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

[pemerton]

Let's discuss "save or die" spells real quick. Anyone worth a damn doesn't choose many "save or die" spells because they are way too risky.

Why?

Suppose I'm a 7th level enchanter wizard about to enter the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. A CR 7 giant has a +4 Will save. With a 20 INT plus Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (as 2 of my overall 5 feats) I can cast my 3 Charm Monster spells (each with a 1 week duration) with a DC of 21. That's an 80% chance of success. That doesn't look that risky to me. My four Suggestion spells each have a DC of 20, or 75% chance of success.

Summon spells take way too long to cast

But once I have a hll giant charmed for a week I don't need to summon any!

With a rogue, you'd lose out on stealth an perception, meaning you'd have no scout and be vulnerable to attack.

Can't a wizard have Perception nearly as good as a rouge in PF (I thought only 3 less, and a wizard might be likely to have a higher WIS)?

For scouting, invisiblity and fly are reasonably effective, aren't they? (And neither is self-only, is it?)

 

[Crothian]

The problem is, short of outright curbstomping the Wizard into uselessness, it's difficult to NOT play an adventure that doesn't give them advantages, simply because magic lets them be incredibly useful for any situation. Even an adventure about fighting and jumping and nothing else lets the Wizard have the advantage by preparing lots of Save-or-Dies, Summons, and Fly spells(leaving some open of course).

This only works when the wizard knows what to prepare and knows what is going to happen. But many adventures have encounters that the wizard or any PC will have no advance knowledge of. I see spell casters routinely have the wrong spells prepared. It is true that they kick ass when they know what is coming but Wizards are not always the best when they get blindsided with no information or bad information about what is going to happen.

 

[Wicht]

This only works when the wizard knows what to prepare and knows what is going to happen. But many adventures have encounters that the wizard or any PC will have no advance knowledge of. I see spell casters routinely have the wrong spells prepared. It is true that they kick ass when they know what is coming but Wizards are not always the best when they get blindsided with no information or bad information about what is going to happen.

I'm glad that its not just my games where the wizard is sometimes less than helpful.

 

[Imaro]

How so? What is convoluted about saying that characters can do extraordinary things without casting spells. 3E is full of such things (say a barbarian's rage, or a rogue's evasion).

Because that's your interpretation of what the passage means... not what the actual passage says... it says that the martial power source isn't magic in the traditional sense... again if it isn't magical at all... why not just say martial power is not magic, as opposed to it is not magic in the traditional sense? IMO, that says it is magic, just not the type of magic that people are traditionally used to.

But now that you draw my attention to them, I don't see the issue. Decipher Script doesn't look to me any different from the classic thief ability. By the way, you mis-state the text of the ability. It does not say "you learn to read any language fluently regardless of whether you've ever been exposed to it". It says (MP2, p 149):

You learn the meaning of any written text you study, even if you are not fluent in its language. You must examine the words for the entire time [10 minutes], after which you understand the gist of whatever the text says. You also make a History or Streetwise check, and if your result is 30 or higher, you can read the text as if you were fluent in the language. Each use of this martial practice allows you to examine about one page of writing or an eqUivalent amount of text.
​

So in 10 minutes you can get the gist of one page of text (not read it fluently), and on a check that few PCs will be able to make reliably before upper paragon or epic tier (DC 30 is a Hard DC for level 15 and a Moderate DC for level 27), you can read one page fluently.

So with a high enough check you can spend 10 mins and read a language fluently. I don't care at what level it is likely that you do it reliably, it can be accomplished at even low levels with a high enough roll and the use of this ritual... SO yeah it does say what I claimed it did, contrary to your attempt at pedantry and rules minutia to make it seem otherwise.

Furthermore, you must be trained in History or Streetwise to use the practice at all (as per the Key Skill rule on p 148). So it is actually the opposite of what you said: the character, through the "school of hard knocks" or through study of histroy, has already established some familiarity (though less than fluency) with the language.

Where is all of this stated in the rules? Seriously, are you making the contention that a back-alley thief could encounter supernal or abyssal in the "school of hard knocks" frequently enough to learn to always understand it and sometimes read it fluently? That's your argument that makes more sense than it being magic in nature? Seriously?

There is nothing here that is remotely magical or hints of magic. It is almost exactly the same as the AD&D read language ability (from Gygax's DMG, p 20):

This ability assumes that the language is, in fact, one which the thief has encountered sometime in the past.​

It's just that, in 4e, the player - by using the practice - gets to decide the PC's past exposure to strange languages, rather than having it determined via random die roll.

The practice is infallible, by taking the practice the player has made it so that his character understands any language he encounters and if he rolls high enough he not only understands it but understands it fluently... but there's never a chance he doesn't know it or can't understand it, there's an infallibility factor that makes it nothing like Read Language which always had a chance to fail. IMO, this is magic.

Warded Campsite requirs (via the Key Skill rules) training in either Nature or Thievery. It is about seting traps and snares to wake the PCs if intruders enter.That's not magical. Aragorn is able to stick his ear to the ground and hear the passage of orcs miles away (pp 446-47 of my one volume edition of LotR):

He stretched himself upon the ground with his ear pressed against the turf. . . . "The rumour of the earth is dim and confused," he said. "Nothing walks upon it for many miles around us. Faint and far are the feet of our enemies. But loud are the hooves of the horses."​

Yet you think he couldn't set wards around his campsite, if he wanted too?

First, let's not kid ourselves, Aragorn does use magic, especially as it seems to be defined by Tolkien in Middle Earth...

As to the ritual, that's a great description but there is no cost requirement in the actual martial practice for materials to actually do this...only the expenditure of a healing surge... Could Aragorn through stress and fatigue, naked on a featureless plain conjure the materials and supplies necessary to set these infallible tripwires and wards around a campsite? I don't think he could, unless of course he was a martial character in 4e since there are no materials required (explained as a gp cost to perform the practice in MP 2)... sure sounds like magic (specifically a warding spell) to me...

It sure seems like martial power is just magic fueled by the physical as opposed to the mental (psionics), arcane, divine, primal, etc. sourcess of other magic... for another example of this in other games look at the Dawn caste in Exalted, or the adepts in Earthdawn and Shadowrun... they just use less ambiguous language when presenting it.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Can't a wizard have Perception nearly as good as a rouge in PF (I thought only 3 less, and a wizard might be likely to have a higher WIS)?

For scouting, invisiblity and fly are reasonably effective, aren't they? (And neither is self-only, is it?)

Yes. For the wizard to do this comes with an opportunity cost and incrementally reduced effectiveness, but sure.

Particularly with PF's more open skill system, it's possible for pretty much anyone to cover another role; and you can create a functional party pretty much any way you want. It's simply more optimal to have those things be covered by someone who's good at them. Even better is the case where the wizard casts Invisibility on the rogue, whose maxed stealth and various abilities allow him to leverage it more effectively.

Conversely, a rogue (or, conceivably, anyone else) can also cover the functionality of the wizard, again with some costs and drawbacks.

Practically speaking, the number of times you really need rogue stuff, let alone fighter stuff, is greater than the amount you need wizard stuff. Sure, you can try to get by with slightly suboptimal perception and fake your way as a scout with skills, but that's demanding, seeing as how in most live game situations, you will constantly need those things.

 

[Ahnehnois]

This only works when the wizard knows what to prepare and knows what is going to happen. But many adventures have encounters that the wizard or any PC will have no advance knowledge of. I see spell casters routinely have the wrong spells prepared. It is true that they kick ass when they know what is coming but Wizards are not always the best when they get blindsided with no information or bad information about what is going to happen.

Beyond the simple question of matching the spell to the situation, there's also issues of analysis paralysis and second guessing that are routine to playing a wizard. Memorizing spells well is fairly difficult, psychologically.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Why?

Suppose I'm a 7th level enchanter wizard about to enter the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. A CR 7 giant has a +4 Will save. With a 20 INT plus Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (as 2 of my overall 5 feats) I can cast my 3 Charm Monster spells (each with a 1 week duration) with a DC of 21. That's an 80% chance of success. That doesn't look that risky to me.

This is true, but only pretty useful outside of combat. If he even feels threatened, actually, he gets a +5 bonus on his save, cutting your chance of success down by 25% (to a 55% chance by your estimation). And, of course, any act by you or your apparent allies that threaten it break the spell. And that 55% is with two feats invested.

So, if the giants are okay with talking, you're looking good at charming one. This might piss off the other ones, though. And if it does, now you're in combat (or they're threatened), where your odds of success have dropped significantly lower than what you've offered. And, of course, just because the charmed giant sees you as Friendly.

Yes, Charm would allow you to try to manipulate it ("You can try to give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. (Retries are not allowed.) An affected creature never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing."). However, I'm not certain that you could convince it to attack its own allies. Even the pfsrd says this:

Charm person makes a humanoid "friendly" to you, as per the rules found in the Diplomacy skill, but it also allows you to issue orders to the target, making an opposed Charisma check to convince the target to do something that it would not normally do. How does that work?

The charm person spell (and charm monster by extension) makes the target your friend. It will treat you kindly (although maybe not your allies) and will generally help you as long as your interests align. This is mostly in the purview of the GM. If you ask the creature to do something that it would not normally do (in relation to your friendship), that is when the opposed Charisma check comes into play. For example, if you use charm person to befriend an orc, the orc might share his grog with you and talk with you about the upcoming raid on a nearby settlement. If you asked him to help you fight some skeletons, he might very well lend a hand. If you asked him to help you till a field, however, you might need to make that check to convince him to do it.

No mention of making it attack fellow orcs one way or another, but I think my interpretation is probably more valid.

But once I have a hll giant charmed for a week I don't need to summon any!

This is the part where we disagree on what you can force the hill giant to do. It's very different from a summon spell. Maybe you're confusing Charm with Dominate?

Can't a wizard have Perception nearly as good as a rouge in PF (I thought only 3 less, and a wizard might be likely to have a higher WIS)?

I'd think the Rogue would have higher Wisdom, based on my experiences of 3.5. But PF did a lot to close the gap with how they handled cross-class skills, yes. (Also, accidental "rouge" on your part )

For scouting, invisiblity and fly are reasonably effective, aren't they? (And neither is self-only, is it?)

Depends on where you're scouting. I don't use dungeons, really, but lots of people do, and invisibility isn't quite as useful there. But yes, they're very good scouting spells.

Just want to add that I think the saves in 3.5 are off-balance, I don't like class-skills in any form (including cross-class skills), and I think that fly/invisibility need a nerf. They're all problems I looked at in my own RPG. However, I think that we're still dealing with niche areas (non-hostile hill giant against an enchanter specialist that are met alone so that their buddies don't attack, and you win an opposed Charisma check as a Wizard [no retries] to allow you to do something that I think is against the rules [fight its allies for you]). But that's just me.

Edited to translate from 3.5 to PF.

 

[Crothian]

Beyond the simple question of matching the spell to the situation, there's also issues of analysis paralysis and second guessing that are routine to playing a wizard. Memorizing spells well is fairly difficult, psychologically.

That brings up a different problem. I have placed a time limits on spellcasters preparing their list of spells. When everyone else is sitting around waiting for the spellcasters to get their spells ready we had to make them either have the spell list done before hand or just give them a short time at the start of the session.

 

[Wicht]

Why?

Suppose I'm a 7th level enchanter wizard about to enter the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. A CR 7 giant has a +4 Will save. With a 20 INT plus Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (as 2 of my overall 5 feats) I can cast my 3 Charm Monster spells (each with a 1 week duration) with a DC of 21. That's an 80% chance of success. That doesn't look that risky to me. My four Suggestion spells each have a DC of 20, or 75% chance of success.

I have never understood this whole idea of charm monster/person in PFRPG being some sort of autowin.

Let's begin with your saving throw. If the creature is being threatened by you, it gets a +5 to its save. That means in the average encounter in which you are invading another creatures home, its going to get that bonus. So your hill giant has a +9 to its will save, not a +4. This means that its going to save on a 12 or better. That's not a sure thing in my book.

Then there's the whole issue of what the hill giant is going to do for you. It has a friendly (not helpful) attitude towards you and only you. There's a good chance that its not going to suddenly turn on all its mates just on your say so (hope your wizard didn't take Charisma as a dump stat) and in fact the hill giant might still lay down on your allies if it feels such a course of action is reasonable. So you have a friend for a week, if it fails its save, but that doesn't make the hill giant your meat shield. More likely, you simply pulled it from being a combat encounter to a non-combat encounter (at least until it realizes its been made a fool of)

Ninjad by JamesonCourage

 

[Bluenose]

I think that most LoTR characters like Boromir and Aragorn are relatively grounded characters, perhaps with moments of genre badassness, but mostly grounded, and it's quite a stretch IMO to hold them up as tokens for 4E martial powers.

Are we limiting casters by what they're capable of in Middle Earth? No? Then why are we cherry picking an example to limit warriors, and then picking an entirely different example for the limits of casters? That's not cricket. There are plenty of examples of warriors doing far more than Aragorn and Boromir who can be "held up as tokens for 4e martial powers"; use those and the problem you see doesn't look so large.