Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[maglag]

Bloodrager can do literally everything a Barbarian can do and he gets things like automatic buffs and flight.

People keep saying this like a mantra but it's simply not true. Unless we're talking about the Primalist archetype. And since it isn't automatically allowed everywhere (not in PFS, for example), the fact remains that a standard Bloodrager cannot do everything a Barbarian can, literally or otherwise.

If you need to ban the primalist archetype to stop Bloodrager from being a directly superior Barbarian than Bloodrager is a directly superior Barbarian. What you have said is "Bloodrager can't do everything a Barbarian can do if you ban the things that allow him to do that.".

Funny you say that, because Franktrollman himself supports the "X is not directly superior to Y because I can selectively ban the strictly superior bits from X" argument back on the 3.5 casters x Pathfinder casters discussion.

If it's perfectly fine to auto-ban/ignore Shadowcraft Mage/Incantrix/InitiateoftheSevenFoldVeil/AbruptJaunt/Precious Apprentice/ItemFamiliar/ThoughtBottle from 3.5, I don't see why you have a problem with auto-ban/ignore of a single PF archetype.

[erik]

Funny you say that, because Franktrollman himself supports the "X is not directly superior to Y because I can selectively ban the strictly superior bits from X" argument back on the 3.5 casters x Pathfinder casters discussion.

If it's perfectly fine to auto-ban/ignore Shadowcraft Mage/Incantrix/InitiateoftheSevenFoldVeil/AbruptJaunt/Precious Apprentice/ItemFamiliar/ThoughtBottle from 3.5, I don't see why you have a problem with auto-ban/ignore of a single PF archetype.

Noooo. The argument isn't "X is not directly superior to Y because I can selectively ban the strictly superior bits from X" cite where you think he says that and someone can splain it for ya.

I do recall the argument being made edge cases that 99% of players aren't ever likely to see or use are not enough to declare 3.5 casters as more buff, since the more significant comparison is that Pathfinder casters have buffed all the weaknesses and problems that 99% of players are likely to encounter are improved in Pathfinder casters and they still have a bevy of winning options to choose from.

It is perfectly reasonable on a more specific conversation to use an archtype when extolling virtues of a specific class since this is a more drilled-down comparison than full casters vs full casters. In this case the argument is actually about a specific class archtype (Primalist Bloodrager) vs. any Barbarian (including any archtype).

[Kaelik]

If it's perfectly fine to auto-ban/ignore Shadowcraft Mage/Incantrix/InitiateoftheSevenFoldVeil/AbruptJaunt/Precious Apprentice/ItemFamiliar/ThoughtBottle from 3.5, I don't see why you have a problem with auto-ban/ignore of a single PF archetype.

1) As to address the argument, Frank's point is that Pathfinder Wizards are played as more powerful in the things people actually play. Not because you can ban things. Things like Shadowcraft/Incantatrix/Thought Bottle/Gate Literally break the game. Like, no one can actually play a game in which those things are used to full effect.

Item Familiar is an obscure complicated feat that is slightly more powerful than other feats, Same for Abrupt Jaunt. It has to do with how easy it is to remove from the game for little loss.

Initiate is powerful, but not even that powerful, so people need to stop lumping it with real OP things, and:

2) Precocious Apprentice? Fucking seriously, you said this before and it makes no sense. This isn't a powerful feat. It is kind of a shit feat. Who cares.

[maglag]

Funny you say that, because Franktrollman himself supports the "X is not directly superior to Y because I can selectively ban the strictly superior bits from X" argument back on the 3.5 casters x Pathfinder casters discussion.

If it's perfectly fine to auto-ban/ignore Shadowcraft Mage/Incantrix/InitiateoftheSevenFoldVeil/AbruptJaunt/Precious Apprentice/ItemFamiliar/ThoughtBottle from 3.5, I don't see why you have a problem with auto-ban/ignore of a single PF archetype.

Noooo. The argument isn't "X is not directly superior to Y because I can selectively ban the strictly superior bits from X" cite where you think he says that and someone can splain it for ya.

I do recall the argument being made edge cases that 99% of players aren't ever likely to see or use are not enough to declare 3.5 casters as more buff, since the more significant comparison is that Pathfinder casters have buffed all the weaknesses and problems that 99% of players are likely to encounter are improved in Pathfinder casters and they still have a bevy of winning options to choose from.

It is perfectly reasonable on a more specific conversation to use an archtype when extolling virtues of a specific class since this is a more drilled-down comparison than full casters vs full casters. In this case the argument is actually about a specific class archtype (Primalist Bloodrager) vs. any Barbarian (including any archtype).

3.5 fullcasters can outmelee 3.5 mundanes with a single spell, sometimes not needing even that, before double digit levels, and that's in the freaking core book (polymorph, wildshape, etc)

Meanwhile in PF fullcasters can't outmelee PF mundanes with a single spell available before double digit levels, and concentration checks for casting in melee also got harder.

So enlighten me, how does PF making fullcaster's lifes more difficult in melee counts as "buffed all the weaknesses and problems that 99% of players are likely to encounter"?

[maglag]

If it's perfectly fine to auto-ban/ignore Shadowcraft Mage/Incantrix/InitiateoftheSevenFoldVeil/AbruptJaunt/Precious Apprentice/ItemFamiliar/ThoughtBottle from 3.5, I don't see why you have a problem with auto-ban/ignore of a single PF archetype.

1) As to address the argument, Frank's point is that Pathfinder Wizards are played as more powerful in the things people actually play. Not because you can ban things. Things like Shadowcraft/Incantatrix/Thought Bottle/Gate Literally break the game. Like, no one can actually play a game in which those things are used to full effect.

Yet people played games with that stuff. Heck, they're still playing it on online PbPs if you look around.

Meanwhile, Franktrollman wrote a full series of homebrew where everybody has infinite scrolls of every spell from the start (as they're worth less than 15 K GP each, aka free as dust as per Frank's "efreetis exist only to be mass enslaved as your wish factories" hypothesis) and after years I still haven't figured out how that's supposed to even start to work in an actual game. But people still claim to have played tome campaigns.

Item Familiar is an obscure complicated feat that is slightly more powerful than other feats, Same for Abrupt Jaunt. It has to do with how easy it is to remove from the game for little loss.

And there's a big loss from removing a single archetype from PF? Is it hard? Will Paizo send his ninja squadrons to kidnap you if you dare even whisper it?

[deaddmwalking]

You've missed the point. Look up and find the phrase 'full of win'. 3.x casters could he more powerful in melee than martial characters, but that's not what makes them powerful. If they're in melee, they're slumming . They're being less effective than they could be to prove a point. We might all agree that wizards shouldn't be better in melee than martial characters, but fixing that doesn't solve the problem.

Wizards are ultimate power because when you have a problem that needs solving on the other side of the continent, the 20th level fighter has no solution but walking, while the 5th level wizard can buy a scroll of teleport .

To boil it down - since magic can be invoked to explain anything happening, whether possible or impossible, it is possible to create a wizard who can plausibly do anything . Not everything because wizards don't get unlimited resources. Characters without access to magic are limited to real life human potential.

[Archmage Joda]

So, some pages back, it was basically implied that PF Clerics are just straight up better than Wizards and can pull off most of their shticks, but how well can a Cleric be a Conjurer? Their standard action summoning feat is pretty limited, being based on alignment subtypes, and it seems Wizards get most exclusive access to a great deal of the toys of Conjuration, barring specific domains. So, can a Cleric be as good a Conjurer as the Wizard?

[RadiantPhoenix]

My first go-to Conjurer spell for the Cleric would be Planar Ally and variants thereof.

[Orca]

At what level, AJ?

At 3rd level a wizard with Academae Graduate can be better.

At 5th a LG cleric can summon a lantern archon as a standard action given Sacred Summons; any time a lantern archon can do the job you'd rather be the cleric summoner because you're not getting fatigued. If it can't you'd rather be the wizard. If you're not lawful good the wizard is definitely better.

Later on as more options get added (including via the feats Summon {alignment} Monster) the cleric should be able to pull ahead in general.

Not that either is necessarily the best at summoning. Characters with the summoner class or arcanists with the occultist archetype get those minute/level rather than round/level summons, all as standard actions, and so are going to have a lot less hassles.

[Archmage Joda]

Well, as for level, I tend to always think in terms of 5+. And I wasn't referring to only summoning, but rather the neat terrain altering battlefield control spells and other similar things conjuration has (Glitterdust, Pit spells, etc.), and teleportation and especially Creation effects. In fact, I'd rather put more emphasis of my question into Creation effects, as I know how to do teleporting mojo on a Cleric, but Creation is a subschool I especially like and want to pull the godlike power of ex nihilo creation.

[DSMatticus]

Meanwhile in PF fullcasters can't outmelee PF mundanes with a single spell available before double digit levels, and concentration checks for casting in melee also got harder.

Um. What. Alter self comes online at level 3 and gives you three natural attacks if you pick the right form (possibly more, I haven't dumpster dived too hard for weird forms). Wild shape hits at level 4, and does the same thing plus change. Beastshape I and II hit at 5 and 7, and do the same thing plus change. The druid and the summoner both start the game with a pet that kicks the fighter's ass, zero spells required. Yes, if you want to outmelee PF mundanes as a caster you can just fucking do that. It's objectively worse than winning the fight by casting spells that shut people the fuck down (exactly like in 3.5), but you can still do it (exactly like in 3.5).

The core of your argument is that 3.5 wizards were better because the power ceiling was (according to you) higher. If that's your argument, stop fucking talking about the shadowcraft mage and the incantatrix. The actual 3.5 RAW power ceiling is using an outsider with SLA wish to wish for a ring of infinite wishes. If the examples you want to use are anything less than that, then you're admitting you're not wholly convinced by your own "we should evaluate this shit by looking at optimization ceilings and not expected level of play" line of argument. The actual ceiling is infinitely many standard action wishes as soon as you get your hands on a candle of invocation, planar binding, or an efreeti. Nobody plays 3.5 that way, but that's how it actually works.

Now observe that the Pathfinder wish is capable of duplicating all of magic circle against evil, dimensional anchor, planar binding, and possibly dominate monster - I can't recall how spells on multiple lists interact with wish. It'll take more time and you're more likely to stall early on, but yes, you can still chainbind up an arbitrarily large army of outsiders if you can get your hands on a seed efreeti. And you're still never going to see that at any table ever.

[Zaranthan]

Meanwhile, Franktrollman wrote a full series of homebrew where everybody has infinite scrolls of every spell from the start (as they're worth less than 15 K GP each, aka free as dust as per Frank's "efreetis exist only to be mass enslaved as your wish factories" hypothesis) and after years I still haven't figured out how that's supposed to even start to work in an actual game. But people still claim to have played tome campaigns.

I doubt anyone has actually played a game like that. The most common houserule I've heard of is to make scrolls above 4th level into wish economy items somehow.

[Insomniac]

I just think the point is that Pathfinder gave casters, especially wizards, higher floors. The absolute ceiling of broken stuff (planar ally cheesedom, quickened summoning and other things to beef that up, Fun With Wishes and Broken prestige classes and undercosted, overpowered legacy items and feats) is theoretically in play with Pathfinder, too. There's no reason why somebody couldn't play as a Beholder Mage, Incantatrix, Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil or anything like that and not bring all the gouda and limburger they can find from 3.0 and 3.5, other than not wanting people to pelt them with rotten vegetables and bricks.

However, at the base, just going for obvious stuff, a 10th level wizard has...

Freebie +2 to Intelligence with so many races. That used to be something you'd have to search intently for and then take something nasty like a hit to your Constitution and have to roleplay a funky, disliked race. You can just have that with Humans if you want. The live list of races to play a Wizard as is much bigger.
Unlimited cantrips
20 more HP
Does not expend experience points as an item crafter
Gets Arcane Bond or a familiar
Gets Arcane School abilities
Can cast off prohibited schools, activate items with spells of prohibited schools, learn spells from prohibited schools and craft items using spells from prohibited schools. Doesn't sound that prohibitive, huh?
Gets 2 traits that are easily as strong as a good to strong feat
Favored Class abilities stronger than 1 HP per level, theoretically, if they forgo the HP

So if the basic game is core stuff, a Core Pathfinder Wizard just looks stronger. Cuz it is. And they try to do stuff like make Concentration harder and make Fly a skill to look like Wizards got a hit, but they didn't. That is a ruse. They're just objectively better.

Nerfing spells like Glitterdust doesn't matter when they'll print stuff like Pit spells and other "Win the Fight" abilities. Nerfing spells is a fool's errand because more of them will always be printed and the selling point of a full caster is cherry-picking the OP stuff.

[Username17]

Meanwhile, Franktrollman wrote a full series of homebrew where everybody has infinite scrolls of every spell from the start (as they're worth less than 15 K GP each, aka free as dust as per Frank's "efreetis exist only to be mass enslaved as your wish factories" hypothesis) and after years I still haven't figured out how that's supposed to even start to work in an actual game. But people still claim to have played tome campaigns.

I doubt anyone has actually played a game like that. The most common houserule I've heard of is to make scrolls above 4th level into wish economy items somehow.

Considering that the wish economy doesn't work anything remotely like what maglag is describing, I'm assuming that it was half-assed hyperbole to attempt to play a shellgame with the fact that his hypothesis is indefensible. His basic claim is that there are some broken rules in 3.5, therefore 3.5 characters are more powerful than Pathfinder characters. That doesn't even. This sentence no verb.

As others have already pointed out, Pathfinder also has broken stuff in it, so if you play "all dicks on the table" then Pathfinder and 3.5 Wizards are exactly the same power. They are both powerful enough to run the game into the ground at about level 9 if not before. So it's basically a meaningless point of comparison. And even if the comparison point was meaningful, it still wouldn't give you an answer, because breaking the game is the same end point in both cases. Candles of Invocation exist in both games, and Pathfinder characters have more wealth by level. I think the theoretical optimization takeoff point for pure RAW wankery is like one level earlier in Pathfinder.

And, as others have pointed out, in the virtually 100% chance that you aren't doing that kind of bullshit and are actually trying to play a game without netdecking the game breaking holes in the rules and shitting through them, Pathfinder Wizards are just objectively better than WotC Wizards. They just are. They have the same spectrum of available spell power and a pile of bonus abilities that range from "better than nothing" to "really pretty decent." It's just not even a comparison that makes sense.

maglag is making the apparently incredibly common mistake that since I posit that there is no number of potions that you can be expected to be able to trade for a major magic item that everyone has infinity potions at level 1. I really honestly have no idea how this is supposed to work. There's no amount of sand you can trade for the Mona Lisa, nevertheless no one has infinity sand. It's not even a paradox and I don't know why people have such problems with understanding it. But no matter how good or bad your understanding of the wish economy, it obviously has nothing at all to do with the relative power of 3.5 Wizards and Pathfinder Wizards. It was introduced as nothing but a "Poisoning the Well" maneuver to attempt to distract from maglag's incredibly weak argument.

-Username17

[Prak]

Nevermind the fact that if you have access to wish, infinite scrolls is like the worst possible way to use it.

[Ice9]

It should be noted though, that PF doesn't have a Wish economy. They solved the issue with brute force - Wish doesn't give you any items or even raw materials at all.

You can still create Simulacra with it. So there's still the possibility to create an army if you can reliably command Efreeti (or use Blood Money). But in terms of personal power, it caps out at +5 to all your stats.

No items also means probably no Wish looping, unless you find a creature to Simulacrum that would definitely grant wishes even at 50% power.

[Axebird]

Wish can still be used to make trade goods (like art objects and cut gems) since you can duplicate fabricate with it and fabricate lists the crafting materials as material components.

[Ice9]

Technically correct. Not likely to be treated as such in a game, but technically correct. But if you go with that interpretation of Fabricate, you can already create infinite anything with Blood Money.

[virgil]

You can still create Simulacra with it. So there's still the possibility to create an army if you can reliably command Efreeti (or use Blood Money). But in terms of personal power, it caps out at +5 to all your stats.

Important reminder, Pathfinder's simulacrum doesn't require a piece of the entity you want copied. If you've heard of the infernal duke, Crocell the Soothing Sin, you can make a lower-HD copy of him.

[Archmage Joda]

Hm, so it doesn't. Well, that's just another bag of issues with that spell.

On another note, for what is essentially a "Supreme Conjurer", that is, good at most if not all aspects of the conjuration school, what would my best chassis be, a Conjurer Wizard, a School Savant Arcanist, or an Occultist Arcanist?

[OgreBattle]

Is there a list of spells weakened in PF(glitter dust)compared to spells improved in PF?

[rasmuswagner]

Is there a list of spells weakened in PF(glitter dust)compared to spells improved in PF?

Rule of thumb: Every spell from the 3.5 PHB that was save-or-lose has been nerfed. "Death" becomes "pile of damage", crippling conditions come with new saves every round.

No spells have been improved, but new ones have been introduced. Create Pit & co. are single reflex save-or-lose vs. non-fliers. Suffocate is the new hawt SoD.

[ishy]

Lots and lots of spells have changed.
Grease has been improved to a minute / level. Frank pointed out that polay ray is an insult, thus it now drains 1d4 dex damage, making it the best spell ever.

Though spells that give rogues sneak attack (grease, blink) have been nerfed for that specific application.

Force cage now allows a reflex save, black tentacles is a lot weaker. Ray of enfeeblement has a ref for half. Polymorph spells are all self (or animal companion or familiar) only, thus no longer help out commoners (fighters). Solid fog is half movement speed instead of 5 ft steps (though it may stack with the half movement speed from poor visibility). Things like remove disease/knock now require a caster level check. Dispel magic scales to a +20, but only removes one spell, greater removes 1 spell/4 lvls.
Projectiles from enlarge person now deal damage based on projectile size, while from reduce person still do damage based on the weapon that fired the projectile. (so nobody can adjudicate the spells that don't mention it specifically anymore).

And many many many changes you don't really care about, like say: summon monster has a different list, cleric buffs work differently (like say divine power), gate only allows you to summon clvl instead of 2xclvl, invisibility now also gives you bonuses to move silently (since it falls under stealth now), wall of iron has this text:

Like any iron wall, this wall is subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena. Iron created by this spell is not suitable for use in the creation of other objects and cannot be sold.

Basically, everything changed in minor ways, so you have to look everything up.

[tussock]

Note to anyone making a list, some of the weakened spells are common on monsters and only weakened against things Wizards can do. Like Mirror Image, which does not block spell targeting in PF, but the images often have a much better effective AC for monster-casters so Fighters can't hit as often, and also can't keep hitting if they do find the caster (move to reset in 3.5).

Those 10hp/level spells are more common, and most classes still will not have that, so everyone is just a single spell away from death, plus Wizards get free Maximise or Twin or whatever to also kill Dragons with them.

[TiaC]

Frank pointed out that polay ray is an insult, thus it now drains 1d4 dex damage, making it the best spell ever.

I once had a character in a situation where Polar ray was his best option. You see, he was a Dragonborn Warmage in a party with a Divine Crusader of Tiamat. It was very likely that we were going to kill each other at some point. Now, he had ridiculous saves, evasion, mettle, decent HP, and a whole bunch of status immunities. Polar ray was the only spell I had that could drop him in one hit that didn't have a save.

That ridiculously convoluted setup is the only time I've ever even considered using it.