Okay, so, for Doomsday Dawn Part 5 playtest at my local Pathfinder Society I decided to make a character based on the Doom Slayer from the recent DOOM video game reboot. Because, y'know, demon slaying.
What I was hoping to go for:
-Speed, armor, and rage-powered fury (I was a paladin with barbarian dedications and class feats, because he hates demons THAT MUCH, he skipped weapons and just used his magic gauntlet fists).
-Parkouring off walls to attack enemies from above and leap on bigger foes' faces to better rip and tear.
-Beat someone to death with part of someone else.
-Use intimidation feats to scare the s%!@ out of demons.What I got:
-Knocked a foe down, wall-leapt off a nearby pillar to try and elbow-drop the downed foe, wound up overshooting because the die were not with me. Missed, character hurt himself.
-Trying to leap onto an enemy is a grapple, and grappling is a fortitude save, which means I failed to grab onto enemies bigger than I was despite the huge targets, because the larger demons have monstrous fortitude saves.
-Resorting to slowly punching enemies to death with my xd6 holy disrupting fists, which felt underwhelming. Although to be fair the other players sounded like they were getting whupped too.
-Generally feeling suboptimal as both a tank and a striker.Forgive me if I sound whiny here, purely my two cents, but it felt like I wasn't getting rewarded for this particular build. Or maybe my math was bad.
Well, a few things.
1) I don't think you can overshoot jumps by RAW. You can undershoot (and only go the maximum Leap distance) or you can undershoot and fall prone. But you can't overshoot a long jump.
2) The armored part might be screwing you up a little; the monk seems use mobility very effectively, especially with stuff like flying kick and wall run. It also has several grapple and throw based feats. And various buffs to punching, or course. Dragon's Roar is excellent for being scary. All that said, monks don't actually lose that much for wearing armor now.
3) A basic Animal Totem Barbarian might also cover this better. Raging athlete gets you a climb speed, and the animal totem gets unarmed weapons that sound thematically appropriate and hit much harder. It also has various mobility enhancers like Sudden Leap which you might enjoy. Finally it has access to intimidation feats which everyone enjoys. And it can wear medium armor without issue.
4) Really sounds like the weak link in your concept was being a paladin. The paladin is currently the most straight jacketed class in terms of only supporting a limited amount of combat styles. We know big changes are coming for the paladin on Monday, and Paizo has acknowledged this problem, so I'd expect it to be fixed. But if being a paladin is important for demon slaying you should have multiclassed into it instead of having it as a base.
5) Even the fighter might have done this better. He's got mobility, armor, and various feats to improve that fighting style, like combat grab and such.
He also has a Holy Rune, and once we learned from dev posts that you can price weakness multiple times with a single attack he has been WRECKING things as his blows are both Cold Iron and Good. Even before that his high accuracy and d10 blows were really doing work.
I'm going to be perfectly honest, and I kind of feel sorry for the demons? I mean demons are jerks but this just feels sad for them, seeing their faces kicked off by some pointy eared little rascal.
Probably spoiler box it to avoid spoiling the monster defensive stats for players, but how much damage was that monk even doing per kick?Also for OP.
Personally I'm not really sure it's a huge issue that it's harder to inflict the Grabbed condition (and thus catch flat-footed) upon a humongous demon than on a small toddler?
I realise that it's physically easier to touch a big monster, but I can't say it would sit well with me for it to be EASIER to grapple a creature for being bigger.
Otherwise, pretty much everything Morgan said.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I wouldn't object to using other rules to climb onto monsters, but I'm not convinced that should give the grabbed condition. If you see what I mean?
As grappling currently works, if it worked better on large creatures it would make you better at nerfing them (higher chance for both Grabbed and Restrained to be inflicted, and a lower chance of them reverse grappling you). I have absolutely zero issues with some alternative maneuver that gives you a circumstance bonus on attack rolls or whatever against a creature you're hanging onto (with a likely circ bonus to do so for creatures of appropriate size), but I really don't think this should be the same thing as grappling.
If I was going to houserule climbing creatures, I'd probably have you roll against their acrobatics DC, either rolling athletics or acrobatics depending on what I felt was most appropriate to that situation. I'd probably wouldn't penalize the monster's AC in any way, or attacks against most folks, but I might penalize its attacks on you. And I'd probably let them use the normal break grapple/escape check rules.
Not really gonna be relevant for DDD, but it seems pretty workable in my own games. Certainly seems easier than trying to beat the CMD of bug creatures in PF1.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
If I was going to houserule climbing creatures, I'd probably have you roll against their acrobatics DC, either rolling athletics or acrobatics depending on what I felt was most appropriate to that situation. I'd probably wouldn't penalize the monster's AC in any way, or attacks against most folks, but I might penalize its attacks on you. And I'd probably let them use the normal break grapple/escape check rules.
Not really gonna be relevant for DDD, but it seems pretty workable in my own games. Certainly seems easier than trying to beat the CMD of bug creatures in PF1.
Also. Depending on the final chassis on the game, it might be fun to redirect crit failed attacks against a climber to the attacker, provided that the attacker is the creature being climbed.
Also. Depending on the final chassis on the game, it might be fun to redirect crit failed attacks against a climber to the attacker, provided that the attacker is the creature being climbed.If I was going to houserule climbing creatures, I'd probably have you roll against their acrobatics DC, either rolling athletics or acrobatics depending on what I felt was most appropriate to that situation. I'd probably wouldn't penalize the monster's AC in any way, or attacks against most folks, but I might penalize its attacks on you. And I'd probably let them use the normal break grapple/escape check rules.
Not really gonna be relevant for DDD, but it seems pretty workable in my own games. Certainly seems easier than trying to beat the CMD of bug creatures in PF1.
Haha! I love that. I feel like monster climbing should be a default skill function and that mechanic would make for an awesome skill feat, probably for acrobatics.
He also has a Holy Rune, and once we learned from dev posts that you can price weakness multiple times with a single attack he has been WRECKING things as his blows are both Cold Iron and Good. Even before that his high accuracy and d10 blows were really doing work.I'm going to be perfectly honest, and I kind of feel sorry for the demons? I mean demons are jerks but this just feels sad for them, seeing their faces kicked off by some pointy eared little rascal.
Probably spoiler box it to avoid spoiling the monster defensive stats for players, but how much damage was that monk even doing per kick?Also for OP.
Personally I'm not really sure it's a huge issue that it's harder to inflict the Grabbed condition (and thus catch flat-footed) upon a humongous demon than on a small toddler?
I realise that it's physically easier to touch a big monster, but I can't say it would sit well with me for it to be EASIER to grapple a creature for being bigger.
Otherwise, pretty much everything Morgan said.4d10 (Or 4d12 on flurry if both hit) +5 per kick plus 1d6 good plus 14 from weakness for the weakest fiends, 20-24 for stronger ones, and 30 for the strongest. It's ridiculous damage but I think the weakness aspect is why these things have stupidly high HP.
And sorry, I'll try to figure out how to spoiler the thing soon as I can.
Beneath the preview/cancel/submit post buttons and the disclaimer about the forums being fun and friendly/checking the community guidelines there is a quick guide on how to format your text.