Pathfinder 1E Balance throughout the game line?

[Melkor]

Hi folks,

I haven't played Pathfinder in quite a while, but my group's normal GM/DM said he might want to run a campaign between now and when D&DNext comes out in August. Maybe Skull & Shackles, but could be something else.

In looking through the options in all of the books, I was wondering how well the game line has maintained balance with the introduction of all of the various classes and options in the Ultimate books.

At least one of the potential players really tries to push the limits with min-maxing and 'stump' the gamemaster. Anything to watch out for?

Thanks.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Hi folks,

I haven't played Pathfinder in quite a while, but my group's normal GM/DM said he might want to run a campaign between now and when D&DNext comes out in August. Maybe Skull & Shackles, but could be something else.

In looking through the options in all of the books, I was wondering how well the game line has maintained balance with the introduction of all of the various classes and options in the Ultimate books.

At least one of the potential players really tries to push the limits with min-maxing and 'stump' the gamemaster. Anything to watch out for?

Thanks.

It's not that balanced to begin with, and the extra books made it worse.

Many of the newer options are actually weak at first glance (the witch, for instance, is weaker than the wizard) but turn out not to be, or at least are frustrating to have at the table. (The witch will almost certainly take Sleep Hex. No Hit Dice cap, no Spell Resistance, and can keep casting. It' s not necessarily nastier than wizard tricks, but will frustrate the DM.)

The summoner is really unbalanced. It's taking a problematic issue (action economy) and breaking it wide open. The synthesist is technically weaker (not breaking the action economy), but results in unstoppable melee characters. Worse, it is the most poorly-written and confusing set of rules you will ever see in Pathfinder, so the player will inevitably get it wrong, assuming the player isn't attempting to abuse the game or the DM's lack of knowledge. Most ways of dealing with a synth within the rules require you to deliberately single out the synth.

Recently Crane Style feats got nerfed because you could create a monk (usually) who could not be killed. The monk couldn't attack, since using the feat required using Total Defense. Alas, if anyone attacked the monk, the monk could counterattack with no real penalties. So what? Why not just ignore the guy who isn't attacking you? Because with a dollop of Enlarge Person, the monk could entirely fill a doorway. Dungeon encounters become very difficult for the DM. (Recall how good monks are at not getting killed by magic.) The fighting style could be dealt with by changing every encounter to deal with it. Every opponent needed multiple attacks and/or lots of reach. Look at feats!

There's a lot of broken archetypes, new classes (eg alchemist) that give new bonus types, new classes (eg gunslinger) that don't use the same rules as other characters and range from broken in specific circumstances to just plain broken depending on things such as what guns and ammunition types are available to them... speaking of which, if you absolutely have to have a gunslinger in your game, read the errata for weapon cords and link your player to them.

There's lots of broken stuff in splatbooks salted in with the good. If you're just starting to DM Pathfinder, stick to the core rules for your first campaign. Sure there's broken cheese there too, but there's less of it to look at.

 

[benkyo]

There's way to break any build in Pathfinder. A friend of mine, who is in my party, built his sorc as an enchanter. He pumped everything into it to make it darn near impossible to resist his mind affecting spells. However, this can be tamped down by throwing things at them that are immune. This is just an example. The other books, like SeveredHead said, include a lot of archetypes that change pretty much everything about a class. If you use just the core book, you will avoid those.

 

[Celebrim]

There is nothing balanced to begin with. Pathfinder basically set itself up as the replacement 3.X system. Therefore, they pretty much had to keep 3.X's system expectations if they were going to sell their product. They also I think correctly realized that balance was never the highest priority of people playing 3.5 anyway and that if everything was broken, then nothing basically was, so they basically just went gonzo and threw kitchen sinks of powers at things and left it up to the tables to sort it out on the theory that the players would be happy and the DMs could deal with it - it's not like the point of DMing is winning anyway, and from a DM perspective, characters that can't die aren't all bad.

It's works in so far as it goes, but it keeps all the problems of 3.5 including poor balance.

I'd like to see a tighter version of the rules far Pathfinder 2.0, but why mess with a formula that is working?

 

[Kinak]

Balance hasn't really changed substantially since the core rulebook's release. None of the new options really trump base Wizard, Cleric, and Druid.

A few classes have very good archetypes that are sort of no-brainers (like the Qinggong Monk), but buffing lower-tier classes like the monk is a good thing from a balance perspective.

Optimizers tend to like the summoner because there are so many dials to play with and most GMs don't bother to check over the point allocations. A lot of tables don't allow them because of the hassle, but they're great to round out small parties.

If your optimizing player seriously just wants the strongest character, it'll pull most of its stuff from the Core Rulebook regardless. The only outside source they probably want is the Advanced Race Guide (for favored class bonuses).

In short, I wouldn't worry about adding the rest of the line for balance reasons. It might be worth paring down for complexity's sake, though.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[MichaelSomething]

While the tiers and brokenness still exits, there is less brokenness and less distance between tiers.

 

[gamerprinter]

Pathfinder is about as balanced as 3x was (or wasn't), and while its true that I'd agree that certain classes can be problematic - witch (though I love the witch) and summoner (I can't stand summoner), for the most part, I love the class archetypes from the Advanced Players Guide to the point that I'd never play any class without one, since I'm always shooting for different flavor. Core class without archetypes put me to sleep, flavorwise (not class feature wise). From Ultimate Combat, I prefer ninja to rogue, and I prefer samurai to cavalier (and not because of the Asian-ness of them, rather their class features.)

 

[billd91]

I think it's important to realize that Pathfinder's approach to balance is fuzzy, and deliberately so. Exactly how characters balance out depends on a lot of factors ranging form player make-up, campaign make-up, play style, and so on. Pathfinder has elements that cater to a broad spectrum of these approaches from class archetypes that are very powerful in some circumstances (the summoner's master summoner archetype) to weaker (the cleric's separatist). Yet each of these options may find a good-fiitting home in any number of different campaigns, even if they shouldn't be let into just any campaign. This does put a lot of burden on the DM to know his players, analyze some of their more questionable choices, and say No judiciously.

 

[TwoSix]

This does put a lot of burden on the DM to know his players, analyze some of their more questionable choices, and say No judiciously.

Or my approach, which is to say "heck with it", and let everything go through. The corollary to "The game must be balanced by DM intervention at the table" is "The game can always BE balanced by DM intervention at the table." Tough encounters just mean more PC death, which means more opportunities to build new characters. And let's be honest, character creation is half the fun of the 3.X/PF system. If it wasn't, the PF SRD wouldn't be nearly as big as it is.

 

[drood]

Pathfinder is not balanced. Even though Pathfinder improved 3.5, they also kept some of 3.5's problems (expanded upon them). PF's Ultimate books just add to some of those problems.

As a GM I believe it's my job to balance everything out in the end. Yes, it's a lot more work. But, I like that! Heh!