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High level pathfinder games *are* superhero games.
Some people don't like it, but that's the way it is. Here's the breakdown-
Levels 1-5: Gritty, mostly realistic themes. Action is grounded in things that could theoretically be possible. Lord of the rings goes here.
Levels 6-10: Pulp fantasy/action movie style themes. Action is beyond realistic, but not so much that it is world-changing. Conan goes here.
Levels 10-15: Wuxia. Jedi, Crouching Tiger, and most greek myths go here. Heroes routinely do unbelievable things. Nothing realistic is a threat to them anymore.
Levels 15-20: Superheroes. Pug of Crydee, the Amberites, Belgarion the Godslayer, and Cu Chulain go here.
That's the breakdown for casters, yes. Here's the breakdown for martials.
Levels 1-5: Gritty, mostly realistic themes. Action is grounded in things that could theoretically be possible. Lord of the rings goes here.
Levels 6-10: Gritty, mostly realistic themes. Action is grounded in things that could theoretically be possible.
Levels 10-15: Gritty, mostly realistic themes. Action is grounded in things that could theoretically be possible.
Levels 15-20:Gritty, mostly realistic themes. Action is grounded in things that could theoretically be possible. Lord of the rings still goes here.
... and that's part of the issue.
As has been pointed out, Cuchulain can sling a stone for miles and chop the tops off mountains. Finn MacCool built the Giant's Causeway. Heracles can carry the sky on his shoulders.
Show me a 20th level fighter who can do that.
The post so nice, he did it twice.
That particular scene wasn't quite as epic though - It was a madman with a wand that would only do its zap towards metal - frying anyone between. Conan just kept maneuvering so he was never in position to get zapped until he got close enough and killed him with a thrown dagger. He wasn't dealing with a flying, invisible, missile protected wizard actually casting spells through an illusion.
This. The Conan wizard wasn't all that tough, that's why he got beat.
The post so nice, he did it twice.
Network issues. <shrug>
That's why the martials are specifically not confined by the rules of Paizo in this challenge. They can not only use their high level abilities, they can use abilities that aren't even in the rulebook. And I'm still not really seeing the awesome Conan-style beatdowns that Robert E. Howard so memorably gifted us with.The Conan style beatdowns work because Conan style wizards aren't PF style wizards.And we're back to "so stop playing Pathfinder"?
I must admit, I'd hoped for better.
(And my reading of the Conan stories is slightly different than yours. The wizards are generally quite powerful blasters in combat, or can summon truly awesome monsters that are quite powerful in their stead. Conan is just that diesel; in particular, I think it's in "Red Nails" where he's dodging magical missile attacks and allowing them to hit the mooks behind him instead. I don't see why PF fighters shouldn't be able to have touch AC's measured in the 40s. Or shouldn't be able to have misses kill mooks.)
Not necessarily "stop playing Pathfinder", but rework your expectations.
While things do get wonky at times, the game is generally built around party play and roles. Sure, the wizard does step on a lot of toes in the latter regard, but there are still limitations.
You're right! The Wizard is generally ineffective in terms of ending combats because his strength is in setting up the enemy for failure by buffing his allies and debuffing his enemies. He can summon, but he's not the best summoner (summoner and cleric both beat him out on that).
The Wizard doesn't directly steal the Fighter's role... but the Cleric does. The Druid does. The Oracle does. What's the point of the Fighter if these three can do everything he does, and still be a 9th level caster? Not to mention that their defenses are way better than his, with better saves and means of enhancing their armor without paying gold for it.
Well, buffs aren't necessarily "ANIMES," and that's one thing I'm hoping to tease out. Some of the suggestions -- followers, more general magic resistance, and even the ability to turn magic against itself -- seem like classic heroic abilities out of Howard.
And, yes, serious shutdown techniques are something useful, if they can be pulled off.... but I seriously challenge, for example, your mutagenic warrior with wings. I'm not a very good arbiter of where the line is, but anything that would require wire-work to film is probably close to wuxia. And without wire-work, how are you getting to a flying wizard?
Our minds obviously go to very different places, and I am extremely sad for you for that.
Because you are looking for 80's flare, let me introduce you TO MY HAWK MEN! DIVE!
You asked what a non-wuxi high level fighter looks like.
I say Cu Chulain is what it should look like.
What it actually looks like is more like Achilles, who, while nearly unbeatable in combat, still couldn't do anything a regular human couldn't do aside from ignore being hit.
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In that case, the fix already exists -- play E6. I'm trying to deal with the people who claim to like high-level play.
I think there's room to still play something a lot like E20, as long as we're able to accept that a 17th level caster shouldn't have CR 20 help. Because if they do, then the 17th level fighter needs CR 20 divine parents that actively help him, too -- and then the game devolves to the players sitting around and fiddling with their iPhones while the DM resolves what the higher-level, more-powerful allies are doing. To some extent, that robs the PCs -- casters and non-casters alike -- of a lot of their agency, which is bad design no matter what power level you're playing at.
Or, if you prefer, E17 can still be a thing; the cutoff doesn't have to be 6 unless we're stuck with totally mundane stuff.
What it actually looks like is more like Achilles, who, while nearly unbeatable in combat, still couldn't do anything a regular human couldn't do aside from ignore being hit.
Achilles is able to convince Zeus to turn the tide of the war against the Greeks. This is what I was talking about above; it lands us firmly in "CR <20 guys have CR >20 b!#$&es" territory, which might be OK for Homeric epics, but which is something I wouldn't like to see too much of in an RPG.
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I like high-Level play better with wuxia-type stuff around, but I feel obligated to try to beat this as a general creative thought exercise.
Here's my attempt:
We'll start with the party's prep.
The Rogue is immune to divinations. He runs his criminal enterprise as a network of preprogrammed sleeper-agents, which he makes through a combination of hypnosis, specifically-applied toxins, and minor brain surgery. He has a network of spies, combined with his own Sherlock-Holmesian pattern-analysis skills, to determine where the wizard stores his clones. He then creates teams of sleeper-agent assassins (with combat abilities boosted by his hypnotic mind-programming) and schedules their programming to trigger en-masse in conjunction with the attack on the tower, having them attack the wizard's clone facilities. The rogue isn't scannable during this process, and the mind-programming similarly isn't detectable until activated.
The rogue performs a behavioral analysis of the wizard using information that his spy network collected and determines what time of day the wizard prepares his spells (alternatively, if he prepares his spells while rope trick'd out or something, a time when he's in a particular room of the tower).
The fighter is a dragonrider. I've seen plenty of classic fantasy art of knight-types riding dragons, so I think this is a valid extension of the class under the restrictions given here. The dragon can't cast magic (as per challenge rules), but it has a few breath weapons that it can switch between (because I'm not stuck using Pathfinder dragon rules).
The rogue, a master of disguise, disguises the whole party as servants of the wizard. If confronted on their approach to the tower, uses the Rogue's extreme bluff skill to get past whatever questioning is going on. If others get questioned, the rogue has them mind-programmed to think they're actually servants to the wizard during this duration of the trip, so the lie uses the Rogue's bluff skill regardless of who is being asked things.
When the group reaches the wizard's place, it ignores the main-tower and flies up to the side of the target-chamber atop the fighter's dragon. The fighter sunders the room's wall with an adamantine great-hammer. Battle starts!
The fighter, a master tactician who has practice coordinating armies, snychs up the party's initiative onto the count of their fastest member. The rogue applies his earlier behavioral analysis of the wizard to boost initiative in fights specifically against him. The brawler led the party in exercise drills in the morning to further boost this. The Gunslinger is The Fastest Gun in the West, and said ability gives him an initiative bonus comparable to the bonus a diviner would get. The party uses this bonus-stack and beats the wizard, despite his diviner bonus, using the Gunslinger's initiative.
Since the initiatives are synchronized, the party gets to determine what order they act in.
The rogue goes first. He deploys a wide-area cluster-bomb of chemical dust he cooked up that operates as glitterdust-plus against invisibility and makes illusions obvious by including substances that react to the presence of illusion magic and change color upon doing so.
He then quick-action fires his hand-crossbow at the wizard (wherever the wizard actually is located) and hits, because he's a crack-shot against individuals who haven't acted yet in combat. He hits for sneak-attack damage due to his acting first, and the bolt is covered in a custom-synthesized poison-mixture that weakens the target's mind significantly and incorporates ethereal spider-venom that dimension-locks those poisoned with it.
The gunslinger is a furious preemptive-counter machine, wielding two pistols and delivering throat-shots to anyone who tries casting spells, dealing damage and forcing checks against spell-disruption each time. For his actual action, he's going to be opening fire on anything not protected by anti-missile wind-walls or the like, shooting body parts to add crippling-effects, disarming metamagic rods by shooting hands, sniping ioun stones out of the air, etc. His priority targets will likely be the inevitable simulacra of the wizard.
At this point, the dragon breathes whichever of his breath weapons is most useful to the situation. We'll go with an action-stopping ice effect. The wizard is probably immune, but presumably some of the henchmen aren't (if they are, just pick a different breath). The fighter is then going to make a supreme-cleave-pounce-charge at the wizard, attacking whatever is in the way and trying to get into his face with whatever hammer-swings remain.
At some point, potentially in the gun-blitz, potentially in the melee-rush fighter's attempt to force melee on the wizard, the wizard is going to pop an emergency force-field up. The dragon will have hypnotic programming implanted to respond at contingency-speed to breathe a force blast to shatter the wizard's emergency-globe.
The brawler then makes the final charge on the wizard. He similarly has a pounce-charge, and his AC is sky-high against AOEs against him as he goes in. He delivers a full attack on the wizard, presumably killing him.
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I am getting so... Incredibly sick of these threads.
For someone who's so sick of them, you appear not to have actually read any of them. The "magic items make martials equal to casters" thing has been discussed, I don't know, maybe 12,000 times? As Kyrt pointed out, that solution works if you hand out artifacts to martial characters as class features. If not -- if they have to make due with their share of the loot -- it's doomed to failure.
Well, judging by his examples, I think he wants to give low level martials artifacts. That could work.
I agree. The handouts would need to be baked into the classes, as class features, and not taken out of the party loot pool -- and the items would eventually have to do a lot more than anyone can currently do with PC WBL -- but yes, with those provisos, it could work.
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I am getting so... Incredibly sick of these threads.For someone who's so sick of them, you appear not to have actually read any of them. The "magic items make martials equal to casters" thing has been debunked, I don't know, maybe 12,000 times?Well, judging by his examples, I think he wants to give low level martials artifacts.
That could work.
What's funny is that this class feature already exists in the game... for casters!
I think if some martial focused magical items got improved, it will really help for martial to catch up with caster while keeping them somewhat realistic. Like magical enchantment, spell resistance 19 for +5 bonus is stupid, at should be at least 25-30 spell resistance because one, spell gets crazy at that point. Two, CL 20 doesn't even need to roll for spell resistance 19. Three, there are plenty of spells doesn't require spell resistance check. So I don't know why they set it so low. It's so easy to balance this that I can do it without even have to take a game design course.
Thing is, even if the group does reach the wizard and stab him to death. It wont matter, because that wizard was just a simulacrum or an astral projection, and have no way to find out where the real wizard is. All the while, the wizard then scry and die's you guys with a different simulacrum/projection next week.
All the while still safe in his own plane of existence. There is no chance of the wizard losing.
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does punching him so hard his soul goes straight to hell count?
This thread is about enabling that group to either track down said backups or somehow kill the Wizard so badly that he dies for real.
I'm struggling to sort out how to do that without going 'wuxia' or imparting magic onto these otherwise martials though.
The issue is that there is no possible way of having damage be a way to defeat a properly run wizard of that level. There is no answer. Either you give them a mystical ability that enables them to track down the creating wizard AND an ability to planeshift AND the ability to findout what metal was used for that plane, there is no possible method of winning. When the enemy is in a location that can only be reached via magic, you need to use magic. It's that simple.
I liked Kirth's idea of the Ranger (and a Slayer, presumably) being able to track his target anywhere. Here's my attempt to codify it in a feat:
The Hunt
(Requires Quarry class feature)
Your prey can never escape from you. You always know the location of the target selected with your Quarry class feature and can always find a way to your quarry's location. If your quarry is in another plane, you may make a Knowledge (Planes) check with a DC of 15+the target's HD to locate a rift you may use to enter that plane. Slayers may take this feat as a slayer talent as long as they meet the prerequisites.
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I liked Kirth's idea of the Ranger (and a Slayer, presumably) being able to track his target anywhere. Here's my attempt to codify it in a feat:
The Hunt
(Requires Quarry class feature)
Your prey can never escape from you. You always know the location of the target selected with your Quarry class feature and can always find a way to your quarry's location. If your quarry is in another plane, you may make a Knowledge (Planes) check with a DC of 15+the target's HD to locate a rift you may use to enter that plane. Slayers may take this feat as a slayer talent as long as they meet the prerequisites.
I would remove the knowledge check and just give it to him. When you designate your quarry you are always able to track it, if it is on another plane you find a rift.
Also, you need not see your quarry to designate it. You can instead track quarry by interacting with any effects produced by the quarry; this may be anything from physical tracks to magical spells.
Fullplate metal armor should provide immunity or damage reduction to electricity damage because it would act as a Faraday cage.
A fire proximity suit (such as one made from abestos) should provide damage reduction (or immunity) to fire damage.
Gold does not chemically react with most acids. As such, a full suit of gold plated armour should provide damage reduction (or immunity) to acid damage.
Cold damage can be prevented simply via lots and lots of insulation.
I am not sure how to protect against sonic energy. Also, these methods do not protect against magic that miraculously appears inside the armour instead of being blocked by it.
These are all fairly low tech ways of evening the odds against magic. Unfortunately, there are still a wealth of techniques that magic users can use.
Absolutely. Noah Bennett is the perfect model for this.
"Oh? You like to shoot lightning huh? Ok, here have a salt water bath!"
"Oh? You are going to read my mind huh? Ok, I'll think in Japanese."
"Oh? You have high metabolism and move with the quickness? Ok, hang out in my walk-in freezer."
That's why the martials are specifically not confined by the rules of Paizo in this challenge. They can not only use their high level abilities, they can use abilities that aren't even in the rulebook. And I'm still not really seeing the awesome Conan-style beatdowns that Robert E. Howard so memorably gifted us with.The Conan style beatdowns work because Conan style wizards aren't PF style wizards.And we're back to "so stop playing Pathfinder"?
I must admit, I'd hoped for better.
(And my reading of the Conan stories is slightly different than yours. The wizards are generally quite powerful blasters in combat, or can summon truly awesome monsters that are quite powerful in their stead. Conan is just that diesel; in particular, I think it's in "Red Nails" where he's dodging magical missile attacks and allowing them to hit the mooks behind him instead. I don't see why PF fighters shouldn't be able to have touch AC's measured in the 40s. Or shouldn't be able to have misses kill mooks.)
Not necessarily "stop playing Pathfinder", but rework your expectations.
While things do get wonky at times, the game is generally built around party play and roles. Sure, the wizard does step on a lot of toes in the latter regard, but there are still limitations.
You're right! The Wizard is generally ineffective in terms of ending combats because his strength is in setting up the enemy for failure by buffing his allies and debuffing his enemies. He can summon, but he's not the best summoner (summoner and cleric both beat him out on that).
The Wizard doesn't directly steal the Fighter's role... but the Cleric does. The Druid does. The Oracle does. What's the point of the Fighter if these three can do everything he does, and still be a 9th level caster? Not to mention that their defenses are way better than his, with better saves and means of enhancing their armor...
Idk.. You have never seen a dedicated Blaster Wizard... with one spell you can deal 15d6 (maximized)+45+(15d6*0.5) damage to an area and cause all those who fail their saves to be dazed... oh and if your cheesy you can do this with a 3rd level spell slot... Just have a Conjuration Wizard play clean up afterwards.
You know what a High Magic mundane looks like in PF?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you... Jarlaxle Baenre
This guy is literally COVERED in magical trinkets... He is pretty much a rogue pretending to be a wizard by going batman style and having ALL THE THINGS...
I liked Kirth's idea of the Ranger (and a Slayer, presumably) being able to track his target anywhere. Here's my attempt to codify it in a feat:
The Hunt
(Requires Quarry class feature)
Your prey can never escape from you. You always know the location of the target selected with your Quarry class feature and can always find a way to your quarry's location. If your quarry is in another plane, you may make a Knowledge (Planes) check with a DC of 15+the target's HD to locate a rift you may use to enter that plane. Slayers may take this feat as a slayer talent as long as they meet the prerequisites.I would remove the knowledge check and just give it to him. When you designate your quarry you are always able to track it, if it is on another plane you find a rift.
Also, you need not see your quarry to designate it. You can instead track quarry by interacting with any effects produced by the quarry; this may be anything from physical tracks to magical spells.
I could see just giving to the Ranger; the knowledge check was mainly to provide justification that could not possibly be construed as mystical (you know how to get there because you've studied it).
Being able to activate Quarry without directly seeing your target sounds like something that would be integral to the class rather than this feat, but Improved Quarry comes later than I'd like it to be... hmm...
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You know what a High Magic mundane looks like in PF?
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you... Jarlaxle Baenre
This guy is literally COVERED in magical trinkets... He is pretty much a rogue pretending to be a wizard by going batman style and having ALL THE THINGS...
Jarlaxle is my favorite character from Salvatore's books.
Jarlaxle is boss.
He is so awesome that when a Elf Mage tried to use detect magic on him, the elf literally went blind for ALL THE STUFF on Jarlaxle xD
I'd probably have the Ranger have to have The Planes as a Favored Terrain, or indeed make that Knowledge Check, to track across the planes.
Jarlaxe is the classic UMD answer to spellcasters, with heavily abused WBL.
You protect against sonic damage with Silence spells. The 3e spell Sound Bubble from the bard list was perfect for this kind of thing.
==Aelryinth
I would probably make it so it's described not a some kind of sense and more like he's able to pick up on every little detain about his quarry.
The fact that the party is inevitably going to split loot roughly evenly and this powers up God even more.I should note that Wizards need to buy most of their spells. Maybe, every arcane magic spell known in his spell book should count against his wealth by level?
Except they get 2 spells every level for free...
Also remember, they can also copy down spells from Scrolls they happen to find around
The fact that the party is inevitably going to split loot roughly evenly and this powers up God even more.I should note that Wizards need to buy most of their spells. Maybe, every arcane magic spell known in his spell book should count against his wealth by level?
they do, and it's still chump change, also the paperwork required to record consumables for WBL is annoying and ultimately leads to weaker parties that use more consumables.
also you know that wizard your party just beat down? all his spells are belong to us.
a +5 vorpal longsword still doesn't allow the martial to teleport, or summon aide when he needs it, he still just swings his sword around to kill stuff.
You definitely could have chosen better example Bandw2 :P
Vorpal on a +5 weapon is basically flushing 150,000 gold down the toilet.
that's why i chose it.
it expensive looks shiny and seems cool, just like a fighter covered in magic items compared to a wizard covered in magic items
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The fact that the party is inevitably going to split loot roughly evenly and this powers up God even more.I should note that Wizards need to buy most of their spells. Maybe, every arcane magic spell known in his spell book should count against his wealth by level?
A Pathfinder Society FAQ notes that:
In the rare instance of a wizard charging a fee for the privilege of copying spells from their spellbooks, this fee is equal to half the cost to write the spell into a spellbook (see Writing a New Spell into a Spellbook). Rare and unique spells do not change the fee in PFS.It could be argued that technically your player character's spell book full of magic spells is not the same value as an empty spell book and should be valued at at least the sum of this price for all the spells in the book and the value of the book itself.
I don't know if any GMs look over the spells known by their players and factor them into their wealth by level and determining the loot their players should have (obviously at initial start hen playing at high levels they do but I mean when checking up later on to make sure the party hasn't unexpectedly gained too much wealth for their level.)
Arkalion spent a whopping 33,805 Gold on all his spells and that includes the price of a Blessed Book, Book of Harms and a Tome of the Transmuter. That's barely more then a +4 sword. I counted the very paltry sum against his WBL. I could still afford many many more useful items then anyone who bought a +5 or greater sword. Even more so if those people lack crafting feats.
This is a followup from another thread discussing the martial/caster disparity and how "unrealistic" it is to for fighters to,... well, to do anything like wizards can. A comment that has come up a lot in that thread is that allowing a fighter to do anything faintly "anime" risks "turning every martial class into into weird magus/jedi/ninja/wizards" or turning a fantasy game into a superhero game.
I'm literally wondering, then, what can possibly be done. So I wish to pose a thought experiment.
Rules for the experiment:
* A party of high level (17th level) martials is taking on a high-level caster (18th level caster, plus enough minions to make it a CR 20 encounter).
* The encounter is taking place in the caster's stronghold. Think, if you like, of Conan encountering the evil wizard at the top of his tower. This gives the caster the home field advantage plus all the prep time in the world.
* The party consists of a fighter, a rogue, gunslinger or a skirmisher ranger, and a brawler. No spells among them. More importantly, no magical items duplicating spells either. This is about martials themselves being cool, not martials pretending to be casters.
* The caster is RAW legal; no nerfing him. Simulacra of wish-granting outsiders, bags of marbles with symbols on them, teleporting to private demiplanes, all legitimate.
* The party is not allowed to do anything "wuxia," "weeaboo," "anime," or similar derogatory words..... but other than that, the party is not restricted in any way by the Pathfinder rules. The whole point of this experiment is to figure out what an awesome martial character looks like, feels like, and plays like. So if jumping 50' in the air is "wuxia,"or shooting bolts of lightning from your hands is "anime," you don't get to do that.
And, most importantly
* The party has to win, and win awesomely, so that everyone has a good time.I'd like people to...
A few months ago a guy wanted a character who did use any magic(spells, SLA, or SU's), and still be a "caster killer". I would definitely look into that thread because this group faces similar issues even though there are 4 of them. I think an ability was found that was helpful, but I am not sure if it was mythic or not, but IIRC, it could be foiled if the caster knew the martial had it.
edit:
Here is the thread.
My next post will give the ability if I can find it.