Pathfinder 1E Your experiences with broken Pathfinder characters? (edit: more accurately, w/1 avg PF character when the rest of the party is meh)

Starfox said:

Not to rain on ggeilman's and airwalkrr's parade, just reporting a different opinion. I feel the player character is very much the player's affair, and the DM should keep hands off as far as possible. Of course, if there is a balance issue that becomes serious, something might have to be done, but arbitrarily taking away something that is an important part of a character's concept is not legit.

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I couldn't agree to a DM being hands off. It's the DM's job to make sure the game works smoothly, and that means allowing or disallowing concepts or other things that would be problematic.

[MENTION=12460]airwalkrr[/MENTION] That is odd as we rarely close games and when we go it isn't for very long. As I had just started a new job and we were in a big project for Goodman at the time it is possible. [MENTION=2303]Starfox[/MENTION] I don't like taking things away from players and would prefer to limit things to start off with but sometimes things just get too imbalanced. Generally I try and make the change at the end of one character and make it clear that it will have to change with the new ones. Yeah, I can see how a Unicorn could get more than a little imbalancing and would have not allowed it to start off with. I do try and discuss things with the player and the group whenever possible. A lot of our house rules are based on group decisions and not the DM.

Didn't mean to say its wrong for a DM to take charge, just that it has to be done sensibly. Think we can all agree on that (even if our standards of "sensible" in this case might differ).

Fiddleback said:

The GMs job is always to challenge the players.

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The GM's job is whatever they do at work. This game is supposed to be that, a game. A GM should not have to spend hour after hour tracking down class, feat and spell combos just to keep the opposition up to speed. On the other hand it is the game designers job to publish material that is actually compatible, that is on the same power level, as the base rules.

Books still say "Pathfinder", not "Pathfinder eta"

Starfox said:

Not to rain on ggeilman's and airwalkrr's parade, just reporting a different opinion. I feel the player character is very much the player's affair, and the DM should keep hands off as far as possible. Of course, if there is a balance issue that becomes serious, something might have to be done, but arbitrarily taking away something that is an important part of a character's concept is not legit.

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(Emphasis mine) That is the point, though. It is not arbitrary. It is a carefully weighed decision after the DM feels an appropriate amount of time has gone by. I rarely take things away from players. But on the rare occasion that I do, it is always after much thought and experience on the matter. If something appears unbalancing at first, I do not immediately snatch it away. I let it ride for a while. I take note of whether the player is using it all the time or if it is something that only comes up occasionally and whether or not it is giving the player an unfair advantage over other players and the player's opponents. Even if I do find it unbalancing, I try to see if there is a way to mitigate the effect somehow either (first) on my side of the screen then (after) on the player's side. I only take something away if I feel I have no other resort. It is anything but arbitrary.

I empathize with your situation on the loss of the unicorn. Perhaps the DM made a rookie mistake and allowed something before realizing how unbalancing it might be and fudged the death without recognizing the consequences. But perhaps the death wasn't as fishy as you believed. I wasn't there, so I cannot say. It is unfortunate that the two of your could not come to some compromise, but would you have done anything different you knew for a fact that the unicorn's death was legitimate? Sometimes paladin mounts do die, and the paladin has to go on without it. It seems you understood the rules of the game and did not want to play by them because you defined them differently for your character. Unless the DM agreed to that at the start of the game, I cannot agree that your actions were appropriate; it seems to me you didn't make the case until the unicorn died, and IMHO, that is too late to be making the case. Maybe I misunderstand the situation, but from what you have said, it doesn't seem like the DM did anything wrong.

But besides all that, I am not talking about taking away a part of a character's concept. The reason I cited the Gygax story is because that is usually the situation that requires addressing. The rules of all versions of D&D get heavily play-tested and re-tested as the system evolves. The rules for building characters are usually the most robust parts of the rules. But sometimes a DM lets an item (or two, as was the case with Erac's Cousin) slip into the game which he later realizes is unbalancing, and has little recourse but to somehow remove the item from play. In any event, at least the player gets to have the item(s) for a while and enjoy the awesome power while the DM evaluates whether or not it was appropriate.

frankthedm said:

The GM's job is whatever they do at work. This game is supposed to be that, a game. A GM should not have to spend hour after hour tracking down class, feat and spell combos just to keep the opposition up to speed. On the other hand it is the game designers job to publish material that is actually compatible, that is on the same power level, as the base rules.

Books still say "Pathfinder", not "Pathfinder Zeta"

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So how, exactly, do you design an adventure for your players? Or do you just run the pre-printed modules? Or flip randomly through the book until you find something that looks good?

And we can pretend to misunderstand what I meant by 'job' all we want. Perhaps you prefer the word 'responsibility'?

Honestly, feel free to attack the system all you want if you don't like it, but leave me out of your attempt to prove the point. I have no great love for certain editions of D&D and reservations about Pathfinder and any number of other games. I'm not defending any system at all here, but I think there can be agreement that, regardless of system, setting, or style, the GM IS there to make the game fun and challenging for those who play it. Otherwise, why bother? As advice to GMs, and this one in particular, my initial post stands just fine as it is.

I have done both over the years and did the job of game designer a time or two. I generally run premade modules from people that are like minded as I am, but I don't have an issue altering them when needed and supplimenting them.

My experience both as a DM and player is that story trumps balance; as long as the players are more interested in story than balance, balance is not generally an issue.

The core problem here was that the DM was thinking more form a balance perspective and I from a story perspective and the two didn't mesh. There were also lots of other factors involved that are irrelevant to our topic here. I didn't take this up here to get neutral arbitration - I took it up as an illustration of the issue of PC vs. DM control of character concepts. What I wanted to point out is that there are two sides to every coin - what the DM thinks of as a balance issue might be something else in the mind of the player. In this case, it is a good idea to sit down and try to find the core of each side's view of the situation rather than to arrange a rust monster ambush.

On the other hand, the Gygax example was actually empowering in a way for the player - the bad guys recognized his ability and tried to arrange an ambush specifically for him. Wow, campaign world recognition! And presumably there should be a chance for the PC to escape the ambush. On the other hand again, if the enemy has the resources to arrange an ambush against any hero anywhere... how come there are still live heroes? And doesn't that foster a siege mentality among the players, where every action has to be considered from a rather paranoid perspective? Turning the fantasy saga into a cold war thriller. These issues are complex - what is right for one story is wrong in another. Trying to stay consistent and avoiding bait-and-switch are core concepts here.

airwalkrr said:

In any event, at least the player gets to have the item(s) for a while and enjoy the awesome power while the DM evaluates whether or not it was appropriate.

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Some artifacts do this welll (IIR the Axe of the dwarfish lords is an example), leaving a "legacy item" in the player's hands when it disappears, which still gives the PC a mighty axe with a story, while removing the full power of the artifact.

frankthedm said:

The GM's job is whatever they do at work. This game is supposed to be that, a game. A GM should not have to spend hour after hour tracking down class, feat and spell combos just to keep the opposition up to speed. On the other hand it is the game designers job to publish material that is actually compatible, that is on the same power level, as the base rules.

Books still say "Pathfinder", not "Pathfinder View attachment 56950eta"

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Well, the "problem" with a ever expanding ruleset is that even if the new options are balanced by themselves, you add so many new combinations that a few of them will combine in a way that is totally unbalanced. I don't think expecting a rulesystem to handle this is realistic.

I think a better approach is for the DM and Players to start out agreeing to handle these, mostly rare, occurences of overpowered/unbalanced builds or items. In other words: as a player don't go with the most OP build you can find and if the DM points something out as a problem, try to suggest changes yourself. This makes the DM's job of adding interesting and challenging encounters easier and you will probably get to play more.

Another alternative is for the group to agree to a limited set of books, but this can be a bit annoying since non-op, but fun options will get excluded.

RangerWickett said:

I'm fine with superhero play. I just don't want getting there to be so non-intuitive.

Maybe let each character pick a schtick. A nimble character's could be "unhittable," and it lets her have an effective +5 bonus to her Dexterity modifier for the purposes of AC and Reflex saves, but only if she's not wearing armor. (Increasing a point every few levels.) The trick to threatening her is denying her Dex mod, or targeting non-Dex defenses.

But her AC could then be easily calculated: 10 + Dex mod. No Wisdom, no dodge, no enhancement, luck, deflection, insight, natural armor. Just give every PC the same formula 10 + Dex + armor + magic (+ cover in some circumstances).

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Let me ask a question. If that is what you really want, why worry about where AC comes from at all? Why consider armor or magic in the equation at all? I mean, when you get down to it, the majority of the complexity you are describing in the situation that prompted this post is armor and magic (plus an 'unhittable' class feature very much like what you are describing). Why not just assign an AC fo all characters based on level and qualified by class and perhaps your ability score? Whether you put on armor or are nimble and fast is just color, regardless you end up with the same AC. If you level, your AC goes up and this is described merely by color - you found some magic armor or you got more nimble. Which it is is meaningless in the framework of the game, and the stated goal - ensuring simplicity of resolution and balance is really easy to achieve.

Likewise, why worry about what weapon the combatant is using to do damage? Why not just assign each character a die based on level and class, possibly modified by a single ability bonus, and consider the weapon to be just color? It doesn't really matter if the character is pummeling someone with fists or stabbing with a knife or slashing with a sword. Again simplicity of resolution and balance is really easy to achieve. What do you achieve by doing something different?

I don't see how the complexity caused by having so many non-obvious bonuses provides much in the way of benefits.

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That's clear.