The Gaming Den

Nevermind on the metamagic thing. Apparently they do work with Words of Power.

Also, wrong about the fear thing.

Best effect I've found so far is Fort Save Mind control.

Still mining.

mean_liar wrote:I'm generally confused at the level of hate for Pathfinder on these boards. It's one thing to say, "Pathfinder is basically a collection of house rules to DnDv3.5 that fail to address several core difficulties with the game", but to blow that to the general meme that "Pathfinder sucks and everyone associated with them are hateful and stupid" is a jump I don't understand.

Like, here. Spellcasting is generally a problem in DnD because of its power growth relative to other, non-caster classes. So they didn't sack up and nerf the spellcasters or dramatically rewrite core spells... at least here they've come up with a limited caster. What's the trouble with that? They could have just introduced a casting class on par with the wizard/cleric/druid that would feed into one divide of DnDv3.5's largest underlying issue... instead they fed the other divide.

Saying this is shit because it doesn't perform as well as spellcasters while also bitching that sorcerers got a boost with the Human abilities or whatever the fuck came out six months ago (bringing them closer in-line with spellcasters) seems petty to me, arguing about the issue from both ends.

I think all the hate is because Pathfinder is the biggest name in 3.5, and they really aren't very good at it. They just had as mentioned above an excellent marketing strategy. This fits firmly into http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5- ... -b.s..html and the theme of this board in general seems to be greatly influenced by an anit-bullshit outlook.
So yeah by that measuring stick... they really do suck, and its again 2 fold.
1. They're not particularly good at designing.
2. They've conerned the market and convinced people they really are, through "Lying", and taking advanage of the ignorant masses.
....................
On a related note. . . I'm amazed that people actually have been convinced to keep paying for this when the srd is free, and the changes aren't really all that signifigant in the places that matter.
Again though, there's the ignorant masses. . . I remeber someone saying about paizo "They know that there are broken things, they are nebulously aware that a place called the char-ops board exists. They've even looked there a time or two with distaste and awe, so they want to curtail that from happening, but since they didn't take a hard look at whats there, they don't know what to fix really. " or something like that.
Many of us secretly love 3.5, and REALLY don't want it to go, but we don't want to see it whored out by some goddamn pimps either. Which is kinda how its happening.

Midnight_v wrote:2. They've conerned the market and convinced people they really are, through "Lying", and taking advanage of the ignorant masses.

I see what you did thar. Assuming that was intentional of course.

Not all monsters got buffed ... animals and vermin got hit with a huge nerf bat making the summoning lists almost useless. Although there are some curious exceptions like the tiger, they seem to have a thing for tigers, the big cat animal companion is also the only useful one.

K wrote: As for the Words of Power, the system is not just incomplete. I mean, I could deal with the fact that the playtest material is incomplete.... the problem is that the playtest material shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what works in the game to defeat the challenges they are offering up as level-appropriate.

Evocation works at all when compared to combat control, mind control, or utility specialist because of Maximize and Empower, and various of metamagics that either make your evocations do interesting things or increase the damage.

Actually Words of Power has Metamagic in it.
I only skimmed it, but it has a few.

Examples:
You can make a Fireball that slows enemies (same save) for only 13 points (13 points is max for each 4th level spell). That is if you want 20 ft area. Fire Blast (6)+ then Medium Blast (5) + then Cramp (2/3) =13
or
Fire Blast (6)+ then Mass (2) + then Cramp (2/3)= 10 which a 3rd level (10 is max 3rd level).
Mass targets 1/level, (allows you to not hit allies).
So kinda debuff action. Not great as fireball will rarely kill, but free slow is good.

IceBall (cold version) works better: Frostfingers (5) + Mass (2) + Cramp (2/3) = 9. At level 5, deal 5d6 cold, slow, and stagger target 1 round.
Slow + stagger is not bad battlefield control. You can make save will save if add another effect, but that would make it a 4th level spell not 3rd level.

So some spells are better as Words of power/vice versa.

The Armor spells are too vancian for the subsystem (they have 4 versions of armor spells): why not have own that scales better/can be boosted?

Prepared casters have to memorize their Words each morning as per normal spell memorization. Spontaneous casters create their words on the fly.
But effect words are learned with Sorceror spell known so wizards know more combinations.

You can only create a 1rd/level Wall of stone (minimum 5th level spell).

Make the spells up on the fly + construct your own spells == trollface.bmp, right?

Seriously, I thought they went in the right direction with the shapechangey things by saying "No, this is how you change. You do not get to spend half an hour flipping through the books, then another ten minutes working out the stat changes, fuck you."

But no, apparently it's a great idea now to do the whole "Stop game for 15 minutes or more every time you cast a spell".

Does their playtest material usually change significantly at release?

Sarandosil wrote:Does their playtest material usually change significantly at release?

Nope. Minor changes usually.

----------------

So yes, I did finally see that metamagic does work with the Words of Power system. And I figured out how their wonky math is supposed to work (mostly badly).

The best spells I could make was a 4th level 1d6 per level (10d6) cold damage + illusion + stagger single target spell that affects Will.

So that's a kind of neat way to annoy Reflexy mobs. It's not as good as Scorching Ray, but Words of Power seems designed to suck in exchange for the illusion of versatility.

Also, a 4th level 2d6/level cold + fire + stagger spell that caps at 20d6. With Empower and Maximize it could be an actually decent spell.

I could also see EVERY spell you use using the Sense Magic.....because hey, it's 1 pt and for the most part you really don't care about super big AoE so getting a quick burst of magic sensing is a bonus.

I also expect Frost Fingers to get nerfed because it's the only good evocation both in cost AND damage AND additional effect.

Sarandosil wrote:Does their playtest material usually change significantly at release?

Define "significantly". The summoner got changed enough from the Beta version to the final version that there was a lot of squawking. But usually there isn't any big change.

In fact, even when there are reassurances like "oh, there'll be lots more X in the final product", that usually isn't the case.

Whoops. Looks like Frost Fingers caps out at 5d6 which significantly weakens the two spells I found.

So that makes a grand total of no good spells after several hours of trying.

hogarth wrote:and (c) their quality of editing is a notch worse than WotC (in my opinion).

Well, they got some typos and stupid errors in some of the last releases ( the Slayer ability of the Inquisitor comes to mind ), but at least I don't see constant "OMG, stat blocks broken!!!111" threads on their boards, like I did on the WotC boards back then.

Juton wrote: I wonder about this. In 3.5 I've seen a Ranger, Fighter, Barbarian and a Gish take out some of the more uninspired level appropriate challenges from levels 6-13ish. They where mostly core, and the Gish only buffed or fire-balled. I think 4 characters who couldn't pass a level 10 SGT individually can take an ECL challenge with 25% or less of their resources.

This is true. Even a weakly-optimized parties, with (non-specialized) Bard as the strongest member, can hold its own in published adventures until at least level 11. And I don't mean completely weaksauce adventures like some of the recent Paizo's APs. And I actually up the challenge by alot, by making enemies behave like sentient being who react to intrusions and shit.

I do believe, that keeping up becomes much harder at two-digit level, though.

magnuskn wrote:

hogarth wrote:and (c) their quality of editing is a notch worse than WotC (in my opinion).

Well, they got some typos and stupid errors in some of the last releases ( the Slayer ability of the Inquisitor comes to mind ), but at least I don't see constant "OMG, stat blocks broken!!!111" threads on their boards, like I did on the WotC boards back then.

They don't generally have stat blocks in their rulebooks (aside from the Bestiary, of course).

There's plenty of stat block errata being pointed out in the individual adventure path forums, though.

MfA wrote:Not all monsters got buffed ... animals and vermin got hit with a huge nerf bat making the summoning lists almost useless. Although there are some curious exceptions like the tiger, they seem to have a thing for tigers, the big cat animal companion is also the only useful one.

Like to like.

They are pussies, so keeping the pussy(cats) as they are is to be expected.

[quote="Midnight_v]On a related note. . . I'm amazed that people actually have been convinced to keep paying for this when the srd is free...[/quote]

Regardless of the merits of their house rules, Paizo has produced without a doubt the best quality books for 3.5 that have ever been printed. Their books are well put-together, there aren't loads of typos, the pictures are awesome, the index is fantastic, the rules are easy to find, and what you need for the game is there. I have friends who came from Exalted and other 3rd party 3.5 books who are sold on Pathfinder simply because the book is so good. Of course, if you criticize the rules they come back with "Who cares? We just roleplay to tell stories!" And really for them, since GM fiat determines the result of almost everything, the system doesn't matter and balance issues cannot help their experience.

So buying the book, in some cases, is better than the SRD.

but if rules don't matter, then why do they care about access to and/or presentation of said rules?

Ow.

Because you have to have a common lingo to base your stories on? Telling someone you have a full BAB character says 'my character is a warrior'. Just because that warrior couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag were they to actually use the numbers he has, doesn't change their perception of things.

TOZ wrote:Because you have to have a common lingo to base your stories on? Telling someone you have a full BAB character says 'my character is a warrior'. Just because that warrior couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag were they to actually use the numbers he has, doesn't change their perception of things.

Strangely, no.

I mean, I'm currently in one of your classic Wizard vs Fighters arguments on Paizo's board and someone is seriously trying to say that "fighters are protecting the Wizard!"

And they won't actually tell me how the Fighter is doing that since it lacks any ability to control a monster's actions or even act as a speedbump.

Then they reply with an example where a Fighter runs up, does an attack, and the monster stops and lets the fighter full attack the next round.

So basically they somehow think that the results of DM fiat are somehow a feature of the game and the monster has to sit there for a Full Attack.

Damn strange behavior really.

Also, I'll agree that Pathfinder has the best presentation of all DnD books. They really do have a nice stable of artists and layout people.

I expect it's because Eric Mona used to be their art and layout guy and he graduated to running the show.

What bothers me the most about Pathfinder is how buttmad Jason Bulmahn gets over constructive criticism. And when I say "constructive criticism," I mean things like, "This class feature isn't very strong for its level; you may wish to make it more like such-and-such," not "you suck and your class sucks and I'm pretty it's HIV-positive and now I have AIDS from reading it, you untalented piece of turd."

Psychic Robot wrote:What bothers me the most about Pathfinder is how buttmad Jason Bulmahn gets over constructive criticism. And when I say "constructive criticism," I mean things like, "This class feature isn't very strong for its level; you may wish to make it more like such-and-such," not "you suck and your class sucks and I'm pretty it's HIV-positive and now I have AIDS from reading it, you untalented piece of turd."

As far as I can tell, Jason B. goes to the forums to steal ideas..... nothing more. He's not even subtle about it.

Which is not surprising. Paizo holds a yearly "Steal The Playerbase's Ideas" contest with the "prize" that three people get to do their gruntwork adventure design for Pathfinder Society.

I mean, I might be willing to let them take my ideas if I got to design an AP, but getting to do one BS Pathfinder Society adventure that a few fringe players will see is kinda demeaning.

I mean, I don't need the tens of dollars they are paying.

K wrote: Damn strange behavior really.

I don't see why you bother. Being an apostle of RPG logic won't convice a juvenile and inexperienced (perhaps shortsighted and stubborn) player.

I wish they would steal the RIGHT people's work. Then maybe the game would turn out better.

K, I think their argument about the monster is, the monster doesn't know the fighter can't hurt it. Most things are adverse to pain. The monster doesn't know the guy in front of it can't hit it, but sharp metal hurts, and the imagined threat of it keeps the monster from intentionally leaving itself open to an attack. Nevermind that AoOs are vastly overrated. The monster isn't 'in character' when it tanks the AoO and bypasses the fighter.

Every intelligent monster knows to geek the mage first.

Or is that another game?

mean_liar wrote:Every intelligent monster knows to geek the mage first.

Or is that another game?

Apparently everyone at Paizo thinks you should attack the heavily armored guy that you have a low chance of hitting and that can only wound you over the lightly armored mage who can steal your soul.