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They should behave like human beings (or dragons, etc).Human beings are way scummier in self defense or murder.
Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes.
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A nonsense post that doesn't address the point about the design intent being deliberately against the tactic you say you should use.Dragon have a breath weapon and multiple attacks for the sole purpose of hitting multiple party members at once. This was the design intent. Stacking these attacks against a singular character to send them to an early grave for no reason beyond spite is a system exploit and bad DMing.
You are the only one I've ever heard say that.
The GM advantages of multiple lesser attacks is that they're more likely to put a player into negative rather than killing outright, and they're less likely to insta-kill a player with a single crit. Plus it forces them into full attacks to do a decent % of their combat potential.
If the dragon splits their attacks between all of the players - they're an idiot, the GM is soft-balling, and the players won't feel challenged.
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Well... Technically, all classes have a variety of options to use...
BUT (And this is a BUT so big that MC Hammer would blush)... Realistically, the more martially-inclined classes, specially the ones without are (ironically) restricted to only a handful of options in-combat.
Why?
Because every time they try to do something slightly different, the game punishes them with attacks of opportunity, major penalties and/or downright saying it's impossible... Unless, of course, they are willing to spend a bunch of feats on it. Many of which are pretty weak and/or have (often unreasonable) prerequisites. And even then, you have no guarantee that your character will be more than a 1~2-trick pony.
Go ahead! Try and make a TWF or archery-focused character and see how many feats you have left to invest in anything else...
Hell! Pathfinder even went as far as NERFING combat maneuvers while simultaneously INCREASING the feat tax required to use them properly.
For starters, feats that do anything other than giving you a +1 are few and far between, and more often than not only give minor bonuses, way too situational, or a hidden behind a monstrous walls of awful feats...
To make matters worse, thanks to Paizo delightful "nerf the old to make the new look shinier" design philosophy, there no guarantee that even if you decide to fight this uphill battle, whatever trick your character got won't be Crane Winged into the crapper like... Well... Crane Wing.
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Like they know their abilities and actually use them for maximum and correct effect. Like they actually have brains and resources and a will to live.Creature do not have mechanical awareness of their abilities except in the most vague terms. This is one of the reasons that real people do not always make the optimal choice in a fight, for how they spend their time, etc.
I fully disagree.
That lion on the African savanna has FULL comprehension of its abilities. It knows it's fast so it can chase a zebra. It knows that it can't chase the zebra all day so it sneaks as close as possible first. It knows it's sneaky so it sneaks. It knows it has claws and teeth so it uses them (all three on one zebra, by the way). It never chooses, say, to just use one claw because it knows that using two claws is better than one. It knows that it's better to bite the zebra's throat than to bite its shoulder.
It has an INT score of 2 by Pathfinder standards and yet it knows all this stuff and does it every time it can. It never pulls its punches. It never distributes multiple attacks to multiple targets at the risk of letting the whole zebra herd get away.
It's deadly, efficient, and fully competent with all of its abilities.
Every time.
I'm sure some zebras would like to pout about the lion being too dangerous, but I don't see Mother Nature coddling the zebras and making the lions attack like idiots.
Pretending otherwise is wrong. Furthermore, exploiting the system and not understanding the intent behind it is also wrong. I never said creature shouldn't use their abilities correctly, I merely said they shouldn't behave like power gamers. They should behave like human beings (or dragons, etc).
So the lion is exploiting the system? Did the lion misunderstand Mother Nature's design intent?
I contend that the lion using all of its ability to stalk, chase, and kill one zebra at a time is behaving exactly like a lion.
I further contend that a dragon using all of its ability to claw/claw/bite/buffet, and even tail slap if possible, one dangerous adventurer at a time is behaving exactly like a dragon.
I don't presume to know the intent of the game designers on this point, but I do suspect that their intent was not to dumb dragons down to the point that they behave less intelligently than a lion.
It would be even more awesome if the Fighter was able to contribute to the next part: Retrieving the tome of forbidden secrets from the house full of haunts and undead
Oh, shit son! I appear to be be wrestling this clearly poisoned, floating knife that is trying to stab up the wizard, thank the gods the rogue is doing so well at picking the lock on that safe, while the cleric deals with the ghosts of the dead family that haunt this place.
Or dealing with the dam that's threating to burst and flood the valley.
Well, thank god I and the rogue are members of this party, because frankly, without my knowledge of engineering and their gift of the gab, we never would have gathered the towns folk, and led them in repairing the dam. What were the wizard and the cleric doing you ask? Well they were lending they were desperately trying to research the weakness of Zarvan the terrible, before the next wave of his attack on the walls.
AWESOME WORDS OF WISDOM!
DM_Blake... This was so wise, beautiful and poetic that I'm starting to tear up....
Moreover, why isn't the brawler jumping of buildings, riding the creature to the ground with a thunderous storm of punches ;)At level 18, surely someone in the party can grant the brawler the ability to fly?one of my GMs struggles to have flying creatures at level 18 because then the brawler could do nothing.I am bothered by "one-trick" classes because the very idea is crazy for two reasons:
** spoiler omitted **...
I 200% agree with this idea hahaha!
Give the brawler spider climb some how so he can run up a building, jump off it, and be pure badass xD
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Or dealing with the dam that's threating to burst and flood the valley.Well, thank god I and the rogue are members of this party, because frankly, without my knowledge of engineering and their gift of the gab, we never would have gathered the towns folk, and led them in repairing the dam. What were the wizard and the cleric doing you ask? Well they were lending they were desperately trying to research the weakness of Zarvan the terrible, before the next wave of his attack on the walls.
Well, you trained knowledge engineering on a class with 2 skill points and a generally low need for intelligence. I hope you don't need to swim, climb, balance or jump, notice things, or talk to people, because you can't do them all.
While Schrodinger's fighter has all appropriate skills trained, in practice, fighters might as well not have skills. Even if you do have a skill trained, outside of Hitting thing with other things until they are dead, fighters are no more effective than a commoner, much less an expert or an adept.
Presumably there was no hint ahead of time there would be flying enemies, so no one invested in fly abilities that could target the other party members who don't have them innately. This type of oversight does happen.Really? I could see that at low-mid levels, but by 18 the brawler should have easy access to Fly or some other method of airborne combat.one of my GMs struggles to have flying creatures at level 18 because then the brawler could do nothing.I am bothered by "one-trick" classes because the very idea is crazy for two reasons:
** spoiler omitted **...
By 18 they should have it. If not - they're badly prepared (go practice with a boyscout) and should deal with the consequences. Heck - a brawler just needs a decent longbow and can take the basic archery feats on the fly.
I was in a module where no one had any sort of flying where the module kind of expected it... at level 6! It was a hassle to deal with, but I'm making sure that my bard takes Gaseous Form in case it comes up again.
And beyond class leveld humanoids, how manh things at level 18. DONT FLY?
This is simply not true.
Without having to give it any serious thought, I can list other things they [fighters] are able to do.
-They can hold choke points fairly well.
-crit fishing for debuffs.
-use environmental elements as weapons, such as using strength to push a wall onto the enemy."Use environmental effects as a weapon". They have precisely zero class abilities to do this. That means when you're pushing that wall down on your enemies, you're either:
*Doing something not very effective, because you've got nothing useful to contribute.
*Being allowed to do something effective, out of GM pity, because you've got nothing useful to contribute.
*Pushing a button the GM put in the scene beforehand for any of the PCs to push. It's a good thing you are the one to do it, because it seems like you've got nothing useful to contribute.A fighting caster can hold the chokepoint almost as well (low levels) or a lot better (medium levels) or "what are chokepoints?" (high level).
Isn't it luck that this is a collaborative game, and that the fighter and the wizard are not in competition.
Isn't it awesome that you can play a fighter, and hold a choke point, and the wizard can say, "dude that it awesome, the way that your totally holding that narrow bridge against the oncoming horde while I use my turn to translate the runes on this magically sealed door, and the rogue counter snipes the hordes boss, and the cleric calls on his god's power to protect you from harm or give you strength."
While I'm here, those are an awful lot of strange names for "a DM rewarding imaginative, improvisation with an effective reward for an attribute test."
So the fighter is as useful as a Summon Monster spell...
And heck, the fighter is not even good at that..
Wizard: Ok BSF,,, i mean... bill go block off the chokehold
Fighter: SURE!!!
DM: fighter make a will save.
Fighter:....16...
DM: well... that sucks... the vampires that have been chasing you? Well they just dominated the fighter...
Wizard: YOU HAD ONE JOB!
A barb is better at being a wall...
Another problem with the level 18 brawler is this: why is the GM not providing assistance to the brawler in the form of suggestions on how to obtain the ability to fly, if not outright giving the PC an item so the PC can actually participate in the flying combat? Seems like problems on both sides. Maybe the PC doesn't know what is available to let him fly. It's a situation that can be resolved easily enough by cooperation and understanding from both sides of the screen.
This is simply not true.
Without having to give it any serious thought, I can list other things they [fighters] are able to do.
-They can hold choke points fairly well.
-crit fishing for debuffs.
-use environmental elements as weapons, such as using strength to push a wall onto the enemy."Use environmental effects as a weapon". They have precisely zero class abilities to do this. That means when you're pushing that wall down on your enemies, you're either:
*Doing something not very effective, because you've got nothing useful to contribute.
*Being allowed to do something effective, out of GM pity, because you've got nothing useful to contribute.
*Pushing a button the GM put in the scene beforehand for any of the PCs to push. It's a good thing you are the one to do it, because it seems like you've got nothing useful to contribute.A fighting caster can hold the chokepoint almost as well (low levels) or a lot better (medium levels) or "what are chokepoints?" (high level).
Isn't it luck that this is a collaborative game, and that the fighter and the wizard are not in competition.
Isn't it awesome that you can play a fighter, and hold a choke point, and the wizard can say, "dude that it awesome, the way that your totally holding that narrow bridge against the oncoming horde while I use my turn to translate the runes on this magically sealed door, and the rogue counter snipes the hordes boss, and the cleric calls on his god's power to protect you from harm or give you strength."
While I'm here, those are an awful lot of strange names for "a DM rewarding imaginative, improvisation with an effective reward for an attribute test."
So the fighter is as useful as a Summon Monster spell...
And heck, the fighter is not even good at that..
Wizard: Ok BSF,,, i mean... bill go block off the chokehold
Fighter: SURE!!!
DM: fighter make a will save....
Sounds like the wizard and fighter are both pretty dumb in this instance, why isn't the fighter lifting the portcullis for the parties escape while the wizard and cleric engage that vampire that they seem to know if following them.
Another problem with the level 18 brawler is this: why is the GM not providing assistance to the brawler in the form of suggestions on how to obtain the ability to fly, if not outright giving the PC an item so the PC can actually participate in the flying combat? Seems like problems on both sides. Maybe the PC doesn't know what is available to let him fly. It's a situation that can be resolved easily enough by cooperation and understanding from both sides of the screen.
haha no. This player always plays a martial. Instead of adapting he pouts because why should all of the classes he likes to play have to use spells to fight.
He just recently rerolled as a strength kensia magus. God he whined for a good minute at having to cast fly on himself. He is slowly beginning to realize how fun it is to fly.
My fighter is level 12 and I'm looking for ways to fly.
As to the OP question, no, "single strategy" classes don't bother me. The game already has like 50 classes, not all of them need to be equally versatile. If I don't like how a class plays, I'll play a different class.
My fighter is level 12 and I'm looking for ways to fly.
As to the OP question, no, "single strategy" classes don't bother me. The game already has like 50 classes, not all of them need to be equally versatile. If I don't like how a class plays, I'll play a different class.
Can you post build, party composition, spending gold, and magic item availability?
Can you post build, party composition, spending gold, and magic item availability?My fighter is level 12 and I'm looking for ways to fly.
As to the OP question, no, "single strategy" classes don't bother me. The game already has like 50 classes, not all of them need to be equally versatile. If I don't like how a class plays, I'll play a different class.
I didn't mean I needed help, just pointing out that a melee guy should be thinking these things long before 18th level.
We're in a 3 months between books period, and I have 10k of pocket change. I'll probably have the sorceress craft me some winged boots now that I think of it.
Not that I'm a particularly optimized character, being a phalanx warrior I'm more defensive in case anything tries to comes close to the sorceress or archer paladin.
*snip*You've never seen a character with a familiar? Free Alertness feat.
*snip*
This is all a roundabout way of saying that play styles differ. My groups don't have the problem that DM Blake described. A mediocre party using good teamwork and creative problem solving is far more effective than an optimized group of hypercompetent loners.
Obviously play however you enjoy, but to me "optimized enough" means able to play in an AP or PFS adventure and be successful - and that bar is low enough that there are many, many, viable options for every class, even fighter and rogue.
To that first point: the characters themselves didn't have Alertness. Their class feature handed it to them. Narrow distinction, I know, but it remains that I have never seen anyone take the actual feat.
To those second two points: I'm not disagreeing at all. Heck, I play the least optimized characters out of the rest of my group by far (halfling barbarians/rangers, bard/fighter multiclass, etc.). But mostly because I'm always curious as to what I can build.
Everyone runs it differently.
But the math still trends towards rewarding those that are built for conquest through optimization.
Lemmy's point above better illustrates what I'm trying to say. Minus the nerf rant :P
Uh... The post I referenced is still there... And it's not offensive or breaking any forum guideline. oO
So all of my fair commentary is just removed, and there was no chance to redact the quoted sections as compliance so that my post could remain? Maybe I should just never quote a post ever again, and damned be the lack of context!
The trick is to just not respond to flame or things responding to flame unless you are willing for it to disappear.
The Background Skills variant in Unchained can help relieve the skill problem many Fighters suffer from. As I’ve posted in other threads, my Viking is actually good at sailing his longship now.
Low Will saves really are a big problem. I think the root of that problem is that the results of a single failed Will save are often too extreme.
@Lemmy - I think you've confused MC Hammer with Sir Mix-A-Lot.
So all of my fair commentary is just removed, and there was no chance to redact the quoted sections as compliance so that my post could remain?
I would be happy to email you the removed posts, but right now, I'm juggling a lot of plates and I'm not sure when I would be able to respond to your request. As pointed out here, we try and avoid editing somebody else's post, as we feel it is not the most effective way to moderate our boards.
I just feel the need to correct one thing as a point of order.
Slumber Witches (or really any spellcaster build) are not one trick ponies. If a Slumber Witch is up against something that their Slumber Hex won't work on, they have many many options including using Dazing Spell to show it whose boss, using battlefield control to make it useless, summoning/animating minions to beat it down. Slumber Hex is focused because it's easy to do so and the pay-out is good, but a Witch will still have plenty of resources to invest into many many other tricks.
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Yeah, Slumber is only one of the tools the Witch can use to prevent the DM and other players from having too much fun. I'm not sure if it and Ice Tomb are technically "overpowered", but they seem to suck the fun out of encounters sometimes. Ice Tomb also often leaves us asking a bunch of questions like...
- If the enemy doesn't take any of the cold damage is it still affected? (our guess is no)
- If you freeze somebody who is in a tree do they fall out?
- When you freeze a flying (or climbing) creature and it falls does the ice take the falling damage? How about the creature?
- When you break the ice with an attack does the creature take any excess damage?
- Does it work on undead?
- How long does the giant block of ice take to melt?
- Can you easily see what's in the ice?
Those are just some of the questions I remember. It seems like new ones come up every session, much more so than with most other spells and abilities. I also suspect that the DM pads encounters with a little more than the PCs could usually handle on the assumption that the Witch's hexes will negate an enemy or two. When her d20 is hot for saving throws the party suffers and the Witch feels pretty useless. Thematically it is a cool power (pun partially intended), but in play it seems to have some issues.
So... I'm posting because DM_Blake brought up good points about being a one-trick pony, and I wanted to make sure I'm not doing that.
I'm currently playing a 2nd level Fighter in a game with my friends. Polearm Master archetype. I felt that the group needed a more tanky / defensive character and felt that a reach, AoO focused fighter could be useful. I'm also planning to invest in Trip somewhat heavily with Improved / Greater Trip, Felling Smash, and Guisarme weapon focuses in order to better prevent people from reaching my team.
HOWEVER, I've realized that trip won't be useful against everything. Already seen this with giant centipedes and snakes. Moreover, I can't rely on polearms all the time, even with the added bonus Polearm Master grants of attacking adjacent enemies. So I've also got a handful of javelins for ranged combat (that are buffed by Polearm Master weapon training) and close-range weapons in a spiked gauntlet and a sickle.
So while I definitely have the schtick as "the ranged tripper", I still have back-up in case my schtick doesn't work. I guess my question is how much should I invest in my schtick? It's something I want to be good at, but I should have back-up options as well.
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I am bothered by "one-trick" classes because the very idea is crazy for two reasons:
** spoiler omitted **...
I'm having the exact same problem, there's a twist to it though. I'm playing in a Way of the Wicked game right now. We have a human ranger with a wolf companion, a human summoner with a cerberus-like eidolon, a gnome sorcerer with the infernal bloodline and I was playing an aasimar evangelist cleric with the fire domain.
Now at first I've helped the player of the ranger make her build, but she's often distracted by new weapons. By level 2 she wanted to give her lucerne hammer ranger with combat reflexes the two-weapon fighting feat so she could use two longswords. After explaining her build to her again, she chose for the lucerne hammer again, but after a few levels she switched to a greatsword because it's magical. (I blame herolab for this.)The player of the summoner is just starting to learn the game, and pretty inventive too. He doesn't know every rule, so a lot of his ideas are shot down pretty quick, but at least he's trying. (To summon third party elementals...)
The player of the gnome tends to forget to update his character. He plays rather chaotic, with a single spell being his favorite, no matter how much we object. (Chaotic vitality from deep magic. Keep in mind that the adventure path assumes we are following Asmodeus and that the players are not allowed to have good or chaotic alignments.)
So far, it's been my cleric who has solving a lot of the problems. I'll admit that the ranger shines in most melee combat encounters, and the summoner can hold his own despite having a constitution of 8. Our main strategy is buffing the ranger, but my cleric has been solving a lot of problems while the other players twiddled their thumbs.
It doesn't help that the other players are shocked when I do something evil. (We're all playing evil characters, I thought that was the point.)
Then I figured that the plot was to railroady for the cleric and it wouldn't be very satisfying to downplay him by not wishing an important NPC dead, so I traded him in for a new character. I've yet to figure out how to solve everything without spells. (But with spheres of power.)
The thing is that the players don't have to be one-trick ponies to mess up the game. Zero trick ponies and I-forgot-my-trick-ponies are just as bad. In the end, you just got to hope for the best, and maybe one day those ponies will turn into stallions. Or something like that. I don't know.
So... I'm posting because DM_Blake brought up good points about being a one-trick pony, and I wanted to make sure I'm not doing that.
I'm currently playing a 2nd level Fighter in a game with my friends. Polearm Master archetype. I felt that the group needed a more tanky / defensive character and felt that a reach, AoO focused fighter could be useful. I'm also planning to invest in Trip somewhat heavily with Improved / Greater Trip, Felling Smash, and Guisarme weapon focuses in order to better prevent people from reaching my team.
HOWEVER, I've realized that trip won't be useful against everything. Already seen this with giant centipedes and snakes. Moreover, I can't rely on polearms all the time, even with the added bonus Polearm Master grants of attacking adjacent enemies. So I've also got a handful of javelins for ranged combat (that are buffed by Polearm Master weapon training) and close-range weapons in a spiked gauntlet and a sickle.
So while I definitely have the schtick as "the ranged tripper", I still have back-up in case my schtick doesn't work. I guess my question is how much should I invest in my schtick? It's something I want to be good at, but I should have back-up options as well.
Fighters are tough. They're ALREADY so limited (any solution that DOESN'T require fighting probably doesn't require fighters at all). But they ARE pretty good at fighting.
There's nothing overtly wrong with your build. You help control the battlefield, you dish out damage, and you have ranged attacks for when you can't get close. You have already realized that Trip isn't for every encounter (yeah, hard to trip those pesky snakes...) but in the end you can just chop them up with damage when you can't trip them.
Get some defenses so you won't be taken out of the fight by every bad guy that casts some kind of Will save effect on you. Get a backup range weapon, something with a really long range for those high-flying encounters (javelins have a max range of 150 feet while longbows have a range of 1,000 feet). While we're on the subject of backup weapons, get another melee weapon too because not everything is easy to slash. Get magical means to around and over the battlefield; you'll need it. These are things every fighter needs, not just yours.
It's okay, Liz. No biggie. I was just confused. Thank you for all the good work you do around here.
Fighters are good at fighting, but by far they aren't the best ones.
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This is why I like to run spellcasters that can fight. If none of their spells are appropriate to the situation, whack something with a stick. And I do prefer spontaneous casters for being able to hammer the same option if need be. My oracle ran into a bebilith and proceeded to empty his 2nd level slots on Spear of Purity.