So, I've been running Pathfinder games for years. It's nothing new to me. I quite enjoy the challenge of trying to create fun and interesting encounters and dungeons that are both difficult and fair. The problem that seems to be most prevalent, however, is that martials, when built in a proper fashion, deal far too much damage. Let me give an example
I'm currently running a game with 8 people. The party consists of a paladin, a fighter with 7 int that THINKS hes a paladin, an oracle, a zauberer (3rd party version of magus that swaps wizard base for sorceror), a hunter, a swashbuckler, a warpriest, and an alchemist. Things were going fairly well; the party was getting along nicely, and everyone was contributing. This was, of course, before combat came into play. Once combat began, it became very clear that certain characters were viable in combat and certain characters werent. The paladin, fighter, and warpriest all dominated, dealing heavy damage and dispatching foes with ease, while almost everyone else was breaking more or less even with the oponents. This is not the first time this has happened; in many previous campaigns, players with only a small amount of experience were able to create massively powerful martials, such as barbarians and fighters, that invalidated most encounters, while their party members languished in the background. These players also usually push to solve every encounter with violence, knowing that they are powerful enough to handle the consequences, regardless of who they offend. This is not so much a problem if the players agree to avoid building in those directions, but many classes seem specifically tooled towards these goals. Cavalier, for example, was able to reach 225 damage in a single crit at level 10! This is easily enough to anihilate almost anything they would be fighting, with the only real solution being to throw something at the cavalier that the rest of the party cant handle. Other than fudging it, how do you solve this?
Martials deal too much damage in Pathfinder
Bumping
Bump
Martials aren't OP, casters just do shit for damage. Also, the base magus does ridiculous damage when played right.
P.S. this is bait
In the remote case of this not being bait, lower your players. 8 people are a fine number for 2 groups; if that isnt possible stop throwing 1 big enemy at them at time, if they can dish out 300+ damage in a single turn, make it so they have to fight against multiple enemies, and balance their foes with melee fighters, ranged combatants and even 1 Support/mage class if necessary.
This might work until their caster reach High levels then you are again in deep shit.
That only half your martials are a problem points toward the real cause being three of your players (guess which ones?) like munchkining or simply copied some online optimization guide, while the others just made characters or didn't understand what they where doing terribly well.
Blizzard Veeky Forums thread?
*Bizzaro
The magus is being controlled by an idiot who spends most of his time casting ray of frost while in melee combat. I know they can do amazing damage when played right, but... well, he's not being played right. And, for the record, "casters doing shit for damage" is the problem. The game isnt balanced in terms of damage. Even monsters, who could be considered martials, do not have the health or the damage to compensate for the output that martials have.
If you're actually sincere, the point being made is that interacting with HP at all is suboptimal and generally shows a lack of understanding of the system.
Casters don't need to worry about dealing damage. Spells can kill or disable enemies with a single saving throw, bypassing HP entirely and making a martials damage output irrelevant. They aren't the damage dealers, they're the clean up crew for after the casters have already won.
I only have 8 people because this group just started, and people drift off over time. I already have one person that is looking to leave, and within about 2 months, I expect to be between 4-6 people, right where I want it. The enemies are running a healthy balance, with some healers, some casters, archers, etc, and they are doing fine until it comes down to the martials. Both the archers and the warriors of the enemy have to be built like shit to prevent them from wiping out the opposition. Meanwhile, the PCs can similarly wipe out the monsters because healthy balance doesnt prevent them from dealing so much damage. For frame of reference, the game is currently level 2, and the paladin is rolling between 15-20 damage with consistent hits.
The paladin is just a guy with a strength mod and power attack. The fighter is a guy with a proficiency and a custom TANKING feat. The warpriest is a guy with a strength mod and power attack. The campaign is only level 2; they cant have broken builds because they basically cant have a build yet.
I'm not going to get into a casters vs martials arguement. It's stupid to begin with in a system where the GM has final say on everything and can completely change the game on a moment's notice. Hell, your point still isnt relevant because, once again, this is level 2. The enemies would have to be significantly higher level than them to cast spells capable of actually disabling them. And this is pretending for a moment that saving throws arent laughably easy to make.
Clearly the imbalance in 3.X stems from overpowered martials.
I wouldnt say that. Casters get some bullshit, too; that's not really the point. The point was that PC martials have the ability to invalidate most monster encounters unless the encounter is specifically built to destroy them.
So, you're just going to completely ignore the meat of the comment and focus on the one thing that you think allows you to negate it? I said that because I dont want to do a casters vs martials argument; that has no baring on the actual conversation.
>the characters who are built to be good at combat and pretty much nothing else are good at combat
Just make the monsters tougher then if you want fights to last longer.
You're talking about martials being overpowered in 3.PF. The very fact you are talking about that shows you don't understand the system. Your entire point, argument and ideas are based on ignorance and improper understanding of how the system actually works, and you're flat out ignoring any attempt to bring up that the entire foundation of your point is ludicrous and fallacious. That is the only decent answer you're going to get, because anything else is stupid pandering to the ridiculous group of 3.PF fans who refuse to acknowledge any flaw with their favourite fucking dogshit system.
A few problems with that. One, two of those characters were not core martials. The warpriest is a fighter/cleric hybrid, and has all the advantages of such, with spells and skills galore. The paladin is more or less the same thing, except that it is basically immune to a shitload of things as well. While I could make the monsters tougher, that leads back to the original problem of having to build encounters around the martials. Or were you referring to just tougher, as in durability? Because... that works, I think. It does indicated that PF isnt really balanced when it comes to health and damage, but I suppose it doesnt matter, in the long run.
Well, you stopped trying to talk about it and simply canned the system as shit, so I guess we're done there. For the record, PF is not a perfect system. As a matter of fact, if I knew of a better option for fantasy TTRPG, I would probably take it, considering the fact that I could drag a good number of people into it with me. However, as far as I know, it's the best out there, and as such, I will continue to use it to the best of my/it's abilities until something else comes along.
>campaign is only level 2
>martials have weird custom feats
>complains that martials are op
Custom feat is basically a taunt mechanic. It doesnt enhance his damage in any way. I believe I alluded to that. And I'm not complaining that martials are OP; they are niche, usually, since they are most proficient in standard combat. However, they do make the combat aspect of the game, which is generally considered to be quite important, far less interesting than it should be due to the natural lack of balance between PC damage output and monster health.
Stop being level 2 and that will fade very quickly, unless they are insane min-maxers.
Literally kill yourself, faggot.
I think it's just my luck; I've had a lot of min-maxers in my group. You're probably right; the players are fairly new and will most likely wind up being average in output. The problem is that doesnt prevent a raw martial, such as a fighter or a barbarian, from achieving truly stupendous damage output with no downside with even the most basic build. The cavalier was a good example; that was level 10 with no minmaxing. Just a fairly normal setup with mostly teamwork feats and a 3-part vital strike build. It wasnt even hard; took all of about an hour to make. And that's one of the more limited options. Barbarians, for example, can hit for some very serious numbers very consistently with their only penalty being the fatigue after rage. Fighters can hit slightly less damage with no penalty and the option for great variety and flexibility, as well as allowing for a far more intricate build due to the increase in the number of feats. Like I said, it may just be my luck, but if someone who has played Pathfinder for a little while sits down and makes a martial, it's not very hard to build something very painful.
>The campaign is only level 2
So you have been playing for 5 minutes and think you know everything there's to know, holy fuck, get out.
>but if someone who has played Pathfinder for a little while sits down and makes a martial, it's not very hard to build something very painful.
That's the fucking POINT of playing a martial, you dense motherfucker. Neck yourself, and save us the trouble.
Sage goes in literally all fields.
I mean... no. I said I've been playing Pathfinder for a while. I've had campaigns that reached level 20. It's a consistent, longterm problem.
GURPS
I get that they are supposed to do damage. I'm ok with that. Blaster casters do damage too, and that's fine. The problem I've been having is the amount. Martials are able to consistently put forth enough damage that monsters, as entered into the bestiaries, are incapable of putting up a fight without making it downright unfair. Most GOOD fights come from the PCs fighting something with class levels, or multiple somethings with class levels, or something custom designed by the GM for that particular party. Your average monster of appropriate CR, however, or even a higher CR, is usually just cannon fodder unless it has a specific anti-martial setup, such as rust monsters or some oozes.
You're the GM. Give the monsters more HP and slightly more AC. Easy solution
I've actually considered that before, and the idea intrigues me. I dont actually know much about it other than it's a very basic framework within which to make your own game. I suppose if I get truly tired of the problems inherent in 3.PF, I could try my hand at making my own through GURPS. However, I dont think that GURPS should really be taken into consideration as a solution to the problem, since what you are telling me to do is literally make my own system because you dont know of a better one.
>make multi-level combats
>target them with tanglefoot bags
>walls of flame
>other such obstacles that prevent the martials from leveraging force
>flying enemies
>high AC tanks
>pavises for cover for ranged enemies
>swarm attacks to tarpit the players
are just some methods of making combat characters a little less difficult.
Right, and that works. The problem isnt so much that it cant be fixed, but more that the RAW of the scenario is inherently flawed. Having to constantly adjust the HP/AC of the monsters you want to work with is more than a little annoying, after all, especially when Paizo was more or less supposed to do it themselves when the monsters were statted.
Cool. Do you have any others? I'd like as much as I can get.
The GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line of supplements is GURPS x D&D. You don't need to make your own, just use the DF line. There's also a standalone DF game coming out in a bit, but that doesn't help now.
Other quality fantasy games include Runequest 6E, 13th Age, Earthdawn, and any edition of D&D that isn't 3.X.
Tucker's Kobolds
Basically the idea is that you play enemy groups as intelligent and self-interested as you'd play any NPC.
Use terrain to funnel the players into areas that the enemies gain advantage from.
Use methods of dealing hard-to-escape damage or status maluses. Grease or fire are pretty obvious ones, but there are an endless number of potential options.
3.PF makes a fine grid-based tactical combat game, treat it like it, because interesting combat terrain can make combat interesting.
Fair fights are for fucken idiots as well. A group of goblins isn't going to fight fair if they can avoid it. Everyone wants to save their own skin.
Wait till you get to 5th level (assuming you don't have a druid) by that time you'll realize HPs don't matter and that combats end the moment the first caster gets the initiative
I mean, yeah. There are other systems that you can play, if that's your take on it.
>Martials deal too much damage
I've never actually had that experience. Who knows, maybe the casters in my group have always been retarded. Still, it hasnt been a problem yet.
That seems like what I'll start doing. Although, some of this stuff seems like it would fall off at late game; do you have any high level options for that?
I'll start taking a look at those. I have a natural aversion to literally anything before 3.0, for what I hope are understandable reasons, and a similar distaste for 4.0. I have heard good things about 5.0, though, so I suppose that's with a shot. This is honestly the first time I've heard of any of the rest of that, though. How easy would most of those be to get new people into?
Shit just doesn't work in 3.PF. It worked in 1-2e thanks to the tiny healthpools and how the systems worked, but it just doesn't in 3.PF. They can easily brute force that shit.
Nah, that stuff can actually work. The terrain and ambush tactics both have serious merit, especially at low-mid level, where counters to such tactics are nearly nonexistant. Once you start getting into large mobility increases, they become a little less worthwhile, but until then, at least, they would quite likely be effective.
yeah you dingus because once you get to levels 6-8 and casters start playing with some heavy equipment then you have to start thinking about that. Play smarter, not harder.
I don't get what you mean. I've successfully run Tucker's Kobolds type scenarios in 3.0, 3.5 and PF. Sure I think I understand that their comparatively higher HP pools and AC means that actions on the Kobold's (for example) side are often wasted, but that just means the kobolds have to fight smarter. And if it turns out the kobolds have a shaman of equivalent level to the party, as well as maybe a sorceror or rogue or something then perhaps the fight will get interesting.
You have a party of 8, assuming you're running enemies at an equal cr to the party's level pathfinder cr is balanced against a party of 4-5 so it will always be a cakewalk if you're doing encounters with a cr equal to the average player level. Throw higher cr shit at them.
Reminds me of a game where I joined late. I was told the other characters built pretty strong so I didn't want to disappoint. There was an alchemist and I think a fighter or barbarian or something to that effect. I rolled in with a pretty minmaxed gunslinger specializing in rifles and trivialized all encounters. I one-shot the boss for the session with a crit.
If you want to complain at me for ruining a perfectly good game, don't. I admit I over-prepared and that was wrong, but later we were taken prisoner by futa Amazons and no this was not an ERP game, I was not expecting this at all.
The people involved were nice though, I respect their chill nature. Even the GM who was definitely only pretending to be a girl, I enjoyed hanging around enough to pretend I believed you.
You're level 2. Of course martials seem OP, they can do damage so long as they're conscious and have a weapon. Once you get to level 6 and your casters have feats and good spells guess who starts taking over?
Also, custom tanking feat sounds like the knight's challenge ability from 3.5 PBH2.
Forgot to add; monster's health starts scaling very high after CR 6.
No man. Just. No. Line of sight and knowledge of the enemy location is necessary for most spells and attacks, a tight corridor means less movement and less AoE spells to obliterate enemy groups, knowledge of layout of the tunnel/halls/whatever means the denizens of the dungeon has the upper hand for ambushes and retreats, there's just too much going for the defenders if they're at least competent of their own home.
Literally an equal number of archers with difficult ground or on mounts would be able to take them out.
Or spearmen backed by archers.
Or archers up on stairs or a balcony.
and the cavalier is level 10?
BAIT
>BAIT
BAIT
>BAIT
BAIT
>BAIT
Ye gods, I know this is bait but holy shit.
>martials, when built in a proper fashion, deal far too much damage
>And, for the record, "casters doing shit for damage" is the problem. The game isnt balanced in terms of damage.
> Even monsters, who could be considered martials, do not have the health or the damage to compensate for the output that martials have.
>I'm not going to get into a casters vs martials arguement.
You only really get that much damage if you let the cavalier get away with charging everything. Put him in a confined space, knock him from the saddle, annihilate him with ranged attacks or flying casters or hell, flying anything
>tfw my brothers blaster wizard can deal 150+ damage a round while flying, with dr and energy resist on himself
>his pen is absurd so 9th level Sr doesn't work unless I wanna up it and shit on the bard and witch-woman in the partyear
>literally just have to cheese him or throw magic immune beasties or constructs most of the time
Fuckin cry me a river OP
Consider the martials ending fights quick a blessing, user. Why would you want to drag them to last longer?
Holy shit have you never played D&D before? Literally the only two editions that have martials NOT instantly curbstomp an enemy they're on top of are 4E and 5E, and of those two 4E is the only one with a legitimate reason for it - its tactical combat needs the game to not be rocket tag.
The problem has never, ever been their damage numbers, it's their inability to deal with situations outside of "I hit it with my sword/shoot an arrow", let alone situations that make that difficult. Why do you think uberchargers weren't broken despite being able to oneshot anything they could charge?
Never DM Pathfinder again
>Blaster casters
Even in AD&D land, that party was playing badly.
You aren't wrong.
But sometimes, aren't the worst games the best stories?
>The problem I've been having is the amount.
That's because you're a bad GM that is crying about martials doing what martials are supposed to do. You know what's way more broken than a martial doing enough damage to kill something in 2 rounds?
Sacred Geometry Dazing Spell fireball spammer Wizards that end fights in a single spell, or pre-nerf wand of Paragon Surge Sorcerors that will always have the right spell for any situation, or even a garden variety Batman Wizard, or a fucking Summoner, which does that damage you're crying about while being a 6th level caster with a spell list that looks a hell of a lot more like a 9th level spell list due to all of the spell level reductions, or really any spellcaster that's capable of SoLing an entire fight into the ground on round 1 and going first more often than not due to the sheer amount of initiative boosts they have.
This.
It only works on a retarded party or the DM fudging rolls/making rulings in favor of the kobolds all the way.
It's a stupid masturbatory story where the DM, the person in knowledgeof all the facts and the wielder of all the narrative is pretending to be the outgunned but wily underdog.
>rulings in favor of the kobolds all the way.
Eh, it's not uncommon for monsters to be able to do things that the players cannot; so I don't get my panties in a wad about the move-shoot-move kobolds.
I give it a 3/10. Put some EFFORT into your trolling.
>The enemies would have to be significantly higher level than them to cast spells capable of actually disabling them.
>what is color spray
>what is sleep
GMing is clearly a too complicated an endeavour for you. I suggest suicide.
>"if it can be broken, it is always broken, even if there are easy fixes"
But that's wrong.
But it's not.
That you have to fix it in the first place necessitates that something is wrong
Try 4e. I love it.
I don't see this as a problem, this is actually allowed by DnD 3.x srd. No where does it say you stop movement once you attack, but to move out of range while in melee means AoO unless you have certain feats. There is zero reason for a ranged character to want to be in melee, so it's not outlandish for them to stay away from it. But, this is also why charging exists, as well as group tactics.
d20srd.org
d20srd.org
Can't do it without one of those feats.
>play smarter, not harder
>at higher levels lel i don't know just give the kobolds PC classes maybe it will work
Were you dropped on your head as a baby?
Except you can't split fire like that as per AD&D combat rules.
I thought Tucker's Kobolds was about being a rampant metagamer GM.