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Ryuujin posted:Also is there a way to get Broken Sword on a Monk or Brawler? With feats.
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Feb 27, 2015 06:58
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Goons halp me! Totally new player to tabletops here. All table tops. Bunch of friends from work play Pathfinder and I've always had an interest in playing these types of games. I'm getting the rule book and am going to read through it. Any tips or suggestions for new players? They need a warrior so I'm going to roll a melee class. Anything helps! Is the op out of date or is still good info?
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Feb 28, 2015 05:31
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I found Paladins and Barbarians easier to work with then Fighters, but you should probably just pick either a Druid, Cleric or Dragon Sorcerer. Druid being a cool option because you turn into a bear.
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Feb 28, 2015 19:05
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I don't want to open a can of worms, but I'm wondering about Pathfinder. Is it pretty easy to balance an encounter as a DM? When I've been DMing 5th edition (and 4th, to a lesser degree) it seems like every encounter I make ends up being hilariously easy or impossible. Also, it depends a lot on player makeup and who is doing the actions. The PCs who are playing casters end up completely overshadowing any of the other classes during combat and I can tell the other PCs don't like it. Is Pathfinder better than D&D in this regard?
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Feb 28, 2015 19:08
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Bazanga posted:I don't want to open a can of worms, but I'm wondering about Pathfinder. Is it pretty easy to balance an encounter as a DM? When I've been DMing 5th edition (and 4th, to a lesser degree) it seems like every encounter I make ends up being hilariously easy or impossible. Also, it depends a lot on player makeup and who is doing the actions. The PCs who are playing casters end up completely overshadowing any of the other classes during combat and I can tell the other PCs don't like it. Is Pathfinder better than D&D in this regard? Nope. All of the problems with encounter balancing in the 5th edition are also present in pathfinder. Except that the casters are even more powerful in comparison to martials in PF. Also, at higher levels fights in pathfinder tend to devolve into rocket tag where the casters sling battle-ending spells at each other. Andrast fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 19:13
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Bazanga posted:I don't want to open a can of worms, but I'm wondering about Pathfinder. Is it pretty easy to balance an encounter as a DM? When I've been DMing 5th edition (and 4th, to a lesser degree) it seems like every encounter I make ends up being hilariously easy or impossible. Also, it depends a lot on player makeup and who is doing the actions. The PCs who are playing casters end up completely overshadowing any of the other classes during combat and I can tell the other PCs don't like it. Is Pathfinder better than D&D in this regard? Unfortunately no. Pathfinder has some severe balance problems when it comes to caster/martial disparity. They made some fixes martial classes like the paladin. But they buffed all the casters as well, so the disparity is still well in effect.
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Feb 28, 2015 19:16
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Zig-Zag posted:Goons halp me! Totally new player to tabletops here. All table tops. Bunch of friends from work play Pathfinder and I've always had an interest in playing these types of games. I'm getting the rule book and am going to read through it. Any tips or suggestions for new players? They need a warrior so I'm going to roll a melee class. Anything helps! Is the op out of date or is still good info? However, there are caster classes that can be super strong in melee. Synthesist summoners, wildshape druids, battle oracles, etc.
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Feb 28, 2015 19:37
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New plan, play an Inquisitor, they can melee and are superfun.
Moriatti fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Feb 28, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 19:45
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Andrast posted:Nope. All of the problems with encounter balancing in the 5th edition are also present in pathfinder. Except that the casters are even more powerful in comparison to martials in PF. So then if casters are literally gods at higher levels, do you have to factor that in pretty heavily when making encounters? For instance, if my group is 3 melee players and a wizard at around level 13, do I have to completely tune the encounter with the idea that every round the wizard will just vaporize at least one enemy? And what about bards? A guy in my group really wants to play one and I'm fine with that but all I really see posted about them is "lol bards"
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Feb 28, 2015 21:35
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Bazanga posted:So then if casters are literally gods at higher levels, do you have to factor that in pretty heavily when making encounters? For instance, if my group is 3 melee players and a wizard at around level 13, do I have to completely tune the encounter with the idea that every round the wizard will just vaporize at least one enemy? Give the enemies higher saves and lower AC. Evasion(and the less popular Stalwart which is evasion for Fort and Will) is also a way to force the caster to be assisting and not dominating. Alternatively give leaders/non mooks spell resistance? Checks to overcome SR are d20+Caster level vs SR so if you want them to fail half the time, give the boss SR 23. Any small enemy (goblin/kobold/gnome/halfling warriors) or any quick animal-y thing, or actual classes that get Evasion make sense. A robot Ninja is immune to most spells, but its AC may be a fair/manageable ~20 (10+6 Modifier+4 armor)
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Feb 28, 2015 21:48
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Bazanga posted:So then if casters are literally gods at higher levels, do you have to factor that in pretty heavily when making encounters? For instance, if my group is 3 melee players and a wizard at around level 13, do I have to completely tune the encounter with the idea that every round the wizard will just vaporize at least one enemy? One enemy vaporization per turn is probably a conservative estimate for the wizard if he knows at all what he should be doing. The problem with actually balancing an encounter in pathfinder at high levels is that one failed save can mean a lost battle, often for both sides. As a result encounter balancing is a crapshoot and battles are often based on who goes first, hence the term "rocket-tag". I generally advise against going over level 12 for long lengthy periods since the system gets so unwieldy. Bards and the other 6-level casters are some of the more fun and better balanced classes in the game.
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Feb 28, 2015 21:50
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Bazanga posted:So then if casters are literally gods at higher levels, do you have to factor that in pretty heavily when making encounters? For instance, if my group is 3 melee players and a wizard at around level 13, do I have to completely tune the encounter with the idea that every round the wizard will just vaporize at least one enemy? Are they actually 13 or is that hypothetical - because realistically most campaigns don't last into the most problematic level ranges.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:02
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The 13 was hypothetical. I just picked a level that I assumed the problems were really apparent at. It sounds like if we stick under level 7ish we won't run into any major class discrepancies, so I'm sure we will be fine.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:13
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I play PFS, which caps out at 11, and don't really run into too many issues of casters totally dominating. They're really useful don't get me wrong, but martials still deal most of the damage and skill monkeys do the non combat stuff. Casters seem to do mostly buffs like haste and control like black tentacles, grease or obscuring mist. Except summoners, they're fuckin assholes.
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Feb 28, 2015 22:33
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We first started noticing the divide around level 6, when the group became split down the middle between Those Who Can Fly and Those Who Can't.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:23
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My first exposure to pathfinder was accidentally destroying all of the challenge by making a heavens oracle who just Color sprayed everything to death for the first ~7 levels. His small campaign just didn't have almost anything that was immune to it.
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Feb 28, 2015 23:30
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Well you can also swing balance by having a really wide variety of enemy types and lots of weird environments with nonstandard hazards, and then just let the martials declare they do poo poo like run up walls or fan the air with their sword to send a poison cloud over somewhere or chuck balls of cooling magma with their hammer or whatever while the casters are "limited" to their spell effects. But then you're not really playing Pathfinder anymore.
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Mar 1, 2015 00:28
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The best and easiest pathfinder games to run are the ones without full casters.
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Mar 1, 2015 04:11
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Lottery of Babylon posted:We first started noticing the divide around level 6, when the group became split down the middle between Those Who Can Fly and Those Who Can't. Yeah this is the first major hurdle, typically. Wings or Boots of flying are too expensive for characters at this level but most casters can fly either via spells or class powers starting at level 6, and martials generally can't, unless they're either hybrids or I think some specifically built barbarians.
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Mar 1, 2015 21:26
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grah posted:Yeah this is the first major hurdle, typically. Wings or Boots of flying are too expensive for characters at this level but most casters can fly either via spells or class powers starting at level 6, and martials generally can't, unless they're either hybrids or I think some specifically built barbarians. Barbarians can't get wings until level 10, and doing so costs all five of their Rage Powers. In our case the casters couldn't even cast Fly on our melee characters because they were a Druid and an Alchemist getting wings from Wild Shape and a Discovery respectively. And just after we hit level 6, we entered a long string of encounters that coincidentally all happened to be flying, invisible, or both. The game was still pretty playable at 6 compared to what came later, but the martial/caster disparity certainly isn't something that doesn't show up until level 13. Andrast posted:Bards and the other 6-level casters are some of the more fun and better balanced classes in the game. This is true as long as you don't count the Summoner. Worst class.
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Mar 2, 2015 00:06
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Is summoner bad because it's objectively terrible bad or is it "oh my god did anyone even playtest this" overpowered bad? Anyone played We be Goblins? Going to run it next week as an introduction to pathfinder for my new group.
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Mar 2, 2015 01:55
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The second.
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Mar 2, 2015 01:58
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How is the Summoner intended to be played? You can't chuck out the extra summons while your Eidolon exists and you can't summon the Eidolon in combat, so do you keep the Eidolon out at all times and fall back on Summons if it goes down?
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Mar 2, 2015 02:00
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The Lone Badger posted:How is the Summoner intended to be played? You can't chuck out the extra summons while your Eidolon exists and you can't summon the Eidolon in combat, so do you keep the Eidolon out at all times and fall back on Summons if it goes down? You play the whole party every fight and trivilize the entire game ala wizard but dont even pretend that your limited by resources like the wizard can.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:08
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The Lone Badger posted:How is the Summoner intended to be played? You can't chuck out the extra summons while your Eidolon exists and you can't summon the Eidolon in combat, so do you keep the Eidolon out at all times and fall back on Summons if it goes down? Your Eidolon fights as well as a full-BAB class does, and you cast as well as a Sorceror does, and you essentially get two turns per round to do both.
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Mar 2, 2015 02:27
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Yeah, the summoner is such a good class that standard action summons, multiple per day for free, are considered a secondary, inferior choice to a competing feature. Like what the actual gently caress.
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Mar 2, 2015 03:05
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The Lone Badger posted:How is the Summoner intended to be played? You can't chuck out the extra summons while your Eidolon exists and you can't summon the Eidolon in combat, so do you keep the Eidolon out at all times and fall back on Summons if it goes down? It's trivially easy to have your eidolon as good as any full-martial character with the added benefit of getting a second full turn to cast spells. Summoner breaks the action economy with its most basic, namesake class feature alone.
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Mar 2, 2015 04:08
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Sticking with Paizo stuff, and without using feats, equipment, spells or favored class bonuses, it's pretty easy to have your eidolon do 12+3d4+5d6 damage at level 6 at full BAB compared to a fully decked out ranger with lead weapons doing about 2d8+4d6+28 damage who takes huge penalties on half their attacks, and minor penalties to negate the eidolon's 3/4 BAB. Of course... at level 8, your eidolon becomes Large, and then all hell breaks loose, and it is no longer a fair comparison... Gensuki fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 05:20
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It's helpful to look at it like the Eidolon is the actual character, the Summoner is just some guy who follows the actual character around and casts spells sometimes.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:32
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And despite some people's reactions to the Synthesist, as being too powerful because it outshines a Fighter or something, it is actually more balanced than a normal Summoner. Because the Synthesist does not get the action economy of the normal Summoner.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:42
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Ryuujin posted:And despite some people's reactions to the Synthesist, as being too powerful because it outshines a Fighter or something, it is actually more balanced than a normal Summoner. Because the Synthesist does not get the action economy of the normal Summoner. To be fair, the Synthesist really is broken as hell. It's essentially a gestalt Fighter+Sorcerer on a 60-point buy. The fact that the base Summoner class is even better says more about the Summoner than about the Synthesist.
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Mar 2, 2015 06:33
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Lottery of Babylon posted:To be fair, the Synthesist really is broken as hell. It's essentially a gestalt Fighter+Sorcerer on a 60-point buy. The fact that the base Summoner class is even better says more about the Summoner than about the Synthesist. I'd love to see a Synthesist base class of some sort, built to focus on the eidolon part more, and other summoning less.
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Mar 2, 2015 10:25
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Moinkmaster posted:I'd love to see a Synthesist base class of some sort, built to focus on the eidolon part more, and other summoning less. The Aegis from Ultimate Psionics is similar and really fun. You create an astral suit using your mind and modify it with a point system like an eidolon. It's also, you know, actually balanced. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/aegis Andrast fucked around with this message at 10:36 on Mar 2, 2015 |
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Mar 2, 2015 10:29
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I'd sort of like to say that if your group has a Summoner in it, the Summoner should count as two characters for the sake of encounter-building, but then again you'd just be punishing the entire group with tougher combats because one of your players picked a class that's equivalent to two characters in one.
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Mar 2, 2015 10:32
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Hey goons, I wanted some advice. I've sttarted planning my next campaign (the current one is wrapping up within the month), and I decided I want to try out the mythic rules. Any advice on running a campaign like this? Recognizing that power creep is gonna be real, I've banned 9 level spell progression classes and summoner, but the effective level of a character being equal to level+half mythic tier seems a bit low, considering the benefits of mythic tiers. Any thoughts on this, or the mythic rules in general?
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Mar 2, 2015 16:25
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Scrimsax posted:Hey goons, I wanted some advice. I've sttarted planning my next campaign (the current one is wrapping up within the month), and I decided I want to try out the mythic rules. Any advice on running a campaign like this? Recognizing that power creep is gonna be real, I've banned 9 level spell progression classes and summoner, but the effective level of a character being equal to level+half mythic tier seems a bit low, considering the benefits of mythic tiers. Just design encounters around ECL = CL + Tier.
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Mar 2, 2015 17:18
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Any class guides on how to be the bestest sorcerer? Would feel awkward asking you guys every time I level. I'm trying to use Minstrels guide but I still ended up basically only casting haste last campaign. But maybe that was because we has a summoner  I think he literally dragged like a 4 ton rock or something.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:26
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I'd check treantmonk, he makes great guides. I know he has a wizard one, I don't know about sorcerer, but it could give you a starting point.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:56
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Buff your party, summon monsters, and control the battlefield. There, that's all of treantmonk's guides to casters boiled down to one sentence.
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Mar 2, 2015 19:34
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kingcom posted:You play the whole party every fight and trivilize the entire game ala wizard but dont even pretend that your limited by resources like the wizard can. And Synthesist and Master Summoner are worse
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Mar 2, 2015 20:04
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