The Gaming Den

Insomniac wrote:Don't clerics get Blindness/Deafness as well?

Not as a level 2 spell, level 3.

Ice9 wrote:Clerics prepare maybe one more slot of each level per day than a Wizard. That's the limit of their increased flexibility. You might have the entire list hypothetically, but on any given day you only have the spells you prepared, and unless you have advance scouting info, that's probably the same spells on most days.

Clerics get the same amount as a specialist wizard.

Low level clerics get a bit more flexibility because they can spontaneously get cure (or inflict) spells so they never have to prep them, and while yes, day to day you only have the spells you prepared, often times you can get a bit of insight into what you need for certain campaign areas/modules that last more than a single encounter. If an adventure lasts longer than a day then you can prep according to tomorrow's expected needs. That's where cleric's deep bench of spells known comes in handy. That's been my cleric experience.

It should be noted that the list of spells Clerics just ambiently have includes a bunch of divination spells. If you have a day's prep time you can turn that into preparing situationally appropriate spells.

Ice9 wrote:
Split casting does suck, especially at low levels. Although if you're going for buffs or other spells without saves, then you only need enough Int to cast spells of the appropriate level (which you'd want anyway for the knowledge abilities) and can focus on Wisdom.

Split casting is really only going to suck depending on your campaign.

In a point-buy where you can use grey elves, buying up your Int DC stat to 18(actually 20 with +2 Grey elf Int) is going to cost most of your points and a 14 in your bonus slots stat is going to be a 14 you could have put into Dex or Con (your Str will suck).

In a 4d6 drop lowest, you are going to have a 14 in most things and a 16 or two and the difference between the 14 in your bonus slot stat and the 16 in your DC stat is going to be pretty hard to notice because everything else is going to be a 12 or 14. Being a gray elf, single casting stat class is not going to matter because you were never going to get that extra 1st level slot anyway since the 20 was not going to happen without a fairly large amount of luck. I don't know what the odds of getting a character with an 18 in a 4d6 drop lowest game, but I do know that I've never had one in twenty years.

K wrote:I don't know what the odds of getting a character with an 18 in a 4d6 drop lowest game, but I do know that I've never had one in twenty years.

9.22% that you will have at least one 18. You have a 1.6% chance of rolling an 18 on 4d6k3 and six independent chances to get it. That means that there's about even odds that someone at your six person table will get an 18 naturally in any given campaign.

Assuming the 9.22% figure is correct, if you rolls a set of stats using 4d6 drop, the odds of at least one 18 are:

# arrays generated	Probability
1	9.22%
2	18%
3	25%
4	32%
5	38%
6	44%
7	49%
8	54%
9	58%
10	62%

I get a 1/(6^3)*6/6*4~=1.85% chance per roll and a 1-((1-1.85%)^6)~=10.6% chance per array, bringing us up to ~67% of getting at least one 18 in 10 arrays (49% in 6).

How many 4d6 drop lowest chars have you played in twenty years? Seems a bit surprising you haven't gotten any if it's more than 6, and I'd bet $20 to $1 it's less than 30.

momothefiddler wrote:I get a 1/(6^3)*6/6*4~=1.85% chance per roll and a 1-((1-1.85%)^6)~=10.6% chance per array, bringing us up to ~67% of getting at least one 18 in 10 arrays (49% in 6).

How many 4d6 drop lowest chars have you played in twenty years? Seems a bit surprising you haven't gotten any if it's more than 6, and I'd bet $20 to $1 it's less than 30.

Probably ten campaigns in twenty years, but lots of one-shots and failed campaigns. I don't really remember the stats of the non-campaign characters, so maybe I had an 18 in there somewhere.

momothefiddler wrote:I get a 1/(6^3)*6/6*4~=1.85% chance per roll and a 1-((1-1.85%)^6)~=10.6% chance per array, bringing us up to ~67% of getting at least one 18 in 10 arrays (49% in 6).

How many 4d6 drop lowest chars have you played in twenty years? Seems a bit surprising you haven't gotten any if it's more than 6, and I'd bet $20 to $1 it's less than 30.

I've learned to like geometry for understanding some statistics.

So, I'm imagining a 6x6x6x6 hypercube grid, and we're concerned with all the edges containing 3+ 6es. That's ((6-1)*4+1) / 6^4 = 1.62% per 4d6-drop

Then we calculate the probability of not getting that six times in a row -- (1 - X)^6, and get 90.66%. Thus, we have a 9.34% chance per character, not counting arrays that give you a free re-roll.

If you do that thing where each player rolls a stat array and each player gets to pick whichever one they want, that's effectively a free re-roll per player. With four players rolling, that's a 32.4% chance per game.

If you play two campaigns like that, you've got a 45.7% chance of never having actually had a character with a rolled 18, which is pretty likely, actually.

(5d6-drop would be a 5-D 6x6x6x6x6 hypercube grid where you count faces, and my head is kind of exploding trying to visualize that)

RadiantPhoenix wrote:(6-1)*4+1

Fuck, because there's no difference between "the 2nd is 6 and all three others are 6" and "the 4th is 6 and all three others are 6" so that one doesn't get multiplied by 4. Fair enough.

(I still don't understand at all what you're doing, but that's fine.)

momothefiddler wrote:I get a 1/(6^3)*6/6*4~=1.85% chance per roll and a 1-((1-1.85%)^6)~=10.6% chance per array, bringing us up to ~67% of getting at least one 18 in 10 arrays (49% in 6).

Close, but should be 4C1*(5/6)*(1/6)^3 for the chance of rolling three sixes and one non-six, and then adding (1/6)^4 for the chance of rolling four sixes. It seems you applied the 4C1 to the chance of rolling four sixes, though the only combination for that is 6,6,6,6.

Edit: aaand ninja'd by you. I don't get hypercubes either.

Edit edit: Oh, so Radiant Phoenix is just talking about a four dimensional graph/table with each axis corresponding to one die's result. Yeah, that's a nifty way to think of it.

So, will Pathfinder do anything to address the Rogue being nerfed into the ground? That is what Pathfinder Unchained at least promises to do in part.

The fundamental problem with Sneak Attack is it is not good enough to give up having another good save and Full BAB for, especially in a class that has no innate ways to boost attacks or spell ways to boost attacks. Look at Slayer. That lags by 2d6 sneak attack damage at level 10, but it has +3 to attack from full BAB and another +3 to attack and damage if its opponent is a Studied Target.

5d6=17.5 damage
3d6+3 damage=12.5 damage, with a better absolute floor in damage and getting another +6 to hit is worth at least another 6 damage when you do a DPR calculation.

It doesn't really matter how many bonus dice somebody has. If they aren't hitting, it doesn't mean a thing.

And the d6 sneak attack damage is seriously not that much damage.
Especially when the classes get better HD, are more likely to have Constitution bonuses from Racial abilities and can put another +1 HP every level.

At 10th level 1d6 damage+a +2 weapon+Dexterity to damage at 24 Dexterity+5d6 sneak attack....

6d6+9 damage. That is seriously nothing. That will not one shot or even 2 shot most 10th level Wizards or Sorcerers. That deals 2 Scorching Rays level damage. It deals less damage than a freaking fireball.

Pathfinder takes the trap niche away as well. Anybody can find a non-magical trap and disable it with Disable Device. There isn't even cross class penalties now. The Rogue is a whopping +3 to checks better than somebody with the same race, ability scores and equipment even with skills on its skill list. Wahoo.

Spellcasters get Detect Magic at will unlimited times per day. They can Dispel magical traps, trigger them with summons or simply avoid them once they know where they are in many cases.

What, if anything, would you do to fix the Rogue class?

Fold Sap Adept + Sap Master + Sniper Goggles + firearm into it? With that stuff, Sneak Attack gets pretty beefy, it's just that it locks Rogues into a particular niche. If those things were just abilities that Rogues got at a certain level (and not limited to a particular weapon style), they'd be in a good spot lethality-wise, and while they're still non-casters they at least have the most skills.

Rogue is the only one to get Skill mastery, one of the few who can take Trap Spotter (automatic trap spotting) and one of the quite a few who get half their level to find/disarm traps.

The rogue is relatively secure in the trap niche, with the Slayer and Investigator being the only real alternatives.

Insomniac wrote:Pathfinder takes the trap niche away as well. Anybody can find a non-magical trap and disable it with Disable Device. There isn't even cross class penalties now. The Rogue is a whopping +3 to checks better than somebody with the same race, ability scores and equipment even with skills on its skill list. Wahoo.

There is also a trait that allows you to disable magical traps.

I really hate they took away sneak attack with ring of blinking. So the only way to sneak attack with ranged attacks is by winning init, sniping (one attack only) or invis.

That they gave tumble (acrobatics) a much harder DC & you fall prone if you take damage while using acrobatics, really hurts too.

If you want a sneak attacker a vivisectionist alchemist might be better?

- Edit: I guess by strict raw, you can clear a lot of mooks, if you win init and sneak attack with a fireball scroll (since sneak attack in PF only requires an attack), but most DMs don't allow that.

ishy wrote:So the only way to sneak attack with ranged attacks is by winning init, sniping (one attack only) or invis.

Or standing inside a smoke cloud and shooting out of it, since PF adds a bunch of ways to see through smoke.

It wasn't the case initially, but by this point PF has brought the blinking flask rogue back into action. It's just that now it's a gunslinging rogue in a smoke cloud.

Ice9 wrote: It's just that now it's a gunslinging rogue in a smoke cloud.

I dub it the... gunsmoke rogue

Will a d20 system like Pathfinder every really do "the boss battle" properly?

Like, 1 bad motherfucker versus a party of 4 or 5 people? Because I remember some of the hardest, best fights just being CR appropriate gainst multiple opponents of good tactics and varied abilities, and the absolute worst , anticlimactic B.S. being so-called "boss battles."

The action economy is real!

Obviously, giant bags of HPs that only interact with the BAB/AC minigame are never going to be interesting opponents. But that's an issue with having monsters that are giant bags of HPs with no abilities.

3.5/Pathfinder actually does have the start of a solution to the action economy issue, however, in the form of immediate actions. I actually managed to make an interesting fight out of a swashbuckler-type creature, by giving it riposte abilities which triggered when attacked. It's not enough for an epic boss battle though.

There's also the issue that very few monsters are actually built at "boss monster" levels. At CRs close to character levels, the monsters are of course disqualified from being bosses. But you can't just climb the CR ladder, because each CR jump increases defense and offense across the board - so a CR+2 is a decent miniboss, maybe, but a CR+4 one-shots the fighter, dodges almost every attack and effect, and whatever gets through is piddling compared to its giant pile of HP.

Ideally, you'd want "boss versions" of monsters, with a "Boss CR" that tells you at which levels it's an appropriate boss.

Insomniac wrote:Will a d20 system like Pathfinder every really do "the boss battle" properly?

Like, 1 bad motherfucker versus a party of 4 or 5 people? Because I remember some of the hardest, best fights just being CR appropriate gainst multiple opponents of good tactics and varied abilities, and the absolute worst , anticlimactic B.S. being so-called "boss battles."

The action economy is real!

Tome's concept of "the Edge" works nicely for this, where the PC's are unlikely to have the Edge on a boss level encounter, who in turn is likely to have The Edge all over 'em.

But you can't just climb the CR ladder, because each CR jump increases defense and offense across the board - so a CR+2 is a decent miniboss, maybe, but a CR+4 one-shots the fighter, dodges almost every attack and effect, and whatever gets through is piddling compared to its giant pile of HP.

"and thus bounded accuracy solves the problem!"

MfA wrote:Rogue is the only one to get Skill mastery, one of the few who can take Trap Spotter (automatic trap spotting) and one of the quite a few who get half their level to find/disarm traps.

The rogue is relatively secure in the trap niche, with the Slayer and Investigator being the only real alternatives.

Hahaha, that would be funny if there wasn't a real chance you were serious about this bullshit.

Trap Spotter is bullshit, Skill Mastery is bullshit, and half the playable classes are easily better than Rogues at Perception even with the bonus.

I just looked up Trap Spotter. Unless I am missing something, it is literally a talent that exists just so you can skip the tedium of saying "I search" every square while you're in a dungeon. And I guess presumably makes any random traps outside of a dungeon setting mysteriously no longer appear.

Even if you did think that was a valuable niche for a character, what stops you from investing a 2 level dip into rogue and then doing anything else? I mean doing something else with those 2 levels is still also better, but starting with the assumption that trap finding/trap spotter are actually worth a damn, why are you spending more than 2 levels in the Rogue class?

MfA wrote:The rogue is relatively secure in the trap niche, with the Slayer and Investigator being the only real alternatives.

My Crypt-Breaker Alchemist and the Urban Ranger say hello.

Insomniac wrote:Will a d20 system like Pathfinder every really do "the boss battle" properly?

A better question - should it? "Boss battles" where a gang of four or more people dogpiles one opponent and each contributes meaningfully instead of everyone but the main character being blown away with a single wave of the boss' dick hand, are largely a videogame concept. In others form of media the most common form of a climactic fight is one-on-one duel, with the party splitting to each fight their own opponent if there is a party. Two-on-one battles, those that do not boil down to a second hero sneak attacking the dude who is busy with the main character, are already considerably rarer. I can remember few good battles that involve a bigger number of people against one boss, and generally in media where lethal damage happening to anyone is incredibly rare, so the boss can repeatedly take people out of the fight just for them to return a minute later, and most of the battle can be reduced to one or two characters harassing the boss, while others recover from stun.

D&D is really big on binary results that fuck dudes up. Either you have an appropriate immunity/counter or you lose. Either you make the saving throw or you lose. Either you avoid the full attack/ubercharge or you lose. 4v1 is never really going to make an interesting fight in D&D, because 4v1 is just an exercise in iterative probability. There's no incremental progress or back and forth or thought, it's just full-on hardcounters and RNG bullshit.

If you want boss fights that feel like boss fights, you want abilities with incremental effects with something like CAN or damage/soak (in addition to attack/defense). When you use finger of death on a mook, you automurder the fool. When you use finger of death on a boss, you do level appropriate danger with some status conditions that aren't "remove from fight." This involves rewriting all the things, so no, you are never going to see it. In the meantime, resign yourself to the fact that almost everything can lose in a single unlucky round and make your boss fights interesting using bodyguards and the environment.

I got the idea here from the Den (I am unsure who posted it though, perhaps Kaelik or Frank), but this is what I use in my games.

Conditions are ranked into three tiers, for example shaken/frightened/panicked. Any creature can take 10/20/30 unavoidable damage (that goes directly to their HP pool, bypassing any temp hp, any DR) as a standard action (even if they can't take actions on their turn) to reduce the condition track by one step. So you can take 30 dmg to move from panicked to frightened, and then on the next turn 20 dmg to move to shaken.

For boss monsters you could decrease the dmg and action cost. Still I think Boss monsters need to have additional actions available as not to get screwed by action economy.