| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think 4th ed. is a perfect example of designers taking the easy way out in terms of game balance. Balancing limited-use magic with at-will martial abilities is hard, but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done.Yes it's hard. From some approaches it's even impossible, as the entire idea from certain angles is that limited-use magic is more powerful than at-will martial abilities (SKR explains it very good here).It's interesting that he specifically states that getting rid of Vancian magic is the way to get out of the nova-wizard-now-we-rest paradigm. I pretty much agree, and have long since instituted changes in my game which take that tack.
I like the idea that casting spells deals nonlethal damage which some RPG systems use. Shadowrun has it but with the ability to reduce the damage to 0 (and a high chance for that) its not enough of a drawback/a limit to spells cast per day. I like it best when combined with the fact that magic can not heal nonlethal damage.
Midgard, a german RPG, uses a variation of spellcasting = nonlethal damage.
HERO games more or less uses this system, as well, with standard attacks doing limited killing damage and killing attacks being much more expensive and easy to repel with decent armor. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it's really what is needed to address the imbalances in the system, as unconscious enemies may as well be dead in most cases, and are often more useful than corpses because they can be woken up and pumped for information.
My take on the best Pathfinder-internal way to fix the Vancian magic problem is to simply only allow the spontaneous casting classes (though you can certainly call a dude with Sorcerer mechanics a Wizard, if you like), and have them cast off of a single magic pool, rather than off of several broken up by spell level as they do now. Oh, and make scrolls weird one-shot items that can be found, but never bought.
This way, the main problem of the prepared casters (their ludicrous versatility) vanishes, and the casting classes have less of a 15 minute workday problem because their magic pools are more flexible. In the end, it is not so much the Wizard's length but rather his girth that is the problem.
After that comes the super-easy task of buffing the martials up to the level of a sorcerer with at-will abilities only...
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure it's really what is needed to address the imbalances in the system, as unconscious enemies may as well be dead in most cases, and are often more useful than corpses because they can be woken up and pumped for information.
My thought was that getting rid of spells per day and vancian casting and replacing it with casting dealing nonlethal damage as a limiter to how many spells can be cast. By that each spell costs something so mages have an incentive to now use spells on things that skills can achieve, too. On the other hand a mage can still cast as long as he is not unconscious, no matter how many spells he's already cast. For that to work you'd first assign every spell level a certain numbers nonlethal damage dealt.
Given the dev team's consistent and vehement opposition to "armchair analysis", and the general sloppiness of design (including the continued existence of things like Powerful Sneak and Death or Glory), what makes you think that they have, in fact, done rigorous analysis?
RPG writing isn't all about rules. The PF team has done rigorous analysis and has simply disagreed with your conclusion.
Not to mention SKR's comments on how Paizo did their testing while he worked there certainly made it sound a long way from rigorous.
I made a craptastic sorceress. CRB feats. I think she started at 16 cha. Took skill focus appraise. Most of the time she would cast one summon spell of highest or -1 highest and then cast invisibility to hide.
She still made well optimized martials feel silly. Turns out, the best fit summon can ourperform cc'd brawlers.
It's not just an issue of optimization. The game at 12+ is for casters. Everyone else can go home.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So is it: "Do martials need better things?", or "Do casters need a nerf?"
Probably a little of each.
So is it: "Do martials need better things?", or "Do casters need a nerf?"
Probably a little of each.
Both could stand to be funner.
Martials through real abilities instead of just more damage.
Casters through a decreased dependence on exploits (the arcanist even calls their abilities exploits).
Given the dev team's consistent and vehement opposition to "armchair analysis", and the general sloppiness of design (including the continued existence of things like Powerful Sneak and Death or Glory), what makes you think that they have, in fact, done rigorous analysis?
RPG writing isn't all about rules. The PF team has done rigorous analysis and has simply disagreed with your conclusion.
Secondary issue, the PF design team appears to be a low optimization group. Poorly built characters can actually gloss over weaknesses in the rules when a normally powerful character is rendered ineffective by poor player choices.
Even if they have done rigorous analysis and testing, the odds are that they're doing it at a low level of optimization, which will tend to garner different results from that of high optimization players. If all characters are built equally poorly, the fact that the martial characters are less powerful will be less apparent than if everyone involved is built into AMBARBARIAN and CoDzilla.
Something like Powerful Sneak mathematically speaking makes you WORSE at sneak attacking regardless of optimization, so some are undeniably mistakes in design that aren't dependent on context but simply not doing their research
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So if something that's normally green suddenly has red skin and is steaming I'd instinctively assume it's a fire variant and act accordingly. Often fire variants of monsters are red. Would you consider that meta-game?
For example, the mentioned, "Cinder Troll" that is one of my staples is nothing but a normal troll with one small change.They look like a normal troll but have a darker reddish skin that gives off steam.
Its amazing how many characters, who have no Knowledge: Nature, seem to instinctively know to go with fire against a Troll.
Ever run at a con?
The number of people who don't pay attention to descriptions is staggering.
The above situation is still technically metagaming but if the cinder troll is red, hot and steaming instead of just not having it's fire weakness it seems intentional enough to be classified as a clue as opposed to metagame information.
But yes people will frequently ignore clues. It's hard to make puzzles in Pathfinder because players either will ignore things or try to bypass them with abilities. One reason why I'm not too keen on the flexibility of optimized casters and instead favoring Spheres of Power where that junk isn't as rampant.
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
My take on the best Pathfinder-internal way to fix the Vancian magic problem is to simply only allow the spontaneous casting classes (though you can certainly call a dude with Sorcerer mechanics a Wizard, if you like), and have them cast off of a single magic pool, rather than off of several broken up by spell level as they do now.
Got a good bit of a chuckle out of that since it can easily be read "Use psionics instead of standard spellcasting", which actually is pretty solid. You look at a book like Dreamscarred Press' "Ultimate Psionics", and all of the classes are much more closely balanced to each other, with higher floors and lower ceilings, and many of the psionic powers are actually much weaker than spells (for example, psionics have cloud mind, concealing amorpha, and chameleon as second level spell options, but even combining all 3 together, which only egoist psions can do inherently, doesn't give you as much as a wizard gets from a single casting of invisibility). Of course, that's both a 3pp product, even if it is one publicly endorsed by Paizo and better balanced than the CRB, and it comes with a flavor that some tables might not like. Having your martial options be "magic users" who just use their power differently like the Aegis and the Soulknife may not scratch that itch for someone who wants their character to be a heroic badass without magic, which is what some people are looking for.
So is it: "Do martials need better things?", or "Do casters need a nerf?"
Probably a little of each.
Ultimate Psionics did both and essentially cut out the extremes at both ends. No class below that mark some know as Tier 4 and none of them cresting above Tier 2. By shrinking those margins you end up with a system that works really well, although there are fewer "entry level" classes (basically one, the Soulknife). I think that using something like that as a basis for a design paradigm is a really smart idea, giving the game a more "heroic" floor where you have fewer character options that can be easily screwed up, and then chopping up some of the more powerful spells that also allow casters to drastically outperform and replace similar non-magical options, like invisibility vs. non-magical Stealth, and you're really headed in the right direction.
I think another thing to look at is the role of feats in character design. Basically every class in Ultimate Psionics has a solid enough chassis that it can be competent on its own, and then the feats you choose lend direction and specialization to the character. You look at basically any spellcasting class from the Paizo core line and it's true of them as well, as well as certain martials. The Ranger, for example, has a solid chassis and his combat styles provide a prepackaged set of options that make sure you have the basic tools necessary to do whatever combat style you picked effectively. Paladins are similarly solid. I would say both classes are vastly easier for a new player to sit down and create than the Fighter, whose reliance on feats also requires a pretty heavy amount of research and careful planning to do effectively, and even when designing by flavor, can be easy to mess up. Paladin is "Lawful Good holy warrior who smites evil and heals with a touch", and I can make a character who fits that description before I even start selecting feats. The Fighter's "master of combat" premise is much more nebulous though; maybe I decide I want to play a big beefy thug who knocks people down and tosses them around the battlefield - have you seen how many prereqs I have to take into account just to do that? I often feel like if a class is going to be reliant on feats to be effective, there should be clearer options for how to do that. The Ranger gets a packet of "basic competency" feats that also happen to often be really good perks, Teamwork feats are essentially hidden class features for Cavaliers, Hunters, and Inquisitors and are presented in a way that makes them fun for those classes but also helps shield the classes who take them a bit so they aren't hosed by a bad choice. Fighters, unfortunately, don't have any guidance or easy reference for feat selection, to the point that there isn't even anywhere in the books that just says "here's all the Fighter only feats" and even if there were there's no theme or cohesiveness to the Fighter only feats that would help you know how to tie them into a concept. Anecdotally, many people consider the Fighter to be the "entry level" class, even despite the complexity of feat trees and prereqs, but the design team as headed by Jason Buhlman actually sees that as the Barbarian's role, which as he explained at a PaizoCon panel is why they did the Unchained Barbarian and cut out all the little floating math bits that used to come with Strength and Con increases and replaced them with temp hp and flat bonuses to attack and damage. I feel like that says a couple things.
I feel like nerfing spellcasting power is step one in a solution. Step two is taking a look at feats and making a firm decision about their role and direction for all characters, and then pricing them accordingly. Why is it okay for the Ranger, a full BAB class with minor spellcasting, great skills, a companion, only 5 fewer feats than the Fighter, and a host of other abilities, to skip prereqs by up to 6 levels in some instances or an entire ability score, but the Fighter must pay full price and meet all prereqs for his? Are feats "less good" for the Ranger? I would think not. Feats need to be, universally, either specifically as good as class features, or specifically less good than class features, and then balanced and priced accordingly if you're going to successfully raise the floor as part of closing the gap between martials and casters.
At Cons you have players who have never played before often right next to "leet dudes" mega optimizers and then some common gamers.You have 0 vetting time.
Then you deal with a plethora of problems. The optimizers are the worst. They'll complain that their preconstruction isn't up to their standards and will plow over the new player who's trying to learn because they aren't doing the best action in combat.
It's loud. People are tired, hungry, and irritated.
It's rewarding when it works, but it requires an amazing level of skill to do.
Wow, you have some s+@$ty people at the cons you attend. That's all I can get out of that. I attend PAX Prime every year (and I've been both an attendee and a GM) and usually make PaizoCon, and my experience has consistently been that the more experienced players are almost universally helpful and informative, offering suggestions to new players when asked or quietly picking up their slack through careful and considered play. I have seen a few times that less skilled players get a bit disruptive, often because they're trying to use loud and forceful roleplaying to plow through scenarios they don't know how to address mechanically, but even then the usual response I see from more experienced players is to suggest how to approach the situation. "Hey Jim, we all appreciate that you want to talk through this scenario, but I'm not sure the trap is listening. Maybe try making a Disable Device check? If your character doesn't have that option, I'm pretty sure Sherry's does" or some variation thereof is what I'm accustomed to. Maybe I've just been lucky, but my experiences with pick up groups while stationed in various posts all over the world while I was in the military matches my experiences at PAX and PaizoCon pretty closely.
The last time I played with a group like you described was about a decade ago while deployed overseas, when I played with five 18-22 year olds who wouldn't know optimization if it bit them in the ass and who were all somewhere between half-tuned and full on drunk while we played (we called it D&D&D, Dungeons & Dragons & Drinking, and story and balance were largely secondary or tertiary concerns concerns).
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Trying to reinforce an argument by summoning the imaginary opinion of casual players who don't even take the time to analyze an issue does not help said argument.
Furthermore, if there is a message board full of people who DO take the time to analyze said argument in a thoughtful way from many angles as has been done on this and many other boards, their argument is the one I will pay mind to.
Saying stuff like... "Casual players aren't going to notice X and Y" is an insult to their poor imaginary intellect. Imaginary people are smarter than you give them credit for. Give them some time spent using a system and they will start to notice that Class Y is growing to meet appropriate challenges while Class X is relegated to doing the same thing it's been doing since level 1, only with marginally bigger numbers.
With each new level, they will notice Class Y's options are growing exponentially while Class X can swing/shoot a weapon a little better.
They will notice Class Y is laughing at the 'Wealth By Level' system while they casually craft magical gear at half price WITH NO DRAWBACKS while Class X has to struggle to find and afford the equipment they need to stay effective at the one thing they are doing competently.
They will notice that Class Y's methods of travel expand to include 3-4 new movement modes INCLUDING TELEPORTATION while Class X is stuck with the same movement modes it had at level 1, maybe gaining a faster land speed through Boots of Springing and Striding if they can manage to fit such an expensive item into their budget.
They will notice Class Y does not have to adhere to the 'Big 6' rule as heavily as Class X due to the ability of Class Y to emulate such effects through a tiny fraction of class features or the ability to bypass certain threats completely using another tiny fraction of said class features. Meanwhile, Class X needs to shore up their defenses as much as possible due to the fact that the only way they can solve a problem is by getting up close and personal with a threat. The big 6 are absolute necessity for Class X.
I could go on but alas it is time for lunch.
~BHoF
I not sure about that.There is an important difference between role-playing games and games of all other types. RPGs are inherently meant to simulate life in an alternate world, and however strange and magical that world may be, there is a basic expectation of cause and effect.
Uh, what? That is an expectation of anything, not RPGs in specific. And 4e was not any worse at that then Pathfinder.
I imagine my hero achieving X by doing Y. If there is no causal connection between X and Y, then even the generous suspension of disbelief necessary to play a fantasy RPG eventually breaks down. 4th ed. had archers moving people 5' in any direction by hitting them with non-magical arrows. How, pray tell? Because reasons.
And yet Pathfinder lets you shoot like three arrows off your bow Legolas style, reload a musket 3-4 times in 6 seconds (oh and shoot said gun), and do all KINDS of crazy stuff. Hell even spell slots are as dumb as "daily" powers from AEDU and don't make any sense. What you mentioned is not even all that egregious, I certainly never noticed anything like that during my gameplay, and I got to play a lot of 4e - even up to the high tiers.
Basically, what you are telling me, is that your internal bias against 4e made you notice everything wrong about 4e where you would have internally dismissed it if it were Pathfinder or some other edition. That's called Confirmation Bias.
What I do know is that it was a vastly inferior role-playing game.
I already said it was an inferior role-playing game, if you would've read everything I said. I said it was a better tabletop.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Beyond the argument of what level of experience/optimization is required before the problem exists for people, can we agree that in Pathfinder we have class features that represents high fantasy when it comes to casters and otherwise magical classes but martial inclined classes do not get much high fantasy representation? Because as a whole I think that's the basis of the the problem or at the very least a concept hole.
As I mentioned before, even within the context of magic high fantasy physical prowess is not very representative. The Barbarian, for example, has a class feature that represents essentially hulking out but even that is limited to simple str bonuses which has little out of combat benefit for one to believe that it actually represents incredible physical prowess. You still can't throw boulders or bull rush a huge creature.
Also, can we agree that feats fail us in a lot of respects by being so investment intensive that feat-based solution to anything becomes difficult?
Every once in a while I hear a story of how the wizard trivialized a whole adventure in a casual group. The GM telling the story is usually confused and wondering what the hell is wrong with the game.
The proper solution to that would be to nerf wizards.
Every once in a while I hear a story of how the wizard trivialized a whole adventure in a casual group. The GM telling the story is usually confused and wondering what the hell is wrong with the game.The proper solution to that would be to nerf wizards.And clerics and druids and witches and sorcerers and oracles and Shamans and Arcanists........
And then nobody can carry the party.
If you're going to nerf the top end you have to lift the bottom or else you end up with a party that can't overcome the trials of mid to high level play.
"Wizards" in this case was a stand-in for tier 2+ classes (though mostly tier 2+ Arcane casters), so sure, I could go with that. I think most APs would be beatable with a good mix of tier 3-4 classes, and you could certainly design custom adventures around that level as well. The versatility that defines a tier 1 class should not be needed to "carry the party," even in mid-to-high level play.
I'm not against buffs for martials. But saying "It's too easy for a Wizard to completely trivialize an entire adventure" does not imply that you should buff Fighter/Rogue/whoever.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly, we don't even need a major system overhaul. Some fine-tuning could work.
Revise or remove the more game-breaking spells and casters would be okay, even if they stayed more powerful. Just taking a second look at stuff like Maze, Planar Binding, Gate, SoL effects and so on would do wonders for game balance without harming casters...
Make sure spells are less binary, this allows players to have fun with casters without instantly killing/neutralizing a whole character because a player rolled poorly once.
Martials should also get some buffing. In fact, I think this is more important than nerfing casters, since you can always tune down a strong character but can't always tune up a weak one.
Give them more mobility and a greater diversity of effective options both in and out of combat. Remove feat taxes and make sure feats are both effective and interesting. Allow combat maneuvers to work effectively without requiring major investment. stop punishing martial characters for trying to do anything other than stand still and full attack. Allow skills to do cool stuff (Skill unlocks are a good start, but pretty underwhelming, specially when they cost you a feat). Forget the stupid idea that classes should get as few skill points as possible.
The most extensive work would be revising spells and spell-lists.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Uh, what? That is an expectation of anything, not RPGs in specific. And 4e was not any worse at that then Pathfinder.
I not sure about that.There is an important difference between role-playing games and games of all other types. RPGs are inherently meant to simulate life in an alternate world, and however strange and magical that world may be, there is a basic expectation of cause and effect.
You really don't get it, do you? "Cause and effect" in a video game or a game of monopoly is nothing more than another term for "the rules". There is no expectation that the rules reflect any underlying reality which is internally consistent. The rules are simply an arbitrary system, and no one looks too deeply into them. Ever consider why Mario can kill koopas by butt bombing them, but gets killed by them when he just runs into them? Of course not, because Super Mario Brothers is not a role-playing game. But make Mario a fighter in an RPG, and you'd better be able to explain why the rules for how Mario interacts with koopas are what they are.
The rules in RPGs are merely the surface on a deeper system, not the system, itself. They are also not discrete, and are meant to describe most but not all of the possible things one can do in the game. This is why there is "room for interpretation" in RPGs, and a DM who runs the world is necessary. In other sorts of games, going "outside the rules" is either nearly unthinkable, or in the case of video games, simply a contradiction in terms.
I imagine my hero achieving X by doing Y. If there is no causal connection between X and Y, then even the generous suspension of disbelief necessary to play a fantasy RPG eventually breaks down. 4th ed. had archers moving people 5' in any direction by hitting them with non-magical arrows. How, pray tell? Because reasons.And yet Pathfinder lets you shoot like three arrows off your bow Legolas style
This is actually possible. Shooting in this way with any accuracy is highly unlikely, but it can be physically done. Moving people in arbitrary directions with arrows...not so much. It is a question of degree: how much suspension of disbelief can we maintain? 4th ed. simply demanded more slack-jawed credulity than many people had to offer.
...reload a musket 3-4 times in 6 seconds (oh and shoot said gun), and do all KINDS of crazy stuff.
Pathfinder's firearms rules are an embarrassment, and I will not defend them any more than I use them.
Hell even spell slots are as dumb as "daily" powers from AEDU and don't make any sense.
Now we're getting to the crux of the problem...the internal consistency of magic in RPGs is entirely too easy to justify because magic can, by definition, pretty much do or be anything. So you end up in a scenario where the developers cannot justify martials having powers A, B and C because they don't make sense in the context of "what a martial is", but powers X, Y, Z, AB, AC, DFG, GFHSFGH, and TRTXG#'ADF GADFG!!! can be justified for magic users because magic.
The fact that RPGs are "deep" systems of cause and effect is ultimately the main reason for the martial/caster disparity. MARTIAL REALISM is the demon that cannot be exorcised. Short of simply nerfing the crap out of magic users, fixing the problem involves going pretty "deep", and mucking around with some of the basic assumptions about how things work in the world. This can be accomplished in homebrews if one makes the effort to mold a setting around a set of assumptions which leads to greater balance, but in kitchen sink Golarion...I'm not sure if balance is possible.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
The rules are fine as long as you don't understand them, or intend to use them as rules... :/
|
|
| 18 people marked this as a favorite. |
To end this experience/optimization debate:
Yes the problems are made clear with experience/optimization, but it's trivially easy to run into them
Every once in a while I hear a story of how the wizard trivialized a whole adventure in a casual group. The GM telling the story is usually confused and wondering what the hell is wrong with the game.
If this happens during a group's first attempt at the game they're likely to abandon it [and perhaps roleplaying entirely, if it were their first experience with that entirely.]
I don't think any of us want that.
This is the big thing for me. I've been playing for well over a decade now, and if you pop back just a couple years on these messageboards, you'll see that I was frequently on the "martials are fine, team game, yadda yadda" side of things. As someone who typically picked his friends and fellow players pretty carefully, martial/caster disparity was never an issue, because we all planned out what we were going to be doing as a group and most of us were into the funky Tier 3 type characters anyways, like Incarnates and Dragon Shamans from 3.5 or Alchemists and Inquisitors in Pathfinder.
It wasn't until I started participating in, and eventually organizing, open table organized play that martial/caster disparity really became a real and relevant issue for me as I watched brand new players instantly leaping into tables where martial/caster disparity was a big issue. I noticed that I tended to get two types of new players (grossly broad generalizations for the purposes of discussion incoming):
Type 1 - These are the guys who already spend several hours a week hanging out at the game store, and decided to join us because no one else at the store that night brought their Magic decks. These guys play maybe 1 or 2 games with a pregen, and then go home and research the character they want to build. They tend to lean towards casters or very high op martials with limited casting options, because they take those same deck-building lessons they learned playing Magic and apply it to their characters, which may include important lessons like resource management and versatility. These alyers are also more likely to look up the rules and guides online. Anyone who has played MTG and Pathfinder can tell you that building a spellcasting character is very much like building a deck, to the point that the two skill sets are virtually identical and your strength at one will likely inform your strength at the other.
Type 2 - Your classic "casuals" who wandered in because they saw all the flashy posters and other materials in the store, saw everyone playing and having a good time, and decided to join. They'll almost always ask for "something simple, like maybe just someone who hits stuff", they may play a pregen for an extended period of time, and then they decide to go buy the Core Rulebook or whichever book happens to have the class(es) they're most interested in.
Unfortunately, many times I've seen these players sit down together for the first game with their freshly built characters, and then things become less than fun. The Type 1 player will often be participating in every aspect of game play, in and out of combat, quite effectively, while the Type 2 player struggles to keep up. I've also noticed that the Type 2 players are often reluctant to seek or accept help from the Type 1 players, whether because they're ashamed that they're under-performing, or because they decide that issue is a system issue because they're "positive" that they have the same amount of system mastery as the Type 1 player(s). The reactions vary from "Wow, whoever designed this game doesn't know what they're doing, let's play 4E/5E/Numenera or some other game" to "What a waste of $50, maybe I'll catch you folks around town".
This is really unfortunate, because the Type 2 players are just as necessary to the continuation of the franchise as the Type 1s. While the Type 1s will probably buy a couple .pdfs that interest them and primarily use a resource like Archives of Nethys, the PRD, or d20pfsrd, the Type 2's are usually a little older and prefer the feel of a book in their hands, and having been born to the digital age they often have hang ups about using other people's work without paying for it, even if that's perfectly legal and intended. These are the people for whom the game should best work out of the box, because they're the ones buying the books off the shelves at full price so the game store continues to restock them, and likely they're the ones who will be spreading the love of the game to a whole new generation the soonest. But when the game has such hugely disparate extremes between class potential, you risk alienating these players. Very few people are going to believe that they are the reason their character isn't as good as someone else's, so they're either going to blame the player(s) with the high op characters, or they're going to blame the system, both of which endanger the chance of them continuing to play and invest in the game, let alone teaching their children to play and love the game.
It's not just the Type 2s who lose out though; these experiences often work against the Type 1 players as well. When you've got some grumpy sack of a GM who accuses someone of being a "power gamer" or an "MMO player who doesn't belong here" just because they used the internet for advice on how to best build their character, you're already heading down the wrong track. Not only are you arbitrating from a position of negativity and "presume guilty of power-gaming until proven innocent, and I have no interest in proving you innocent because I already know what you are", but alienating the Type 1s does little to help the Type 2s, since the isue is inherent to the system and will continue to crop up as long as it exists. You start bleeding from both ends, pushing away both the older crowd and potentially their children and pushing away the younger crowds who were introduced to fantasy via digital mediums. If the ceilings and floors of the various classes were adjusted so that it was harder to make a bad character and harder to make a character who can put the deities of the Greek pantheon to shame, you wouldn't have these issues to begin with.
I was a little disappointed in the Pathfinder Strategy Guide when it came out, because I felt like it was a giant waste of a print run. They already have a great Beginner's Box that teaches people how to play the basic game, I was really hoping for the Strategy Guide to be more expansive and focus more on things like when it is or isn't a good idea to pursue a feat tree and how much of your resources are smart to spend on any given particular trick, maybe talk about some of the math that underlies the various mechanics so that people can understand the ramifications of their build choices, etc. This would have made it a great resource for those Type 2 players, giving them a portal into the game that provides tools similar to those the Type 1 guys are finding on the internet. Even something that was essentially just them collecting and refining some of the better character guides from their own messageboards would have been a superior product. Instead of a strategy guide, it really felt more like a pregen generator, with instructions that boiled down to [robot voice] "Please - select - core - class. Thank - you. Please - select - build - 1 - 2 - or - 3. Thank - you." [/robot voice]
Basically, this is a game that uses an "old school", non-digital format but which has close to the exhaustive rules structure of a computerized game, and when things are going good, it bridges that gap between the board game generations and the video game generations, with each side bringing their particular strengths and insights into the process. Unfortunately, at its worst the game is divisive, with these hard lines between intractable old Grognards and their "Fighters swing pointy sticks and can never jump more than 10 feet in the air and that's the way I like it!" and your younger "You know there's this thing called the internet, right?" groups forming up their battle lines and new players finding themselves categorized and shoved into one group or the other and further polarizing the player base.
For example, this:
MMORPG players tend to be poor tabletop players because the GM, as arbiter of the rules, can more quickly make alterations and is usually far more quick to react. MMORPG players are usually all about hyper-optimization which relies on knowing not only their own mechanics but also the mechanics of everything they will be facing. They don't get that in tabletop because the options a GM has at their disposal are so varied that it makes the same kind of planning incompatible.
Is a statement that my experience not only tells me is patently untrue, but which I find to be ignorant, elitist, and divisive. It badmouths MMORPG players while simultaneously creating this elitist perspective that "real" RPG players are superior. It's unhelpful, likely to chase away new tabletop players who may have cut their teeth on World of Warcraft or something similar and are now looking for a medium that allows them a greater degree of control and creativity, and reflects an attitude that I find deplorable. It's also just plain ignorant. As I mentioned earlier, I have had several new players who build their characters like Magic decks, doing things like selecting spells that target a variety of different strengths and weaknesses, investing in Knowledge skills so they can identify their enemies and react appropriately, etc. These players are often fantastic roleplayers, because they've learned how the game works and found the mechanics that support what they want to do. Copernicus Alkazar, the wizard one of my brand new, only-ever-played-WoW-and-Magic-before players is running is a former court advisor who was driven out of his home due to a rival's false accusations of Copernicus dallying with the daughters of several prominent noble families. His time in court has taught Copernicus to be insightful and always consider a problem from all angles, though his exile has led to him being somewhat reserved and avoiding taking the lead in social environments, instead preferring the role of advisor to a more charismatic party leader. He is simultaneously the best "roleplayer" and the best "rollplayer" I have in that group (much as I detest that terminology), because the two aspects of game play actually enrich, not lessen, each other.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The rules are fine as long as you don't understand them, or intend to use them as rules... :/
Pretty much. Which is why I'm generally on the side of 'I don't have a problem because of 3pp', the further you get in the rules the more unbalanced it becomes until you add in rules that serves as an equalizer. The problem frequently doesn't exist until it does because of how we use the rules really. Early on casters follow themes and concepts. Teleporting doesn't happen because 'I'm a Fire mage'. Dominate Person doesn't get cast because 'I'm not an enchanter'. NPC casters are generally inferior to PCs because they have an agenda going and have narrow but appropriate options while PCs will take the good options. If it didn't take a lot of work to rewrite I'd be in favor of giving prerequisites to every 2+ level spell because as good as spells are access to them is what I feel the bigger issue is.
Then there are some players like myself that actively don't go for toolbox casters and goof off with the worst spells for the sake of what my character is that get by fine among less experienced or lower system mastery players.
But the fact remains that with a game structured like it is you get rewarded for knowing more by getting a mechanically more efficient or better character that does what you want it to do. Inevitably, unless you intentionally shoot yourself in the foot like I do, the problem eventually starts existing and requires GM fiat to deal with. Which wouldn't be so bad but in the case of completely spell less classes and some of the pseudo magical ones the difference is too dumb. For example the Fighter gets Bravery but it does not even render it's Will save 'good' considering that it gets a +5 bonus to a save where the difference between good and bad is 6, making it borderline useless. He also gets 4 weapon groups that are actually worse each time he gets a new one. Then there are the rogue's talents that happen once a day for whatever reason that isn't even good if it were at-will.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I wouldn't go that far. Drop Rogues and fighters, drop Wizards and Clerics, cut the remaining full casters back to 6th level, and watch just how well all those 6 level casters handle challenges. Not as easily as a Cleric/Druid/Wizard/Sorcerer party, but you would be amazed how well these characters can perform when you let them loose.
Another way to say that if you happen to be able to discuss Tiers without creating a flame war that burns the thread to the ground, is "Focus on the Tier 3 classes and drop the outliers on both ends".
I mentioned Dreamscarred Press' "Ultimate Psionics" earlier as an example of a really well balanced system set in the Pathfinder game, and a big part of the reason for that is that they buffed the Tier 5 classes up a notch and the high casters are naturally less powerful than core arcane casters (possibly even less than the Tier 1 divines, like Clerics and Druids), so you've got a narrower spread that only passes between Tier 4 (Aegis, Soulknife) and Tier 2 (Psion). Because you've got that much narrower gap and all of the classes draw the bulk of their power from class features instead of feats and have limited but specifically tailored power sets, you have naturally better balanced play experiences. The classes are also all designed with the idea that the characters all exist in a world where they will be heroically powered characters fighting beasts that will quickly exceed the power and abilities of anything that exists in the real world, and have powers and abilities appropriate to their anticipated challenges, so even if a Psion is technically 2 steps more potent than a Soulknife, it's exceedingly rare to see this become an issue because the Soulknife is extremely good at his intended role and generally has enough other tools to branch out into some non-combat areas as well.
I definitely agree that you don't need those Tier characters, such as Wizards, Clerics, and Druids, in the group for the party to be successful. I was part of a party that included my Hunter, a Bard, an Alchemist, a Warpriest, and a Paladin recently, and they were absolutely capable of dealing with encounters from level 5 well into level 16 when the game was retired due to scheduling conflicts. We were on Fast track xp, but we were still knocking out an average of 5 combat encounters and around 2 hours of social and exploration play per 4 hour session, with everyone staying engaged throughout the evening. That, for me, is pretty much the best way to play this game, with your "Wizard" role filled by Magii and Alchemists, your "healer" role spread around throughout the party with everyone having a few different ways to heal hp and remove some status effects, and everyone having a reasonable suite of non-combat options. When the guy with the least to do out of combat is the Warpriest who quietly makes the Sense Motive checks and signals the Paladin when someone is lying or hiding something and also takes care of a smattering of important travel buffs, life is pretty good.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
One thing to add to the nerf casters situation; How about we take away some of the things that are blatantly unfair or things they didn't have before.
I have my own mini-rant to that effect.
1; Spells need prerequisites. This is blatantly unfair. I think unless you get it as a bonus spell you shouldn't be able to learn a spell unless you learned a spell within the same school in the previous spell level with the exception of zero level spells. This includes divine spells too.
2; Lets actually restrict opposed schools.
3; Lets get rid of the spells that do something martial especially if they grant attack bonuses.
4; Lets make all spells with durations require a swift action to maintain and you can only maintain one at a time unless you spend a move action for the second one. Better yet, have them make concentration checks to keep their spells that have durations if they are damaged or something. (exception: Alchemy due to it's nature. And potions because potions suck.)
5; Everyone needs to have their personal +x to attack and damage taken away. Especially if they have magic. What is up with that anyway? What's the point of BAB if everyone gets a fighter's effective BAB? The only answer I really have is HP and Power Attack.
6; Make skills, saves and Initiative scale by BAB. Things should look like this. Especially in the context of Wizard vs Fighter. Both have 2 skills a level but with only one does it actually matter. That's not fair. The guy with the magic gets more skills naturally?
7; For that matter, lets remove INT from skills. I'd love for skills to be a flat +4, +6 or +8, with Rogues getting +10. Int just become that much more important for what it is, especially compared to Charisma. Plus if the saves change from the previous suggestion then Wis would be less important unless you really need to shore things up or you need it for class features.
8; Combat feats should do one thing and should scale instead of needing three feats to do one feat. If a feat makes an old feat do something new it should be it's own feat. If it does something that just adds to the old feat it should just be combined with the old feat.
9; Fighters need more feats for fighters. There are some classes that can get levels of fighter for the purposes of feat prerequisites. This means nothing. Extra damage or attack for a whole feat? Wow the flexibility. There are like 8 feats for fighters only and all of them suck. Well there are also the critical feats which you can get at a really high level which do something that triggers on an event that isn't terribly reliable. Meanwhile look at Feats that require monk levels or get discounts from monk levels. Look at feats that require any other class feature. There are so many that levels of fighter means nothing.
10; Master of Many styles needs to stop existing and Monks need Style Feat in their bonus feat options. Seriously, this was the best idea; you have a class that's pretty much 'THE' martial artist class and then introduce mechanics representing a fighting style? Thats something that the Monk needed from the get-go and could have been a part of the class as soon as it was introduced by letting them gain them as part of their bonus feats. But that didn't happen.
Hating on fun I see
Hating on fun I see
In the case of the caster part; Kinda. A lot of things that they get is because a lot of aspects about casters weren't fun. d4 hit die, no option to take a spell from your restricted school, some spells having barriers.
I left out my harshest fun-killer which was to do away with metamagic feats unless they're bonus feats.
Reminds me of my wood element wizard. At first level I can magically create short spears and throw them using my inteligence modifier for attack and damage. And that's before I start using spells.
@Hwalsh; All those things wouldn't have to happen at once. Also most of them don't apply to my own games and caster martial things have already been solved long ago. But for everyone else just prerequisites for spells would go a long way. From my review of Spheres of Power: " To cast Fireball you don’t need to know Burning Hands or Produce Flame or have any knowledge of any fire spell to cast it. This has always bothered me to no end. You just grab the spell and you can cast it. "
But I do feel strongly that INT shouldn't govern skills per level as it generates an uneven situation. Lately I've been trying the consolidated skill list and for simplicity sake just gave classes their class number per level and left INT out of it, and really it worked out for the best. A lot of things got consolidated into being an INT skill so INT commanded a lot of the skill list and was still valuable (although to be fair, this is for a scifi game where low int becomes terrible fast.) and left a lot of room for applying things to what you want to do without worrying about skills and made skill ranks per level actually valuable. I think the same can be done for the regular skill list, especially since crafting applies to martial runes.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think this explains about 99% of the disagreements you and I have in this field HWalsh.In my opinion spending an entire feat for +2 damage is absolutely NOT 'really good.'
MAYBE if Weapon Specialization scaled at +1 damage per 2 points of BAB [which is the ratio it has when first available] it might actually be worth a feat. But Fighters already do damage pretty well, what they need is mobility, resilience and flexibility.
To me this is why I say they suck. I need a WHOLE feat to do this? I already have full BAB +4, what do I need more damage for? In Magic: the Gathering there's a concept of 'win-more' cards. This means that an effect is great but shows up when it stops being relevant. Its the equivolent of if you reduce a creature to 0 hp you can coup de grace them as a free action. Yeah its great but you don't need it anymore. If I'm one of the heaviest damage dealers in the game I don't need more damage. I need an ability that actually does something that I can't previously do. Weapon Focus/Specialization, barring Combat Expertise, is the worst kind of feat to me. A numerical bonus that otherwise does nothing but give you an edge that you likely already have in the first place.
Hating on fun I seeIn the case of the caster part; Kinda. A lot of things that they get is because a lot of aspects about casters weren't fun. d4 hit die, no option to take a spell from your restricted school, some spells having barriers.
I left out my harshest fun-killer which was to do away with metamagic feats unless they're bonus feats.
I can honestly say, as a GM who has altered, limited and even changed the way magic works including adding weaknesses to casters, it doesn't hate on fun or limit fun unless I've gotten someone who is a hard case about house rules.
In which case they would have left long before they got to changes to casters! ;)
But no, it does not make casters unplayable nor does it somehow stop fun.
Of course my problem with a lot of this is that while I agree with it in theory, I have a strong nostalgic attachment to Vancian casting and the D&D spell lists in all their baroque, broken glory. Without that, it's not D&D to me and I'd probably move on to a completely different system.
Thus, I prefer boosts to the martials and more subtle nerfs to the casters than total reworks of the magic system. Make it easier to save/harder to boost save DCs. Make it easier to disrupt casting and/or require concentration for more things. Ban opposed schools. As suggested in one of the other threads, muck around with the pricing of items that mostly benefit martials or casters. Flat out drop the items that let casters get more spells or reuse spells or boost spells or what have you.
In addition to letting the martials do cool stuff.
Well, how I got things handled in my games I haven't touched casters much (in games where Spheres of Power hasn't taken over) but they don't get too many buffs from third party spells. I have some that I just hand off but it requires study, finding treasure or going through libraries to access a lot of third party spells I have.
Meanwhile martials get techniques and maneuvers from BoMA and Path of War, Runic that mostly key off of CON, looser rules on some equipment, overpowered third party combat feats, and consolidated combat feats. I also made combat feat retraining easier with a coach or book, sometimes to the point of being able to do it every day.
But I do feel strongly that INT shouldn't govern skills per level as it generates an uneven situation.
Int to skills also leads to funky situations such as a lot of animals only being good at one thing. This is sometimes mitigated in bestiary monsters by giving the animal a massive racial bonus, which honestly feels like lazy game design.
Also a lot of animal companions do not get massive racial bonuses. You are given the choice of having your animal companion being mediocre at a few skills your animal companion should have, or having it hyper specialize in one skill. Either way, your animal companion comes out less than natural.
In fact, most creatures with abysmal intelligence come out seeming completely unnatural.
|
Yeah, if they absolutely must link an ability score to skill points, they should let you pick which one. Or, at the least, link it to that class's primary ability. A fighter who spent his life honing his physical prowess should not be worse at swimming than the wizard who spent half his life in a cell studying.
I'm getting ready to start a high magic game with the idea of wiping out all the T1-T2 classes and things like fighter,rogue, monk, and barbarian as player options (still might possibly be npc options) and adding some 3pp material (PoW and SoP specifically) to see how it all works out.