3.P Barbarian Playtest Results: A dry run

[virgil]

I'm going to continue to post over at Paizo with real results, especially now with Aubrey and LL banned as well for the week so there might be a chance to get a word in for a long enough time to make a difference. Just in case, here's what I'm planning on posting.

Half-Orc Barbarian - level 5
Stats (32 point-buy): Str 20, Dex 14, Con 16, Int 8, Wis 14, Cha 10
Feats: Power Attack, Overhand Chop, Weapon Focus (Greatsword)
Skills: Climb, Intimidate, Perception
Rage Powers: Surprise Accuracy, Intimidating Glare
Equipment: belt of strength +2, +1 breastplate, +1 greatsword, potion of enlarge person, 2 potions of lesser vigor, heavy wooden shield, mighty (+5) composite longbow
Challenges
Huge animated iron statue: This is not a fight the barbarian can afford to be thrifty with, though we're fortunate that it's AC is so low. For the first three rounds, he uses Surprise Accuracy and Power Attack for booku damage at a near guaranteed hit. Then it was mop-up, though on the second fight I did get crit by one of its slams and had to take a lesser vigor potion before coming out of rage. Overall, the fight took virtually all of the barbarian's rage points, and it still took four rounds. Just to try it out, I experimented on the third fight by not using Surprise Accuracy. I barely made it, but it only took a round longer to actually kill it.
Basilisk: I'm only failing 10% of the time, so I started off just fighting with my eyes open. I opened with a Power Attack and Surprise Accuracy to make sure I could only miss 20% of the time, and then died to a natural 2 on the second round before I attacked. That was an anomaly, as I then proceeded to kill it the next two times.
Large Fire Elemental: Damn, this is a close fight, looking at the numbers. However, I got semi-lucky and managed to remain standing by the second round thanks to those virtual HP from raging for two fights, though I just plain lost the second of the three. 2/3 ain't bad, though this was a more struggling fight than the basilisk.
Manticore on the Wing: I wait to rage until it's within reach, since the barbarian can't fly or reliably shoot ranged. Unfortunately, that magic critical with my bow never appears, and I die a horrific death the first time through. The second go around, I try to hunker behind a shield and wait four rounds, and I still die. I try one more time to wait behind the shield, and survive the thing's barrage, only to die from one round of melee because I was incapable of dealing 57+ damage in that one attack I had available.
Mummy: First fight brings death. The barbarian gets his revenge in the second fight and kills it back. Unfortunately, this seems to be an alternating pattern, as the barbarian dies horrifically in the third fight.
Phase Spider: It gets the first bite, but once the barbarian goes on the alert, it dies on the second swing. Even failing against the poison proves to not be enough for the spider. This is a hat trick for the barbarian.
Troll: The barbarian surprisingly does well here, taking it down and then putting a torch to its face all three times. They deal comparable damage to each other & have identical hit points, but the troll doesn't quite do enough in two rounds to take him down.
Chasm: Proves to be doable, if a bit time-consuming, since the barbarian is having to do it the old-fashioned way.
Moat filled with acid: This is really damn embarrasing. I assumed the moat was an almost trivial 10' across, which means I have to roll an 8+ after a running start with Acrobatics (Dex based). I failed to do so three times in a row. I'll give him a pity win to account for the bad luck, which brings it up to 1 out of 4 for this challenge.
Locked Door Several Pit Traps: He survives the traps, grunts at the lock, and proceeds to smash open the door with 7 rage points and a single attack.
Pit Filled with Medium Monstrous Scorpions: On the first and second run, the barbarian rolled poorly enough to miss the pit and falls in. Twelve are just too many for him to survive, especially since he's only killing one a round. Now, on the third fight, he sees them and laughs as he fills them full of arrows (like shooting scorpions in a pit?).
Grimlock Assault Team: Like lambs to the slaughter. These guys just can't do enough damage and die from being breathed on, even though one of them got lucky and crit before going down, which brought our barbarian to the fairly hurt stage (still able to stand without having to drink a potion).

Final Result: At 5th level, he's doing quite well for himself (got a score of 65%). He effectively blows his entire load in two fights, but that gives him more staying power than an optimized paladin. This is a rather typical build, with simple feats. I would almost venture to say that this is almost too good for this level, though even a relatively minor reduction in the actual numbers would turn a couple of fights from wins to losses because they were so close (the elemental and statue, namely).

One other thing I am somewhat disappointed by, which is the option for Intimidating Glare. It's too expensive to even bother, doubly so with the fights being so short.

[Leress]

Where are you going to post this?

[JonSetanta]

Very nice!
It's almost like an American Gladiators commentary. Very descriptive.
This process appears to be effective, although it does lack certain special elements such as the Shadows. But hey, if STR-draining undead simply don't exist any more, that's fine by me.

One thing: I'd like to know more about the encounter with Manticore. Why did you 'hunker down'? Doesn't it have ranged attacks like in 3.5 to just peck at you from the sky?
I'll go with my theory on warriors where it's better to bring the sword to the foe, and state that (yet again) this system needs better methods of making melee a decent tactic against hard-to-reach targets.
And at low levels, this means retarded crazy high-strength jumping.
It would also make the acid pit easier. MUCH easier.

[Username17]

Manticore have a very limited number of spines to shoot. If you can survive long enough on the ground, the manticore will have to close or flee. Unfortunately, as noted this is very hard to do because the Manticore is a total bad ass in melee and his initial barrage of spines is quite deadly as well.

High AC builds, Save-or-Die builds, and guys mounted on griffins are the most likely to succeed.

-Username17

[virgil]

I just noticed the lack of shadows in the playtest. However, while raging, he pretty much only has a 50% miss chance and they die in one hit. Their own attack bonuses are in the 50% miss chance range. Eye-balling it, a dynamic duo of shadows will lose about twice, just being unable to do enough strength damage in their short unlives. Further encounters, on the other hand, will be vicious.

As for the manticore, Frank nailed it on the head. While it's a bad-ass in melee, the barbarian is even better.

At level 5, there aren't a whole lot of flying+ranged attackers, and they served to be one of the few foils for the barbarian.

[Username17]

Note however: as far as I can tell the Aubreys and other jackholes of the world are still totally there. In fact, ckafrica made a thread about me being gone, and people over there posted time and time again that they were glad I'm gone in order to drive up the post count and make their endless grassroots of support seem bigger. I doubt that will get slapped down, because the moderators over there genuinely want it to continue.

Genuine playtest like that isn't something they want to see. All they really want is to here about how you played the game with the new rules and you had fun. Then they will use that "playtest" result as a marketing gimmick. Remember that people who don't like the project will self select out of the test, so as months go on their percentage of positive responses from active members will continue to rise.

By the end they will have virtually unanimously positive responses no matter what product they make. They just have to keep the test going on long enough.

-Username17

[virgil]

Man, I want to playtest the cleric, but it's really damn tempting to just run a necromancer and let the horde of undead do the work for me.

[JonSetanta]

I'd like to playtest some kind of caster-archer. Got an itch for that archetype since I saw the Cleric Archer a while back, and from playing Ina in Samurai Warriors 2.
While it won't be as baaa-roken as the 3.x Cleric Archer, I do expect the ranged specialty to cream some foes the Barbarian had trouble with.
Anything big and brutal in melee would be another matter. Like Mummies.

Do ranged attacks in Pathfinder provoke AOs? What are the drawbacks?

[CatharzGodfoot]

Does Pathfinder use a 32-point buy?

[virgil]

Some people on the Paizo board were suggesting that 32 point-buy should basically be +1 CR/LA, but it's easy enough to just reduce the Charisma and Intelligence by 2 each and lose intimidate so as to not change the numbers at all.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Ah, so it uses a 28-point buy?

[SphereOfFeetMan]

Why didn't they go the last 2 points and go with 30? That most closely represents dice rolling averages.

[virgil]

I just assumed a 32 point buy for the baseline in which to test results, because the 'official' standard is the whole 4d6 hassle.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I don't think Paizo's decided on any official character generation method for Pathfinder. At least, there's nothing in the Alpha pdfs that I can find.

[virgil]

Then the lack of declaration means a default to prior canon, and point-buy is a more standardized method of playtesting than actually rolling.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I like using the elite array when random generation is not desired.

[virgil]

And now I look into building a high-level wizard playtest, which is going to be just plain painful. Ever since I realized that my maneuver can be used as long as you have shrink item (used with the Frank Cheat) and telekinesis around when you throw giant flasks, it's looking like initiative will decide the battle.

[Username17]

Note that Wizards and Clerics in Pathfinder can create things wherever they want as standard actions with spell-like abilities. No attack roll or saving throw, just cubic feet of stone cages filled with acid and enemies.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Note that Wizards and Clerics in Pathfinder can create things wherever they want as standard actions with spell-like abilities. No attack roll or saving throw, just cubic feet of stone cages filled with acid and enemies.

-Username17

How so? That doesn't seem right. Or sane.

[Username17]

Normal creation spells, only they go off in combat time instead of non-combat time because it's a Spell-like ability.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

Normal creation spells, only they go off in combat time instead of non-combat time because it's a Spell-like ability.

-Username17

Ah. I thought you meant in a general sense of spellcasting, but yes, Shadowmages and item abilities have that cheese as well.
Why ever cast Identify when one can put it on a wand and use it in a single round?

I wonder if the 3.0 designers understood what they were doing, truly anticipating the outcome of the spell-in-to-SLA rules, or did they design 3.0 by piecemeal and stick it all together in the end.

[virgil]

*sigh* I got this one guy saying I can't make traps with major creation because they're not fully homogenous in material makeup.

[Voss]

And things that are fully homogeneous don't count as traps?

[Username17]

Aside from the fact that filling a room ankle deep with black lotus extract is technically homogeneous, the spell doesn't actually require the created items to be homogeneous.

-Username17

[JonSetanta]

*sigh* I got this one guy saying I can't make traps with major creation because they're not fully homogenous in material makeup.

Sure it makes sense.
... if you're a grognard.

Cite the old "it doesn't say I can't" clause.

You create a nonmagical, unattended object of nonliving, vegetable matter. The volume of the item created cannot exceed 1 cubic foot per caster level. You must succeed on an appropriate skill check to make a complex item.

Attempting to use any created object as a material component causes the spell to fail.

I see nothing about homogeneous material. Your guy is a killjoy between-the-lines grognard.