The Gaming Den

Ah, using arguments to not make the Monk heinous by comparing them to the Rogue, the dreadful, dreadful Pathfinder Rogue, which is the weakest class by a longshot in Pathfinder.

Bulmahn and SKR basically don't want anybody to play Rogues or Monks.
They cock-slapped them repeatedly with gimping rules and "errata."
Then they gave trap-finding to everybody and created numerous d8 classes better than Monks like Summoners and Inquisitors.

Like, Crane Wing was fixed pretty quickly and Metamagic/Caster cheeseball stuff like Dazing Spell, Split Hex, Divine Interference, Paragon Surge has been around for ages.

"What is that? It isn't complete ass to play a monk or a rogue in this system? ISSUE THE ERRATA."

Insomniac wrote:Ah, using arguments to not make the Monk heinous by comparing them to the Rogue, the dreadful, dreadful Pathfinder Rogue, which is the weakest class by a longshot in Pathfinder.

Bulmahn and SKR basically don't want anybody to play Rogues or Monks.
They cock-slapped them repeatedly with gimping rules and "errata."
Then they gave trap-finding to everybody and created numerous d8 classes better than Monks like Summoners and Inquisitors.

Like, Crane Wing was fixed pretty quickly and Metamagic/Caster cheeseball stuff like Dazing Spell, Split Hex, Divine Interference, Paragon Surge has been around for ages.

"What is that? It isn't complete ass to play a monk or a rogue in this system? ISSUE THE ERRATA."

But if we don't fix the martials, then water balloon throwing fighter might become as good as bow shooting fighter and that is FUN AND NOT REALISTIC AND WE CAN'T HAVE THAT NOW CAN WE?!

The Rogue is actually less terrible - by a lot - than when Pathfinder started. Between firearms and various feats/items that improve sneak attack, they can be dealing pretty decent damage and sneak attacking pretty reliably.

Pretty decent as in "10th level - twelve touch attacks a round for 12d6+41 damage each, while in a cloud of smoke that you can see through and others can't."

However - they've also introduced the Ninja and Vivisectionist Alchemist, which are both "the Rogue but better". So you may as well play one of those instead.

The Alchemist actually does throw water balloons too.

OgreBattle wrote:The Alchemist actually does throw water balloons too.

The Alchemist is a water balloon magician, not a water ballon muggle. Don't you see the difference?!

Ice9 wrote:
Pretty decent as in "10th level - twelve touch attacks a round for 12d6+41 damage each, while in a cloud of smoke that you can see through and others can't."

Twelve touch attacks? At best, dual-wielding double-barreled pistols and handwaving reload, including haste, I get 10 attacks per round at level 10. How are you getting 12?

BAB +7, TWF, Improved TWF, Rapid Shot, Haste
You get two primary + two secondary + rapid + haste = 6, x2 = 12

And for reload, you get an extra arm: graft, play a race that has them, or take a couple Vivisectionist levels (losing no Sneak Attack) and take the Vestigial Arm discovery. Or substitute Quick Draw for Rapid Reload and carry three pairs of pistols.

Even better with Ninja, because you get an extra attack from your Ki pool, for a total of 14.

Someone posted an Expert build over on the Paizo forums that outclassed a Rogue build someone had offered.

Expert can have the class skill of their choice, and don't need a trait for that. ergo, they are better skill monkey.

Ice9 wrote:BAB +7, TWF, Improved TWF, Rapid Shot, Haste
You get two primary + two secondary + rapid + haste = 6, x2 = 12

Why are you doubling the amount of attacks?

ishy wrote:

Ice9 wrote:BAB +7, TWF, Improved TWF, Rapid Shot, Haste
You get two primary + two secondary + rapid + haste = 6, x2 = 12

Why are you doubling the amount of attacks?

Double-barrelled pistols. Even with touch attacks there's a serious chance of missing - rapid shot -2 and firing two barrels at once -4, and the expense of enchanting so many guns will likely keep the enhancement bonus low.

and how are you reloading those guns? TWF only really works with modern firearms. Unless you have a third arm, or something

Ice9 was suggesting a 3rd arm or similar to reload. Look above.

Thinking about it they're not light weapons so TWF adds another -4. -10 total on primary attacks; if the enemy has a deflection bonus to AC or similar this is flurry of misses territory.

Interesting. How do you deal with misfires and your gun exploding?

I've thought that a problem with the Rogue for a while since he has all of that rider damage, people try to attack the most with it. But my idea of the Rogue is the back stab, the sneak attack, the ONE ATTACK that does a ton of damage.

3.0/3.5/Pathfinder has some really rotten assassination rules and it has
always made the Rogue seem a bit weird to me.

Hadn't noticed they weren't light. Still, not too huge a problem - you're making flat-footed touch attacks, so that's generally an AC of 11 or less.

You have at least 24 Dex, the weapons are +1, and +1 from Haste. So that's a total of +16 to hit, -10 -> +6 to hit. With attacks at +6/+6/+6/+6/+1/+1, you won't hit every time, but you will get a fair amount of shots through.

Alternately, if you want accuracy, you can switch to a single double-barreled gun, "only" making eight attacks, but at +10/+10/+10/+5, again against a very low AC.

Why in Kord's name did they give two attacks to a two-barreled gun when pulling the trigger once? It's such an obvious thing to just use 2[W], or +1d6, or anything except double attacks for!

I mean, it's nice that someone finally got some nice things who wasn't a spellcaster, but how did they not know that Rogues add +fucktons on each extra attack? That attacks are fucking precious? Even a Ranger, a Paladin, even a fucking Fighter. Fuck! Wait. Was this them giving something to the martials without letting anyone know? Did they give in?

tussock wrote:Why in Kord's name did they give two attacks to a two-barreled gun when pulling the trigger once? It's such an obvious thing to just use 2[W], or +1d6, or anything except double attacks for!

I mean, it's nice that someone finally got some nice things who wasn't a spellcaster, but how did they not know that Rogues add +fucktons on each extra attack? That attacks are fucking precious? Even a Ranger, a Paladin, even a fucking Fighter. Fuck! Wait. Was this them giving something to the martials without letting anyone know? Did they give in?

Because they're shitty writers who don't understand the system they're writing for. This is the book that brought us Titan Mauler, Prone Shooter and Death or Glory.

Uggh, Pathfinder traits are so stupid. They are just the ultimate in the Dumpster Dive. So, they are supposed to be worth half a feat, but there
are things that let you make better Acrobatics checks when you charge on a hill and then there are ones that give you untyped Initiative bonus, increased caster level, longer duration on spells, +1 luck bonus to all your saves, trap-finding as a Rogue, skill on your skill list and add a different modifier to it (equivalent to +8 or better on a skill check) etc.

They printed several hundred of these things and maybe 25 of 'em ever hit character sheets. Those are the things people love about DumpsterFinder, I guess. Scouring d20pfsrd.com for "Wait, they printed that?" and getting all their fiddling bonuses stacking together.

Edit: The skills ones are particularly hilarious. From Traits and Extra Traits, do you know what the best social characters are? Yeah. Wizards, Witches and Sage Sorcerers (Sorcerers that cast off their Intelligence). Because why WOULDN'T the full casting Arcane characters not be the best at that, too?

rasmuswagner wrote: Because they're shitty writers who don't understand the system they're writing for. This is the book that brought us Titan Mauler, Prone Shooter and Death or Glory.

I only remember Prone Shooter - and that other feat that lets you spend a Full Round Action increasing the reach of your weapon for the duration of your turn. What's the deal with TM and DoG?

Koumei wrote:

rasmuswagner wrote: Because they're shitty writers who don't understand the system they're writing for. This is the book that brought us Titan Mauler, Prone Shooter and Death or Glory.

I only remember Prone Shooter - and that other feat that lets you spend a Full Round Action increasing the reach of your weapon for the duration of your turn. What's the deal with TM and DoG?

Monkey Lunge (Spend a standard action to increase your reach until the end of your turn) is from "Sargava, The Lost Colony" - the book that also has a brillinat feat that lets you take a standard action to make a combat maneuver check against an adjacent enemy, and if you succeed...you can make one attack.

But Titan Mauler is also from Ultimate Combat. It's a Barbarian archetype, and it's all about using oversized weapons. The penalty for oversized weapons is reduced by -1 per 3 levels. But by the rules, you can't actually use oversized weapons (beyond the Large Bastard Sword for 2d8 at -2 to hit), and the archetype doesn't come with an exception to that.

Death or Glory is a feat that works, it's just unbelievably terrible. It requires BAB +6 or better, and as a full-round action, you can make a single attack, at +4 to hit (+5 at BAB +11, +6 at 16, +7 at 20). Right out of the gate, we see that it's probably a bad investment. It's like Vital Strike's little brother who went Full Retard.

But it gets better: It can only be used against Large+ creatures. And here comes the best part. After your one attack, the target gets to make an attack, as an immediate action, with the same bonus.

My favorite part about Titan Mauler is they specifically get the ability to use a two-handed weapon in one hand, but for some reason it has to be appropriately sized for them. So a class based around using "weapons from their titanic foes" can dual wield greatswords but not large longswords, but has less penalties for using large longswords than for using greatswords.

For the record it was written by Jason Nelson, who intended it to allow you to use giant weapons but didn't write that. He also wrote the Sohei (a Monk with Light Armor Proficiency that still loses Monk abilities for using it), Fast Learner (a feat that is directly, universally worse Toughness but people think gives you a skill point and is thus broken), and a huge pile of other stuff.

He seems nice and at least takes credit for his mistakes, but I seriously can't comprehend how someone can work on a system for so long and still turn out things like this.

Paizil wrote:My favorite part about Titan Mauler is they specifically get the ability to use a two-handed weapon in one hand, but for some reason it has to be appropriately sized for them. So a class based around using "weapons from their titanic foes" can dual wield greatswords but not large longswords, but has less penalties for using large longswords than for using greatswords.

For the record it was written by Jason Nelson, who intended it to allow you to use giant weapons but didn't write that. He also wrote the Sohei (a Monk with Light Armor Proficiency that still loses Monk abilities for using it), Fast Learner (a feat that is directly, universally worse Toughness but people think gives you a skill point and is thus broken), and a huge pile of other stuff.

He seems nice and at least takes credit for his mistakes, but I seriously can't comprehend how someone can work on a system for so long and still turn out things like this.

To be fair, if you're a freelance writer, editors can (and sometimes do) take something reasonable and "improve" the wording into something worthless.

Absolutely true. The Prone Shooter incident was Ross Bryers having someone turning his boring +1 feat into a totally useless feat. Similarly, I wouldn't blame Jason Nelson for Jade Regent: The Hungry Storm being unplayable as written. The caravan rules were added by James Jacobs with no testing, and the original turnover was supposedly less of a railroad and generally made more sense.

However, these are things that Jason directly stated were his intent. On the Sohei he said giving armor proficiency to a class that loses most class features when wearing armor was "giving it options." While he said the Fast Learner text was changed, he said his intent was choosing (+1 HP and +1 SP) or (+1 FCB), which is the same thing it ended up being and is just worse Toughness. And of course, he admitted he didn't write Titan Mauler in a way to allow larger weapons.

He isn't uniquely bad at these things, and I only know which they are because he actively interacts with people on the forums. However, the problem remains that he creates material like this after professionally writing for Pathfinder for half a decade. Not as bad as SMR not knowing how rounds work or Bulhman putting trivial infinite loops in playtests, but not good by any means either.

Did someone really register on this board with the name Paizil?