This might not help the OP, much, but just in case people want to review the Time Mystery, and don't have a book copy, here it is.
I was hoping to comment, but my concentration is shot right now, so... whoops!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It's cool, not OP.
ACG will provide way more difficulties towards balancing than UM and UC. If ACG is fine for you, the latter should'nt be a problem.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think it is great, but in a fun and useful way, not an OP way.
It has lots of generally useful revelations, so you're not stuck picking anything terrible for lack of choices. On the other hand, the low level spells aren't great, though they improve at higher levels, and Time Stop at 9th is just dandy.
As a player I like it a lot, and as a DM I would have no problem with a player taking it. The one thing you may need to turn your mind to is how Time Sight works when you get the later abilities beyond True Seeing (I think the intent is clearly to give additional abilities rather than to take something away and substitute something else, but the wording is unclear. That is a higher level problem than you need to deal with right now, however).
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think it's one of the better Mysteries available, but not game-breakingly so. The last few spells are pretty powerful but the first half is kinda meh. But the real power is in its Revelations; there are some really good ones. They're mostly utility, but can influence combat quite a bit.
Be aware though that rules as written, Knowledge of the Ages is a standard action to use, so doing it mid-combat to identify creatures will be tricky.
Compared to the Fire Mystery, Fire is a lot more outright destructive: better Mystery spells (Resist Energy, Fireball) and more damaging Revelations (Burning Magic, Fire Breath, Touch of Flame), while Time is a lot more support-based (Knowledge of the Ages, Erase from Time, Temporal Celerity, Time Hop). Both are very powerful in different contexts, but I wouldn't say one is outright better than the other.
Unless you allow the Dazing Spell metamagic feat (which I don't recall where that comes from, so...), in which case flame suddenly wins D&D Pathfinder.
EDIT: looked it up, and linked above. It's from the Advanced Player's Guide, so... yeah. There are a lot of threads on that feat.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Time mystery is powerful but not in a disruptive way, its one of the better mysteries I have actually ran an oracle who used it but she was a seer so some of her discoveries were spoken for. I always felt like my discoveries were useful but they aren't particularly broken.
I mean they do get Time stop but if you get to 18 you've probably already found the game broke xD
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In my Jade Regent campaign I made an escorted NPC a time oracle with the tongues curse and a homebrew archetype. The time mystery has a lot of utility: Knowledge of the Ages gives information, Temporal Celerity gives initiative, Time Flicker gives concealment, Time Hop gives mobility, and Time Sight penetrates illusions. I didn't try the others, but Sean FitzSimon's Channeling the Cosmos: A Guide to the Oracle quotes Nategar05 on a use for Erase from Time.
Utility is not power. Utility makes the party more versatile and can make the game more fun for everyone. Therefore, I count time as one of the good mysteries for the GM.
To be clear, when the campaign started I thought CRB, APG, and ACG came out first -- THEN UM, UC, etc. And I only allowed the ACG because I wanted to give people more class flavors -- if you want to be a barbarian/caster hybrid you're out of luck without the Bloodrager or Skald, for example.
You are correct in terms of when they came out.
The APG came out 2010, UM and UC in 2011 (to the best of my recall - UC could have been 2012, but I think it's 2011).
The order they're released means little, in terms of balanced abilities.
One of the (if not The) most broken and unbalanced book in the game was printed extremely early on: Core. The abilities printed in that book are generally (though not excessively) less balanced in most cases, compared to subsequent installments (barbarian, bard, paladin, and ranger, aside; and depending on who you talk to, those are questionable).
Other books with individual abilities that have been relatively OP have been released since, but most prominently the balance of the Core classes is all over the place.
The APG provides several instances of surprisingly potent abilities (such as Dazing Spell feat, mentioned above) that can wreck encounters in a multitude of different ways.
Because of that...
I'm completely fine banning (or altering/nerfing) certain spells/feats/archetypes/etc.
... is totally a solid and important decision. House rules are awesome rules. That said, it may be hard to know exactly what advice to give, and what relative power levels you're comfortable with when making suggestions or giving advice, as we're not all using the same scale.
Either way: hope you've got some good gaming!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Eh, doesn't seem like anything an Oracle could really abuse. You're pretty generous with loot and you've buffed your PCs quite a bit. Simply adding more HP to enemies won't counteract that, but cherry-picking monsters rather than using CR seems fair (though can sometimes bite you in the ass). I'm not seeing anything that would make Time more OP than Flame. As said, it's less blasty and more support. Depending on group composition, that's fine. Don't think Time Oracles will end encounters as much as Flame Oracles would. Time lends itself more towards buff/debuff or more melee, while Flame will sling more spells/abilities.
You are correct in terms of when they came out.
The APG came out 2010, UM and UC in 2011 (to the best of my recall - UC could have been 2012, but I think it's 2011).
ACG didn't come out until 2014, which was my point.
Fair enough. The only thing you seemed uncertain about in that part was the timeline, hence my comment. :)
The order they're released means little, in terms of balanced abilities.
Is that so? I saw quite a few things in UC/UM that looked like blatant power creep to me, hence my concern.
Eh. "Balance issues" perhaps, but that's rather even throughout - the actual timeline doesn't make power creep increase over time, in Paizo (unlike in 3.5, where it not only did so, but did so intentionally).
House rules are awesome rules. That said, it may be hard to know exactly what advice to give, and what relative power levels you're comfortable with when making suggestions or giving advice, as we're not all using the same scale.
How would you suggest I indicate my place on the scale?
I don't have a particular suggestion, the details you give below are a pretty solid method. I'm not - and let me repeat that: I'm not - suggesting that you're doing anything wrong, or that you shouldn't be doing that, or whatever.
My only point therein was to caution that a lot of the advice you'd receive may not entirely be applicable, because a lot of the abuses stem from subtle, nuanced, or unexpected interactions.
By making proactive choices (like banning leadership), you're cutting down a lot on the general power available.
The other "most powerful" effects you should be aware of, though, include (but are not limited to) gate, simulacrum, wish, and magic item creation, in general. Also a candle of invocation (especially lawful evil, chaotic evil, and any kind of good).
I have zero problem with so-called "min-maxing" though I dislike "cheese."
This is totally fair, but... you'll have people arguing about what each of those are in no time flat. XD
(Again, not wrong: it's just that (to half-quote myself, as I say this a lot), as passionate nerds, we have strong personalities and stronger opinions, and that comes out... a lot!)
In general I'd say the campaign has a stronger focus on combat than most might and combats in general are significantly tougher than other campaigns I've played in. Combats are also generally longer than people describe on these forums, though that could be a case of people not optimizing enough or something (and/or due to me throwing stuff at the party that I know they can handle rather than what CR claims is reasonable).
<snip>
Character creation rules are 20 point buy, nothing above a 16 or below a 7 prior to racial bonuses. Two traits. After the TPK I said the party could start with 33k WBL (which brought their WBL down a bit from prior to the TPK, though a lot of that WBL was inflated due to back-up weapons or something). They also got 12 potions each of caster level 5 or less. Level 6 and 9 casters also got to start with 3 wands of caster level 5 or less. If that seems like a lot their characters are also on an extended mission in the wilderness with little chance to resupply until level 9.
Players have maximized HP. Bestiary monsters get a health bonus to compensate for the maximized HP and the larger party size. Classed enemies simply have maximized HP like players.
I also went a bit crazy on the "finale" of level six and made some new stuff up with extra bonuses for a boss battle which, judging by player comments, was well received. Normally stick to the default rules, though.
Sounds like an awesome game!
EDIT: I'm sick, mildly feverish, and kiiiiiinda forgot sentences I had in my head, but typed too quickly to actually write. Also to fix a bit of coding.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You're pretty generous with loot and you've buffed your PCs quite a bit.Eh, 33k is simply level 8 WBL, for the record. The potions are extra, sure, but they're having to manage those long term over several levels. The wands thing mainly came about from observing how casters seemed to be struggling compared to martials, at least so far (from what I understand this will likely severely reverse itself at higher levels).
Simply adding more HP to enemies won't counteract that, but cherry-picking monsters rather than using CR seems fair (though can sometimes bite you in the ass).Just to clarify...
Bestiary monsters get a 50% bonus to health rather than getting HP maximized. This is because monster con scores and hit die can radically differ -- if a creature has 51 HP (6d6+30) and another has 45 HP (6d10 + 12) you'd get 66 vs 72 HP when maximized.
When we went up to six people from four I also started adding a further 50% bonus (since 6/4 = 1.5) as a jury-rig quick fix without having to find new monsters or adding extra ones. Technically the synergy between six PCs results in more than a 50% power boost but I figured it was good enough in most cases and it seems to have worked fine so far.
Also, I wasn't cherry-picking monsters, I was making encounters that would seem unreasonable by straight CR.
For example, one encounter was two trolls, a troll acolyte, and a two-headed troll. According to CR this is CR 5, 5, 6, and 8 which totals 10400 XP (or the equivalent of a CR 10+ encounter). The party was level 5 at the time. The party still won without any deaths. And that was after several other fights that day as well, not the only encounter.
This all sounds very fair, and quite solid.
From what I'm seeing,
Don't think Time Oracles will end encounters as much as Flame Oracles would.
... is pretty much exactly correct. A dazing flame oracle will wreck stuff.
casters seemed to be struggling compared to martials, at least so far (from what I understand this will likely severely reverse itself at higher levels).
... this is not a truism, despite the implications you'll read from me and others. It can be true, and it can easily and accidentally happen, but it's not automatic.
Rather, it's just... a thing that keeps happening, happening on accident and without any intent, and happening a lot. It does not happen every time, and does not happen automatically. It is up to the choices of the player and how they build things (though not necessarily consciously).
Also, Dazing Spell (and, you know, Sacred Geometry) aside, blasters aren't really ever going to wreck your encounters. The power of magic is less to defeat encounters (though it can do this well) and more to circumvent encounters entirely (usually by altering the flow of the narrative). How it accomplishes this is kind of irrelevant: there are far too many exceedingly specific methods for any different hypothetical encounter, depending entirely on a caster's personal load-out and access to various spells or abilities.
This more or less coincidentally becomes ever-more-likely at higher levels with smaller-but-more-potent-over-all spell lists come into play.
Anyway, it's not even a bad thing, just something to be aware of, as, if it catches you off-guard, it can ruin the game. One thing you may want to do is get player buy-in that if they, for whatever reason, accidentally wreck your game, they'll be willing to put down or trade in their new toys for something a little more "in line" with your expectations. Actually doing so is never the goal, nor should it be a first resort, but if you, as a GM, just can't challenge them anymore for <reasons>, or you'd be forced to go, "Uh, okay, well... you win, I guess. I'll see you guys in a year, when I come up with a new game?" instead of any sort of true narrative, many players would prefer to forgo their personal glory for a more interesting (and satisfying) story.
All that said, nothing about Time oracle is especially DOOM-worthy to my (not terribly experienced with that mystery, and kind of out-of-it, 'cause sick) eye, so, I'd say you can give it a shot, if you think it can work for your game!
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
All that said, nothing about Time oracle is especially DOOM-worthy to my (not terribly experienced with that mystery, and kind of out-of-it, 'cause sick) eye, so, I'd say you can give it a shot, if you think it can work for your game!What criteria should I be using for that? Or to rephrase, what would make you think "That won't work well for your game?"
That depends per class, I'd say. In general, if the same general strategy works against a wide variety of encounters and that person seems to dominate the party. Even then, there's a difference between being very effective and being OP, but still. A Flame Oracle is a dumb blaster that can fart out a lot of Fireballs per day, but it still has all the problems a regular blaster has. Spell Resistance, Fire Resistance, and so on. A Heavens Oracle will be using Color Spray until level 11 or so. That might not be exactly OP, but very tedious and anoying. A Time Oracle will usually be good with Knowledges (Knowledge of the Ages), be on top of initiative order (Temporal Celerity), and have great mobility (Time Hop). Each individual thing isn't overly powerful in itself, but together it cam be quite a powerful package. OP-ness usually stems from multiclassing a certain combination of class abilities together, or ridiculous overspecialisation in certain areas. Time Oracle doesn't do that, IMHO.
And my apologies for using "cherry-picking," it might've sounded more negative than I intended. The encounter sounds pretty nasty, but it seems like you've made it out okay. Trolls are mostly dumb beatsticks, if your party has a way of crowd control, that CR drops a lot. Still, though, "My party made it out fine" is a slippery slope. I'm not disapproving, just warning a bit. Two extra players ups the party's CR by 2 or 3 or so, but that still would've been a nasty fight. I had a GM who kept throwing more and more ridiculous CRs at us, saying that we kept surviving, despite the chances of a TPK constantly being at around 60+%. But that's just percentages, sometimes they just don't work out the way you'd think. If your party beat everything without too much risk, they're either playing really well or were lucky, I can't see that from this side of the screen.
Again, I'm not implying you should stop doing what you're doing, but please realise that the CR system, flawed as it is, is somewhat grounded in reality and has a reason for being like that.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There is a wonderful site that lists a ton of Pathfinder Guides. Whenever you are concerned about a player using something, consult a guide. These guides are designed primarily for player usage and written by someone with experience, or at least plenty of theorycrafting, about the class in general.
Your players will never be quite as good as the guide writer in running their character, but the guide gives you a good expectation bar for the peak performance of a player.
From having played Oracles myself, the Time mystery is perfectly fine. It doesn't provide any additional ways to get Charisma to a stat, its mystery spells are pretty mediocre until higher levels which leaves the player stuck to what spells they learn as they level (quite a limited list), and overall the Time mystery revelations are on the defensive side of things. The defense isn't a bad thing, but a Wizard would have access to just about everything the Time Mystery provides the oracle.
-Haste and Slow
-Blur and Blink
-Time Hop (Wizard School Ability)
The only really unique aspects of the Time Mystery are the ability to protect escorts/allies via Erase from Time and their exceptional initiative. Which is fine because, again, Wizards just take a familiar that gives them a flat +4. Heck, even the final revelation is just the Wizard Immortality discovery.
If you'd allow a Wizard, you should allow a Time Oracle.
Some of the things I noticed that looked like power creep (not exhaustive and certainly not claiming these are the worst examples):
Quick Bull Rush/Dirty Trick/etc
(Improved) Snap Shot
Clustered Shots
(Greater) Spell Specialization
I've found the efficacy of Combat Maneuvers weakens so much against non-humanoid opponents (in fact, against most bestiary creatures), so things that empower that don't bother me, much.
Snap Shot is an interesting case - it originally did nothing (it "permitted" something that could already be done without the feat), but was actually changed (because it really didn't do anything) via errata to become one of the more powerful feats, so... go figure.
In any event, most of this is fair. It's personal balance considerations.
WHY ARE YOU BEING CONDESCENDING AND CLAIMING I'M DOING EVERYTHING WRONG. YOU JERK.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The other "most powerful" effects you should be aware of, though, include (but are not limited to) gate, simulacrum, wish, and magic item creation, in general. Also a candle of invocation (especially lawful evil, chaotic evil, and any kind of good).
Crafting is also not allowed, though that's also partly simply because the party won't have the time to craft for a while, things are busy happening. Also avoids some of the other issues (and, incidentally, lets me "break" the rules in the party's favor for obtaining magical items if needed).
Fair!
I'm assuming the main issue with Candle of Invocation is the Gate spell?
Except for Simulacrum, the rest seem to be level 9 spells. How exactly do people abuse Simulacrum? Crafting or something? Extra buffs?
Actually the "problems" come in several different ways, and I can't necessarily think of them all.
While the main problem is gate, yes, that's not the only problem.
candle’s operates as if two levels higher for purposes of determining spells per day if he burns the candle during or just prior to his spell preparation time. He can even cast spells normally unavailable to him As if he were of that higher level, but only so long as the candle continues to burn.
As a single example, let's imagine a ninth level cleric, who just gained access to 5th level spells. Now that cleric has access to planar ally, and thus an outsider of impressive power (who's CR is hypothetically equal to the party, with a CL equal to the party's own sorcerer). The outsider is fundamentally loyal, as they are allied with the cleric's deity and motivations.
For some campaigns, this can cause problems.
(For others, notsomuch, but, again, one example of many; there's also access to the geas spell, and other abilities that games sometimes either have problems with, or whatever.)
This is totally fair, but... you'll have people arguing about what each of those are in no time flat. XD
Fair enough. For example, going 1 Sorcerer/19 Wizard for sorcerer bloodline powers affecting wizard spells would be cheese (and I ruled that wouldn't work). Going 1 level of Oracle for Water/Fire Sight only would be cheese. Both from my perspective of course, YMMV.
Indeed! One of the reasons I think this game is so cool, is how many ways people can play it "right" and "wrong" at the same time!
(By RAW, you're correct, that the first wouldn't work, by-the-by.)
The power of magic is less to defeat encounters (though it can do this well) and more to circumvent encounters entirely
Suppose we'll see what happens, any particular spells to keep in mind in that regard? I realize you said there's loads of possibilities, but surely some spells stand out in terms of "You'll need to take this into consideration."
The simple answer, is "No." There really, really are way too many, and it is so situational that I can't even begin to list them all out.
As an example, depending on how they're used, a simple hypnotism and charm person could massively wreck intrigue-based campaigns, via a bard or sorcerer spamming those and acing any Diplomacy/Charisma-based checks. They'd be much less viable in an undead-themed campaign, however (not entirely useless, but it might be more difficult).
All that said, nothing about Time oracle is especially DOOM-worthy to my (not terribly experienced with that mystery, and kind of out-of-it, 'cause sick) eye, so, I'd say you can give it a shot, if you think it can work for your game!
What criteria should I be using for that? Or to rephrase, what would make you think "That won't work well for your game?"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sorry! Seems like it's okay to me!
If you'd allow a Wizard, you should allow a Time Oracle.
Seems about right!
Oh, heeeeeeeyyyyyyy - that awkward moment when you get super sick, totally forget about/lose a thread, and only find it much later.
I... may have some responses, later, if I don't ADD-out and forget again. Sorry! >.<
I played one in Jade Regent and didn't feel it was particularly powerful at all. it was FUN... but a lot of his abilities required him to touch an opponent, and he was WAY too squishy to be THAT close to the opponents.
All in all, I had a lot of fun with him AND was one of the weakest in the game. no power creep there.