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So I started playing in a pathfinder game a couple of weeks ago and we ran into a couple of problems. Two players are playing Noble Drow. Which are like regular Drow but with a bunch of powerful spell like abilities. A lot of them. In the bestiary the Noble Drow start at CR 3 so they're like level 3 monsters before adding class levels. What's a good way to handle it as just saying "no" resulted in a huge rear end argument. I'm pushing for a 3 level adjustment. The players say a 1 level adjustment (as per regular Drow) is appropriate, our DM is pissed that they get stuff like detect magic, levitate, and deeper darkness at will. It's these guys that are causing the issues.
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Sep 26, 2010 18:23
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3 Level Adjustment, or "No".
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Sep 26, 2010 18:28
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Gr3y posted:So I started playing in a pathfinder game a couple of weeks ago and we ran into a couple of problems. Well, according to RAW, it would be a 3 level adjustment with a bonus class level between their 2nd and 3rd level up that doesn't actually affect their character level. So (just using Rogue as an example) at 4th level they'd be, say, a Rogue 1, at 5th level a Rogue 2, halfway to 6th you'd make them a Rogue 3, and at 6th they'd be a Rogue 4. But also as a note, basic drow don't get any level adjustment, LA isn't part of Pathfinder anymore so you can just ignore the old values. However, they also say that most of the monsters are in no way balanced around them being used as PCs, that that wasn't the goal of the Bestiary, and that this system is basically a temporary kludge until they actually put together a way to use the really weird or powerful monsters as PCs. And so you should basically just put a lot of thought into if that monster is appropriate as a PC at all. And a noble drow is one I'd definitely think hard about if you want to allow at all. Edit: Yeah, what Klungar said.
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Sep 26, 2010 18:33
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There's material for balancing Noble Drow in the 3.5 Faerun books, and also in the "Drow of the Underdark" book. I seem to remember that it handled Noble Drow as being ordinary Drow, except they have to take certain feats to have the special Noble Drow abilities.
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Sep 26, 2010 18:55
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As was already said, monsters from the bestiary are not balanced to be used by players as PCs. There aren't a whole lot of ways to fix that, since they're designed to be challenges for PCs.
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Sep 26, 2010 20:57
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Etherwind posted:I seem to remember that it handled Noble Drow as being ordinary Drow, except they have to take certain feats to have the special Noble Drow abilities. This sounds like a much reasonable compromise (especially with the 1 level adjustment) than 3 level adjustment, as it's pretty much the same as a 3 level adjustment, since the players must spend the finite number of feats they get starting off and whenever they level.
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Sep 27, 2010 00:08
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Young Freud posted:This sounds like a much reasonable compromise (especially with the 1 level adjustment) than 3 level adjustment, as it's pretty much the same as a 3 level adjustment, since the players must spend the finite number of feats they get starting off and whenever they level. Not quite as much, since like I said earlier, Pathfinder drow don't get a 1 level adjustment. Actually, looking at the stat block again, I'm not sure what by strict RAW the noble drow level adjustment should be, since I just noticed the example CR 3 statblock they have is a cleric 3. But that's just more evidence that it's a bad choice to allow, since that's obviously something that should definitely have one. Idran fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Sep 27, 2010 |
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Sep 27, 2010 00:15
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Idran posted:Not quite as much, since like I said earlier, Pathfinder drow don't get a 1 level adjustment. The thing is, even is you strip out the Cleric levels and their spells you still have a solid list of utility spells. I like the idea of feat taxing but that will probably cause a poo poo storm as we would be inventing custom feats just to keep those two in line.
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Sep 27, 2010 00:35
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Gr3y posted:The thing is, even is you strip out the Cleric levels and their spells you still have a solid list of utility spells. I like the idea of feat taxing but that will probably cause a poo poo storm as we would be inventing custom feats just to keep those two in line. Hey. I told you, go read the Faerun books, they've already been written. Races of Faerun, Pg. 164 posted:Highborn Drow [General] Edit: also check out Drow of the Underdark. It's a standalone book for D&D 3.5 that has nothing to do with Faerun and gives tonnes of stuff for playing Drow. Etherwind fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Sep 27, 2010 |
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Sep 27, 2010 00:45
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^^ Yeah, a bunch of cantrips and 1st level spells as SLAs aren't really worth a whole level adjustment at later levels, and except for when the SLAs are above your level. EDIT: I think the prereq needs adjusting though. The SLAs gained are not so significant to a spellcaster(good will save) and are roughly worth a feat for a caster who can cast them himself, which the +2 Will save prereq is too low for. Will +4? +5? veekie fucked around with this message at 13:02 on Sep 28, 2010 |
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Sep 28, 2010 12:54
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veekie posted:^^ Did you see the set noble drow get? Yeah, most are pretty low-powered a few levels in, but levitate at will and dispel magic and suggestion 1/day are SLAs that I'd say are worth level adjustment through a good part of your progression. Levitate would get obsoleted earlier than the other two once you reach the point where you have easy access to flight, but dispel and suggestion are always handy.
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Sep 29, 2010 06:47
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Idran posted:Did you see the set noble drow get? Yeah, most are pretty low-powered a few levels in, but levitate at will and dispel magic and suggestion 1/day are SLAs that I'd say are worth level adjustment through a good part of your progression. Levitate would get obsoleted earlier than the other two once you reach the point where you have easy access to flight, but dispel and suggestion are always handy. SR of 11 + level is also a pretty big benefit that is not easy to come by other ways. And the array of attributes that Noble Drow get in pathfinder--it's easily a 3 level adjustment, if not 4. They are much more potent than pc races, and much more potent than common drow. As an aside, does the Magus class playtest seem really broken to anyone else? Not in the sense of being overpowered, but in the sense of "this is badly made and there is no reason to play it"? The class has two (2) touch spells and a class power that only works with touch spells. Using it's signature ability requires a significantly hard caster level check and imposes a -4 to attacks whether or not you get the extra spell cast or not, and if you fail you lose the spell slot, which you have a very limited number of. I can't see any reason to play this. If you want a sword fighting magic user, even a straight sorcerer works better than this, or a sorcerer-fighter or a ranger or literally anything you could think of seems better. Am I missing something here?
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Sep 29, 2010 07:37
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Not everyone can be a wizard. Sometimes, someone's got to be the hexblade.
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Sep 29, 2010 08:22
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LA +3 is well over the bump though. A level 1 character with those abilities is nowhere near the same level of function as a level 4 character without. You have: SR 11+level(from 6+level) SLAs -constant, Detect Magic, Handy, if not really a game changer due to the way cantrips work. Any caster can do this. -at will, Dancing Lights, as above, any arcane caster already has this at will -at will, Faerie Fire, 1st level, negates invisibility if you know where to aim. Useful at all levels that invisibility sees use. -at will, Feather Fall, 1st level, nice, but sorta niche. Useful at all levels -at will, Levitate, 2nd level, this is basically perfect climbing. Pretty good for travel and navigation purposes, and not too bad for a spellcaster who can sit in the air and buff/AoE, though opposing archers/casters would make it nasty in a hurry. Useful at all levels, but limited use in combat due to lack of maneuvering ability. -at will, Deeper Darkness, 3rd level, this increases power, and functionally negates the racial Light Sensitivity. A real nasty one to have. -1/day, Divine Favor, 1st level, useful but not all that hot, it only lasts a minute and takes a standard action to put up. A cleric or a bard would be more efficient. This one becomes outdated in a hurry. -1/day, Dispel Magic, 3rd level, generally useful countermagic. Having this would be useful until the teen levels, where you'd have more sources of it -1/day, Suggestion, 3rd level, one of the really nice one, this is powerful up till the teen levels at which point it becomes merely nifty. At will Levitate and Deeper Darkness are the major concerns here, with the Dispel Magic and Suggestion being less bad. Most of the issues here are with entry level of these, at least half the SLAs don't belong on anyone below 6th level. Spell Resistance is in itself, as much trouble as it helps. quote:A creature can voluntarily lower its spell resistance. Doing so is a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity. Once a creature lowers its resistance, it remains down until the creature's next turn. At the beginning of the creature's next turn, the creature's spell resistance automatically returns unless the creature intentionally keeps it down (also a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity). I'd stagger these out if it was converted for PC use. The first feat, for any drow with Will save +2: SR improves to 11+level Dancing Lights at will. Detect Magic at will. Feather Fall at will. Divine Favor 1/day The second feat, for any drow with the first feat and a Will save of +3: Detect Magic to Constant Faerie Fire becomes at will Darkness becomes at will Levitate 1/day The third feat requiring the second and a Will save of +5: Levitate becomes at will(you can get magic items for this by then) Darkness becomes Deeper Darkness Dispel Magic 1/day Suggestion 1/day Now, the above takes a crapton of feats, but I dare say some will go for it, and the Will save prereq means that casters will qualify most easily, however, they will already have many of these abilities at the same levels, so it virtually saves them a handful of spell slots is all.
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Sep 29, 2010 08:31
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veekie posted:stuff I'd agree with you if you also changed "+4 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom, +2 Charisma, –2 Constitution" to the standard elf bonuses, because these ability score racial adjustments are just about worth a level by themselves.
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Sep 29, 2010 08:36
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Why not just start with a high as hell level adjustment like +5 and let them buy it off as they level?
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Sep 29, 2010 15:52
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Tactical Bonnet posted:Why not just start with a high as hell level adjustment like +5 and let them buy it off as they level? Because then you are level 1 with like 5hp
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Sep 29, 2010 16:14
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Call it punishment for playing Eric Draven-Drizzt.
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Sep 29, 2010 18:24
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A five level adjustment is too high. By the time they start catching up we would be facing things that can both one shot them and drat near auto hit their low level asses. Etherwind posted:Hey. I told you, go read the Faerun books, they've already been written. Because I don't wanna! One of the reasons I want to play in this game (and why our DM wants to run it) is because, theoretically, we don't need shelves upon shelves of splat books like 3.5. I don't have any beefs with the 3.x system, but I hate trying to justify/balance a couple of dozen splat books spread across all the players so everyone gets their special snowflake character. veekie posted:I like the feat tax idea because it spreads out his progression in SLAs more like that of a normal caster. My suggestion to the DM tonight is to hit him with a LA (which is fair just for the stat bonuses) and then use character level as caster level for his SLAs. If that's a Level 3 Sorcerer spell he doesn't get it until he would have access to those spell if he was a sorcerer/etc. I think the big problem with the two Drow Nobles is that they get access to really good stuff for a level 1 character. Yeah, most of that stuff isn't that impressive from the mid-game on, but it kind of easy-modes the lower levels. Of course the A answer would still be to just say "No, you don't get to play that because it's loving broken" but that didn't work too well last time.
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Sep 30, 2010 05:26
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+2 Level Adjustment. Just do that. Characters are stronger than ever in Pathfinder, and the less levels they have to work with, the harder off they are. Sure, it doesn't seem like a lot, but when everyone else is having fun with second attacks, 3rd level spells and awesome class abilities, you can do what? Levitate? Good for you.
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Sep 30, 2010 06:10
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grah posted:SR of 11 + level is also a pretty big benefit that is not easy to come by other ways. And the array of attributes that Noble Drow get in pathfinder--it's easily a 3 level adjustment, if not 4. They are much more potent than pc races, and much more potent than common drow. There's supposed to be a metric buttload of new touch spells in Ultimate Magic, which should supposedly make the class better. It's just that they didn't want to playtest them so all we get is what's in the core and the APG. And so with the lack of playtesting, they'll likely be the same poorly-executed-but-decent-ideas-at-the-core kind of stuff we got from the APG. (Losing faith in Paizo month by month...)
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Sep 30, 2010 08:05
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grah posted:I'd agree with you if you also changed "+4 Dexterity, +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom, +2 Charisma, –2 Constitution" to the standard elf bonuses, because these ability score racial adjustments are just about worth a level by themselves. Well, how the hell did I miss those, yeah, that too.
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Sep 30, 2010 15:17
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The thing about the public playtests is that they're not really going to be using what people say to drastically change the designs. They use internal playtesters for that kind of stuff. The public playtests are more like free advertisements for their books. They managed to sell 1,000 copies of the Beta corebook at Gen Con even though there was a free pdf anyone could download and the book was going to be obsolete in less than a year. People brought those books home and started their groups playing Pathfinder a year before Pathfinder was even out. Everything is marketing with Paizo. Every blog post, every "casual" photo that has 17+ paizo products sitting innocently in the background, and these playtests.
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Sep 30, 2010 20:37
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So the DM decided that they can't be Drow nobles. One player was absent, the other didn't really give a poo poo. The rest of us had a blast. My Inquisitor is loving awesome. He seems to be just about the right balance of martial murder machine and self buffing magic man.
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Oct 4, 2010 04:54
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Gr3y posted:So the DM decided that they can't be Drow nobles. One player was absent, the other didn't really give a poo poo. The rest of us had a blast. You should have told him the amount of discussion went into noble drow, man. 
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Oct 4, 2010 06:03
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Any interest in playing a Maptools game of this? I just bought the core rulebook and want to get some use out of it. 
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Oct 22, 2010 04:11
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Sombrero! posted:Any interest in playing a Maptools game of this? I just bought the core rulebook and want to get some use out of it. I'd give it a shot since the last pbp game on here fell apart, assuming I can get maptools working, which seems pretty doable.
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Oct 22, 2010 07:37
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I'd be interested, though I'd prefer to do it on IRC since Maptools doesn't get you an OOC room.
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Oct 22, 2010 07:39
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I'm interested, I'm used to gametable instead of maptools but that's doable.
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Oct 22, 2010 15:14
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I'd be interested, depending on what night it is.
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Oct 22, 2010 15:40
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I'm super new to Pathfinder, so would anyone be willing to bite the bullet and DM? We could just use one of those Pathfinder Adventure Paths, they seem pretty awesome.
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Oct 22, 2010 17:59
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Just don't use Rise of the Runelords. It came out before Pathfinder was officially released, so is built using 3.5 rules, and it is a pain in the rear end to convert everything over to Pathfinder.
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Oct 22, 2010 18:03
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I'm down for a game too, haven't played Pathfinder but really would like to try - I was a big 3.5 fan so, when reading the rulebook, I was pretty happy. PM me if there's a game on ...
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Oct 22, 2010 18:07
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Klungar posted:Just don't use Rise of the Runelords. It came out before Pathfinder was officially released, so is built using 3.5 rules, and it is a pain in the rear end to convert everything over to Pathfinder. We could try Curse of the Crimson Throne?
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Oct 22, 2010 19:38
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Sombrero! posted:I'm super new to Pathfinder, so would anyone be willing to bite the bullet and DM? We could just use one of those Pathfinder Adventure Paths, they seem pretty awesome. Maybe we could rotate dm? I don't mind dm-ing, but I dm a lot for my local group and always want a chance to actually play too.
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Oct 22, 2010 20:15
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I might tentatively be up for DMing. Let me see if I can get ahold of these modules first.
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Oct 22, 2010 20:17
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grah posted:Maybe we could rotate dm? I don't mind dm-ing, but I dm a lot for my local group and always want a chance to actually play too. I'm pretty new to RPGs and have never DMed in my life so I'd be a terrible DM, but I totally understand DM fatigue. Anyone else want to volunteer for DMing? I just grabbed all the existing Pathfinder Adventure Paths and I could send them to you (promise I haven't read them at all )
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Oct 22, 2010 20:22
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Sombrero! posted:I'm pretty new to RPGs and have never DMed in my life so I'd be a terrible DM, but I totally understand DM fatigue. Anyone else want to volunteer for DMing? I just grabbed all the existing Pathfinder Adventure Paths and I could send them to you (promise I haven't read them at all Hit me up on AIM?
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Oct 22, 2010 23:27
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Donraj posted:Hit me up on AIM? YOU'RE NOT ON AIM AT MIDNIGHT ON A FRIDAY NIGHT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU (right after I typed this you logged in. nerd.)
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Oct 23, 2010 05:18
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If anyone's interested I've set up an IRC channel for this game, #pathfinder on synIRC. It looks like the game is gonna be a combo of maptools + IRC. Come in so we know you're interested.
Sombrero! fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Oct 23, 2010 |
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Oct 23, 2010 06:12
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