Well if you are counting in skills a high int usually trumps raising the stat in the long run.
The skill bonus ranks from a high int will more than make up for the difference in enough levels.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I like that stat loadout, honestly. It's tempting to make it even, yes, but I wouldn't say it's bad.
Then again you're also talking to someone who has a 13 Int barbarian. (We rolled, and that was my fourth worst roll. 10 Wis and 8 Cha round it out.)
This is even better if you want to do a little facing when off the clock, as mentioned earlier. You won't be BEST at it but you'll have it in the toolkit just in case you didn't memorise Charm Person that day.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I suspect it has more to do with picking the right GM than with the deal you offer the efreeti.My friend tried to pull that trick. For most of the campaign he talked about doing it, and I told him not to do it, just to maintain party balance if nothing else. Well, of course he did it (because complaining about how easy and stupid broken it was wasn't going to stop him from being a god, of course.) He got away with it once, and the Effriti told him not to do it again. He did it again, of course. Then we go ambushed by about 2 dozen of his Effriti buddies that didn't like our wizard using magic to mess with their freind's soul.Your friend should have given the efreeti a better deal. I find that agreeing to allow the genie to use one wish on itself (I will make it on the efreeti's behalf, but with the disclaimer that it can't make the wish to bring harm to me, my party, my loved ones if any, and such) for every two wishes it granted me.
As a general rule, don't brag to the GM about how you plan to exploit a loophole. It's asking for trouble.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I suggest you look at saves of monsters your likely to encounter. Then find out what your DC will need to be to have over a 50% success. More often then not if this is past level 8. You will need to have started with a casting stat of 18 or higher. If your looking at lower level your ability scores can be much lower and have well over a 70% success. It really depends on what level your game will stop at. Most games below level 6 don't require a lot of planning. Every game beyond that point requires more and more planning. You don't need to make a munchkin. You do need to make a character that can fill the role they where made for. For any caster it will be about save DC. It will not matter how good they can do fringe things. When it comes down to it almost all spells get a save. Illusions are great until you start going up against out siders. There are a lot of out siders with trueseening constant. That makes them immune to all illusions. Summoning is speed a speed bump to a high level encounter. Most high level encounters will ignore the summoned and go to the summoner. To solve that problem. Every thing with a CR 13+ or usually above average Int. Not planning for after level 6 has caused more character death. They get to the higher level play. Suddenly they can't figure out why X is not working any more.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For the record, I think he means generic table stats (ala making a monster in the bestiary back) rather than saves of specific characters (though I could be wrong); the former is really quite fine, while the latter is often frowned upon. (Though different groups are different, so you could do worse than to check first.)
It depends on the setting and your role in the party, and when you expect to get gear to boost your defenses, and the setting/goal of the campaign. The longer it will take you to get scrolls/add to your spell book or improve your saving throws/AC and the more diverse the game expects you to be, the more spread out I want my level 1 point buy to be.
Personally, I don't like starting with more than 19 Int at level 1, and I'd actually say that 19 is pushing it. An 18 is just too expensive to be reasonable unless you're doing a 25 point buy. My standard 20 point buy stat array is 16 14 14 12 10 8, put in some order, with one of those 14s always going into constitution. If you buy an 18, that shifts things around to a 18 14 12 10 8 8 or 18 14 12 12 8 7. Blech. Part of that is simply not wanting to deal with carrying capacity at early levels, and part is trying to shore up early game saving throws and armor class.
That's only early levels, though. By level 4 or 5 i expect to have a handy haversack or some other kind of extra-dimensional storage, some kind of cloak of resistance to boost saving throws, and some kind of spell to shore up my AC with concealment or some extra defenses. If the game starts there, buying an 18 is probably okay.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I find this funny every one is talking about 25 or 20 point buy. I use 15 point buy in my home games and I have yet to see a full caster start with less then a 18 in their casting stat.
Low point buy hurts casters the least. It's a paradox that many GMs, trying to clamp down on casters, want to reduce the BP for everyone. But if you have fewer points to spend, the class that needs the fewest abilities is also affected least.
|
|
I find this funny every one is talking about 25 or 20 point buy. I use 15 point buy in my home games and I have yet to see a full caster start with less then a 18 in their casting stat.Low point buy hurts casters the least. It's a paradox that many GMs, trying to clamp down on casters, want to reduce the BP for everyone. But if you have fewer points to spend, the class that needs the fewest abilities is also affected least.
I did not do it for casters. I did it because I know how to brake the game. Higher point buy makes it very easy to do. Casters don't really brake the game. Near invulnerable front line combatants do that more then casters.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Lol.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Casters end encounters with 1-2 spells. Near invulnerable combatants have to do a hell of a lot more work to end encounters (and have to invest more gold/character generation resources), and often run into more problems with action economy than casters do. Casters are also a hell of a lot harder to kill than the "invulnerable" front liners, if the player/GM knows how to play them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm confused with the use of the word "brake", do you mean break?
One is what you use to stop your car or similar applications mechanically. The other is to make something inoperable, like smashing a pot.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
APs are built with the assumption that your you have at most at a 17 in your higher stat (15 pt elite array + racial bonus).
Having a 20 in your spellcasting stat is definitely nice, but it's not actually necessary. Having an 18 post racial mod and having the rest of your stats not be garbage is quite fine.
(Essentially, a +3 mod is the level of competency, while a +4 or +5 starting mod puts you slightly ahead of the game's assumed curve.
Don't have an int under 16 unless you decide to do something really goofy, like an orc eldritch knight. =P)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I find this funny every one is talking about 25 or 20 point buy. I use 15 point buy in my home games and I have yet to see a full caster start with less then a 18 in their casting stat.
Considering that the average output of 4d6 drop lowest 6 times is ~ a 20 point buy, it seems to be a pretty good baseline to talk about.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
At 1st level, it is my opinion that a Wizard will do just fine with a score of 18 or 19 Intelligence and will not suffer from not starting with 20 as they level up.
However, if your DM tends to run your party through a lot of encounters before you can rest, a score of 20 means another spell you can cast during one of these encounters and can make all the difference.
In short, if you know you'll be resting between each fight, a score of 18 or 19 is enough.
However, if you expect to face multiple encounters without rest or you'll spend a lot of time playing at 1st level, a score of 20 is preferable, so you won't just shoot a crossbow most of the time. That's not so effective nor fun either...
Technically, they are not... anymore. From my understanding (and memory of James' comments) that stopped somewhere around Serpent's Skull... incidentally around or shortly after they stopped printing stats for pretenders NPCs.
Either way, taking a selection of the old pregenerated ones (instead of the new updated versions) should be able to prove or disprove this. My memory isn't a valid "source" after all. :)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
YOu mean the iconics? Yeah, SS was where they stopped including them in the back of AP's.
Mainly because they considered it a waste of paper, and people looking at them going "LOL WTF who made up this fighter?"
==Aelryinth
At least a 14, but higher is better. By the time you're casting 5th level spells you will have two free ability score increases and will likely own an ability score increasing magic item.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
@ Create Mr. Pitt - Here's James Jacobs (a.k.a., the guy in charge of APs), confirming APs are designed around 15 point PCs.
PFS assumes 20 pt PCs.
I believe the baselines for monster design also assume 15 pt PCs.
(Aside: I have PCs be 20 pt in my own games, whether homebrew or a published AP. But if I'm running an AP, I'll also scale up encounters for dealing with a stronger party.)
This is also the guy who said in the same post that 10 PB is something other than a joke option they tossed in for shiggles, and actually advocated using it. But I kid.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure he has a minimal hand in designing the specifics of APs, encounters-wise. They really do seem designed for 20 PB PCs, because otherwise they'd be f$%%ing brutal for most characters, which I don't think is the intent.
|
I have never given any character a primary stat higher than 17 at 1st level. Let's face it, a 17 Int is going to give you the bonus spell you need and Spell DC's of 14 for your 1st level spell. That's pretty good, and statistically, killing your other stats to try and eek out 1 more point of DC is counter-productive. Bump your Int at 4th level and after that pick up a Headband for +2 and later +4 Int. If you need more than that, something is seriously wrong.
My default stats for a Wizard:
Str: 10 You don't need a lot, but don't penalize yourself with encumbrance and climb/swim penalties that could kill you.
Dex: 14 +2 AC and Ref is a life-saver. Even better with a Belt +2
Con: 13 +1 HP, +1 Fort and a little longer before death in the negtives. Bump at 8th level for more survivability
Int: 17 Plenty of Int for skills and Spells, raise at 4th and then buy Headbands
Wis: 13 +1 Willpower is always good, plus it helps with Perception and other skills. Bump at either 8th or 12th level.
Chr: 12 You ALWAYS need to be able to talk to people in Pathfinder. Maybe it's not your primary job, but being able to use social skills is key to most adventures.
There is nothing less fun (IMO) than some min/max over-specialized character that is more caricature than character. As a DM, I will not allow people to create characters with serious deficiencies just in order to make some broken uber-concept. No Chr 6, Str-20 fighters allowed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
At level 1 if I don't have a 20 in Int then a 17 is fine. Anything between 17 and 20 isn't really enough in my opinion to justify the increase in costs for it and hits you in other areas.
I've never had a character start with an ability score above 17 at level one either. Weird. Those wizards I've played were still fun. I must just be remembering wrong since half this thread is adamant that a 20 is an absolute requirement for play.
Half the thread? I read a single post, which was partly in jest. If you can't remember the thread right after reading it, maybe we should be wary of your recollections?
It does seem like about a third of the people posting recommend a 19 or 20, a third an 18 and a third less then 18. Although it is a little hard to tell if some of the people pointing out power increase from a high score, or ability for the character to still function well are necessarily advocating for a specific score. I didn't count each post, so my recollections could be way off as well.
Con: 12 or 14. Buying odd is a waste of points except when dumping to 7, when aiming for feat prerequisites, when going from 8 to 9 or 10 to 11 because otherwise you hit 14, 19, or 24 point buy, or on your highest stat.
odd con is not so bad. That is one more negative you get before dying. If I had to put a stat odd it would go to con.
This is also the guy who said in the same post that 10 PB is something other than a joke option they tossed in for shiggles, and actually advocated using it. But I kid.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure he has a minimal hand in designing the specifics of APs, encounters-wise. They really do seem designed for 20 PB PCs, because otherwise they'd be f+$!ing brutal for most characters, which I don't think is the intent.
Well, actually -
I'm pretty sure the intent is for the APs to be pretty brutal if played as intended. (And to beat someone to the punch, WotR was supposed to be hard, but the power of mythic PCs was grossly underestimated.)
That actually backs up what I said. He's mainly editing and enhancing existing work and encounters, making sure everything fits the proper tone and feel, uses the right rules, and is lore accurate (a big job in and of itself with such a fairly dense setting). But he doesn't really draft the encounters themselves.
But the APs being meant to be brutally hard doesn't really gel with how Paizo works. The APs and Modules are their bread and butter...they need to be accessible. Accessible generally means "Able to be completed by people with minimal optimization skill", meaning for 15 PB characters it should be, if not easy, only somewhat difficult to run from start to finish.
This is true for 20 PB characters, as there's a bit of wiggle room, room for mistakes in stat allocation or fiddling around with somewhat niche characters.
Not as much for 15 PB, which rewards high-op players and punishes newbies, and isn't much better for middle of the road players.
The developer having to edit and adjust encounters would very strongly suggest that he does, in fact, have a hand in the encounters.
Heh. I'm used to people on the boards complaining that the APs are too easy.
Based on how I usually have to ramp up encounters to challenge a party of 20 pt buy characters, I'm pretty comfortable with saying the APs are aimed at 15 pt buy.
(I'll also note that Carrion Crown is an outlier in the opposite direction from WotR - Carrion Crown is mean as hell, but I believe that was deliberate on the developers' part - making it harder than usual to support it being the "Horror" AP at the time. There's a lot of dickery in Carrion Crown that I haven't seen done again in later APs.)
I think the fact that most AP encounters need to be ramped up is less a matter of what point buy your groups uses than how optimized the group is. Like Rynjin said, Paizo aims there APs to playable for fairly unoptimized groups.
A group of veteran players with good character building skills can tear up on AP on 15 or 20 point buy. Or even 10 point buy.
Heh. I'm used to people on the boards complaining that the APs are too easy.
They are, hence why saying they're meant to be brutally hard is kind of odd.
Newbies and "casuals" on a 15 PB are still gonna have a bad time though. But pretty much ANYBODY can make a 20 PB work for them.
^Which is why I have been saying that they really ought to follow the lead of PFS for this one thing and start designing APs around 20 point buy.
But getting back to the topic of this thread, I would rather see a selection of Wizards (and for that matter, other classes not explicitly made Charisma-dependent by class features) that are effective without all being clones of Mr. Budd Tuggly . . . .
Okay, maybe I'm misunderstanding Rynjin? I thought he was arguing the APs can't really be meant for 15 point characters because they'd be too hard for 15 point characters.
My understanding is that the APs are meant to be challenging (there's certainly enough reports of TPKs floating around the various obituary threads), but still reasonably completable for new players running 15 pt characters.
(Hell, the 1st level AP chapters written by James JAcobs often have "tutorial" sections. My personal favorite going to the goblin chieftain in Book 1 of Jade Regent who goes through an entire string of really stupid actions, basically to show new players "hey, don't do this.")
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I will note that when it comes to AP survival, one can never forget the role of the RNG in potentially dooming the group. Despite having a pretty optimized group, I GMed a near TPK in an un-boosted encounter while running Rise of the Runelords because my dice just would not stop rolling high. Even an optimized Barbarian is gonna start having trouble when he gets hit with three triple-damage crits in one round.
I will note that when it comes to AP survival, one can never forget the role of the RNG in potentially dooming the group. Despite having a pretty optimized group, I GMed a near TPK in an un-boosted encounter while running Rise of the Runelords because my dice just would not stop rolling high. Even an optimized Barbarian is gonna start having trouble when he gets hit with three triple-damage crits in one round.
It's partly because so many encounters are designed around fighting big strong single target enemies. Those enemies aren't going to win, but when you fight something like a dire boar, you have a pretty good chance of a player getting seriously maimed,or (in one of my player's cases) going straight to dead.
I will note that when it comes to AP survival, one can never forget the role of the RNG in potentially dooming the group. Despite having a pretty optimized group, I GMed a near TPK in an un-boosted encounter while running Rise of the Runelords because my dice just would not stop rolling high. Even an optimized Barbarian is gonna start having trouble when he gets hit with three triple-damage crits in one round.It's partly because so many encounters are designed around fighting big strong single target enemies. Those enemies aren't going to win, but when you fight something like a dire boar, you have a pretty good chance of a player getting seriously maimed,or (in one of my player's cases) going straight to dead.
Runelords does feature a lot of encounters with melee brutes who sport high strength scores, large size, and x3 critical weapons. That is usually a recipe for trouble if the Dice Gods favor the NPCs, since it means that when they crit, they crit hard.
Does anyone find it funny there's a thread this long about stats? I guess those basic fundamentals on pathfinder are the big ones.
Well, if we were talking about wisdom for barbarians, or constitution for druids or something, it wouldn't really matter much. However, wizard is largely considered the most powerful class in the game, and the most simple and effective way to gain massive power as a wizard is boosting intelligence. So, the fundamental question of this thread is how powerful should my wizard be.
If you are trying to be as powerful as possible - 20. Later in the game you can solo APL+3 epic encounters.
If your goal is for everyone at the table to have fun (including the GM), you're probably looking at a 16 in most groups, and definitely not more then an 18 if it is for a normal AP.