Venture-Lieutenant, Indiana—Martinsville
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I have looked at this and at my one (1) character that uses this Archtype, using Herolab for the rebuild.
To be fair, I did not take this archtype to get Combat Maneuvers, but for the Knowledge Skills it provides.
I lost one feat from the loss of the bonus feat from 2nd level, which means that Dodge was dropped, which also dropped Mobility for me. For me, that is the extent of the change, having to choose another feat in place of Mobility. Everything else stayed the same for me, as I was not using the CMB aspects of this Archtype. I also got to choose one of the new sword Secrets, which was a bonus for me.
How does it stack with the original Archtype vs. the change? Meh.
I don't see the need for the change, but as far as Grandfathering the old version, not really seeing the need for that either. The loss of a few bonuses on CMB (if choosing the Maneuver Training) is tempered by the flexibility to choose the Sword Secrets wanted at different stages. My original reason for getting this Archtype was to qualify sooner for Living Monolith. That still happens for me.
I do understand that the bonuses are halved for the newer version with Maneuver Training. I saw a similar change like this with Sap Adept/Master feats a bit ago.
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I would love to see the previous version of Lore Warden grandfathered into PFS, but I do have a dog in this fight so take that as you will. That said, here in my thought on this.
Like some others, I did not take Lore Warden for the combat maneuver bonus, I took it for the skill point boosts. I loved the flavor of the archetype and initially I wasn't even really focusing on the combat maneuvers. After seeing the interesting ways to affect combat as opposed to "Move into position. Roll attack. Did I hit? Roll Damage. Did I miss? That sucks. Next round. Move into position. Roll Attack. Did I hit? etc."
Lore Warden was the only fighter archetype you could play where the other players did not expect you to thwack the enemy over and over again. Take a Polearm Master and tell you fellow players that you want to try to Trip up one of the mooks in the fight, or Disarm something from the BBEG and everyone groans. Say that with a Lore Warden and you get nods and understanding.
The new Lore Warden isn't awful, but for an archetype that wants you to do something other than thwack stuff over and over again, it goes out of its way to make those options much more different than simply thwacking stuff. Its an established fact that CMD is more often than not higher than an enemy's AC, especially at higher levels.
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I also don't support grandfathering on principle. Every time we grandfather something that is deemed inappropriate, it continues to do its damage until the character retires. That's 33 games they can negatively impact, if it's a particularly bad option. (Or more, when people go and start up several level 1's just to get around the impending ban.)
I expect the campaign staff will/have looked at all sides of this, and are likely to have more than just forum reports to go on. I trust them to make the right decision for the campaign, and I will change my PC's if needed and go on. Season 9 is shaping up to be amazing (as I prep the upcoming special - oh my gosh, can't wait to run this!!), and losing a +4 is not going to impede my fun that much. YMMV.
More like 60, People with grandfathered stuff around here always slow track them to get to play them the most they can.
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I am a player of not one but two old school Summoners (one has a non combat Eidolon) so while I don't have skin in this game, I know what skin means to people.
That said I totally understood that there was a reason why Summoners were eventually banned. There was a clamoring for it from the bottom up and leadership eventually responded.
They were also sensitive to the desires of those who had started characters (and bluntly, neither of my characters flavor would have translated well).
There seems to be no clamoring to change the Lore Warden. Quite the opposite in fact; many asking why the heck are they messing with it. Many are citing both flavor and mechanical reasons for it's retention.
In that context, how can campaign leadership not either grandfather or allow the both versions of the Lore Warden?
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Please forgive the possible silly question, but has there ever been a case where the powers that be have reversed their decision to change classes/items/etc due to posts on the forums? I personally do not like the changes to the Lord Warden(I have 2), nor do I understand the need to change it, no matter how it is explained or what math is tossed in.
Just curious and tossing in my opinion.
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Please forgive the possible silly question, but has there ever been a case where the powers that be have reversed their decision to change classes/items/etc due to posts on the forums? I personally do not like the changes to the Lord Warden(I have 2), nor do I understand the need to change it, no matter how it is explained or what math is tossed in.
Just curious and tossing in my opinion.
In this case, it would be the Pathfinder Design Team (PDT), which have nothing to do with PFS, that would make this sort of decision. The fact that they actually printed a change in a Core line book, leads me to believe they wouldn't go back on that change until potentially a reprint.
But, search out the threads regarding Crane Style and the later Crane feats (Crane Wing and Crane Riposte) and Free Actions to how they've completely reversed course on FAQ answers before.
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Personally, I've played in many times more scenarios broken by murdermachine archers and a druid's PET than by summoners.Summoners getting to stay ended up being a mistake.This.The summoners got to stay. Are lore wardens nearly as bad?
*pawprint*
Old Eidolons could be far more broken than druid pets.
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Old Eidolons could be far more broken than druid pets.Personally, I've played in many times more scenarios broken by murdermachine archers and a druid's PET than by summoners.Summoners getting to stay ended up being a mistake.This.The summoners got to stay. Are lore wardens nearly as bad?
*pawprint*
Every time I've played with and played old school Summoners, the players have been aware of the potential brokenness and have toned it down if need be. They have also are the ones who know summoners inside and out so they don't tie up the speed of the game.
I would say, far from being a mistake, it has shown that most veteran players (the ones with old school summoners)could be trusted to handle the characters well.
Surely,if we can trust veteran players with old school summoners, trusting most players with lore wardens should work.
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I think flavor is "I'm a trip fighter, and I'm good!"
Having a +32 CMB is "I can trip an average foe four levels higher than me with no failure chance, and I can trip a foe seven levels higher than me with a 50/50 chance!" That's more than flavor.
Since in PFS, you never see foes at CR15 except when it's supposed to be something you don't fight, having numbers that high breaks the game system.
EDIT: rewritten to avoid the potential snarky tone the first version had.
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Old Eidolons could be far more broken than druid pets.Personally, I've played in many times more scenarios broken by murdermachine archers and a druid's PET than by summoners.Summoners getting to stay ended up being a mistake.This.The summoners got to stay. Are lore wardens nearly as bad?
*pawprint*
Every time I've played with and played old school Summoners, the players have been aware of the potential brokenness and have toned it down if need be. They have also are the ones who know summoners inside and out so they don't tie up the speed of the game.
I would say, far from being a mistake, it has shown that most veteran players (the ones with old school summoners)could be trusted to handle the characters well.
Surely,if we can trust veteran players with old school summoners, trusting most players with lore wardens should work.
As almost every argument of this type has gone by over the years, its become increasingly clear that every region has differences. The maturity with which players use broken characters is one of those regional differences.
My experience does not mirror yours.
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I don't think that's "flavor", that's "breaking the game system".
I agree here. Being really good at something can be flavor. The gradient by how much which you break the game system is not flavor. You can still create a really fantastic and effective CMB/CMD character and thus the flavor is not broken.
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I don't think that's "flavor", that's "breaking the game system".Not all that different than an enchanter stacking all the feats available, though.
Besides, at level 8 you can expect to fight CR11 stuff in PFS. According to the stats, that's roughly equivalent to having a hit-with-stick bonus of +25. Maybe +21, given the number of four-legged creatures floating around. Absurd, yes, but that kind of murderhobo build doesn't get errata'd nearly this hard.
Trip builds need that kind of overkill more than stabby builds, anyway, since there's a penalty for failing your roll badly.
Unless you are trying to trip 8-legged, Huge creatures at level 8, you don't need a +32 to trip at 8th level.
EDIT:
And being able to trip everything with only a 5% failure chance, kinda defeats the purpose of needing to roll a random chance to succeed at something, doesn't it?
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You are not allowed to trip huge creatures (unless you are large or wear titanic armor as medium creature).
You cannot trip flying or swimming creatures.
You cannot trip creatures without legs (oozes, snakes, nagas for example).
Now if I meet something that is actually trippable I want it to stick or I would have been better off with simply dishing out damage as CMD ramps up much faster than AC.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Like some others, I did not take Lore Warden for the combat maneuver bonus, I took it for the skill point boosts. I loved the flavor of the archetype and initially I wasn't even really focusing on the combat maneuvers. After seeing the interesting ways to affect combat as opposed to "Move into position. Roll attack. Did I hit? Roll Damage. Did I miss? That sucks. Next round. Move into position. Roll Attack. Did I hit? etc."Lore Warden was the only fighter archetype you could play where the other players did not expect you to thwack the enemy over and over again. Take a Polearm Master and tell you fellow players that you want to try to Trip up one of the mooks in the fight, or Disarm something from the BBEG and everyone groans. Say that with a Lore Warden and you get nods and understanding.
I wish it was better designed. From a logical standpoint you're still thwacking at stuff its just slightly differently.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I'm not a big fan of the old lore warden, but I support this request.
I think the old lore warden did a poor job of realizing it's primary theme - the learned fighter - because those abilities were clunky. And the maneuver side was very powerful, way ahead of the curve for fighters of its time. (Nowadays other fighters have sort of caught up.)
I would like to give people either complete rebuild or grandfathering. I think any lore warden build is going to be an intricate piece of machinery, and it's going to suffer heavily with less than a full rebuild. There are very specific ability score choices, feat progressions, and multiclassing decisions involved that mean you can't just switch the LW levels for the new LW and expect the resulting creature to function properly.
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While I don't have a Lore Warden myself, I know plenty of people that do. Here's my take on this situation. The original Lore Warden seems too good that there's almost no reason to NOT take it over a regular Fighter. Seems to me that Lore Wardens are better at combat maneuvers than Maneuver Master Monks. That sounds like an issue.
I would support full rebuilds for PCs that have levels in Lore Warden; however, I cannot support grandfathering. Balance changes happen for a reason and this new version looks to be more reasonable. I feel that grandfathering the Summoners of old was a mistake and while LW is not on that level, they needed to be hit with the Nerf Bat.
Calling Nerf Bat...
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All I gotta say is that I'm going to miss Caspian (my lore warden). I put a lot of effort into learning how to talk like a "country hick" that had more than a middle school education. He was the only character I had that had never done lethal damage to a living creature. I put his Intelligence on par to his Dex (dex based fighter) so he could identify the bad guys and show off all the knowledge he had gained from reading books during his down time at the farm.
I'm not even sure if I want to rebuild him at all or just retire him. He has been lack luster during combats the last few scenarios where the majority of the enemies were immune to his maneuver, but boy was he fun to roleplay.
I'll support leadership either way in this, I just wish I had more time to play Casper.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Appalachia
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I am a player of not one but two old school Summoners (one has a non combat Eidolon) so while I don't have skin in this game, I know what skin means to people.
That said I totally understood that there was a reason why Summoners were eventually banned. There was a clamoring for it from the bottom up and leadership eventually responded.
They were also sensitive to the desires of those who had started characters (and bluntly, neither of my characters flavor would have translated well).
There seems to be no clamoring to change the Lore Warden. Quite the opposite in fact; many asking why the heck are they messing with it. Many are citing both flavor and mechanical reasons for it's retention.
In that context, how can campaign leadership not either grandfather or allow the both versions of the Lore Warden?
Allowing both would also be acceptable.
I really have absolutely no issue with the O G Lore Warden, I just think that grandfathering is a bad policy and should not be the standard.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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You should bring a printout of the PRD if you don't have reliable internet access or a tablet with the screencaps.
You don't even need to do that. Since we don't need proof of purchase, a player can borrow a friend's copy of the new rules and copy down the rules by hand, yes?
--
One of my characters used a two-level dip in Lore Warden to meet prerequisites for a Prestige Class and a couple of feats. I have NO IDEA what I am allowed to rebuild, in order to bring him legal?
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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There seems to be no clamoring to change the Lore Warden. Quite the opposite in fact; many asking why the heck are they messing with it. Many are citing both flavor and mechanical reasons for it's retention.
It was there, but it was mostly GMs frustrated when maneuver monkeys go to town, preventing every monster in an adventure from doing what it's supposed to.
It wasn't nearly as bad as summoners, but there absolutely were some people unhappy with the Lore Warden as-was.
It was also on the development team's list of things "that should have never been made like that" - originally it was way ahead of the power curve for fighters. Other archetypes have caught up a lot, also thanks to advanced armor and weapon training.
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All I gotta say is that I'm going to miss Caspian (my lore warden). I put a lot of effort into learning how to talk like a "country hick" that had more than a middle school education. He was the only character I had that had never done lethal damage to a living creature. I put his Intelligence on par to his Dex (dex based fighter) so he could identify the bad guys and show off all the knowledge he had gained from reading books during his down time at the farm.
I'm not even sure if I want to rebuild him at all or just retire him. He has been lack luster during combats the last few scenarios where the majority of the enemies were immune to his maneuver, but boy was he fun to roleplay.
I'll support leadership either way in this, I just wish I had more time to play Casper.
Exactly. My LW was a person, not a collection of combat maneuvers and attacks. And the person that she was can't exist under the new LW rules. I'd be better off retraining into Slayer, but again, that's not who she is. Adoption of the new LW is effectively murdering one of the people I most enjoyed pretending to be. And that makes me sad. And angry.
Not angry at John and the development team. It makes me angry at the Problem Players who have once again made us unable to have nice things. More and more, when I see changes made to mechanics, especially in PFS, they come as a result of Problem Players abusing rules, exploiting loopholes, etc. The problem isn't (usually) in the rules. The problem is the Problem Players who exploit and twist the rules. Changing rules and nerfing beloved options doesn't actually solve anything, since the underlying problem is still in place: the Problem Players who caused the problem in the first place.
When a Problem Player's current abuse gets nerfed, he posts a nasty comment on the forums, then promptly moves on to abuse some other mechanic, triggering more complaints about 'broken' mechanics- and the cycle begins again. But all the non-Problem Players have been punished for what the Problem Players have done. The only ones who don't suffer are the ones who caused the problems in the first place.
TL;DR
Mechanics aren't the problem. Problem Players are the problem, and no amount of changes to the mechanics of the game will fix what's wrong with some players.
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Exactly. My LW was a person, not a collection of combat maneuvers and attacks.
Yeah. This does highlight a difference to approach. One could imagine a continuum, between your character being what I call a gamepiece (i.e. the collection of maneuvers, attacks, and abilities) and a character (i.e. the person). Few people are at one or the other end of the continuum, but most of us are probably closer to one end than the other in terms of how we approach our characters.
If you call your character a "toon" (common in MMOs; I heard it all the time in Eve Online, but have only heard PFS players use this term once or twice), you're probably all the way over to the gamepiece side. If you don't even know how to take mechanical advantage of your character's capabilities, and don't care much, you're all the way over on the character side.
It's interesting to ask people why they like a class. If they respond because it's powerful in this way and gives you this at this level, etc., then they're thinking more in gamepiece terms. If they respond having to do with the nature of the class and what lore it implies, they're probably thinking more in character terms. (I find wizards sometimes frustrating to play because you have to know at the beginning of the day which spells you're going to need; sorcerers are ironically a little more flexible, at least during one day. However, wizard remains my favorite class because I like the whole scholar-mage thing. So, arcanist is one of my new favorite classes.... My favorite was the Magister from Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, as they were like the arcanist from Pathfinder, but had the spell progression of the wizard.)
So, why do you like the Lore Warden? Me, because it is a fighter class that focuses on scholarship and knowledge. It's exactly the sort of fighter that the Pathfinder Society should attract. The old Lore Warden was great; the new one makes too many sacrifices (giving up a feat and a class feature for a delayed, specific and weak, feat is very sad).
I can see where the old Lore Warden was perhaps abusive if you viewed it as a dip to get you lots of fun mechanics, or if you used it to build extreme maneuver cheese. Were people complaining about it? I didn't see it at all myself.
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There seems to be no clamoring to change the Lore Warden. Quite the opposite in fact; many asking why the heck are they messing with it. Many are citing both flavor and mechanical reasons for it's retention.It was there, but it was mostly GMs frustrated when maneuver monkeys go to town, preventing every monster in an adventure from doing what it's supposed to...
I view this a more of a problem on the GM side of the screen, although I also agree with Amanda's comments about Problem Players.
If PCs who are built for it manage to use manoeuvres successfully to shut down enemies, how is that any different than a PC Wizard with maxed INT and spell focus feats doing the same thing with spells? (Same analogy goes for any primary spellcaster really).
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I view this a more of a problem on the GM side of the screen, although I also agree with Amanda's comments about Problem Players.There seems to be no clamoring to change the Lore Warden. Quite the opposite in fact; many asking why the heck are they messing with it. Many are citing both flavor and mechanical reasons for it's retention.It was there, but it was mostly GMs frustrated when maneuver monkeys go to town, preventing every monster in an adventure from doing what it's supposed to...
I think that the GM having a good time is also important. If a GM doesn't enjoy something that doesn't mean the GM is necessarily the problem. If a player enjoys an ability and the GM doesn't, that doesn't mean the player is right and the GM is wrong.
It's the step from "GM should be a fan of the players" to "GM should learn to enjoy everything the players do no matter what" that I don't want.
If PCs who are built for it manage to use manoeuvres successfully to shut down enemies, how is that any different than a PC Wizard with maxed INT and spell focus feats doing the same thing with spells? (Same analogy goes for any primary spellcaster really).
You're arguing "something else is also problematic so we should just accept this", which I don't agree with.
As it happens, it's easier to work on this isue (it's only one archetype) than a dozen whole classes.
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I view this a more of a problem on the GM side of the screen, although I also agree with Amanda's comments about Problem Players.There seems to be no clamoring to change the Lore Warden. Quite the opposite in fact; many asking why the heck are they messing with it. Many are citing both flavor and mechanical reasons for it's retention.It was there, but it was mostly GMs frustrated when maneuver monkeys go to town, preventing every monster in an adventure from doing what it's supposed to...I think that the GM having a good time is also important. If a GM doesn't enjoy something that doesn't mean the GM is necessarily the problem. If a player enjoys an ability and the GM doesn't, that doesn't mean the player is right and the GM is wrong.
It's the step from "GM should be a fan of the players" to "GM should learn to enjoy everything the players do no matter what" that I don't want.
If PCs who are built for it manage to use manoeuvres successfully to shut down enemies, how is that any different than a PC Wizard with maxed INT and spell focus feats doing the same thing with spells? (Same analogy goes for any primary spellcaster really).You're arguing "something else is also problematic so we should just accept this", which I don't agree with.
As it happens, it's easier to work on this isue (it's only one archetype) than a dozen whole classes.
This is pretty much it. And one of the reasons I haven't GM'd hardly anything for PFS since November of 2016.
I'm a huge fan of PCs and a huge fan of players getting to enjoy their character's abilities. But I'm also a storyteller. And part of telling stories in roleplaying games, is experiencing the encounters. When all the hard work I put into those encounters to help tell a riveting tail goes for naught, because players constantly build characters that can't be hit, kill in one shot, and often before I get to do anything as a GM, then that ceases to become fun for me as a GM.
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While I don't have a Lore Warden myself, I know plenty of people that do. Here's my take on this situation. The original Lore Warden seems too good that there's almost no reason to NOT take it over a regular Fighter.
Armor proficiency. I mean lightly armored fighter is a lot more viable now than it used to be but walking tank is still a thing.
Seems to me that Lore Wardens are better at combat maneuvers than Maneuver Master Monks. That sounds like an issue.
They have a higher bonus but maneuver master monks are far better at them. A lore warden just increases the raw number. A maneuver master messes with the action economy in such a way that a full attack from them is functionally an instakill to something without a supernatural means of getting out of a grapple.
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It's not that "something" else is also problematic. It's that wide scopes of things, even CRB things are far more problematic, and the Lore Warden was at best questionably so, and even then, hardly comparable to a base class like the stock Wizard that can do more and affect more enemies.
My take on the Lore Warden "update" was that it was done simply to fulfill someone's personal preference for the class to get it official, which doesn't align with most folk's preferences.
While I don't have any Lore Wardens myself, I personally dislike the sort of mentality that I suspect was the grounds for the reprint. I could be wrong, but that's what it sort of reads like to me.
On the other hand, I do have some second-hand personal investment in this. The wifey has/had a Lore Warden/Rogue that was waiting for our friends to catch up to do the Seeker Arcs. At this point, she just walked away from PFS, because it's not worth it.
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This is pretty much it. And one of the reasons I haven't GM'd hardly anything for PFS since November of 2016.I'm a huge fan of PCs and a huge fan of players getting to enjoy their character's abilities. But I'm also a storyteller. And part of telling stories in roleplaying games, is experiencing the encounters. When all the hard work I put into those encounters to help tell a riveting tail goes for naught, because players constantly build characters that can't be hit, kill in one shot, and often before I get to do anything as a GM, then that ceases to become fun for me as a GM.
I haven't GM'd a lot for PFS.
Part of the reason was due to a previous campaign having a level of power-creep that makes PFS look downright tame in comparison, even with all of the options available. Much like Tallow mentions here, it's not a lot of fun if one has players that 'attempt to shoot the block text', and then grumble because they have to 'sit through a waste of time'.
On the other side of the token, part of the 'arms race' has come from increasingly difficult encounters and scenarios, and even a person that holds closely to the ideal of 'character development' over 'mechanical development' will be able to point to points in their character's career where 'this' thing or 'that' thing became important to know and have.
As a GM, if a player has a means to shut down an encounter shortly after it is introduced, I'm glad to see it, because it makes up for all the other combats that last for hours on end with things like Obscuring Mist, Stinking Cloud, Mirror Image, Blur, etc, that usually get dropped in the *last fight* after three to four hours of play.
One of the benchmarks I've used, particularly in GMing PFS, is 'is the party working as a unit' as per 'Cooperate'.
If everyone is working together, and the TripMaster 3000 is holding one flank and the blaster is taking care of the right, the healing support is keeping everyone standing and the martials have made themselves either into a wall or a solid harassing force to handle opponent casters (for example), even if I barely get to do anything as a GM, that's a table that 'gets it'.
What is also good to see as a GM is when the 'tried and true' tactics *don't* work, and what players and their characters do to make up for that.
When it's just one 'superstar' that's doing 'everything', well, it's pretty easy as a GM to adjust generic tactics to 'All Firepower on That Target', and it's a legitimate GM tool, as the PCs have brought creative means to the encounter and that opens things up a little.
This also takes the heat off the other PCs in some circumstances to give them a chance to shine, and perhaps excel.
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This is pretty much it. And one of the reasons I haven't GM'd hardly anything for PFS since November of 2016.
I'm a huge fan of PCs and a huge fan of players getting to enjoy their character's abilities. But I'm also a storyteller. And part of telling stories in roleplaying games, is experiencing the encounters. When all the hard work I put into those encounters to help tell a riveting tail goes for naught, because players constantly build characters that can't be hit, kill in one shot, and...
The solution to this is to outright ban all Arcane classes, all Occult classes, Alchemists, Druids, Archer builds, and anything that gets any sort of pet, (except maybe, maybe Mount). Additionally, all Combat Maneuvers.
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I also GM, and I do want to have fun when I am GM'ing.
I don't mean to say that we should accept something that is genuinely broken "because wizard." I do want to see players (and PCs) treated fairly. I think that nerfing a fighter archetype whilst there are still SAD full casters who get more new spells with every splatbook published is somewhat disproportionate, and tantamount to fixing a ship's sails whilst she's shipping water belowdecks. And I say that as a fan of full casters; magic is what makes the game a fantasy roleplaying game.
I think what this all comes down to is, "how good is too good?"
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With the exception of a handful of spells that don't come into play until late in a character's career, as a GM I get a saving throw. That's largely enough for me except for players that take SAD, fears, traits, etc to such an extreme that DCs are nearly unbeatable at CR APL+4. When things end immediately except for a roll of a 1, because things are too easily maxed out that even CR APL+4 creatures are immediately made impotent, then as a GM, I don't get to make that roll.
Essentially when a player creates a situation based on build choices that takes all agency away from the GM, that isn't fun for me.
Developer
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With the exception of a handful of spells that don't come into play until late in a character's career, as a GM I get a saving throw. That's largely enough for me except for players that take SAD, fears, traits, etc to such an extreme that DCs are nearly unbeatable at CR APL+4. When things end immediately except for a roll of a 1, because things are too easily maxed out that even CR APL+4 creatures are immediately made impotent, then as a GM, I don't get to make that roll.
Essentially when a player creates a situation based on build choices that takes all agency away from the GM, that isn't fun for me.
This is why so many GMs hate "Deja Vu", and why I've stopped using the spell.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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With the exception of a handful of spells that don't come into play until late in a character's career, as a GM I get a saving throw. That's largely enough for me except for players that take SAD, fears, traits, etc to such an extreme that DCs are nearly unbeatable at CR APL+4. When things end immediately except for a roll of a 1, because things are too easily maxed out that even CR APL+4 creatures are immediately made impotent, then as a GM, I don't get to make that roll.
Essentially when a player creates a situation based on build choices that takes all agency away from the GM, that isn't fun for me.
Grease is a spell that doesn't require a save to neutralize tactics. It's why the spell is so good.
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With the exception of a handful of spells that don't come into play until late in a character's career, as a GM I get a saving throw. That's largely enough for me except for players that take SAD, fears, traits, etc to such an extreme that DCs are nearly unbeatable at CR APL+4. When things end immediately except for a roll of a 1, because things are too easily maxed out that even CR APL+4 creatures are immediately made impotent, then as a GM, I don't get to make that roll.
Essentially when a player creates a situation based on build choices that takes all agency away from the GM, that isn't fun for me.
Whilst I completely agree that GMs should be able to have fun too, I think you're not comparing apples with apples.
An NPC doesn't get a save against a raging barbarian's power attack, or a paladin's smite attack, or a ninja's sneak attack from invisibility. Just like these forms of attack, a combat manoeuvre relies on an attack roll and the defence against attack rolls is static (AC or CMD). 3.5e had some opposed rolls for combat manoeuvres, but Pathfinder got rid of those (for the better I think).
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Grease is a spell that doesn't require a save to neutralize tactics. It's why the spell is so good.With the exception of a handful of spells that don't come into play until late in a character's career, as a GM I get a saving throw. That's largely enough for me except for players that take SAD, fears, traits, etc to such an extreme that DCs are nearly unbeatable at CR APL+4. When things end immediately except for a roll of a 1, because things are too easily maxed out that even CR APL+4 creatures are immediately made impotent, then as a GM, I don't get to make that roll.
Essentially when a player creates a situation based on build choices that takes all agency away from the GM, that isn't fun for me.
Not sure how you mean. You get a save or very easy acrobatics check to avoid the effects of grease. It doesn't automatically negate an entire enemy.