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So it looks like there's definitely enough interest. Donraj has kindly agreed to DM a campaign, and if it goes well maybe we can make it an ongoing thing and follow the entire Pathfinder adventure paths. We'll be starting with Curse of the Crimson Throne. Thread will go up soonish.
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Oct 23, 2010 20:31
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| # ? May 17, 2024 16:15 |
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http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3359575 Threads up.
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Oct 24, 2010 17:32
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I am humoring some friends by playing in a PF game tomorrow. What's the most broken level 1 character I can make? Is it Summoner? I also need details about it if possible. edit: VVVV that doesn't really answer my question. alg fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Nov 4, 2010 |
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Nov 4, 2010 14:03
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Next time just say "no, thanks" instead of planning to be a douche.
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Nov 4, 2010 15:52
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angrylinuxgeek posted:I am humoring some friends by playing in a PF game tomorrow. What's the most broken level 1 character I can make? Is it Summoner? I also need details about it if possible. It's the same thing its always been in 3.5 - a wizard. Memorize Sleep or Color Spray, and win all fights by yourself with a single spell.
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Nov 4, 2010 17:02
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It kinda depends on what you're facing. Summoner is probably the best overall, just thanks to its superior summoning power. Never mind your Eidolon; you can summon seven times for a minute each time. Get Spell Focus (Conjuration) and Augment Summoning, and you can summon a dog each round that's not that much weaker than the fighter, and they'll last until the end of the encounter or until slain. Spam dogs. A more interesting option would be a cleric of Urgathoa with the Magic domain. You have more HP than a wizard, you can prepare Burning Disarm, and if your enemies aren't dumb enough to drop their weapons, you can use your Magic domain power to hurl your scythe for a ranged attack that does about as much damage as the fighter's sword and also has that x4 crit that might trigger. Other options are a bard who abuses Fascinate, a druid with something that looks good for your animal companion, or the classic sorcerer with Sleep and Color Spray. Sorcerer is better than wizard at first level. Or you could just make something normal and enjoy the game, of course...
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Nov 4, 2010 18:49
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ZeeToo posted:Spam dogs. this sounds super fun quote:Or you could just make something normal and enjoy the game, of course... that's what I ended up with. they are my Encounters players, and they have been bugging me to play PF for months. They challenged me to bring something OP to the game to show off how "well balanced" PF is, but I decided on a Druid from the jungle with a Dinosaur companion. We'll see how it goes, a bit disappointed I don't get an At-Will damage spell.
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Nov 4, 2010 18:57
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angrylinuxgeek posted:They challenged me to bring something OP to the game to show off how "well balanced" PF is, At first level?  By level 7 or 9 the Cleric and Wizard are starting to make the fighter look like a cheering squad, but, sure, at first level a sorcerer might want a fighter in front of him to keep him from going down in 1 or 2 strikes. But they'll never be anywhere near balanced as long as Divine Power, Righteous Might, and save-or-lose exist solely in the hands of the primary casters.
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Nov 4, 2010 19:46
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angrylinuxgeek posted:that's what I ended up with. they are my Encounters players, and they have been bugging me to play PF for months. They challenged me to bring something OP to the game to show off how "well balanced" PF is, but I decided on a Druid from the jungle with a Dinosaur companion. We'll see how it goes, a bit disappointed I don't get an At-Will damage spell. A lower level game is not going to appear nearly as unbalanced. As it stands though, the following spells are entirely better than HP damage and can end or trivialize an encounter in ways that only a primary casters can. A level one wizard/sorcerer has access to Sleep, Color Spray, Cause Fear, Charm Person, Hypnotism. Daze Monster and Hideous Laughter are also ways to make an enemy suffer, though not as brokenly good as the above.
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Nov 4, 2010 19:54
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A level 1 Alchemist can also do enough unresistible AoE fire damage to kill most CR 1 monsters.
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Nov 4, 2010 20:51
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Tell them to prove it's balanced you want a level 20 game where you get to play the wizard and cleric and they're all fighters. TOTAL BALANCE
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Nov 4, 2010 21:14
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If you build characters well, at the mid levels where most campaigns take place (say 5-12 or so), Pathfinder is about as balanced as a 3.5esque game is going to get. Yes, given time to prepare, a wizard will probably take a fighter of equal level out in single combat without a whole lot of fuss. That doesn't make the fighter an inferior member of the party. If people know the roles they'd like to fill and build characters to fill them, everyone is going to be useful for the entire game. My group likes high level play, our games usually start at 5 and run until 20 and at no point have I ever seen the melee classes become 'useless' or had wizards consistently capable of soloing encounters. Particularly at high levels when you start seeing monsters with good immunities, high saves, and spell resistance, the casters rely on their melee-capable buddies to help them to progress through encounters. We did ban summoners though. I don't know what the hell Paizo was thinking there.
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Nov 4, 2010 22:51
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grah posted:If you build characters well, at the mid levels where most campaigns take place (say 5-12 or so), Pathfinder is about as balanced as a 3.5esque game is going to get. Yes, given time to prepare, a wizard will probably take a fighter of equal level out in single combat without a whole lot of fuss. That doesn't make the fighter an inferior member of the party. If people know the roles they'd like to fill and build characters to fill them, everyone is going to be useful for the entire game. Do you just not throw caster type enemies at your party's fighter than? Or Enemies with flying, or area denial effects? I genuinely ask because I really see no way that a fighter can serve as a front line combatant against a flying monster or a monster that can fear, or dominate etc...
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Nov 4, 2010 23:16
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Red_Mage posted:Do you just not throw caster type enemies at your party's fighter than? Or Enemies with flying, or area denial effects? I genuinely ask because I really see no way that a fighter can serve as a front line combatant against a flying monster or a monster that can fear, or dominate etc... Generally I guess I try to plan encounters that the party will have to work together to deal with, but I don't go out of my way to avoid a casters' strong points. Certainly there will be some encounters where the caster really shines, but there are plenty of others where the party might be ambushed, or the caster only gets off one spell before getting grappled or having an enemy caster start to waste his turns with countermagic or silence or whathaveyou. While a fully informed, fully prepared wizard can absolutely easy-mode his way through most adventures, I find once we get into playing the wizard (or any other caster) has limited resources and if the party wants to have a pacing that is in any way reasonable, half casters and non casters are going to play a very important role. I'll give an example of the last session I played. This will be kinda long, sorry. The party is a Bloatmage (who basically never runs out of spells), a hurler barbarian, a magus (yay playtesting new classes), and an inquisitor. The party is 6th level but I know this group optimizes very well so probably figure an effective party level of one higher. They were ambushed by 3 cloakers. On the first (surprise) round 3 members of the party get nauseated by the cloakers' moan ability--The wizard, barbarian, and the magus (the wizard has bad fort saves and the magus and barbarian just rolled poorly). The inquisitor gets off a flaming arrow and destroys one of the cloaker's mirror images. On the second round they descend from the ceiling and start grappling people and continue using their moan abilities, but the party has slightly better luck with saves. The magus and wizard take a bit of damage. The inquisitor destroys another mirror image. On the third round The wizard gets lucky and the cloaker misses his grapple check, the wizard casts 'grease' on himself. The magus uses a spell storing sword and manages to hit his cloaker and release a flaming sphere to attack one of the non-grappling cloakers with. The inquisitor gets a real hit (with a flaming composite longbow, which he baned up via the Inquisitor class power) and the barbarian dices up the cloaker that had been attacking the wizard for good damage. On the fourth round the wizard gets grappled on a natural 20, which is a bit of bad luck. The cloaker on the magus loses his grapple, and the magus casts glitterdust, blinding one cloaker. The barbarian uses a rage power to drop a big rock on an injured cloaker, killing it. The inquisitor is just happily rapid-shotting his way through the next cloaker. Fifth round the wizard's cloaker fails its grapple check miserably, the wizard gets off his ghoul touch and the last cloaker falls pretty easily. This isn't an encounter specifically designed to screw over the wizard, cloakers are a standard, I'd even say classic monster. But in a party with two half casters and a full caster, magic really wasn't the centerpiece of the fight. The inquisitor's class powers and the barbarian's sheer damage output were extremely important. The magus got off some good spells and the wizard did ultimately finish the fight with a good low level save-or-suck but no one carried the encounter by themselves. grah fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Nov 5, 2010 |
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Nov 5, 2010 00:30
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grah posted:party stuff SO you had meant fighter as a role, not the class, as I see you have an inquisitor and a barbarian as your frontline combatants. That helps alleviate the gap, certainly. Can casters not use feats to bypass grapple issues anymore?
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Nov 5, 2010 00:41
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Red_Mage posted:SO you had meant fighter as a role, not the class, as I see you have an inquisitor and a barbarian as your frontline combatants. That helps alleviate the gap, certainly. A well built fighter would have acted differently but would also have been important in the fight if he replaced the barbarian. Even if just for pure damage, a two-handed-weapon fighter stacks up pretty well against a raging barbarian thanks to double strength mod on damage rolls, and being able to take weapon specialization, and just having more feats in general. Still spell exists and lets you cast while grappled, but there is still a concentration check and if you prepare spells, you have to prepare them with the metamagic feat on them already. A sorcerer or other spontaneous caster can add metamagic feats at the time of casting. There are also rods of still spell but the Magus needs too much other stuff to afford one and the Wizard opted for a rod of silent spell instead.
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Nov 5, 2010 01:13
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I see what you are getting at, and It sounds like you plan good stuff for your party, which is really cool. More what I was asking is do you have to avoid certain types of adversaries (most prominently intelligent casters) because of the fighter's (or even the fighter type's) blatant weaknesses. Most of my experience with pathfinder comes from the beta, where their iconic fighter at level 14 had a will save that a 1st level wizard enemy could feasibly beat. A 14th level caster type with a save or lose control of you character could reduce his ability to contribute to the fight to zero in a single round.
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Nov 5, 2010 02:03
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Red_Mage posted:I see what you are getting at, and It sounds like you plan good stuff for your party, which is really cool. More what I was asking is do you have to avoid certain types of adversaries (most prominently intelligent casters) because of the fighter's (or even the fighter type's) blatant weaknesses. Fighters having a weak will save is a problem, but I don't go out of my way to avoid it, nor do I go out of my way to pick on it. If a lot of mind altering effects are part of your campaign, people playing fighters will probably take steps to shore up that save, either with feats (they get plenty of them), traits, magic items, multiclassing, or a little help from a friendly cleric. As for avoiding casters, people might disagree but--fighters are good at dealing with intelligent casters. Most of the better save or die spells are Fort saves, so fighters are decent at resisting those. Enchantment effects can be a problem but most fighters are a lot better at will saves than that fighter example that was presented a while back on the Paizo boards. They've got enough feats to take things like 'disruptive' that are situational but really screw over casters. They have good CMBs and can usually knock a caster prone or sunder his metamagic rods or bonded item, or use feats like Step Up and Following Step to negate a caster's ability to five foot step back and cast. I know a lot of people will never be convinced that a fighter is as useful a party member as a caster, but fighters are not a bad class at all. What I'm saying is that fighters get an awful lot of poo poo for a class that isn't monk.
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Nov 5, 2010 04:04
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Are you kidding me? Fighters can't do poo poo to intelligent casters. Did you mean to type unintelligent casters? Because I can totally see a DM trying to make a fighter feel good about himself by making all the evil wizards cast a vs. Fort save or lose rather than a vs. Will save or lose, sure, but if an enemy wizard or cleric is actually planning at all the fighter might as well not be there.
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Nov 5, 2010 06:46
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Fighters actually get a decent bit of feats and tricks to use against casters if they build for it. At best, though, they just make it take a bit longer for the wizard to turn them into a bunny and feed them to their snake familiar.
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Nov 5, 2010 06:59
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Right, see, they get a decent bit of them. Like, there are a lot of them there. Seemingly more every day! Now, why could this be...
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Nov 5, 2010 07:04
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Every trick they add delays the inevitable for one more round.. eventually, the wizard's buffs will wear off. Now they are usually 1minute/level... So as long as the fighter is level.. 40.. and the wizard is level 4, he should have it!
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Nov 5, 2010 07:11
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grah posted:Fighters having a weak will save is a problem, but I don't go out of my way to avoid it, nor do I go out of my way to pick on it. If a lot of mind altering effects are part of your campaign, people playing fighters will probably take steps to shore up that save, either with feats (they get plenty of them), traits, magic items, multiclassing, or a little help from a friendly cleric. See this is a problem, and what is indicative of a lack of balance. First, you shouldn't have to rely on system mastery (knowing which feats are worth taking, knowing which ones are worthless) to make any class simply competent in a fight, or in any aspect of the game for that matter. Second, and this is the big one, one entire category of class (non casters) is entirely reliant on another category of class (casters). You say in there that some help from a cleric is expected, thats an issue when you say earlier that the wizard with good planning is pretty self reliant, even if he is explicitly being targeted. Why should the fighter have to take levels in another class, rely on the magic of another class, or burn their main class feature (extra feats) just to stay, by your claim, marginally behind the curve the full casters are setting?
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Nov 5, 2010 09:49
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Lots of classes have bad will saves. If you are playing such a class and want to not have a bad will save, you either take feats to shore it up, get magic to shore it up, or dip into a class with better saves. When I say that a perfectly informed perfectly prepared wizard can solo any adventure, it's true. But there's a hitch: this never, ever happens. If your adventure is that predictable, you're doing something wrong as a gm. Every member should be relying on every other member of the party to do whatever they do well and to take care of each other's weaknesses. I'm not suggesting that pathfinder is perfectly balanced or that wizards and casters generally aren't at an advantage--they are. But things like "fighters are totally useless" that you see a lot of people say whenever this comes up are hyperbolic, and that's really all I'm trying to convey. Fighters and other martial classes are perfectly capable of being useful members of the party at all levels of play. Wizards are not gods of boundless power, and fighters are not joke classes who might as well not show up. It just doesn't work out like this at the table if you've good characters and a good adventure.
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Nov 5, 2010 13:17
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grah posted:Wizards are not gods of boundless power, and fighters are not joke classes who might as well not show up. PFSRD posted:Weapon Mastery (Ex) PFSRD posted:Time Stop You act freely for 1d4+1 rounds. Core While 20th level is going to be the pinnacle of imbalance, the main draw of wizards is that you are basically a god. A fighter can make his sword crit harder and becomes immune to disarm effects (mind you this doesn't make his weapon invulnerable). A wizard can turn into a monster comparable to a 20th level fighter, create a giant glacier that is an infinitely better protection than a fighter, stop time and set up hundreds of dice of damage/breaking if he needs to, and of course can make 4 wishes a day (assuming we are willing to spend some of the party's money on it, of course the fighter has at this point spent millions of gold to get enough magic items to stay alive).
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Nov 5, 2010 13:45
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Name one reason to bring a fighter instead of another cleric. Cleric can manage effectively just as much to-hit, at least as much damage, can tank just as well with their healing power, have touch-range save-or-lose spells that are at least the equal of combat maneuvers, and have better saves naturally. Add in that they have buffing spells for essentially everything, the ability to summon, other area-control and damaging spells, and also this handy-dandy turn undead power, there is literally no reason for "fighter" to be more than a 2-level (or maybe four level, if you're desperate for feats) dip. It's kind of telling, to me, that I'm pretty sure that "fighter" is the only class ever listed as a prerequisite. "Caster level" is the closest other thing, and that can be fulfilled by a host of classes. But boy howdy, those fighter feats can't be available to barbarians/rogues/rangers/paladins! Now, without Divine Metamagic and with Pathfinder bonuses, the difference between a cleric and a fighter is somewhat less than it was in 3.5, if you're looking at the cleric as just a fighter-replacement instead of covering its own role. Essentially: the fighter is in all seriousness a joke class for people who like playing silly gimmicks or don't mind being useless. Even with Pathfinder, having a fighter that can contribute to a party of two wizards and two clerics, for instance, is just unlikely. And once spells get into maybe 5th level, at highest (it may be lower), a fighter is roughly equivalent to one spell by a caster--Summon Nasty, Wall of Force, Black Tentacles, Stoneskin, Charm, Blade Barrier... off the top of my head. And casters have a lot of spells.
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Nov 5, 2010 15:43
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Anyone have any advice on a cleric? I've been sifting through the thread, but nothing concrete. I've read Eidolon's guide as well as the Beckett's Lab guide, but since this is my first character I'm kind of at a loss. Right now the group is myself (human cleric), and a human wizard, druid, and fighter. I chose the sun domain. I made him before I really looked into him but I still am not entirely sure what to grab. Right now my stats are 16 str 10 dex 14 con 10 int 18 wisdom 10 cha It was a 25 point buy, and right now I'm level 3. I chose the sun domain (sarrenrae), and the feats I have right now are Endurance, Die Hard, and Extra Channel. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
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Nov 6, 2010 03:06
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Nigulus Rex posted:Anyone have any advice on a cleric? I've been sifting through the thread, but nothing concrete. I've read Eidolon's guide as well as the Beckett's Lab guide, but since this is my first character I'm kind of at a loss. Are you having any specific problems? A cleric can be worked towards almost any role. Inflict is a good series for touch-range offense, the stat-buffers area almost always useful, and your various defensive and offensive buffs can turn you or another party member into quite a death-dealer. Also, since 80% of your power or so is in your spells, you can change your role quite a lot from one day to another, and with spontaneous cure spells, you're always a good healer unless you just run out of spells completely. The only thing that I'd say to really look up on if you haven't is... you do know clerics get two domains, right? All of Sarenrae's domains look like pretty solid choices; the weakest is probably Healing. More Cha wouldn't have been terrible, either, for Channel Energy, but unless you're in an undead-heavy campaign, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
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Nov 6, 2010 04:43
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ZeeToo posted:Essentially: the fighter is in all seriousness a joke class for people who like playing silly gimmicks or don't mind being useless I always wonder if people who say this have played pathfinder fighters at high level. A cleric can't match a fighter in melee, unless he buffs. But buffs, summons, channels, and all these things that make clerics great, all cost actions. If ever the party is ambushed (perish the thought), you're already an action behind, and then if you spend the first turn doing a full round summon-which can easily be -interrupted, or casting a buff spell, you're now two actions behind and wasting resources. The action economy is one of the biggest limits on spellcasting, especially at levels where Swift Spell and its 4 spell-level bump is not viable. Beyond that, I really hope your magic-user only party never runs into any kind of high CR golem or other magic immune creature. Or encounters any situation which is less than ideal for magic use, like high level monsters with good spell resistance (which is most of them, including every CR20 monster in the Bestiary). A well built fighter is invaluable in these situations, and in even when a fighter is not the optimal choice, it isn't some waste of space joke character like some people like to insist. Bad saves or no, any character that can put out several hundred damage a turn is not to be written off entirely.
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Nov 8, 2010 04:28
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grah posted:I always wonder if people who say this have played pathfinder fighters at high level. A cleric can't match a fighter in melee, unless he buffs. But buffs, summons, channels, and all these things that make clerics great, all cost actions. If ever the party is ambushed (perish the thought), you're already an action behind, and then if you spend the first turn doing a full round summon-which can easily be -interrupted, or casting a buff spell, you're now two actions behind and wasting resources. The action economy is one of the biggest limits on spellcasting, especially at levels where Swift Spell and its 4 spell-level bump is not viable. ZeeToo posted:Name one reason to bring a fighter instead of another cleric. This still stands. It takes about one spell to match what the fighter's advantages are, and sometimes you don't even need that. I'm not denying that a Fighter + a Cleric is better than a Cleric alone, but what's the advantage of a Fighter instead of another Cleric? The cleric isn't that much worse at low levels in weapon combat than a Fighter, and he has spells to draw on as well. Not many, sure, but even first-level buffs can be pretty helpful. At high levels, you have Symbols, mass Inflict spells, Summons, Holy Word(or equivalents), and so on. Sure, it'll take two or three spells to get as good as the fighter at weapon use, but it doesn't matter when you can stop the fight in one spell that does more damage (or equivalent) than a fighter's weapon, who cares? Then you start to get spells like Flame Strike and Boneshatter that do more damage at range than a bow-focused fighter. And if you're trying to tell me that a Fighter can top a cleric at melee range, with the cleric's touch-range killing spells, I don't know if you've even looked at the cleric's spell list. Then there's the fact that the cleric has, what, 50+ spells equipped at high levels, and can change every day to match what's on the agenda today. A human fighter has less than half as many feats, which often have prerequisites of other feats, and the feats are generally less powerful than, say, Implosion. I've never known SR/saves to be anywhere near enough to be meaningful except on powerful dragons and demon lords. And if you're fighting a dragon--guess what? You want the guy who can cast Resist Energy. For that matter, the guy who can summon an elemental or angel isn't a bad choice, either. Or the guy who can heal, drop buffs, who isn't completely flummoxed by something like Wall of Force... notice a trend? The cleric can generally also tank better, becuase it has better saves, and can heal and if he has one action free he can use a buff spell or two. Anything less that that sort of foe, and the cleric can just Slay Living or something. The only time you'd want a Fighter over a Cleric is if you're in an Anti-magic zone; I stand by my statement.
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Nov 8, 2010 06:32
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Fighters are useful at early levels as sources of damage dealing and damage soak. As the tables turn and the casters get higher level, fighters (and nearly every other melee class) are still useful as a support class. Ironic, isn't it? You're not going to output a cleric or wizard or druid in damage, but with a few spells on their end, you're going to be a significant threat every combat. You guys are playing with groups that work with each other, right? If you're choosing to play a fighter and you're complaining that you aren't exactly as effective as the wizard, well there's always 4th edition right over there. Otherwise, if you don't mind becoming a party support class at higher levels, stick around: your wizard may make fun of you, but he'll still be glad to have you have his back.
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Nov 8, 2010 07:17
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If you think spell resistance is detrimental to casters at high levels, your casters must be literal retards. Summon x, Wall of y, Z Cloud. If your casters are seriously going "welp this dude has spell resistance, gee I wish we had brought bob the fighter instead of this here druid" what the gently caress are they spending their spells on. Setting aside all the ways to outright ignore spell resist, all the CR20 monsters have an SR of 31. That means assuming our level 20 casters are only using spells subject to spell resist and are only using their caster level and a d20 to overcome that, they are going to hit on an 11 or better, roughly half the time (d20 av roll being 10.5 and all). All of the Monsters have ACs between 36 and 40, meaning that a fighters best attack against the weakest monster, will probably hit on a 4 or better for his first attack, and then subtract 5 for every iterative attack (assuming he is reasonably optimized, not power attacking), we can thus assume that three of his five attacks will hit on average. We are not looking at a sizeable damage advantage to the fighter, again assuming our casters are dumb and juts attempting to damage the thing down. Oh and of course all this assumes that the fighter has a fly speed to match those creatures, as all the bestiary cr20s have a fly speed. All of them are intelligent and would probably realize that standing in place trading full attacks with a fighter is a bad idea. Assuming they don't go for the all out dick moves like using many of the attacks against the fighters god awful will save, or using area denial affects, since your own party is not using them, they all still have access to teleports and size advantages. All that being said, I am sorry for making the pathfinder thread a more adversarial place. I can honestly say that paizo makes bitchin maps and battlemats.
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Nov 8, 2010 07:25
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Red_Mage posted:If you think spell resistance is detrimental to casters at high levels, your casters must be literal retards. Summon x, Wall of y, Z Cloud. If your casters are seriously going "welp this dude has spell resistance, gee I wish we had brought bob the fighter instead of this here druid" what the gently caress are they spending their spells on. I don't think this is adversarial, I'm enjoying the discussion. Hitting SR on an 11 means half your spells fail before even provoking a save, and monsters with good saves can up the failure rate considerably more. Battlefield control spells like wall of force are great, but they're not going to end the fight for you. At some point, something has to hit that monster and kill it. That's about when you want to start teleporting Bob the fighter close in. A lot of people will rip on a fighter's bad Will save, but a Wizard's bad Fort save is just as much of a liability if he doesn't do anything about it. At the same levels where failing a Will save takes you out of combat or puts you on the wrong team, failing a fort save probably means you die. If a spell resistant enemy is flying around to avoid attacks, what's the wizard doing? He's casting area denial spells to keep it close so the rest of the party can hit it, or he's casting overland flight on his buddies so they can hit it, and in both these cases you'd rather have a fighter hitting it than a cleric almost 100% of the time. And fighters are not confined to doing only hitpoint damage either. A fighter should have far and away the best CMB in the party. He can run around with a swordbreaker dagger disarming and sundering any weapon-using enemies, which is as good or better than a lot of debuff spells. He can drag and bullrush enemies around the battlefield, granting the other party members lots of nice attacks of opportunity, or protecting the fragile ones from being attacked. A fighter can be built to be an extremely effective mounted combatant, and if placed on a flying mount (not terribly expensive at high levels) can absolutely terrorize flying enemies. With the Disruptive and Step Up/Following Step/Step Up and Strike feat chain, the fighter can almost completely nullify an enemy caster. Fighters are not the marquis class of the party and you won't find me arguing otherwise. But calling them a joke class that no one should ever play except as a gimmick is just hyperbole. Edit: Oh, and the most important thing! The fighter is still just as effective and putting out the same damage, using the same CMB on the last turn of the last encounter of the day as he on the first turn of the first encounter. The fighter has staying power. And yes, when possible the pace of the party will be dictated by spellcasters' need to rest. But if your party is fighting its way up the Big Bad Evil Guy's Tower in a big climactic series of final battles, I don't think they're pitching a tent there in the spire, and rope-trick doesn't let you remove or conceal the rope anymore. Every time a fighter kills an enemy in melee, that's a spell the cleric or wizard didn't have to cast. Every time an attack misses a fighter's high AC, that's healing the cleric doesn't have to worry about. PF is frequently a game of resource management, and the fighter who's doing his job lightens everyone's load in this department. grah fucked around with this message at 11:10 on Nov 8, 2010 |
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Nov 8, 2010 11:01
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grah posted:Hitting SR on an 11 means half your spells fail before even provoking a save, and monsters with good saves can up the failure rate considerably more. Battlefield control spells like wall of force are great, but they're not going to end the fight for you. At some point, something has to hit that monster and kill it. That's about when you want to start teleporting Bob the fighter close in. Since spells are the only important game element at mid to high levels in the game, even an unoptimized and unimaginative wizard's 50% chance of landing a ninth level spell blows the fighter's 0% chance of landing a ninth level spell completely out of the water. Of course, you've already been told that the best wizards will just kill you with spells that ignore SR. Plenty of them do that affect targets directly, even ones that just blast you for straight damage. quote:A lot of people will rip on a fighter's bad Will save, but a Wizard's bad Fort save is just as much of a liability if he doesn't do anything about it. At the same levels where failing a Will save takes you out of combat or puts you on the wrong team, failing a fort save probably means you die. A wizard can do something about it - he can stay out of enemy reach and protect himself with a thousand and one hours/level defensive buffs, starting with Superior Resistance and working up from there. quote:If a spell resistant enemy is flying around to avoid attacks, what's the wizard doing? He's casting area denial spells to keep it close so the rest of the party can hit it, or he's casting overland flight on his buddies so they can hit it, and in both these cases you'd rather have a fighter hitting it than a cleric almost 100% of the time. Haha, maybe if we could somehow get a fighter to cast Divine Power and Righteous Might on itself. Oh, and actually get itself a Will save worth a drat, since of course one of the many advantages of having a cleric be your main tank is that it can't be trivially mind-controlled. quote:And fighters are not confined to doing only hitpoint damage either. A fighter should have far and away the best CMB in the party. He can run around with a swordbreaker dagger disarming and sundering any weapon-using enemies, which is as good or better than a lot of debuff spells. He can drag and bullrush enemies around the battlefield, granting the other party members lots of nice attacks of opportunity, or protecting the fragile ones from being attacked. A fighter can be built to be an extremely effective mounted combatant, and if placed on a flying mount (not terribly expensive at high levels) can absolutely terrorize flying enemies. With the Disruptive and Step Up/Following Step/Step Up and Strike feat chain, the fighter can almost completely nullify an enemy caster. Why are you pretending that the fighter's crowd control abilities are comparable at all to any spellcaster's crowd control capabilities? Gosh, with the right combination of feats and the ability to get in reach and succeed on a few rolls a fighter might be able to inconvenience one guy! quote:Oh, and the most important thing! The fighter is still just as effective and putting out the same damage, using the same CMB on the last turn of the last encounter of the day as he on the first turn of the first encounter. The fighter has staying power. And yes, when possible the pace of the party will be dictated by spellcasters' need to rest. But if your party is fighting its way up the Big Bad Evil Guy's Tower in a big climactic series of final battles, I don't think they're pitching a tent there in the spire, and rope-trick doesn't let you remove or conceal the rope anymore. Every time a fighter kills an enemy in melee, that's a spell the cleric or wizard didn't have to cast. Every time an attack misses a fighter's high AC, that's healing the cleric doesn't have to worry about. PF is frequently a game of resource management, and the fighter who's doing his job lightens everyone's load in this department. I think you mean every time a cleric kills an enemy in melee, or a druid's animal companion kills an enemy in melee, that's a spell that druid or cleric didn't have to cast. Because of course the spellcaster classes are basically 90% as good as fighters all the time (at fighting; they're way better at not dying or not falling to disabling attacks), and hundreds of times better whenever they actually need to be. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Nov 9, 2010 |
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Nov 8, 2010 16:52
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Ferrinus posted:spells are the only important game element at mid to high levels in the game This is just plain false and if you believe it there's not any discussion of any melee class to be had, and there is literally nothing that can balance a non-casting class short of giving them spells.
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Nov 9, 2010 00:17
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grah posted:This is just plain false and if you believe it there's not any discussion of any melee class to be had, and there is literally nothing that can balance a non-casting class short of giving them spells. Hey, you're right.
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Nov 9, 2010 00:46
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grah posted:This is just plain false and if you believe it there's not any discussion of any melee class to be had, and there is literally nothing that can balance a non-casting class short of giving them spells. Technically you could do what they do for monsters and give the needed spells as spell like abilities, but yes you have hit upon way number 1 to balance 3.x Way number 2 involves taking away spells from everyone.
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Nov 9, 2010 00:53
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grah posted:This is just plain false and if you believe it there's not any discussion of any melee class to be had, and there is literally nothing that can balance a non-casting class short of giving them spells. At low levels, it's more on parity, but when the cleric has dozens upon dozens of spells to draw on, there's no comparison. A cleric can do a melee guy's job and more. A wizard or sorcerer can win fights even faster, but at least isn't nearly so obvious with the whole "your job and more" nonsense; a wizard is more about dropping something that just ends fights--Forcecage, Maze, Disintegrate. The much-maligned classes from Book of 9 Swords are still not on the same level as a cleric or wizard, though they at least can contribute well to a party with them, and they're pretty much all strictly superior to even PF-bonused Fighter/Barbarian/Paladin, once you convert from one system to the other what's needed.
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Nov 9, 2010 01:33
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ZeeToo posted:If you believe otherwise, give me one reason to take a fighter over a cleric. I've asked twice before, after all A cleric is better than a fighter overall especially at high levels. This does not in turn mean that fighters are 'worthless' or 'a joke class'. That said, here are two builds using non spellcasting classes (including paladin) that are very good at what they do: Fighter: Use the Two-Handed Weapon fighter from the APG with a Scythe, probably half-elf is the best idea here. You can use the half-elf exotic weapon proficiency feat to use a falchata instead of scythe, but I prefer the scythe so maybe just take the standard skill focus in something that seems relevant. Prioritize strength, power attack your heart out. You need decent Constitution but Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma are all useless to you so take a decent Wisdom to shore up your saves. Maybe don't totally dump Dex since AC is nice and you have bad Reflex Saves too (for some reason). Burn a feat on Iron will too if you want. At mid to high levels you're doing better damage than a buffed cleric and have a comparable or almost comparable will save. By level 20 you've had 22 feats so you should have found the room to take Improved Iron Will, so failing will saves should be a rarity. At level 16, with standard loot, including the ~+2 cloak of resistance that everyone buys and a cheap wisdom boosting headband you should have about a +12 to Will saves, and +14 against all enchantment effects if you went half-elf. Not great but it isn't trivial to mind control the fighter now, and he's immune to sleep which is nice. You should also be dealing something on the order of: 2d4+20(strength with class feature)+12(power attack with class feature) + 3(a modest enhancement bonus at this level, should be higher)+4 weapon training+4weapon specialization for a minimum of 47 damage per attack, and almost certainly 2, and sometimes 3 or 4 hits per round. If the situation lends itself, use whirlwind attack or great cleave to get even more attacks at your full BAB that will almost never miss, and you're putting out lots of damage. By level 20 when the fighter is 'totally useless' you can once a day take a -5 penalty on an attack (if you did things right you still hit most things on a 3) to make that attack an automatic critical threat, which thanks to level 20 Weapon Mastery you automatically confirm, and treat with an increased multiplier. So you're going to see something like 10d4+110+100+24+24+20 damage on a hit. That's, at a minimum, 288 damage, and on average its 303 damage. And frankly this build is less than optimized. Throw an appropriate 'bane' on the fighter's scythe or give him a permanent enlarge person spell, or point a lowly "Wand of Bull's Strength" at him and the damage skyrockets quickly. Every point of bonus damage you can give this fighter from a buff becomes five points of damage if it stacks on a crit, and he autocrits once a day and autoconfirms crits, which should come up on one in ten rolls via Keen or Improved Critical. This is a good use of resources, not a waste of space. It's not as versatile as a cleric, but for straight damage, it's quite good. Build Two: Rogue/(Anti)Paladin. You want a half orc with max charisma and the highest strength you can get. Everything else (except constitution) is irrelevant. Start with levels in Anti-Paladin for the proficiencies and better hit die, and the massive boost to saves at level 2. When you can swing it, take two levels of Rogue(Thug) from the APG. Using the Rogue Talent at level two, you're going to take Intimidating Prowess, and with your normal feats take the Dazzling Display feat chain. Always max your intimidate ranks. This way by level 5 you're able to make most CR 10 creatures Frightened (not shaken mind you, Frightened) for one round on a 2. You can do this infinite times per day, it effects all creatures within 30 feet, and creatures immune to fear lose their fear immunity within 10 feet of you. When you're done scattering the enemies and making them all but useless so your party can pick them off one by one, you have high enough strength to do good damage. You're wearing heavy armor for a pretty solid AC. You save against everything. If an enemy does get close, you've got cruelties and Touch of Corruption to do nasty things to them too (including Bestow Curse numerous times per day). Alternately you can stop taking levels of AntiPaladin after level 3 and start taking levels of fighter, to do better damage, get Armor Training to pull your speed up, and be more effective without sacrificing any ability to destroy any enemy's ability to fight effectively against the party. Or as another alternative, you can replace any or all of the later Paladin levels with barbarian levels. Take amplified rage and get a buddy to take it as well. Now your rage has a handy +8 Strength/+8 Constitution to it, which is a bigger bonus for your intimidate checks as well as all of the typically useful things high strength does. You can be very formidable this way without ever casting a single spell, and without really needing the party spellcaster to buff you.
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Nov 9, 2010 02:38
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| # ? May 17, 2024 16:15 |
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A 20th level wizard who is int focused has 5 ninth level spells and literally 50 other spells of various levels to cast. One more per level if he's specialized
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Nov 9, 2010 03:01
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