[Dreamscarred press] [Path of war] Enduring Crane Strike and the bag of cats

[Michael Sayre]

So, I feel like I got blindsided a bit by some responses to a post of mine from a while back that got linked in, but I really want to point out that the point of that post was to say "I disagree with the PoW team sometimes, but we're friends and I both support what they do and understand why they might do something differently than I would". I'm pretty sure most people got that message, particularly seeing as how the lead designer for PoW was one of the guys to favorite the post.

Now that being said- I think the Path of War classes are all true to Tier (generally Tier 4 or Tier 3), but that is only one side of the equation, essentially one axis on the XY chart. They know that Broken Blade and Primal Fury have some issues and are working on fixing those, which should help a bit on the other front.

As to bag of cats issues- my suggestion for addressing those if you find you have them is to add some verbage like this-

"Attacking an unattended object, helpless creature, unaware creature, or a creature that has fewer Hit Dice than half the initiator's character level does not trigger any maneuver abilities that require a successful attack (such as Silver Crane's Blessing), nor can a creature willingly allow itself to be struck by such an attack."

That should pretty much stop any bag of cats issues you may find yourself dealing with. It's a slight variation on a general house rule that we use in my group.

[Felyndiira]

I find it a bit interesting that everyone in this thread (aside from a few posters in the beginning), on both sides, are ardent supporters of Path of War. Despite arguing about PoW's balance, both Insane Dragoon and Sky are regular contributors and testers in the PoW:E thread, and are very knowledgeable about the product.

I have my own thoughts, support, and criticism for the product, but I feel that any further discussion on balance not related to infinite out-of-combat healing is just bring this thread further off-topic. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have another thread specifically devoted to math and balancing, in my opinion, though I think we said all that there is to say about Enduring Crane Strike.

(Though I would like to point out that market price of Boots of the Earth is 5000 GP. It doesn't become a party staple until usually at least level 7 or so, with all of the other protective gear that they have to buy.)

[DungeonmasterCal]

Bag of Cats? What is this you speak of?

[bookrat]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

Bag of Cats? What is this you speak of?

It's the idea that if you carry around a bag of cats (or other small helpless critter), you can use an ability infinate times per day or use it to grow in power quickly. For this example, you have to attack someone and you can heal an ally - so if you attack a cat in your bag you can heal out of combat to full as many times as you want, without spending gold on wands or potions. If you can do this, the ability is often considered too powerful and broken for pathfinder.

There's a link to it on Page 1 for more detail.

[Michael Sayre]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

Bag of Cats? What is this you speak of?

It refers to abilities that can theoretically be abused if you have ready access to a large number of easily targeted creatures, such as using a bag of kittens to chain together attacks from a discipline that grants healing, like Silver Crane, or some other function.

A Paizo example would be the Order of the Flame cavalier who could challenge a bunch of kittens using his Glorious Challenge ability to juice his damage up ridiculously high before actually engaging an enemy. I think I've also heard it referred to as the anthill fallacy, back in 3.5 where you had a prestige class called the Necrocarnate who could technically get near-unlimited resources by standing over an anthill with a magnifying glass and frying the little bastards so he could eat their tiny ant souls.

[Malwing]

From my understanding the healing isn't too much of an issue because of the good descriptor needed. Its certainly not good too murder bags of kittens, and even if it's a bag of imps you're still behaving vampiric at best. I find more issue with teleporting although its not too dumb of an issue. I just hate that the issue comes up in the first place but honestly its not that big of a deal as it is played out in PoW. I take a bigger issue with players trying so hard to nickel and dime every verb in the game looking for loopholes for cheap shots. I had one player doing things like selling summoned horses and use detect magic as a see invisibility.

[ErrantX]

Malwing, thank you for articulating that. Seriously.

-X

[Rynjin]

*Looks back at my first post in this thread, which says the same thing*

=(

[Andreas Rönnqvist]

Skylancer4 wrote:

Casual Viking wrote:

Skylancer4 wrote:

It's actually new writers brought in to work under the DSP name, who have very different thoughts on what "game balance" is supposed to mean. They come from a forum where optimization is standard and have stated outright that classes like the Fighter are bad design and feat chains are horribly bad design. They have no intent on making it play "nice" with core options.

I'm stating this as, I'm not of the opinion DSP's products aren't quality material, but to say that who is actually writing the material might be something to look at from this point on if your expectations are not being met.

The point is, you now have two separate design philosophies from the same company. One which has always "played nice" with core rules and now, one that is pushing the boundaries. Depending on what you are looking for, you need to start checking who writes what from them, as the "quality" of work will be different.

Hi!

When we design, we design for a very specific, and tight, area. We want our classes to land in what is sometimes called or defined as "T3" in most cases (the unavoidable T2 for Psion/Wilder is pretty much due to backward compatibility). For those unaware of what that means, it means that a class should be REALLY GOOD at one thing, and atleast be able to help out or add to the rest of possible focuses.

For example, the Marksman is REALLY GOOD at ranged combat, can do melee combat, skilled encounters, some sneaking/scouting and social interactions fairly well. You can expend resources, such as gold or feats, to gain a broader ability set (like Expanded Knowledge), or to focus even more (like Precise Shot).

Path of War, Akashic Mysteries and pretty much any other material we release tries to adhere to that. So no, there are no "other" writers than all of us DSP writers. Do we make mistakes? Hell yes. We try to fix those as best we can. We listen as much as we can, at as many different places as we can, for the feedback our fans give us. Listening doesn't always mean agreeing. We had many vocal fans during our very first initial playtests of Psionics Unleashed. We listened. Sometimes we changed things, sometimes we didn't.

If we set the bar for something different, we'll tell you. Upfront and clear.

- Andreas Rönnqvist
Dreamscarred Press