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Playing a Druid in pathfinder society atm and there have been lots of situations where this spell just flatout broke encounters.
A lot of people at my tables including gm's are often struck silent by it.
Should I stop using it entirely? Or take the stance that I am allowed to use it so I should?
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Playing a Druid in pathfinder society atm and there have been lots of situations where this spell just flatout broke encounters.
A lot of people at my tables including gm's are often struck silent by it.
Should I stop using it entirely? Or take the stance that I am allowed to use it so I should?
How does it break encounters?
In general, "don't be a dick" runs both ways. If the game master is routinely putting you in situations where the inability to see is a problem, then an intelligent character would prepare magical counters to that situation. On the other hand, it's not nice for you to ruin the fun of other people at the table.
Personally, I'm of the opinion a) that it's impossible to "break" PFS as it arrives from Washington pre-broken for your convenience, and b) any GM who is flummoxed by a simple spell like echolocation doesn't know what a real problem looks like. But perhaps there's some subtlety that I'm missing.
I'm guessing it's either stuff like Deeper Darkness or Invisibility causing the need for Blinsight, yes? Heightened Daylight or Invisibility Purge will beat that too.
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If being able to see in the dark, beat an illusion, or see invisible creatures in a certain radius breaks the encounter, the encounter already sucked.
I'm guessing it's either stuff like Deeper Darkness or Invisibility causing the need for Blinsight, yes? Heightened Daylight or Invisibility Purge will beat that too.
Yeah, at a level where echolocation is available, neither invisibility nor darkness is more than a speed bump.
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"Being able to tell what's going around you" is something that's always fair game for players in my opinion. Even if the opposition takes steps to prevent the players from knowing what's going on around them, it's not hardly unreasonable for the players to do something to circumvent that.
Bad guys weren't planning on defeating the PCs by being invisible, or casting deeper darkness, they were planning on defeating the PCs by the PCs by using invisibility/deeper darkness to do something while the PCs were unaware. If the PCs are not, for whatever reason, unaware, they can still attempt that something or try a different tactic.
Use discretion when choosing spells that will end or trivialize whole encounters by themselves, go nuts with spells that just let you know what's happening around you.
"Being able to tell what's going around you" is something that's always fair game for players in my opinion. Even if the opposition takes steps to prevent the players from knowing what's going on around them, it's not hardly unreasonable for the players to do something to circumvent that.
Bad guys weren't planning on defeating the PCs by being invisible, or casting deeper darkness, they were planning on defeating the PCs by the PCs by using invisibility/deeper darkness to do something while the PCs were unaware. If the PCs are not, for whatever reason, unaware, they can still attempt that something or try a different tactic.
Use discretion when choosing spells that will end or trivialize whole encounters by themselves, go nuts with spells that just let you know what's happening around you.
Well put. I wish I had expressed it that well.
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One more charitable possibility is that we're looking at different system mastery here. Echolocation is, IIRC, a single-target personal-range spell. If the druid is the only person in the group who has ways to deal with an invisible target, the druid will, of course, be more or less forced to deal with the BBEG and all his archangels, which means that the fighter, the rogue, the magus, and the investigator will just be sitting on their thumbs.
... which normally isn't fun.
Again, I'd be hard-pressed to call that "breaking" the encounter,... and to some extent, the problem was self-inflicted by the rest of the party.
Some time ago, I found a very nice capacity checklist for Pathfinders, which I recommend to all players just coming out of the newbie stage. It lists a whole bunch of questions to ask yourself at various levels to make sure that you're equipped to handle a typical variety of level-appropriate challenges.
For example, by level 4-6, you should have "an emergency way to fly," a way to "reliably affect incorporeal creatures," and "a solution for ability damage." At level 12, you should have "a plan for creatures with strong Spell Resistance."
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I figure that at the level where the druid has access to echolocation other people in the party will have some sort of plan for dealing with people who are invisible or otherwise obscured. If the Druid spots them with echolocation, it's not that the Druid has to fight solo and the Fighter just stands there. If the Druid says "hey folks, there's invisible beasties about" then the rest of the party can default to the "what do I do against invisibility" algorithm that they have hopefully prepared.
Echolocation is a long duration personal buff. Glitterdust lasts 1 round per level. By having Echolocation up on the Druid, they can point and say "over there" so someone else knows where to cast Glitterdust. Worst case scenario, you can tell someone which square to throw the flour on.
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I figure that at the level where the druid has access to echolocation other people in the party will have some sort of plan for dealing with people who are invisible or otherwise obscured.
That's normally my assumption, but it's not necessarily a safe one in PFS.
But, unhelpful though it may be, the proper response at this point might be "L2P, n00b!"
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Use echolocation to know where to target your faerie fires to outline enemies for the rest of the group.
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I personally find "darkness" shenanigans to be a bit... stale. They've been used in quite a lot of (admittedly, older) scenarios, they're not a refreshing challenge, they're a routine problem to be overcome written by scenario writers who thought they were inventing something utterly original.
However, if your local meta has a lot of players unprepared for it, you could bend your spell selection to better enable the whole party, instead of only alleviating penalties to yourself. Daylight and Faerie Fire are both on your spell list. Lead by example. Expose bad guys and teach the other players that these tactics can be overcome at the same time.
I've used it on my Occultist whenever I could and I never really had any use for it. But I never encountered invisible enemies, so your mileage may vary.
My main problem with this spell is that it technically allows you to "see" through walls and doors, while in-game it wouldn't make sense to, so as long as you don't abuse that to sense what you'll be facing and buff accordingly, it's fine. Similarly, tremorsense is equally frustrating. "There's three enemies in the next room, one of which is Huge." It sort of robs the GM of the element of surprise, but I can't deny it's a good tactic.
I'd say keep using it. I've been frustrated by it, but it's a good tactic against invisibility and darkness. What Cabbage says makes sense, though. You have a tendency to trivialise combat, be it through very strong characters (STR-wise), or good spells, try to avoid showing off. I'm not saying stop packing those spells, but maybe only use those when crap hits the fan. Using Hydrophobia in a water-based adventure is a great tactic, but if it's 6 PCs versus a single boss enemy and one spell solves combat altogether, it's kind of an anticlimax. Fun to use, certainly, and I don't begrudge you for that, but it was absolutely unnecessary.
TL;DR: echolocation and similar spells are fine, but try to avoid breaking the scenario with it. It's a stupidly long buff so it's not strange to have it on at all times, but trying to solve combat even before it's begun isn't necessary. PFS scenarios are rarely so difficult that it warrants such use. In a home campaign where the GM can throw whatever he wants at you, it seems more reasonable, but even then I'd have a talk with the GM about it.
However, if your local meta has a lot of players unprepared for it, you could bend your spell selection to better enable the whole party, instead of only alleviating penalties to yourself. Daylight and Faerie Fire are both on your spell list. Lead by example. Expose bad guys and teach the other players that these tactics can be overcome at the same time.
I agree with this. Your Druid tends to have a lot of "selfish" buffs (IIRC, correct me if I'm wrong), while the Druid has a lot of goodies to distribute. Ask people if they'd like a Barkskin or whatever. I recall one adventure where ALL your level 1 spells were Mighty Fist of the Earth, and we encountered an invisible enemy. you could've possibly dealt with it with a single Faerie Fire, but you didn't have it prepared.
Try to be a bit of a team player. You don't have to solve every encounter by yourself, and sometimes you have to share some spells with party members. Hell, my Shaman and Bard are made to let other people shine (Shaman moreso than my Bard, but still).EDIT: My apologies if I sounded too harsh, I didn't mean to insult or embarrass you, I just thought some clear examples would help.
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Echolocation gives you blindsight.
Going by the Universal Monster Rule, someone with blindsight "must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object." (This is not mentioned in the Core Rulebook.)
Walls and doors block line of effect.
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Blindsense requires LoE to know where the target is. No seeing through walls or doors. Tremorsense does not have that same qualifier.
Echolocation gives you blindsight.
Going by the Universal Monster Rule, someone with blindsight "must have line of effect to a creature or object to discern that creature or object." (This is not mentioned in the Core Rulebook.)
Walls and doors block line of effect.
Whoops, ignore that part of my comment, then. I looked up the spell and the effect, didn't show anything about that. Forgot to look up the UMR.
I would also like to know how echolocation is breaking encounters? And if you could provide some data on which PFS it would also be a great help to many GM's out there. MDCI have often found in Pathfinder Society, shockingly few characters are prepared for the lights going out. A lot of the time, the monster turns Invisible or the Dark Stalkers use Deeper Darkness or something, and they whole party is just boned.
... which turns back into "L2P, n00b!" doesn't it?
I can understand one player being annoyed at another player whose schtick is shutting down the first player's schtick. That's part of "don't be a jerk."
But nothing about echolocation or similar self-sensory buffs actually shut down anyone else's abilities. You are just as (in)capable after I buff myself as you were before. And if the problem is that you didn't bring a torch, I'm not going to stop playing a dwarf because I can see in the dark and you can't.
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I think this comes from players learning in a home game session where a GM will only prepare encounters that the PCs have some way of dealing with, since "everybody throws rocks at the flying creature because no one has nay ranged ability" just isn't fun.
But the basic assumptions of organized play are different, and the GM isn't going to change anything to fit the party, they're just going to have to deal. Perhaps their next characters will learn to carry around bags of flour to deal with invisible creatures.
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I've had a bunch of good games where we run into a monster with some defense not all of us are prepared for and you see players taking notes on "hey, you have that, that works? I gotta get that too..."
That includes things like teaching new players about just how cheap cold iron is, or the uses of having both bludgeoning and slashing weapons. That javelins help round out a 2H melee build. That holy water saves alchemists from evil outsiders with too much elemental defenses. Or the awesomeness of a swarmbane clasp. Or even the lowly knotted rope.
Everyone has to learn these things for the first time at some point, so let's not hate on that. Some people may need some prodding to realize though that it's not safe to spend all your gold on beelining for one build-central item without pausing to pick up these necessities on the way.
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By breaking encounters I mean that the tactics become invalid, but I must admit that in a Lot of these situations my allies would not have prepared counters. 2 of the times I got complaints and silence at the table was when we were fighting against a couple of advanced babaus and deeper darkness. I believe this was at level 7, neither the wizard, the alchemist or the warpriest had any counter of any sort prepared while the babaus could not enter my 15 foot reach or flank me so they literally stood at range hitting me with dispel magic over and over.
The other time was when the BBEG was flying in the middle of a cave, he had cast fog cloud and displacement on himself if I remember correctly, I casted echolocation and Air walk and waded into melee wildshaped, The fighter and barbarian had no flight mean available and the arcanist had no way to get around the displacement.
I believe I ran the latter case for you. I wouldn't feel bad about it if I were you, it's an entirely legit thing to do. Enemy had a defense, you had a counter. I think you would've managed without it eventually, but I can't deny it didn't come in useful.
I think that if you're worried about breaking encounters, your absolute powerbuilds are more of a problem. You can literally solo most boss encounters, and even some scenarios entirely. I know some players feel inadequate when they play with you, because their damage output is not even half what you're capable of. Action economy just gets broken in half when you can oneshot an enemy 3 CRs above you. They're meant to feel epic and take a while to defeat, but you absolutely murderise them.
Again, no offense meant, just offering fair criticism of your characters.
We were fighting against a couple of advanced babaus and deeper darkness. I believe this was at level 7, neither the wizard, the alchemist or the warpriest had any counter of any sort prepared while the babaus could not enter my 15 foot reach or flank me so they literally stood at range hitting me with dispel magic over and over.The fighter and barbarian had no flight mean available and the arcanist had no way to get around the displacement.
Er,.... "hahaha L2P n00b."
Seriously. That's not a broken encounter; that's a broken party. A potion of fly costs 2PP or 750 gp. Levitate is even cheaper.
There's a very good charop guide for the cleric, but a lot of the advice in it is more generally applicable. This bit, in particular, is important:
to which I would add "THE POTION." You are given gold for a reason; the expectation is that this gold will be spend on adventuring equipment (and not, for example, on beautiful women and olive oil). Every character should buy whatever equipment is needful to make sure they have cheap toys and trinkets to make sure they can operate in difficult situations.
I believe this was at level 7, neither the wizard, the alchemist or the warpriest had any counter of any sort prepared while the babaus could not enter my 15 foot reach or flank me so they literally stood at range hitting me with dispel magic over and over.Well, neither the Wizard nor the Alchemist sure have no excuse. Tell them to learn Alter Self, turn into Bugbears to gain the Scent Ability, and stop whining like babies.
Meanwhile, Echolocation is an Alchemal Extract, and it is a Wizard Spell. They have that to look forward to.
So as for the Warpriest and the Fighter, they might have to take some Feats. The character I mentioned was a Half Orc. She took Scent as a Feat, and she took Blindfighting.
Barbarians can get Scent as a Rage Power.
Other characters might have to just take Improved or Greater blindfighting. But honestly, if this PFS group has a lot of the usual suspects at the table, you can totally build your characters together so that you all have Blindness countermeasures, 1 of you can pack an Eversmoking Bottle (or better yet, you're a Druid, just pack Pyrotechnics.), and you guys can devastate most PFS Encounters, since most monsters and NPCs don't prepare for going Blind, either.
no flight mean availableThey're level 7, and they don't know how to fly? Tell them to make their next characters not suck.
Tell them to buy Potions of Fly and stop being whiny little babies.
Tell them to learn Blindfighting and buy Potions of Alter Self, and stop being such whiny little babies, or potions of Bloodhound.
Slippers of Cloudwalking aren't bad. Flying Ointment should do the trick.
To be fair, this might be a little too harsh. Yes, you can have it on your spell list, but you get only so many spells per day. If you prepared for something different, you're SOL. The Wizard and Alchemist were specced for something totally different, that can happen.
Fair point about the potions, though. I wouldn't word it like that (they weren't whining, that's what you make of it), and Blind-Fight might not fit in everyone's build, just like most people have other items in their Feet slots, but potions are fair game. I catch myself on not being built for that on a regular basis as well.Also, as an example of how powerful your builds are: Yesterday you nearly solo-ed a CR 8 and a CR 10 creature, which were a level 9 Fighter and a level 10 Cleric (with sub-optimal tactics, granted), with the help of a level 6 (?) Hunter and a CR 5 NPC running interference. While you were level 5 yourself. That's just crazy.
the babaus could not enter my 15 foot reach or flank me so they literally stood at range hitting me with dispel magic over and over.
Don't Babau demons have longspears, so they could 5' step into your reach and attack?
Even so, it seems like at some point "eat an AoO" (and maybe not even that, since they have a +11 Acrobatics mod) is a better tactic for enemies than "keep trying something that's not working."
Tell them to learn Blindfighting and buy Potions of Alter Self, and stop being such whiny little babies, or potions of Bloodhound.Quick nitpick. Alter self is a personal spell, no potions allowed.DOH!
It is on the Alchemist spell list, so potions or Infusions are a possibility.
"Also, as an example of how powerful your builds are: Yesterday you nearly solo-ed a CR 8 and a CR 10 creature, which were a level 9 Fighter and a level 10 Cleric (with sub-optimal tactics, granted), with the help of a level 6 (?) Hunter and a CR 5 NPC running interference. While you were level 5 yourself. That's just crazy."
As a druid? How? I've been struggling with melee druid builds, so this blows my mind and piques my interest.
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"Also, as an example of how powerful your builds are: Yesterday you nearly solo-ed a CR 8 and a CR 10 creature, which were a level 9 Fighter and a level 10 Cleric (with sub-optimal tactics, granted), with the help of a level 6 (?) Hunter and a CR 5 NPC running interference. While you were level 5 yourself. That's just crazy."As a druid? How? I've been struggling with melee druid builds, so this blows my mind and piques my interest.
Not a druid in this case, A bloodrager4/medium1 multiclass going into dragon disciple.
Went crossblooded rageshaper with draconic and abbysal, granting me 2 claws that hit for 2d8 and a bite of 1d8 due to the tusked trait.
my routine comes out to : +16 2d8+14, +16 2d8+14, +11 1d8+10
The enemy cleric cast greater command Halt repeatedly, I purposefully left my reflex and my will somewhat weak to give him flaws as my previous characters covered all bases and had no weaknesses to target, as such the fighter was free to wail on me, I rolled a 16 on my next willsave to break the spell and I proceeded to full attack the fighter for about 70 damage, the fighters next hit puts me at 0 but he keels due to being at 0 himself.
My Hp is really high, but my armor class is dreadful, I am covering this with the esoteric dragon manifestiation wich grants me permanent blur while bloodraging.
Also, I can link my current druid build later if you want.
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Seeing as this thread went completely off its course, I wish to end with : thanks for responding to this.
I will keep using echolocation and when I notice something with it I will notify my party members, if they don't have something to contribute at that point...tough luck I guess.
Happy gaming and playing everyone.
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By breaking encounters I mean that the tactics become invalid, but I must admit that in a Lot of these situations my allies would not have prepared counters. 2 of the times I got complaints and silence at the table was when we were fighting against a couple of advanced babaus and deeper darkness. I believe this was at level 7, neither the wizard, the alchemist or the warpriest had any counter of any sort prepared while the babaus could not enter my 15 foot reach or flank me so they literally stood at range hitting me with dispel magic over and over.
The other time was when the BBEG was flying in the middle of a cave, he had cast fog cloud and displacement on himself if I remember correctly, I casted echolocation and Air walk and waded into melee wildshaped, The fighter and barbarian had no flight mean available and the arcanist had no way to get around the displacement.
At level 7 not using something because the rest of your party would be standing around not able to help is merely asking to have everyone picked off one by one. Not everyone can have a solution for every scenario, that's why you work together as a group. As for the lack of flight by the melee.... by that level they need to learn to keep utility items around for those situations (potion of fly) and if they opt not to use them, that's on them, if they don't have them, it's time they learn!
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"Also, as an example of how powerful your builds are: Yesterday you nearly solo-ed a CR 8 and a CR 10 creature, which were a level 9 Fighter and a level 10 Cleric (with sub-optimal tactics, granted), with the help of a level 6 (?) Hunter and a CR 5 NPC running interference. While you were level 5 yourself. That's just crazy."As a druid? How? I've been struggling with melee druid builds, so this blows my mind and piques my interest.Not a druid in this case, A bloodrager4/medium1 multiclass going into dragon disciple.
Went crossblooded rageshaper with draconic and abbysal, granting me 2 claws that hit for 2d8 and a bite of 1d8 due to the tusked trait.
my routine comes out to : +16 2d8+14, +16 2d8+14, +11 1d8+10
The enemy cleric cast greater command Halt repeatedly, I purposefully left my reflex and my will somewhat weak to give him flaws as my previous characters covered all bases and had no weaknesses to target, as such the fighter was free to wail on me, I rolled a 16 on my next willsave to break the spell and I proceeded to full attack the fighter for about 70 damage, the fighters next hit puts me at 0 but he keels due to being at 0 himself.
My Hp is really high, but my armor class is dreadful, I am covering this with the esoteric dragon manifestiation wich grants me permanent blur while bloodraging.
Also, I can link my current druid build later if you want.
I believe there's a bit of a flaw in those numbers. Bestial Aspect inreases the die size by one. That's the meaning of "increase... by one die", consistent with all similar effects. Still comes out at 2d6. So hardly a huge decrease. There are multiple threads discussing this.
I'm curious as to how the rest of the numbers come together, as a fan of natural attack builds myself.
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Ah fair enough. as for the rest.
Currently sitting at lvl 5 bloodrager with 1 level medium
due to demonic bulk im getting an additional +2 strength but i'm getting a -1 size penalty to attack.
Str 27 -1 size (+7) (+8)
Furious aomf (+2) (+2)
Champion spirit with focus (+2)seance(+4)
Base attack bonus (+5)
total (+16) (+14)
My bite gets half the strength scaling but the spirit bonus and amulet are unaffected by the secondary attack penalty. Once I get to second level dragon disciple I trade it in for the dragon bite wich gets 1.5x strength scaling.
And Quentin : Don't forget that I have a Raging (hurr) bloodrager addiction, they are extremely easy to hit really hard with, little to no feat investment and easy scaling.
The Gunslinger I am currently playing is hitting for 1d10+2 right now with point-blank shot and I had to dip fighter at two just to get precise shot and hit things.
And for some reason Barbarians and bloodragers are pretty darn rare at our lodge, at least at the tables Im playing at, so I can understand that my numbers catch you off guard.
As an example : human barbarian 4 with power attack, reckless rage and reckless abandon. starting with 19 str at 1 with the increase at 4 and belt.
Attack : sword+1furious(+3), bab+4, abandon+2, Str+8, -3 power attack.
Damage : Sword+1furious(+3), Str+12, power attack+9
+14 2d6+24 at level 4 and superstition is still open so saves are not an issue, aside from my first bloodrager, my characters are pretty lopsided having easy weaknesses to target.
I know the thread has sort of changed subjects but I'm honestly struggling to figure out what the annoyed GM/players expected to happen. What were you supposed to do?
Because in both situations the only real alternative given the way you described your party was... sitting there and dying because no one else could effectively harm the enemy. Or maybe getting unreasonably lucky with both guessing where the enemy is and nailing your total concealment rolls.
I can understand a player getting annoyed that they couldn't really contribute, but even then I can't imagine why they were mad at you instead of the GM for throwing out tactics designed to invalidate them in the first place.
As a GM for him, I can explain. In the examples given here, I believe I GMed the second instance. Echolocation really isn't the problem, as other people have said before. It's a basic survival trick. It didn't break the encounter. By this level, people are expected to deal with it.
What some people at my lodge (including myself sometimes) are annoyed with is the fact that this guy trivialises entire combats. Okay, some people at our lodge don't build optimal characters, but I have seen people stop doing things in combat because OP deals more than double their damage and they feel useless in comparison. Combats that are supposed to be very challenging just end after one round, maybe two, once OP can full attack. Yes, combats break when OP is around, but I have no idea why he thinks Echolocation is the culprit. His damage output is way more than encounters can handle. As seen in his example above, his damage output on level 4 lies around 30 (24 static, roughly 7 from average dice). I referred to the Bench-Pressing table for comparison. His damage output is roughly that of a level 5.5 character. For comparison, my strongest character has a similar damage output per hit on level 10 (though to be fair, he wasn't as laser-focused as OP's build). And he's built several natural attackers that can deal roughly the same damage per hits (okay, slightly lower due to Power Attack not adding 50%). There have been scenarios that were very tough when I played them (and not due to party composition), but when I ran it for him it was a cakewalk.OP says he has built in weaknesses, but they're not always relevant. His Druid has a terrible DEX, but due to level dipping his Reflex save is still decent, and he has Evasion. I've seen him dodge multiple Fireballs, for instance. He has (over)invested in Constitution, so even if he fails some saves, he still has a lot of HP left. And his AC used to be terrible, until he dipped Monk for Monk AC, added Barkskin, and added natural AC from Wildshapes. He's rocking an AC of 30+ on level 11, with a DEX of 10, I believe. He has permanent Tremorsense and a whole slew of cheese that makes GM's go "Explain me how this works, please" regularly. That Druid havign Echolocation is the least of the GM's problems, trust me. His other character purposefully has low AC and Will save, but an incredible bag of hit points, and deals 30 damage per each of his 3 natural attacks at level 5. I fear the day he gets Confused or Dominated, it'll result in a TPK.
I don't mean to vent all my anger on him, but I do want to paint a clear picture here. I repeat: people aren't whining and doing nothing because they can't do anything. They're whining because they don't have to do anything. They think OP is a showboat (he is rather... present at tables) and some are actively avoiding tables he's sitting at. OP's characters are part of the problem here, but another part is OP's character, if you will.
Richter, I don't want to be mean to you (and I'm sorry if I were). You're a good guy, you're just a little too loud for us, sometimes. I've tried saying this in person to you several times, and it goes well for a while. But almost every single time I play with you, I hear someone complaining. You're trying to have fun, I get it. We all are. But I ask you, please take the other players in consideration.