ones effectively. You just have to make sure that the weaker ones have options that keep them in the picture so they don't ever feel obsolete. For an actual example from a game, if I can routinely deliver four-digit damage to the target, then I might try to help my table mate build a support and debuff oriented character, and note how much his support contributed. And I would do that early, so that he's not suddenly shocked into a role-shift he doesn't want.

Ideally, in the process of providing that help, the player gains better system mastery so that eventually I'm not 'playing down' to him, or forcing him to play up to me, but he does it naturally.

[knightnday]

WPharolin wrote:

It seems to me the heart of this discussion SHOULD have been whether or not we should limit ourselves or hold back in anyway if it means not offending other Pcs. His story should have been an anicdote added to clarify his meaning and possition. It's a shame that the anicdote became the focus because I think a discussion could have been worth something. Why does anyone care how much money his DM throws at them? It isn't remotely relevent. "But his CP cost was too high!" Who cares? He's claiming he shouldn't have to cater to the feelings of the group. Shouldn't we address that...like...at all? I mean it is the thread title after all.

Sure, let's address it.

Yes, you should limit yourself. This is a group activity, and while I can appreciate people that want to play someone who needs no one and wants to be the star, the rest of the party gets very tired of being the spear carrier to your hero.

I've had the misfortune of playing that role several times in different games, where someone was allowed by design or mistake to become VASTLY more powerful than anyone else could have been. We pretty much got to watch the fights take place and maybe sift through the remains for any loose treasure that the Super Dooper guy didn't already grab. It was not fun. It was not even interesting. It was a waste of time and energy to be there.

So yeah. It doesn't take much to make a powerful character. If you are lacking in system mastery there are tons of threads here to crib off of; at least once a week there are threads with "how do I make the most powerful blah ever!!" that you can use to your hearts content.

And when you do and people stare at you and grumble and complain, you only have yourself to blame. Yay! You one-shotted the big bad, took no damage, and "won" the game. Everyone else was bored, but your character was so cool!

[gustavo iglesias]

WPharolin wrote:

It seems to me the heart of this discussion SHOULD have been whether or not we should limit ourselves or hold back in anyway if it means not offending other Pcs. His story should have been an anicdote added to clarify his meaning and possition. It's a shame that the anicdote became the focus because I think a discussion could have been worth something. Why does anyone care how much money his DM throws at them? It isn't remotely relevent. "But his CP cost was too high!" Who cares? He's claiming he shouldn't have to cater to the feelings of the group. Shouldn't we address that...like...at all? I mean it is the thread title after all.

I think it goes beyond of that. The question is not if we should "cater" other people in the group. The question is if we should limit ourself (specially with casters). Regardless of that bloodrager player opinion, the question is: should we take care with what we do, specially with rules that are easy to broke like crafting rules?

If the answer is not, then the following issues will arise:

Blood Money shenanigangs paying for Wish.
Simulacrum to creatures with wish SLA to chain-cast Simulacrum
"Standard" simulacrum to incredibly powerful creatures, such as simulacrums of Tarrasque, Baba Yaga, Karzoug, Golden Celestial Great Wyrms, and other stuff, for very cheap gold.
No time demiplane sheanigangs.
Flurry of blows-Grab-Constrict-free action release- Flurry of Blows again shenanigags
wall of iron-fabricate-millions of gold made of masterwork daggers
use-activated-gloves-of-true-strike
everyother broken stuff that came once and again to the forum to be debated

That includes, of course, building automatons that are CR 15 when your APL is 7, and giving them 6 attacks when the rest of the party has 2.

So, in my opinion, yes, we should be careful with the full caster's ability to destroy the universe, break the balance, run amok and overshadow everything. The GM has the tools to police that, but more important, the player has the option of not doing it to begin with.

That said, the problem in this case wasn't caster-martial disparity or full caster overpowerness. It was a lenient GM who gave 800.000gp treasure to a 7th lvl party, in a situation where most the party couldn't really benefit from their share of the treasure in the way a crafter does.

[WPharolin]

The first post did indeed direct the flow of the conversation. But it in no way hinted to me that he wanted a dissection. And to be frank, I don't care too. He made an assertion that he shouldn't have to limit himself and gave an anecdotel reason why he felt that way. His build really couldn't be any less relevent if it tried. The gold his DM tossed at him is a complete non-starter.

Personally, I agree with you kestral to a degree. But I find it a troubling answer because it implies that we need shadow rules when making a character. These are always going to be nebulous because you are literally basing these invisible, self-imposed restrictions are based entirely on trying to feel out what is okay and not okay on a person by person basis. And you have zero control over the sensibilities of others.

[LazarX]

gustavo iglesias wrote:

I think it goes beyond of that. The question is not if we should "cater" other people in the group. The question is if we should limit ourself (specially with casters). Regardless of that bloodrager player opinion, the question is: should we take care with what we do, specially with rules that are easy to broke like crafting rules?

If the answer is not, then the following issues will arise:

Blood Money shenanigangs paying for Wish.
Simulacrum to creatures with wish SLA to chain-cast Simulacrum
"Standard" simulacrum to incredibly powerful creatures, such as simulacrums of Tarrasque, Baba Yaga, Karzoug, Golden Celestial Great Wyrms, and other stuff, for very cheap gold.
No time demiplane sheanigangs.
Flurry of blows-Grab-Constrict-free action release- Flurry of Blows again shenanigags
wall of iron-fabricate-millions of gold made of masterwork daggers
use-activated-gloves-of-true-strike
everyother broken stuff that came once and again to the forum to be debated

That includes, of course, building automatons that are CR 15 when your APL is 7, and giving them 6 attacks when the rest of the party has 2.

My GM style includes home rules that answer every one of those minefields, some of which I've posted in this venue. GM's have to learn that just because RAW permits exploits far beyond what the rules intend, they are not obligated to allow them.

[gustavo iglesias]

WPharolin wrote:

Personally, I agree with you kestral to a degree. But I find it a troubling answer because it implies that we need shadow rules when making a character. These are always going to be nebulous because you are literally basing these invisible, self-imposed restrictions are based entirely on trying to feel out what is okay and not okay on a person by person basis. And you have zero control over the sensibilities of others.

I think this border with an ethical question. And, like with any ethical question, there's not a black and white answer. Is killing someone bad? Sure! What about killing a terrorist who is going to blow a school full of children? Well, that's OK!. What about a man who is NOT going to blow a school, but COULD do it some day? Well, that depends: how sure you are that he's going to do that?

I ussually optimize my character within reason. For example, if I build a Goliath druid (my current char), I decide which pet I want to have, what magic items benefit me more, and which feats make my character better with things I think he should be good. And I don't "cater" other players with my choices. If I want a dinosaur pet, I take it. If my player fighter need help to build a fighter who isn't overshadowed by a dinosaur pet, I help him (both as a player, helping him to take good choices, and as a character, crafting stuff for him, or giving my pet a Menacing amulet of mighty fist that help the group, for example) BUT if the fighter player WANTS to play a gimped char (and refuses to increase str, take bad feats, whatever), I don't think I should "cater" to him. It's his option to play an unoptimized character, I don't have to give up Power Attack just because he didn't take it.

HOWEVER, that holds only while I'm playing within the borders and boundaries of reasonable optimization. If instead of a dinosaur pet (which fits my goliath archetype perfectly), I try to get a pet which is a simulacrum of a Tarrasque, then yes, it's perfectly logic that other players, or the GM, suggest me that maybe breaking the game with stuff like that isn't really helping to produce a good playing experience. The game is easy to break, if you try. That's why you don't try. I think a CR15 construct in a APL7 party clearly fulfill that "too much" role.

[gustavo iglesias]

LazarX wrote:

My GM style includes home rules that answer every one of those minefields, some of which I've posted in this venue. GM's have to learn that just because RAW permits exploits far beyond what the rules intend, they are not obligated to allow them.

While that's true, I don't think those homerules are needed. In my games, we follow a much more easy route: I tell the players that if they break the game, then the game would be unplayable, and thus, they don't try to break the game. You need to have confidence with your players, and probably wouldn't work in something like PFS or convention games, but I haven't needed to houserule simulacrum, for example. My players understand that it's utterly broken RAW, so we don't try to exploit it. Same goes with Blood Money. We had a char that used it in Way of Wicked, it was cool and thematic. He used it to pay for animate dead and other cheap stuff like that. He never tried, or suggested, that he "should" be able to cast wishes with it, so no need to houserule against it. Table variance is expected, of course.

EDIT: to be honest, it also helps that the player with higher system mastery is me, and I don't see the point to break the game through loopholes and broken spells like simulacrum, and the second player with higher system mastery is in fact a narrativist type of player who couldn't care less about breaking stuff.

[kestral287]

WPharolin wrote:

The first post did indeed direct the flow of the conversation. But it in no way hinted to me that he wanted a dissection. And to be frank, I don't care too. He made an assertion that he shouldn't have to limit himself and gave an anecdotel reason why he felt that way. His build really couldn't be any less relevent if it tried. The gold his DM tossed at him is a complete non-starter.

Personally, I agree with you kestral to a degree. But I find it a troubling answer because it implies that we need shadow rules when making a character. These are always going to be nebulous because you are literally basing these invisible, self-imposed restrictions are based entirely on trying to feel out what is okay and not okay on a person by person basis. And you have zero control over the sensibilities of others.

Frankly, unless your group routinely hides things from each other... they are not shadowy rules. I can look at the rest of my table and see the character sheets for those players. I can probably figure out what they want to do-- and if I can't by looking at the sheet, I can, yanno, talk to them.

In fact, in relating the anecdote I did... that's exactly what happened. I built my character to be a hammer. She can support the group a bit, she can debuff the enemy or control the area a bit, but at the end of the day what she's best at is turning things into frozen corpses.

I did not hide this. In fact, I've openly told the group about her inherent weaknesses, and my GM knows exactly what's needed to stop her cold.

So, there was another player who was interested in running a damage dealer with a side order of debuff. I worked with him and what he wanted to do to figure out just what would be needed for him to match my character's numbers-- it was possible, but it meant basically all of his feats and options going forward. He hemmed and hawed on it for a while-- and last night, of his own volition, he altered the character and his plans to fill the debuffing/anvil role more fully. He fell into that in a way he never really got into figuring out how many dice he could roll at once, and I could tell right off that he was having more fun.

Win/win. His character comes out stronger for it, my character comes out better off from having all opponents crippled before she gets to them, and we're both probably going to wind up having more fun since we can cheer each other on now. And now I don't have to worry about if I'm pushing the numbers too hard, since I'm not trying to keep close to him without passing him.

On the flip side, if a player breaks the contract I have no sympathy for them. The third player of our group, who joined late, declared that he wanted to build the tank. I just sort of raised an eyebrow at that, because my established character already did that, and did it better. And I'm not going to dial that back for him.

To bring things full circle: the OP broke the contract, by playing over and on top of the Bloodrager. And he did so knowingly. It is possible to do things on accident, and I can understand that, but we have enough information about the event, as well as quotes from before the event, to determine that this was premeditated. That's not the Bloodrager's fault for being 'beneath' him, it's the Wizard's fault for going out of his way to put the Bloodrager under his boot.

[mourge40k]

WPharolin wrote:

It seems to me the heart of this discussion SHOULD have been whether or not we should limit ourselves or hold back in anyway if it means not offending other Pcs. His story should have been an anicdote added to clarify his meaning and possition. It's a shame that the anicdote became the focus because I think a discussion could have been worth something. Why does anyone care how much money his DM throws at them? It isn't remotely relevent. "But his CP cost was too high!" Who cares? He's claiming he shouldn't have to cater to the feelings of the group. Shouldn't we address that...like...at all? I mean it is the thread title after all.

Well, ideally? If you're playing a team focused game like Pathfinder, you should aim to function as a part of a team. And while a team can certainly have a star player, it is far more important that they are all able to work together and shore up each others weak points.

Further supporting the whole team analogy is the fact that nobody likes a sore winner. I mean, let's face it, there are people like the OP out there. And if this thread has shown nothing else, it's that these sorts of people don't really get a positive reaction most of the time. So why try to deliberately out-power your team when you can mesh with them instead?

[Malag]

I haven't read all comments, but here is what I managed to understand so far. Your GM gave you a lot of gold and in short, you have built a monster that out surpassed every other PC in the party.

To be honest, I partly agree with you. You shouldn't have to limit yourself just so other PCs can feel special. Once or twice in a few sessions, it might be okay, but constantly limiting yourself is preventing you from having a good and immersive gaming experience.

But you should also realize that life is a set of compromises. Having built such monstrous character which can easily handle encounters on his own defeats entire purpose of game. Some people do not wish to hear this, but having too strong character affects both party balance and gives GM more work. It's in your best interest, not to create a walking monster, but a viable character. Unfortunately, I haven't seen this construct's statistics, so I can't say for sure, but take my advice with a grain of salt if I understood something incorrectly.

We all wish to be special in our own way during gaming, but there are limits to everything. Having average viable character can be a good learning experience also.

Adam

[TOZ]

WHOOOSH!

[Cavall]

Well. I think we all learned something about ourselves today. When given a list to make things go any way you want, you'll undoubtedly make things the best way possible, even if it undercuts the fun of other players.

Oh. Wait. I thought this was a thread about why we needed a summoner unchained.

Meh either or.

[Zhangar]

So the L7 party had a construct with an attack that looks something like "6 slams +15 (3d6+10)"? before you bother to put a bull's strength or haste, etc. on it?

Yeah, that's a bit much.

If you're really wanted it to be tank, you should have given may 2 slams tops but given it grab or similar abilites, so that it actually harassed enemies instead of insta-gibbing them.

Multiple people told you in that initial thread "don't build a murder bot" and you ignored them and built a murder bot anyways =P

[Kobold Catgirl]

Weslocke wrote:

Just because you can do a thing it does not necessarily follow that you should do that thing.

But that doesn't follow. See, I want it more, sir.

TOZ wrote:

WHOOOSH!

I never miss a point. I am too accurate, I would hit it.