Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[Rawbeard]

holy shit, I want to play as Kenshiro now.

[Username17]

The Broken Blade really underlines the fundamental difficulty in writing "damage dealers" in 3.x rules. It's a thing that K and I bumped into time and time again when making classes: if a class does enough damage to reliably kill their enemies then they are too "powerful" in the sense that they are then able to easily slap down all of the level appropriate encounters that they can interact with, while if the class doesn't do enough damage it sucks because it doesn't beat level appropriate encounters and also still can't participate in all of the other challenges like getting to the bottom of the sea or whatever.

That being said, having a class swing around 15 dice of bonus damage at 5th or 6th level is just Derp. That's enough damage to one-round a level appropriate Earth Elemental even before taking into account your strength bonus (which you also get to use three times). Dumbass damage dealers are stupid and boring characters, but giving them numbers so high that they red mist everything they look at is in no way an improvement.

-Username17

[virgil]

So raw damage dealer characters end up at best.

[Strung Nether]

The Broken Blade really underlines the fundamental difficulty in writing "damage dealers" in 3.x rules. It's a thing that K and I bumped into time and time again when making classes: if a class does enough damage to reliably kill their enemies then they are too "powerful" in the sense that they are then able to easily slap down all of the level appropriate encounters that they can interact with, while if the class doesn't do enough damage it sucks because it doesn't beat level appropriate encounters and also still can't participate in all of the other challenges like getting to the bottom of the sea or whatever.

That being said, having a class swing around 15 dice of bonus damage at 5th or 6th level is just Derp. That's enough damage to one-round a level appropriate Earth Elemental even before taking into account your strength bonus (which you also get to use three times). Dumbass damage dealers are stupid and boring characters, but giving them numbers so high that they red mist everything they look at is in no way an improvement.

-Username17

This is something I have noticed. Certain character builds in pathfinder, notably a fighter with a bow or a beast tottem barbarian simply deal so much damage so reliably that they might as well have an at-will ability to just destroy HP from monsters. It isn't interesting, and it makes encounters very hard to design for them.

[TiaC]

This is why, in my experience, for all that the moderately-optimized cleric is far more effective than the ubercharger, the ubercharger is more unbalancing. Many would go "blah blah tiers blah", but I can make encounters for a a party that plays like clerics more easily than I can make them for one that plays like uberchargers. The ubercharger either wins instantly or is completely useless, but either way, some of the players are going to be bored.

[FatR]

My biggest problem with the Path of War is the fact that each PoW class has like three resource management mechanics, which are separate but intersect in fiddly ways, and the result somehow ends considerably more complicated to run than full casters. Maybe it's the bias of a player who had decades to learn 3.X's spells talking, but I find Path of War character practically unusable as NPCs and still overly fiddly as PCs. That maneuver-plundering fighter trick upthread deserves investigation, though.

[GnomeWorks]

That being said, having a class swing around 15 dice of bonus damage at 5th or 6th level is just Derp. That's enough damage to one-round a level appropriate Earth Elemental even before taking into account your strength bonus (which you also get to use three times). Dumbass damage dealers are stupid and boring characters, but giving them numbers so high that they red mist everything they look at is in no way an improvement.

What I've started doing is importing 4e monsters into Pathfinder.

It actually works hilariously well. What was a slog in 4e is an encounter of sensible length in PF, with enough diversity in what team monster is doing that it's also much more tactically interesting than straight PF monsters. Their damage output is low enough that it doesn't seem too out-of-whack in PF, and they have enough HP to make the damage-dealers feel awesome without also immediately ending the encounter.

[MisterDee]

Does anyone have ideas on how to get out of the four-to-six encounters adventure rut the PF rules seem to encourage so much?

Obviously, you can easily reduce the number of encounters by having a couple of tough monsters, but I can't see a way to realistically have 10+ encounters in a session. Monsters get outclassed so quickly that a CR-1 monster might as well not exist, but anything tougher than CR+1 does drain party resources too quickly, and that doesn't take into account the time investment required by a level-appropriate encounter.

[Kaelik]

Does anyone have ideas on how to get out of the four-to-six encounters adventure rut the PF rules seem to encourage so much?

Obviously, you can easily reduce the number of encounters by having a couple of tough monsters, but I can't see a way to realistically have 10+ encounters in a session. Monsters get outclassed so quickly that a CR-1 monster might as well not exist, but anything tougher than CR+1 does drain party resources too quickly, and that doesn't take into account the time investment required by a level-appropriate encounter.

Uh... How the fuck is Pathfinder that different from D&D? If anything I would think Pathfinder scales more slowly by monster, because they fap so hard to how monsters are better than PCs.

[Username17]

Large running encounters with huge numbers of low level creatures that come in small, staggered waves. So, like sixty Gnolls, who come into the battlefield 5 at a time. Preferably with a couple of tougher mages or monsters (that are still individually weaker than the PCs) mixed in. That kind of thing is pretty decent for characters in the 8-10 level range because it makes spell slots actually matter and by extension gives the people on at-will power schedules something to do.

Problem of course is that while the old Gygaxian endurance challenge is the only thing "Fighters" are any good at, it's also completely untested ground. Different parties have massively different horde tolerances. A Fighter who dumped AC because it doesn't matter against high level enemies (and let's face it: it does not) is going to get his ass handed to him by some Kobolds with light crossbows. Meanwhile, someone with plate and shield and some defensive abilities can probably wade through 60 Gnolls by himself.

What the right number of Troglodytes or Grimlocks for your party is going to be is highly build-contingent. But an encounter with 50 Lizardfolk who come on the field over ten rounds with a couple of Demons or Giants stiffening things up a few times can be a memorable encounter.

-Username17

[FatR]

Does anyone have ideas on how to get out of the four-to-six encounters adventure rut the PF rules seem to encourage so much?

Assign XP as you see fit, instead of calculating it by rules. PF adventure paths do have way too fucking many combats just because the assumed XP progression is too slow. I personally can't be arsed to run every encounter with trash mobs.

The advice about enemy waves is sound. Another idea that I find usually working is to deploy boss monsters in pairs with a bunch of relatively low-CR minions. A single boss even with minions is too suspectible to SoDs, and due to massive action disadvantage generally needs to make every one of its actions super effective (thus threatening to wipe the party) to avoid going down like a chump.

[AcidBlades]

Uh... How the fuck is Pathfinder that different from D&D? If anything I would think Pathfinder scales more slowly by monster, because they fap so hard to how monsters are better than PCs.

No kidding. Compare a normal Succubus and Rakshasa to that to their PF variants, and you will see that monsters in PF tend to have way over inflated statistics compared to their 3.5 versions.

[Aryxbez]

It isn't interesting, and it makes encounters very hard to design for them.

I get from a design perspective this is a bad thing, and its difficult to achieve parity (albeit you'd think it would just be a math problem away from a fix, since they have avg HP values of monsters). However, the current proposed combo by Seerow doesn't really seem a bad thing in the realm of D&D-land. Wizards throw down SoD's, Clerics self-buff murder or SoD, non-PF Rogues Burst Damage things dead as well. So it just seems like par for the course with the current design of 3rd edition in general. While this is Pathfinder, we all know its just a thinly disguised 3rd edition that's also created options that likely achieve close to Rogue-balance or higher all over again (Alchemist, Ninja?, Witch, etc.).

Large running encounters with huge numbers of low level creatures that come in small, staggered waves

Even with a few unique monsters mixed in with the minions, sounds like this would take a lot of time to complete, and would bog the session down. How successful have these been to being memorable encounters, opposed to slogs in another form? (I know its untested ground, but figure there's something)

[Username17]

Even with a few unique monsters mixed in with the minions, sounds like this would take a lot of time to complete, and would bog the session down. How successful have these been to being memorable encounters, opposed to slogs in another form? (I know its untested ground, but figure there's something)

By untested, I don't mean I haven't done it. I mean that it's never been part of any rigorous testing. Like high level play, your results may vary. A lot.

But really, most of the memorable encounters I've run and run in have been set up like this. Considering how many times I've done this vs. how many times I've run into "standard" encounters where the players meet a CR appropriate monster and roll initiative, the balance of evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of sieges against large numbers of humanoids with a few mid-power monsters or casters in the mix.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

In other words, getting back do D&D's roots?

[FatR]

Even with a few unique monsters mixed in with the minions, sounds like this would take a lot of time to complete, and would bog the session down. How successful have these been to being memorable encounters, opposed to slogs in another form? (I know its untested ground, but figure there's something)

Certainly multi-wave running battles bogged my sessions down less than fighting comparable numbers of opponents as separate encounters. PF adventures often are full of weaksauce encounters that fold ultra easily, so combining many opponents from the same dungeon in one extended fight was a natural solution that generally worked for both providing challenge and showing players that they are in a living environment that reacts to their actions.

The main problem I noticed that once party becomes used to meeting shittons of extras, they tend to, at the very least, jack their ACs so your 2-HD common soldiers can hit only on a nat 20. Once thing go to this point, there is not much point in involving those extras, they add more rolls than anything else to a fight. And the situation when even beefier physical attack mooks (say, bearded devils) are almost unable to do anything to any of the PCs, but have far too many hit points to be one-shotted is also common. Sure, they can work for draining a party's resources, before a boss is unleashed, but rolling through a fight where the Team Monster is only there to take punishment is boring for me. The optimal composition for a major fight in my current campaign seems to be one or two boss monsters, and a bunch of weak spellcasters/swarms/other attackers that don't need to attack the party's full AC.

[Prak]

I actually ran a multi-wave encounter with Wastri cultists in my session last night.

PCs were 4th level (Conduit, TBarbarian, Gunslinger class I wrote), and went down to the river to find the entrance to the Wastri temple. They found a bunch of cultists tailgating there because there's a big sacrifice coming up and they've been told to check in so the high priest knows when he has 100 celebrants.

The Conduit tries to sneak up on them and gets spotted, so three break off to capture her, which eventually turns into them slaughtering 10 or 11 Clr2s and a Clr3 while a couple swam off to alert the high priest.

Worked surprisingly well.

[hogarth]

No kidding. Compare a normal Succubus and Rakshasa to that to their PF variants, and you will see that monsters in PF tend to have way over inflated statistics compared to their 3.5 versions.

Changing monsters so that they don't have CR >> HD is a good thing, not a bad thing.

[virgil]

Changing monsters so that they don't have CR >> HD is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Is there a reason you're being wrong? The CR for a succubus wasn't changed in PF, but she gained like 2 HD (now with 1 HD over the CR instead 1 below); but her hit points were tripled, got +3 to all saves, an extra and bigger form of mind control, a higher DC energy drain, vampiric touch at will...That is far and away NOT CR>>HD. I don't know of anyone complaining about the succubus being too weak for her CR back in 3.5, especially to justify the rather sizable buff given.

[Kaelik]

Virgil, the thing is Paizo was so butthurt about Frank using actual sensible math to show them how to balance things, that they completely redefined CR. In a way to make the SGT no longer accurate.

A PC is equivalent to a Monster of CR equal to Level MINUS one.

So in effect, every single monster needed to be buffed to be stronger than it was previously, because it now needs to be the equivalent of a PC class 1 level higher.

They didn't change the four encounters 50% at EL = Party level, so by rules PCs in Pathfinder are supposed to have a harder day that D&D. In practice, most of the buffs given to monsters are mostly just number buffs, with actual abilities getting nerfed, so if you have real abilities, it may not actually be harder.

But this does mean that a Valid CR 10 encounter is a Wizard, and two Galbrezu... Yes Planar Binding has already been fucked up, but when level 11 Wizards are considered CR 10 and can still Call Glabrezu who are CR 13, that gets especially stupid.

[ishy]

Virgil, the thing is Paizo was so butthurt about Frank using actual sensible math to show them how to balance things, that they completely redefined CR. In a way to make the SGT no longer accurate.

A PC is equivalent to a Monster of CR equal to Level MINUS one.

Not exactly. An NPC with NPC WBL is CR equal to (class)level minus one, but with PC WBL it is equal to level.

[Hicks]

Turns out summons in Pathfinder are way more limited that I understood before the post below; I was thinking about 3.5 that didn't have the line that prohibited summons from duplicating spells with expensive material components, which specifically bans wish.

[Axebird]

From the text of Summon Monster.

Creatures summoned using this spell cannot use spells or spell-like abilities that duplicate spells with expensive material components (such as wish).

[ishy]

Turns out summons in Pathfinder are way more limited that I understood before the post below; I was thinking about 3.5 that didn't have the line that prohibited summons from duplicating spells with expensive material components, which specifically bans wish.

Well 3.5 has this:

A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have, and it refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilities that would cost XP if they were spells.

and for wish: "The minimum XP cost for casting wish is 5,000 XP. "

[virgil]

Yeah, it's always been calling and simulacrum spells that were used for such shenanigans.