Pathfinder might become less bad

[Axebird]

This is stupid and you should feel stupid. Hold person is in all ways worse for the game than deep slumber. The first leaves you helpless and gives your enemies a time limit for coup de gracing your ass. The latter boots you out of the combat, but offers no harm at all if your allies win the battle.

Save or Lose is fine, and basically necessary if battles don't take a large number of rounds. Save or Lose effects that wear off before the battle is over are the worst thing ever, because they encourage overkill actions that are meaningless to disposable monsters but cause lasting harm to player characters.

-Username17

Hold person was just the first example that came to mind. You're right that it poses that problem where it encourages enemies to nail you with a coup de grace rather than treating it like crowd control. Conditions like dazed or stunned would be more appropriate, since they leave you temporarily unable to act (and perhaps a bit more vulnerable), but don't leave you open to instant death.

Being temporarily disabled is fine. Having permanent incapacitation a looming threat if you don't deal with the condition quickly is fine. Being instantly out of the rest of the fight because you failed one save sucks, especially if you can't do anything about it yourself. It's not fun. You should be able to do something on your turn, even if it's just attempting to shake off whatever bad mojo nailed you last turn.

[virgil]

Being instantly out of the rest of the fight because you failed one save sucks, especially if you can't do anything about it yourself. It's not fun.

As several people have already mentioned, this doesn't seem like a real problem if you let combat stay fast and short (like my sex life).

[Cyberzombie]

As far as PF 2.0, the main thing I want to see is them to dump the old iterative attack mechanic and full attacks, and just letting fighters get multiple attacks as a standard, and preferably multi-attack AoOs too.

I'd also like to see the 5 ft step done away with or limited such that casters and archers can't just step back out of an opponent's reach. Perhaps require that another ally be threatening a target before you can do a 5 ft step.

Being temporarily disabled is fine. Having permanent incapacitation a looming threat if you don't deal with the condition quickly is fine. Being instantly out of the rest of the fight because you failed one save sucks, especially if you can't do anything about it yourself. It's not fun. You should be able to do something on your turn, even if it's just attempting to shake off whatever bad mojo nailed you last turn.

You know, I used to think this way, before 4E came out. Then I actually played 4E, and definitely changed my mind. The result of removing save or dies and going for these long combats where it's tough to get dropped is that you got long grindy combats.

Personally I think the best solution would be more of a scaled save-or-die like mutants and masterminds. So it's potential to knock out someone with a bad save so it stays exciting, but it also allows for a hold person that dazes someone on a minor failure, while outright removing them from the fight on a big failure. That way every roll of the dice matters and you don't get into 4E situations where it's a boring grind and everyone knows exactly what's going to happen.

Also, Frank is correct about temporary helplessness being a terrible idea. You never want to encourage coup de grace on the PCs.

[MGuy]

I think that Next had something about spells like sleep and whatever effecting targets based on current HP. I think that that idea is pretty neat. Like trying to catch a pokemon you need to weaken a target just enough then you can take it out of combat. I'd say that would get people to not be so down about SoL type spells. I'd also wager it would make healing and damage dealing worth just that much more.

[fectin]

fast and short (like my sex life).

Midgets and Maseratis: the Untold Story of Virgil's Sex Life

[magnuskn]

Considering that both Pathfinder and 4E D&D deliberately implemented changes to extend the mean length of combat it is something that has to be dealt with.

At least the PF guys utterly failed at that. High-level combat in AP's, even with encounters which were buffed and combined, last about 1-3 rounds, depending on the type of enemy. At least that has been my experience over three and a half AP's.

[tussock]

d20 Bad save, just for people who haven't noticed.

1/3 level. Game ends at 16th, so +5 base, +3 from stat not too bad, +5 cloak, duh, had one since 6th level, some late era spellbook spell adds a morale bonus too, to "fix" things, only +4 by here. +17.

Save DC: Int 28, level 8 spell, DC 27. Hey, let's try a bit and make it DC 29 with feats.

Rolled an 11, failed my save. Only it's fucking 16th level so fights start with mass save-or-die, maybe save-or-swap-teams, and half the party just died. That's 3e D&D. Without the newer morale bonus it's 16+ to save and guess what, mofos

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp ... g20001229b

Everybody rolled their Fortitude saves vs. a 9th-level death spell cast by a demigod arch-lich. And, with only one exception, THEY ALL FAILED. In the space of one melee round, every character on the field of play was dead, dead, dead -- except for Tanith, who was now Acererak’s thrall.

Back in the 3e playtest the core design team knew damn well any high level caster was a 1-round TPK and it just gave the DM a throbbing erection. The players, you ask?

How could the party possibly defeat him now?

Strangely enough, I never talked any of the players into giving it a go.

3rd edition saves in a nutshell, eh. That whole article is awesome for seeing the caster-love at work at the time.

---

The 4e "solution" was removing high level play from the game. I think that's a shit idea, a world where some individuals can crush entire cities under their heel as the nation's army cowers has many excellent stories arise for heroes. But I do believe that high level parties need to be able to not die on round one to them, even though low level NPCs out of their depth totally should. The populous should need heroes for BIG problems in D&D, and the heroes should win when so tasked (as a statistical expectation).

This 5e gag where twenty archers are always better than your whole party, but you can't hire them because, you know, DM fix you up long time. That's just useless.

Gary Gygax was an actuary before he made D&D. His math on this is better than Monte, Jonathan, and Skip. It's better than Rob Heinsoo, and it's better than Mike Mearls. High level characters need to make their saves. Staying even is not good enough, as low level spells do not end the campaign in one round (well, at least Sleep allows the NPCs to tie you all up).

[Kaelik]

d20 Bad save, just for people who haven't noticed.

1/3 level. Game ends at 16th, so +5 base, +3 from stat not too bad, +5 cloak, duh, had one since 6th level, some late era spellbook spell adds a morale bonus too, to "fix" things, only +4 by here. +17.

Save DC: Int 28, level 8 spell, DC 27. Hey, let's try a bit and make it DC 29 with feats.

Rolled an 11, failed my save. Only it's fucking 16th level so fights start with mass save-or-die, maybe save-or-swap-teams, and half the party just died. That's 3e D&D. Without the newer morale bonus it's 16+ to save and guess what, mofos

https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp ... g20001229b

Everybody rolled their Fortitude saves vs. a 9th-level death spell cast by a demigod arch-lich. And, with only one exception, THEY ALL FAILED. In the space of one melee round, every character on the field of play was dead, dead, dead -- except for Tanith, who was now Acererak’s thrall.

Yes, because I totally have 16 Con at level 16, and think this on my bad save is appropriate and make no effort to raise my save or have Deathward cast.

Imbalanced stats are maybe a problem, depending on optimization level, but whining about how a level 16 party all died to one Wail of the Banshee is a fucking joke. If you failed a will and and fort save because your saves were that shit it is your fault for not giving yourself immunity.

[Ferret]

Why not build that relative immunity into the save mechanism, Kaelik? How many TPKs do you have to go through before you realize that it wasn't a fluke, you really have to gear up for invulnerability on EVERY CHARACTER?

How many of those learning TPKs happen before you're like "fuck this system?"

"If you failed a will and and fort save because your saves were that shit it is your fault for not giving yourself immunity" smacks of 3.x designers hard-on for trap options and rewarding system mastery. That's just a new version of the Adversarial GM bullshit we all profess to hate so much.

[Username17]

Characters at 16th level are indeed expected to face comparable opposition. Also, they are expected to have over two hundred encounters under their belt, so a certain amount of learning curve is permissible. There is in abstract nothing wrong with being asked to adventure with deathward going at 16th level - just as there is nothing wrong with demanding that 1st level characters adventure with rations and rope.

Now obviously there are some pretty big problems with the implementation. First of all, there are four players in the party, and out of the eleven character classes, only three classes can cast death ward at all. There are 560 distinct four player, no repeat classes parties you could field where there was no access to the spell. And even if it is available, the importance isn't described anywhere, and it requires ten minute workday shenanigans to work.

TL;DR: The problem is not that high level play has requirements for PCs to survive. The problem is that documentation for high level play is bullshit and most of the classes do not make a serious attempt to meet those requirements.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Why not build that relative immunity into the save mechanism, Kaelik?

You don't build that immunity into the save system because there are three goddam saves. If you are immune to one third of all spells (but really more, because there are not a lot of Ref spells that aren't uninspiring piles of small damage) that is drastically different from being immune to some specific death effects. You might as well ask why Dragon energy immunity isn't built into their HP totals.

How many TPKs do you have to go through before you realize that it wasn't a fluke, you really have to gear up for invulnerability on EVERY CHARACTER?

Zero, because when you are level fucking one someone casts sleep on you, and you realize you need to fucking have high saving throws, and if you don't have high saving throws you need to be and elf to be immune. And then, if you aren't an idiot, you can extrapolate that forward.

But even if you are an idiot, at level fucking 9 when someone polymorphs you into a toad, or at level fucking 11 when they cast Finger of Death you might start to figure out that having saving throws or immunity to the effect is an important part of your character without a TPK.

"If you failed a will and and fort save because your saves were that shit it is your fault for not giving yourself immunity" smacks of 3.x designers hard-on for trap options and rewarding system mastery.

Yeah, that dreaded system mastery of "You should have fucking saves that aren't ass" For fucks sake, do you even listen to yourself? Most likely one or fewer PCs will have both Fort and Will as bad saves. So each one of you is making two saves at 1d20+10+Stat and 1d20+15+Stat against a DC of 19+stat. Yes, your stat will probably be smaller, but not by much, and maybe not at all. And that is before you even take into account any intelligence at all on the part of the players. If you know you have a low Wis, maybe you should boost your Will save. If you have a shit con, you should not be and idiot and have a higher con, and maybe boost your fort save. Hell, you might be a dwarf and have +2 on top of that, you might have moral or competence or even enhancement bonuses to saves.

If you are failing both saves on Wail of the Banshee you are either:
1) A Rogue with no optimization who was moderately unlucky.
2) Anyone else with no optimization who was extremely unlucky.
3) An idiot.

Since I don't think 1 and 2 covered the entire party, I'm going to assume the main problem was that they were idiots.

That's just a new version of the Adversarial GM bullshit we all profess to hate so much.

No, saying "Saves scale to give you about a 50 chance of losing if you aren't immune to the spell and did literally nothing to boost your saves aside from buy one item but the Wizard optimized save DC to the max (but maybe he isn't a Wizard, maybe he's a monster, and then the saves are even more likely to be passed)" is not adversarial DMing. It is leaving any room at all for save spells to actually matter, but totally letting the PCs dumpster dive for save bonuses to eliminate saves from the game if they want.


I mean, here are some MM save DCs for a level 16 party"

Angel: DC 25 implosion. So your strong Fort save is a 50% if you have a con of 10 and no other bonuses. Your weak save is a better than 50% chance with Greater Fortitude and a con of 16. Or you could have 50% with a +4 item and a con of 16.

Cornugan: DC 23 will save against fear that you have to make once ever. Also a single target stun if he hits you at DC 27. So if you have and defenses at all, probably about the same 50% chance as the Angel, or lower.

Nightshade: DC 24 will save on a gaze attack. So if you know you have a low will save you can not gaze at it.

Formian Queen: DC 24 Prismatic Wall, but a bunch of saves, so you should probably just not walk into the wall. Also Temporal Stasis, if you are stupid enough to get hit by a touch attack from an immobile creature with Dex --, but only one save.

So basically a bog standard core party with Cloaks of Resistance are going to be just fine against all those parties, and even if they do face a filthy Demilich casting Wail of the Banshee (Which is basically a CR 19 monster, and therefore absofuckinglutely something that should have a very high chance of killing a couple of them), then still, they get to make two fucking saves against DC 24-26 with their saves that at least on of which should, even if they are extremely mediocre and put literally zero thought into it, have a greater than 50% chance of passing.

[Red_Rob]

If you are failing both saves on Wail of the Banshee you are either:
1) A Rogue with no optimization who was moderately unlucky.
2) Anyone else with no optimization who was extremely unlucky.
3) An idiot.

Wail of the Banshee is Fort only. I assume you are thinking of Phantasmal Killer which allows two saves.

On a related note, playing with Tome rules gives everyone generally better saves than Core 3.5. The number of base classes with all good saves means most characters end up with at least a level in one, scaling feats means you are more likely to grab a Save bonus, and +Saves scaling items are expected as standard from low levels. I've run a Beholder against a level 12 Tome party and the Barbarian just tanked it because she couldn't fail a save against any of the eye effects whilst Raging.

[Kaelik]

Wail of the Banshee is Fort only. I assume you are thinking of Phantasmal Killer which allows two saves.

No, I was thinking of Weird. But honestly, if you have a bad Fort save and a good will save you are a Wizard, so should have long ago optimized your fort save in some way.

On a related note, playing with Tome rules gives everyone generally better saves than Core 3.5. The number of base classes with all good saves means most characters end up with at least a level in one, scaling feats means you are more likely to grab a Save bonus, and +Saves scaling items are expected as standard from low levels.

Also you all get +5 to every stat at level 11, so your three save tied stats scale up more comparably than in 3.5 where DMs expect you to buy Tomes, so only Casters ever do and then only for their casting stats.

[tussock]

I understand the 3e paradigm where everyone is a Cleric with free metamagic and whatever Wizard spells they like, and thus has Death Ward and Mind Blank and Free Action and Heroes Feast and whatever the fuck else you need to be immune to anything up all day forever.

I get you can source dive for extra bonuses to spells. I get that DMs will totally all pinky-swear to never use optimised casters against the party because boo hoo it's not "fair". I get that anti-magic and DC 50 (Ex) Con poisons are not a common 6th level spell and CR 13 monster, and is in fact "cheating" to the point of table-flipping because your bullshit stops working if the DM even remotely cares.


It's just there's a bunch of other classes in this game that are also supposed to work. I can't understand why anything thinks spreading around the fucking privileged immunity suite is a better solution for them than letting high level character and monster saves get the job done. Why are characters who are strictly immune to the monster manual (so long as everyone plays along) desirable at all? Aren't you just going to have to redo the MM to break it all down again? Like they did in 4e.

[Kaelik]

It's just there's a bunch of other classes in this game that are also supposed to work. I can't understand why anything thinks spreading around the fucking privileged immunity suite is a better solution for them than letting high level character and monster saves get the job done. Why are characters who are strictly immune to the monster manual (so long as everyone plays along) desirable at all? Aren't you just going to have to redo the MM to break it all down again? Like they did in 4e.

Hey you fucking idiot. The fighter has a greater than 75% chance to make the save against an optimized Wizard's Wail of the Banshee. Shut the fuck up.

I know you have this weird hate on for anything that isn't 100% magic immunity to all characters, but tough shit, you have to settle for saves that are actually on the RNG instead in 3e. Go fuck yourself.

[Username17]

Obviously in a leveled system there are going to be GTFO abilities and players will need abilities of their own to keep up at higher levels. At the most basic, you're going to have enemies who can't be struck with melee weapons or adventures that take place under water. No amount of fiddling with the numbers can keep a character relevant if they lack real counters to GTFO abilities from several levels ago.

The 3e fighter is a shitty class and will always be a shitty class, and adding twenty or twenty thousand to all their numbers wouldn't fucking change that. The reason that only the full casters are good is not that other classes don't get good numbers, it's that the entire list of gambits and counters for monsters and players alike is simply the spell list, and if you don't get access to that, you don't matter.

-Username17

[rasmuswagner]

Fighters could get "Full round action, kill an adjacent creature, no die rolls, no immunites, RIP" as a class ability at level 6 and I still wouldn't play that shit.

[tussock]

Let me check, you're suggesting the Fighter's good save, their best save, the one in three which works at all, is 75% and so that's just fine.

Which is true, if they have free wishes or piss away combat power on save feats and second-choice stat boosts or ... funnily enough cast a splatbook spell. Usually some of all of those.

But Fighters also have Ref and Will saves from which they instantly lose, and there are half the classes which don't have a good Fort save in the first place, and those poor saves even when you go crazy and lose combat power for fourth-choice stat boosts and 3 (of 7) feats on fucking saving throws, you still fail over half the time.

So when a caster who's supposed to be 1/4 of your daily resources casts Wail of the Banshee on your classic party of four, a lot of the time two of them die. Which is half the party just like a said it was, even when they're highly defence focused.

And hey, technically all those True Resurrection spells are totally just part of your daily resources (who even wants combat power) and the money's nothing because no one uses those rules either. Hurray, what ever was I thinking.

---

Remember in 4e when they fucked up the progressions and made you buy feats to fix them? That was bad, we all ehat the people who did that.

Remember in 3e when they fucked up the progressions and made you buy 3.5 which also fucked up the durations and also made you buy a bunch of splats so you could cast tonne of nightstick divine persistent metamagic defensive buffs on everyone all the time and also ignore the rules for wealth to fix them? How is that not bad?

---

Fighters totally just fucking work if there's no cheaper way to make the monsters actually die. That's why 2e splat (and 1e UA) Fighters just fucking work, there are simply no more efficient solutions to making nasty things (which can strait-up kill Wizards) stop that and die.

95% MR and 2+ saving throws never stops people playing Wizards, it just lets people play Fighters too. Fucking 5th edition's got that the other way round, AC a fighter can never hit and yet the spells still work all the time. One of these progressions works, one doesn't. Stop picking the one that doesn't work.

[Kaelik]

Which is true, if they have free wishes or piss away combat power on save feats and second-choice stat boosts or ... funnily enough cast a splatbook spell. Usually some of all of those.

But Fighters also have Ref and Will saves from which they instantly lose, and there are half the classes which don't have a good Fort save in the first place, and those poor saves even when you go crazy and lose combat power for fourth-choice stat boosts and 3 (of 7) feats on fucking saving throws, you still fail over half the time.

So when a caster who's supposed to be 1/4 of your daily resources casts Wail of the Banshee on your classic party of four, a lot of the time two of them die. Which is half the party just like a said it was, even when they're highly defence focused.

Tussock, we have had this conversation over and over again. And every time you make baseless allegations about saving throw failure with no evidence, and every time I come back with actual numbers and corrections to your complete failure to know the rules. And then you shut up and wait a few months and it comes up in another thread.

Shut up. Never post again about saving throws, because you are a lying jackass who can't do math. You once again, still, don't actually know any of the math for saving throws, and just make shit up that isn't true, like your vague numberless allegations above.

[deaddmwalking]

If you're rolling the save, you've already lost.

Ititerative probability being what it is, you are guaranteed to roll a 1 at some point. Since that is an auto-fail, you will fail a 'critical' save.

Maximizing your saving throw BONUSES is super-easy if you multi-class like crazy, but if you institute a sane policy of 'progressive bonuses' (ie, if you stack two classes with a +2 at 1st level, you treat it as 2nd level in a class with that save [+3]; if you stack 3 classes with a +0 at 1st level, you treat it as 3rd level in a class with a bad save [+1]) then maximizing those saves across the board becomes impossible.

The most synergistic Attribute is probably Dexterity - it can affect your attack rolls, your saving throws, your Armor Class and your Initiative - but most of the saving throws that tie to it are just damage. Fortitutude and Will cover most of the 'save or suck'.

There's a bunch of reasons that saving throws have problems in 3.x. If they're arbitrarily easy to make you invulnverable to everything, then monsters should be invulnerable.

[Covent]

It's just there's a bunch of other classes in this game that are also supposed to work. I can't understand why anything thinks spreading around the fucking privileged immunity suite is a better solution for them than letting high level character and monster saves get the job done. Why are characters who are strictly immune to the monster manual (so long as everyone plays along) desirable at all? Aren't you just going to have to redo the MM to break it all down again? Like they did in 4e.

Hey you fucking idiot. The fighter has a greater than 75% chance to make the save against an optimized Wizard's Wail of the Banshee. Shut the fuck up.

I know you have this weird hate on for anything that isn't 100% magic immunity to all characters, but tough shit, you have to settle for saves that are actually on the RNG instead in 3e. Go fuck yourself.

From what I see the average result without Elemental Focus in Pathfinder is 76% good save and 55% bad saves, 69% good save and 45% bad save with elemental focus. This is with a character prioritizing saves and using the Improved save feat reroll vs an optimized caster.

My data is Here.

Best downloaded and viewed in excel.

Not trying to argue just trying to provide data.

All data is for Pathfinder as this is both what I am more familiar with and what the thread seems to be about.

[Kaelik]

All data is for Pathfinder as this is both what I am more familiar with and what the thread seems to be about.

Technically no part of the saving throw argument is about Pathfinder, but whatever, that is close enough to the 3e numbers, although usually without saving throw feats because they mostly suck.

[Covent]

All data is for Pathfinder as this is both what I am more familiar with and what the thread seems to be about.

Technically no part of the saving throw argument is about Pathfinder, but whatever, that is close enough to the 3e numbers, although usually without saving throw feats because they mostly suck.

Ah my apologies. I had just assumed from the thread title, that is why I was slightly confused.

If you drop both saving throw feats you go to average 44% good save, 25% bad save with no elemental focus and 37% good save, 18% bad save with elemental focus.

You never get above a 50% chance of saving and only get to 50% with a good save and no elemental focus.

Level 13-20 you only have a 10%-15% chance to save on a poor save with elemental focus.

This in my mind makes the saving throw feats must haves along with save buffing items and such for any classes in pathfinder which do not have a class feature such as Divine Grace.

In short in pathfinder I feel the save feats are a tax for any class that does not get a good set of saving throws, or a powerful saving throw class feature.

[Slade]

95% MR and 2+ saving throws never stops people playing Wizards, it just lets people play Fighters too. Fucking 5th edition's got that the other way round, AC a fighter can never hit and yet the spells still work all the time. One of these progressions works, one doesn't. Stop picking the one that doesn't work.

Actually in 2E, Wizards got -X save debuff spells (they had no save), and some spells had -X built in like greater command (had a -2 in addition to affecting that area and being 1 rd/lv).
These effects meant even Fighters with good saves of +2 s can fail easily with preparation.

These help a lot in BG 2 video game, but it is just as useful in tabletop.

[tussock]

Sure, Hold Person's -4 against a single target, and your saves at low level are terrible, there's not even clear rules for when you get to apply Wis or Dex or Con to your saves. Thieves have pretty rubbish saves all along, Wizards good against magic, etc. Without a nice ring (or magic armour, if it applied, who knows), no one actually gets to 2+, and there's always one save that's a bit weaker. You still don't use direct magic on Drow and Demons and a bunch of other types because it's inefficient.

The 2e defence takedowns are theoretically the right choice against a few high end monsters, if I recall the theorycrafting sessions of years long past, there's one lowers Magic Resistance too, but for the most part it's just a waste of rounds and precious spell slots and it's not regularly enough useful to carry. So real Mages don't learn them and don't carry them.

The Baldur's Gate stuff is quite different, because you can delay and kite a bunch of opponents in ways that just doesn't work if the monsters have a human running them, you always have all your spells available, and you always know what's coming up, and the guys in the next room will wait a day or a month for you to open the door. Not to mention the reloads when they win initiative. Fun game, but very different optimisation trends.