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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6091286" data-attributes="member: 1165">Given that our DM rarely surprises us with enemies (only happened once that I recall, and not really a surprise, but certainly prevented us from prepping), I don't think that would work well in that campaign. The enemy has to have at least 1 round of warning to have a low-duration spell like that ready.I don't get it. 17 pounds isn't encumbering him. I doubt he's carrying much more than that either.In the aforementioned campaign, where we used a computer to track encumbrance (the DM was a computer science major), I was playing a ranger. The computer kept saying I was carrying too much gear, prompting me to throw away my spear, tent (even though I told the DM I'd drop it one combat starts), bedroll, etc. All I had was leather armor, one short sword, a longbow, and a bunch of arrows. I don't think I even had a backpack! D&D isn't realistic, or at least no campaign I was even in was, so otherwise I've never been in a campaign where encumbrance comes up a lot.Maybe encumbrance is sneakily needed for preserving game balance, but that's not explained in the PH or DMG and I don't think it's a "fun" way of preserving game balance either. Strength 8 isn't even unusually low for a wizard. If said wizard had started with Int 16 instead, and Strength 8, they'd also be "punished" for having the gall to play a scholar as realistically not being fit.He doesn't carry a bow or sword. It's not like he's playing an elf for any reason but the Int bonus, and also because he likes Eberron elves (his character worships ancestors, much like those elves). His melee attack bonus is so weak a sword is pointless, although he does have a "grave touch" ability that he can use often. It doesn't do damage, but spells don't need to do that. Pathfinder wizards rarely need to do that "crossbow" thing, since each specialty gives you a spell-like ability you can do a few times per day, and that's actually enough to fill in your rounds even at 1st-level. (Glad to see Pathfinder came up with a way to keep 1st-level wizards from being wimps.) Of course, some of those specialties (and the universalist) have wimpier ones than others.He's got a pebble he can cast a Light spell on. (IIRC, that's a cantrip in PF, so he can have one ready at all times, and he has low-light vision anyway.) He doesn't need to carry much food or water because, between the druid and barbarian, we never fail Survival checks. A high Wis druid, with a +2 bonus due to Nature sense, can't fail the DC 10 + 2 per PC checks needed most of the time, and if he rolls a 1 and can only feed most of the party (bear companion and mounts included, when we bother with the latter) the barbarian's check is nearly as good. We end up with too much food, prompting the druid to preserve what's left and take breaks on hunting so we're not killing off the local wildlife. Good thing we keep on the move.He doesn't have camping gear. The encumbrance system pretty much ensures no one ever does things like that, not even high Strength fighters. We just rough it. I don't know how the soft wizard without Survival gets along with that, since he's not abusing Rope Trick or other such spells, but that applies to other untough/unSurvival-trained PCs as well.The entire party does that actually. I'm pretty sure my druid has to cup water from a stream to drink. No pots. What do we do if we find a well without a bucket?We're also not "adventuring for loot". I personally can't stand that style of play. We use loot to buy magic gear, but that doesn't weigh more than regular gear. I suspect we have a Bag of Holding. My PC doesn't, but druids are self sufficient. He carries a stick, wears armor and clothing, the latter frequently unnecessary due to how long wild shape lasts (but he does anyway, he can't be a bear all the time), and has some low-weight material components/foci.It turns out we have two guys with Charisma (a paladin and the magus). It's okay to sack Charisma due to the whole "party face" thing. There's no rule saying the guy without Charisma who doesn't make skill checks ever actually fails those checks, any more than my druid would be expected to make Pick Lock checks.The druid's wild empathy score is low. The barbarian has low Intimidation. The latter isn't any kind of cost; the party likes fighting, and doesn't like scaring enemies into not fighting, unless they're so weak it's not worth our time.Kingmaker isn't at all realistic. If it were, we'd all have our spheres of responsibility (technically, we do) but we still travel as an adventuring party. Which means, among other things, we're out of contact with our kingdom much of the time!We've hired a good bureaucracy though. There's no food riots. There is religious conflict, but that was mainly because a bard was using Scrolls of Mass Charm (or maybe it was Song of Discord) to force people into beating up priests, so social skills were less relevant. We weren't always able to calm the populace, but we could certainly find that bard and do away with him. (He's currently alive, and in jail. Pretty sure that's a DM innovation, and not part of the adventure path.)1) Yes.2) I haven't run D&D 3rd Edition since 2006 or thereabouts, but I never had to deal with crazy save DCs like that. Of course, I was much less permissive about what I allowed into the game. 28 point buy, and nothing like star elves.He's a necromancer, and does not have Spell Focus (Enchantment). I'm not even sure he has any of those feats, but if he does, it would be necromancy.I wouldn't expect the spells to almost never work. But by the math you gave, if they work 75% of the time against a good save, there's a problem. It means his spells always work. To be fair, the group has other balance issues. The barbarian pretty much never misses either, and he can deal a lot of damage... but he can't guarantee a kill per turn, nor can he even guarantee a full-round attack per turn.No. Why would they? The witch has a more reasonable stat allocation, so their Spellcraft and other scores would be lower.Or if you mean, away from the spellcasting, they can fly more easily and heal, but I wouldn't consider a witch to be on par with a wizard. (I suppose that, much like 3rd Edition's warlock and war mage classes, Paizo was experimenting with a more limited arcane spellcasting class.)Funnily enough, he's made it work, and I was paying attention. Unfortunately, not having photographic memory, I don't recall how he did it. I know he wasn't spamming summons. I think maybe he was Mirror Image'd and Blurred at first, and then turned Invisible later once all the worst opponents were tied down.I double checked the spell. Apparently Int only affected the grapple bonus in 3rd Edition, but not Pathfinder.The witch isn't ineffectual. The witch is playing with ability scores that you'd expect in a typical D&D game.Yes. It's not all the rules. I was merely pointing out that high point buy can have unexpected effects. (There's currently a thread on Paizo about a similar situation, involving a monk... and a 26 point buy build, including a Charisma of 5, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. 26 by Pathfinder standards that is, using Zen Archery and some race I've never heard of. The monk in question had a starting Wisdom of 20, plus competitive Strength and Dexterity scores, so instead of the typical weak monk, he's the strongest PC in the party by a long shot.)The player has been with the group a long time. Because it's a rotating DM group, no DM has a lot of power, and every DM has different expectations. This DM wants us to put our character sheets on the wiki, and so I do. Almost everyone does, but there's not much that can be done (other than tossing out a player) if someone doesn't do that.Said player has electronic character sheets on his printer for all the games we play, apparently being allergic to paper character sheets or something. Feel free to roll your eyes. His laptop is really out of date and incredibly slow, and he doesn't have a printer. Even in 4e (he has a Character Builder) it takes a lot of effort to get him to simply export a PDF, which can be uploaded to the wiki. I've been way too tolerant, in part because it hasn't been a big issue for my campaign. He's not cheating on dice rolls or anything (that would result in a tossout), and he can't squeeze more than a +1 bonus out of his scores by having unexpected ability scores. Also, apparently he never learned how to use a paper 4e sheet on his own, which is sad but also a bit plausible.Pathfinder is different. My PF sheet is three pages, and that's only because as a druid I need to take up pages for my wildshape forms and summons (with Augment Summoning and the ability to apply multiple templates to bear summons, I need that space!). But at the same time, the balance is more by the group than in the rules, so seeing a PF character sheet ahead of time is more important.Normally that would be the case. In Kingmaker, the 15 minute work day is usually in full force, although the day the new PC showed up, we were actually doing a dungeon crawl and had to do everything in one day. (We failed, too! Although that's only because we're about 4 levels lower than we should be, and because the final boss was built extremely well to take on spellcasters, unusual for that adventure path.) A higher save DC means you're using fewer spells per encounter, because you're not having that annoying thing happen where you cast a spell, and an opponent actually saves against it, causing you to "waste" a round.</blockquote>

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