You're Doing It Wrong

[PłentaX]

WBL is a rule ? wow you learn something new everyday !
i always treated it as guideline or "advice"

[HWalsh]

PłentaX wrote:

WBL is a rule ? wow you learn something new everyday !

i always treated it as guideline or "advice"

It is a guideline.

[Threeshades]

it's very much a guideline. One which exists purely to place characters not created at level 1 at their expected power level.

In game the treasure generation rules and a bit of faith in the law of averages is going to take care of treasure more or less.

In fact, I found that in my group, without really taking WBL into account since the group was built at level 6 all the way through level 13 everyone is still pretty much at their expected WBL (with an aberration of maybe 3 or 4%), even though I just gave them randomly generated treasures based on the monsters they fought and adventures they completed and they made their own measure of use of consumables.

[Chief Cook and Bottlewasher]

As a fairly inexperienced GM, I keep an eye on WBL, so I know I'm keeping the treasure reasonable. So that I have an estimate on how much to give out on average over the next 5 encounters, say. Because I don't like having the exact same amount in each.

[Zenogu]

CommandoDude wrote:

Zenogu wrote:

Back on topic. Rules often overlooked? Counterspelling. In my 10+ years of 3rd edition-PF, I've seen maybe 1 successful counterspell.

Part of the problem is that counterspelling is so difficult, you have to ready an action BEFORE they even start casting. AND you have to have the right spell to counterspell in one of your slots - or Dispel Magic, but then you need a Caster Level check after that!

Exactly. It's quite convoluted, to where I'd only ever use that tactic as an Arcanist. Maybe

[The Doomkitten]

Detect evil does not automatically detect evil: it only works if somebody has 4 or more HD, or are a dragon, undead, or fiend. Same goes for all of the other detect alignment spells.

[Balgin]

Prince Yyrkoon wrote:

Forgetting that shooting through any other creature's space gives your target soft cover. And then complaining about how strong archery is.

The same also goes for reach weapons dependant on positioning.

[Chengar Qordath]

I think the whole argument about WBL is pure semantics. What the whole issue ultimately boils down to is:

1) The game's math assumes you have a certain amount of wealth at various levels. If your wealth goes too far above or below to expected level, the game's math starts getting skewed and players might not be able to engage certain level-appropriate threats.

2) Ergo, the GM either needs to compensate for how the game changes at low/high wealth, or the GM should keep the party more-or-less at WBL.

[Trimalchio]

The problem with this formulation is the whole game starts to skew by level 5, WBL is just another rube Goldberg device in a clocktower full of them all trying to balance 4 characters of vastly different abilities.

If the 10th level martial needs an artifact sword to remain viable do you otherwise strip him naked?

[Kirth Gersen]

In 1e, you typically couldn't buy magic items, and the random item tables were skewed overwhelmingly towards swords and armor, for everything other than potions & scrolls. That meant that (a) fighters tended to get the lion's share of the loot, and (b) sooner or later they'd end up with an intelligent sword that gave them useful powers.

Having radically unbalanced WBL tables, based on class, would be one way to emulate that (I'm not saying it's a great idea, BTW, just that one could do it).

Another possibility would be to nix the free 2 spells/level for wizards leveling up, and also jack up the cost to scribe spells in your spellbook, so that most of the wizard's WBL would be tied up in his/her spellbooks. That doesn't help with clerics and druids, though, nor with sorcerers and oracles.

[Gurior]

Headfirst wrote:

From your personal experiences playing and/or running Pathfinder games, what are some things you've seen people doing blatantly wrong in terms of rules? I'm not talking about problematic attitudes, boring plots, or awkward house rules here, just people unintentionally messing up the actual rules of the game.

Another title for this thread could be: "What are some often overlooked or misunderstood Pathfinder rules?"

For me, it would be all the very popular spells that have a casting time of 1 round that are often allowed to be cast as a standard action because nobody remembers their actual casting times.

Another common mistake is that the Diplomacy skill is not an unlimited charm person spell, no matter how high your bonus is.

Also, in the ongoing debate about how arcane spellcasters can easily duplicate lots of traditional rogue skills, people always forget that stuff like knock and disguise self still require skill checks, they're not instant success win buttons.

I had this player, in my last game as a GM.

He was the crowned champion of half-reading the rules.
50% of the time, he would start reading any power (spell, feat, class ability, etc), up until the drawbacks/limitations where explained.
Then, when he would perform outstandingly in an encounter, and we had to stall the game and check what he understood wrong, and fix it.

the rest of the time, just a slight misunderstanding of what he read made a balanced power into and overpowered one. Given, he had a bit of difficulty with English, but what was most annoying was that he would not realize that he did not understand fully was he read. He would interpret it as he saw fit.

A few examples (and god knows, I could go all day giving more of them)

- Starting as a level 1 summoner, he misread a few combined abilities that "raised the caster level of his summoning spells" (or something like that) to "raise the spell level". He was pretty much dominating the first day of a level 1 campaign by throwing around several "summon monster III" a day, each lasting 1 minute.

- Use the spell skinsend as was intended, except, you know, for all the drawbacks. He pretty much used it as a free, second-level spell, daily clone, and thought than when he was killed in his skin, his consciousness was just transfered back into his body. Or that he could scout with the skin, then not bother with walking the way back, end the spell, and continue the adventure normally (no loss of pv).

-Forgot that there was a 10d6 limit on fireball, and regularly throw around 12-13d6 fireballs at level 7-8 (with several legit caster level boosts, including mythic levels). Took a while to notice the dice pool was too large.

- Choosed the School Understanding arcane exploit (see the arcanist class) to get a good wizard school power, with a min/maxed High intel, low-cha character.
forgot to read the part that said that said "using her Charisma modifier in place of her Intelligence modifier for this ability".
Which meant that he was freely switching elements of his evocation spell 7/day instead of a maximum of 2 or 3/day.
Given his knowledge checks, it pretty much meant that any energy resistance on the monsters meant nothing, since he could adapt his fireball to any element necessary. I don't think there ever was a day where he needed more than his daily allowance of 7. 2 or 3 would have made a great difference in his combat ability.

- etc.

I might sound like an impatient or really irritable DM by my way of speaking, but truth is there rarely was a game session where we did not have to stall the game at some point to check up his abilities/spells in the rulebooks. Whenever his character performed surprisingly well in any task, we had to check up if he misread/misunderstood any rules. And sadly, about 75% of the time, we were right :-/

It really added up in the long run, and became taxing on me.

In another game, he became at some point bored of his character, and asked to GM to switch out character class (I wasn't DM'ing in that one). I agree that enjoying the game (and his character) is more important than sticking to it, and I'm not here to argue the point.
however, it always went out in that sequence :
- Player get bored of current character. Spots a really nice class build / archetype he would like to try out. Ask DM to change. Gm agrees.
- Player is surprisingly effective with the new class. Get progressively pointed out everything he misunderstood about the build, and corrects it.
-Player realize, after a few games and corrections, that his character is just average, in the end.
-Gets bored, spots another class. Gets excited.
Rinse, repeat... Happened trice in a campaign spanning about 6 months.

If only , at any point , he would have asked around any of the other more experienced players about his planned build, most could have pointed out several misunderstandings. But he was more of a secretive "I can't wait to surprise the DM with all my new class shenanigans" type of guy.

Sorry for the long post, I guess I had to wind out about that for a long time :O

Don't get me wrong, that players was still a lot of fun around the table, and his play really brought a lot of life to the game sessions. But these problems added up and wore me out in the end. Maybe I'm just to much of a "rule-nazi", or have become too rigid with the game after the accumulated experience with the pathfinder ruleset, and have trouble dealing with more casual / less experienced players.

[PłentaX]

why didnt you throw him out? from what you posted is more like (sorry for say this like that) 50% half-assed-reading and other half lazy player and not "weak" knowledge of language

[Rub-Eta]

@Gurior: I've had that player as well. Had him as a DM as well... for a while... Even when I asked him to re-read the rules he just wouldn't read them in its' entirety. Was extremely frustrating because he also tried to make fun of my rules understanding, pitting the other players against me... Didn't help that the others didn't know the rules either...

[Gurior]

PłentaX wrote:

why didnt you throw him out? from what you posted is more like (sorry for say this like that) 50% half-assed-reading and other half lazy player and not "weak" knowledge of language

That wasn't really an option. The group of players we had around the table (5 in total) were all friends or close acquaintances. Kicking someone out would have affected relationships, and was a bit egoist.

I was the one the most affected by the player's ignorance of the rules (as a DM). The other player though it was barely more than an occasional annoyance. Plus, he didn't mean it. He was actually trying to pay attention to the rules, he just was really bad at it.

Later in the campaign, another of the 5 players left for personals reasons, and the gaming group was severely affected. It finally collapsed about 6 weeks later.

[M1k31]

@Gurior

I feel your pain... the current group I'm playing with has a player somewhat like that... although he has no excuse for not understanding English... and when he replaces his character it's with the same type of character with the same kind of abilities with many of the same misunderstandings, granted part of it is how frequently our every other week game gets cancelled.... but it's sad when of the other players all of them can tell when he has some misunderstanding... even though I was new to pathfinder(with very limited exp playing 3.5-4th Ed previous to joining this group) and most of us were new when the group started(other than the GM).

[Jewelfox]

master_marshmallow wrote:

Prince Yyrkoon wrote:

Forgetting that shooting through any other creature's space gives your target soft cover. And then complaining about how strong archery is.

Do multiple people providing soft cover from a single shot stack?

That depends on how many you can fit on one arrow. For maximum stack-age, I prefer ballistae.