[Pathfinder] More previews up

[Leress]

Page 50 of DMG seems to side with Kaelik about summoning creatures raising the CR or EL of the encounter.

[Ganbare Gincun]

So, to sum up: the general consensus on this forum are that Pathfinder and 4E both suck the sweat from the nuts of hobos, and the Tome rules and Earthdawn are pretty much the only viable platform for a balanced fantasy RPG at this time, correct? If that is the case, is there anything that is even remotely salvageable from the Pathfinder rules that could be integrated into the Tome rules to improve them?

[Psychic Robot]

Economy of actions my ass. When those extra actions aren't very good they aren't worth CR. An Ice Devil who can't summon is not a CR 13 monster. That's the fucking point. An Ice Devil is an EL 13 encounter. When he summons, he is still an EL 13 encounter, because the summons count as part of his abilities, just like when a Wizard summons and just like when a Cleric casts animate dead.

And fuck you and you 80HD Wyrm Strawman. You can't animate an 80HD skeleton of anything until epic. The best a Cleric can pull out is a few 20HD skeletons, and he has to kill 20HD creatures first. And at level 20, 20HD skeletons don't fucking matter, and that's the point.

Strawman does not compute. Exaggeration for the purpose of making a point != strawman. And shit, you can get some nifty undead critters on your travels that aren't 20 HD SKELERTON.

An Ice Devil is a EL 13 encounter. An Ice Devil and 2d4 Bone Devils and 1d6 Bearded Devils none of whom can summon is also an EL 13 encounter.

An Ice Devil and 4 Bone Devils who have not summoned yet is an EL 15 encounter.

If later 1d6 Bearded Devils and 2d4+2 Bone Devils are summoned, it is still an EL 15 encounter.

It says right in the fucking rules that summoning doesn't increase EL.

Does it? Then I am mistaken. Logic would seem to dictate otherwise, but if it's in the rules, then so be it.

You didn't ask what level 13 character can beat an Ice Devil, you asked which can beat CR challenges.

The Chargadin can charge from 600ft away and kill it in a round, that's not going to work every time, but it will work more than the zero percent chance that sword Paladin has.

The Rogue can sneak up any full attack kill it. Again, not every time, but that's okay.

The Warblade can use Scent and maybe something else to narrow the odds, ect. The Frenzied Bersker is just immune to damage and breaks Ice walls as easily as Illusions.

The point is that though the Gelugon can beat them, they can beat lots of other challenges.

The Paladin can't actually stand in melee against anything he can't smite evil on. He just loses. And anything he can use Smite Evil on is capable of negating his Smites.

It's the problem with a class design that requires enemy specific buffs to stand comparable to regular CR monsters.

Characters that don't require enemy specific short term buffs to compete can deal with teleport, and deal with being tricked by Illusions. Paladins can't.

Fair enough.

[Korwin]

Earthdawn?

[Leress]

Earthdawn?

http://www.earthdawn.com/

[Korwin]

the general consensus on this forum are that Pathfinder and 4E both suck the sweat from the nuts of hobos, and the Tome rules and Earthdawn are pretty much the only viable platform

I know the System (vaguely), but this is the first time I read about Earthdawn on this forum...

[Kaelik]

I think he meant when did the gaming den universally support earthdawn, or for that matter even mention it.

I certainly don't remember when this happened.

Strawman does not compute. Exaggeration for the purpose of making a point != strawman.

It's a strawman because one of those is possible and the other is not.

What you did is exactly like claiming that a Ice Devil that summons is not an EL 13 encounter because if the Ice Devil Summons 300 Balors, that's way more powerful than EL 13.

Duh, that's why Ice Devils summoning Balors is not allowed in the rules.

[Psychic Robot]

This makes me sad. It just demonstrates how screwed up the 3e system is. Sigh.

[Grek]

Frank's four stat system (the one that's apparently getting used in TNE if that isn't dead) is also a viable option.

Edit: Really, the system doesn't matter. It's just a matter of handing out interesting and balanced things to do equally to the players and having good playtesting.

[Ganbare Gincun]

I think he meant when did the gaming den universally support earthdawn, or for that matter even mention it.

I certainly don't remember when this happened.

Earthdawn was mentioned briefly as an alternative system in one of the two "Shadowrun Fantasy" threads here. No one voiced any major issues with it at the time.

[erik]

I think he meant when did the gaming den universally support earthdawn, or for that matter even mention it.

I certainly don't remember when this happened.

Earthdawn was mentioned briefly as an alternative system in one of the two "Shadowrun Fantasy" threads here. No one voiced any major issues with it at the time.

Much of the system is laudable, however I detested that some combat spells took multiple rounds to cast, and even then may still fizzlefail.

[Roy]

So, to sum up: the general consensus on this forum are that Pathfinder and 4E both suck the sweat from the nuts of hobos, and the Tome rules and Earthdawn are pretty much the only viable platform for a balanced fantasy RPG at this time, correct? If that is the case, is there anything that is even remotely salvageable from the Pathfinder rules that could be integrated into the Tome rules to improve them?

I have no comment on Earthdawn, as I haven't bothered looking, nor do I think I've even heard that name before now. Otherwise, that's about right yeah. 4.0 tried to do something different and epic failed. PF wasn't even willing to attempt something new and interesting before epic failing.

Now, PF is an example of 'even a broken clock is right twice a day'. They get a few things decently right, but it's in the middle of so many wrong things that it's really hard to care. And those things were stolen from other systems. Like fusing together similar skills? That's Saga. They get negative points for having to plagiarize in a professional capacity. And as they have the reverse Midas going on, they ended up doing it worse than Saga did anyways. So if you were to do some stealing (which is worth no points for non professional projects) you would do it directly from the source and sidestep the analog degradation.

Also, for the most part the system is the work of one person. And while that does mean 'one person outskilling the entire team' carries a lot less weight, it does explain why the whole thing comes across as one person's personal house rules. Because it is. Therefore Tome or whatever could benefit more from the personal house rules of people that actually know what the fuck they're doing.

Or maybe not. Tome is balanced around setting the power level very high. So if you only go for high, or normal it would be out of place, and weaksauce compared to Tome stuff. And chances are, no one bothered making house rules for 'very high' power D&D, because they saw Tome did it for them.

So I don't think there's anything there either.

[TOZ]

There's been a little discussion on the Paizo boards about changes to the monsters. Apparently classless undead get d8 HD and use Cha instead of Con for HP. Supposedly this will keep high CR undead from having to have ridiculously high HD to maintain their CR, and will use DR and such to give them the extra toughness. Thoughts?

[Roy]

There's been a little discussion on the Paizo boards about changes to the monsters. Apparently classless undead get d8 HD and use Cha instead of Con for HP. Supposedly this will keep high CR undead from having to have ridiculously high HD to maintain their CR, and will use DR and such to give them the extra toughness. Thoughts?

DR doesn't stop competent characters. Sure, they're designing with the express intent to make everyone incompetent at the whole level appropriateness thing, but still. And if they're redesigning the MM... well given their track record with much less competent things I expect a work that makes the Monster Manual 2 look like a paragon of quality and excellent design. Remember, these are the people who thinks encounters that can be annihilated by a light breeze, but that can do 600-1,500 if they get a turn with no miss and no save is good design. Which is from the MM2, by the way. So we know what sort of MOBs they favor. And yes, the use of that word is intentional. To play intelligent foes would require intelligent creators. So they just throw lots of numbers around... except they aren't good at that either, so they have to gimp everyone in order to design anything. And they fail at failing at failing, so they made the casters better.

So basically, they're a long chain of fuck ups.

And oh yeah, what do you mean by 'classless'? Because if its stuff like skeletons and zombies, they now need even more to make up for the fact they have -2 HP per HD. If it's the special ability undead that don't have class levels they'll likely end up a bit better. Though that's basically restricted to a few incorporeals, and... hm.

I just realized a Dread Wraith would fucking annihilate any of the Paizo gimps. Use a normal Wraith against the lower level ones so this actually means something.

After all, they all have terrible saves, even the Paladin because they don't realize this is a game filled with 'You must be this tall to play' moments and therefore forget about basic and obvious things like cloaks of resistance on every character.

It goes from 1d12 to 1d8+7, increasing total HP from 104 to 184. The normal wraith has exactly the same HP either way.

Either way, it can just chill out in an object, using its incorporeal sense to know when its target is close, then attack it through the ground or walls or whatever. 25% miss chance due to swinging blindly at a square + Blind Fight. But the dread wraith hits AC on a 2+, and the normal one doesn't have much harder of a time, so let's call it 55-70% accuracy with each hit and call it a day.

The Paizo gimp basically can't do anything except ready an action to do something the enemy won't care about. But the Wraiths quickly score Con kills due to the huge downward HP spikes those impose, not to mention that makes their saves suck even worse. And even the 5 temp HP they get every time they do that can't be completely ignored, as they do such low damage, and have nothing to reliably hit them with that that fluff text measure is actually a decent mitigator against them. Even though they're higher level.

If they move it doesn't matter, the wraith moves faster and can find them via incorporeal sense without ever coming out into the open except to attack, where they still have cover. And it only has one attack anyways, so it is not penalized in the slightest by moving.

What's that you say? They're in a party? Even worse, because the gimp is actively making the battle harder by getting themselves owned and Wraithified. Granted, that doesn't matter for the Dread Wraith, since its spawn are still normal Wraiths. But it does matter for the lower level examples, that only get a normal Wraith.

Edit: I wrote Liches, but that's wrong. They have to have class levels. Then I was going to write vampires, but they have class levels too. And those are the main ones that need it. So this seriously applies to almost nothing except skeletons and zombies, which do not have very good Cha scores at all and just became super fragile and entirely useless as a result. Lulz, 1d8-5 HD.

[NineInchNall]

There's been a little discussion on the Paizo boards about changes to the monsters. Apparently classless undead get d8 HD and use Cha instead of Con for HP. Supposedly this will keep high CR undead from having to have ridiculously high HD to maintain their CR, and will use DR and such to give them the extra toughness. Thoughts?

Great, another way to favor casters (reduce undead hd/saves) while fucking Fighters (maintain HP and add/increase DR).

Who the fuck are these retarded monkeys, and may we have a linky?

[Username17]

There's been a little discussion on the Paizo boards about changes to the monsters. Apparently classless undead get d8 HD and use Cha instead of Con for HP. Supposedly this will keep high CR undead from having to have ridiculously high HD to maintain their CR, and will use DR and such to give them the extra toughness. Thoughts?

That would have been a much better way to design things. Fuck, just give most undead a Con score. Nothing positive is actually represented by not putting Con scores on corporeal undead.

But it's pretty laughable to claim that this stuff is in any way compatible with 3.5 if you explicitly can't pull monsters out of the monster manual. And indeed as NIN points out: such a change by itself hurts Fighters and boosts Casters.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Technically you still can pull a "d12 hd" undead out of the MM and put it in the game - it'll just be tougher in some aspects than the PF undead.

[Roy]

Hold it. Have there been any indications that HD count has actually been reduced or is planning to be reduced? Because it sounds more like they're doing that because they're trying to prevent the need for huge piles of HD to be relevant, and aren't actually removing any of the huge piles that already exist.

Though if they did do the latter, you're right in that that's more of their SOP - casters get better and non casters get worse.

Let's go back to the Dread Wraith. Well, it has 184 HP instead of 104. And that's literally almost double. In order for its HP to be about the same, you would have to reduce it from 16 HD down to 9, which gives 103.5. It also reduces saves by 2/2/4 and reduces save DCs of its own abilities by 4... which gimps it pretty heavily. It also loses one feat for what that's worth, which is not very much. Of course it would still annihilate PF gimps, but that's because they are further below the level appropriate bar than it now is.

Oh yeah, and something else I'll repost on.

I wrote Liches before, but that's wrong. They have to have class levels. Then I was going to write vampires, but they have class levels too. And those are the main ones that need it. So this seriously applies to almost nothing except skeletons and zombies, which do not have very good Cha scores at all and just became super fragile and entirely useless as a result. Lulz, 1d8-5 HD.

Seriously, how many intelligent undead are there that do not typically have class levels? It's a short list. And now the mindless ones are completely useless.

[hogarth]

DR doesn't stop competent characters. Sure, they're designing with the express intent to make everyone incompetent at the whole level appropriateness thing, but still. And if they're redesigning the MM... well given their track record with much less competent things I expect a work that makes the Monster Manual 2 look like a paragon of quality and excellent design.

Yes, they're redesigning the Monster Manual. And yes, that makes it not very backward compatible. And yes, I have some concerns about how well it'll turn out (I think Sean K Reynolds is doing a lot of the work on that one).

I don't suppose anyone here picked up the Pathfinder Bestiary preview at Free RPG Day...

[virgil]

Some of the people I game with did, but I haven't been near it recently. I do know that they're not making the undead, plant, or construct type give an automatic immunity to criticals and sneak attacks; which from their prior talk means that the incorporeal subtype will have it instead.

[TOZ]

Relevant thread here.

The basic idea is that for slow BAB you have a d6 HD, for medium you have d8 HD, for fast BAB you have a d10 HD. Barbarians and dragons are special cases, and thus get a d12 HD.

Undead do now get their Charisma bonus to HP rolls, and undead will generally have pretty good Charisma scores as a result. As a general rule, an average undead creature is about as tough as an average non undead creature. Many undead will have some form of damage reduction or other defense to model the fact that they're harder to kill than living things, though...

Well... the way undead ended up working in 3.5 was pretty lame. You had to give high CR undead such ridiculously high HD so that their HP would be where they needed to be that all undead became not only effectively immune to turn undead, but also had ridiculous Will saves, stupid-high save DCs for special attacks, and several other unfortunate problems.

It works a lot better and more balanced in PFRPG by giving them d8 HD, Cha bonus to HP, and as necessary damage reduction and other special defensive abilities.

Of all the monsters in the final book, undead have gotten the biggest makeover. The problems mentioned by James were pretty terrible at higher CRs making undead mostly unusable. I won't get into too many specifics, but undead on the whole gained hp, increased in BAB and generally became a bit cooler (the sample lich has over 100 hp for a creature of the same CR as the old sample Lich).

And the advancement rules are a whole lot easier. The old line on monsters was mostly arbitrary anyway.

[Username17]

Sigh. Yes, the basic rules are pointless kludge. But they are still kludging things, so no change really. The whole thing where undead required a wand charge to critical was silly, but it worked. The thing where undead needed to gain a lot more hit dice than anything else was silly, but it worked.

See, Undead never should have had any special rules. Being Undead should have just been a subtype that makes you take damage from cure spells. Seriously, that's all it should have been. The fact that it cam with a bunch of rules baggage was retarded, and necessitated the creation of a bunch more rules to bring it back to normality as far as basic combat numbers went.

But here's the thing: if you change it now, you're not reducing special rules, you're increasing special rules. It's totally more shit to have to learn, because people already learned the kludges and the workarounds to the kludges. It would be one thing if they were going to go all the way, but as far as I can tell they are not - it's just another half-assed patch and frankly I don't see the point.

If you want to see how much work it is to overhaul the undead in D&D until they are functioning the way they are supposed to - check out the Tome of Necromancy. That's a lot of work, and I have no faith whatsoever in Pathfinder to actually do that much work. Indeed, it seems like they are just throwing random stuff around. If you're going to do an overhaul so total that the result is unrecognizable, you should get rid of all the bullshit, but they aren't doing that.

-Username17

[Roy]

DR doesn't stop competent characters. Sure, they're designing with the express intent to make everyone incompetent at the whole level appropriateness thing, but still. And if they're redesigning the MM... well given their track record with much less competent things I expect a work that makes the Monster Manual 2 look like a paragon of quality and excellent design.

Yes, they're redesigning the Monster Manual. And yes, that makes it not very backward compatible. And yes, I have some concerns about how well it'll turn out (I think Sean K Reynolds is doing a lot of the work on that one).

I don't suppose anyone here picked up the Pathfinder Bestiary preview at Free RPG Day...

Someone ward me against Int damage and I'll TPB it or something. Assuming anyone actually cared enough to steal it.

Some of the people I game with did, but I haven't been near it recently. I do know that they're not making the undead, plant, or construct type give an automatic immunity to criticals and sneak attacks; which from their prior talk means that the incorporeal subtype will have it instead.

Which actually sounds good until you remember how badly they gimped Rogues.

I had to look at that 'wand charge critical' thing several times. That's a really fucking roundabout way of saying Gravestrike. It's written more like 'a wand charge criticaling on undead does something special' which just doesn't make any fucking sense.

The rest of that is dead on though.

And on an unrelated side point, has anyone but me noticed how very useless Fortitude save based effects are?

First, there aren't that many enemies that even have a low Fortitude save. And no, casters don't have low Fortitude saves. Most enemies are either hulking brutes or solid at everything.

Second, the typical Fortitude effect is something like death or poison or whatever... and creatures immune to one of those tend to be immune to all of them.

Third, most of the enemies that do have a low Fortitude save are immune to the aforementioned typical Fortitude save effects.

So that leaves you affecting... Rogues, and that's about it. Except you can hit them with Will instead. And that will probably work as well or better, because most Rogues have Con > Wis and certainly do not have it as the other way around. So even if you are actively assaulting a Thieves' Guild, which is the only time this will come up you can just do the Glitterdust, got them all thing instead.

There's a few random edge cases like Disintegrate vs low HP low Fort undead you might do if you know it's coming but other than that...

Even Reflex is better off, because there are a very small number of meaningful Reflex save based effects... and because they are so obscure, enemies are rarely packing the counters, and are probably at least semi neglecting that save because 99% of the time it doesn't fucking matter because it's just damage.

And of course, Will = win.

So are there even any mainstream uses for Fortitude effects?

[Yugo]

See, Undead never should have had any special rules. Being Undead should have just been a subtype that makes you take damage from cure spells. Seriously, that's all it should have been. The fact that it cam with a bunch of rules baggage was retarded, and necessitated the creation of a bunch more rules to bring it back to normality as far as basic combat numbers went.

The fixes to undeads' (and constructs') hit point problem should have be simple. Tag on a special ability to the monster that says: "You gain X hit points for each Hit Dice you have." Similar abilities for BaB and saves should also exist. This would allow designers to enforce HD = CR for all monsters and standardize some of the fundamental rules between monsters and PCs. Allowing monsters whose HD != CR makes creating balanced rules more unnecessarily difficult.

[mean_liar]

I think he meant when did the gaming den universally support earthdawn, or for that matter even mention it.

I certainly don't remember when this happened.

Earthdawn was mentioned briefly as an alternative system in one of the two "Shadowrun Fantasy" threads here. No one voiced any major issues with it at the time.

I mentioned it, and explicitly said that I hadn't even played it.

Plus, I am not a valued member of this or any community. *sob*