|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My base inquisitor at level nine can get around +27 If everything comes together up and everything is active, So I feel like it's theoretically possible to do it with a munchkin build. However, it would be pretty wacky for him to have that number on Round 1 of combat.
My + to hit comes from:
+4 from 18 str, +6 from Bab, +2 from weapon enchant, +3 divine favor, +3 judgment (with judgement surge), +2 bane, +4 outflank +2 Heroism, +1 haste (hopefully I have an arcane caster with me). You could pump this higher with weapon focus and some other feats and such.
Does he spend the first couple rounds buffing?
No, it is not normal.
It's not normal that a PC should ever need +38 AB at level 12, since the average AC of a CR-equivalent opponent is supposed to be 27. But you aren't holding a normal game for your players, so I'm gonna guess our opinions on what is normal aren't that important for your table.
If you're wondering how they reached +38, you should probably just ask your player instead of us. But considering that the Inquisitor is pretty good at stacking buffs, I don't doubt it's possible.
Divine Favor, Heroism, Justice Judgement, Bane, etc results in pretty big bonuses, which should let them touch 30 AB without sacrificing any feats.
Inflated gold per level and just picking up Outflank should definitely make 38 AB possible.
Inquisitors are kind of ridiculous, especially in bursts. All of that and they also get lots of skills and out of combat bonuses. Do keep in mind that some creatures are immune to being flanked, like elementals, but that just shaves off +6 of his potential attack bonus.
|
|
Sounds like a pretty munchkin character, but I wonder what his own AC is?
My inquisitor has a pretty noticeable weakness when it comes to dealing with things with lots of attacks who hit hard, since it's d8 hp class.
It's especially rough if something gets in my face before I complete my divine favor prep.
Legit but it's on an ideal case, it would be better to see the average case where there are long buffs in order, but assuming no time to do in-combat ones because the setup doesn't allow the party to do so outside of the first round, and no "casting before pushing the door".
The class has stealth and invisibility on its spell list, while also being wisdom based and having perception. The normal case doesn’t usually have the inquisitor going in blind.
Now, the inquisitor abilities can get used up pretty quick, but there are plenty of campaigns that have 15 minute adventuring days, and the inquistor can really take advantage of that.
It's not normal that a PC should ever need +38 AB at level 12, since the average AC of a CR-equivalent opponent is supposed to be 27. But you aren't holding a normal game for your players, so I'm gonna guess our opinions on what is normal aren't that important for your table.Check the attitude, please. Here's the roster for the main combat last night (first fight of level 12, mainly meant to let them play around with new abilities and feel awesome...especially the sorcerer who just got Chain Lightning):
10 CR6 creatures (AC 23 each)
20 CR6 creatures (AC 23 each)
1 CR10 creature (AC 31)
1 CR10 creature (AC 31)
1 CR10 creature (AC 36)
Sorry if you interpreted it as snark, I've just gotten the impression that you hold a very high-powered game where +38 AB might not be enough to guarantee a hit at level 12.
While your examples do show that your creature AC values are a bit inflated, +38 AB is still just overkill.
So it is "normal" for an Inquisitor to be able to reach that AB at level 12, but usually there just isn't any reason for them to buff their AB to that number.
I'm guessing the rest of the party is about 10-15 points below that, and you worry about being able to challenge the Inquisitor while not shutting down the rest of them?
Does he spend the first couple rounds buffing?Literally just Divine Power in terms of spells that "need" to be cast in combat. Heroism is long term.
Technically Judgement and Greater Bane as well but those are swift actions, one on turn one and one on turn two.
It's not normal that a PC should ever need +38 AB at level 12, since the average AC of a CR-equivalent opponent is supposed to be 27. But you aren't holding a normal game for your players, so I'm gonna guess our opinions on what is normal aren't that important for your table.Check the attitude, please. Here's the roster for the main combat last night (first fight of level 12, mainly meant to let them play around with new abilities and feel awesome...especially the sorcerer who just got Chain Lightning):
10 CR6 creatures (AC 23 each)
20 CR6 creatures (AC 23 each)
1 CR10 creature (AC 31)
1 CR10 creature (AC 31)
1 CR10 creature (AC 36)If you're wondering how they reached +38, you should probably just ask your player instead of us. But considering that the Inquisitor is pretty good at stacking buffs, I don't doubt it's possible.I know how they reached it, I went over the math once I saw the number. That's why this is in Advice rather than Rules.
Inflated gold per level and just picking up Outflank should definitely make 38 AB possible.Quick character sheet audit shows 111kish, with 8k of it in a back-up Ghost Touch weapon. That's also with no crafting, so full price for everything.
Anything is possible.
But until you say more than "OMG +38AB WTF" we don't have enough information to give any advice.
That was pretty much my initial reaction, yes. But it all seems possible within the rules, that doesn't stop my reaction as you so aptly put it.
Do you have a breakdown of how this is happening? Can you post the characters stats...
Looking at the breakdown, I'd say "Yes, pretty normal". My current character has 11BAB at level 13 (so slightly more than a straight 3/4 class, from multiclassing), and a static AB of 20, which is basically exactly on par with your player. Throw in flanking, a couple buff spells, and two rounds worth of swift actions, and it seems entirely reasonable. Plus he can only maintain that level of BAB for limited number of rounds per day, and he's essentially using resources to massively over-inflate his bonus higher than he needs it to be. Odds are some other aspect of his character is suffering adequately to make it up.
|
|
Are you trouble challenging the player? From My experience playing a melee inquisitor, here are the things I don't want to face:
Long spans of time between combats that force me to recast heroism, delay posion and other assorted buffs.
Numerous combats of moderate difficulty with a several enemies each that forces me to debate when I spend bane at inopportune times.
Hit and run tactics, something like a cavalier with ride by attack or a bunch of flying archers would be a significant headache.
Welcome to the Pathfinder Advice forum. Some here are more interested in chest-beating tribally for their style of play than offering advice for yours. You already seem aware of this.
That said, your question is subjective: "Is this sort of thing normal?".
"Normal" requires qualification to meaningfully discuss. As a baseline I offer Paizo's Monster Creation rules. Scrolling down to locate the table, these give the following relevant averages for a CR12 monster:
HP: 160
AC: 27
High Attack: 22
High Damage (average value if everything hits): 60These statistics, however, are a little simplified and dated, though easy to get into. If you want a deeper dive, the later-published, ironically-named Simple Monster Creation rules offer a more detailed statistical breakdown. Extracting from the Combat creature arrays on a sub-page gets the below relevant averages for a CR12 monster:
HP: 176
AC: 29
Touch AC: 17
Flat-Footed AC: 21High Weapon Attacks: +21/+16/+11
Damage (average value, per successful hit): 35Low Weapon Attacks: +15/+10/+5
Damage (average value, per successful hit): 26Two Natural Attacks: +21/+21
Damage (average value, per successful hit): 31Three Natural Attacks: +21/+16/+16
Damage (average value, per successful hit): 41/21/21You may notice these values tend to be higher than those found in the earlier Monster Creation rules/guidelines.
Nominally, a PC with "normal" wealth by level is of a CR equal to their class levels, notwithstanding a powerful race or mythic tiers. While you haven't provided the typical damage values or other statistics of this character, if you presented a clone of them as a CR12 enemy, by either of the above references they would not be normal. Discounting the bonus owed to flanking, which is conditional, the character's leading strike is a +32 to...
I think this is a good way to compare the relative attack bonus, but I also think you're not evaluating them in a comparable way. The actual attack of the Inquisitor is right on par with these CR12 options. The flanking is positioning, as you said, so remove that +4. +7 is coming from buff spells, which aren't going to be part of a bestiary entry, so subtract that. +27 AB. Remove the bonus that literally only works for 12 rounds a day, and you have +25 AB. Arguably, that is a value which could be used for comparison purposes; it requires activating a class feature, but one that lasts all of combat, so could be considered nearly always up. A little high, but averages assume some "normal" values will be a bit higher. I maintain that the player is pretty normal, just maybe oddly concerned with boosting attack bonus over AC or saves.
How do other players feel about this? Does he make them feel useless?
Just be aware that your limited selection of books contain a majority of the most powerful options in the game.
|
To answer your Q: No it's not normal, this is what happens when you let your Inq overbuff spending 3-10 rounds of pre-combat setup, ideal positioning, built to spec munchkin nonsense and also burning up all their daily uses of various abilities.
If it's disruptive to your game, just drop a few save or die spells on them and make them reroll something that doesn't require the perfect confluence of buffs to hit on every attack short of rolling a 1. Should this be causing the encounters to be trivialized then there is a problem that the GM has a responsibility to address, through force if necessary.
If it's not really a problem for the challenge rating for the party then let it ride and just start dropping ambushes and multiple encounters per day on the group.
To answer your Q: No it's not normal, this is what happens when you let your Inq overbuff spending 3-10 rounds of pre-combat setup, ideal positioning, built to spec munchkin nonsense and also burning up all their daily uses of various abilities.
I only see a few buffs that would even stop him from full attacking. Heroism and Divine Power. If he is casting both of them then yes, there is a lot of rounds for buffing but we were also told there are two party buffers so Heroism is most likely coming from one of them plus at this level, it does last a long time. So might have gotten one round to buff which seems to be not that hard to do. Personally, I do not think this is out of line and does not even seem to be min-maxing since I doubt he does a whole lot of damage.
If it's disruptive to your game, just drop a few save or die spells on them and make them reroll something that doesn't require the perfect confluence of buffs to hit on every attack short of rolling a 1. Should this be causing the encounters to be trivialized then there is a problem that the GM has a responsibility to address, through force if necessary.
This is the wrong way to handle it. Never do this. Talk to the player out of character and tell them that you are upset with their attack bonus and ask them to not use those powers. It is easy as that. If they refuse then you have a problem player on your hand and there are many ways to deal with that. I do not really know how your game is run but this is the best way instead of changing the rules.
I revamped the monster creation based on what players have ACTUALLY been doing -- because right now a Balor is supposed to be as strong as 24 level 11 characters but the Unchained Monk could more or less solo it with one round of group buffs, at least in a straight up melee fight.
For example, the default scaling is roughly 11 + 1.26 per CR. I upped it to 11 + 2 per CR. Basically takes into account more the stuff that players can do as the level since the game apparently vastly underestimates character growth. Meaning a CR14 enemy would have a default of 39 AC...which is only 1 more than the Inquisitor's AC at level 12, so I'm wondering if I need to tweak the values again. Especially since the Inquisitor also has 38 AC...and would be at 40 with a polymorph.
I am sorry, you are doing what? No one will be able to hit these guys and every battle is going to be a slog. This game was not made to have monsters have so much AC. Let's say you give CR 14 creatures 41 or 42 ac. That is only two levels higher, this Inq will only miss on a 1 or 2 but what about the rest of the party? The paladin is currently at 29 AB, he will miss on his first attack a lot. Based on the monster creation table, it seems that they want full BAB hitting on the first attack most of the time.
Except that is changing the rules.
Also, the campaign is supposed to be about challenging combat so simply saying "Hey I need you to not use those abilities" feels like a cheap cop-out at best.
If something needs to be nerfed I'm happy to nerf it, but I expect the players to make powerful (but not munchkin) characters.
I understand. I do not know what to tell you then. If you do end up nerfing his character, give him a chance to make a new character since I am sure he did not know this would happen beforehand. Now that is cleared up, what do you want from us? What kind of advice are you looking for? You clearly have an interesting game going on but it's so far from what I am used to that I am not sure I can help you.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
First, my game is a fairly low-powered Pathfinder game.
Yeah, it really isn't.
For some reason, your players seem to optimize their characters to a pretty extreme degree.
In any case, no, an attack roll of +38 at 12th level is not normal. But then again, neither is AC 36 for a CR 10 monster (the CR 10 monster with the highest AC in the game is the Nosferatu at AC 30).
My presumption is that you tried to fight the players min-maxing by increasing monster difficulty/stats, and the players responded by min-maxing even more, and so on, to the point where you're at now.
Just be aware that your limited selection of books contain a majority of the most powerful options in the game.If you're referring to full casters, I'm aware, but right now I'm concerned about the balance between martials.
Even for martials, those books contain a majority of the strongest options. Barbarians and Bloodragers are beasts. The paladin can be the tankiest tank. And the Ranger's Instant Enemy spell was probably a step too far, for buffing that class. And if you're including 6th level spellcasters as martials, then you have options like the inquisitor, magus, summoner and alchemist which can dish out massive amounts of damage.
Really, the only big thing I can immediately think of outside of those 3 sources is advanced weapon training for the fighter. Most of the stuff outside of the core line of books is weaker, but more flavorful than the stuff inside the core line.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Based on that then I have a few pieces of advice. I will start with saying that I do not think anything you find strong from UC and UM are that bad but I doubt my opinion matters to you on that. They have been out for so long now that it is core part of the game as with all the other core line books. People play PF for choices and more books give that. Anyways on to the advice.
Even if you did not allow MP, they would have found a way to get BS to get to the same point. It's just the nature of the spells. You should ban polymorph from the game. That would solve your problem right away. There would be no more OP characters since all their damage would drop off big time but then you are going to have to go back on a lot of the changes you have made to the monsters. This also comes with the price that the players may not be happy. If three people are doing this together then they seem to like it.
You could remove the three players that are giving you a problem. The general advice is that you remove problem players from the game but then you have to look for three new players which I doubt would be very hard since there are always new players but that comes with the unknown of what those players are like.
Then there is the third choice. If these people are your friends and you like playing with them. Change systems. Do it now. The longer you wait, the more headaches you are going to get since it seems like PF might not be what you are looking for from a game. On this front, I can offer you other games to play but I am not really sure what you want from a system so I would need that info from you before I offer anything on that front.
The key to all of this is to have fun right? From what I see here, you are not having any fun and I can't speak for your players. I would be careful in thinking you know what they want though. Depending on how well you know them, they might not be saying everything on their mind. People do not like to confront others. It's by nature and you can see it all over the internet when players and GM talk about problems in their game that could be solved with talking.
I want to help you make your game a better game but I think house-ruling is the wrong way to go about it. It causes all kinds of problems the more you add. That includes messing with the monsters.
You should ban polymorph from the game. That would solve your problem right away.
That, right there. <thumbs up>
I hate the traveling-monster-freakshow-circus that the game has trended to in recent years.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I’m failing to see why it matters that they can realible hit an enemy if they could be figniting 33 enemies in an “main encounter” . Plus he is melee so he has to move to something to full attack and he has spend a turn buffing. Really not seeing an issue with this in the way you design encounters.
If martial characters aren’t all but certain to kill every turn I think I’d just lose my mind at the sheer boredom of a fight that long.
Also he is using 4 expendable resources to achieve that, plus having to get outflank to go off, plus maybe other things I forgot.
He can’t do that in multiple combats a day, divine power he probably has 4 castings of, he has 4 judgements a day and 12 rounds of bane.
This is an extremely limited nova and honestly kind of a bad strategy.
They’d be better off only using one of those buffs and just turning Bane on for full attacks. To give them more longevity.
But then I guess is most of the session is taken up with one massive fight there isn’t any reason to be sparring.
How many combats do you have a session?
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
First, my game is a fairly low-powered Pathfinder game.
If this is the same game you made the Mitigating Enervation Spam thread about then no it is not. Even if it is a different game, THAT many enemies means it is not low powered unless you aren't even trying to hide the fact you want the Player Characters to lose and get wiped out, and are now upset that isn't happening.
I think you have already diagnosed the source of your "trouble."
And if the game was primarily story based with combat as an afterthought I'd be less worried -- but the campaign is primarily challenging combat. Hell, a few sessions ago a major enemy was in really bad shape after a long fight and I elected to have him flee when the party inadvertently gave him an opening to do so. The catch is this was quite late after a long session and I was so focused on the boss trying to survive that I didn't realize I could probably had TPKed the group if I had him be more aggressive. I was just worried about him living another round. So the next morning I get this message from an upset player...
"i see no reason why he even had to run, he could have just killed us. He had the upper hand on us. I get it if you dont want another TPK but still....It feels like you are pulling punches which I am fine with but I am rather you make that clear going forward that is how the game is going to be run."
This suggests to me that you have transitioned (or maybe just started there?) from a role-playing/story-based game to a wargame. That at least one player was disappointed you didn't "try to win" by killing all of them seems confirmation. In some ways it speaks to the flexibility of the system that it can be used as a wargame but underlying mechanics make it a challenge. The largest being it becomes the GM vs. the players. And each player is trying his best to make a better monster (or monster-killer.) And as is the case in any other more classic game, there are winners and losers. And some players are better than others. And eventually, there's a chance one or more players will be better than the GM. And then things get weird.
It appears your NeverMiss Inquisitor is a legitimate construct according to the rules. That player is winning. Your recently arrived Vivisectionist is just playing along in the arm's race. And now you have some players who are falling behind. Maybe they aren't as good at finding quirky rule synergies (I really wanted to say perverse rule synergies there just to show my bias) or maybe they're not as interested in doing so.
I don't have any practical advice other than to have an open discussion at the table about how and why everyone is playing. Because, as I think someone suggested earlier in the thread, this is only going to get worse as the levels rise. If you thought your level 12 Inquisitor was death incarnate, wait until the characters get to level 16 or 17. Have any full casters in your group? 9th level spells are world-breaking and potentially game-breaking. On purpose.
|
|
How long do you say passes each time they search a room?
My GM says it takes about 10 minutes each time a group makes a perception check to thoroughly search a room and I'd suggest you do the same.
This way he can't just have shield of faith, divine favor, monstrous physique etc. all up and running when a fight starts. If you allow all his 12 minute long buffs to last half the dungeon crawl, it's going to be tough for you to challenge him.
Make him spend the first couple rounds buffing himself to his 38 AC and attack instead of just saying it takes 30 seconds to thoroughly search a room and allowing him to get way more mileage out of his spells than he should.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
|
|
Honestly, after reading through this and also the Reddit thread... my best advice would be to show the GM and the offending player this post and on the subreddit.
They should get a good grasp of why it's problematic, what they're doing that you aren't enjoying, and an idea of hopefully how to improve the game.
Fact is, it sounds like your Inq and GM are at war with each other like this is some kind of wargame for them, but the other players and yourself are NOT participating in that aspect of the game so you and likely others are getting frustrated that this one Player is hogging the spotlight.
Truth be told, if everything you've noted here and in other places is really true, I'd talk to the other players who are frustrated, and then spit off and start your own table, even if that means one of you have to GM for a while. These two people are ruining other players fun, and no matter what the nay-sayers here or elsewhere have to say, if one player is able to wreck the game balance and enjoyment for others, then something needs be done.
Honestly, after reading through this and also the Reddit thread... my best advice would be to show the GM and the offending player this post and on the subreddit.
They should get a good grasp of why it's problematic, what they're doing that you aren't enjoying, and an idea of hopefully how to improve the game.
Fact is, it sounds like your Inq and GM are at war with each other like this is some kind of wargame for them, but the other players and yourself are NOT participating in that aspect of the game so you and likely others are getting frustrated that this one Player is hogging the spotlight.
Truth be told, if everything you've noted here and in other places is really true, I'd talk to the other players who are frustrated, and then spit off and start your own table, even if that means one of you have to GM for a while. These two people are ruining other players fun, and no matter what the nay-sayers here or elsewhere have to say, if one player is able to wreck the game balance and enjoyment for others, then something needs be done.
Just an FYI, this thread was made by the GM and that Reddit thread was me. I am not the inq, I am the brown fur arcanist. I am upset for the other players since high AC does not change how I play. When other players are unhappy, so am I and currently, most of the players do not like super high AC. I understand there is a lot to read but I just wanted some outside input on how others would handle it and it seems that I was correct that messing with the game is not the way to go.