As far as the minimum contribution in combat help goes my opinion is this: Is your noncontribution going to cause the party to fail at its mission, cause the death of a party member (or TPK), and/or create a situation that would cause inter-party strife? If the answer is "No" to those three questions, then do whatever you want in combat my friend.
However, if the answer is "Yes" to any of those questions, then you need to seriously reconsider your PC. PFS is a Cooperative game. As long as your PC is not going to be a detriment to the party, then have at it. Just be able to contribute elsewhere and be prepared to face the consequences of your actions if said noncontribution causes any of the above situations to occur.
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I guess I had better go drink, because evidently I am useless. Never mind that for most of my career I have been a primary damage dealer for my parties, as well as being a "skill monkey", and that is before I got "unchained".
I'll have to put my gladīī away, hang up my picks, and devote myself to regailing myself with tails that never happened. Sigh. What's an adventurer to do?
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Honestly, with the release of Weapon Master's Handbook a melee fighter can shore up most of the existing holes in the class. It's just frustrating they didn't put fighter in PU and simply increase the skill points to a reasonable level.
Yes, Weapon Master's Handbook is a serious upgrade to fighter in many ways, though I was discounting it as I own the book but have yet to use anything out of it. I did buy it the day it released though, cause xome of that content is amazing.
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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My very first game in PFS was a scenario with a rep for TPKing parties in tier 1-2.*
It was a very scary scenario. Over half of us were on our first adventure with only what we could have purchased for 150K. We had a bunch of core classes: sorcerer, cleric, fighter, ranger, rogue and one level one heavens oracle (no color spray yet). Saving graces to this party:
- A fighter who knew what he was doing, and fearlessly through himself in front of the party. He also had both Knowledge Dungeoneering and Engineering, and used them.
- A savvy halfling rogue who knew what he was doing, disabling traps, flanking, grabbed that adamantine dagger that the adventure provided and used it WELL.
- A cleric who kept us healed, and who fought well with his reach weapon.
- A ranger who made skill checks, and used the terrain to his advantage.
- My grappling tiger (I was a sylvan sorc) and well-placed grease.
- Teamwork every step of the way.
The rogue and the fighter saved us over and over again, though everyone kept us alive. We all shared the skill checks, and we somehow pulles through with no deaths but some very close callls...
Teamwork. Really, that's what this thread is about. This is a team sport. Pathfinder is at its best when we remember that.
Hmm
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Bart:
First off, thank you very much for dropping that info in though yes, the *only 2 skill points* does very much scare me away, along with *a bunch of combat feats that require things that don't fit into a DEX build*.
I'll have to take another look, perhaps even invest in that Weapon Master's Handbook when I'm not trying to finagle financing for PaizoCon and Gen Con.
nosig/Legio:
My -1 is Slayer 6/Cleric 3 (went Cleric when I misunderstood something about UMD but definitely do not regret the choice).
He's built to initially be stealthy and the eyes of the group, but can also 'tank' if he has to (Trial by Machine kind of sold him on the 'always have a shield' after *no one* sat down to the table with one and there weren't any DEX+WIS/etc characters there.)
He can also be 'emergency field medic' and ironically that's carried a party that could've done the whole "Oh, we've got a CLWW, we're golden" when the party ran into something particularly nasty.
Have there been other scenarios where he's been ineffectual? Yes, but that's usually the learning moment to help him pick up things to make him rounded.
But he's at *L9*. It really *is* a 'grab-bag' (based on personal play experience) between 1-8. It's worse than Forrest and his box of chocolates, or Pawn Stars at some tables without a dedicated group to play with, and players one knows.
Mileage may vary, but not having certain things CAN and HAVE cost a party PP, even if the certain things aren't very well trained.
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There's a reason my next character is going to be a Summoner. It's not for the fancy hat and free body art either.
I *was* considering Summoner and doing the research to figure one out, until it got restricted to 'just Unchained'.
Then I kind of threw my arms up and shrugged and made an unchained rogue instead.
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Woo! Rogue-Shaming and Fighter-Shaming! Everybody drink!
Be sure to drink twice - once for the fighter hate and once for the rogue hate.
Bart beat me to it on responding to why fighters are actually good. They might not be the absolute best at anything, but they've got enough feats to be very good at whatever they want to do, and to even have more than one specialty.
Of my 20 PFS PCs, two of them are fighters, and I'm currently planning another fighter for my 21st. I've also got an Unchained Rogue. None of them are multi-class yet, though I was considering a two level dip into warpriest for #21. Not because straight fighter isn't good enough, but mostly for flavor and to be a little different.
Just to give you an idea of why I went fighter with these PCs: One is the dwarven Foehammer archetype from the Advanced Race Guide. It just looked cool and flavorful. A dwarven longhammer, dwarven boulder helm, and 18 strength go a long way in a fight, and I'm giving him some combat maneuvers for fun.
One of them is a non-archetype, non-multiclass fighter that I made in response to one of these fighter hate threads, just to prove I could make a fun and useful PC that way. I decided to go armored tank with him for high AC, but try to do it without a shield, so I could still get two handed weapon damage. He's a tiefling with Armor of the Pit feat, Defender of the Society trait, and Dodge to make up for the lack of shield. He's also got 14 dex to go with the Armor Training, since fighter's the only class that can get +2 dex to AC even in full plate, and I'll boost that later in life to 16 dex once his Armor Training can keep up and I have enough cash. But his damage isn't hindered by all that armor focus, because he's still a fighter with 18 strength and a greatsword, with the usual Power Attack, Weapon Specialization, Weapon Focus, etc. And a bite for one more attack, just because I can. And just enough skill ranks to be good at intimidate and profession (chef), along with the occasional rank here and there in things like swim and climb for utility.
The newest one is an attempt to see if thrown weapons could be a viable combat style. The short answer: Yes, as long as you own the Weapon Master Handbook, and play a class with a LOT of bonus feats. Fighter is the best choice, just for quantity of bonus feats, and you can still get 2-4 skill ranks per level pretty easily, and take a trait to have an unusual class skill if you want stuff that's not on the fighter list.
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Oh, are we doing the fighter/rogue hate thing again?
Ooh, ooh, I bet my character is hated more than yours! My core Venture Captain is an (obviously unarchetyped) fighter (9), a rogue (4), AND a lawyer.
Somehow she managed to not cause any tables to spontaneously erupt into flame. And, in fact, I was asked NOT to GM several times when I volunteered because the table needed her to kill difficult enemies,and find things with her ludicrous perception score, or disable traps, or...
But fighters and rogues are bad, yeah?
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*will have to hold off on drinking until AFTER work. They'd take a dim view to me showing up half-tanked*doesn't every group need a "tank"? and if we have two PCs that are "half-tanked", are they more "generalists"? and able to survive on their own better?
;)
'in the bag' 'sloshed' 'bombed' 'blitzed' 'stoned' 'toasted'
More along those lines than "I hold the Boss, you spank him!"...
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Bart:
First off, thank you very much for dropping that info in though yes, the *only 2 skill points* does very much scare me away, along with *a bunch of combat feats that require things that don't fit into a DEX build*.
I'll have to take another look, perhaps even invest in that Weapon Master's Handbook when I'm not trying to finagle financing for PaizoCon and Gen Con.
Fighters by no means have to be DEX builds, I just believe they favor having at least some/more due to class features, this is my take away for the class and certainly not the only way to do it. (As for the 2+INT I will say I was getting 4 skills per level almost every level personally. In fact I seem to get more skills out of that build than my Warpriest despite nearly identical stats, more or less the same as my Paladin and a couple others. I tend to like the way a number of 2+INT classes work mechanically, I guess (As PFS characters + my two AP characters well more than half are in 2+ INT classes (2 Paladins (both are multiclassed, but only 1 got extra skills so far)/2 Clerics/2 Druids/1 Fighter/Swashbuckler/Sorcerer/Warpriest)
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I think that the only reason that I have yet to make a fighter, is blank canvas syndrome. I really like the Sensate Fighter archetype, but it does not lend itself strongly toward any one specialty, as far as I can tell.
Sensate is cool, but it's mechanically bad post Weapon Masters Handbook. Giving up advance weapon training hurts too much.
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Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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The short answer: Yes, as long as you own the Weapon Master Handbook, and play a class with a LOT of bonus feats. Fighter is the best choice, just for quantity of bonus feats, and you can still get 2-4 skill ranks per level pretty easily, and take a trait to have an unusual class skill if you want stuff that's not on the fighter list.
I would argue the Brawler's probably better simply because you have the flexibility a Fighter doesn't in using incredibly situational feats. Admittedly, it does swing you into the realm of "Ooo god. What choices do I make" but if you are smart about building the class you'd at least have a bunch of good defaults to start of with (ie. Every single combat maneuver feat).
EDIT:Except for ranged. Ranged generally seems to be more straightforward.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 8
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The best part about Jeff's obviously serious equation is that at level 1, characters need to do less than 1 DPR a round to be effective.
One of these highly optimized characters would take 6 rounds to drop a goblin. Presuming they could hit that AC 16.
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The best part about Jeff's obviously serious equation is that at level 1, characters need to do less than 1 DPR a round to be effective.
One of these highly optimized characters would take 6 rounds to drop a goblin. Presuming they could hit that AC 16.
There goes my 5 str 20 dex finesse halfling dagger build. I guess I shouldn't have gotten quite so optimistic about my 1d3-3 damage a round!
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If your primary means of contributing to party success at level 20 is "poke things with a pointy stick" then possibly yes given that you could be replaced with someone whose primary options are "wield ultimate cosmic power".So if you aren't doing 350 damage per round at 20th level you're dead weight?
Huh, never knew.
Yes! And I've got Caster-Martial Disparity for the bingo!
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Continue whatever discussions you want, but I have decided to just make a controller/utility Wizard with the Extradimension Subschool. I just thought that you should know.
Extradimension School isn't PFS legal. All archetypes in Black Markets are PFS legal, but no mention was made of the arcane school in AR.
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According to this conversation, that was an oversight and will should be corrected with the next update.
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According to this conversation, that was an oversight and will should be corrected with the next update.
Ah, I had missed that.
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Let's pull some numbers from the shadow plane.
Assuming combat is NOT your primary role I would hope you can do one of the following at level 11:
-75 damage a round
-Save or suck at DC20 across all three saves
-cast haste 3 times a day
-have high saves and the ability to negate crippling conditions (fear/charm & compulsion/nausea/
These numbers are completely arbitrary. They are not required, but each make a good fall back role if you can't do anything else.
Perhaps a better guide would be: if your character is the 5th character at the table do you make up for losing the 4-player adjustment? If you literally make the party's chances of survival worse though your presence then it may be time to improve your capabilities.
Ultimately everyone's character is their own and it is up to the individual to balance what they want from their character with what they perceive the social contract of an organized play environment to be.
(these have been off the cuff comments and should not be seen to exclude anyone from the table)