Pathfinder 1E What's broken or needs vast system knowledge?

[Cadence]

So, I've played and run 1e, 2e, 3/3.5, and 4e over the decades, and am now running Pathfinder. Apparently my play groups over that time have ruined me by not trying to exploit the cracks in the rules and not making their characters by optimizing out every last benefit. Needless to say this leaves me unprepared for dealing with the rest of the gaming universe.

So, two questions:

1) What have you personally found to be most broken in Pathfinder?

2) What have you personally found requires the most system knowledge to take advantage of in Pathfinder?

On a side note, I'm going through http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-pathfinder/319833-what-your-pathfinder-houserules.html#post5853912 to see the variety of house rules people are using, but a lot of those aren't for addressing the broken. Any other threads you can lead me to would be appreciated as well.

Thanks!

 

[Dozen]

1; The class abilities, definitely. The Paizo guys were so desperate to fix the broken classes, they sometimes overshot. You can't really blame them, though; it is clear by now that 3.x gained sentience, decided it doesn't want to be fixed and resists all attempts with unearthly vigor. The only consistent advice I can give is: Keep an eye on those full Arcane casters. They grew little more nasty, just enough to suprise you on the occassion after years spent as a 3.5 DM.

It's an entirely other matter if you allow 3rd party material. The classes from other publishers are mixture of the best of ideas and impressive creativity with such a baffling level of complete, utter jacksh*t it would Overwhelm a Demigod if he cast Detect Chaos on it. Like the Artificer which can unbalance a campaign more than a 3.5 one and refers to rounding up as "natural" - whereas that's the first instance you need to round upwards I've ever seen - , or the Warlock, a thinly disguised, flavorless Sorcerer ripoff with limitations the D&D version couldn't help but laugh at. They are not broken, per se, but not thought through, so watch out, just in case.

2; A rather odd question, and I'm not sure if I understand correctly. You want to find the hardest, most mentally challenging way to abuse Pathfinder rules? You expect your players to find the best loopholes on their first try? Who are you DMing for? Dandu?

 

[Wycen]

1) What have you personally found to be most broken in Pathfinder?

2) What have you personally found requires the most system knowledge to take advantage of in Pathfinder?

Well, my answer to number 1 is probably going to change from campaign to campaign or game to game. I'd say our wizard's Knowledge checks are broken, or at least 2 of us in the party think that. But he bought down all his other stats to eek out every point possible, so someday he'll regret having a bad DEX.

For number 2, I'd say the Combat Maneuvers require a ton of system knowledge to not bog the game down. One group I play with abuses the system as a substitute for pretty much anything that can't be defined as hitting a monster with a sword, but my other group tends to avoid using them, except for my eidolon and when we need to escape a grapple.
When else do people create flow charts for this subsystem?

 

[Dandu]

Take a sharpie and strike out any references to Candles of Invocation in your Pathfinder books.

 

[Mad Hamish]

Full progression spellcasters are the most powerful classes in Pathfinder just like they have been for every version of AD&D (past extremely low levels in earlier ones).
The summoner class needs some watching as the Eidolon can be extremely effective and cut into a hth specialist's role.
Pounce is a huge power up.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Wild Shape is still broken, although only in one aspect, namely AC. (Otherwise it's confusing and takes lots of system mastery.) Your AC will suck, unless you get wild shaped armor, which is a +3 armor bonus.

I'm playing an 8th-level druid, who due to an alternate path can turn into a Huge bear. His AC is probably too high due to the wild armor (spent something like 90% of character wealth on that, because casters are less item-dependent than other classes), but without it would have an AC score rivaling that of a 1st-level monk. (Beast Form III, if turning into a Huge animal, gives -4 Dex and a -2 size penalty to AC. It gives back +6 natural armor, basically matching out, but you can't wear armor. Or, I suppose, you could buy expensive non-enhanced barding that you somehow need to transport in (demi)human form and then have someone else spend minutes putting it on whenever you wildshape.)

Even worse might be the barbarian armored hulk alternate path, taking away a barbarian's only real weakness, their low AC.

Or maybe worse is the alchemist. It's not core, thank Gozreh, and I'm finding I have a real distaste for it. You can drink a mutagen to boost Strength (a new or untyped bonus) for a long period of time. This stacks with the Bull's Strength potion you can make (but only for yourself, I guess alchemists are supposed to be selfish), you can use another potion to enlarge yourself (+2 Strength, significant non-ability-score based combat bonuses like reach), and of course you can take the Feral Mutagen feat that gives you three natural attacks. All of this stacks with rage, and isn't particularly level-based, so you can just dip the alchemist. Paizo even has a "ragechemist" path, so obviously they saw this coming.

Having run 4e before my current Kingmaker campaign (I'm still running 4e and am playing in Kingmaker) my distaste only grew. The class seems like a "striker" but even then the powers cover too big an area. In addition to everything I mentioned above you also get bombs. And maybe poisons. I'm not sure; at one point three PCs were multiclassed alchemists and all had different paths, so each had to give up some alchemist abilities in exchange for other ones. The vivisectionist, for instance, gave up bombs in order to gain sneak attack, which works real well when you're 10 feet tall and have a spear that now has 15 feet of reach.

 

[Cadence]

2; A rather odd question, and I'm not sure if I understand correctly. You want to find the hardest, most mentally challenging way to abuse Pathfinder rules? You expect your players to find the best loopholes on their first try? Who are you DMing for? Dandu?

I've heard a friend (not in this PF game) and a few posters in various places say they dislike PF because it requires a lot of "system mastery". One of the ways they meant it seems to be along the lines of "if you don't know how to make the things in the system work together that you're letting down the rest of the party... and there is a lot there to make work together." So this is more of a figuring out what's going on question than preparing for my players to try and abuse things.

[MENTION=13732]Wycen[/MENTION] 's comment about the combat maneuver's is one of the two I expected. I actually had my group try an out of campaign combat to see how they would work since a few had done them only in 3.5 before and a few had never seen them used at all. The other is something about choosing the right options (feats, skills, etc...) early on so that you can take full advantage of what becomes available later. Not so much in min-maxing or loopholes, but just to get the feats as they become available.

 

[Aramax]

S U M M O N E R is broke as heck!If I could I would just rip the pages out of the book!

 

[S'mon]

I'm not sure; at one point three PCs were multiclassed alchemists...

That brings up the general point: GMs, don't allow unrestricted 'dipping' of classes! Multiclassing in general should only be done with GM approval and needs to make sense in-world. If you allow the players to try any abusive combo they can think of, it's much more likely they will.

 

[Dozen]

I've heard a friend and a few posters in various places say they dislike PF because it requires a lot of "system mastery". One of the ways they meant it seems to be along the lines of "if you don't know how to make the things in the system work together that you're letting down the rest of the party... and there is a lot there to make work together." So this is more of a figuring out what's going on question than preparing for my players to try and abuse things.

... Have those guys ever played optimized 3rd Edition D&D? PF is a tad tamer version of 3.5, really - unquestionably harder than 4th Ed., but in all seriousness, if you have half an idea about 3.5., you'd have to actually try your best to create a character who slows the party down in Pathfinder. They fixed tons of useless Feats, balanced classes. You don't need to sweat on deprivation, or get splashbooks to play a Mid-Tier Fighter. I don't think anyone who played 3rd Ed. and then tried out PF found the latter harder. Now 4th Ed. fans are another story, but they are used to an easy experience, not the rigors of other editions. There was a guy not too long ago who started this thread to "fix" Player Characters - yes, just them, NPCs could have been made out of paper for all he cared - in D&DNext because they are low enough on hitpoints at first level to get killed in one hit.
(Psi)SeveredHead pointed out some legilimate issues, but these come with 3.x, and always will. The best you can do is to memorize them so they won't suprise you and can prepare to counter them.