Pathfinder Is Still Bad

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:16 am

Well, mindless undead were never going to realistically threaten a well prepared party. Silent Image will lock it in an Illusory box and stops the encounter cold for as long as you concentrate on it, Hide from Undead can be cast by any first level cleric and affects your entire party for just under an hour at 5th level and you can just leave and, get this, it automatically works on mindless undead with no save. Halt Undead is a medium range spell that holds it immobile for up to 5 rounds at your level and, say it with me now, mindless undead get no save. Major Image, Minor Image, Invisibility Sphere, and I am seriously not going to research through the Pathfinder SRD any more for a single spell that will Auto win/bypass this encounter. Let's be honest here, I just came up with seven ways in as many seconds to defeat this "unfair" encounter, with spells most competent casters will have on their character sheet somewhere in an adventure that features an undead badass they have heard about.

About the absolute worst thing you could ever do is engage it in melee, and there are at least 7 ways to basically end the battle music and move on with life with the expenditure of at least a standard action and at most a scroll on top of that.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 10:11 am

Ice9 wrote:
Rawbeard wrote:
But why you would pretend a 14 undead HD monster is a level 14 monster instead of a level 7 monster is beyond me.
Are you drunk?
HD != actual power. I couldn't find the exact monster you're talking about, but if you compare the Paleoskeleton Tricerotops to the Bulette, it looks roughly on par.
Monsters get pretty buff at CR 7. If your party is non-optimized, they might be in some shit.

Did you try Googling "shadowy triceratops skeleton"? Because for me, the first result was the stat block in question:
http://www.thegm.org/npcs_display.php?selected_npc=23

Shadowy Triceratops SkeletonCR 7
XP 3,200
Negative-energy-charged triceratops skeleton (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 86, 250; Advanced Bestiary 185)
NE Huge undead
Init +6; Senses blindsight 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +0
DEFENSE
AC 15, touch 12, flat-footed 13 (+2 Dex, +2 dodge, +3 natural, -2 size)
hp 91 (14d8+28)
Fort +11, Ref +6, Will +4
Defensive Abilities channel resistance +4, obscuring energy, resistant to positive energy; DR 5/bludgeoning and good; Immune cold, undead traits
OFFENSE
Spd 60 ft.
Melee gore +18 (2d10+15 plus 1d6 negative energy)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Special Attacks charged attacks, searing darkness
TACTICS
During Combat The undead triceratops quickly moves to attack the first foe it notices. Note that the undead dinosaur is huge and thunderous; having it make a charge attack against a PC only to miss and hit the tank of fetid water could make for an exciting development.
Morale The skeleton fights until destroyed.
STATISTICS
Str 30, Dex 15, Con -, Int -, Wis 10, Cha 14
Base Atk +10; CMB +22; CMD 36
Feats Improved Initiative
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Charged Attacks (Su) The triceratops's gore attack inflicts an additional 1d6 points of negative energy on a hit. In addition, when it makes a full attack, it can make a second attack with its gore as if hastened.
Obscuring Energy (Su) The shadowy undead triceratops is surrounded by flickering shadows and wisps of black smoke, granting it partial concealment (20% miss chance). When it stands still, the shadows grow stronger and grant concealment (50% miss chance).
Resistant to Positive Energy (Ex) The undead dinosaur takes 10 fewer points of damage than normal from positive energy effects that deal damage.
Searing Darkness (Sp) Once every 1d4 rounds, the undead can release a beam of searing darkness; treat this as a searing light spell (CL 14th) that inflicts negative energy damage.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Sep 16, 2016 8:46 pm

OgreBattle wrote:Is there anything like "Combat Maneuvers Unchained" in PF? The idea of Dirty Tricks seem good but costing a standard action to even attempt to put a minor debuff on someone that can be removed with a move action makes it very situational. Taking a bunch of feats to make it worth using then means you have to make a dedicated "I throw sand in eyes" build.

Could you just throw out the whole idea of CMD's and use fort/ref/will saves with 10+BAB+[whatever attribute you use to punch people] being the DC of trip/disarm/blinding/etc. and have a more playable system?

You could do that, or you could make them (touch) attacks that can be adjuncts to your full attack scheme, like 3.5 trip.

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 1:23 pm

I love the part where "a well prepared party" in an AP where they had an entire book of preparing a stageplay is to have Command Undead on them, because duh, especially as a Sorcerer. I guess part of "well prepared" mean "read the book in advance

Also I love the smug "it's only HD 14 undead, +7 BAB, lol". well, seems your math is wrong. you guys sure you are talking about the right ruleset?

and the part where "use illusions". well fuck, did I not mention the Blindsight? seems like I did. The fuck does it care for fake people to charge, it knows they aren't there.

[sigh] seriously. But at least some people seem to have agreed the design is a proble within the context of the book.[/sigh]

ffs, just look at the pregens this adventure gives you and then tell me how they are supposed to solve this.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 2:18 pm

It does stink fighting new/unknown monsters with gotcha abilities. I'm sure my group would have not assumed blindsight or damage reduction or a ray attack and attempts of foiling with illusions or flight/climbing would have been wasted. If we had the right spells it can go from a rough fight to a cakewalk though.

I really, really like preparing Command Undead with my arcane casters, but I know it can stink having that prepped and not using it on those days when undead don't show, and don't begrudge people making other choices like glitterdust and web.

Spells that should help are ones screwing movement and/or targeting Will (or the auto-wins vs undead):
Grease, Web, Sanctuary, Halt Undead, Hide from Undead, Command Undead, Bestow Curse, Slow.

And if you're in for the long haul in an undead campaign you may want to have Stone Shape (create altar/shrine) + Consecrate in your golf bag as a party. An amusing little F-U to undead as you retake their tomb or what-have-you. Heck, my group would probably run to avoid the encounter until we had a plan (often stone shaping close the room, it was funny when we trapped a dire bear that way... someday we'll check to see if it starved to death and loot that room), if possible. We do that a lot.

Could you share the spell list of the arcane pre-gens? If they have Slow then that could make the fight a lot easier- 5 rounds where it can only use it's ray pretty much (so maybe two 5d6 ranged touch attacks over 5 rounds).

Any cleric should have the various undead (hide from, halt) spells available which gives you ways to bypass or curb-stomp the encounter. And I like to prepare Bestow Curse with my level 5 clerics. It's a nice debuff against single tough opponents.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 2:42 pm

Rawbeard wrote:I love the part where "a well prepared party" in an AP where they had an entire book of preparing a stageplay is to have Command Undead on them, because duh, especially as a Sorcerer. I guess part of "well prepared" mean "read the book in advance

Or you know, have a scroll of a no save fucking win spell that no save wins against an entire fucking class of enemies.

Rawbeard wrote:Also I love the smug "it's only HD 14 undead, +7 BAB, lol". well, seems your math is wrong. you guys shure you are talking about the right ruleset?

I supposed you could learn to read. But sure, shout your gotcha from the sky because Pathfinder has an obscure rules change that people don't remember that doesn't change the answers given:

CR 7 Elementals have +12 BAB.
CR 7 Animate Objects have +12 BAB.
Hill Giants have +10 BAB
Criosphinx have +10 BAB
Whales and Dire Bears and Bulettes and Dragonnes have +9 BAB.

Fucking get overyourself, it's not a goddam 14th level monster, it's a fucking 7th level monster.

Rawbeard wrote:and the part where "use illusions". well fuck, did I not mention the Blindsight? seems like I did. The fuck does it care for fake people to charge, it knows they aren't there.

Really? It has 600ft Blindsense? Why didn't you say so? Or do you mean it has 60ft Blindsense, so Silent Image still shuts it the fuck down if you stand 60ft away from it?

Rawbeard · Post by **Rawbeard** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 3:17 pm

ah, you assume it is not parked right in front of a door you need to go through with he order to attack instantly the first thing it sees. ok, good luck with your Silent Image, that I have literally no GM ever seen allow to work in the ways the Den does. Also you do assume a lot of "we know what is coming for us before it knows we are coming for it". seriously, have you played this game with actual real people? I mean outside of omniscent "prepared for everything ever" people. Yeah, for "we play this compeltely as a statblock" people this is a cakewalk. for a mortal it is not. FFS, stop telling me how to solve this with a decent prepared group. I am only one player, who will not use his spells known in a DEVILS EVERYWHERE campaign to learn "fuck of skeleton" spells. A single "hide from undead" would have solved this WITHOUT turning the party into "we have a murderous pokemon", but that was never the point.

Now I get why you get constatly shat on when you voice an opinion. but you go ahead and continue missing the point of this rant.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 3:47 pm

Rawbeard wrote:ah, you assume it is not parked right in front of a door you need to go through with he order to attack instantly the first thing it sees. ok, good luck with your Silent Image, that I have literally no GM ever seen allow to work in the ways the Den does.

So in fact it totally ignores you if you cast silent image since it doesn't see you? Thanks for the free win? Oh wait, you mean that as long as the DM ignores both the spell text of Silent Image and also the description of mindless creatures, and you all walk up to it instead of using ranged attacks, then it's still less of a fight than a CR 7 Earth elemental.

Rawbeard wrote:Also you do assume a lot of "we know what is coming for us before it knows we are coming for it". seriously, have you played this game with actual real people? I mean outside of omniscent "prepared for everything ever" people. Yeah, for "we play this compeltely as a statblock" people this is a cakewalk. for a mortal it is not.

Again an still, no, people having a scroll of Command Undead does not require advance notice of everything you will ever face.

Nor does just killing it have to involve being prepared. If you are facing a CR 7 Earth Elemental with higher BAB, more HP, and better DR, you don't get to know in advance that it's coming, it could just punch you out of the goddam floor at any point. But that's still a CR 7 monster.

I didn't even bring up Command Undead in the first place. The entire point here is that this CR 7 monster is not noticeably tougher than CR 7 monsters because of it's stats, so when you said "BUT IT HAS 14 HD SO IT'S A CR 14 MONSTERRRRRR!!!!1111!!!!ONE!!" you were totally wrong.

Your repeated attempts to cast this about preparation are just lies to cover your incompetence.

Slade · Post by **Slade** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 4:55 pm

He just conflated HD with CR which works with humanoids, he just forgot undead work differently.

For silent image it still gets a save each rd if you are attacking it as it assumes that the box isn't actually solid at that point (it is interacting with it each round).

Now, it isn't that strong. It'd be more fearsome if they were 2 or something.
Single enemies are rarely a serious threat.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 8:02 pm

I'm looking at the shadowy triceratops and the large earth elemental - and that triceratops is definitely stronger. They have comparable HP/AC/BAB/DR, but the skeleton has concealment and does twice as much damage if it gets to full attack (during which it has even more concealment), not counting the 14d6 ray attack it gets every 1d4 rounds - it's definitely a hell of a closet troll in comparison. Remember, this is against a supposedly level 5 party. A CR 7 is supposed to be very tough, so it's expected to be nerve-wracking, and it doing nearly twice as much damage as any other monster I know of for that CR (without sacrificing durability) just makes it all the more worrisome.

Still vulnerable to the handful of anti-undead spells, but that just makes it a very binary fight.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 8:32 pm

14d6 ray? It caps out at 5d8 against living creatures.

Melee you are looking at an average of 25 damage per round. The scary thing is if it crits because that is a dead pc. Otherwise it is just a big stupid pile of HP and focus fire damage.

There are many spells that significantly neuter it. Some that totally own it.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 9:03 pm

erik wrote:14d6 ray? It caps out at 5d8 against living creatures.

So it does. My bad.

Melee you are looking at an average of 25 damage per round. The scary thing is if it crits because that is a dead pc. Otherwise it is just a big stupid pile of HP and focus fire damage.

It's still about twice the average DPS of a huge earth elemental, which is also essentially a pile of HP and focus fire damage - and it still has 20% or 50% concealment over what the elemental has. It being being a pile of HP and damage doesn't somehow mean it's not a threat against some random low level party. A wizard can plausibly go down in a single hit, a barbarian in two.

There are many spells that significantly neuter it. Some that totally own it.

Which I already pointed out. If you have the spells that auto-win against mindless undead, you auto-win. If you don't, and a super-majority of groups that play Pathfinder fit this situation IME, then you're in for a rather tough fight.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 9:08 pm

virgil wrote:I'm looking at the shadowy triceratops and the large earth elemental - and that triceratops is definitely stronger. They have comparable HP/AC/BAB/DR, but the skeleton has concealment and does twice as much damage if it gets to full attack (during which it has even more concealment), not counting the 14d6 ray attack it gets every 1d4 rounds - it's definitely a hell of a closet troll in comparison. Remember, this is against a supposedly level 5 party. A CR 7 is supposed to be very tough, so it's expected to be nerve-wracking, and it doing nearly twice as much damage as any other monster I know of for that CR (without sacrificing durability) just makes it all the more worrisome.

Still vulnerable to the handful of anti-undead spells, but that just makes it a very binary fight.

1) It does not have "comparable" HP/BAB/AC. In a world where apparently 91HP is an unstoppable monster, 152HP sure as fuck isn't comparable to that. It does slightly less damage, but it has way more HP and higher AC.

2) I never said that it didn't have dumb as shit abilities, but the thing where it comes with a free haste for no fucking reason has nothing to do with it's 14HD, which means that the 14HD shouldn't be given as a reason it's "clearly not a level 7 monster"

3) As mentioned, the Searing Light totally doesn't do that, but even if it did, would still have nothing to do with it's HD proving it's anything, and everything to do with dumb abilities.

4) The Shadow thing's concealment exists or whatever, but Earth Elementals punch people from under the ground, so I'm not that impressed. Being immune to ranged attacks and full attacks is pretty good.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 9:31 pm

Kaelik wrote:1) It does not have "comparable" HP/BAB/AC. In a world where apparently 91HP is an unstoppable monster, 152HP sure as fuck isn't comparable to that. It does slightly less damage, but it has way more HP and higher AC.

You must be thinking of a different earth elemental.

2) I never said that it didn't have dumb as shit abilities, but the thing where it comes with a free haste for no fucking reason has nothing to do with it's 14HD, which means that the 14HD shouldn't be given as a reason it's "clearly not a level 7 monster"

Where the fvck did I say 14HD had anything to do with it? I was talking about raw stat comparisons, and how the triceratops is definitely wonky.

4) The Shadow thing's concealment exists or whatever, but Earth Elementals punch people from under the ground, so I'm not that impressed. Being immune to ranged attacks and full attacks is pretty good.

In the history of never have I seen a DM besides me actually use an earth elemental in that way. Even were it to, it's running at a 50% miss chance because it's only using tremorsense to see, which makes its comparative DPS even lower to that of the triceratops.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 10:53 pm

Don't devils command undead and shit, sometimes?

Not saying that you need to be always prepared for every contingency rawbeard, but you're getting mad at Paizo and us (well, Kaelik) for getting cockslapped by a closet troll when by your own admission you were fucking around.

E: Honestly, you were going into a Paizo AP, which you should know by now is as balanced as a drunk on a unicycle, playing a fuckaround character in a fuckaround party role and you come crying to us when you run into a dumb encounter and get mad when we say both it and you are dumb? The fuck did you expect, a cookie? Did you confuse us with the Paizo official boards?

Come on, son; you should know better than that.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Sep 17, 2016 11:30 pm

virgil wrote:You must be thinking of a different earth elemental.

Wholly fucking shit. No wonder everyone thinks Fighters do Rogue damage, they just fucking halved the HP on all monsters just for shits.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:04 pm

I think I was enraged almost to Kaelik's baseline when I read that they completely changed Earth Elementals. Fucking hell. I can't trust any assumptions when talking about Pathfinder.

Slade · Post by **Slade** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 2:40 am

Wow, so Small/Med/large Pathfinder ones better, but Huge/Greater/Elder are weaker. That is weird.

I've never noticed that. Why did Pathfinder do that?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 2:58 am

Slade wrote:Wow, so Small/Med/large Pathfinder ones better, but Huge/Greater/Elder are weaker. That is weird.

I've never noticed that. Why did Pathfinder do that?

Because backwards compatibility is for suckers, and it's more important to make sure everything is just slightly different enough to make it so that people don't use 3.5 shit anymore so that you can sell more books.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 3:13 am

Slade wrote:Why did Pathfinder do that?

Pathfinder made a whole lot of changes basically for the sake of making changes. They wanted their material to be different enough so they couldn't be sued for straight copying D&D, and I think they just adjusted shit more-or-less at random until that was true. Making it annoying to remember the differences so that people would choose to remember only one rule set was probably an unintentional side effect.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 4:27 am

If you're self-confident enough that you think you can replace D&D, you're probably also self-confident enough that you think you can fix every single thing about D&D that is a bit out of place, like the kludgy little rule that gave constructs and stuff extra hit points in 3.5, or the funky monster classes.

But just because someone thinks that, doesn't make it true, or even desirable. It may however still be economically necessary. In the case of trying to sell the 3.5 people a new PHB and MM, when they probably already had a few copies in their groups, you really do have to change quite a bit.

Needs to change stuff => imagines he can fix stuff => Pathfinder. That 3.5 rule that wasn't great? There's a new rule that also isn't great in its place.

Rejakor · Post by **Rejakor** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 6:35 am

wait, are people (well, kaelik) actually arguing that silent image will fool a creature with blindsight that can see that the image it is seeing with it's real eyes is not actually there

You don't need a mind to program a if.doesn'tExist ->Target (Something Else) (if.noTargets -> walk (Spiral.pattern)) loop. At best you're blocking it's vision of you (by illusory whatever + 60' distance), which doesn't stop it walking around at random looking for you.

I guess if you play solely in DM vs Players armsrace games, you assume rules-lawyering bullshit and fake analysis for the psychology of nonexistent mages are ironclad laws, or at least, you're encouraged to, by the format.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 6:49 am

Rejakor wrote:wait, are people (well, kaelik) actually arguing that silent image will fool a creature with blindsight that can see that the image it is seeing with it's real eyes is not actually there

You don't need a mind to program a if.doesn'tExist ->Target (Something Else) (if.noTargets -> walk (Spiral.pattern)) loop. At best you're blocking it's vision of you (by illusory whatever + 60' distance), which doesn't stop it walking around at random looking for you.

I guess if you play solely in DM vs Players armsrace games, you assume rules-lawyering bullshit and fake analysis for the psychology of nonexistent mages are ironclad laws, or at least, you're encouraged to, by the format.

Last I checked, mindless skeletons obey orders, so if it is literally camped in front of the door with an order to "attack instantly the first thing it sees" then it only attacks things it sees, and it's blindsight is not seeing anything.

It was purely making the point that the orders and circumstances matter, but it sounds like they are actually super player friendly, IE, a fucking door that is small enough for the PCs to get through and not the creature, forcing it to spend a round breaking the wall, repeat a few times to get free attacks. And yes, if you can see it and you are currently 30ft away, you can move 30ft further away and then silent image and it still can't see you (or in fact, detect you in any way) and because it's mindless, it literally can't remember that you exist*

* Except where the Pathfinder definition of Mindless involves memory, reasoning, and just doing whatever the fuck you want because changes are fun.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 7:07 am

Rejakor wrote:wait, are people (well, kaelik) actually arguing that silent image will fool a creature with blindsight that can see that the image it is seeing with it's real eyes is not actually there

I was reluctant to grant silent image or any illusions working since it depends upon the layout and what command was given to it. If you encounter it in a 60' diameter room and it is commanded to attack anyone it senses, then no. But if the setup is as Kaelik described where you can get to outside of its range, then totally yes.

Heck, you could lay the illusion right in front of it so long as you are out of blindsight range. Put a fog up, and its blindsight won't auto succeed at disbelieving it.*

* Caveat: As I am unwilling to fuck my mind with yet another version of 3e rules that are subtly and stupidly different, it is possible Pathfinder changed the rules on anything including but not limited to how illusions work, how saving throws work, how fog works, how blindsight works, how mindless tags work.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Mon Sep 19, 2016 5:29 pm

Kaelik wrote:Last I checked, mindless skeletons obey orders, so if it is literally camped in front of the door with an order to "attack instantly the first thing it sees" then it only attacks things it sees, and it's blindsight is not seeing anything.

On what planet? Blindsight isn't blindsense, it has full detail. It even has "sight" in the name! If you mean that you create illusory fog while standing more than 60' from it ... great, but if it's within 60' of the door it will still see you when you try to walk past it.

Your better bet would be to make an illusion of an incorporeal creature and have that 'creature' run away from it, in the hope it chases. Whether that works depends on whether it's orders are to guard the door or to kill people it sees.

Also, while Silent Image is cool, I'd agree that it's not going to work the same in all campaigns. I've seen a lot of DMs who give a save right off the bat - and undead have good Will saves.