What is "The Elephant in the Room" as it pertains to Pathfinder?


Homebrew and House Rules

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@Kurald/Temperans.

Please to the math. While you can theoretically do these things with no feat investment, it will nearly never be a good idea in practice, so the decision may as well not exist.

Against a 2 Attacks on a full attack enemy, moving away (trading one attack and an AoO for a full attack) is generally worse then full attack trading because he hits twice at full bab, rather then with his best attack and his iterative. If you have mobility, this changes to make it an equal decision.

Tripping/Sundering/etc. as the AoO is a horrible idea if you dont have improved in it, because you get AoOed back.

Look, if people have combat expertize, and dont make use of it, its their problem not the rules problem. It has better exchange rates to trading AB for AC via fighting defensively, and the exchange rate can be improved even further if you pick the appropriate trait (threatening defender), which is cheaper then the feat neccessary to make fighting defensively really good.


I use Combat Expertise all the time on my Bloodrager. It's not nearly as bad a feat as people think.

The example given used spring attack to get an attack while still being far enough away to get an AoO when the enemy closed. He does this by level 7 (judging by the penalties and AC bonuses given by Combat Expertise), which means he either spent 5 of his 5 feats on Whirlwind Attack (or 5 of 6 if Human) or he used the EitR rules and only spent 2 feats. So this is either an example of a Very specialized level 7 Bloodrager, or a good example of how the EitR rules can give you options without taking all your feats.


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Mysterious Stranger wrote:
MrCharisma post is the first post in this thread to actually have any kind of valid reason for this system.

Why thank you.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:
I still don’t think this is something that is really in need of fixing, but I can at least understand and respect this point of view.

Yeah honestly we don't really use it. We have used it, and I don't mind it, but I don't think you need it. I can see why people would use it though, and I think there's a reason it's one of the most well known and widely used set of house rules.

If you like it, great. If not, also great. If you want to "fix" the Martial/Caster problem then maybe look elsewhere.


Mightypion wrote:

@Kurald/Temperans.

Please to the math. While you can theoretically do these things with no feat investment, it will nearly never be a good idea in practice, so the decision may as well not exist.

Against a 2 Attacks on a full attack enemy, moving away (trading one attack and an AoO for a full attack) is generally worse then full attack trading because he hits twice at full bab, rather then with his best attack and his iterative. If you have mobility, this changes to make it an equal decision.

Tripping/Sundering/etc. as the AoO is a horrible idea if you dont have improved in it, because you get AoOed back.

Look, if people have combat expertize, and dont make use of it, its their problem not the rules problem. It has better exchange rates to trading AB for AC via fighting defensively, and the exchange rate can be improved even further if you pick the appropriate trait (threatening defender), which is cheaper then the feat neccessary to make fighting defensively really good.

That's my point that specific example was bad because you compared "guy does full attack" with "guy actually uses the feats they have". Of course the second will sound better than the former, thus coming across as disingenuous.

Tripping without improved is not nearly that bad if you are using a tripping or reach weapon which most people who would try would. Not to mention without a tripping weapon if you fail by 10 or more you would get tripped anyways, even if you have the feat.

Sovereign Court RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Mightypion wrote:
Against a 2 Attacks on a full attack enemy, moving away (trading one attack and an AoO for a full attack) is generally worse

Or you use tumble, or the withdraw action.

Quote:
Tripping/Sundering/etc. as the AoO is a horrible idea if you dont have improved in it, because you get AoOed back.

Or you use a reach weapon.

You're trying to tell us that characters with EITR have choices that Core characters do not, but it looks like these choices exist in Core just fine. If you want to claim that the choice exists for both but is only worthwhile for one of them, please show us your math on that.


Kurald Galain wrote:
AwesomenessDog wrote:
by the time a character finishes the cleave line, or finishes a single combat maneuver line, etc. to fully enable the tree, they have maybe one or two feats remaining in a campaign and are level 13-17
The discussion at hand is not whether martials are on par with casters, but whether it's totally unfair if a character has to wait all the way until level 7 ("jumping through hoops") in order to get the trick he built his character for.

I'm sorry, you think it's fair for the martial when the caster just had to make a free selection on any spell without prerequisites (let alone useless prerequisites) and said caster still has at a minimum 15 other useful spells? What planet do you live on where this "any spell" can potentially kill outright or fatally cripple a single target with only a few things maybe being absolutely immune to it, and where the fighter who spent over 50% of his feat selection on whirlwind attack, an ability that is rarely useful are considered fair against one another? If your answer is "oh well he shouldn't have invested in this feat line because its expensive or he's only a level 7 martial how competent can he be compared to a 140+ iq wizard?" then I think you are either completely missing the point of EitR or insanely misrepresenting the actual assumptions of the game.


Kurald Galain wrote:
Mightypion wrote:
Against a 2 Attacks on a full attack enemy, moving away (trading one attack and an AoO for a full attack) is generally worse

Or you use tumble, or the withdraw action.

Quote:
Tripping/Sundering/etc. as the AoO is a horrible idea if you dont have improved in it, because you get AoOed back.

Or you use a reach weapon.

You're trying to tell us that characters with EITR have choices that Core characters do not, but it looks like these choices exist in Core just fine. If you want to claim that the choice exists for both but is only worthwhile for one of them, please show us your math on that.

Reach weapon doesn't help against an opponent with reach as well, he also forgot to mention being hit on the AoO for not having improved makes the damage act as a penalty to your CM roll, and we have already explained the math on several occasions. Not having to pay anywhere from 1 to 3 feats as a tax for a feat line means you can afford more feat lines. Instead of being the wizard who casts any number of spells more or less whenever they want, and now finally instead of being the fighter who gets to safetly duplicate the spell effect of a single 1st level spell, Thunderstomp, this fighter can trip someone and maybe cleave, or have a useful shield 2wf/bull rush build.

You keep making the argument "oh yeah they already could do this one thing" as if our point is that they should be able to do this one thing better, when it's "you should be able to do more than one thing".


In my case the argument is that EitR doesn't quite do what it says it does, as well intentioned as it may be. Nothing to do with casters, everything to do with what someone is willing to try, risk, and build around.


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Kurald Galain wrote:
Mightypion wrote:
Against a 2 Attacks on a full attack enemy, moving away (trading one attack and an AoO for a full attack) is generally worse

Or you use tumble, or the withdraw action.

Quote:
Tripping/Sundering/etc. as the AoO is a horrible idea if you dont have improved in it, because you get AoOed back.

Or you use a reach weapon.

You're trying to tell us that characters with EITR have choices that Core characters do not, but it looks like these choices exist in Core just fine. If you want to claim that the choice exists for both but is only worthwhile for one of them, please show us your math on that.

Lets first remind everyone that tumble cannot be used by anyone bearing a medium load, or wearing medium armor or more, which considerably reduces its applicability to essentially a subset of dex based martials.

Tumble is Acrobatics vs. CMD.

CMD scales with STR, BAB, size and Dex, and with any circumstance, deflection, dodge, insight, luck, morale, profane, and sacred bonuses to AC.

Acrobatics scales off a much lower number of possible boni, its basically just your class level, your dex, and specific boni either from class skill or items to acrobatics.

Look at it this way, your acrobatics is class level + dex modifier + 3 (most relevant classes have it as a class skill)-ACP (although it should be low because classes that actually tumble tend to get near zero ACP relatively early).

A serious threat you want to tumble at, or away from, will typically have a greater or equal BAB then you have class levels, and his STR + DEX bonus will often be higher then your Dex. You then have 3 + extra boni to acrobatic -ACP, and hope that this is higher then their size + circumstance, deflection, dodge, insight, luck, morale, profane, and sacred, which frequently wont be the case.
The penalty for failure quite devastating, you get a max Bab attack, and will probably get full attacked next turn.

Concerning trip/sunder/bullrush without the improved version:
You can trip relatively risk free without the feat if you do have reach advantadge. That is not much of an if for a Bloodrager (who are basically the easiest class to get 10 feet reach advantadge in the game), but can be a sizeable if for anyone else.
Trip is vs CMD rather then AC. CMD is typically greater then AC, by something like CR/1,5 (outliers exist, but its surprisingly accurate).
If it is something you would hit on an 11, you would, assuming relatively low CR, probably self trip and a 3 or less. The Feat sizesable reduces this to a 1 or less in this case. I typically find that improved trip reduces my odds of catastrophic failure by about half.
Something with a 1/20 risk of catastrophic failure is a lot less risky then something with a 1/7.

The reason these things are bad without EITR are because failures are catastrophic. Tumble failure and trip AoO failure can mean character death. With EITR, I am not rolling to tumble at all, and while the trip can fail, I would need to be seriously unlucky for a catastrophic failure.


Diego Rossi wrote:

"I want it and I want it now!"

Any goal for the other 19 levels?

If you get everything within the first few levels, you end feeling that your character gets little growth, it is simply a more refined version of what he was at level 1.
Probably you will feel even more envy for those pesky spellcasters that gets new spells every two levels.

So, I'm 7 months late to this reply... but I've playtested a Fighter that got 2 bonus feats every level [one restricted to Combat because Fighter, and the other free choice so long as the character qualified] and at level 15 there were still dozens of feats I wanted.

Tragically, feats just aren't that good. The more of them you have, the more of them you want because they're just incremental improvements in what you're capable of.

A little extra option here, a little bonus there, a penalty removed over here... very few standouts.


Mysterious Stranger wrote:

I don’t understand what the big deal is with having to wait until 7th level for something to come online. A 1st level character is not supposed to be a seasoned and experienced character they are supposed to be beginners that are still wet behind the ears. They are the equivalent of the nerd from the suburbs who has never touched a gun before and just got out of boot camp, not a member of seal team 6. Expecting them to be able to fight effectively with both a ranged and a melee attack in the same round is kind of silly.

Are you implying soldiers straight out of bootcamp aren't expected to be able to fight effectively with a firearm and CQC in the same 6 seconds, should an assailant close on them?


kyrt-ryder wrote:
Diego Rossi wrote:

"I want it and I want it now!"

Any goal for the other 19 levels?

If you get everything within the first few levels, you end feeling that your character gets little growth, it is simply a more refined version of what he was at level 1.
Probably you will feel even more envy for those pesky spellcasters that gets new spells every two levels.

So, I'm 7 months late to this reply... but I've playtested a Fighter that got 2 bonus feats every level [one restricted to Combat because Fighter, and the other free choice so long as the character qualified] and at level 15 there were still dozens of feats I wanted.

Tragically, feats just aren't that good. The more of them you have, the more of them you want because they're just incremental improvements in what you're capable of.

A little extra option here, a little bonus there, a penalty removed over here... very few standouts.

Which is why I'm generally of the opinon that combat feats need to be improved in order to make Fighters better rather than giving them a lot of new stuff while keeping underwhelming feats.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 8

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IMO EITR does some helpful things if you want build flexibility. It reduces feat taxes as said, both by eliminating some feats (like Power Attack and Weapon Finesse being options everyone has) as well as allowing some feats to naturally advance with leveling (like Two Weapon Fighting). It also swaps Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot in the archery tree, which desperately needed to be done.

Where I've seen it used to effect is people using it to round out characters (they can skip a few feat taxes so they can get a skill boost or something). I used it in a non-combat build (witch I think it was) so she could actually do something with a weapon should she not have a useful spell to hand in combat. Yes, I think a fighter could use it to boost their combat effectiveness even further than in vanilla, but my sense is while it makes characters overall slightly more effective in combat, the strength of the system is in people seeking more options and flexibility over sheer power. I don't doubt those who build for sheer power have found ways to use it in a broken way. At the same time I'm seeing more and more PBP PF1E recruitments use it, by GMs who are urging well rounded characters over uberspecialized ones. So the attraction to it seems to be by those types of players. (With the corollary being if you are not that kind of player/GM it may not be for you.)

As an aside, in the 15 years I've played Pathfinder, I've personally not experienced the martial/caster disparity to the extremes that some have been insisting it is since, indeed, PF was even a thing (that is to say, since the D&D 3.x it was based on). I get the gist, but having played both types of characters I never felt more or less useful. As a caster I had to watch resources more. As a martial my options were simpler but I still had them and still had skills and roles to play in the group outside of "I hit it with my sword" (and sometimes, I'll add, I enjoy the simplicity of "I hit it with my sword," especially when it is what wins the fight). I've never been able to figure out how much of folks' perceptions of the disparity is just differences in play styles, theorycraft versus practice, differences in adventure types played in, a desire to argue about something, differences in GM adjudication styles, differences in the kinds of adventures played, or what. I don't think anyone who finds this disparity an egregious issue is wrong, just that whatever they are doing with their gaming groups is not what we are doing in ours, so it's hard for me to understand the gnashing of teeth that tends to go on over it.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
DeathQuaker wrote:
As an aside, in the 15 years I've played Pathfinder, I've personally not experienced the martial/caster disparity to the extremes that some have been insisting it is since, indeed, PF was even a thing (that is to say, since the D&D 3.x it was based on). I get the gist, but having played both types of characters I never felt more or less useful. As a caster I had to watch resources more. As a martial my options were simpler but I still had them and still had skills and roles to play in the group outside of "I hit it with my sword" (and sometimes, I'll add, I enjoy the simplicity of "I hit it with my sword," especially when it is what wins the fight). I've...

If anything, in my campaigns the martials (or martial/magic hybrid classes) tend to be ones where builds go completely off the rails. I got a player who managed to boost his martial AC to over 60 at level 16 - 17 in Shattered Star, which was very difficult to manage. As a lesser example, currently in Curse of the Crimson Throne the clearly best character is the Investigator (Empiricist) 13 / Swashbuckler (Inspired Blade) 1 / Bloodrager (Urban) 1, who is very hard to hit and gets a ton of area control with Long Arms and lots of attacks of opportunity out of Parry/Riposte and another ability from a feat.


What I'm getting is, power attack and point blank shot can be
1- Things Martials already have.
2- Things every person has(All humanoids and other non monsters).
3- A background trait at the start of play.
4- If it ain't broke, don't try and fix it.

The numbers are there for organization. By martials I mean Fighters, monks, and maybe paladins and cavalieres. Worshipers of a deity with the war domain definitely.


In my opinion, the only good thing that EiTR does is that it gives you a good template to make your own feat tax rules, because EiTR itself is really bad at actually adressing the problem it tries to adress and ignores a lot of parts of the system which those rules should tweak if they really want to remove feat taxes in the system.

But even if you make your own feat tax rules, if you don't force your players to actually take non-combat related feats like PF2e does you really aren't solving the problem because players are likely going to still take combat feats to make their combat aspects even better rather than trying to make themselves better in other things, though I still prefer to have those rules on even if I know I'm making the PCs stronger, because I can't hate system taxes in PF1e more than I already do.

If you really want to give martials something to do outside of combat the thing you have to do first is start merging some skills into each other because having 35+ skills doesn't make it easier for martials that barely get 4 or 5 skill ranks per level. Even investigators which get a ton of skill ranks and have a reason to invest into Intelligence still cover a criminally low % of the whole skill list because it seems 3e devs were afraid of skills being powerful for some reason (and no, skills aren't strong at all. Just a few of them actually are strong like Perception and Stealth.)

Is there really a purpose to have have Knowledge (history), Knowledge (local), Knowledge (nobility), and Linguistics as four sepperate skills when we could easily take the Starfinder route and have a single "Culture" skill which encompasses all of them? The only skill from this group which is frequently taken is Knowledge (local), the other ones are barely used and I even saw GMs moving the checks associated with those skills into Knowledge (local) already because it streamlines the system.

Grand Lodge

As a DM I have reintroduced different xp tables for various classes haha.

I find it works best for my group at the least so we are happy with it.

there are three tracks in Pathfinder for xp and leveling up. we use the fastest one for non-casters

we use the middle one for casters who gain up to level 4 or 6 level spells

we use the slowest one for casters.

is simple enough to work out the difference for those that choose to multiclass but to be honest very few desire it in our game.

we stopped using eitr at about the same time and overall find this to be more fun. we also added back in xp bonuses to the total based on attributes as well which have helped a bit.

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