Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6203466" data-attributes="member: 17106">That's misleading. I don't veto a skill when it's appropriate. I call for a roll when it's appropriate. It's an affirmative action on my part. It's not like my players don't get a lot of mileage out of their skills. They roll a lot more skill checks that attack rolls.By "we", I assume you mean "me". That being said, I'll let that one go.Summoning and polymorph both give you the base version of the creature. You can cherry pick some decent abilities now and then, but those creatures/forms don't play well in a high-powered game. It's virtually impossible for a summoned creature to do anything, and a polymorphed caster still has crap HD and BAB and saves. Typically those types of spells a waste of a spell slot. The exception is when you get into the highest level spells like Shapechange and Gate, but most characters don't get there, and those are so fraught with issues that most players don't touch them.I find that most people gravitate towards spells that allow their characters to utilize their own best abilities. If you pump your casting stat, it's best to have enemies rolling saves against it, but that does also incur SR.I also find that the most effective use of spell slots is often to boost the fighter; I see a lot of casters specializing in that. No SR there, it's true. But many very good spells are more effective when cast on a melee party member than on the caster.It's a pretty common SLA among demons and their ilk and available to every full caster class. It's not exactly rare. "Outside of casters" is outside of a large portion of the PHB classes.Not really. Some good equipment and buffs and the PF CMB rules pretty much negate those things. TB combat reactions help too. Even under the core rules, it always seemed to me that the basic fighter spine numbers were so dominant that they did alright.I had one player who made a ranger with favored enemy aberrations and took the will save reducing flaw. This was not a good decision on his part. He was repeatedly enchanted in various ways and eventually got hold/CdGed. I don't see a lot of martial characters with low will saves any more. It's just not wise (no pun intended). Also, medium saves help, and the core rules do shaft the nomagical classes on base saves a little bit. That said, saves, like AC, come largely from magic items.DR is usually pretty easy to beat; extraplanar creatures with alignment DR are the main exception. Iterative attack math can be a problem, one that Trailblazer patched pretty well.Typically I use more monsters than classed NPCs, but it varies by campaign.I'm playing a heroic high fantasy game. My players have much better ability scores than the standard array, and much more money than the DMG advises, and various other things. Their enemies are typically built the same way they are. In general, I consider a balanced encounter to be an even fight: that is, four PCs of level X against 4 NPCs of the same level, built the same way. When using monsters I'll typically have them in numbers and way, way over what the CR would suggest, and they'll all be custom built to the same standards. One NPC against the party will typically be on the order of six levels higher than them. Theoretically, these should be 50/50 battles decided by a razor thin margin, not mopping the floor with anyone. Sometimes I go higher than that. Sometimes I go lower, but anything much lower is less a battle and more a training exercise, barring some unusual tactical considerations.The baseline encounter difficulty is really bizarre. As I've said elsewhere, in a four on one battle of equal level characters, the one should run or surrender, not fight.In practice, the players have a much better feel for their characters and tend to use their abilities more effectively, so it swings their way. That said, this is why I don't run a lot of battles. I want each one to be a big deal and generally carry a real risk.</blockquote>

Verification