In general, what character builds or concepts do not pan out in PFS?


Pathfinder Society

1 to 50 of 258 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
Shadow Lodge 4/5

Obviously with enough system mastery and additional resources you can make almost any character build or concept work. However, considering a casual player with average system mastery, what character builds or concepts work poorly or, alternately, scale poorly into the 7-11 tier?

5/5 5/55/55/5

5 people marked this as a favorite.

Scout:

You have no idea how many human rogues i've seen try to "stealth through the darkness" only to have monsters at the other end of the hall go

"what is it doing?
"I don't know. Why's it crouched over like that?
" And feeling the wall.
"Oh.. i think he's blind. Why didn't his parents drown him at birth?
"Too soft I guesse, sigh.. i suppose now WE have to do it FOR them...

There's no way to open a door without being seen
Stealth has some of the biggest table variations in how it works.
The herd of cats your with probably won't stand back
The herd of cats you're with probably isn't built around not making noise
There's only a limited amount of time to do anything, and you can't take up half an hour trying to get one surprise round on one encounter.

Pure healer

You're a wand discount. The healers handbook might change this, but healing does very little compared to damage taken

2/5

3 people marked this as a favorite.

High AC - Low Damage builds are very meh at those levels. I consider them a bit of a waste of space unless dealing with very low intelligence (even 0 Int) creatures that simply attack whatever's in front of them or if specifically written with mindless/dumb tactics. Anything else would move on to easier kills, heck that's even Int 1-2 animal behaviour such as wolves.

The Exchange 3/5

Anything which creates an area effect which requires "permission" from the party to use.

Negative Channeling
Darkness
Deeper Darkness
Silence
Anti-Magic Field
Source Severance

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5 RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

Natural weapons.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5 RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

9 people marked this as a favorite.
BigNorseWolf wrote:

Pure healer

You're a wand discount. The healers handbook might change this, but healing does very little compared to damage taken

You've clearly adventured with very poor healers.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Teamwork builds (that don't somehow grant teamwork feats to at least one of your party members).

5/5 5/5

6 people marked this as a favorite.

I have to disagree with BNW on whether pure healers are useful at higher tiers, with a qualification. If the rest of the party has good damage mitigation and can take down opponents quickly enough, he is correct. However, I have seen situations where a dedicated healer could have prevented PC deaths and once you start losing some of your damage dealers, things can quickly slide into a question of retreat or death. I always welcome a dedicated healer in any group where I'm playing a damage dealer and I have found that my dedicated healers are always welcomed by others, but there have been times where there has been very little for them to do. They are an insurance policy - you might be able to do without but when you need one, you need one bad.

5/5 *****

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Michael Eshleman wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:

Pure healer

You're a wand discount. The healers handbook might change this, but healing does very little compared to damage taken

You've clearly adventured with very poor healers.

I have run for and played with many different types healers and in the majority of cases their group would have probably been better off having that character run with active control effects. Pro-active damage prevention is regularly going to be more effective than reactive healing.

5/5 *****

Pete Winz wrote:
I have to disagree with BNW on whether pure healers are useful at higher tiers, with a qualification. If the rest of the party has good damage mitigation and can take down opponents quickly enough, he is correct. However, I have seen situations where a dedicated healer could have prevented PC deaths and once you start losing some of your damage dealers, things can quickly slide into a question of retreat or death. I always welcome a dedicated healer in any group where I'm playing a damage dealer and I have found that my dedicated healers are always welcomed by others, but there have been times where there has been very little for them to do. They are an insurance policy - you might be able to do without but when you need one, you need one bad.

I have run and played a lot of high tier and seeker level content. In seeker content you are largely looking at using heal which does keep up with incoming damage. Other forms of healing largely do not (outside of maybe repeat channelling life oracles) so you are normally better off doing something more pro-active.

If you damage dealers are going down fast then either they need to focus more on their own defences or they need to up their damage game.

Grand Lodge 3/5

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Dpr builds where all the damage comes from sneak attack. Keep your damage decent and treat sneak attack as a bonus. This is easier now that unrogue is the standard.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5 RPG Superstar 2013 Top 8

4 people marked this as a favorite.
andreww wrote:
Pete Winz wrote:
I have to disagree with BNW on whether pure healers are useful at higher tiers, with a qualification. If the rest of the party has good damage mitigation and can take down opponents quickly enough, he is correct. However, I have seen situations where a dedicated healer could have prevented PC deaths and once you start losing some of your damage dealers, things can quickly slide into a question of retreat or death. I always welcome a dedicated healer in any group where I'm playing a damage dealer and I have found that my dedicated healers are always welcomed by others, but there have been times where there has been very little for them to do. They are an insurance policy - you might be able to do without but when you need one, you need one bad.

I have run and played a lot of high tier and seeker level content. In seeker content you are largely looking at using heal which does keep up with incoming damage. Other forms of healing largely do not (outside of maybe repeat channelling life oracles) so you are normally better off doing something more pro-active.

If you damage dealers are going down fast then either they need to focus more on their own defences or they need to up their damage game.

The healer role encompasses more than just hit point replenishment. It is also about condition removal/prevention and IMO movement facilitation (e.g. freedom of movement).

Silver Crusade 1/5 *

Michael Eshleman wrote:
Natural weapons.

How so?

5/5 *****

Michael Eshleman wrote:
The healer role encompasses more than just hit point replenishment. It is also about condition removal/prevention and IMO movement facilitation (e.g. freedom of movement).

I would consider those as part of the general expected toolset of caster orientated cleric/druid/oracle. I find when people are talking about healers though they are expecting a handful of d6 channels to keep them up through a combat and that becomes less and less likely as levels increase as healing doesn't really keep pace with likely damage.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Michael Eshleman wrote:
andreww wrote:
Pete Winz wrote:
I have to disagree with BNW on whether pure healers are useful at higher tiers, with a qualification. If the rest of the party has good damage mitigation and can take down opponents quickly enough, he is correct. However, I have seen situations where a dedicated healer could have prevented PC deaths and once you start losing some of your damage dealers, things can quickly slide into a question of retreat or death. I always welcome a dedicated healer in any group where I'm playing a damage dealer and I have found that my dedicated healers are always welcomed by others, but there have been times where there has been very little for them to do. They are an insurance policy - you might be able to do without but when you need one, you need one bad.

I have run and played a lot of high tier and seeker level content. In seeker content you are largely looking at using heal which does keep up with incoming damage. Other forms of healing largely do not (outside of maybe repeat channelling life oracles) so you are normally better off doing something more pro-active.

If you damage dealers are going down fast then either they need to focus more on their own defences or they need to up their damage game.

The healer role encompasses more than just hit point replenishment. It is also about condition removal/prevention and IMO movement facilitation (e.g. freedom of movement).

The distinction between healing and support is pretty muddy in my opinion. I have seen some very powerful "healers" who utilize support options until healing becomes necessary. I took BNW's "pure healer" comment to mean someone who focuses entirely on HP replenishment (and perhaps condition removal) to the exclusion of all other support options. In that context, I'd tend to agree with him.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Michael Eshleman wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:

Pure healer

You're a wand discount. The healers handbook might change this, but healing does very little compared to damage taken

You've clearly adventured with very poor healers.

I have played a very high level scenario with my healer and ran it for a team with no healer.

In my play, I actually got a Greater Restoration off in combat rounds, because I could do nothing else. We were tanked up and mitigating enemy effects, but could not do enough damage to end the fight.

In my run, the fight was over in maybe three rounds due to massive damage, and my monsters were unable to inflict much damage on the team.

If you build for healing, you encourage tactics that need it. If you build for damage, you don't need to build for healing.

5/5 *****

TOZ wrote:

I have played a very high level scenario with my healer and ran it for a team with no healer.

In my play, I actually got a Greater Restoration off in combat rounds, because I could do nothing else. We were tanked up and mitigating enemy effects, but could not do enough damage to end the fight.

Soooo much ability damage and drain in that fight. I seem to recall that, rather ironically, the out of tier low level witch was the most valuable contributor to successful completion of that adventure.

Quote:
If you build for healing, you encourage tactics that need it. If you build for damage, you don't need to build for healing.

I would add "or control" to that list. Enemies who spend most of their time nauseated, blind, stunned, paralysed, dazed or unconscious do very little damage.

5/5

I find the two concepts that do not work well are ones that are based on GM interpretation:

- Enchantment specialists (see the thread about exactly what Charm Person does)
- Illusion specialists (the definition of 'interact' is also GM dependent).


I find myself agreeing with both sides of the healing argument.

I think it is too situational to definitively come down on one side or another, but Pete Winz said it best: healers are, "an insurance policy - you might be able to do without but when you need one, you need one bad."

TOZ has a point too though. Most people seem to change their tactics when they know there is a dedicated healer in the party and IME that change is usually for the riskier.

OTOH to BNW's point, I have played with "pure healers" (exclusive hp healing focus) that were a total waste of f---ing space. Every turn was, "I delay until someone needs healing." In a party of 3 + pregen, that makes for a miserable time.

The Exchange 4/5 5/5

Any build that attempts to bluff/charm/bribe/sneak past every encounter.

Mind you this is very group-dependent. Occasionally the guy with the 5-Int, 8-Wis, 9-Cha Nagano barbarian will be happy role-playing along. But often he'll want to show off his Greater Beast Totem and be really annoyed that he isn't getting to do anything.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Pete Winz wrote:
However, I have seen situations where a dedicated healer could have prevented PC deaths and once you start losing some of your damage dealers, things can quickly slide into a question of retreat or death.

But this isn't considering the opportunity costs. for this to be true, the situation would have to be where a dedicated healer would have prevented PC deaths and another type of character wouldn't. Those situations where a healer would have done so would have to be more often than when another character wouldn't.

Grand Lodge 3/5

Mekkis wrote:

I find the two concepts that do not work well are ones that are based on GM interpretation:

- Enchantment specialists (see the thread about exactly what Charm Person does)
- Illusion specialists (the definition of 'interact' is also GM dependent).

Charms person has its problems but other enchantment spells are very powerful and much clearer. Not to mention it is the school with the most optimisable DCs.

I think of lot of the illusion variation was cleared up in ultimate intrigue. Not to say that fixed everything but it helps a lot.

1/5

I'm playing eyes of the ten right now, finished the second scenario. Our healing is a wand of cure UMD'd, wand of infernal healing, the healer's gloves for a breath of life, and a scroll of heal to be UMD'd in case of status removal.

fights last an average of 2 rounds.

5/5 *****

Thomas Hutchins wrote:

I'm playing eyes of the ten right now, finished the second scenario. Our healing is a wand of cure UMD'd, wand of infernal healing, the healer's gloves for a breath of life, and a scroll of heal to be UMD'd in case of status removal.

fights last an average of 2 rounds.

I am curious, how many players do you have? Eyes really doesn't stand up well to having 6 PC's.

I played it with four but to be fair we were two caster sorcerers, a sorcerer/gunslinger/eldritch knight and an archer paladin. We had virtually no in combat healing but few opponents got a chance to take an action between both sorcerers dropping control effects. If they did they didn't last long to the ranged damage dealers.

I handled status removal with scrolls as a razmiran priest, not that we needed much of it. Our other sorcerer died at the start of part 4 but I was able to bring him back pretty much straight away.

I played it in core with 4 but we had 3 full casters including a melee orientated druid and a high damage dealing martial and nothing was really much of a challenge. I ran it in core for 2 paladins, a fighter/barbarian and an eldritch knight and they had a death every session and two in part 2 (the same person twice).

1/5

We have 5. 1 evocation wizard, 1 draconic sorcerer, 1 oldschool summoner, an investigator, and a skirmisher ranger.

fights last 2 rounds because more enemies show up round 2.

1/5

I would say:
Two Weapon Fighter does not work. It hasn't ever really worked, but just don't try to make it work and be sad when it doesn't work.

There are some ways to build rogue which work out, but the default build which everyone seems to want to make - the two weapon fighting sneak attack rogue usually doesn't really pan out. You need STR for damage and DEX to hit if you use Weapon Finesse.. Basically you're the most MAD character ever and you have 3/4 to hit and need to split gold on each weapon to be enchanted. You COULD buy Agile on two different weapons, or you could just play something else. This is not to say that no sneak attack builds are possible - A successful sneak attack build of usually trades out sneak attacks for dirty trick: blind, then continues to attack for sneak attack damage. I would recommend using natural weapons with a Tengu if possible and buying a Amulet of Mighty Fists and boots of speed. Come out of stealth and pop them for 4 attacks. Buy a helm of the Mommoth Lords and make it 5 attacks, 4 of which are sneak attacks after your dirty trick: blind. But think about it before you make that 2WF Rogue. Look before you leap.

Silver Crusade 4/5 5/55/55/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Beckman wrote:


There are some ways to build rogue which work out, but the default build which everyone seems to want to make - the two weapon fighting sneak attack rogue usually doesn't really pan out. You need STR for damage and DEX to hit if you use Weapon Finesse.. Basically you're the most MAD character ever and you have 3/4 to hit and need to split gold on each weapon to be enchanted. [...]

I agree in general that TWF is hard, but don't forget that unchained rogue is basically built for it.

5/5 5/55/55/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Two weapon fighting sneak attack.

Looks great on paper, but you move into position, hit something, and then because you have the same combat effectiveness at 1 hit point as 100, the party focuses fire and kills the thing. you then need to move into position attack once.. wash rinse repeat.

The better optimized your party is the more often that happens.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden

The Zadim pregen works pretty well for me. Strength-based 2WF through ranger combat style skips a lot of the downsides of 2WF. High accuracy, lots and lots of attacks, and decent damage. It's a good pregen to give to new players who want something not too complicated yet also able to give a real contribution. Having 7 skill points per level also doesn't hurt.

Things that don't work: builds that depend on the rest of the party having compatible obscure builds. That only works if you coordinate all the characters. Like the entire party with See In Darkness that spams Deeper Darkness. It'll steamroll the dungeon if everyone is on board, but it falls apart if you're not always playing with the same people.

Relying on Wavesight/Obscuring Mist for ranged sneak attack is even worse.

The Exchange 4/5 Owner - D20 Hobbies

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I played an Overrun specialist (Elephant Stomp, Charge Through, Greater Overrun) and found nearly every GM ruled differently on how these all worked.

Liberty's Edge 5/5

BigNorseWolf wrote:
Two weapon fighting sneak attack.

My -1 was a sword-and-board fighter rogue. I think I got to actually do a full attack from flank about once every three scenarios or so.

The Exchange 4/5 5/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
David Setty wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Two weapon fighting sneak attack.
My -1 was a sword-and-board fighter rogue. I think I got to actually do a full attack from flank about once every three scenarios or so.

I saw a team (two IRL brothers, I believe) at a con make excellent use of a TWF rogue. Because the other one was playing a sorcerer.

Rogue: "I delay"
Sorcerer: "I'll D-door myself, Stabby McRoguepants, and the barbarian. Putting myself on one side and them adjacent to me but on opposite sides of this medium creature here."
Rogue: "I come off delay."

Sorcerer had Toughness, huge Con, and anything else you could think of. He knew he was going to take some hits doing that but man was it effective.

5/5 *** Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht

Diplomacy specialists. Certain scenarios just require a certain brute-forcing. Yeah, it's great that you can convince a person to part with his most prised possessions, but sometimes things just want to hit you in the face. And while I can't say talking your way out of a fight is a bad thing, it just feels anticlimactic.

Similarly, illusion-based characters. I like that you have all the options in the world to make combats go away, but like Diplomacy, it just feels cheap somehow. And the fact that the illusions are left to the creator's whims, you can build in some things that might not have been intended that way. Again, I can't deny its effectiveness, but it does feel like it's something the system wasn't intended to do.

Any build that overspecialises in a certain skill. I always wince when a friend announces himself as the healer of the party, because he's maxed the Heal skill. He can still deal good damage (Alchemist...), but most of his extracts are selected on giving them to other players, who are too busy hitting things to take their extracts.

I never know when to use TWF and when not. I'm not a big fan of TWF in general, but purposefully lowering your to-hit for more damage only works (in my mind) if a) your to-hit is great, or b) have so many attacks that one is bound to hit eventually. I'm a big fan of Slayer TWF because he's full-BAB and has ways to boost his to-hit, whereas a Rogue already has crappy to-hit and lowers it even further. I've done some hasty math, and the Slayer is so much better at it, even with slower sneak attack progression, yet pretty much all Rogues go with TWF.

My newest character is a dirty trick Slayer, and I'm still not sure if straight up attacking isn't just better than dirty tricks. I guess it comes in more useful once I start getting iteratives with sneak attack.


Ragoz wrote:

Anything which creates an area effect which requires "permission" from the party to use.

Negative Channeling
Darkness
Deeper Darkness
Silence
Anti-Magic Field
Source Severance

I had that problem with a character. She was a Half Orc with Keen Scent, Blindfighting, and an Eversmoking Bottle.

Terminalmancer wrote:
Teamwork builds (that don't somehow grant teamwork feats to at least one of your party members).

She also had Snake Fang and Paired Opportunist via a level in Cavalier. The idea was whenever anyone attacked and missed her, everyone would get an Attack of Opportunity. But almost nobody was willing to form up on the same opponents she formed up on, even when I explained to people that my character gave out Attacks of Opportunity. It's almost like everybody willfully used bad tactics.

5/5 5/55/55/5

Diplomacy specialists are fine. Charisma casters or any int caster with an int to diplomacy trait do just fine.

The Exchange 4/5 5/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Diplomacy specialists are fine. Charisma casters or any int caster with an int to diplomacy trait do just fine.

Mentioned it above but the issue is with diplomacy/bluff/bribe/trick/bypass ONLY specialists. Because no matter how willing the GM is to go along with it it is rare to find an entire party where every player is happy playing second fiddle the whole scenario.

Sovereign Court 3/5 5/5

Kevin Willis wrote:
David Setty wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
Two weapon fighting sneak attack.
My -1 was a sword-and-board fighter rogue. I think I got to actually do a full attack from flank about once every three scenarios or so.

I saw a team (two IRL brothers, I believe) at a con make excellent use of a TWF rogue. Because the other one was playing a sorcerer.

Rogue: "I delay"
Sorcerer: "I'll D-door myself, Stabby McRoguepants, and the barbarian. Putting myself on one side and them adjacent to me but on opposite sides of this medium creature here."
Rogue: "I come off delay."

Sorcerer had Toughness, huge Con, and anything else you could think of. He knew he was going to take some hits doing that but man was it effective.

I have a rogue that does that all by herself. And she tends to ruin encounters for everyone else. But, aside from some way to teleport like that, it IS true that rogues rarely get to do a full attack in a flanking position.

Shadow Lodge 4/5

I enjoy using my spells and abilities to grant flanking to party rogues, as they always appreciate it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. The dimension door tactics is one way, spiritual ally/summon spells are another, telekinetic charge (a.k.a Summon Full Attack), and Greater Invisibility (Summon Greater Sneak Attack) are all wonderful ways.

Dark Archive 1/5

Shield champion brawler aka Captain America: the Build. If anybody could help me build it, that would be appreciated.

4/5

StevenStag25 wrote:
Shield champion brawler aka Captain America: the Build. If anybody could help me build it, that would be appreciated.

Funny enough, the geek sudoku mustering of the last scenario I ran included two players with shield champion brawlers. That's not so much an issue of it not working, though - it works fine.

3/5 **** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro

Terminalmancer wrote:
Michael Eshleman wrote:
andreww wrote:
Pete Winz wrote:
I have to disagree with BNW on whether pure healers are useful at higher tiers, with a qualification. If the rest of the party has good damage mitigation and can take down opponents quickly enough, he is correct. However, I have seen situations where a dedicated healer could have prevented PC deaths and once you start losing some of your damage dealers, things can quickly slide into a question of retreat or death. I always welcome a dedicated healer in any group where I'm playing a damage dealer and I have found that my dedicated healers are always welcomed by others, but there have been times where there has been very little for them to do. They are an insurance policy - you might be able to do without but when you need one, you need one bad.

I have run and played a lot of high tier and seeker level content. In seeker content you are largely looking at using heal which does keep up with incoming damage. Other forms of healing largely do not (outside of maybe repeat channelling life oracles) so you are normally better off doing something more pro-active.

If you damage dealers are going down fast then either they need to focus more on their own defences or they need to up their damage game.

The healer role encompasses more than just hit point replenishment. It is also about condition removal/prevention and IMO movement facilitation (e.g. freedom of movement).
The distinction between healing and support is pretty muddy in my opinion. I have seen some very powerful "healers" who utilize support options until healing becomes necessary. I took BNW's "pure healer" comment to mean someone who focuses entirely on HP replenishment (and perhaps condition removal) to the exclusion of all other support options. In that context, I'd tend to agree with him.

There are a ton of scenarios where an(y) optimized pure healer is more effective than the dedicated damage dealer and those are usually the infamously hard scenarios of PFS. I think the healers in the scenario were keeping up with a hasted baned flaming Crowe Pregen in terms of damage which was a good thing because he was in another room.

Quote:

Scout:

You have no idea how many human rogues i've seen try to "stealth through the darkness" only to have monsters at the other end of the hall go

"what is it doing?
"I don't know. Why's it crouched over like that?
" And feeling the wall.
"Oh.. i think he's blind. Why didn't his parents drown him at birth?
"Too soft I guesse, sigh.. i suppose now WE have to do it FOR them...

There's no way to open a door without being seen
Stealth has some of the biggest table variations in how it works.
The herd of cats your with probably won't stand back
The herd of cats you're with probably isn't built around not making noise
There's only a limited amount of time to do anything, and you can't take up half an hour trying to get one surprise round on one encounter.

Actually most of those have hard counters and weirdly is easy enough to build around if you go Shadow Oracle.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

My least-favorite: the invisiwizard.

a) all their spells are geared towards making themselves safe from everything
b) ranged combat? too risky, what if an enemy ::gasp:: sees me?
c) does this barrel contain the secret to ultimate cosmic power? No? How about this one?

5/5 5/55/55/5

3 people marked this as a favorite.

The best way i've found to make a healer work is to have a lot of hitpoints yourself and cast shield other on your meatshield(s). Your channels then get effectively doubled.

Risky, but amazing when your level 1 is wrestling the high tier into submission...

4/5

I honestly expect to see a spate of Pei Zin life oracles if the archetype is legalized for that very reason. Panic Button of Channel + Quick Channel + Lay on Hands with Life Link and Shield Other active more or less trivializes damage from a lot of encounters.

3/5 **** Venture-Agent, Massachusetts—Boston Metro

BigNorseWolf wrote:

The best way i've found to make a healer work is to have a lot of hitpoints yourself and cast shield other on your meatshield(s). Your channels then get effectively doubled.

Risky, but amazing when your level 1 is wrestling the high tier into submission...

And be Fey. All of the best healers are Fey simply because healing yourself is more efficient (+2 for every die of healing rolled on you) than healing someone else.

4/5

MadScientistWorking wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:

The best way i've found to make a healer work is to have a lot of hitpoints yourself and cast shield other on your meatshield(s). Your channels then get effectively doubled.

Risky, but amazing when your level 1 is wrestling the high tier into submission...

And be Fey. All of the best healers are Fey simply because healing yourself is more efficient (+2 for every die of healing rolled on you) than healing someone else.

I can't wait to see the day when someone tries to argue that the Orc Bloodline should add to healing because it's positive energy damage. Someone's gonna do it some day and the backlash will be glorious.

Scarab Sages

Most are covered above. In general, anything that requires the GM to interpret the rules a certain way, is problematic in PFS. In particular, I've had issues with illusion magic in PFS, as that entire school seems to have issues with table variation. Stealth too.

Not so much a PFS issue, but one for Pathfinder in general, is that there aren't really that many abilities that allow a Tank character to hold the enemy's attention like in most MMORPGs.

As BNW pointed out, lots of issues getting low level healers to be more than just wand holders. I think the ease of access to wands for low level characters serves to really nerf clerics of good deities, at least at low levels. I've played several scenarios where my dedicated healer is mostly casting guidance and light, because they just have no other use to the party.

In general, I've noticed that characters designed to be supportive, but not really a combatant, seem to be looked down upon in PFS. This could just be a local or personal thing, as I do mostly make support characters.

1/5

Since PFS is random people with random characters it's most peoples hope that people are bringing valuable members. A metric people use is how useful in combat are you. When your entire contribution was giving people a +1 to an attack or save then you're not really doing much to help the team win because a different character could have been dropping an enemy or hindering them to make them easier to kill. So if your supportive character doesn't meet their view of useful it will be seen as a character that is needing to be carried.

This is why battle bards/clerics are cool. Lay down a party buff and then get to the killing, and why Lem is less cool, lay down the buff and then total defend until fight is over.

Scarab Sages 3/5

This might sound odd, but I've found that the best way to 2WF is to let them come to you. Shoot/throw/buff something turn 1, if they're still alive they should be coming at you so you can full attack. It's not quite as glamorous as pounce, but it makes do.

5/5 5/55/55/5

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Angel Hunter D wrote:
This might sound odd, but I've found that the best way to 2WF is to let them come to you. Shoot/throw/buff something turn 1, if they're still alive they should be coming at you so you can full attack. It's not quite as glamorous as pounce, but it makes do.

"Whats QuisinOrc doing?

"I'm going to delay the Ghoul comes near me then step up and full attack

"Bob, whats Ulgar Doing?

"LEEEEEERROOOOYYY JEEEEEEEENKINS!" charges up.

1 to 50 of 258 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Organized Play / Pathfinder Society / In general, what character builds or concepts do not pan out in PFS? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.