jasin
Explorer
No?
Smite give +Cha to attacks and +level to damage against evil, +Cha to attack and +2xlevel against fiends, dragons and undead.
Seems pretty massive.
PF Paladin Lay on hands ability
- Thread starter MACLARREN
- Start date
Smite give +Cha to attacks and +level to damage against evil, +Cha to attack and +2xlevel against fiends, dragons and undead.
Seems pretty massive.
Jadeite
Hero
But it's only damage. Lots of damage, certainly, but still only hp damage.
And it only works against evil opponents. Fighters, Monks, Bards, Rogues and Rangers all get access to either kill effects or excellent ways of dishing out negative conditions. The paladin just gets a free banishment against an evil outsider, ending the effect of his smite, no matter if succesful or not.
His smite evil ability is also quite useless against monsters like the Tarrasque unless they change its alignment.
And it only works against evil opponents. Fighters, Monks, Bards, Rogues and Rangers all get access to either kill effects or excellent ways of dishing out negative conditions. The paladin just gets a free banishment against an evil outsider, ending the effect of his smite, no matter if succesful or not.
His smite evil ability is also quite useless against monsters like the Tarrasque unless they change its alignment.
Still no.
At 11th level my Paladin can smite a grand total of four opponents per day. Yes a barbarian has limits on his rage, but it's not limited to four specific targets. A fighter can use his feats on any and every target he tangles with and a rogue can sneak attack whatever he wants whenever he can qualify. A monk can flurry all day long (and it's at full BAB now!) Finally, let's not forget that smite evil requires the target to actually be evil. Not uncommon but not a given.
Seriously, yes it's a massive boost in what a Paladin can do, but it's absolutely not unbalanced or broken at the game table. Pathfinder is definitely somewhat more powerful than 3.5e core but it's balanced. Also, the monsters in PFRPG are being renovated to reflect the new state of the onion.
jasin
Explorer
So +5 to attacks and +11 damage on each and every attack against a grand total of four opponents per day is suddenly not impressive damage?
How on earth did you endure playing 3.5? Or did you just use it when you wanted to play semi-competent everymen, like when people go to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay to play camp followers and rat catchers?
Is that the official line? Backwards compatibility is forgotten and a new arms race is on? That doesn't sound very appealing to me.
I should preface my comments that it strikes me you're disinclined to be satisfied here and that you're operating on a have-made-up-your-mind basis. I could be wrong, but I'm getting that feeling.
It's impressive damage and I admitted as such. It is however focused and specific damage. This isn't terribly different from talking about psions being overpowered because they can nova. Sure, there are circumstances where a psion comes out ahead. But in typical play it doesn't work out that way.
Again, halfway through his career a paladin can at best do his extra damage to four evil opponents. If you're up against CN, N, LN or CG opponents you're just out of luck. If there are more than four of them in a day, you're out of luck. If you pick the wrong ones, you're out of luck. If you're busy being grappled, or fighting off a spell, you're out of luck. My point is that it's conditional. Highly conditional. Yes, it's likely going to get used on the BBEG if the player can figure out who it is. Sure. But it's not broken.
Think of this like a more limited version of a ranger's favored enemy. Sure it maxes out at more damage, but it's less frequently applicable.
Well. That was sort of a nasty paragraph. But hey.
It's kind of funny. We're talking about abstract numbers. Hit points and damage-per-hit. Yet you're suggesting 3.5 was just right in it's numerical abstraction and PFRPG is full of ubermensch?
The problem is that in 3.5 my group rarely played paladins because they were visibly inferior to most other classes. Aside from role-play potential (which is admittedly huge) most other classes played out a lot more interesting on the table. PFRPG gives the paladin enough useful and meaningful that it's suddenly fun to play again.
Immortal? Undefeatable? Broken? No. Play the system. Seriously. It's fun, which last time I checked was the goal of the whole bloody hobby. Give the rules a chance as written and forget the numerical comparison to 3.5 core. Give it a try as a complete solution. I've got no more arguments left for you since you basically don't accept any of what I'm saying so far.
Not at all. What's going on with monsters is that they're being adjusted to be more appropriate. I've got no great examples off the top of my head, but there's been a lot of thinking put behind this too. One that I can relate is that undead now have a d8 hit die. Why did this change from d12? Simply so that they can have undead with more hit dice but lower overall hitpoints (or the same). It's a mechanical way of having the option to make their saves better (for instance) or their BAB better (for instance) without giving them an extra twenty or so hitpoints.
Some monsters are being re-evaluated as to how they actually play at the game table. Some CRs are just wrong. Some monsters will be rated at lower CRs than we're accustomed to seeing written because they're actually easier than rated, when actually played. Some higher. Some will be adjusted to more appropriately model the CR that the creature should be at.
Paizo has never made a secret that part of what they were doing was making the core 10 classes and the core races more powerful to be more in line with the last several years worth of expansion materials. It's sort of an arms race in that sense, I suppose.
Still, I have to say from the player's end, adventures are a lot deadlier than they used to be. I'm a much smarter player now than I was six years ago, but Red Hand of Doom handed me more dead character sheets than I can shake a stick at. It's fun that things have gotten more dangerous, and it's fun that now I've got a few more toys to work with.
Try it. Seriously.
It's impressive damage and I admitted as such. It is however focused and specific damage. This isn't terribly different from talking about psions being overpowered because they can nova. Sure, there are circumstances where a psion comes out ahead. But in typical play it doesn't work out that way.
Again, halfway through his career a paladin can at best do his extra damage to four evil opponents. If you're up against CN, N, LN or CG opponents you're just out of luck. If there are more than four of them in a day, you're out of luck. If you pick the wrong ones, you're out of luck. If you're busy being grappled, or fighting off a spell, you're out of luck. My point is that it's conditional. Highly conditional. Yes, it's likely going to get used on the BBEG if the player can figure out who it is. Sure. But it's not broken.
Think of this like a more limited version of a ranger's favored enemy. Sure it maxes out at more damage, but it's less frequently applicable.
Well. That was sort of a nasty paragraph. But hey.
It's kind of funny. We're talking about abstract numbers. Hit points and damage-per-hit. Yet you're suggesting 3.5 was just right in it's numerical abstraction and PFRPG is full of ubermensch?
The problem is that in 3.5 my group rarely played paladins because they were visibly inferior to most other classes. Aside from role-play potential (which is admittedly huge) most other classes played out a lot more interesting on the table. PFRPG gives the paladin enough useful and meaningful that it's suddenly fun to play again.
Immortal? Undefeatable? Broken? No. Play the system. Seriously. It's fun, which last time I checked was the goal of the whole bloody hobby. Give the rules a chance as written and forget the numerical comparison to 3.5 core. Give it a try as a complete solution. I've got no more arguments left for you since you basically don't accept any of what I'm saying so far.
Not at all. What's going on with monsters is that they're being adjusted to be more appropriate. I've got no great examples off the top of my head, but there's been a lot of thinking put behind this too. One that I can relate is that undead now have a d8 hit die. Why did this change from d12? Simply so that they can have undead with more hit dice but lower overall hitpoints (or the same). It's a mechanical way of having the option to make their saves better (for instance) or their BAB better (for instance) without giving them an extra twenty or so hitpoints.
Some monsters are being re-evaluated as to how they actually play at the game table. Some CRs are just wrong. Some monsters will be rated at lower CRs than we're accustomed to seeing written because they're actually easier than rated, when actually played. Some higher. Some will be adjusted to more appropriately model the CR that the creature should be at.
Paizo has never made a secret that part of what they were doing was making the core 10 classes and the core races more powerful to be more in line with the last several years worth of expansion materials. It's sort of an arms race in that sense, I suppose.
Still, I have to say from the player's end, adventures are a lot deadlier than they used to be. I'm a much smarter player now than I was six years ago, but Red Hand of Doom handed me more dead character sheets than I can shake a stick at. It's fun that things have gotten more dangerous, and it's fun that now I've got a few more toys to work with.
Try it. Seriously.
Only if the GM is using 4 evil outsiders per day. However, it's a problem with a GM's way of doing things rather than the system.
Two different games. Not comparable.
Oh, and d20 Paladin under 3.x had all the restrictions and no benefits. You could play a paladin, of course, but you were unfairly penalized.
You're not making sense.
Pathfinder RPG is official rule set for Paizo products from now on.
Backward compatibility means that the system can import material from previous editions. It does not mean that Pathfinder material must be compatible the other way round.
This is not an arms race - this is an honest attempt to fix a lot of balance problems. You don't need to agree, but you're strongly advised to remember that you're arguing with people with more experience, and who actually used this class in that form in their games already (12th level Paladin player in my party says "Hi").
Finally, to recap some basic truths:
1. Paladins, Warriors and Barbarians are different types of front line character. Paladins are tanks with ability to deal with single strong opponents, Warriors are critical masters with great penchant for maneuvers, Barbarians have great mobility, good resistance to damage and effects and deal a lot of harm by themselves.
2. If you see a Rogue trying to ply his trade at front line, than that means that a class with a different specialty is infringing on home turf of warrior class. It's possible but should not happen too often... otherwise everyone will want to play a Rogue, and none a warrior.
3. At 11th level you should to expect 100 damage per round dealt to you. 7d6 healing is non-issue.
Regards,
Ruemere
Last edited:
jasin
Explorer
No, that's if the GM is using 4 Evil creatures per day. Against Evil outsiders it's +22 at 11th level.
Your extensive experience and in-depth understanding isn't really showing.
Your claim that monsters are being boosted to compensate for the "new state of the onion" would suggest that you cannot simply import material from 3.5. If a Pathfinder paladin 11 is going to be mopping the floor with a CR 11 3.5 Dragon, that's not backward compatibility.
Yes, that's what I am talking about. +11 to damage (i.e. Evil non-outsider/not-a-dragon/not-an-undead) simply brings the paladin up to Fighter damage threshold (Weapon training + Weapon specialization + Critical feats). Unless the opponent is also an outsider, there is nothing really to speak of.
Be more specific. It's hard to refute your statements when you fail to provide accurate listing of things you find to be wrong with using Pathfinder RPG.
Actually, since it's apparent that you're not using PFRPG classes yet, you are arguing from the position of a person who tries to raise an issue for the sake of raising an issue...
I never mentioned monsters. I have pointed out inherent flaw in your argument - that of a meaning of "backward compatibility".
The monsters are being actually toned down due to different encounter design principles, and those get fixed from previous editions, too.
Importing is "simple" for certain values of "simple". Basically, to run a monster, and please understand - we're talking about running a monster, not an NPC, you can simply plug it into your Pathfinder game - you may need to adjust a thing or two (like adding CMB and CMD - it's doable on the fly).
Countering general arguments with specific examples is wrong. We have been talking about "importing", then you suddenly switched to "monsters" and now it's "dragons".
Consider the following:
- a dragon is free to grab, chomp and swallow. Actually, given PFRPG rules, it may be pretty easy for it to do just that (Dragon's CMB is going to be pretty high given it's size and strength and number of HDs).
- Saint George and his cronies, on the other hand, are strongly inclined to think that a knight in a shining armor should have a chance against a dragon.
- a dragon, with its massive attack bonuses, is not a trifle unless the GM's doing something strange.
Regards,
Ruemere
Last edited:
jasin
Explorer
You are wrong.
I'm operating on the basis that on the first reading, the paladin boosts appeared insane.
After some discussion, I haven't changed my mind and they still appear insane, because the counterargument seems to boil down to "meh, it's +20 to damage, but it's just against a couple of guys per day" and "meh, it's fast healing ~17 at 10th level, but it'll run out in 15 rounds".
These arguments do not convince me because I have played a lot of 3.5, and have seen the difference between having and not +20 to damage or fast healing 10, and they have had a profound effect on the encounter, even at significantly higher levels.
It has also been my experience (supported on the whole by the collective experience I've read about on various forums) that being able to focus power and pour all your resources into a single encounter (or a couple) doesn't balance very well with inexhaustible power of lesser intensity. +20 to damage against 7 opponents day is way better than +4 to damage against 50 opponents per day.
It also doesn't balance very well in terms party vs. monsters, because it's likely to be used to devastate the most important fights, running the danger of making anticlimactic the fights that are supposed to be the most memorable. This problem was commonly accepted to be at least one of the problems with psions, and to a lesser extent all spellcasters. It's such a common issue that there's a shorthand phrase for it, going nova, and it's rarely meant to indicate anything positive.
My experience (and I thought common wisdom) suggest quite the opposite: ostensibly the psion is balanced because if he just pours all his power points into disintegrate after disintegrate, he'll have very little left for later. In practice, however, this means that the psion anticlimatically disintegrates one fight, and then calls for rest. This is either practical, in which case the psion is ready for another bout of disintegration spamming, or not, in which case the psion is bored and boring. That is not balance.
A bit, yes. But despite the tone, the question was honest. If you (general you, not you personally) feel that the PFRPG paladin is just fine with over 700 hp of healing capacity at 20th, dealing +40 damage against some of the most iconic, ostensibly scariest foes, how did you manage to enjoy the game before, both playing a paladin and playing something else (that's not a shapechanged wizard, a shapechanged druid or a Divine Metamagic/Persistent Spell cleric)? How could the experience have been anything other than incredibly frustrating due to the characters' incompetence?
No, I'm suggesting 3.5 is all sorts of messed up, and PFRPG, to the best of my ability to discern, seems all different sorts of messed up.
This comes as a huge disappointment to me. Deciding to compete with a new edition by cleaning up the old was a very brave decision, and it had the potential for greatness: 3.5 was a good game, and a professional team putting in the effort to work out the problem with the benefit of years of experience could have made it truly great. Instead, my impression is that we have a different game, better than 3.5, but only slightly. Better, but not enough to outweigh the advantages of 3.5, namely extensive experience and the wealth of material.
It's anecdotal, but my experience was that paladins were among the most impressive classes, aside from spellcasters played by players system-savvy abusers. They were not as fragile as spellcasters or light warriors (rogue or ranger), they were not as susceptible to magic as brutes (fighter or barbarian), they can heal (not that much, but better than anyone else except the cleric or druid), and they could do scary damage against their favoured foes when they tried (not all the time, but enough to put the fear of it into DMs, and enough to be appropriately remembered as the bane of single, powerful foes).
I will, but mostly on the strength of the quality of Paizo's work so far. Which might not be completely reasonable, considering this quality is mostly found in adventure design rather than game mechanics design; in fact, these same overall excellent adventures often sport some incredibly inept mechanics design.
But I don't think discussing or having an opinion about a game before trying it is invalid. I don't have the time to try each and every game available, so I must apply some selection process before I try them. Reading through a game and comparing it to previous similar experiences seems reasonable.
I think you're very, very wrong here.
3.5 undead already had too many hit dice compared to... well, anything; their CR, their hp, their BAB. This was one of the problems with 3.5 turning: CR 6 zombies that couldn't be turned by a 16th-level cleric because they had 20 HD. Piling on more HD is not what anyone wants to do with undead.
Instead, Pathfinder increases undead BAB from weak to medium. This means that you don't need as many HD for your undead monster to be able to hit stuff.
Since HD and BAB are linked in Pathfinder, that means d8 HD for undead.
Since this means that undead would have phenomenally crap hp for their CR under 3.5 rules thanks to their Con -, Pathfinder takes a page from late 3.5 and applies Cha to undead hp, like other creatures apply Con. There is already a precedent for that in 3.5 core with undead using Cha instead of Con for concentration and rage, and almost all late 3.5 undead had Unholy Toughness (Cha to hp) as a "special ability" because the designers already realized that just piling on HD to achieve the desired number of hp had undesirable cascading effects, and that it was more elegant to bring undead more in line with other monsters by giving them a stat to use for hp.
At the risk of being nasty again, I'm not convinced you can claim an in-depth understanding on the system if you so profoundly misunderstand a design decision like this.
However, the perpetual arms race and obsolescence of relatively recent material is not fun, at least for me.
Far be from me to claim that 3.5 was perfectly balanced, or that there was no power creep, but over it's lifetime at least it appeared to aim for the same (admittedly wide) range set by the PHB classes. The most powerful later classes were no more powerful than the most powerful PHB classes, and the weakest later classes were no weaker than the PHB's weakest.
Despite claims of backwards compatiblity, Pathfinder unambiguously ramps up the PC power level. This is desirable to the extent to which it makes up for the power creep over 3.5's lifetime, but if the Pathfinder classes are appreciably more powerful than all or most of 3.5, what am I to do with my 3.5 material? What am I to do with Paizo's own 3.5 adventure Paths? Just ramping up the monster power level and the future adventure path difficulty to compensate for the compensation isn't the answer. It leaves us right where we were at the end of 3.5, but without the benefit of experience in identifying problems.
As far as I see it, Pathfinder set out with two goals: to provide an in-print engine for Paizo's adventures after the end of 3.5; and to fix the issues with 3.5, many of which were well established and discussed in depth.
It obviously succeeds at the former, but for the latter it appears to have gone in much the same direction that 4E was initially criticized for: in short, fixing what ain't broke, and thereby introducing whole new problems. There's even some of the same rhetoric: everything sucked before, but not anymore.
4E at least (despite the fans' wishful thinking) never claimed or attempted to be 3.5 only better, but was intended as its own thing from the start. Pathfinder and its fans seem to have went from "3.5 thrives!" to "Pathfinder rules, 3.5 drools!" with alarming haste.
I'm not sure the paladin sucked before, rather I think folks would have different reasons for playing one. Before they were pretty much an alternate fighter with some inherent resistances, but now I think they'd fill in as a reasonable replacement for the party healer as well.
That said, my first glance left me with the impression that Bulmahn may have gone a wee bit overboard with the new version, but whatever. If I don't like it in play, I'll finesse some of the details until I do.
It would be tragic if the new pally is the final straw that soured you to the system, because I think there's so much more to like.
