Incoming House Rules

[virgil]

As you know, I play with a bunch of Pathfinder lovers. I'm just about finished running the AP with them, and they're planning on picking up the next one in the line (Kingmaker, it's called).

The fellow who's wanting to DM for this next AP wants fights to resolve faster for each round, but last for more rounds; 'more tactical', as he calls it. He's noticed that once you get past the low levels, the damage density is such that nothing survives longer than two rounds, while still taking forever to resolve; primarily due to multiple attacks. He's currently thinking the following alteration...

Nobody, monsters included, has more than one attack per round. If you take a full-attack action, you multiply the number of damage dice by the number of attacks you normally have in a full-attack (not the static modifier); for those familiar with Pathfinder, it's much like the Vital Strike feat tree. Also, their favorite 'soft crit' rule is in effect, which is where critical hits only multiply the base weapon damage and not the static modifier; though it will multiply the increased weapon damage; so a crit from a level 6 scythe-wielder will deal 16d4+modifiers.

The DM is aware that evocation doesn't keep up with normal damage dealers without a large amount of tinkering, and are still quite limited in endurance, so he's not concerned with them.

[RobbyPants]

Nobody, monsters included, has more than one attack per round. If you take a full-attack action, you multiply the number of damage dice by the number of attacks you normally have in a full-attack (not the static modifier); for those familiar with Pathfinder, it's much like the Vital Strike feat tree. Also, their favorite 'soft crit' rule is in effect, which is where critical hits only multiply the base weapon damage and not the static modifier; though it will multiply the increased weapon damage; so a crit from a level 6 scythe-wielder will deal 16d4+modifiers.

So, two greatsword attacks with an 18 Str are resolved as 4d6+6 as opposed to two separate attacks of 2d6+6? Eh, it could work. I guess it helps even out things like cumulative iterative attack penalties, but it penalized people with high static damage. It also sucks hardcore for TWF rogues (unless they behave differently in PF).

This should also make monsters like trolls a bit easier to fight, since most of their damage comes from their Str mod and the fact that they get three attacks.

[malak]

Nobody, monsters included, has more than one attack per round. If you take a full-attack action, you multiply the number of damage dice by the number of attacks you normally have in a full-attack (not the static modifier); for those familiar with Pathfinder, it's much like the Vital Strike feat tree. Also, their favorite 'soft crit' rule is in effect, which is where critical hits only multiply the base weapon damage and not the static modifier; though it will multiply the increased weapon damage; so a crit from a level 6 scythe-wielder will deal 16d4+modifiers.

But this makes the game much more unpredictable and swingy. Is that a goal?

[hogarth]

But this makes the game much more unpredictable and swingy. Is that a goal?

How is it more unpredictable? Full BAB characters will presumably always hit instead of always hitting once and sometimes hitting two or three times.

The caveat I would have is that this system encourages you to have a bunch of piddly side attacks that ordinarily wouldn't do much (e.g. bite attacks, claw attacks, off-hand attacks, etc.).

[Kaelik]

As far as I can tell, it's actually a Monk buff.

Since monks have shitty Str scores and no way to add static modifiers, but can actually get large weapon dice attacks.

It still does nothing to change the best tactic of punching stuff in the face as a full round coup de grace action after it's been taken care of though.

[Roy]

When you said Pathfinder losers I immediately suspected a backwards change. I was not disappointed.

Ask yourself, who has high base damage on attacks? If you say Monks you are technically correct but missing the point.

The answer, of course is monsters. So now instead of them doing a bunch of small hits, they'll just hit once for 150, or something stupid.

Also, slower is not more tactical. Especially when not everyone is slowed down. Then it's just a melee nerf, which of course is typical for them. If everyone is slowed down, it's still not any more or less tactical, even if you think it is. That's just 4th edition, and we all know how that went.

[ubernoob]

Damage is high enough without crits that the change isn't a big deal. Plus, it's not like half the monster manual isn't immune to crits already or anything like that.

[hogarth]

Plus, it's not like half the monster manual isn't immune to crits already or anything like that.

Fewer creatures are immune to crits in Pathfinder.

Upon further thought, it just sounds like it will be strange in the case of creatures with one big attack and lots of small attacks.

Consider the wyvern. Instead of sting +10 melee (1d6+4 plus poison), bite +10 melee (2d6+4 plus grab), 2 wings +5 (1d6+2), it will be doing bite +10 (8d6+4 plus grab) or sting +10 (4d6+4 plus poison), correct? That's a big difference between bite and sting damage.

[Ice9]

It also sucks hardcore for TWF rogues (unless they behave differently in PF).

Unless Sneak Attack also gets multiplied (it is dice rather than a static number, so maybe).


Hmm, if you wanted to collapse Sneak Attack into a single number of dice, you'd be looking at something like:
L1: 2d6
L3: 4d6
L5: 6d6
L7: 8d6
L8: 12d6
L9: 20d6
L11: 24d6
L13: 28d6
L14: 35d6
L15: 48d6
L17: 54d6
L19: 60d6

That's assuming that the hypothetical Rogue gets the TWF feats ASAP, but no other attack boosters (Rapid Shot, Palm Throw, etc). Smoothing it out, you could do something like:
L1-7: 1d6/level
L8-13: 2d6/level
L14-20: 3d6/level

Which might make a decent basis for evocation as well. Except nobody wants to roll that many dice, so it would have to be converted to partially a static modifier or multiplier (60d6 -> 6d6+189 or 6d6*10, depending on how predictable you want it).

[Caedrus]

But this makes the game much more unpredictable and swingy. Is that a goal?

How is it more unpredictable? Full BAB characters will presumably always hit instead of always hitting once and sometimes hitting two or three times.

The caveat I would have is that this system encourages you to have a bunch of piddly side attacks that ordinarily wouldn't do much (e.g. bite attacks, claw attacks, off-hand attacks, etc.).

Not if you have a flat 50% chance to miss.

[Ferret]

As others have said, this is going to get weird for Monsters with high numbers of small attacks, and one or two big nasty attacks. I'd advise the DM to only multiply similar attacks: a monster can combine his slam attacks for x2 dice +str, but if he also had wing buffets or a tail slap, those do not affect his slam.

Then each monster gets a few different attack routines based on how many attacks it could get with each kind of attack (claws, tail, bite, weapon, etc) and multiply each appropriately for single attack per round.

[Ferret]

Not if you have a flat 50% chance to miss.

And speaking of miss chances, you'll probably want to recommend that miss changes get tuned down some - Greater Concealing Amphora and similar effects are made of pure gold in single-attack systems.

[virgil]

Got a bit more information, and he's keeping TWF and alternate types of attacks separate. All told, the ONLY attacks getting combined are iteratives for the same weapon. He's saying something about using more humanoids to account for this, so his boss fights will be improved by a relative increase in power (their power is unchanged while our damage output is reduced).

While the reasoning is that 'more tactical' means fights take longer, part of its acceptance is that the number of things to do don't change. Once you hit mid+ levels, you only ever use one of your 4+ abilities, because the fights are over so fast; and the damage output is less than halved, so it's not like the fights will inherently take thrice as long because of this.

[hogarth]

Got a bit more information, and he's keeping TWF and alternate types of attacks separate. All told, the ONLY attacks getting combined are iteratives for the same weapon.

Then how much time are you really going to save? (Answer: basically none.)

[MfA]

Got a bit more information, and he's keeping TWF and alternate types of attacks separate. All told, the ONLY attacks getting combined are iteratives for the same weapon.

Ah, so the druid's animal companion can embarrass melee characters even better than usual.

[Username17]

So the plan is that really weird math will come in and dick punch anyone who stabs with knives or shoots a bow, but everything else will remain the same. So the reality will be that being a conjurer or battlefield control wizard or druid will be even more like teabagging the table than normal, and the players will be even more helpless in the face of monsters than before.

Other than being a really big Rogue and Ranger nerf, I am not sure what the point is.

-Username17

[virgil]

I can see the motivation. He's fully aware of some of the trouble with boss fights. In the AP I'm currently running, we've recently hit the double digits in level; fights are a slow slog in resolution, yet short in game time.

One of the more noticeable sources of drawing out the length of a combat round is the party's monk, who will roll for each attack one at a time, followed by rolling for damage one at a time. The party rogue, who's a THF, takes a bit of time as well for essentially doing this as well. Historically, it's been the people with many attacks who visibly take the longest. They're not the sole sources, as my personal observation is that we waste more time to people being unable to keep track of their bonuses and have to re-add them after failing something (this! all the time!).

As for damage output, while the two biggest sources in my party are the summoner and sorcerer, in a previous AP it was the fighter and ranger (I was the fighter). Nobody is playing the summoner for this next AP, and the sorcerer could only exist through my permission of three different sourcebooks. This leaves the more 'core' options for known damage output in the hands of iterative-attacks, which as I mentioned earlier also take up a noticeable amount of time to resolve their turn (my damage looked like a Shadowrun check).

All things told, as far as I can tell, it's usual behavior in developing house rules. If something offends their sensibilities, they will decide its exact function is the cause of it all and strike it from their sight.

A most poignant example is as follows, boxed up if you don't want to see it, as I think it's a retread.

The most obvious example is their change to critical hits. It was designed solely because player after player would almost get one-shot by a monster (or actually one-shot in one notable case) in the AP because of a critical hit; specifically an AP where it was full to bursting with giants (many with levels and higher stats) wielding axes and polearms. The DM for that AP was trying to figure out what to do, because fights were incredibly swingy and dangerous because of this, especially because only one player (me) did anything outside of melee.

My suggestion fell on deaf ears of course, which was to spend some of our pile of money on protection; the MIC suggested only 1.5k for the ability to halve damage from a critical once per day (we weren't critted to often each day). The solution was more obvious to said DM. The reason we were nearly dying from a crit was because the giants had huge modifiers that get the x3 multiplier; therefore, get rid of those modifiers from the crits! Now a critical hit only multiplies base weapon damage.

The other players loved this change so much it's been given the title 'soft crits' and it's almost a standard option in their campaigns.

[DMReckless]

One wonders if people this bad at math might have problems adding all those damage dice together.

[hogarth]

My suggestion fell on deaf ears of course, which was to spend some of our pile of money on protection; the MIC suggested only 1.5k for the ability to halve damage from a critical once per day (we weren't critted to often each day). The solution was more obvious to said DM. The reason we were nearly dying from a crit was because the giants had huge modifiers that get the x3 multiplier; therefore, get rid of those modifiers from the crits! Now a critical hit only multiplies base weapon damage.

Actually, I sympathize with your fellow players; I don't like one-shot critical kills, either. It's just another reason that being a melee fighter sucks in D&D.

If everyone in the party needs a magic item to work around annoying rule X, then something is wrong with rule X.

[virgil]

"Man, I hate having to buy armor to protect against attacks." - meaning we should look at attack rolls as a bad rule?

The bigger problem is the preponderance of levelled giants with x3 weapons. Really, if the rest of the group worked on their AC better, the chances of a one-shot critical were drastically less than the chances of failing against a Save-or-Die (which 5% at best). Even with their low ACs, we only actually had ONE character get one-shot by a critical, and that was by the ambushing BBEG of the dungeon.

Oooh, new update from the DM on how he's adjudicating illusions, which are essentially house rules...

DM: Hmm...
I think I will let illusions do things that I think are appropriate for their level.
me: ?
DM: Well, for example, you could feasibly use silent image, a level 1 spell, to replicate blindness/deafness, a level 2 spell.
Well, blindness.
me: For a duration of concentration
DM: In this case, I would give the subject a bonus to their save, say a +2, to replicate that silent image is a little unused to that.
Sorry, that sentence kinda stopped making sense halfway through, but I hope you got the point.
me: How is interaction/disbelief handled?
I've got my own interpretation to how the rules state it, but I don't know if you care about that
DM: They have to interact with it somehow, be that hearing, seeing, etc. But it will be based on whether the image could be valid without sound, or the sound without visuals, etc.
me: So seeing a patrolling orc inherently counts as enough interaction to get a save?
DM: Unless the orc is far enough away that you could feasibly not hear him.
In which case you would have to get close enough to notice the lack of sound, or touch him.
Also, I think that suspicious enterences count as interaction. i.e., a dragon appearing in the room where there previously wasn't one would allow everyone a disbelieve save.
me: even when coming from around a corner or bamfing in as if they teleported or were summoned?
DM: Coming from around a corner would probably work, unless your enemies knew what was behind the corner or something, bamfing in I would have to rule against how much interaction they had had with teleport (so a group of orcs would get a save, but a wizard might not).
Also, I should note that if any of them have spellcraft and I make it, he will call it out and everyone automatically gets the modified save.

[hogarth]

"Man, I hate having to buy armor to protect against attacks." - meaning we should look at attack rolls as a bad rule?

If every one of your players truly hated it every time they got hit by an attack, then yes, that would be a bad rule for your party.

[Roy]

So basically Paizil logic is because the Monk is making 5 attacks (and missing all of them) that random nerfs that in no way address the problem should be sprayed out like shotgun jizz, and casters should be made any more dominant?

While we all know this is their SOP, I am quite boggled as to how any non Paizil could think this was a remotely good idea.

And I am just as boggled as to how anyone could suggest 'work on your AC' with a straight face when discussing a game that has every problem of 3.5 intact. Being auto hit is a given. The problem is lack of fortifiaction.

[virgil]

Precise motivation for the iterative consolidation ruling (as I call it)

2 reasons, 1) to lower damage of PCs, especially near end-game. 2) to reduce the time a turn takes.

[Roy]

Precise motivation for the iterative consolidation ruling (as I call it)

2 reasons, 1) to lower damage of PCs, especially near end-game. 2) to reduce the time a turn takes.

Now, remind me why the characters who need to struggle hard to do relevant damage need to do less damage. Once you do that remind me why 'herp derp we can't do math' is a valid reason to kick gimp characters while they are down.

Once you have done both of those things smack the guy who thinks it's a good idea with the Bo9S.

[virgil]

When he speaks of reducing time length, he speaks of stuff like a hasted 12th level monk or a 17th level archer with a hail of arrows. Each of them have six to eight attacks each; and in practice, something will happen with this group to allow even the monk to hit with half of his attacks.