[Pathfinder] More previews up

[hogarth]

Here's the Pathfinder cleric "preview":
http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lacj

[Roy]

Amusingly, this one isn't that bad, relative to the others. Still terrible, but better. It's also the lowest level. Hm.

Apparently they further nerfed the already action wasting channeling. Also, I found this hilarious.

Divine Power was significantly altered to prevent the cleric from becoming a better melee fighter than the fighter with just a spell or two. Now the spell grants a bonus to attacks and damage rolls, temporary hit points, and an additional attack whenever the cleric makes a full attack (just like haste).

Let's see...

Divine Power (before) = attack, damage, temp HP.

Divine Power (after) = attack, damage, temp HP, haste granted attack.

How is this a nerf again? The only way it could possibly be is if it granted lower bonuses. But it doesn't say that, it just writes it as if changing it to ADD AN EXTRA BENEFIT is making it weaker. So in other words, they rolled fucking Righteous Wrath of the Faithful into it.

Of course we all know why they think that's a nerf. They think BAB, particularly BAB over 15 actually matters, when it does not and they have done nothing to change this. That last attack isn't going to hit anything anyways, which just makes BAB an attack bonus. And there are plenty of those. Especially for a Cleric.

Not to mention they think a spellcaster hitting things with a stick actually matters. Or scratching them with fucking fire evocation for that matter.

TL;DR version: Standard Paizil drivel, only moderated by the fact even they have a hard time making CoDzilla look too bad. Oh and for all their laughable claims, given their sample Fighter outclassing him, even at level 8 vs 14 is trivially easy.

[Kaelik]

Worst domains ever.

[Parthenon]

This is retarded. They talk about getting rid of Turn Undead and changing it to Channel Energy. Then, in the feats list she has "Turn Undead" as a feat. WTF?

My issue with Death Ward is not that its too powerful; it's that it is only 1 min/level, so it causes one PC out of 4 to be immune to death effects for one encounter per day. Yeah it can be chained but then its a level 6 or so spell and still helps for one encounter. I wouldn't mind nerfing to just give a bonus to resists if it always gave a save versus negative energy effects such as Negative Levels, and if it was 1 hour/level.

My main issue though is the name of her sun god: Sarenrae? That is one syllable too long and gives me the idea that all the gods names will be confusing and irritating.

[hogarth]

This is retarded. They talk about getting rid of Turn Undead and changing it to Channel Energy. Then, in the feats list she has "Turn Undead" as a feat. WTF?

I guess the point is that "channeling energy" doesn't make undead run away but "turning undead" does. They made the "turning" bit optional (via a feat); during the playtest there were complaints about how annoying it is to chase down fleeing enemies.

My main issue though is the name of her sun god: Sarenrae? That is one syllable too long and gives me the idea that all the gods names will be confusing and irritating.

Fluff, schmuff.

Divine Power (before) = attack, damage, temp HP.

Divine Power (after) = attack, damage, temp HP, haste granted attack.

How is this a nerf again?

The attack bonus is now a luck bonus, not an unnamed increase to BAB. So it doesn't stack with Divine Favor, for instance.

[Judging__Eagle]

Brier Pazio and Brier Paizils: Whoooo-hooooo!

You take that you mangey Cleric! You take it good and hard! Try to be aweome will you? Try to be one of the only two good classes in the game, will you?

Here, take that!, and that! and how about a little that!

Oh yeah? Try to get full BaB will yew?

Well, too bad, we're just going to give you an extra attack instead!

Brier Cleric: Oh nooooesss! Whatever you do, please, pless, plzzz don't take away my BaB and give me an extra attack at my highest to-hit bonus! Whatever you do, don't do that!

I'm sure that's exactly what happened. Exactly like that.

[hogarth]

Brier Cleric: Oh nooooesss! Whatever you do, please, pless, plzzz don't take away my BaB and give me an extra attack at my highest to-hit bonus! Whatever you do, don't do that!

I'm sure that's exactly what happened. Exactly like that.

3.5 Divine Power + 3.5 Haste + 3.5 Divine Favor >> PFRPG Divine Power + PFRPG Haste + PFRPG Divine Favor

(And it's "Br'er", not "Brier" -- unless you're thinking of the Canadian men's curling championships.)

[Judging__Eagle]

Well, yes, of course, but are they real nerfs when compared to everything else in PFRPG?

That stands for what though? Paizo Failure Role Playing Game?

[Username17]

The character is inferior when maximally buffed including spells that are not on their list, but better when using only spells on their list. I am unable to see that as a meaningful nerf.

-Username17

[hogarth]

The character is inferior when maximally buffed including spells that are not on their list, but better when using only spells on their list. I am unable to see that as a meaningful nerf.

-Username17

Most melee fighters (clerics or not) have Boots of Speed on their "list", in my experience.

I was addressing Judging Eagle who seemed to be implying that they made it better, which is just plain wrong. A luck bonus (that doesn't stack with Divine Favor) is demonstrably worse than an unnamed bonus. An extra attack that doesn't stack with Haste is demonstrably worse than one or more extra attacks that do stack with Haste. Whether that's a "meaningful nerf" or not is debatable, but it's certainly not an improvement.

[Roy]

My issue with Death Ward is not that its too powerful; it's that it is only 1 min/level, so it causes one PC out of 4 to be immune to death effects for one encounter per day. Yeah it can be chained but then its a level 6 or so spell and still helps for one encounter. I wouldn't mind nerfing to just give a bonus to resists if it always gave a save versus negative energy effects such as Negative Levels, and if it was 1 hour/level.

7. And turning immunities into resists is a fast track to uselessness. Either you already have enough resist so now the spell doesn't make any difference, you have so little resist that you're still fucked, or you have enough so the spell makes you near immune which just takes the bad part of immunities and the bad part of iterative probability without any good parts to balance it out.

Of course, making useless content means they're having a good day, so eh.

I guess the point is that "channeling energy" doesn't make undead run away but "turning undead" does. They made the "turning" bit optional (via a feat); during the playtest there were complaints about how annoying it is to chase down fleeing enemies.

Of course, scratching them for piddly shit is not an improvement.

The attack bonus is now a luck bonus, not an unnamed increase to BAB. So it doesn't stack with Divine Favor, for instance.

And if you don't have Persist, you aren't going to use Divine Favor anyways. If you do, you'll be a CoDzilla regardless. So it still amounts to bonus = bonus. Make your Will save to disbelieve their tricks.

And that last attack that won't hit anything anyways isn't good for anything, so that's not helping it.

Brier Pazio and Brier Paizils: Whoooo-hooooo!

You take that you mangey Cleric! You take it good and hard! Try to be aweome will you? Try to be one of the only two good classes in the game, will you?

Here, take that!, and that! and how about a little that!

Oh yeah? Try to get full BaB will yew?

Well, too bad, we're just going to give you an extra attack instead!

Brier Cleric: Oh nooooesss! Whatever you do, please, pless, plzzz don't take away my BaB and give me an extra attack at my highest to-hit bonus! Whatever you do, don't do that!

I'm sure that's exactly what happened. Exactly like that.

I think you're onto something. Because extra attack at full bonus > extra attack at -15. Just one thing though. Only two classes? Even if you're only counting core only, there are at least three. Could go higher if you lower the bar below top tier.

Brier Cleric: Oh nooooesss! Whatever you do, please, pless, plzzz don't take away my BaB and give me an extra attack at my highest to-hit bonus! Whatever you do, don't do that!

I'm sure that's exactly what happened. Exactly like that.

3.5 Divine Power + 3.5 Haste + 3.5 Divine Favor >> PFRPG Divine Power + PFRPG Haste + PFRPG Divine Favor

(And it's "Br'er", not "Brier" -- unless you're thinking of the Canadian men's curling championships.)

Except since Paizil Failure RPG makes Divine Power give you the part of Haste you care about, and either way you don't need Divine Favor is saying 3 spells > 1 spell really saying much? It's certainly better than any one of those 3 spells. So it's still more Bizarro Paizil Logic.

The character is inferior when maximally buffed including spells that are not on their list, but better when using only spells on their list. I am unable to see that as a meaningful nerf.

-Username17

Most melee fighters (clerics or not) have Boots of Speed on their "list", in my experience.

I was addressing Judging Eagle who seemed to be implying that they made it better, which is just plain wrong. A luck bonus (that doesn't stack with Divine Favor) is demonstrably worse than an unnamed bonus. An extra attack that doesn't stack with Haste is demonstrably worse than one or more extra attacks that do stack with Haste. Whether that's a "meaningful nerf" or not is debatable, but it's certainly not an improvement.

Except that when there are either no practical ways of getting that luck bonus or plenty of replacements it is identical. Also, now you don't need the boots or the spells since you have Divine Power and Righteous Wrath in one package. Which, compared to an attack you might as well not even bother rolling...

[hogarth]

Except that when there are either no practical ways of getting that luck bonus or plenty of replacements it is identical.

I've seen clerics buff with both Divine Favor and Divine Power in 3.5. Maybe that's not possible in your game. Fine; life is a rich tapestry. But still "identical" is not the same as "better" (which is what JE was implying).

Also, now you don't need the boots or the spells since you have Divine Power and Righteous Wrath in one package. Which, compared to an attack you might as well not even bother rolling...

Again, maybe no one is casting Haste (or Righteous Wrath or Snake's Swiftness or etc., etc.) on the party in your games. In that case, Divine Power is better. But in my experience getting Haste (either from boots or from a party member) is pretty standard.

[violence in the media]

Of course, scratching them for piddly shit is not an improvement.

This is just a minor tangent, and not a critique of your assessment of the current Paizo topic, but I'm trying to figure out what you consider appropriate or significant damage. You use the phrase "scratching/flailing for piddly shit" pretty frequently and I wondered if there was a percentage of hp or total value where the term ceased to qualify? Is OHKO-level damage the only acceptible quantity? 50% of target hp? 33%? 10%?

[Roy]

Except that when there are either no practical ways of getting that luck bonus or plenty of replacements it is identical.

I've seen clerics buff with both Divine Favor and Divine Power in 3.5. Maybe that's not possible in your game. Fine; life is a rich tapestry. But still "identical" is not the same as "better" (which is what JE was implying).

If you do not have access to Persist you are losing more damage from lost actions or lost surprise rounds from attempting to cast before combat than by using it. If you do have access to Persist your stats are going to be the highest in the party regardless. No, Quicken is not an acceptable substitute, you have better things to do with 5th level spell slots or 3/day charges on an expensive item than +3 to hit and to damage with your auto attacks. Indeed, the Righteous Wrath I keep mentioning gives +3 to hit, damage, and the haste attack and it still isn't worth it without Persist, though to be fair quickening that is not 5th level/lesser rod material. And if you have access to DMM you have access to Persist. They're in the same book. So no matter how you look at it, it doesn't matter.

Again, maybe no one is casting Haste (or Righteous Wrath or Snake's Swiftness or etc., etc.) on the party in your games. In that case, Divine Power is better. But in my experience getting Haste (either from boots or from a party member) is pretty standard.

Haste burns a round that could be spent winning the fucking combat. It falls under all the same things as Divine Power. Righteous Wrath however can be Persisted, and that's what the party is doing right now. Like I said, it saves you the trouble of the boots. Which, given there are multiple must have foot slot items is a very good thing.

Of course, scratching them for piddly shit is not an improvement.

This is just a minor tangent, and not a critique of your assessment of the current Paizo topic, but I'm trying to figure out what you consider appropriate or significant damage. You use the phrase "scratching/flailing for piddly shit" pretty frequently and I wondered if there was a percentage of hp or total value where the term ceased to qualify? Is OHKO-level damage the only acceptible quantity? 50% of target hp? 33%? 10%?

First thing: Scratching and flailing do not mean the same thing there. Scratching means low damage. Flailing is the same, but also means low accuracy and is thus most commonly used in reference to Monks. The piddly shit part makes it clear you don't care about their damage. Pretty much exactly what the context implies, but just making sure. The distinction is important because the default accuracy is 95% after the first few levels, so having low accuracy is all the more telling.

As for how much is considered acceptable, the amount varies depending on level. As enemy HP scale exponentially, and HP damage does absolutely nothing until Critical Existence Failure kicks in it takes quite a lot to qualify as good damage. That build there was doing something like 12-32 (average 22) at level 8 with a save for half (that I think is a Will save). Inferior to blasting, which is in itself inferior to pretty much everything else. By comparison, level 5 enemies average 56.24 HP. So you're looking at maybe taking off a quarter of a mook's health on average (and actually level appropriate things will have much more HP). And that's your entire turn. At least turning actually removed enemies from the fight, even if you did have to run after them. This just slightly annoys them.

I'd say as a general rule if you cannot kill an enemy of your level in a single round or MAYBE two rounds, you are scratching/flailing for piddly shit because no one cares about your damage output. I say maybe because there are only a few enemies that cannot easily kill you in one round and only a few non caster builds that can try to prevent that from happening. And of course if you're a gish, you don't have a problem so eh.

Just to give an example, I currently have a level 16 with an auto attack sequence like this with PA 2: +38/+38/+33/+28/+23 doing 37-87 damage a hit + 2 negative levels.

That's about right, seeing as 2-3 of those are going to miss, he will probably have to burn a round turning on True Seeing in order to do anything worth considering against any real threat and even the routine encounters at this level have several hundred HP, so averaging 72 a hit counting what the negative levels take off is merely par for the course at best. Even when you consider he could also throw in some Dungeoncrashing at +28 doing 22-42 (average 32) it still only manages to be average, as unless the enemy is still in auto attack range after the wall launching or that was the last attack you still lose damage compared to just swinging again. Which means they have to be standing right in front of a wall or something. And how often is that going to happen? It's funny, but it's not that effective.

Then you consider he's more or less topped out on damage, but over the next four levels average enemy HP nearly doubles... It's the sort of thing easy to have a kneejerk reaction to, but ultimately that's just them struggling to keep up and partially succeeding. If it were much lower than that it would be scratching for piddly shit because the enemies would just shrug it off, and probably sneak in a Heal or something if they cared a little. This character started out flailing for piddly shit, as he only had half decent accuracy and at level 12, had a damage output similar to the Paizil Fail Fighter for many of the same reasons. He got better. Of course, he started out that bad because the original party was much more melee heavy and I was trying not to make a cohort better than a real PC and I overcompensated quite a bit. As they left I fixed things.

TL;DR version: You need damage outputs that seem high just to be average, due to the way HP damage works. If you don't, you're scratching for piddly shit. If you're also missing with your main attacks with any degree of reliability, and it isn't level 1-5 you are flailing as well and should be imagining some guy looking really determined, but he sucks so all he manages with his attacks is to windmill his arms around while his superior opponent calmly puts a hand on his head to hold him off.

[NineInchNall]

As a damage-oriented melee character you need damage and accuracy sufficient to stand toe-to-toe trading hits with one of the baddest melee brutes of CR = your level and win greater than half the time.

I don't know why you decided to make that into a long post.

[Roy]

As a damage-oriented melee character you need damage and accuracy sufficient to stand toe-to-toe trading hits with one of the baddest melee brutes of CR = your level and win greater than half the time.

I don't know why you decided to make that into a long post.

Because scratch/flail for piddly shit clearly wasn't enough to get the point across, despite practically explaining themselves.

You didn't get it right by the way. "Damage oriented melee character' is an oxymoron. There's only one type of melee character, so specifying 'damage oriented' is redundant. Well, unless you want to count 'useless' as a type.

Further, if you're only winning over half the time against routine encounters, it means you're dying once every fight, or maybe once every other fight because iterative probability is mounting you and giving you a face full of cock. Not to mention what happens the moment any enemy is above par. Which seriously happens every fucking day. Sometimes more than once. Try 'ability to kill routine encounters before they kill you a minimum of 99% of the time'. That still has you dying 2-3 times to routine encounters and much more often to anything harder than that, but it does at least allow you to make headway, gaining levels and loot faster than you lose them to revive costs and the opportunity costs thereof (namely, being dead while people are getting more XP because you cannot be revived right away).

[virgil]

Is this 'winning over half the time against routine encounters' for solo work, making it a PC fighting a monster of CR = level? If so, then that's how it's supposed to work.

[Roy]

Is this 'winning over half the time against routine encounters' for solo work, making it a PC fighting a monster of CR = level? If so, then that's how it's supposed to work.

Supposedly. But we all know how that went, and more to the point in the course of > 250 or more combats you're going to encounter quite a few where only one person acts before the enemy. Guess what that means if that person can't seriously fuck up said enemy? Now how many of those do you suppose will be you?

[virgil]

Except for SoD/SoS effects, which not all monsters use, 50/50 battles are largely not decided in the first round of combat. When SoD/SoS effects are flying around enough to keep combat in the 2 round range (give or take a round), then death is going to happen w/in the party. Did you know that PC mortality rates are expected to be nonzero without making the campaign go to a screeching halt? Notice that bringing people back from the dead becomes reliable by 7th level with either delay death or reincarnation.

[Roy]

Except for SoD/SoS effects, which not all monsters use, 50/50 battles are largely not decided in the first round of combat. When SoD/SoS effects are flying around enough to keep combat in the 2 round range (give or take a round), then death is going to happen w/in the party. Did you know that PC mortality rates are expected to be nonzero without making the campaign go to a screeching halt? Notice that bringing people back from the dead becomes reliable by 7th level with either delay death or reincarnation.

You are telling me nothing I do not already know. Further, you are wrong. Pretty much anything can 1-2 round you. The non casters use full attacks for that. Since you're forced to close and take those hits with 95% accuracy on you, and you have far less HP than they do...

The issue isn't that deaths happen, it's that if your success rate is that low they are happening so often that fighting puts you in the red via level and/or cash loss. Which I've already pointed out. You need a much higher success rate to push deaths down to an acceptable level, again as I stated. Really, given that I'm the one running around here pointing out Revivify and Revenance all the time, you should really know better. And I'm taking those into consideration when I say you're in the red. Because that's seriously happening for every enemy in every fight, and there's lots of those. This is otherwise known as Iterative Probability.

[Ravengm]

Next week we are laying our hands on the mighty and powerful Seelah, the iconic paladin.

I laughed a little. This should be interesting.

[Prak]

Next week we are laying our hands on the mighty and powerful Seelah, the iconic paladin.

I laughed a little. This should be interesting.

well, paizo may suck at creating a complete RPG that's supposed to fix 3.5's problems, but their actual writing skills are pretty good. Dragon and Dungeon were great magazines for pretty much that reason, and occasionally you'd find some absolute gold.

[Psychic Robot]

I have no idea why they didn't just make divine power into the divine equivalent of Tenser's transformation.

I laughed a little. This should be interesting.

To be fair, the paladin got a large overhaul--the largest, in terms of changing class mechanics--and it's much more interesting and viable now. Still weak compared to a wizard, but less junky.

[Kaelik]

I think the point is that they managed to make a pathetic Cleric and Sorcerer, so pretty much any character they make is going to fail to live up to the adjectives mighty and powerful, seeing as the Paladin will probably when smiting and shit do less damage per full attack than a hybrid/melee caster of his CR. (Or just a weak punchy monster if they are low enough level that there are no hybrids.)

[koz]

I think the point is that they managed to make a pathetic Cleric and Sorcerer, so pretty much any character they make is going to fail to live up to the adjectives mighty and powerful, seeing as the Paladin will probably when smiting and shit do less damage per full attack than a hybrid/melee caster of his CR. (Or just a weak punchy monster if they are low enough level that there are no hybrids.)

QFT, seriously.