Pathfinder 1E Your experiences with broken Pathfinder characters? (edit: more accurately, w/1 avg PF character when the rest of the party is meh)

[frankthedm]

I don't play D&D because I want to buy items that give me +1 deflection, +1 natural armor, +1 enhancement armor, +1 enhancement shield, +1 luck, and boosts to my Dex. That stuff really REALLY bores me, especially as a GM because a ruleset that requires those items just causes me to spend pointless time picking out gear of appropriate value in order for an enemy to be a decent challenge.

I definitely don't want to have to include giants, nets, and NPCs with dispel magic in my 'fantasy spy mission' adventure, simply because one PC is not threatened by mortals. I was running 4e before, and got fed up with the way it let players stack tons of debuff effects on prominent enemies, so we switched to PF, and now it's the math that's beating me up.

I really think I'd rather just convert to a system where my intuition about how challenging something should be in a 'Hollywood physics' world is matched by the system. John McClane survives Die Hard because he's a scrappy hero, not because he was kitted up like a magic Christmas tree.

Sometimes you have to accept a rulset is a bad match for what you want to run and just put the books on Ebay.

 

[Schmoe]

Now maybe I've drunk too much D&D Next kool-aid, but I hate the amount of math and stacking of weird bonuses that goes on in 3.5/PF. Has anyone successfully fixed the problem? Do I just need to send high level wizards with empowered Magic Missiles at her?

I feel like the topic has strayed a bit from the OP, and I just wanted to return to address this one point. I think virtually every game system has some benefits for "system-expertise". Whether the system expertise is knowing how to stack bonuses, or which powers work well together, or which options are weak, a player who is intimately familiar with the system will be more effective than one who is not. I suppose there may be counter examples (Amber maybe?), but I think it's very hard to design a system that doesn't have some mechanical benefits for knowledgeable players to exploit. That being said, I think it's important to determine for yourself which types of system expertise you consider fun, and which you consider unfun. And along the way also consider that your players may have different opinions. Where you see complexity, others see tactical depth. I have a hunch that the player of the monk is enjoying exploring the system and experimenting with what he/she can achieve. If you hit the character with the nerf-bat, you may be taking away exactly the aspect of the game that the player enjoys.

 

[Thotas]

http://hastur.net/wiki/Oracle_(Apath)#Disbelieved

Good googelly-moogelly. Cassandra is one of my favorite characters in all of mythology. I've gotta save that one.

 

[RangerWickett]

Sometimes you have to accept a rulset is a bad match for what you want to run and just put the books on Ebay.

*grin* I'm using a friend's books, and the PFSRD. But point taken. We were running 4e, and two of the players complained about the system, while the others were uncommitted. Well, now that we've switched over, it's clear that I am not enjoying things as much. I was going to talk to my players, but horrible wretched food poisoning sidelined me for this week's game.

 

[Blackbrrd]

*grin* I'm using a friend's books, and the PFSRD. But point taken. We were running 4e, and two of the players complained about the system, while the others were uncommitted. Well, now that we've switched over, it's clear that I am not enjoying things as much. I was going to talk to my players, but horrible wretched food poisoning sidelined me for this week's game.

Am I getting this right: are you going back to 4e? Sounds like you look at the game about the same as me. I do wonder how you think 5e is looking, compared to 3e, Pathfinder and 4e regarding the issues you are having in your first post of this thread.

 

[Starfox]

So you either learn to optimize to a certain degree, you know, learn the ins and outs of the system. Never hurt a good DM to know the mechanical side of their game. To assume solid roleplaying gets detracted of by solid rollplaying is a fallacy. There's plenty of online resources if you want to go this route, and plenty of helpful folk out there to provide aid. You're forced to metagame, sure, but as a DM, that's your job anyway. You'll look back on this thread and wonder out loud: "did I really complain about a Sorcerer 3/Monk 4 being OP? Seriously?!"

Actually, you donöt really need to optimize. You just need to learn what your PCs can and cannot do, and what CLs are appropriate to them. You are the DM, you have worlds and worlds of beasties to throw at them if that makes your story better.

 

[JustinAlexander]

I'm still struggling to understand what the actual problem is with this character having a high AC for two encounters every day. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, completely standard CR 7 opponents taken straight out of the books will still hit her a significant portion of the time.

RangerWickett: Can you explain exactly what your issue as a GM is with this character? What is she supposedly forcing you to do that you dislike so much?

 

[ImperatorK]

What is she supposedly forcing you to do that you dislike so much?

Thinking?

Insulting your fellow board-members doesn't produce great conversation. Please remember the Whedon Rule, and don't let it happen again. ~KM

 

[RangerWickett]

Problem 1: Her character reminds me regularly of many of the mechanical elements of the game that irk me. I can get over this, however.

Problem 2: Her character makes two other players feel weak and useless. Those players don't want to delve into the complexity of the bonus-stacking system of 3.5/PF, so their characters are weaker than hers. The system too easily allows you to make under-powered characters.

Problem 3: Her character is not threatened by things that threaten the rest of the party. I, like the two aforementioned players, don't want to spend tons of time prepping for my game by designing custom foes. I want to grab all the handy pre-published foes and use them*. But most pre-published foes are built to target reasonable ACs. I feel it lessens the fun of the game if you're at no risk of defeat. Now sure, I could add foes who are higher level, but they'd just overpower the rest of the party.


*I feel that if you're going to design a game and release content for it, that content should be useful for the mainstream player base. Now perhaps I'm not mainstream for Pathfinder. I clearly want a system that doesn't demand as much time be spent on 'getting the numbers right.'

Edit: Also, I seldom have more than 2 combat encounters in a day. I don't run dungeon crawls. This was a reason I don't like 4e pre-Essentials; you were expected to have 4 or 5 combats in a single day, and I just don't run that way.

 

[knottyprof]

One reason I like the DCC 3.x published adventures is that it gave suggestions on how to beef up or tone down encounters based on number of players and total party level. I haven't seen that in a Paizo adventure path (that I am aware of) and I am not sure what they determine is an optimal party (4 playercharacters, 6 playercharacters, etc.).

I am just finishing up the first chapter of the Rise of the Rune Lords anniversary edition (what is it like 5 years old? How does that rate an anniversary edition other than the fact the original was geared for 3.5 instead of Pathfinder?) and we have a full party of 6 PCs and I bumped up all of the goblin encounters just so it wasn't too ridiculously easy.
Luckily after the next session I get to pass the DM hat so it is no longer my problem.

But again, to the whole point of this discussion even published adventures may need to be altered here and there to make it more challenging to players, especially in a mixed group where you have one or two that eat up most of the action while the others just sit back and wait to collect XP (if they even get the chance to do anything in the first place).