Pathfinder 1E So what do you think is wrong with Pathfinder? Post your problems and we will fix it.

[GMforPowergamers]

Level is a measure of power, its just not a completely objective level of power, nor can it be in any game with meaningful variety.

yes and no... there is a range of power and one person may shine at there specialty, but there is atleast a basic amount that level have to mean...

If my level 5 character is a drow (LA+2) and has 2 levels of rogue and 1 of fighter, and I have +1 elven chain and a +1 dagger, and your level 5 character is a Dwarven Cleric of a war god level 5, and yet another PC is a Human Wizard level 5... a set of 2 goblins and a few rats would be a challenge for a group of my characters, and would be a speed bump at best to the other 2, an oger with a level of anti paliden would be a good challaange for your character but would drop me like a rock, and the wizard either totally owns the encounter (right spells prepped) or dies as fast as me (wrong spells prepped). BUT we are all 5th level...

The only solution here is for the DM to be aware of the flexibility of the system and to learn to adapt. But that's one of the reasons to have a DM, to make those adjustments when necessary. System mastery is not just a desirable skill on the part of the players. The DM should really make it a goal to learn what the CRs represent and what they are not. They are a baseline of difficulty. They are not a guarantee (nor can they be) of total compatibility with any given character.

yes witch is why I can run a kobold tribe as villains for my Saturday night crew even at level 3 or 4, and would never throw them against a dragon...ever, but Tuesday night might face a CR24 dragon before double digit levels... but the problem is when you mix the two... when one player is ready to fight kobolds and the other is ready to slay dragons...

If your characters are more powerful than the baseline, then you need to up the challenges. If the characters are weaker than the baseline, then you need to hold back some.

and what do you do when your 5 players have 2 way above base line (higher AC saves and damge plus atleast 1 or 2 cool encounter enders) and 1 of your players is just about on base line (some ways a little above and some ways a little below) and 1 of your players is a fair bit below base line, and your final player is WELL below baseline...

throw an encounter that one of the 2 power houses can't solo and you might as well just tell the weakest player to sit out or die... throw an encounter that really challenges those 2 power houses togather and the others might as well make a beer run...

Now, if the problem is that you have a character who just plain outperforms all their companions, that is a group problem, not a rules problem.

it is BOTH a rules problem and a group problem. No rules should default to angel summoner and BMX bandit.

[Aside: some think 4e fixed this; but I note that the fix - flattening the potential differential in character abilities, made the game blander for many participants and has been largely deemed an undesirable solution in the long run].

4e is far from perfect, so is PF and 3.5... but in this reagard I will take 3e every time...

I see two solutions here. Firstly, you can attempt to address it from the player's side and have the players strive to keep their characters balanced with one another. As a player I would find that unsatisfactory (actually as a player I don't care much about this issue).

I have seen this done, start game by asking everyone to play... I will give 2 examples of it backfireing though..

1) my 4e game I had an over powered Ranger at 11th level just shy of soloing =level challenges and totally soloing lower level challenges... I asked him to retrain expertise, focus, and another feat I can't remember the name of and he got PISSED... I did get him to calm down when I pointed out in the last fight our rogue did a victory dance when he called 121 damge... with an action point a daily and and encounter power, when he (the ranger got pissed the next round when his action point and encounter + atwill "only" did 132 damage...

2) our last 3.5 game we all agreed was going to be all out power plays... I showed up with an uber wizard build, another player had a psion built for super charms, a third player had a cleric decked out to be a super healer, and the fouth player was a fighter/rogue with 2 short swords... The psion died encounter 1 to our first SoD and brought in a druid... me and the druid took turns ending encounters... when that game ended the fighter/rogue pointed out he hadn't rolled an attack roll in 4 sessions...

Secondly, you can address this from the DM side of the screen and have the DM analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the characters and play to those. I think this the better solution if its an issue, but as with most solutions, it requires more thought, skill, and work from the DM side.

and still may not work...
lets see, the rogue is quick and stealthy, but the wizard has spells that can do that... the fighter can be strong and durable but the cleric can heal and make himself large size...

what do you do when you CAN'T play to both the less powerful character AND not have the more powerful character step iin?

Magic missile works for DMs too.

I hope that was a joke

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

To be concrete, is there any version of D&D where we can say we have two level 10 characters, specify nothing else about them, and know that they are equal? Of course not.

You're absolutely right -- but nobody has made this claim. (If it reads like I did, I apologize for being unclear.)

You seem to be saying that "No two 10th level characters are going to be exactly the same power level, so why even try? Any range of power levels within the 10th level is acceptable!" What I'm saying is "Perfect utopia is an impossible ideal, but that doesn't mean I want to throw law and order out the window in favor of anarchy and mayhem." If I did, I'd probably be playing Exalted or some other point buy game.

Obviously it's impossible to ensure perfect parity within a given level, but I think it's worth narrowing the range of power levels more than PF has. You don't have to go the 4e route to do so -- although I think that 4e's lack of gonzo/niche character options is far outweighed by the increased parity that it boasts -- but you do need to care about balance more than the PF team does.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You're absolutely right -- but nobody has made this claim. (If it reads like I did, I apologize for being unclear.)
...
What I'm saying is "Perfect utopia is an impossible ideal, but that doesn't mean I want to throw law and order out the window in favor of anarchy and mayhem." If I did, I'd probably be playing Exalted or some other point buy game.
...
Obviously it's impossible to ensure perfect parity within a given level, but I think it's worth narrowing the range of power levels more than PF has.

I'm not really clear on what your standard is though regarding the meaning of level.

For example, if we take as given that two level 10 characters won't always be the same, are you stating that a level should instead be an exclusive range (for example, that no 9th level character should ever be as powerful as a 10th level character; that there is a range of power levels that comprises level 9 and then when that ends the least powerful 10th level character kicks in)? Even that, I think, is clearly untenable.

Are you suggesting that holding some variables constant, but not having character building choices be among those constants, everything should even out? What I mean by that is that if we say that two characters are of the same level, have the same equipment resources/ability scores/etc., and only differ by which class the player chose and which abilities they chose under that class, that then those two characters should be equals? I don't buy that either, but maybe that is what you're saying.

But I'm not really sure what you're getting at when you're talking about character level as a measure of power. Absent that understanding, I really don't see any reason to narrow the range of options at all. If someone wants to say there are some spells or other niche rules that need fixing, I'd go back to what I said above: of course, there always will be. But the basic paradigm is what it is, and it seems to work okay.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You're absolutely right -- but nobody has made this claim. (If it reads like I did, I apologize for being unclear.)

You seem to be saying that "No two 10th level characters are going to be exactly the same power level, so why even try? Any range of power levels within the 10th level is acceptable!" What I'm saying is "Perfect utopia is an impossible ideal, but that doesn't mean I want to throw law and order out the window in favor of anarchy and mayhem." If I did, I'd probably be playing Exalted or some other point buy game.

Obviously it's impossible to ensure perfect parity within a given level, but I think it's worth narrowing the range of power levels more than PF has. You don't have to go the 4e route to do so -- although I think that 4e's lack of gonzo/niche character options is far outweighed by the increased parity that it boasts -- but you do need to care about balance more than the PF team does.

no 2 10th level characters are the same... but what about a game with a 10th level cleric, a 9th level druid and a 15th level fighter and a (gish) 4th level fighter/7th level wizard

a 9th, a 10th, an 11th and a 15th level character, how counter intuitive is it that the 3 lower level characters have BOTH a wider range of powers and more power in general?


put another way... lets pretend we had a pre gen character that was 10th level he had 4 levels of fighter and 4 levels of wizard and 2 levels of rogue. we pass this character to 100 players and let them run through an adventure that will give them enough xp to go up 1 level... what gives them the most power 1 level of fighter, 1 or rouge or one of wizard? lets pretend that those 100 people broke pretty close to even, and 30 took a level of fighter and 30 took a level of rogue and 40 took a level of wizard... then you send them through the next adventure and they level again. of the 30 that took fighter 15 take another fighter and 15 took rogue, of the 30 that took rogue they also split 15 take fighter and 15 take rogue... of the 40 who took wizard 20 take wizard again and 10 take fighter and 10 take rogue...

now can you tell me why the 20 players who chose wizard twice have the most power? why are they all counted as equals when they clearly aren't?

 

[Wicht]

If your cleric is casting all their buffs on themselves, and the wizard is only ever using their spells to make themselves shine, your problem is selfish players who are actually playing suboptimally. A fighter buffed by the cleric almost always outperforms what the cleric can do, and a rogue made invisible by the wizard is a far better sneak than the wizard will ever be.

And, as stated above, buffs are not a constant factor, or should not be, and when the buff is off, the non-buffed player is essential. If your encounters are dealt with handily by the wizard and cleric merely using up their spells, you are not sufficiently challenging your party.

 

[Wicht]

now can you tell me why the 20 players who chose wizard twice have the most power? why are they all counted as equals when they clearly aren't?

Assertion is not the same as proof. And not everyone agrees with your analysis of a wizard's power. I most certainly don't.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm not really clear on what your standard is though regarding the meaning of level.

For example, if we take as given that two level 10 characters won't always be the same, are you stating that a level should instead be an exclusive range (for example, that no 9th level character should ever be as powerful as a 10th level character; that there is a range of power levels that comprises level 9 and then when that ends the least powerful 10th level character kicks in)? Even that, I think, is clearly untenable.

in a perfect world yes, but I agree untenable...

But I'm not really sure what you're getting at when you're talking about character level as a measure of power. Absent that understanding, I really don't see any reason to narrow the range of options at all. If someone wants to say there are some spells or other niche rules that need fixing, I'd go back to what I said above: of course, there always will be. But the basic paradigm is what it is, and it seems to work okay.

my attanable goal would be parity within range...


any class average to well built would rate a 1-5 power range at level 1 and a 3-6 at level 2 and a 5-7 at level 3 and a 6-8 at level 4

no one class would be the more powerful choice and no one feat or race was either...

an average to well made fighter would be as good to an average to well made wizard. a power gamed fighter would be as powerful as a powergameed wizard...

right now we have an average made cleric or slightly above average made wizard is equal to a power gamed fighter for most levels, but a power games cleric is always better then a fighter...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Assertion is not the same as proof. And not everyone agrees with your analysis of a wizard's power. I most certainly don't.

ok, so in your mind a 10th level cleric a 10th level wizard and a 10th level fighter are already equal?

 

[Wicht]

I hope that was a joke

Missed this. No - it wasn't a joke. It was an observation that there are things which bypass armor.

 

[Wicht]

ok, so in your mind a 10th level cleric a 10th level wizard and a 10th level fighter are already equal?

There is a baseline parity there. Depending on the choices made during character creation, the ability scores, magic items owned, and other factors, any one of them might be technically and mechanically superior to another. I could easily envision a 10th level fighter that far outperformed the other two if called upon to do so, or it could go the other way. Likewise, depending on actual player skill, any one of them could be played superior to another, with more optimal choices. The level alone merely provides an estimate - actual in-game choice, and the luck of the dice during ability creation also matters.

In most of my games, slight variations of power lever rarely matter as the characters work as a team. And the disparity is never all that great, and it balances out over time as each character contributes to different aspects of the game-play.