Tamarask -- or why I started worrying and stopped loving the

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virgil
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Post by virgil »

Also, out of this group, I have offered the option of me running Tome games before and later attempted to argue the idea of them even thinking of running a Tome game.

It doesn't work.

They hate Tome. They shake their heads, call it munchkin crap (just from looking at the powers alone), say they want games to last longer than a single round, and go back to wanking off to Pathfinder.
Last edited by virgil on Sat Apr 11, 2009 8:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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TOZ
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Post by TOZ »

Yay closedmindedness! I mean, I'm a Paizoan and at least I'm willing to TRY Tome stuff...
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Post by Roy »

If they want fights to last longer than 1-3 rounds (you said 1, but that's likely just you quoting their Extremist Fallacy) they shouldn't be playing D&D. Full stop.

Stupid Paizils. :roll:
TavishArtair
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Post by TavishArtair »

The sad part is Tome fights aren't appreciably shorter, and give everyone interesting options to do so that the briefer period is more interesting.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

TavishArtair wrote:The sad part is Tome fights aren't appreciably shorter, and give everyone interesting options to do so that the briefer period is more interesting.
Tome fights tend to be appreciably shorter than plinking at DR 15 with attacks that do 1d8+8.
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Post by Username17 »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:
TavishArtair wrote:The sad part is Tome fights aren't appreciably shorter, and give everyone interesting options to do so that the briefer period is more interesting.
Tome fights tend to be appreciably shorter than plinking at DR 15 with attacks that do 1d8+8.
True but a stunlock monk or a tome fighter has fights that are substantially longer than the fights of a beguiler who just uses any of his spells.

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Post by SunTzuWarmaster »

We actually had our only Tome vs. Tome fight last seven rounds.

Tome Knight vs. Tome Monk 1/Tome Samurai cage match at level 9.

Samurai abusing his crits against the Knight Fortification armor, Knight abusing Sword + Board Fighting Style (and stunlock) against Monk 1 Displacer Beast Style (20% miss chance, free trip/disarm).

It actually came down to 3 unlucky rolls (missed on the trip attempt, concealment attempt, and Fort save :( after whiffing for a full round and immediate action)for the Samurai in round 7.
Last edited by SunTzuWarmaster on Sun Apr 12, 2009 1:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

Blech, we ran into a villain a few times, and we discovered that we could get access to the discern location spell. Since the villain was a minion of some epic spellcaster in a hidden city, we figured we could use it find both the minion and have an idea where the hidden city was. But we were told that the spellcaster had his city warded so that no form of divination can penetrate it (even indirectly upon people within), including discern.

And by epic, I mean 20 levels of spellcasting and enough toys to count as CR 21.
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

"Not making your character powerful is a responsibility."

And he remains bitter over my munchkinism when my 7th level wizard solo'd the illithid knight (3 levels of fighter, full plate, ~16-18 physical stats) by turning into a remorhaz and swallowing it.
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Post by SunTzuWarmaster »

An Empowered Lesser Ord of Acid does (6d8) 27 damage on average at level 7, and allows to save or spell resistance.

A level 3 fighter with 16 con has 10(first die)+9(con)+2d10 hp = average 30.
18 con puts that number at 33.

The fighter has between 21 and 39 hp, and you will do between 6 and 48 damage. You have a slightly below average chance of flat out murdering him with direct damage with this level discrepancy. In fact using any spell that allows a save success chance of higher than about 90% is discouraged in this instance, as direct damage is actually BETTER (assuming you prepared one, which you shouldn't have).

If your character is NOT SUCKING with any strategy, you should be able to dispatch this opponent with a Standard Action at best, and a Full Round at worst. The fact that this character is inferior to any Summon Monster IV is a separate matter.
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

I meant that that to indicate an illithid with 3 levels of fighter.
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Post by Rejakor »

Hey Virgil, I was just wondering, have you tried the suicide tactic? Do you think they'd even recognize it?

By suicide tactic I mean doing what they want you to do, but to such an extent that they can't fool themselves and see the stupidity inherent. Like, say, playing a 3.5 Fighter the way the designers wanted you to. Sword and Board even. Check the character with the GM, make sure it's okay. Ask if this is less powerful, the kind of thing he was thinking. And then suck. Roll the die and have it not matter cause you can't hit. Start carrying party stuff because that's the only way you 'feel useful'.

It'll probably have no effect, but at the very least it might serve as some kind of wake up call, possibly with a link to the tier system that that guy at gameologists wrote up, that DnD can exist at different levels of play, and that the DM should stop being a dick and f***ing PICK ONE instead of socially enforcing a bullshit rule that isn't consistent or coherent.

Games run so much more smoothly when the mechanics are not a barrier, and in trying to remove the mechanics as a barrier, your GM is making them a barrier. Pride and refusal to admit it just make it worse.

You have my sympathy and condolences about the entire situation.

-R
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

Stupid freakin' DM. For the last three sessions, every single thing we fight has been modded to have maximum hit points, which makes fighting undead really damn painful since he found out Paizo undead get their Charisma mod to hit points (high HD, d12s, Charisma mod, maximized = too many HP).

A stealth nerf if I ever saw one, and not even a good one since the other two fighters (TWF ranger & TWF axe/board fighter) don't hold a candle to my DPS. Now, the ranger is the 'big' one, doing close to half as much as me unless he fights his favored enemy. Since Paizo applies the favored enemy bonus to attack AND damage, he's actually comparable to my archer against said creature type (giants are his primary).

And while undead are vulnerable to crits too, it doesn't matter. Two adventures ago, we fought alot of giants with axes and other x3 weapons. Their crits can take the high-HP characters from full to near 0. The DM didn't like this and was trying really hard to figure out how to keep us players from dying from bad luck, and he hated my suggestion of letting each party member have a bear helm trinket or two each (MIC, 3k, 1/day cut crit damage in half).

Instead, he changed the entire crit system from thenceforth, obviously ignoring any flaws in the plan I brought up. Now, critical hits only multiply base weapon damage (eg, longbow crits are a simple +2d8).
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Post by Meikle641 »

I know it's not really right, but my group has done a simple multiplier rather than rolling it x times. Tends to work for us, but yeah.
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

Oh, my own game we usually do multiplication too for expediency. That's a completely different story from crits not improving bonus damage from strength or anything.
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Post by Rejakor »

Eh. Crits aren't usually particularly powerful in the first place. But compared to the other problems you have in this game... not a huge one.

Besides, it's not even mechanically /that/ bad of a fix. Basically removes crits from the equation, but doesn't royally screw anyone, and doesn't royally screw any other mechanics based on crits.
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

It does make the purpose in taking Improved Critical and any other crit-based feat pointless, and the DM is honestly confused why I'm not taking them.
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Post by Roy »

virgileso wrote:It does make the purpose in taking Improved Critical and any other crit-based feat pointless, and the DM is honestly confused why I'm not taking them.
Those things are rather pointless anyways. Even if it expands your threat range from 3 numbers to 6 that is, at most a 14.25% chance of double damage (and likely closer to 7.5%, but let's use the ideal example that doesn't actually happen).

So for every seven damage you do, it adds 1 on average. Ok. And of course the enemy has to be susceptible to crits.

So if you're doing 50 damage a hit, it adds 7 on average. That's almost kind of sort of half decent. Then you remember the immunity, and that the practical damage is more like... 4, and you remember that to get 50 damage a hit, you're probably Power Attacking... which is anti synergestic.

Then you remember Iterative Probability. Since you need to win every time but the enemy only needs to win once, you flat out cannot rely on luck spikes. So either your base damage is high enough to 1-2 round the enemy and you don't need crits, or it isn't and crits might or might not help you enough, but if you don't get them (which is often) you're screwed.

Sure, making them far worse isn't helping matters any. But it could be he's just telling you 'look, crits suck so just ignore them ok?' or something to that effect.

Edit: I thought Paizil undead were running on D8s now. So the stuff like Dread Wraiths just got a lot more hardcore, but skeletons and zombies now have 1 and 5 HP, respectively if humanoid, and better but still stupidly low numbers if made from something else. And that assumes zombies still have Toughness, otherwise it's a flat 1 HP per HD. Which means even the big zombies die from a Cherry Tap.
Last edited by Roy on Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by virgil »

No, he honestly believes crits are the cat's meow, and he continues (post nerf) to suggest to all of the fighters in the party that they should take Crit-based feats when we start trying to figure out what feats to take.

Paizil undead are running off of d8s, this DM hasn't been shown it to be a hard-fast rule yet, so he's assuming d12s. With every sneak peek of the rules, he's adding the revealed changes; so the game is changing a rule a session practically.
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Post by Fuchs »

Subjective impressions can be very strong and hard to overcome. One or two heavy crits and it's nerf time all the way.

(We've got a 3.0/ToB build that has a threat range of 12-20, yet the player rolls so badly that the barbarian with a spear seems to roll more crits. Though even actual logs bears out that the crit rate is significantly below of what it should be according to probability.)
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

Don't I know it. The last 100 arrows I've shot, only 1 has threatened a critical.
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Post by Roy »

virgileso wrote:No, he honestly believes crits are the cat's meow, and he continues (post nerf) to suggest to all of the fighters in the party that they should take Crit-based feats when we start trying to figure out what feats to take.

Paizil undead are running off of d8s, this DM hasn't been shown it to be a hard-fast rule yet, so he's assuming d12s. With every sneak peek of the rules, he's adding the revealed changes; so the game is changing a rule a session practically.
Typical Paizil stupidity. Why are you still there?

Edit: Forgot to mention yet another thing. Best case scenario for crits is a Falchion (what I assumed, Scimitar could do the same but it's one handed). Just about everything else is weaker. Longbows get 2/3rds those numbers on all counts.

More to the point, using the crit focused weapons means losing the things that actually fucking matter. Like reach. Best you can do there is like... 20/x3 and that's with no threaten adjacent. Exactly the same as the longbow.

So not only does it still not matter in the best case for crits, but it costs so much to get so little that even weaksauce shit like mother fucking Weapon Focus ends up better.

I must say though, if there is anyone in the world so stupid so as to get me out of my apathy to go genocidal on for the good of the world, it's the Paizils.

Image
Last edited by Roy on Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Draco_Argentum wrote:
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Can someone tell it to stop using its teeth please?
Juton wrote:Damn, I thought [Pathfailure] accidentally created a feat worth taking, my mistake.
Koumei wrote:Shad, please just punch yourself in the face until you are too dizzy to type. I would greatly appreciate that.
Kaelik wrote:No, bad liar. Stop lying.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type I - doing exactly the opposite of what they said they would do.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type II - change for the sake of change.
Standard Paizil Fare/Fail (SPF) Type III - the illusion of change.
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virgil
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Post by virgil »

And just to show that I'm not alone, the party cleric got nerfed. He had built himself as a buffer and a caster of planar ally (levels in thaumaturge). Apparently the DM spent an hour handcrafting a half-dozen vampire skulks (~9 or 10 HD) as minions to a boss monster, only to see them taken out by a holy word.

He also, after two or three sessions, realized that a planetar casts as a level 17 cleric; though our cleric had got its help solely in non-combat, as it hid in a rope trick a fair distance and would only come out if there were no hostiles around (thus we only use it for buffs and post-combat heals).

Two new rulings in the middle of that session, which kept the player kind of busy as he started refunding himself all of the money he had spent while we played that hinged on those two aspects (~120k worth)...
* Caster level bonuses never stack with others
* You can never bind/call/summon a creature with a caster level greater than yours
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Post by Akula »

Those rules don't even make sense.
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Post by Cynic »

A_Cynic wrote:
someone else said wrote:
Does your DM hate your group?
If I remember right, the dm's rationalization used to be that he had to have "fun" as well. One of the reasons, why I left the group after the initial campaign that the original post of this thread was based on.
never realize that when they play as a dm they don't have to treat the player as an outright enemy at all points.
Yep, I'm not in that town, But, I just had to remember what my reasons to stop playing with the man was.
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