Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[icyshadowlord]

I just noticed that there might be more people from the Paizo forums lurking the Den than I thought earlier. So, which one of you guys here is Gorbacz, or is he just stalking?

[tzor]

Paizo has a board!? Is it made of mahogany?

Knotty pine, IIRC.

I'm pretty sure it gave me a splinter the last time I rubbed past it.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Whole lot of stuff

But you prebuff, so those hits that you ignore are wreaking your buffs. You don't keep mirror image up by ignoring weak hits, so you either don't bother casting fucking mirror image and ignore weak enemies or you cast mirror image and everyone fucks with your buff so you murder everyone.

I did not recommend DR, I recommended a spell that obviates the need for a good fort save that has a side effect of free DR and free mind blank will save bonuses. It also gives you free AC, free Dex and tiny size that I didn't mention because everything always hits anyways.

Enervation is fucking awesome and does not need to be explained.




Hey, don't forget circle of death as one of the necromancy mass save-or-dies. Unfortunately it has a stupid HD cap that makes it suck, but it still qualifies (shitty as it may be).

[LR]

Since this is a PF game, your entire party is casters

This line of thinking is the core of all the bad arguments you're making. The party is not all casters. They have some kind of fighting man, a rogue, a wizard, and a divine caster who is expected to heal the party. They have not read through every book ever published, and the group probably does not own every book. They probably believe that Pathfinder is "balanced". The casters will probably be the only reason the party gets anything done, but they will not be aware of it. They don't have to be intentionally nerfing themselves, they just have to believe the ability flavor text.

If you want to win any arguments here, you have to understand that when an encounter is wildly more powerful than advertised and TPKs the party, that is a problem with the game. Complaining about basket-weavers and claiming that every "real" party is hyper-optimized in some way you have yet to fully explain gets us nowhere. 3.5 and Pathfinder are bad games because they draw reasonable people into taking trap options and leave paths to infinite power that smart or lucky players can find. Overly difficult adventures are bad because they are not targeted to a normal party, which is their nominal demographic. There are games aren't bad and don't produce suboptimal characters from reasonable decisions, because the options in those games actually do what they claim to. What problem do you have with that?

[Kaelik]

I feel like such an idiot. Shadow Balls is just Roy's new account, and because of his ban and new account, I wasted all this time with him not on ignore.

Problem rectified.

[Shadow Balls]

Whole lot of stuff

But you prebuff, so those hits that you ignore are wreaking your buffs. You don't keep mirror image up by ignoring weak hits, so you either don't bother casting fucking mirror image and ignore weak enemies or you cast mirror image and everyone fucks with your buff so you murder everyone.

You haven't read PF Mirror Image, have you? Nor have you read my post.

Enervation is fucking awesome and does not need to be explained.

In 3.5 yes. In PF? Utter shit, totally not worth it.

Since this is a PF game, your entire party is casters

This line of thinking is the core of all the bad arguments you're making. The party is not all casters. They have some kind of fighting man, a rogue, a wizard, and a divine caster who is expected to heal the party. They have not read through every book ever published, and the group probably does not own every book. They probably believe that Pathfinder is "balanced". The casters will probably be the only reason the party gets anything done, but they will not be aware of it. They don't have to be intentionally nerfing themselves, they just have to believe the ability flavor text.

Then you have two characters that are worth something, and two characters that are worthless wastes of space. That still gives you a minimum of a 99% chance that one of your two casters acts before the enemy moves. Increasing that to 99.25% is not worth the stat points. That is 1 out of 400 fights in which an enemy that you otherwise wouldn't get the first strike on you get to attack first. That could very well never come up even once even in a very long campaign.

If you want to win any arguments here, you have to understand that when an encounter is wildly more powerful than advertised and TPKs the party, that is a problem with the game. Complaining about basket-weavers and claiming that every "real" party is hyper-optimized in some way you have yet to fully explain gets us nowhere. 3.5 and Pathfinder are bad games because they draw reasonable people into taking trap options and leave paths to infinite power that smart or lucky players can find. Overly difficult adventures are bad because they are not targeted to a normal party, which is their nominal demographic. There are games aren't bad and don't produce suboptimal characters from reasonable decisions, because the options in those games actually do what they claim to. What problem do you have with that?

A basket weaver is someone who is intentionally sabotaging their character. Someone who falls into traps unwittingly is not a basket weaver. It also hardly takes hyper optimization to take certain items, and enact certain routines. Especially since the PF Behir is so pathetic that even if it does full attack you and everything hits you don't even care.

I'm not sure what overly difficult adventures even have to do with this topic, as Red Hand of Doom is easy as fuck, and you can easily take two characters and run through the unmodified module and just destroy everything without blinking. Despite your party being half the recommended size. It would even be easier to do it this way than the normal way, because it means that all rewards are being split 2 ways instead of 4.

[DSMatticus]

The logical extension of Shadow Ball's retardation:
1) Infinite power loop available by level 8.
2) Ergo, if you can't win D&D by level 8, you fail. What the fuck is your problem?

But it's even worse than that, because he's got this retarded "everyone is omniscient and understands the exact terms of the encounters and is therefore perfectly prepared (with esoteric spells and items, if necessary) because I can't tell the difference between a CO challenge and playing the game."

[Blicero]

I feel like such an idiot. Shadow Balls is just Roy's new account, and because of his ban and new account, I wasted all this time with him not on ignore.

Problem rectified.

Roy was actually banned? I assumed he just got bored or ragequit like PR pretended to do.

[Juton]

Roy was actually banned? I assumed he just got bored or ragequit like PR pretended to do.

There was a thread asking about why he was banned, so I assume that was the case.

[TheFlatline]

You are seriously arguing that you ignore non-threats using your hp. If shit is hitting your hp then you're losing because you still don't have all that much of it. You're running counter to your argument of "casters never get touched" by saying "you need high hp." Pick a side, we're at war.

Wait, I thought "geek the mage first" was tactics 101 in a D&D game.

Who the hell doesn't pound on the mage? When I have to run D&D due to peer pressure I flat out warn that playing a mage is hanging a big motherfucking target on your back. In fact, that's why people play fighters- To rush in and occupy the bad guys who would otherwise be geeking the mage in round 1.

Of course, 3.x rules made it harder to contain mages- spells don't fizzle like they did in AD&D largely due to the elimination of casting times, which just made it all the more vital to actually kill/incapacitate the mage instead of just interrupting his spells.

[GâtFromKI]

"Picking Incantatrix" isn't a combo.

Incantratrix is a PrC from an osbcure splatbook. As far as I remember, it's not even a generic splatbook, Incantatrix exists only in FR.

"Casting Glibness, then lying through your teeth" isn't a combo.

Glibness throw you out of the RNG for bluff only. It doesn't make you a godwizard, firstly because it's a bard spell, secondly because you can't bluff the dire tyrannosaur in front of you.

"Color Spray or Sleep or Web" isn't a combo.

Color spray and sleep are mind-affecting effect. They are powerful, but they don't make you a godwizard.

Actually, sleep works only on creatures with 4 HD or less. The full attack of a level 1 barbarian is almost a DNS effect on such a creature. Color spray is powerful because its effect is very good on creatures with many HD, but in the other hand, sleep is nothing special.

"Wishing for a Ring of Three Wishes" isn't a combo.

"I wish to do 3 wish" is a fuzzy wish. I'm not even sure it works.


3.5 breaks when you begin to think outside the box, when you do thing that weren't intended. When you wish for a candle of invocation, when you sell your iron wall to buy a vorpal gnome hooked hammer... Pathfinder breaks at the moment you write "diviner" or "witch, ice tomb" on your sheet. There's really a difference.

[TheFlatline]

Well, you could in theory cast the intelligence buffing spell on the T-Rex to push it's intelligence up to 8 or so, and then bluff the hell out of him.

Which is technically a combo, but one that really hurts my head.

[Psychic Robot]

since when is roy banned
you know what I bet he was the guy posting all the gorn

[darkmaster]

Gorn?

[Maxus]

Gore-porn.

[icyshadowlord]

Ahem. I don't think gorn has anything to do with Pathfinder, but to complain more, I think that the community (as seen in the Paizo forums) is just as big a problem that Pathfinder has as a game as it's actual mechanical flaws, and that makes me sad. I actually kinda like the world setting and such, but being reminded of all the conversations at that forum that made me hurt just from how stupid they were, I am having a hard time even liking that part of it...

[Psychic Robot]

well if the community held paizo responsible and stopped wanking to the thought that jason bulmahn knows what he's doing, we might see an improvement in quality. it's nice to see some realtalk regarding the rogue though

[K]

Ahem. I don't think gorn has anything to do with Pathfinder, but to complain more, I think that the community (as seen in the Paizo forums) is just as big a problem that Pathfinder has as a game as it's actual mechanical flaws, and that makes me sad. I actually kinda like the world setting and such, but being reminded of all the conversations at that forum that made me hurt just from how stupid they were, I am having a hard time even liking that part of it...

I've never been trolled so hard as that forum, and I've been the Den for some time. It honestly makes me wonder if the forum is a net loss in customers considering how it killed all the goodwill that I had for the company.

I mean, I used to buy adventures all the time just to read because the base setting is decent and I like adventures, but after a particularly hard period of trolling where people were stalking me from thread to thread just to specifically troll me I basically just stopped being a customer completely.

[Fuchs]

I still have the adventure path on subscription, though I don't visit their forums anymore; I don't use PF but 3.X with house rules, and I don't use their setting, so I mostly pilfer the fluff for adventure ideas and adapt the paths to something I can use in game, usually gutting a lot of the plot and replacing it with tailored stuff, and dropping 90% of the combat encounters.

[Shadow Balls]

The logical extension of Shadow Ball's retardation:
1) Infinite power loop available by level 8.
2) Ergo, if you can't win D&D by level 8, you fail. What the fuck is your problem?

But it's even worse than that, because he's got this retarded "everyone is omniscient and understands the exact terms of the encounters and is therefore perfectly prepared (with esoteric spells and items, if necessary) because I can't tell the difference between a CO challenge and playing the game."

Cute logical fallacies, but your hyperbole is no puppy.

You are seriously arguing that you ignore non-threats using your hp. If shit is hitting your hp then you're losing because you still don't have all that much of it. You're running counter to your argument of "casters never get touched" by saying "you need high hp." Pick a side, we're at war.

Wait, I thought "geek the mage first" was tactics 101 in a D&D game.

Who the hell doesn't pound on the mage? When I have to run D&D due to peer pressure I flat out warn that playing a mage is hanging a big motherfucking target on your back. In fact, that's why people play fighters- To rush in and occupy the bad guys who would otherwise be geeking the mage in round 1.

Of course, 3.x rules made it harder to contain mages- spells don't fizzle like they did in AD&D largely due to the elimination of casting times, which just made it all the more vital to actually kill/incapacitate the mage instead of just interrupting his spells.

This + there being no such thing is tanking is the reason why the Wizard does what he does.

The main point of this though is that a game is about whatever options within it matter. If that's a hundred things, the game is about a hundred things. If it's ten things, the game is about ten things. And you have an overcentralized meta, which is bad. PF has an overcentralized meta, because only a tiny handful of things are worth playing. And that in turn means that it is reasonable to assume that any PF party is all casters.

None of that particularly matters for the Behir, as it's so easy now you could beat it with just one or two. But in general it is a reasonable assumption based on the meta in which you are playing.

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Shadow, PF mirror image pops if people miss you by 5 or less. That means every attack because you're a fucking wizard and your AC is somewhere in the teens if you bothered casting mage armor.

For high hp on a wizard...

Everyone targets the wizard, but the wizard should be flying, invisible, mirror imaged or any combination of those things the moment he realizes enemies are capable of hitting him (or before if it's a big, scary fight). If the wizard can get hit the wizard ends up dieing pretty quick because every attack will hit him as he is squishy when not covered in layers of magic or floating high above the battlefield.

Weirdly enough, targeting the wizard is often not an option due to the flight + windwall combo or just plain mirror image. Then there's the whole "best offense in the game" thing where he only needs one round to decide what the biggest threat in an encounter is and neutralize it via a "this tactic won't work" spell or "the largest threat is now mind controlled/separated/exploding/blind/vomiting uncontrollably/a frog/dead" spell. Most threats have an answer to one or two of these things, but very few can answer all of them. Getting hit is a losing game because, in spite of all that power, a wizard is still vulnerable to grapples (ends when he gets a ring of FoM) and other casters. None of those threats use an hp track to beat the wizard, they use a "I disable you with one successful hit" track.

That shit isn't even break-neck optimizing, as the wizard is always the biggest threat on the field and everyone knows it. That's just "I know some spells that are good and will use them to not die, since everyone always targets me." The wizard is the primary threat, and if you're open to getting hit you just end up dieing because all their big guns are aimed at you.


Shadow, what the does your level 8 wizard do when he gets grappled by any mook ever? Soak some hits with his high hp while being useless? You can't "ignore weak enemies" because even the gimpiest mook out there can bear hug you to death while you fail to cast spells because PF made it fucking impossible to cast while grappled (no joke, you need to succeed on a fucking DC 35 check just to cast a level 1 spell when grappled by the half-fiend behir, which means you succeed 0% of the time at level 8).

[TOZ]

I just noticed that there might be more people from the Paizo forums lurking the Den than I thought earlier. So, which one of you guys here is Gorbacz, or is he just stalking?

He just lurks and doesn't post. Something about feeding the trolls.

[Shadow Balls]

Shadow, PF mirror image pops if people miss you by 5 or less. That means every attack because you're a fucking wizard and your AC is somewhere in the teens if you bothered casting mage armor.

That is much better than the 3.5 Mirror Image, particularly given that whole buffing at the entrance thing.

For high hp on a wizard...

Everyone targets the wizard, but the wizard should be flying, invisible, mirror imaged or any combination of those things the moment he realizes enemies are capable of hitting him (or before if it's a big, scary fight). If the wizard can get hit the wizard ends up dieing pretty quick because every attack will hit him as he is squishy when not covered in layers of magic or floating high above the battlefield.

And then stuff counters that, because everyone knows the main threat is flying, invisible and mirror imaged. Not immediately, but eventually. Point being the more you layer it on the better, and there is no reason not to do it.

As it is though, the PF Wizard is just as durable as the PF Fighter before casting any spells, and before accounting for the fact he doesn't have to trade full attacks to get anything done. A squishy character he is not.

Shadow, what the does your level 8 wizard do when he gets grappled by any mook ever? Soak some hits with his high hp while being useless? You can't "ignore weak enemies" because even the gimpiest mook out there can bear hug you to death while you fail to cast spells because PF made it fucking impossible to cast while grappled (no joke, you need to succeed on a fucking DC 35 check just to cast a level 1 spell when grappled by the half-fiend behir, which means you succeed 0% of the time at level 8).

Laugh, use standard anti grapple measures, and continue on. Haven't we already been over those? Not to mention while the Behir is missing its mother, the other casters are destroying it.

I really do have to wonder. Are you asking these questions because you honestly don't know the answer, despite this being a board of elitists?

[Pseudo Stupidity]

See, with mirror image you buff at the entrance, and then every mook who throws a spear at you blows up an image. That's incredibly wasteful because you're burning a perfectly good 2nd level spell on stopping total garbage from hitting you in a resource you specifically buffed (hp) for that sort of thing. You're either using hp or spells to protect yourself from hp damage, and you have plenty of hp without heavy con investment because this is pathfinder we're talking about. How often do you take serious amounts of hp damage as a wizard once you get 6th level? You should have at least 7 hp/level by 6th, 8 if you want to burn a feat on it too.

There is no counter to flying mirror imaged wizards except true sight + ranged shit that gets windwalled or being a caster yourself. Thus, the only threats doesn't deal HP damage. The beatsticks aren't running around chugging potions of true seeing anyways because that is retarded. They flail at the other beatsticks while you kill the threat and then make sure none of your beatsticks fall down. That's honestly how PF campaigns work, and you'll go entire sessions without taking any hp damage unless a poorly built caster throws a fucking Xd6 fireball at you that you brush off before strangling him with your pubes or murdering/gimping him in any number of ways. You're just on a different win track than your party, so start acting like it and stop worrying so much about hp. As you level you won't even notice the +/- 1 hp/level.

There are no anti-grapple measures for a wizard who is in a grapple (unless you took conjuration specialization and the teleport subschool). Your only option is "don't get grappled, and if you do hope your party can get you out asap" until you get FoM. How are you getting out of the grapple, Shadow? You already said you're a divination wizard. Anklets of translocation don't exist in pathfinder and contingency is at the level you have a ring of FoM anyways.

[GâtFromKI]

I've never been trolled so hard as that forum, and I've been the Den for some time.

Does it really surprise you?

you can't be trolled on the Den, unless you want it. Look: Pseudo Stupidity want to be trolled by Shadzar's Balls, and therefore he is trolled very hard; you don't want, and therefore you aren't. That's because if you're trolled on the Den, you can tell the troll to go fuck himself, and then ignore him.

In the other hand, the only rule on Paizo's forum is: you have to be polite. You can be hypocrite, disrespectful, a troll, anything you want, as long as you're politely hypocrite, politely disrespectful, a polite troll, or a polite anything you want. Use the fallacy you want to create an unconstructive discussion, as long as it's a polite fallacy, moderation won't do anything. And for a lot of fun, add some non-moderable trolls. Like SKR. Thanks to this kind of persons, some poster are "trollable", and there's many posters without personality who copycat "respectable trolls".

How are you getting out of the grapple, Shadow?

Actually, nobody cares. Please stop asking things to Shadow.