[Pathfinder] More previews up

[FatR]

Speaking from total ignorance of the setting:

Are the gods on a geologic time scale? Like, maybe they did a lot of stuff a long time ago and now 10k years is a bullshit distraction blink-of-an-eye?

That would have been a good explanation, but no. Several of them are (relatively) recently ascended mortals, for example.

[FatR]

Well, I'm the other way; I like Eberron-style extremely distant and uncaring (possibly non-existent) gods. Then you have easy answers to questions like "Why doesn't god X send a couple of solars down to kick bad guy Y's ass?" (Which usually ends in vague muttering about balances of power, etc.)

Well, thing is, that's how Pathfinder deities actually behave - if you replace them with some mindless mechanisms that give power to clerics, hardly anything will change in the material world. But why then they included pretty extensive writeups of their personalities and supposed goals in the setting book and "Gods and Magic"?

[hogarth]

Well, I'm the other way; I like Eberron-style extremely distant and uncaring (possibly non-existent) gods. Then you have easy answers to questions like "Why doesn't god X send a couple of solars down to kick bad guy Y's ass?" (Which usually ends in vague muttering about balances of power, etc.)

Well, thing is, that's how Pathfinder deities actually behave - if you replace them with some mindless mechanisms that give power to clerics, hardly anything will change in the material world. But why then they included pretty extensive writeups of their personalities and supposed goals in the setting book and "Gods and Magic"?

In theory, though, you could go to plane shift to Asmodeus's house and punch him in the junk. Or something like that. Or you could go to the big pit where Rovagug is imprisoned and laugh at him, I guess.

[Blicero]

Well, I'm the other way; I like Eberron-style extremely distant and uncaring (possibly non-existent) gods. Then you have easy answers to questions like "Why doesn't god X send a couple of solars down to kick bad guy Y's ass?" (Which usually ends in vague muttering about balances of power, etc.)

I'm with hogarth here. I find distant gods whose tenets are totally open to interpretation are far better. However, the Eberron gods have at least done something. The Silver Flame has its inquisitions, the Blood of Vol is powerful in Germany, and so on.

Now, I know next to nothing about Pathfinder, but are you guys saying that the gods haven't even done stuff like that? Are they really just power sources? I have this image of giant power outlets floating around in the sky and across the planes...

[RandomCasualty2]

Well, I'm the other way; I like Eberron-style extremely distant and uncaring (possibly non-existent) gods. Then you have easy answers to questions like "Why doesn't god X send a couple of solars down to kick bad guy Y's ass?" (Which usually ends in vague muttering about balances of power, etc.)

Yeah, Eberron's take on gods was probably the best fresh idea to come out of that setting. I've always hated the conventional gods bullshit, where you have these uber beings like solars and shit who do nothing but sit in Celestia who call themselves paragons of good, yet they do nothing to actually help people.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

They do good stuff all the time. That's where the setting background stories and the DM come in.

[Roy]

Ok, so enough about the Fail gods. What are the Paizils up to?

[Psychic Robot]

Cataclysmic fail. (In other words, "par for the course.")

The bard preview thread is getting messy because people are pissed about the changes to the bardic music abilities (measured in rounds, not uses, per day). Half of them are sucking Bulmahn's cock, and half of them are raging. Then Bulmahn keeps posting, and it's like watching an engineer try to conduct a trainwreck.

[DeadlyReed]

This is the right thread (about the Bard).

[Psychic Robot]

I didn't mis-link. The PA thread is more fail.

[MartinHarper]

So, wait... if a Bard uses inspire competence to help out a rogue who is taking 20 to disarm a trap, he needs 20 rounds of bardic music to do so? That's terrible.

[Roy]

Cataclysmic fail. (In other words, "par for the course.")

The bard preview thread is getting messy because people are pissed about the changes to the bardic music abilities (measured in rounds, not uses, per day). Half of them are sucking Bulmahn's cock, and half of them are raging. Then Bulmahn keeps posting, and it's like watching an engineer try to conduct a trainwreck.

Indeed. Just about everyone there except for... 2 people are completely devoid of intelligence. Oh and Faelryinth showed up.

Lol at the idiots thinking two handers don't have a significant damage advantage and that AC matters at all.

The worst part of the Fail though is when some Magic Missile spammer is doing more than even the two handed beatsticks. What a gimp ass party. It's a wonder they can survive waking up in the morning.

Edit: Welcome to the Fail.

[Frantic]

Your One True Way-ism is astounding as usual, Roytard. People play differently than you do. Don't cry. It's just the Internet.

Fun fact: With your 21,000 posts you've made within the last two years, if you assume that each post you've made took five minutes, which is generous seeing as you're in a PBP and make retarded rants, so it's actually much longer; you've been posting for approximately 73 days straight within the last two years.

You've been sitting on your computer for nearly three fucking months just posting alone. That doesn't even count your amount of time reading, lurking, or browsing 4chan for shitty memes or LOLCATS. Well, please, do yourself a favor– GET THE FUCK OUT.

You responding to this would only be further proof that you can't brush my comments off your shoulder.

You analyzing the above statement as a sneaky way for me to win an e-argument would be further proof of your insecurities.

Not to mention you're a fucking ass burger whom no one respects.

Q.E.D., you fucking fucker. Coup de grace complete.

[Username17]

...And Frantic just got added to my ignore list as well.

People whose only contribution to discussion is that people shouldn't contribute to discussions if they aren't contributing to the discussion should take their own fucking advice.

-Username17

[Wulf]

Sorry to interrupt the venting of paizo fail, but Roy says AC doesnt matter.

Is that from a certain level (I do know that the attack vs AC increases in favor of attacking as you level up) ? Or just in general ?

We play 3.5 and we have houseruled stuff (there is no wish economy for instance in our campaign) and we havent been past level 12 yet, but AC seems to matter to our campaign (but I admit, we do not play with fully optimized characters..most dont even multiclass to gain more benefits). I am curious to Roy's and other people experiences with AC.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I haven't played any of high-level games that transition from low to high (I have played games that started out at high level, though).

Here's my take. AC remains very important, it's just that the number of effects that target you directly or just target touch AC get higher as you advance in level. This is especially considering how many higher-level creatures get spellcasting.

But a servicable AC isn't in fact very hard or expensive to get. You shouldn't go out of your way too much to get it, but let's face it, a wizard with Polymorph Any Object is going to make you run around all of the time with a damn high AC.

[Roy]

Sorry to interrupt the venting of paizo fail, but Roy says AC doesnt matter.

Is that from a certain level (I do know that the attack vs AC increases in favor of attacking as you level up) ? Or just in general ?

We play 3.5 and we have houseruled stuff (there is no wish economy for instance in our campaign) and we havent been past level 12 yet, but AC seems to matter to our campaign (but I admit, we do not play with fully optimized characters..most dont even multiclass to gain more benefits). I am curious to Roy's and other people experiences with AC.

At level 1-5 it matters... but then here's the thing. AC requires a great deal of monetary resources to keep up (and still isn't good enough). But at levels 1-5, you're either using MW or +1 armor because you literally don't have a choice. And you'd do that anyways, because you need the basic +1 in order to access special properties.

At 6-20 you get to the point where the first attack from anything that is expected to attack you with a weapon will hit you 95% of the time or very close to it at first and goes up from there (enemy PAs for x and still hits 95% of the time, where x increases with level). As you already know, attack scales faster than AC, which is why that happens.

Now, the critical part. The full attack sequences of anything you care about will, at the most take a -5 penalty to their attacks because they are natural attackers. And chances are it's -2 or even 0, because it would be pretty stupid not to take (improved) multiattack and indeed many do by default. The ones using weapons are humanoids (and the odd giant or whatever) but in any case they aren't really threats. And in the case of humanoids, they're non threats and Monty Hall, as that NPC Fighter is literally as rich as a dragon.

Because the penalty is at most a -5 and most likely less, them hitting your AC is a foregone conclusion. If you don't have real defenses such as miss chances, mirror image, etc you have nothing protecting you except HP... which means you die in 1-2 rounds.

And then the stuff that doesn't care about hitting you with a weapon does other stuff which ignores AC entirely and also kills you in 1-2 rounds.

So basically, if you're a non caster you have very limited access to those real defenses and are thereby essentially forced to 1-2 round the enemy before it 1-2 rounds you. Even if AC actually did work, you'd never lose out on damage for it because you need to boost your damage very high just to stand a chance. This is otherwise known as turtling... a common tactic in games, but in D&D it is Turtle Fail because it Just Doesn't Work.

The problems are WORSE with not optimized characters for several reasons. First and foremost, you can't get your damage up. Enemies manage just fine. Enter non casters getting slaughtered like Red Shirts. Second, just getting AC to the level where you aren't massive Power Attack bait and therefore might survive a single round without spending exorbitant amounts of gold which typically means cutting off other areas that leave you fucked anyways requires optimization to counter the fact it naturally scales much slower than offense. Third, optimized characters are about the only ones that have real defenses as a non caster.

On the offense side, optimization certainly improves it, but if you're dead in 1 round anyways does it matter if the enemy does 100 or 800? Exactly.

Optimized characters survive better, both because they are better at killing the enemy first and better at surviving when they can't.

QED.

I also note you said people don't multiclass. Non multiclassed non casters are generally the worst builds in the game (though a few are ok, which is why it's only general). So unless these guys are ToB sorts, Duskblades, Psychic Warriors, or Rogues... what the hell? Sounds like 'some house ruled stuff' means 'no enemies over party level - 3' because stock Monster Manual 1 stuff slaughters such characters.

And I'm assuming stock stuff the entire time. Complete with Alertness and Toughness spam. No changing monsters to make them take stuff they'll actually use. So no straw manning me with that (you know who you are).

Also note that like everything else, Paizo makes this worse. Enemies do more damage now, and get full bonuses with bites and claws (as in, most natural attacks) without any assistance. And that's against Fighters, who they love calling buffed because they made his numbers marginally higher. Against everything else...

Edit: PAO would go under the category of 'optimization'.

See normally, non casters have an absolute cap of 49. And that normally costs around 380k, which is half your total WBL. You can make this much cheaper with the optimization of throwing Magic Vestments and Greater Magic Weapons around and such. But it still caps at 49. Casters do better, due to self only buffs. Which is why gishes are best at the task - you can use stuff like Inertial Armor for cheap and easy buffs... to give an idea, Inertial Armor + Animated Shield + Magic Vestment all around + Barkskin all around + SoF all around = AC 57 for under 10k gold. And that's cheap and affordable. Actually he might have had a floating rock in there or something, and if so under 15k. Whatever. Still, throwing around lots of Chain spells qualifies as optimizing.

[IGTN]

Sorry to interrupt the venting of paizo fail, but Roy says AC doesnt matter.

Is that from a certain level (I do know that the attack vs AC increases in favor of attacking as you level up) ? Or just in general ?

We play 3.5 and we have houseruled stuff (there is no wish economy for instance in our campaign) and we havent been past level 12 yet, but AC seems to matter to our campaign (but I admit, we do not play with fully optimized characters..most dont even multiclass to gain more benefits). I am curious to Roy's and other people experiences with AC.

As I understand it:
1: AC only matters against a specific kind of attack (that is, those that use an attack roll instead of a saving throw or that work automatically). Your AC of 50, or even 9000, doesn't do anything when I drop Solid Fog on you or imprison you in a Wall of Ice, or isolate you from the battle behind (or inside) a Wall of Thorns, or blind you with Glitterdust, or knock you out with Sleep, or Polymorph you into a toad; you need another defense, like the ability to teleport, or walk through walls, or good will/fort saves, or alternative primary senses.

http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Spells_Tha ... DnD_Other) has a partial list of spells that you might need to especially worry about, both from enemy wizards and as spell-like abilities on monsters (remember, many monsters, especially those designed to be bosses, have either a huge pile of SLAs or are actual spellcasters). Very few of them, actually require attack rolls, those that do are mostly tactically disadvantageous to use (because they're melee-ranged, and wizard spells), and fewer have attack rolls that allow you to avoid the effect, instead of delay/retarget it (remember, if you miss with a touch spell, you get to try again next round as an attack). Also, the list omits spells that don't appear on the Wizard list.

2: Even against things that take an attack roll, most of them don't use your real AC. Flask rogues and mages casting rays, for instance, use touch AC, and flask rogues leave you with no bonuses except size, deflection, and bullshit.

3: Those things that attack full AC as their primary way of harming you, fighters and brute attack monsters, typically have such better attack bonuses compared to the ACs of attack-optimized melee fighters (that is, one-trick ponies that can disable enemies as quickly as a wizard can, such as uberchargers) that what AC you do have basically only tells them how much they should power attack for (a DM roleplaying his monsters and separating their knowledge from his own might have them guess wrong, but generally the guy in bright glowing silver armor has a fairly high AC, but you can power attack your entire BAB away on the guy who just Shock Trooper charged you). This is, I think, the weakest link; I'm not sure if I'm fully convinced of this.

4: Adding even more trouble to this is the fact that AC has to keep up with level and attack bonuses, while other defenses, even those that do the same thing (like miss chances) don't.

"AC is not a defense" is exaggeration. "AC is an awful defense" is nearer the mark. The attacks that target fortitude and will saves, or potentially ablative defenses like teleportation, are more important, and so they will be targeted more.

e: Link broked

[Roy]

Mostly right. See the previous post.

[virgil]

For optimization purposes, it can still be done with Paizo. My own archer is mostly core Paizo, non-multiclassed fighter even, except for a handful of magic items (mostly weapon/armor crystals). At level 14 I walk around with a 44 AC while doing rogue level damage. That kind of AC is actually something to brag about, as rare is the day that something needs less than a 16 to hit me on their first attack; even if they're melee brutes.

EDIT: As for saves, immune to mind control (continual protection from evil) & +18/+15/+12 (extra +3 vs fear)

[Username17]

At low levels, attacks target AC and drop players. Rogues stab with shortswords for 2d6+1 and orcs swing greatswords for 2d6+3. It's a big deal. Your character can literally drop from a single attack. And their attack bonuses are in the +3 range, meaning that putting on a chain shirt and having a shield represents a real defense against having your chest caved in.

At higher levels, a Cloud Giant has a +22 to-hit before applying any of the bonuses that he very likely has access to. But he "only" does 4d6+18 damage per hit. It becomes a grinding action, where AC matters a lot less.

If a character walked into a 12th level game with an AC of 15 I wouldn't think that was weird.

-Username17

[Roy]

For optimization purposes, it can still be done with Paizo. My own archer is mostly core Paizo, non-multiclassed fighter even, except for a handful of magic items (mostly weapon/armor crystals). At level 14 I walk around with a 44 AC while doing rogue level damage. That kind of AC is actually something to brag about, as rare is the day that something needs less than a 16 to hit me on their first attack; even if they're melee brutes.

EDIT: As for saves, immune to mind control (continual protection from evil) & +18/+15/+12 (extra +3 vs fear)

That's not very impressive. Seriously. 44 is enough to make enemies miss sometimes vs level 14 enemies, but not too often. Another thing I didn't mention the first time? 20-40% of enemies will be higher level than 14. And to hit scales at roughly 3 points per level. You do the math. Also, rogue level damage is only moderate (rogues end up ok because they get like 10 attacks a round... you can't do that, so you end up with bad damage).

The saves are half decent but definitely need improvement. Like 5-10 points on the two categories that matter. And +5-10 AC wouldn't hurt either, but good luck with that.

So you've definitely done some work there (else you'd have an AC around 25-30, and terrible saves) but you need more. Remember, enemies only need to win once. You'll be seeing them a lot more than once.

Edit: Frank is flat out wrong though, unless you have real defenses. If you do, your chance to be hit is incredibly low before counting AC. If you don't, you're PA bait and suddenly everything is doing 50+ a hit (mid levels) or 100+ a hit (high levels) to you.

I am again reminded of the thread that got me banned from the Paizil's forum in which I compared D&D AC to video game defense - it doesn't stop you from being hit (the low % evade stat does), but reduces the damage you take per hit. And that's fine if you can get your defense to an acceptable level. But if you can't, like you can't in D&D...

[virgil]

I'm calling BS right there. I'm looking at the MM right now, and except for the Greater Stone Golem & Tarrasque, nothing can hit me on a 14 or less. The Frost Giant Jarl comes close, but my initiative is better and he's 3 CR higher than I AND I can attack from longbow ranges.

Also, I know what I'm talking about when I say I do damage on par with a rogue. I don't mean that each attack is on par with a rogue's attack, I mean my total damage in a round, after misses and DR, is about the same as what a halfling hurler does in a round.

I almost forgot to include the fact that I have a +35 Spot/Listen, which means invisible stuff isn't, especially with a seeking bow.

No, I can't deal with walls that well, but that's something I can handle in a level once I get a ring of blinking and my damage destroys walls within the round most of the time anyway.

[Wulf]

Thanks for all the replies people.

As for non-multiclass characters...well, one is a druid, the other a duskblade (I heard that is one of the acceptable melee classes) and I use a ToB:Bo9S variant and I plan to multiclass into a prestige class. The other wanted to play a samurai (yes the CW version), we kinda stopped him at level 2 and slammed his face into an open ToB:Bo9s book to get him to play a warblade instead. He seemed to enjoy it now.

As for feats..eh..we do have toughness (not chosen to use it), it gives +1 hp per level + con modifier, instead of +3 hp. Actually, we mostly use ranked feats from Frank's Tomes, same for armor equipment

Perhaps we are lucky that most of our opponents are melee-based rather then casters. And humanonids like humans (with class levels). We are playing a rather story-centric campaign, with lots of war and skirmishes with an another empire.

Also, AC starts around offering 50 percent miss chance at level one, until level 20, where it offers only 0 percent (auto-miss on 1 still). Assuming you keep it all balanced that is, as the designers prolly meant (fat chance on this board, hehe). Ofcourse, it means you have to gain +1 AC every level (deflection, natural armor, armor enhancement,etc) just to keep it up. Fighters would hit 2.5 times an equal equipped fighter at level 20. (100 percent, 75 percent, 50, 25). In practice, I guess it never works out that way.

At level 12 my AC is/was around 30 by the way. AC 44 is super. That is +16 AC above average for that level (as told in DMG anyway).

Roy, I do not understand how you can scale attack +3 per level. You have BAB, you have enhancement bonus (but not per level) and strength (not per level). How do you get +3 per level? (I do not care about monsters, just humans and equipment, although monster's average follow these guidelines still, but I am sure there are exceptions that show beyond balance statistics).

(PS, our DM is not out to kill us, Roy. We do not fight super-monsters of level +4 above us (Except a boss perhaps). Actually, we fight equal level humanoids..all 4 battles/day in one go I guess).

[RandomCasualty2]

Perhaps we are lucky that most of our opponents are melee-based rather then casters. And humanonids like humans (with class levels). We are playing a rather story-centric campaign, with lots of war and skirmishes with an another empire.

yeah that's basically the deciding factor. In some games, the opponents are a bunch of frost giants and shit, so being an AC whore might be worth something. In other games, where you fight a lot of casters, AC is all but worthless.

Really depends a lot on your DM's selection of monsters.

Though really, at higher levels, it becomes less and less of an issue because monsters get bigger, and that means fewer of them can attack you at a time, and as Frank said, a giant fighting you without a full attack is basically just a grind game that takes 2-3 rounds at least to drop you, so it's not the kind of attack you're really worried about. You just tumble back every round so he only gets one attack per turn and you're fine.