Pathfinder D&D (aka 3.75)

[Xillen]

Well I didnt realize the usefulness of the use magic device thing till Kongming mentioned it. I think that if a group of people are going to invest ranks in the skill and be responsible for their own healing then yes a healing focused character probably wont be needed. I also think that it will free up even more spells for clerics to use in offensive ways and thats a good thing IMO.

The "you don't need a cleric to begin with" I understand. The point where it saves up cleric spells I fail to see, because even without the UMD, the cleric can still use wands that he didn't buy himself, not?

[Brandon]

Yes but they never get to use them because they are forced to be healing 24/7 through converted spells, memorized spells, or other items like scrolls and wands. If someone is doing their own healing then that free's up the clerics action in a round to do something else

[Xillen]

Ahh, during combat. You're right there. Most of the time I'm just fending for myself during combat. If they're stupid enough not to run away when they're about to die, then it might help the genepool to let them die there and then :P

[kongming]

If they're stupid enough not to run away when they're about to die, then it might help the genepool to let them die there and then :P

*laughing* I like your style.

"Cleric of Darwin"

[Far eyes]

That’s one of my biggest problems with 3e you often do not have the chance to tray and run, because if I the enemy is really stronger you are probably screwed unless you have something like teleport at your disposal

[Xillen]

True, but they could like take cover behind those that are not yet injured and use reach/ranged weapons :)

And Cleric of Darwin? Now that would be an awesome idea! :P

[Chris Brady]

So their solution is to make Magic Spells available to anyone in the form of wands etc, which TO ME proves my problem with the 3.5 rules set.

I'll give this a pass.

[kongming]

Tell me, do you want balance in the form of everyone being able to do things on the same level of the spells, except in their own fashion and not relying on other people/equipment to provide those spells?

If so, once again I mention the Tomes. They basically solve that problem.

Or do you want spellcasting to simply be as useless as everything else?

If so, I recommend 4E. They really did well at making sure everything has the same boring, weak sauce abilities in that.

See, currently I'm not sure if your problem with 3E is "some people can do awesome things" or if it's "other people can't".

[Brandon]

Well last night was our second session of Pathfinder and I have to say I was exhausted and barely able to keep my eyes open by the nights end. Last week our adventuring party was fighting undead in a crypt but this week things changed a bit. We started out by getting our rewards from the adventure last week, leveling up to level 4, and then immediatly went on to looking for other work that our group could do. The mission we ended up taking was one that required us to go into the wilderness to meet up with a small town of woodcutters who had been having trouble with gnoll incursions.

We quickly found that surviving in the snow covered peaks of the mountains was hard but thankfully our barbarian and fighters survival checks were enough to keep us all fed (but just barely). I think if our fighter and barbarian hadnt both maxed out their survival we would have starved to death on the way there, let alone during the adventure. So definatly Yay for no more cross class skills

Anyway, we got to the village of the woodcutters called Salmon creek. When we got there we immediatly went to the mayor to talk about the gnoll situation. My sorcerer's diplomacy skill really rocked that meeting and I was able to negotiate a 50% increase on the money we would earn if we took care of the gnolls. We spent a couple days in town to interview the various woodcutters and again my diplomacy skills kicked ass. By the time we left and went up into the mountains the whole town was like our best friends.

We traveled for a few days into the wilderness and eventually entered gnoll territory. Small hunting groups would follow us but never engage us in talk or battle which had us worried that we were being led into a trap. Unfortunatly we were right. Four days after we got into their territory we came upon a ravine that was a good defensable position but unfortunatly the 2 hunting groups knew the area better and set up an ambush of archers on the high cliffs and warriors to rush into our front line fighters. Thankfully my heavenly fire bloodline ability and cantrips helped with those archers and between me, our rogue, and cleric we were able to dispatch them without to much damage. By that time our barbarian and fighter were in bad shape so I had to play healer for a couple of rounds with my heavenly fire again. With only a couple of gnolls left and most of my spells exhausted I decided to be a little ballsy and join the melee with my Longsword (humans get a free martial weapon prof). Now I wish I hadnt done that because one of the gnolls turned around and hit me with his great ax and got a maximum damage critcal, killing me instantly. So that taught me to stick with Cantrips and bloodline abilities if I play a sorcerer again.

We ended the session after the ambush so now Im thinking about what else I might play. Sorcerer was fun and flavorful though, much mroe fun then the 3.5 sorcerer. The celestial bloodline power heavenly fire was awesome and had a huge effect on our party. Being able to always use it to damage our opponents and heal each party member 1/day was a godsend. Now I have to think up a new character and I think I might try a druid next

[Chris Brady]

Tell me, do you want balance in the form of everyone being able to do things on the same level of the spells, except in their own fashion and not relying on other people/equipment to provide those spells?

If so, once again I mention the Tomes. They basically solve that problem.

Which are?  I didn't collect much, I admit.

Or do you want spellcasting to simply be as useless as everything else?

If so, I recommend 4E. They really did well at making sure everything has the same boring, weak sauce abilities in that.

Having played it myself, I'll have to politely disagree and say that at no time did the FIRST level abilities feel 'weak'.  Hell, the Human Fighter nearly single handedly defeated a 'level 3 brute' white dragon by pushing it around and smashing it hard, repeatedly.  And this is the same beast that took out a 30 HP Dwarven Fighter on it's first pass with a single attack combo.

The Game Day adventures were MEAT GRINDERS, and on an adventure module creation, just plain bad, but the characters themselves were pretty good at what they were trying to accomplish.

See, currently I'm not sure if your problem with 3E is "some people can do awesome things" or if it's "other people can't".

My problem is both, and at high levels it happens AT THE SAME TIME.  Unless you have the Magic (power or toys) to help mitigate it, or if you're GM is a dick or not.

[kongming]

Let me say that there's a reason all the advertising was done for first level stuff. Hint: it's not because "all games traditionally start at first level."

People get a handful of different abilities at first, and sufficient HP. From then on out, every ability you gain (less than 1/level) is really the same - damage that doesn't scale (and the damage doesn't scale well from level 1 abilities to level 30 abilities - you end up dealing, for instance, 5*Weapon + STR + magic bonus + feats. or 5d10 + Int + magic bonus + feats, for a DAILY power, when facing something with over a thousand HP), and one of the following:
*Daze/immobile/stun for a round (this is, sadly, the best of the bunch, as you can gang up with friends and Stunlock an enemy)
*Same as above, except save ends (so, it lasts for a round if you're lucky)
*Lasting damage (save ends. See: they always save, and no-one even cares about the piddly damage dealt)
*Slide them a couple of squares. They then walk right back as if nothing happened, maybe provoking (a basic attack, see: who cares?) on the way.
*You or a friend get a tiny bonus, and actually have to care about this bonus because it's what counts for good in this game: small bonuses instead of actual abilities
*You or a friend can spend a healing Surge
*You attack someone else for fuck-all damage

And that's it. And that's all you'll ever do. Everyone will only gain combat abilities, and spend them grinding away slowly at the massive HP of enemies (it starts off as ideal, then quickly becomes stupid. Before you know it, you're maxing out Intimidate just to force boodied enemies to surrender, and even then it will soon take too long just to bloody them). Skill challenges are completely retarded, disease DCs are in the "Yes, you will fail." range, rituals are completely stupid for a variety of reasons and still don't actually achieve much... all the game really has is combat, and that is boring and unimaginative.

Now, 3.5 + Tome material. Let's take some examples:
Fighters: can shatter Walls of Force, allow all damage dealt to count as "Ongoing" (so if they full attack a caster for 100 damage, then the caster needs to make a Concentration check with a DC over a hundred in order to cast on their next turn), an use a ranged touch attack as an immediate action to cause any action to automatically fail (spellcasting, attacks, movement...), can make two immediate actions per turn, can make a free 5' step on anyone else's turn and can make magic items with a craft check. They're masters of identifying monsters for bonuses, too.

Barbarians: become immune to mind-affecting effects when raging, gain relevant DR, add loads of damage to attacks, gain fast healing when they don't rage, and pick up various immunities and things. They're probably the most basic class still.

Knights: gain spell resistance, energy resistance and various immunities. They also grant Evasion to anyone standing next to them, can elect to take an attack for anyone next to them, and also can (as a Swift action) challenge a foe. If that foe fails to damage the knight by the beginning of the knight's next turn, then the knight adds insane amount of damage to all of their attacks against them for the round. Essentially, attacking the knight is a bit of a waste, because it takes a lot to kill them. NOT attacking the knight means you die. They also gain mounted combat abilities, and it is outright expected that after level 10 they are riding dragons instead of horses.

Samurai: cut through anti-magic fields and walls of force, have utterly deadly criticals, can make criticals happen all the time, get millions of AoOs (and an ability that lets them say "I'm taking all of my AoOs against you, right now, even though you didn't provoke), and can use their weapons to deflect spells away/back at the caster.

Rogues: it is outright assumed that rogues dual-wield acid flasks (ranged touch attack sneak attack, 3 attacks at first level and it grows from there), use magic devices to the full extent, and use "Bonus Feat" for the Rogue special ability to take feats they don't qualify for (as this is completely within the rules). This keeps them playing the same game as everyone else - and able to fight monsters. There are cheap-as-dirt wands of Gravestrike etc. to sneak attack golems, undead, plants and all the rest.

There are also some base classes for rogue-variants, such as the Jester, the Assassin and the Thief-Acrobat, all gaining cool abilities that are fun and useful.

Monks: can practically fly, are actually hard to hit, can actually hit their foes, gain SR, and can enter stances that provide relevant benefits such as "I hit you. Save or die.", "50% miss chance!", actual flight, teleportation, TK added to their attacks, ability tomake unarmed attacks at a distance, ability damage/drain on attacks, and "I hit you. Everyone except me within 30' takes 10d6 Sonic. No save. No, have the damage. Really, I insist."

The casters: mostly remain the same, except Clerics and Druids don't automatically know all splat-book spells (they can scribe them like Wizards, and gain ONE non-core spell per level for free), and Wildshape has been adjusted, as have certain spells, to not be plain stupid.

Monster characters are now actually playable, instead of a joke.

Instead of ignoring inherent problems in the game, it either fixes them, or makes them into features of the world.

Feats have been changed - you can do useful things with feats, especially the martial characters - stunning/dazing foes, reducing their movement, dealing Dex/Con damage, being taken along for free when people teleport near you (you choose to, it's not automatic), being able to ignore magical bonuses to AC, blindsense and two-weapon fighting that doesn't make us cry.

---

Think of it as "D&D 3.5 - you still know the basic rules! - except it's balanced so that when a CR X monster rocks up, everyone of level X can actually meaningfully contribute to the battle, and is also almost guaranteed to have something to do when the battle ends."

Now, if the Schuztaffel rocked up and said "Play 4E or Pathfinder, or I shoot you!" then I'd pick Pathfinder. I'd make sure to play on Easy mode by playing a caster, but at least I wouldn't be playing 4E. However, as it is, I'll bully/beg DMs into running Tome games for me, and it will remain the superior option, and is likely to be the best thing until either TGD completes "The New Edition" or we at Elliquiy complete the game we're working on, in which case one of those two will likely be the best.

[Xillen]

Just a quick question. Would those tomes be compatible with Pathfinder, since they're both based on 3.5? IE. could they be mixed?

[Brandon]

Im not familiar with the tome series...well Ive only seen the book of nine swords in play which I felt was completly overpowered but granted it might have just been the player manipulating the system and a crappy DM.

That said, even if its not immediatly interchangable I think just a few adjustments and you could use the tome series without much difficulty

[Chris Brady]

I liked Bo9S.

Brandon, honest question here, why didn't you like it?

[NightBird]

<snip>

My problem is both, and at high levels it happens AT THE SAME TIME.  Unless you have the Magic (power or toys) to help mitigate it, or if you're GM is a dick or not.

Okay, so nobody really gave a damn about the minis for the concept (and I do realize that the squee factor of minis is a fringe aspect of roleplaying), but I have to chime in again on this last statement.

As somebody who's been playing since the 70s, I would have to say that, no matter what system was involved, which edition, what extra rules or supplements were allowed, the single most significant determinant of whether a game was fun or not had a helluva lot more to do with the 'dick factor'. If the GM or even one loud-mouthed player the GM didn't pull back into line was a royal PITA, the game sucked. If somebody lived to min/max, or the GM had to be the one to 'win' by the monsters killing us all, or a player had to rules lawyer everything or the GM wasn't creative with how player decisions affected the game, the evening sucked. Big time. When everybody was going with the flow, building characters that had more to do with being the characters they were than pinching the absolute most out of every area the rules allowed some sort of uber-playering, the game, any game I played was fun.

There is no way for any design team to figure out and then design into the ruleset ironclad terms to preclude all the myriad ways people can be dicks. I don't think they should. If you don't have a GM who can do a credible job of making the rules into something fun by intelligently making decisions about the specific circumstances of a particular set of gamers in this instance of a game right in front of you, then I don't see it as necessarily being all the authoring company's fault. I put a lot of importance on the judgment of the GM as being the single most important aspect to make or break a campaign and a group, with the players' approach to the game and each other as a close second.

Just like how the same job can be heaven or hell depending on what the boss makes of it, the same game can be cool or miserable depending on what the GM and other players contribute.

[kongming]

Tome of Battle: Book of WEEABOO FIGHTAN' MAGIC actually:
a) Isn't a "tome" game as such (the "tome series" are unpublished book-sized documents by Frank & K: Tome of Necromancy, Tome of Fiends, Dungeonomicon, Races of War and the incomplete Book of Gears, Book of Trees & Tome of Tiamat)

b) Isn't overpowered. It has certain breakable combos in it, just like everything else, and it does show the core fighter up for the weaksauce piece of junk it really is. It also provides options for the characters, even if they are largely the same (yet with more variety than 4E, amusingly enough)

That being said, my favourite Book of 9 Swords ability has to be the one which "removes one effect that is affecting you". Examples can include: night time (the effect is limited vision - POOF! No more night, ever), time (it can eventually grant ageing penalties - POOF! No more time!), gravity, pregnancy...

Not powerful per se, as it can't exactly be used to win a fight, but it can turn the universe upside down. It's one of those "We'll point it out and laugh, but no-one is ever going to actually do that." things.

[Far eyes]

In some cases ToB is in fact severely limited, as a lot of pavers assume and only work as Sword and Board or 2h weapon. And don’t really work with TWF

But if you mean pure damage output, two humans going against each other one using ToB one being a simple PHB, CW barbarian they will be prty much equal, the barbarians damage might even be higher

Say kongming do you know ware I might be able to get those files you mentioned, they sound interesting?

[kongming]

Sure thing: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48453

That has most of the stuff - though the site itself has all sorts of other random things there. There are even a few feats, classes etc. that I invented (such as prestige classes for large characters who don't just want to be "HULK SMASH!" Ever seen a 10' tall ninja? No? Exactly, you never see them until it's too late.)

[Far eyes]

Hehe Thanks, it seams one of the sites that appears a lot in the links is down at the moment. But I bookmarked it and will look it up later

[Brandon]

So I got to play again the other night and just as I thought I made a druid to replace my now dead sorcerer. We started out this week just after last weeks massive ambush with my druid joining the party and telling the group that it was not one but two tribes of gnolls who were at war, the Sabertooths and the Bloodfurs. My druid didnt know all of the story so we traveled further into Bloodfur lands and ran into a group of Sabertooth gnolls that were gathering information. We stopped and talked with them and the druid and I both handled the negotiations (again yay for no cross class skills!).

We found out that the Sabertooth clan had turned away from the demon princes old ways of bloodshed and had adopted the harsh yet fair laws established by other nomadic and barbarian tribes that they had met before. The Bloodfurs wanted their hides because they had moved away from the traditional ways of Yeenoghu. Fearing that the war between tribes would spill over into their neighbors lands the Sabertooth cut down the bridge that gave the woodcutters easy access to the nearby trees. Without it the Bloodfurs would have had to travel another fifty miles to get to the village. With the story in our heads we offered to help the Sabertooths overcome their enemies if they would allow the woodcutters to continue their work and they agreed with a few minor stipulations.

So our group got to go to war with the gnolls. We went with the scouting party back to their camps to meet their warchielf and he sent us out as an advance guard to wipe out Bloodfur scouting parties and patrols. This was a bunch of minor fights but it was when I really got to play with Wildshape and it has changed massivly. At 4th level I could choose to become a small or medium animal of my choice, taking on its form and gaining its movement types. I started out doing some scouting in the form as a hawk, flying around and noting where these groups of gnolls were. In this form I had the movement type of the hawk but only a +2 Dex and +1 natural armor bonus and I got none of the penalties that would have come with the transformation (like mystrength being reduced to 6 with 3.5 rules but staying at 14 with Pathfinder rules).

Anyway, once we found out where they were we went hunting and everytime we found a group I would wildshape into a cougar (In 3.5 I would have ruled a mountain lion as a Tiger but in Pathfinder it didnt matter.) In the form of a courgar my stats changed to be +2 strength and +2 natural armor and would have been the same as any medium animal. If we were playing 3.5 and assuming Courgar = Leapord I would have had +2 Strength, +4 Dexterity, and +1 Con. Now one thing Ive noticed about wildshape is that it isnt clear on how attack forms work. Do you use the base creatures damage for claws and bites? I would think so but it doesnt say that so thats something to clear up for beta.

Anyway, we killed several groups of gnolls and after I did some more ariel scouting of their village our group is planning on the final push into Bloodfur land with the Sabertooths. Hopefully the plan we formed will work well and we can send most of the Bloodfur's packing next week and wrap this adventure up.

As I think everyone can see Wildshape is nowhere near as abussive as it would have been. I just made 5th level on Saturday night and we all know that the old wildshape could make you cringe right after you got it. Its nowhere near perfect and could still use some more clarifications but its definatly not the IPWNJOOWTFBBQ!!11!!!!1 stuff that it was in 3.5 and I think thats a good thing

[Brandon]

I was reading through some more things tonight and I found out something awesome. Pathfinder has gotten rid of experience costs! Instead you take the experience cost and multiply it by by 5, whatever number that equals is the additional cost. So lets say you were to cast wish to give yourself +1 constitution, the extra cost of that spell would be 25,000 gold pieces. This means that you are no longer punished by falling behind in leveling if you want to create magic items for the rest of the group. I always thought that was the dumbest idea they ever came up with anyway

[kongming]

I fully agree with you there - it was especially stupid when you consider that by careful planning you can end up with more XP than the rest of the party (craft a small item, lose a small amount of XP, drop 1 level, then, when you next gain XP as a group, you earn more because you're lower level than the rest of the party, and the difference is more than the XP you spent, so you end up in front).

Now, you can still totally enter Wish Economy before 10th level, as Wishing for items as a (Sp) ability still won't actually cost you anything (whereas Wishing for items as a spell will cost you money instead of XP, I suppose? Kind of a "Well, there's no store, so I'll import things from Wishland! There's an import tax though."), and Paizo have chosen the "pretend this doesn't happen" solution, but that's one little thing.

To the majority of players, this does indeed mean "Score! I can just spend money to make things, instead of the nonsensical XP cost!"

And Wildshape sounds a lot more reasonable.

[Brandon]

Yeah the big bonus to wildshaping as I see it is, if you were going to make a halfling druid that specilized with wildshape you could skip on your Str, Dex, and constitution scores (making them like 6/6/8) and wildshape would instantly change them to higher scores in 3.5 like the leapords 14 str, 19 dex, and 15 con. In pathfinder your scores acctually mean something with wildshape which means far less min/maxing

another interesting change to wish is that if you want to gain innherrant bonuses you have to reduce another ability score. Im guessing they did that because they wanted people to focus on the tomes that grant inherrant bonuses, which Im fine with. I always used those instead of wishes anyway

[Xillen]

You don't want to have a low con as a Druid in 3.5 either. Wildshape doesn't affect hit points, which is actually the main result of constitution. But yeah, can we say Gnome Druid with Str 6, Dex 8, Con 16?  Something easily done with pointbuy system.

Do the tomes also give you a penalty on another score, like wishes do? Also, if you later want to increase your inherent bonus, do you need to do all the wishes all over again? If so, do the penalties stack?

[kongming]

In the Tomes, it's simply "Well the maximum you can be granted is +5 to each ability score, so just let the players do it (they'll like the bigger numbers) and do the same to basically any intelligent enemy when you reach that stage."

Because if everyone has a +5 across the board, it doesn't really change anything.

Also, in theory Wildshape doesn't affect your HP (it changes your Con, but not your HP) but in practice it totally does.

Step 1: Wildshape from a 10 HD, Con 6 thing into a 10 HD, Con 20 thing. Your hit remain at 6+9d8-18 (~28).
Step 2: Cast Bear's Endurance or whatever it is, for +4 Con - and it recalculates your HP. You are now 10 HD, with Con 24, and your hit points change to 15+9d8+63 (~118).
Step 3: Hope you don't die when Wildshape & Bear's Endurance end.