FrankTrollman wrote:
Well... we already showed that the sample characters can't accomplish shit with Combat Maneuvers.
Again, note that the current rules are different from the Beta rules that you used in your example.
So? We just quoted the current fucking rules and got the same fucking result!
Shut your whore mouth. If you have any actual evidence that anything was ever improved at any point, you are welcome to do a math analysis and show us wrong. If you're just going to hop up and down about how periodically Jason regurgitates minor changes to the rules and things could be different from the last time we reviewed it or the time before that, just go suck a barrel of cocks. I don't have time to check the entire Monster Manual every time Jason moves a period.
Roy wrote: Do I really need to post the fire giant comparison AGAIN?
What, the one you last posted during the Beta playtest when the rules were different?
If you want to look up the new rules, go right ahead. I'd like to hear what you consider an acceptable result beforehand, however, so you don't do any goalpost-moving after you do the actual calculations.
Given you no longer get a free attack, 80%-90%.
It was 50%-60% in 3.5, close to 0% in PF.
Note that in Pathfinder you do get a free attack (well, an attack of opportunity) but it takes three feats (Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Greater Trip) instead of two.
A fire giant in Pathfinder has a CMD of 31.
Let's say our level 10 tripping fighter has Improved Trip and Greater Trip and generally uses a tripping weapon. His CMB is (conservatively):
10 (BAB)
+ 7 (Str)
+ 4 (feats)
+ 2 (weapon enhancement)
+ 2 (weapon training)
----
+25
So he succeeds only 75% of the time, unless he can squeeze some more bonuses in there (like Weapon Focus, Haste, bard song, etc.). But note that that's better than the 50%-60% quoted for 3.5.
A Man in Black had the right answer -- the combat maneuver system is worse than 3.5 because now it takes a bunch of fiddly bonus stacking to succeed, and combat maneuvers eventually become pointless anyways. That's not the same as saying it's impossible to succeed.
Last edited by hogarth on Sat Jan 09, 2010 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote:Shut your whore mouth. If you have any actual evidence that anything was ever improved at any point, you are welcome to do a math analysis and show us wrong.
Nobody's saying that the rules improved at any point. In fact, they've gotten worse.
The PF Beta rules don't work, but they're at least obviously non-functional so you know that grappling/tripping/disarming is a really bad idea. There's no fiddly modifiers, no hidden stuff, no vagueness, just You're Probably Just Going To Fail.
The PF final rules might include a bunch of random bullshit modifiers, who knows. Whether you're going to succeed has less to do with not trying maneuvers on big strong things but instead how well you've memorized the Bestiary. A bunch of stuff is randomly immune to maneuvers. It's a gigantic clusterfuck that works differently depending on the whim of the GM.
They're both nonfunctional, but the beta rules at least worked in a clear way.
I did the maths for this a while a go over at BG. If you stack modifiers a PF character can more reliably trip then a 3.5 character. Granted they can't get the feat to get that important second attack on a tripped opponent until level 6.
I've had the opportunity to play a campaign using the CMB rules. For the most part what keeps non-specialists from attempting maneuvers is the AoO they provoke, even though their likely hood of succeeding the check has increased the likely hood of them wasting their action has stayed constant because attack bonuses and ACs haven't really changed. A class like a Barbarian is more likely to be able to pull off maneuvers without any specific feat investment because of the new calculations.
Edit: Spelling
Last edited by Juton on Sun Jan 10, 2010 11:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Juton wrote:I did the maths for this a while a go over at BG. If you stack modifiers a PF character can more reliably trip then a 3.5 character. Granted they can't get the feat to get that important second attack on a tripped opponent until level 6.
The level 6 part is important. Most games don't even go beyond 11, so if you don't get the feat that lets you do damage until 6, you get to spend half the game sucking.
cthulhu wrote:The level 6 part is important. Most games don't even go beyond 11, so if you don't get the feat that lets you do damage until 6, you get to spend half the game sucking.
That's several years of sucking, by the way.
Wow, Pathfinder games must run slow. That's what, 5 sessions in a normal D&D game?
...if you start at 1st level, which a lot of games don't.
No they run at the same speed - I'd suggest very few people use the advancement proposition in the book. And heck, even if you DO it comes with the same effect as you repeatedly 'reset' to level 1.
James Jacobs wrote:My suggestion: Rather than toss your hands up in the air, roll eyes, and make fun of the rules... (and honestly... I'm kind of okay if it takes a 20th level commoner several months to brew a potent poison)... make new rules to fix the problem. My solution: A "Craft Poison" feat that lets you vastly speed up the time it takes to craft poison.
The Craft rules work fine for things that are relatively inexpensive... like the majority of all of the things in the equipment chapter. They're not broken. They're just not intended to be used to craft the game's EXPENSIVE stuff. Which for the most part means magic items. That's why we have the item crafting feats.
Poison, on the other hand, has a higher GP value because of its more significant effects. (It's one of my own pet peeves that you can't put a lake of poison in an adventure without basically giving crafty PCs a lake of gold.) The use of Craft (poisonmaking) is, essentially, a band-aid over a problem.
So yeah. Here's my suggestion.
NEW FEAT Craft Poison
You can prepare poison more quickly than most. Prerequisites: Craft (poisonmaking) 3 ranks Benefit: You can create poison. The maximum number of doses of poison you can have brewing at any one time is equal to your rank in Craft (poisonmaking). Brewing a batch of poison (of any amount up to this maximum) takes 1 day for each 1,000 gp in the poison's per-dose price. (Depending on the GM, some special or particularly rare poisons can take much longer to brew.) To create poison, you must use up raw materials costing one half of the total price of poison to be brewed, and must make a Craft (poisonmaking) check (DC = the poison's save DC). If you fail the Craft (poisonmaking) check by 5 or more, you have accidentally exposed yourself to the poison. Special: If you have the Poison Use ability, you don't poison yourself if you fail a Craft (poisonmaking) check by 5 or more.
Jimmy Jake wrote:My take: Multiclassing becomes less and less desirable the more players you have in a game. In a one-player, one GM situation, multiclassing is a good option because it helps your one PC be more versatile. But in a group of five or so... multiclassing is less of a good option, mostly because chances are very good that there's already someone in the group who's not multiclassed and will be a constant reminder of how much better they are at what they do, compared to the multiclassed character's stuff.
My theory: Multiclassing should rarely, if ever, be a route taken by players seeking to make powerful characters. It should be a route taken by players seeking to make unusual characters who are a challenge to play.
James Jacobs also wrote:I, for one, DON'T think that a fighter 1/wizard 5/eldritch knight 10 or however that pans out is a second rate character. That's the "best" way to do a fighter/wizard multiclass, I think... but another good option is to ONLY take 2 or 4 levels of fighter and do the rest in wizard. An even split between a spellcasting class and a non spellcasting class is where the problems show up.
It's like the entire system is a giant No True Scotsman. The games "works" if you play it the way they want you to play it. If you figure out how to break the system by analyzing it, you're not a True Roleplayer, so your viewpoint of the game should be disregarded.
It's something convenient for them to hide behind at least.
Draco_Argentum wrote:
Mister_Sinister wrote:Clearly, your cock is part of the big barrel the server's busy sucking on.
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.
Not only that, multiclassing gives options, and dumber players/DMs don't like options. Seriously, they don't want you to have them and they don't want to have them themselves. That's why you'll see certain players always pick Sorcerer over Wizard, they only have to choose their spells once.
There was quite a few posters on the Paizo boards that put forth various rules kludges to allow more organic multi-classing without taking dual progression PrCs. Some where adequate, most where underpowered and all where ignored. More options means they'd have to think more and dumb people hate that.
Like it or not, D&D (and Pathfinder and "Tome" D&D) does AD&D-style multi-classing by using specific prestige classes or base classes. Maybe they need to put in a warning in big bold letters to that effect somewhere, but I don't consider that a "trap" any more than putting one point in every power is a "trap" in Mutants & Masterminds or Champions. Any game that allows meaningful choices in character creation will also allow bad choices.
Of course that doesn't excuse anything that James Jacobs happens to blurt out on any given occasion.
Last edited by hogarth on Tue Feb 02, 2010 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
hogarth wrote:Like it or not, D&D (and Pathfinder and "Tome" D&D) does AD&D-style multi-classing by using specific prestige classes or base classes. Maybe they need to put in a warning in big bold letters to that effect somewhere, but I don't consider that a "trap" any more than putting one point in every power is a "trap" in Mutants & Masterminds or Champions. Any game that allows meaningful choices in character creation will also allow bad choices.
I understand that if you allow any meaningful choices at all, some combinations will have to be bad ones. I take umbrage when he claims that multiclassed characters should be "a challenge to play", which he's used in the past as doublespeak for weak.
A Man In Black wrote: I take umbrage when he claims that multiclassed characters should be "a challenge to play", which he's used in the past as doublespeak for weak.
I agree, that part is just plain dumb. Sean K Reynolds is famous for doublethink shit like that, too: "That class/ability/whatever is supposed to be shitty so that you can challenge yourself creatively to make it useful." (With regards to the monk, for instance.)
Last edited by hogarth on Tue Feb 02, 2010 2:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Apologies if this had already been stated, but how did PF change multiclassing? I thought they got rid of favored classes, but that was it. What's missing?
I don't know if they changed anything beyond this, but everyone pretty much picks their own favored class (humans and half-elves get two, I think) and every time you gain a level in your personal favored class, you get either +1 hit point or +1 skill point.
mean_liar wrote:Apologies if this had already been stated, but how did PF change multiclassing? I thought they got rid of favored classes, but that was it. What's missing?
That particular thread was sparked by the usual 3.X complaint that plain multi-classed characters suck (e.g. a fighter 5/wizard 5 is way worse than the "average" 10th level character). It wasn't particularly PFRPG specific.
Well to be fair to the dumbfuck squad, consider who ends up multiclassing. Not PRCing, multiclassing. Hint: It's not the casters. The trouble is they as usual have it backwards. Instead of the classes being weak because they are multiclassed, they are weak so they need to multiclass and dip around for all those front end loaded benefits.
Though the real question is why aren't they all just playing 4.Fail? It gives them the sprite based interaction they're looking for.
Draco_Argentum wrote:
Mister_Sinister wrote:Clearly, your cock is part of the big barrel the server's busy sucking on.
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.
hogarth wrote:That particular thread was sparked by the usual 3.X complaint that plain multi-classed characters suck (e.g. a fighter 5/wizard 5 is way worse than the "average" 10th level character). It wasn't particularly PFRPG specific.
Actually, it was about how the eldritch knight sucks, but yeah, not PF specific.
In other news, spellcasters receive another buff for those that don't know. Now that Giant is a subtype of the Humanoid type, all giants are affected by Hold Person. Your 4th level cleric has a new save-or-die against CR5 trolls.
