Pathfinder Is Still Bad

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hogarth
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Post by hogarth »

icyshadowlord wrote:Anyone taken a look at the Mythic Rules thing they are planning now? I think they dropped a preview on some blog.
My predictions:
[*]The lower mythic "levels" will get playtested way more than the higher mythic "levels", as usual with D&D.
[*]In the past, people have complained that Paizo's adventure paths have gone from fighting Kyuss and Demogorgon to fighting generic wizards and bards and stuff, and the explanation is that they would need epic rules to properly run an adventure path with a really powerful bad guy. (This is notwithstanding the fact that the adventure paths featuring Kyuss and Demogorgon used little or nothing from the Epic Level Handbook.) I predict that when they come out with their mythic adventure path, their mythic bad guys will almost certainly be beatable by a party of non-mythic adventurers.
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Post by LeadPal »

hogarth wrote:I predict that when they come out with their mythic adventure path, their mythic bad guys will almost certainly be beatable by a party of non-mythic adventurers.
I'm not so sure about this one. I suspect this will get pointed out in the first round of playtesting, and it will be resolved by tacking on "you must be this tall to ride" mechanics. And probably a few nerfs to existing material, because it's not Mythic that's wrong, it's the WORLD that's wrong.
Last edited by LeadPal on Tue Sep 25, 2012 10:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

So should we be expecting nerfs to terrain-editing, illusions, extra tokens, stealth, and flight then? Those things typically and asymmetrically bone supposedly high-level critters made by unwitting designers.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Juton »

If Pathfinder's developers where competent they'd use mythic levels as a sneaky way to bolt on legitimate super powers to all those DMFs Lago complains about. We know that they are not competent, so I suspect mythic levels will be pretty much useless, worse than taking levels in a caster and probably on par with low optimization Fighter levels.
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Post by LeadPal »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:So should we be expecting nerfs to terrain-editing, illusions, extra tokens, stealth, and flight then? Those things typically and asymmetrically bone supposedly high-level critters made by unwitting designers.
Oh no, I'm sure it'll still be possible to become fully immune to half the mythic bestiary with such methods. But my guess is that searching for loopholes in their defence would be a pain in the ass, because they'd slap things like "immunity to non-mythic ability drain" across the board after the first round of playtesting. I doubt they'd do anything deeper than that, though, so it'd be trivial for entry-level mythic characters to walk all over everything in the game.
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Post by Slade »

Tier 3 (Tier is a word for Mythic level) Mythic Rules had you get two Intiative rolls: you got two turns/round. Go one higher and lower score. Second had a -20 penalty.

This means everyone has a At Will Belt of Battle.

Sadly, powerful enemy will as well (depending on enemy Tier). The example Minotaur showed Tiers added 1 CR each.

So having two turns/round is only worth +3 CR. Granted since there are stil no details how you "level" a Tier, we don't know how easy it will be.
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Post by Manxome »

Slade wrote:So having two turns/round is only worth +3 CR.
"Only"?

Am I remembering correctly that doubling the number of monsters you're fighting is supposedly a +2 CR? That doubles the number of attacks they can make, and also their total HP, number of spell slots, etc.; not to mention the tactical benefits of being in two places at once.

There are certainly some things you can do by taking two turns that you couldn't do by having your twin fight next to you, but it is not obvious to me that it would necessarily be better overall, let alone so much better that adding another +1 CR would still be undervaluing it.
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Post by Koumei »

Well, let's say you really wanted to boost a Minotaur by 3 CR. You could:
A) Add something like 9 racial HD if you're allowed to do that.
B) Add something like 6 Cleric levels (nonassociated, bitches!)
C) Add 3 levels of Barbarian or what-the-fuck-ever
D) Add two more minotaurs
E) Add some derpy template or combination thereof
F) Add 3 Tiers of Mythic. The third one of these lets it take a second turn each round, I don't know if it does anything else at all. The first two presumably also do something good for it?

I'll let you decide which of these is best. A and B are looking pretty good at the moment, but if the other Mythic stuff you get is decent, then I'll add F to the list. When you're 3 levels over the Minotaur, I'm not sure adding another pair will really do that much good.
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Post by RobbyPants »

(As pointed out by Libertad at Minmaxboards:)


Monkey Lunge:
this retarded feat wrote: Monkey Lunge (Combat)

You can quickly recover from your lunges, helping you to avoid counterattacks.

Prerequisites: Lunge, Acrobatics 1 rank.

Benefit: As a standard action, you can use the Lunge feat to increase the reach of your melee attacks by 5 feet until the end of your turn, without suffering a penalty to your AC. You cannot use this feat if you carry a medium or heavy load.

Normal: You take a -2 penalty to your AC until your next turn when making a lunge attack.
Holy shit! That's worse than Prone Shooter! At least that shitty feat does nothing for the cost of a feat. This one makes it so you do nothing for a round... and costs you a feat.

I'm so glad PF came along and fixed 3E.
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Post by virgil »

But, but, Pathfinder had an awesome public playtest and everyone gave their feedback to help the game.

Image

Sadly, this hits home to me. I had a friend who started his own RPG amongst friends and really went on about feedback, and my first critique got me booted and ostracized by him and the entire circle of friends (extreme alpha of the group). This was before I even heard of the Den, so I didn't even know how to give harsh criticisms.
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Post by ishy »

RobbyPants wrote:Monkey Lunge
(...)
Holy shit! That's worse than Prone Shooter! At least that shitty feat does nothing for the cost of a feat. This one makes it so you do nothing for a round... and costs you a feat.

I'm so glad PF came along and fixed 3E.
Yeah check out page 83 of this thread for people talking about it too.
Last edited by ishy on Fri Sep 28, 2012 1:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RobbyPants »

ishy wrote:Yeah check out page 83 of this thread for people talking about it too.
Oops! I remembered Prone Shooter, but not that one.

I say, once a thread hits 100 pages*, I reserve the right to forget what was in the previous pages.


* Or any other arbitrary number that needs to change in the future when I do it again. Hell, I'll set this number to 1 and call it a day...
Last edited by RobbyPants on Fri Sep 28, 2012 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by hogarth »

Slade wrote:Tier 3 (Tier is a word for Mythic level) Mythic Rules had you get two Intiative rolls: you got two turns/round. Go one higher and lower score. Second had a -20 penalty.
According to Jason Bulmahn on some podcast, the second turn is not free -- it costs you one "mythic point" from your "mythic pool". Still beats a double-strength Cure Light Wounds spell, though.
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Post by virgil »

Personally, since mythic players are going to be expected to only fight mythic threats, that bonus turn each round is going to mean jack. If you limit its use with a ki pool or whatever, then I am severely unimpressed, because that's akin to saying "you've reached epic levels, cast Greater Celerity 3/day."
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hogarth
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Post by hogarth »

virgil wrote:since mythic players are going to be expected to only fight mythic threats
Where did you read this?
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Post by virgil »

hogarth wrote:
virgil wrote:since mythic players are going to be expected to only fight mythic threats
Where did you read this?
I'm predicting the average gamer's mentality. A super-majority of PF players IME continued their behavior of excising petty fights (EL < APL), and made the game naught but boss battles. They wouldn't do this as much in the single-digit levels, because they made such crappy characters that even the petty fights would be a challenge, but starting at mid-levels it would become the rule. Even their plots and campaign designs would do this, as they rarely have the ability to conceive of epic 'mooks' without sneering. While the mythic rules may allow low level play, the mentality I know from PF players are going to mentally place it in the same category of high level, so they'll be prone to play it that way.

Now, I may be mistaken as to their purpose with mythic rules, but this is only my impression.
Last edited by virgil on Fri Sep 28, 2012 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Slade »

Pathfinder releashed a new Ring of Blink (ring that allows full attack sneak attack).
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/rings/decoy-ring

Gives Invisibility condition (not spell, so similar to G. Invis like 3.5 Ninja) whenever you are helpless or use Withdraw action.
Withdraw action doesn't require you to withdraw, just use action, so withdraw to enemy (drawing weapon) then full sneak on your next turn.
You can't be attacked usually as invisible so this works.
In addition, 4 dupplicates of you appear running around so acts like a semi-mirror image (unless DM cheats and so enemy knows which is you)
Oh, and allies allows can see you.

Con:
Anything that defeats invisibility
Only last 3 rounds per use (unlimited use)

Price: 12K
Being better than Ring of Invisibility? Priceless.
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RobbyPants
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Post by RobbyPants »

So, after all that crap about the Ring of Blinking... they just changed their minds?

Or is this something that's going to get stealth errataed as soon as they realize that it lets rogues use Sneak Attack more than once in a blue moon?
Last edited by RobbyPants on Fri Oct 19, 2012 5:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Foxwarrior »

How are you converting the Withdraw Action into an unsheathe action? As far as I can tell, that would be like taking a Full Attack action as an AoO because you were attacking while full.
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Post by Username17 »

Foxwarrior wrote:How are you converting the Withdraw Action into an unsheathe action? As far as I can tell, that would be like taking a Full Attack action as an AoO because you were attacking while full.
If you have a BAB of +1 or more you can draw or sheathe a weapon whenever you move. And Withdraw allows you to make a regular move. But I don't know why you'd care one way or the other: D&D characters do not spend a lot of time unarmed and drawing ammunition is a free action in any case.

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Post by Foxwarrior »

Ohh, I missed the "your next turn" part. Well, it only lets you full attack two thirds of the time.
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hogarth
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Post by hogarth »

RobbyPants wrote:So, after all that crap about the Ring of Blinking... they just changed their minds?
I think it's much more likely that whoever wrote the description of the item got sloppy and didn't realise that people would claim that "invisibility = greater invisibility" without a disclaimer saying otherwise.
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Post by John Magnum »

It's actually fairly clear in the rules that it gives invisibility that doesn't drop when you attack. It doesn't grant "as the spell Invisibility", it grants the special ability invisibility, which has absolutely nothing in its description about disappearing when you attack. You can check the hyperlink in the item's PFSRD page: It goes to the special ability, not the spell. It's pretty blatant that the invisibility granted lasts three rounds regardless of whether or not you attack, and you'd have to be deliberately reading it with an eye toward nerfing the item to interpret the rules otherwise.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

John Magnum wrote:It's pretty blatant that the invisibility granted lasts three rounds regardless of whether or not you attack, and you'd have to be deliberately reading it with an eye toward nerfing the item to interpret the rules otherwise.
Thus according to Rule Negative Two the untrue player-screwing interpretation of 'you lose your invisibility, ring doesn't work' is in fact the correct interpretation. Or rather, the only interpretation that you should expect to use. What with Mr. 'write feats to raise money for Kitty Cat' guy being Pathfinder's No. 2 guy.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Fri Oct 19, 2012 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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hogarth
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Post by hogarth »

John Magnum wrote:[..] you'd have to be deliberately reading it with an eye toward nerfing the item to interpret the rules otherwise.
Uh...right.

Let me get this straight:
The idea that one of the writers for Paizo was lazy and/or confused and/or stupid when writing that item is so unbelievable to you, that the very suggestion of it must mean that the suggester has some kind of ulterior motive?
Last edited by hogarth on Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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