Pathfinder Thread

I guess that's slightly better than D&D3.5, where I believe they couldn't cast spells at all while grappled.

It's actually the same rule, except the concentration check is generally a little harder in PF so it actually is worse for casters.

EDIT:

3.5 version:

Hahaha, the grapple rules seemed easy enough until I saw that flow chart.

Now I am curious, though! I've never seen grappling used, so why are you house-ruling that part out? Does grappling stopping wizards from casting fireball instead of having to dimension door out cause problems in your games? I thought everyone agreed that casters were grossly overpowered anyways?

If anything is grossly overpowered in Pathfinder it is high strength two-handed weapon fighters/barbarians/etc., IMO. I think the material component rule is restrictive enough for grappled casters, personally, as written I feel like it is just too much of a total shutdown, especially for lower level characters and divine casters. This opens up a few more options that just "feel" right, like being able to shocking grasp someone in a grapple, etc.

As a caster (grant you, a shitty caster, I am a bard), the material component rule still meant I was 100% fucked when I was in a grapple. It would've been less so had I been a sorcerer like Ingmar wanted, though, as I would've had the eschew materials feat. :P

And yes, my 2h weapon fighter in a different pathfinder party is probably the most overpowered character I have ever played.

That's an interesting inversion of the usual description of DnD. Do you think it's because, according to other threads I've seen anyways, people rarely keep campaigns going past the early teens so they spend most of the time in the lower levels, or did the changes in PF manage to make fighters and barbarians not the red-headed-stepchildren of the game past level 4? (AFAICT still no one likes rangers.)

It's all the Pathfinder changes. They powered up Power Attack, powered up the class abilities of fighters and barbarians, etc.

We started a new campaign Thursday, Second Darkness (we held a vote on Google Polls!), and one of my character concepts was a monk with the grappler archetype. I was going to do it just to troll the DM, because he's a curmudgeon. Then I realized he's only DMing because I am always the DM and he was doing me a favor, so I made a fighter.

A 2-handed Paladin is the most overpowered thing in Pathfinder. Smite Evil trivializes all boss encounters, since how many bosses, really, are you going to have a Paladin fight that aren't evil?

The Paladin we had in Curse of the Crimson Throne could basically kill anything he decided to Smite if he got into melee with it. The one and only time I was able to shut him down as a DM was when a devil cast a Force Cage on him and he rolled a 2 on his reflex save (het gets his Charisma bonus to all saves, and another bonus on saves against effects from his Smite target, so he cannot fail saves). Even then, the devil could not hurt him at all, so he sat in the force cage and cast buffs on himself til the rest of the party worked their way up to the area he was trapped to free him.

Once he was free, he used his flying armor to fly up and make a single attack against the flying devil. He crit (rolled a 17, keen edge on a bastard sword) and did 150 damage. Fight over. This was before he got the magic artifact holy sword in the campaign.

Aye. Fighters in Pathfinder are considerably better than in D&D 3.5, but they're still one of the weaker classes as far as powergaming goes. Paladins, Rangers, Monks, and Rogues can all be more dangerous, let alone spell casters.

Paladins in particular are far and away better than the other melee classes -- they'd still be competent if you simply removed their Smite Evil power, as they're already quite good in other regards.

Fortunately Fighters have been made decent enough that a modicum of powergaming will bring you up into a reasonable range with other non-powergaming characters.

They have another Kickstarter running:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1675907842/pathfinder-online-a-fantasy-sandbox-mmo

Is it odd that if I did pledge it would be just for the super dungeon and supporting materials? I really don't care about an MMOG.

A FFA pvp MMO at that. I am not sure they understand just how badly that is likely to faceplant.

They should have stuck with not having dumb ideas.

Right now the party fighter does an obscene amount of damage if he hits. The big thing there is if he hits. Basically he one-hits everything that I throw at them.

I've found that the encounters as written in Serpent's Skull AP are kind of wimpy. The AP's first adventure has the party shipwrecked on a deserted (not really) island. It was a big sandbox adventure, but mostly the party could sit down and rest between every encounter so they were always at full. I just started doubling the number of monsters in each encounter and it became much better in terms of challenge.

Right now they're in the second adventure and they're clearing out a mine full of wights. The wights are providing no challenge at all as they come in dribs and drabs-- always 2 wights at once. Part of this is an attrition thing-- they're not supposed to be overly challenging, they're just supposed to suck party resources so that during the big battle with the head wight the party has some hard decisions to make. Part of this is because so far every time a wight has hit, the PC has made their saving throw and not taken Con damage (these are salt wights, so they do Con damage instead of negative levels).

I still may increase the number of wights in the final battle.

Have the wights try ambushing the party. They have +16 stealth! Have them flee and try to kite the party into another group. Have them try to smother the party's light source so they can utilize their darkvision. Wights aren't unintelligent Undead, they can adapt to the group's tactics.

Sometimes when players get complacent, you can really screw them by having the monsters do something totally unexpected. Sometimes you try that and then roll a 2 and the players crush the enemies anyway.

Two wights already ambushed the party from under a bridge. The party was in the waist deep water, one wight tried to grab the cleric, the other one of the fighters. Cleric gets grappled and pulled under. He's got like 15 rounds before he even starts to suffocate. The other one doesn't make the grapple, so has to fight the beast of a fighter, a monk, and the rogue. He dies in the first round after the surprise round. The cleric channels positive energy and the other guy gets cut down in the second round. Fight over.

The next two wights are up on the ceiling. They cause a cave in that does 2d6 damage to everyone within 20 feet. That goes well, then the next round after surprise one is cut down by a javelin from the fighter, some spell from the cleric, and something else from the witch (even though the wight has concealment from the dust from the cave in, it doesn't matter). The other wight gets to go and he can either drop and take 1d6 damage from the fall (5 feet of water cushions the 20 foot fall so he only takes half damage), or he can climb down, but he won't survive another round of climbing so he takes the damage, gets one hit in, and the next round is cut down.

So they're using interesting tactics so far, but there's just not enough of them to survive more than a round or two against a party of 4 PCs + 3 NPCs.

That's a lot of protagonists for two wights to face... What level is everyone?

It is a very, very easy trap to fall into as a DM to think that easy encounters are bad. You already hit on the key factor, which is that you're slowly burning their resources for the big gotcha at the end. You can only channel so many times per day, etc. If you throw more big fights at them it is likely you'll just force them to make it a multi-trip visit to the mine and in most situations that's going to be less fun and more time consuming at the table IMO. What you want is that they have just enough resources to make that decision 'well we can do one more fight' just as they hit the last one.

My first suggestion, long term, is to get those NPCs out of the actual adventuring parts. Tropical diseases, someone has to guard the injured guy at the camp, there are lots of Serpent Skull-appropriate ways to write them out of combat scenarios and you'll have a much easier time keeping an eye on balance (and faster combats too).

EDIT: I find that it is usually very easy to convince players to not bring the NPCs along by dividing the XP such that NPCs are taking full shares. Players hate sharing. :)

Agreed, on the second point especially. Who's controlling the NPCs and are they actually contributing to combat? I would've written them off, it seems like a lot of extra bodies and extra paperwork to keep track of. If they are summoned creatures or whatever, then I guess that's a bit harder to get rid of.

Also, your second wight dropping from the ceiling should've tried to land on a player =)

I prefer the parallel GMing school, where fights are less common but more frequently dangerous and not just about conserving resources, where you continue when wounded because you have something to accomplish that's worth the risk, and the opportunity won't last if you "leave and reenter the dungeon". Sometimes leaving and accepting the consequences might well be the best choice, and it's up to the players to decide.

Admittedly that's not really in the spirit of D&D as the mechanics make it difficult! You can still do it with scenes that compel action (e.g. kidnapping, escaping badguys, etc), but there is always a strong pull to "rest a day" when "resources are low".

Hmm it does sound like there's too many heroes in the cave. I don't know what the newer APs are balanced for but the older ones are set up for 4 PCs. When a 5th player joined mid-campaign, I scaled all the encounters by either adding an extra monster or giving the solo monster +1 or 2 to everything except spell save DCs (hit, ac, saves, skills, damage).

One of my DMs is worried my bard is overpowered.

My bard.

I've got two leftover NPCs from the last adventure that they wooed with treasure and good diplomacy rolls.

This adventure has a professional guide NPC along. They completed subquests to get him to come otherwise it adds travel time. They're currently racing rival factions to get to what amounts to El Dorado first to plunder it.

They're trailblazing for a caravan, so they have to send someone back whenever they come across something in order to warn/instruct the wagons. The idea was that they'd never have more than one NPC and the guide with them.

One of the PCs didn't show up to play during our last session, so his character went back to the caravan and they kept all the NPCs with them.

I play the guide, and he doesn't do much aside from the occasional heal when they're in dire straits. They already pretty much hate him because he doesn't contribute enough. I used to play the other two NPCs, but it led to too much monsterbating on my part, so I handed them over to the players, and they generally hand them around to whoever's getting bored and needs more to do. Next session will start with the PC who was out playing one of the NPCs until his character gets back.

Oh, and everyone's 4th level. When they clear this mine they'll probably all be 5th.

Alright, spill it. How do you powergame a bard? Are you abusing whips?

No, he's just one of those DMs who gets antsy if every single fight isn't life threatening, and Will save spells are pretty swingy.

Dammit, I didn't Summon Straight Man. How dare you take me seriously! ;-)

What I liked is that he warned me to diversify or else I would be Unhappy when he starts to "compensate" for my MASSIVE OVERPOWEREDNESS. Because the word I think of when I think of the bard spell list is definitely "diverse."

"Oh, Sjofn," you might say, "you could maybe shift some focus into your fighting skills instead of casting spells! Maybe he's just gently encouraging that!" At which point I laugh at you, for she has a 10 str and a 9 (A NINE) dex.

Part of me wants to point out to him that if I was optimizing to a ridiculous degree (as he seems to think I am doing, which ... I am either a Bard Savant or he needs to relax), she wouldn't be a fucking bard in the first place. I'd be ten times more broken as a sorcerer.

Between this and my OTHER DM basically stealing my fighter's weapon to depower her (yay, a bunch of my feats are currently useless!), I'm either way better at character building than I thought, or ... or I don't even know. Yeesh!

I was going to suggest maybe it's a bard with a level or two of paladin!

Regarding wights, you could always throw on a few little unique things on the fly. Maybe one wight has broken armor from its job as a guard in life hanging on it, so it has an extra 3 or 4 armor. Or quickly drop on the dust wight variant (Salt dust wight!) for 5/blunt DR. It may not actually slow down your party's murder machines, but at least they might look back later and say "Hey, remember that time you were attacked by a dusty wight in a hat?"

Yeah my bard is just Default Bard. Not even an archetype bard or anything. A plain ol' human bard. Who is all of level 5 (well, she JUST hit six, but has yet to wow the world with her terrifying new spell, glitterdust.).

I think maybe he's just anxious because he's got six players and still a little touchy about his game balance. It just seems weird to look at our group and go "yeah, that bard is out of control." I wonder if part of it is because I am ... not bad at the tactical part of D&D, but some of my fellow partymembers definitely are? So he notices my SWEET TIMING of a hold person and not so much all those other rounds where I'm not even a tiny bit a factor or he made his saves or whatever? I dunno.

(I mostly wanted to bitch about this, because seriously. I'm a fucking bard.)

Some GMs just don't have any conception of what powergaming actually looks like. It's certinaly not a Str 10 Dex 9 Bard!

Sounds like he must be complaining about... your spell casting?! Next time play a Wizard. ;-)

[Addendum] Don't mock Glitterdust! That spell kicks ass.

Oh, I'm not knocking glitterdust, it's going to be quite useful in the long term. But yeah, it's the spellcasting, I have spell focus in enchantment and a 20 cha (which I will say is 100% because of how the GM has us doing our character generation), so he thinks my save DCs are SUPER HIGH (they aren't easy, certainly, but they're not like ... crazy. They're like ANY OTHER SPELLCASTER'S WOULD BE).

Basically I think because most of my spells are will saves, which are by their nature pretty irritating when you fail against them, he thinks I'm going to ruin everything with my outrageous barding.

And you're right, next time I should play a REAL spellcaster. I almost feel like he's practically challenged me to show him what a real ridiculous PC looks like. (Except I generally hate spellcasters, the bard is kinda out of my usual comfort zone. I mostly prefer melee characters. Which can be hilarious in their own ways, of course.)

The end boss of Curse of the Crimson Throne was a bard. Let me tell you, nothing pisses off a paladin like Greasing his holy sword.

The bard's DCs are actually one lower than a sorcerer's with comparable resources invested would be, of course, since the bard typically gets the spell at a lower level (hideous laughter is 1st instead of 2nd, etc.)

And that's before you get into things like the fey bloodline adding +1 to compulsion DCs, etc. I should HeroLab up a kitsune fey sorcerer at our level and forward it to him so he can see what real optimizing looks like.

Maybe everybody else's character is hilariously unoptimized? (Lol at my spell check, wanting to change unoptimized to unbaptized)

I don't know much about Pathfinder, but in 3.5, you can make very satisfyingly broken melee characters even at low levels. Especially if your GM allows you to buy back -LA levels with gold when you roll up your character. Half-dragon Cleric wielding a Goliath Greathammer, equipped with a Belt of Giant Growth? Excuse me while I go around 1shotting enemies who I always hit because my to-hit and damage stat are both Strength.

Druids are even more broken in 3.5, of course, but that's a whole different story.

In sum, yes Ingmar, you should make that Sorcerer and it will be beautiful.

Nah, the rest of the party is at least decent. There's a few who make weird tactical decisions, but their actual builds all seem relatively normal, if not "optimized." I think it's basically "if I fail my will save on hold person, it makes me sad, and it is not unlikely I will fail that roll at this level" making him crabby. If you want to save against my hold person, you need to make a DC 18 will save. This just does not seem obscene to me.

This isn't even getting into the fact I can only cast that 3 times a day, and that's if I don't cast blur on our front line guys or whatever. Grr!

You can make pretty silly melee characters in Pathfinder, yes. Until the DM waits for you to drop your +3 falchion you have a bunch of feats invested in and gosh an earth elemental just happened to be lurking in the floor (extra irksome as I almost always try to avoid dropping my weapons anyway, but the rest of the group basically goaded me into it so I could swap to my adamantine reach weapon and full attack with it) and ran off with it, so right now I am suffering with a +2 greatsword. It's not terrible, of course, as at least all my "heavy blade" stuff I get from being a fighter still applies and I still have a very high str (I think she's got a 27 str now, with magic items and shit), but it is really annoying. I didn't do anything particularly crazy with her, either.

There's a weapon enhancement that lets you call your weapon back to you. It combos hilariously well with barbs, and is pretty much the only way to make a bow ranger not suck.

(Barbed Arrows of Returning or whatever; first they shoot into you, then they tear out of you for bonus damage!)

There's also one in Pathfinder that makes it so you can change your weapon into another weapon. Considering slapping that on my adamantine polearm. Assuming that group ever plays again, of course, we had recent DRAMAZ (it was so middle school) so who knows if the DM has the will to keep going at this point (I think he was running out of steam to start with, to be honest).

The best, the best, is barbed tridents of sizing with a gem of returning in them. With the right feats, it goes something like:

1: Attack, thus sticking the trident in the enemy
2: Make the trident become Colossal
3: Move away
4: Call your trident back to you, thus tearing it out of the enemy

Hilarious. Until your GM makes you remake your character, which happens after the very first session.

I think it's funny when people say they're not min/maxing or power gaming then make a spellcaster that starts with a 20 in the primary stat at level 1. A guy in our new game did that, he made a wizard with scores 10, 10, 10, 20, 10, 8. If you're going to make a guy like that go play WoW or 4E where there's nothing to do but fight.

I can't wait for the DM to poison him.