Synthetist is Shameful.

[tylermalan]

Nah, critical mass is a scientific term that refers to when something has obtained enough mass to go nuclear. In the case of the synthesist I am using this analogy to demonstrate that by building a piece it can outshine other pieces.

You know, I don't really care if the summoner has better action economy than the synthesist. I actually like the term action economy, I will need to think some more on this term. I have my reservations about it as I think it does not account for board position but yeah, I need to think some more on this term.

For now gentlemen, I have a serious problem with a crertain synthesist in my game. This is causing me some duress but it is also giving me vast insight within myself and my game. I will confide in you that I find myself to be drawn into an adversarial role with my fellow synthesist player. Now I recognise this as my bad and I admit my fault. I do not want to disallow the class. Yet, I do not want to increase the CR challenges for this will cripple the rest of the players.

Fine - this can very well be the case, and no one would dispute this. As mentioned by others, even a little bit of optimization can seem vastly broken if the rest of the party is UNoptimized by comparison. Just realize that a lot of this board contains very skilled players, and these players may look at your synthesist player and immediately react with, "You think THAT'S bad? Nah, man, that's not bad. I'll show you bad." They then proceed to drop Big Grimm on you. Etc.

And what they're really trying to get to is this: is your player ACTUALLY overpowered, or do you just THINK he's overpowered because you can't come up with a way to keep the game interesting when he's in combat? As mentioned, there are legal builds that are worse, and DMs find a way around these, so...

But, agh, man, this thread was over a long time ago. It was over at post number 10 by SteelWind. Or, really, arguably at post number 2, by Stream... But just read post number 10. He tells you that casters are strong by this level, so this is something that you should expect. He tells you that your PC is not as bad as it could be. He then gives you suggestions about how to challenge him AND the rest of the party. Other than the fact that you said you wanted to stay away from teaching lessons, I consider this thread over already. And if you DON'T want to teach lessons, then your only question should be "Is everyone having fun?" If the answer to this question is "yes" then this thread was over before you posted it.

 

[Nellisir]

The class is an aggressive build which precludes that the player will have balls.

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

Fine - this can very well be the case, and no one would dispute this. As mentioned by others, even a little bit of optimization can seem vastly broken if the rest of the party is UNoptimized by comparison. Just realize that a lot of this board contains very skilled players, and these players may look at your synthesist player and immediately react with, "You think THAT'S bad? Nah, man, that's not bad. I'll show you bad." They then proceed to drop Big Grimm on you. Etc.

And what they're really trying to get to is this: is your player ACTUALLY overpowered, or do you just THINK he's overpowered because you can't come up with a way to keep the game interesting when he's in combat? As mentioned, there are legal builds that are worse, and DMs find a way around these, so...

Yer kidding right? C'mon, don't patronize me ok, if I wanted to I'd just fill a couple ranks of level 1 gunslingers and have done with them. I've already posted the bad boy uptop, oh, did I mention that he was playing a Paizo 3rd party bear ursine that gave him improved grapple as a first level feat, heh heh, the sucka would be hitting 15" reach with no a00s and grabbing everything in sight. heh heh, this is where the discovery part of playing begins, as we all sat down behind of our projector and reviewed his sources we determined that 3rd party was also "home brew" and therefor disallowed in our campaign.

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

This is actually pretty cool internet experience, I feel like I fell in a pond of little fish that are all taking little bites out of me. Good thing I have my tower of Id.

Admin here, once again. Folks -- and this applies to everyone -- don't bicker. If you see a problem, please report it with the little triangular "!" at the bottom left of any post. Starting or continuing a fight is not what we want to see. -- Piratecat

 

[Systole]

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

Oh come on! You're going to put that quote in there and not link it?!?

 

[Nellisir]

Oh come on! You're going to put that quote in there and not link it?!?

Why? You did it for me.

 

[Bacris]

This is actually pretty cool internet experience, I feel like I fell in a pond of little fish that are all taking little bites out of me. Good thing I have my tower of Id.

And with that, I'm done.

If you construe my points as being antagonistic / adversarial, then there's no point in continuing the discussion when I'm simply attempting to have a reasoned debate.

Good luck in your game.

And for the record - I have never played a synthesist, but do have experience in game design and balance and was a pretty common member of the old Character Optimization boards over at the WotC forums and have experiencing seeing where things are that can be exploited and the effect that a single optimized character in a non-optimized party can have.

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

Post removed by Admin. Keep the thread on topic, please. -- Piratecat

 

[joah_from_Alberta]

And with that, I'm done.

If you construe my points as being antagonistic / adversarial, then there's no point in continuing the discussion when I'm simply attempting to have a reasoned debate.

Good luck in your game.

And for the record - I have never played a synthesist, but do have experience in game design and balance and was a pretty common member of the old Character Optimization boards over at the WotC forums and have experiencing seeing where things are that can be exploited and the effect that a single optimized character in a non-optimized party can have.

I can appreciate that you have an image to uphold. But whenever someone from a forum picks apart what I say sentence by sentence, ah that's an old flowchart technique that doesn't value the spirit of the letter.

I value what you say the most in your closing comments not because you are saying that you have had enough, but rather that having a single optimized character in a group of non-optimized is detrimental. It would be interesting, rather than to slug words about this if could be analytical and create comparison models that we could then analyze. Say, we make the most optimized character and we make an optimized synthesist and see how they compare both in combat and out of combat.

If I have offended you, I apologize, I mean no disrespect.

Cheers,

 

[tylermalan]

You came on here with a really serious attitude from post number 1, then seemed to get more angry at reasonable posts that disagreed with you when these posts weren't even written in an abusive, confrontational way (especially the posts containing the most commonly accepted counter-points to your arguments). You bring flawed arguments with bad/no evidence and have been angry from the start - I don't know what else to say, other than what I've already said (which you ignored when you quoted me).

But, agh, man, this thread was over a long time ago. It was over at post number 10 by SteelWind. Or, really, arguably at post number 2, by Stream... But just read post number 10. He tells you that casters are strong by this level, so this is something that you should expect. He tells you that your PC is not as bad as it could be. He then gives you suggestions about how to challenge him AND the rest of the party. Other than the fact that you said you wanted to stay away from teaching lessons, I consider this thread over already. And if you DON'T want to teach lessons, then your only question should be "Is everyone having fun?" If the answer to this question is "yes" then this thread was over before you posted it.

How much Pathfinder have you DMed or played? The biggest disconnect here is that many people will experience something in their game that is very, very strong and immediately think it is overpowered because they've never seen something equally strong before. I think this is why the other posters responded by telling you that your Synthesist PC is not so strong by comparison to actually, really strong characters. Also, if your other party members are not equally optimized, then your problem PC will seem MORE problematic than it really is within the greater scope of the game-at-large. Basically, your PC is a combat beast, but the other posters here don't understand how or why that's a problem, ESPECIALLY when you consider that a problematic PC for THOSE POSTERS (who are very skilled, experienced players) would be much, much stronger than the Synthesist which you refuse to believe could not possibly be considered weak.

Inside the context of your game, it might be strong. But your players might be inexperienced and incapable of making equivalent characters. They might have bad tactics. They might not care, and might have purposely made slightly weaker characters for some reason. All of these things could explain why your Synthesist seems so unbalanced, and none of them have anything to do purposeful power creep on behalf of Paizo or "corporatism". It's an outlandish claim especially considering the overwhelming community feeling that the Synthesist is less powerful than the normal Summoner. Open up a little bit and this could actually be a decent conversation.