Pathfinder 1E The Nimble Ninja versus the Armoured AntiPaladin

[Metasyntactic]

Again – terrific points guys. Ill try and remember them as I type.

I actually think him having the ring is cool in game

Me too. Its different in terms of what I have witnessed before – and people always seem to forget. The DM is sometimes naughty and uses player knowledge instead of character knowledge – but he always forgets about that soddin’ ring! Haha

On the other hand if the group is trucking along just fine, there's little reason to try and convince him to get rid of the ring.

Squishiness *is* an issue because he *is* playing like a tank. I think it’s a new play style and because he’s rocking full plate, its making him think above his station.

This is FOLDING plate remember and I think it should be treated as a get out of jail free card more than a battle suit. Without it, he has his arsenal of manipulation skills, some cracking spells and shouldn’t be an obvious target (and can use stealth to a degree to remain out of the battle until to his advantage

There's no "wrong way to play"

Indeed and its not to say he hasn’t had his uses. The “pick up all the weapons and fling to the back of the room” thing being one of them – and I think there was a time when a tomb was opened from across the room and the nasty trap that went off would have hurt the party! [Acid!]

The 16 in Dex is wasted with the Full Plate and would have been better used in CON giving him another 24 HP

True *BUT* this is based on him being in ‘actual’ plate and being a tank – which he really must realise he’s not!

The DEX is decent for when hes not suited up (‘folded’?) and when he’s simply spying or information gathering and things turn graphic (or if he needs the dex for climbing or covert entry somewhere).

I love the evolution of the discussion though.

The Ninja would probably win the fight one on one – if the paladin couldn’t nail him with a debilitating spell.

But the Ninja (and the other fighter) should be the front line. Neither are really ‘tank’ builds, but are ‘tankier’ than the AntiP.

His back story is beautiful and I bet you could write a best seller off the back of it (a double cross, a fall from grace, a raising from the dead, a vendetta – its got everything).

Although, in order to join the front lines, perhaps not as “The Tank”, I think some natural armour magic and a protection ring will work.

If 30 is the benchmark, then a +2/+2 will get him there.

 

[N'raac]

The 16 in Dex is wasted with the Full Plate and would have been better used in CON giving him another 24 HP.

The DEX seems out of place. He's also not buying up DEX-based skills, so that's not it. Mind you, get that Plate made in Mithral and he could benefit from a 16 DEX. He's also spent a feat on Improved Initiative, so he may have been going for a quick reaction time.

As others have pointed out he has done nothing to improve his AC at level 12. It should be around 30. No magic for the armor, nat armor or ring of protection all to get a ring of telekinesis. Not sure how such a poorly optimized character even made it to level 12.

[RANT MODE]It might be because he is playing in a game focused on characters who are characters, not optimized statistic bundles, where story rules over mechanics and where teamwork is used to leverage the strengths and cover the weaknesses of each member of the team, rather than a game that focuses on optimization and features characters who uniformly build up character abilities focused on optimizing one or two things that character will be the best he can possibly be at, and let everything else fall by the wayside, where wealth is focused on the "big six" so everyone has the best armor, shield, cloak of resistance, weapon, ring of protection and amulet of natural armor they can afford, and nothing else because anything else would be statistically inferior.[/RANT MODE]

There's more than one way to play the game, and the balance between "Role Playing" and "Game varies considerably between gaming groups. Neither "Optimize above All" nor "Role Play and Forget the Numbers" nor any point in between is the "right" or "wrong" way to play the game, although it could be "right" or "wrong" for any given player or group ("fun" is "right", by the way). One group's barely optimized character is another's cheesy min/maxer.

 

[Salamandyr]

You know, this reminds me of the fact that for the most part, rings are really overpriced in 3ed and its derivatives. Unless that ring of telekinesis is providing some kind of devastating, game unbalancing advantage to the anti-paladin, perhaps the best solution is to talk to the DM about pro-rating it's value vs. his wealth by level and letting him divert some of that to his defenses. Because half or more of your expected magical power tied up into something that's primarily a roleplaying benefit is kind of harsh.

I'd also look seeing if he can either re-roll hit points, or use average dice roll instead, so his hp are closer to standard for twelfth level. Kind of hard to tank if you can't take a hit.

 

[brvheart]

True, there is not right or wrong way. Just offering an opinion on optimizing him better vs the Ninja. That is why I run multiple games. I have 2 games that are role playing based and 2 that are more roll playing bases. Still, I would not want characters that would not be survivable. A character with those stats would not survive my role playing based games either with the amount of combat that there is in them. Lost 2 characters out of 4 on Friday because they wanted to head into the sewers instead of role playing when they were short handed. The other 2 crawled out with 1 hp between them.