Pathfinder Is Still Bad

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Axebird
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Post by Axebird »

The idea for druids is usually to get the wild property on their armor (dragon hide plate, at the top end). It doesn't really matter whether they're proficient in the armor or not, or what its max Dex bonus is, since it fucks off into the ether when they shapeshift anyway. It's dickery with specific pieces of equipment to get your AC completely off the RNG if you play your cards right.

I imagine shifters could do pretty much the same thing. If you're committed to diving for things like that you might as well just play a druid, but it should still work.
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Post by Covent »

The Wild FAQ is... bad.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

Of fucking course the armor you're wearing and benefitting from should still have its drawbacks as well. Fucknugget. This isn't a bad ruling.

(But the encumbrance part of it is).
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Post by Covent »

I was under the impression that this made Pathfinder +3 Wild property equivalent to the +2 Beastskin property from 3.5. The fact that the Beastskin property existed also seems to imply that before this FAQ that Wild did not work that way.

*Shrug* I may be wrong.
Last edited by Covent on Sat Dec 02, 2017 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Voss »

rasmuswagner wrote:Of fucking course the armor you're wearing and benefitting from should still have its drawbacks as well. Fucknugget. This isn't a bad ruling.
Agreed on the ruling.

On the other hand, it is pretty dumb to have to make a ruling on that rather than include the fact that the dex cap, movement penalties and armor check penalties are still present in the wild property itself.
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Post by GâtFromKI »

saithorthepyro wrote:If it's a beginner class, it's in the wrong book, and it also doesn't have the capabilities to survive a beginner making mistakes with it. It's inability to punch at it's weight class and contribute is not going to leave new players with a good impression of the game.
It's far too complicated for a beginner class.

One of the three abilities you get at level 1 is Shifter Aspect. This is a micro-management ability (4 minutes per days, usable in 1 minute increment), with byzantine activation/de-activation rules : it activate as a swift action (for the sake of comparison, Barbarian's rage activate as a free action), you have to take an action to de-activate it (for the sake of comparison, Barbarian's rage is auto-deactivated when you fall unconscious - it may cause insta-death because you lose your Con bonus, but at least you don't spend your daily duration because you're not able to take any action).

On top of that, it gives shitty bonus you don't care about. I'm totally OK with a permanent +1 attack bonus (you write it on your sheet and you forget it, it's always hidden in your total bonus), I'm totally OK with limited-duration large bonus (like barbarian's rage or paladin's smite), but a limited-duration shitty bonus isn't something I like, especially for beginners.

It interact strangely with stacking rules : there are forms that give enhancement bonus to Str, Con or Dex. Hence at level 3 you have to remember it doesn't stack with your friends' buff spells. There are enhancement bonus to base speed as well, so it doesn't stack with common effects, and competence bonus to skills, so it doesn't stack either. For the sake of comparison, Barbarian's rage stacks with almost anything and barbarian's fast movement is untyped.

In the other hand it's totally not a polymorph effect (it's just a non-permanent change of form), so it stack with polymorph effects.

This whole stuff is totally counter-intuitive: if you're a frog shifter, you don't have a permanent acrobatics bonus to jump, but you totally have permanent claws - except when you major shift.


There are also stuff like this :
Wolverine
Minor Form: You gain 1 additional hit point per Hit Die you have, and treat your Constitution score as 4 points higher than it is for the purpose of determining when you die at negative hit points. At 8th level, you gain Diehard as a bonus feat. At 15th level, you treat your Constitution as being 8 points higher for the purpose of determining when you die at negative hit points.
We don't now how those additional hit points work upon de-activation (... but a beginner should know?), there's a byzantine effect "you treat your Con higher in some bizarre context, but it's totally not higher, and it's only valable when the effect is activated - but you can't activate it at the moment the situation comes up since you're unconscious lol", there's a bonus feat you get only when you activate the effect - but the bonus feat is a feat you should have taken in the first place at level 1 to activate the minor form when your HP are negative (and we don't know how the additional hit points work in this case, since it's neither temp HP, neither healing effect, neither a Con bonus : maybe you're still in the negative, maybe not)...

Those are problem a beginner has to solve if he want to be cool as a wolverine. In the other hand, a non-beginner see the whole aspect as a dumb piece of shit and immediately forget about its mere existence. How can this be "beginner friendly" ?


There's also the frog's major form.
Frog
Tongue (Ex) Your tongue is a primary natural attack with a reach of 15 feet. Your tongue deals no damage on a hit, but can be used to grab. You do not gain the grappled condition while using your tongue in this manner.
Now look at the Shifter claws ability:
While a shifter uses wild shape to assume her aspect’s major form, her natural attacks gain the same benefits granted by her shifter claws ability. If the form she takes has claw attacks, she can use either the base damage of her shifter claws or the damage of the form’s claws, whichever is greater. If the form does not have claw attacks, she can choose up to two natural attacks that would deal less damage than her shifter claw damage and have those attacks instead deal the same damage as her shifter claws.
As an experienced player, I can't say which rule is more specific. Maybe the Frog Shifter uses the generic frog's tongue attack, his Shifter Claws ability is more specific and override the tongue damages. Maybe the frog Shifter is a specific kind of Shifter, and the tongue no-damages special rule override the generic Claw's damages replacement rule. I can't figure, so I've no idea if the tongue of a frog Shifter deals damages or not. "Dealing damages or not" is quite an important part for any attack ability.

But a beginner should know? That's pure insanity.



...I'm not even discussing if the class is good or not; I'm just noticing it's a complete mess, and any designer or developer saying it's for beginners is either trolling or retarded.
Last edited by GâtFromKI on Mon Dec 04, 2017 11:07 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Post by Voss »

Well, we aren't actually sure that they did. It seems to be the hill the paizo fanboys picked to die on- that it's ok for a class to be terrible if it's for beginners. And, further they claimed that somewhere one of the designers said it, but can't point out where.


Though admittedly, no one would be terribly surprised if they did say it.
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Post by saithorthepyro »

I'm going to say the probable impetus behind the design was laziness. The class looks like if someone was given the criteria of making a Shifter, looked at the work, decided to not do it and instead create some BS to try and emulate it without any of the actual work.

Either that or they hit a deadline and literally made this in less than a few weeks. Given the lack of a play test like with other products, that could also be the case.

Product discussion is revolving around the fact that the book practically is a playtest at this point and was probably designed as one. Also that the FAQ/errata is being worked on from the forums, looks like the Oozemorph might get all it's EX abilities changed to SU.
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Post by Username17 »

Certainly, I once wrote an entire 4e class to fill a couple of holes in less than 12 hours. There were a few rules interactions that didn't work quite the way I had envisioned them (I think technically you can't use reactions on your own turn because 4e is filled with shit like that). But it was overall a pretty solid class (for 4e) and my point was made.

Anyway, if someone hands out a writing assignment to make a Pathfinder class that does X, Y, and Z, I would be surprised if it would take more than a few days to get the primary writing done.

That's the basic reality of the Shifter class. Someone decided there should be a Shifter class. Because like, turning into animals and fucking shit up with claws is a thing that Martial classes could plausibly do. So why not? And then actually writing that class was assigned to a person or maybe two people, and they were tasked with filling in all the blanks in the class template and also filling up their wordcount. And that's it. That's as far as it goes.

There was no playtesting. No pride in work. The author (or authors) of the Shifter class just got a paycheck and don't actually care.

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Post by Voss »

saithorthepyro wrote:I'm going to say the probable impetus behind the design was laziness. The class looks like if someone was given the criteria of making a Shifter, looked at the work, decided to not do it and instead create some BS to try and emulate it without any of the actual work.

Either that or they hit a deadline and literally made this in less than a few weeks. Given the lack of a play test like with other products, that could also be the case.
Truthfully, the 'less than a few weeks' doesn't hold up to the actual timeline.
Ultimate Wilderness was announced back in March, and was in the works for.. however long... before that.

Now, I could believe an argument that the shifter class they originally intended didn't make the cut, since this is the description from the product announcement:
The shifter, a new character class that harnesses untamed forces to change shape and bring a heightened level of savagery to the battlefield!
... which honestly sounds nothing like Claw Girl (and the 'Iconic' was written up in October, which is 'round about the time the book would have been finalized for printing (actually probably September). So they had at least 6 months to work out a single class, even if they waited for the book announcement to start working on it.

But while I know they'll never give out the full story, I'd love to know the logic. Because the outcome is a weird hybrid class of druid/monk, if you strip out almost every meaningful class feature from the druid, break the one that's kept, just hand over the monk's AC bonus, but only for sometimes. Two crippled class features and some of the junk doesn't make for a class, and that should be obvious to anyone, even if they'll argue about fighters and monks with a straight face.
Last edited by Voss on Tue Dec 05, 2017 8:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

I'm being invited to play "Way of the Wicked" and I'm considering making a Master Summoner (not unchained) or refluffed Celestial Commander summoner. Is this a trap? Am I making a bad choice? If yes, what would be a good, not too broken character for casual play? If no, what's a good domain for Celestial Commander? I'm considering Void for better summons or Death for Animate Dead. Though it seems like Celestial Commander getting cleric spells on cleric levels wasn't really thought through.
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Post by Voss »

Longes wrote: Is this a trap? Am I making a bad choice? If yes, what would be a good, not too broken character for casual play?.
Trap? No, not in the sense you're picking up a worthless piece of shit.
Bad choice? Yeah, probably. Being able to replace most of the party with disposable minions and flood the action economy is generally annoying for everyone.

Pick up something that can contribute in multiple situations and help without replacing the party. It isn't hard.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Way of the wicked is bad and you should feel bad.
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Post by Longes »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Way of the wicked is bad and you should feel bad.
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Post by Ice9 »

The shifter pisses me off more than most of Paizo's fails, because I really fucking wanted a pure shapeshifter class. That sounds fun as hell to play, and it's something that, oddly, D&D has never really delivered (Wildshape Ranger -> MoMF -> Warshaper is close, but it's a lot of book-keeping and doesn't kick in until mid-level or later).

And no, I didn't expect a lot; this is Paizo after all. And making a shapeshifting-oriented class is non-trivial - I tried a while ago, and ran into some problems*. So I wasn't expecting anywhere near perfection.

But damn, they managed to go below my lowest expectations. Even if they'd literally taken the Druid, dropped the spellcasting and animal companion, and replaced that with more Wildshape uses, it would have been better than what we got, while probably taking about half an hour to write.



* But back to those problems, because that's more interesting than this shoddy class. One of the goals I was trying to hit was for the shapeshifter class to be versatile, able to change role - both for thematic reasons and to be a non-caster that doesn't run on auto-pilot.

I ran into the problem that:
1) Martial power in 3.x comes from stacking things.
2) Many of those things are external to the class (feats, items, etc)
3) Therefore, a supposedly versatile class still gets locked into a rut by the rest of the character sheet.

I think there's a possible solution - make it more like spells. By which I mean increase individual ability power and reduce Voltron synergy. Not sure how well that squares with the 3.x rules, but next time I give it a try I'll use that approach. That or just make shapeshifting also re-assign feats and create a paperwork nightmare. :tongue:



Re: Master Summoner / Celestial Commander - it's not going to be weak, if that's what you mean. It might result in swamping the field with minions and having a turn 10x as long as the rest of the party though. Celestial Commander has some bonuses to only summoning a single creature, as does Evolved Summon Monster IIRC, so maybe do that.

Oh, and summoning is a hell of a lot of paperwork, so bear that in mind.
Last edited by Ice9 on Fri Dec 08, 2017 8:30 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by GâtFromKI »

Ice9 wrote:* But back to those problems, because that's more interesting than this shoddy class. One of the goals I was trying to hit was for the shapeshifter class to be versatile, able to change role - both for thematic reasons and to be a non-caster that doesn't run on auto-pilot.
It's not that hard; the synthesist summoner is able to change form at level 1, at higher level he has spells to gain the evolution he needs - while not being able to get all possible forms, he's able to adapt his form to his need.

The synthesist is poorly written, and the length of its errata is bigger than archetype's description; its writing is still better than the shifter. He's a better shifter than the shifter, and he's more versatile: using Evolution Surge, he's able to get fly speed, swim speed (and aquatic respiration), +8 to any skill, blindsight, pounce, grab attack, etc.

If you want a non-spellcaster shifter, you may tweek the synthesist : remove spellcasting, hand out full bab, reduce the eidolon summoning time, give abilities similar to Evolution surge and Magic fang.
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Post by Ice9 »

It's better than the Shifter, no doubt, but the Synthesist primarily just has build-time versatility, not in-play versatility. Any of the latter it has comes from also being a caster.

What I'm saying though, is that even if you had a version of the Synthesist that could change its evolutions at will, it would be pidgeonholed into a particular fighting style most of the time by the feat/item/stat choices of the character.
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Post by virgil »

Ice9 wrote:That or just make shapeshifting also re-assign feats and create a paperwork nightmare.
It might not be a paperwork nightmare if you use one of the Tome Polymorph approaches. Specifically, the one where you choose a level-appropriate monster and totally turn into it - no reassignment or even carryover of your buffs. Just put away your character sheet and open the monster manual to the right page, and run it from there.
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Post by Voss »

GâtFromKI wrote:
Ice9 wrote:* But back to those problems, because that's more interesting than this shoddy class. One of the goals I was trying to hit was for the shapeshifter class to be versatile, able to change role - both for thematic reasons and to be a non-caster that doesn't run on auto-pilot.
It's not that hard; the synthesist summoner is able to change form at level 1, at higher level he has spells to gain the evolution he needs - while not being able to get all possible forms, he's able to adapt his form to his need.

The synthesist is poorly written, and the length of its errata is bigger than archetype's description; its writing is still better than the shifter. He's a better shifter than the shifter, and he's more versatile: using Evolution Surge, he's able to get fly speed, swim speed (and aquatic respiration), +8 to any skill, blindsight, pounce, grab attack, etc.

If you want a non-spellcaster shifter, you may tweek the synthesist : remove spellcasting, hand out full bab, reduce the eidolon summoning time, give abilities similar to Evolution surge and Magic fang.
Not that it matters much here, but the synthesist approach wasn't and will never fly with paizo. It isn't something they'd do again in any form, as they banned it hard from their own organized play.
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Post by Username17 »

Voss wrote:
Not that it matters much here, but the synthesist approach wasn't and will never fly with paizo. It isn't something they'd do again in any form, as they banned it hard from their own organized play.
Paizils are nothing if not mentally flexible. One day they are writing extra rules and rants to stop people from playing flask rogues, the next day they are creating an Alchemist class that is required by law to do flask rogue shenanigans.

Anything that gets ranted about enough to get ban hammered by angry devs also has enough fans that when the next time the deck chairs get shuffled there might be enough votes to bring it back.

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Post by Prak »

What was wrong with just creating a class based around using the already existent array of polymorph spells in Pf as supernatural abilities? Like... seriously, fucking why is Shifter not just, basically, a sphere user focused on a Shapeshifting Sphere?
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Post by erik »

Prak wrote:What was wrong with just creating a class based around using the already existent array of polymorph spells in Pf as supernatural abilities? Like... seriously, fucking why is Shifter not just, basically, a sphere user focused on a Shapeshifting Sphere?
Can you think of a worse idea for Pathfinder designers to try and make? A class revolving around polymorph?
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Post by Prak »

Well, looking at the very first Beastshape spell, apparently it's A FUCKING LEVEL THREE SPELL. FOR A MOVEMENT MODE, SENSE ABILITIES NO ONE GIVES A FUCK ABOUT, AND A +2 TO A STAT. OH, AND VERY FUCKING MINIMAL NATURAL ARMOR.

So, no, I can't think of a worse idea.

But also, that would be too simple and sensible for Paizo.
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Post by Longes »

Another build question.

Let's say I'd like to be a shadow (umbral) bloodline fetchling sorcerer focusing on being stealthy and illusion/shadow magic. The image I have in my mind is a rogue-like sneaky git with magic, leveraging the fetchling's 50% dodge in the shadow for combat survivability. Wayang would be sneakier, but fetchlings can get human favored class bonus which is extra spells known. How do I go about this? I'm thinking of Spell Focus Illusion, Tenebrous Spell/Umbral Spell/Grasping Shadows metamagic line. Maybe Shadow Gambit? What else? How do I improve my gishiness and is it even worth doing? What about archetypes? Seeker would add rogue trap handling, but it seems like being a False Priest is better to spontaneously cast from divine scrolls at level 9.
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Post by GâtFromKI »

Ice9 wrote:It's better than the Shifter, no doubt, but the Synthesist primarily just has build-time versatility, not in-play versatility. Any of the latter it has comes from also being a caster.
This is where the spell Evolution Surge comes into play: the spell makes you gain evolution points on the spot, you can use them to gain the ability you need.
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