*yawn*

So... for pathfinder... in Core, can you make a melee combatant that is as interesting and versatile and useful and non-spellcasting as the Core Horizon Tripper?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80415

Thank you grey cloak.

He pretty much nailed it, by level 20 I can pretty easy manage a Fighter that is throwing out.
ATK:40/40/35/30/25. 2d6+42 Damage. 18-20x3. Critical Damage. Or on average about 200 damage a round. (Give or take for misses and critical) Which is more then Enough to cut down most Casters and its not like your gonna miss them that much. (Which is not to say they can't one shot you if you don't beef up your saves, any maybe if you do)

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As for ranger. (Thinks you get in Pathfinder that you don't in 3.5)
d10 HP instead of d8.
4/4/3/3 Spells Instead of 3/3/3/3.
Six Combat Style Feats Instead of three. (And they are generally more flexible in Pathfinder)
Favored Terrain.
Improved Evasion over Normal Evasion.
Quarry and Improved Quarry.
Master Hunter.
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Fighters.
Bravery. (Kind of sucks but what ever)
Armor Training. (A possible +4 Armor and -4 ACP)
Weapon traning. (+4 Attack and Damage, on top of what ever your weapon gives)
Weapon Master. (Better Criticals)
Armor Mastery. (5/- DR)
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Honestly Rejakro if you can't see this a marked boost then you cant be reasoned with.
And don't get me wrong Fighter and Ranger needed a boost to kind of even them out with casters latter.

And as for the DM doing to counter the casters. OK.

Pit Fiend.
Spell Resistance:31.
FT:24. RF:21. WP:18.
AC:38. HP:380.
Immune to... A bunch of stuff.

Lets say you have a level 20 Mage. INT:31. Improved Spell Focus/Penetration. Level Eight Spell.
That's a Spell Pen Check of 1d20+20. Or a 45% change to get thought. (Maybe a little better if I am missing something)
With a DC:30. (Or 12 for a will save, 9 for a RF, 6 for a FT)

You will notice that the warrior I came up with Cant miss twice, and will most likely land all but one hit. And most Likely Critical once. Which is to say that there is very little change that the pit fiend will last more then two or three rounds vs the warrior, Which is about what I give it vs the caster, if the Pit field doesn't decide to.. you know have a brain and kill the caster.
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But I will be honest its most likely a mute point to talk to you, you seam like you already "Know whats going on" and are basically going to argue your points and ignore any point that dose not match up with yours. I could be wrong and you could actually be discussing things like you see them, just saying I have never had a problem DMing or Playing that was not caused largely by a imbalance in player skill of min-maxing.

The point is that you can make any... Well almost any class VERY impressive. Some are easier to make impressive.
You continued statement that "You can't make a (Enter Class) hear that is as good (Enter class) Hear" Is simply assanine, what you mean is YOU cant do that.

As a case and Point. Almost every player I have ever seen Hold the Position that you can't make a Bard that is Power house in anything. I normally disagree with the statement that you can make a VERY Effective bard. But I am inclined to agree that I have never seen a Bard that was the rockstar of a group. I will not say It can't be done. But I have not seen it done.

You seam to hold bards in such high esteem that it makes me wonder how impressive B your wizard would be, because there should be no contest there. Bards spell pen can't be any higher then a Wizards, and there Spell CR's are going to be lower by virtue of only being a 6th spell level casting class. And wile I'm a big fan of the bard spell selection, what exactly are you killing the boss with as a bard?
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My final word is this, If you think that you can make a Bard that is going to easily down a Min Maxed Fighter then your statement about being able to optimize a fighter is basically null and void, and we are not even talking about some of the classes that are really good against Casters, a monk or Paladin is a much better choice.

Again that's not to say that a bard could not under any circumstance beat the fighter, or a wizard would not have the upper hand at some levels, it is simply to say this huge gap you are talking about does not exists in most games. And if it does then it is the by product of (Sense you like to make lists) #1: A pore selection of monsters on the part of your DM, picking nothing but lower saving throw monster and SRless mosnters. Not to mention some monsters that are immune to some spell effects, #2: Players who simply don't know what they are doing with there Melees.

I have seen allot of fighters that do make VERY bad choices that you have as of yet states nothing about.
(I.E. I normally pick up some Save boosting feats and A cloak of Resistance) Not to mention Dex and Con Items.
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most Wizard vs Melee Fights Should go something like this.
A: Mage downs Melee in First or Second Round.
B: Melee Kills Mage in Second or third round.

Now you are going to have Wizards who Really know what they are doing.
And you are going to have miss matches at times. (I.E. Wizard with a Fast Fly spell vs Fighter with no ranged attack or way to get to him) Ext.
And you are going to have miss matches on the other side. (I.E. Fighter Charges in and Critical First thing)

But its not this matter of.

Wizard is AMMAZINAA!
Fighters DRULE!

That you seam to be going on about.

so Pathfinder didn't fulfill everyones expectations?
golly what a crime!

anyone need a 3.5 core book?

the thing I like most about PF:

Choices, lots of them
- 10 different sorcerers
- more flavor for specialised wizards
- Rouge Talents
- Rage Powers (though most of them just suck)

no more Level Adjustment for most Monster Races (with a free power creep for everyone else)

no more Dead Levels for non-casters (those levels without Class Feats)

a feat every second level (don't care some might feel nerfed)

skills consolidation (at the cost of synergy)





My pet peeves with PF:

too much copy paste, especially the weight for armor (which ought to have the same weight factor as clothing for smaller/larger creatures)

half orcs are the suckers:
in 3,5 they where the only ones who could get STR20 at first level, the advantage is gone, but they got nothing in compensation.

Kind of agree with the Half Orc-thing BTW.

And Ya I agree, I really can't think of much if any way that Pathfinder is not a improvement over 3.5, That's not to say that 3.5 is not good.

Weapon Focus/Greater Weapon Focus as a class feature isn't really that overwhelming in any sense of the word.

As for the power attack thing.. right. So in games where fighters take Power Attack and don't take Shock Trooper/use power attack against non-incapacitated enemies, the pathfinder fighter is superior?

Since that kind of fighter is far weaker than a fighter using an actual feat combo, I guess we're assuming that there's no strong casters, either through self-nerf or just lack of them being in the game? Well.. sure. I guess in incredibly low-op games the fighter does benefit from the PA changes. What pathfinder was designed for, eh.

On to some builds:
Sickened is -2. Unless, unlike everything i've seen in PF so far, it actually stacks up to nauseating, how is that going to help you? And if you're attacking something enough times that your 16-20 crit range is critting multiple times, and it isn't dead, and you're not dead, that's really weird, given how damage scales at higher levels. Either something is immune to you, i.e. you're not critting or it's dead, with 10+ attacks and therefore doesn't care that it's nauseated.

2d6 bleed damage is 6 damage/round. See previous point about things taking hits not dying etc. Also pretty sure any kind of healing magic or fast healing or regen stops bleed. Which is most stuff at level 11+.

Also, how is the PF fighter in these low op games finding these feats amongst all the shiny-looking useless feats? I mean his buddy the wizard is using magic missile at level 11, right, so why is this guy cherrypicking feats so well?



I was under the impression that CMD in pathfinder scaled a lot faster than str/dex trip/bullrush etc defenses in 3.5, so you NEEDED those bonuses just to keep up. As evidenced by the fact that your trip focused PF fighter is failing to trip some 60% of the time, and a similarly low-op 3.5 fighter succeeds more than 50% of the time.

I was also under the impression that weapon focus did not stack with weapon training.



Well, again in this theoretical low op setting where a fighter would take power shot as an archer instead of any of the other stuff that helps him more without a way to counteract power shot's -to hit.

You just admitted to writing down the stats for like 15 creatures. How exactly is that different from writing down yourself AS those creatures? It takes about the same time, albeit slightly more math than blind copying does. The only things wild shape changes is natural attacks and physical ability scores - it's REALLY not hard to write those down, which is what the person I am talking about did in like 5 minutes.

And if you have a table where there is absolutely no downtime, then sir, you and your gaming group are singular in that distinction.

The guisarme fighter mini-build I did is pretty similar. If you wanted, you could do a 1-level Barbarian dip for the fast movement and rage, which combined with Armour training II would give speed of 40 in medium armour (hello, mithril full plate). I'd probably not do that and stick with 30' movement in full plate at 7th level but it's up to you. Also, there is a Horizon Walker in the PF-APG which would be easy to get to. I'm not sure what the Horizon tripper gets out of that but the class is as easy to get to as it was in 3.5.

After 7th, the PF trip fighter has lunge which allows him to trade -2 AC for an optional +5' to reach so he'd be reaching 10-15' normally and 10-20' with enlarge.

The build would look something like this:
Str>Dex=Con>Int (min 13)>Wis>Cha
Str 16+2, Dex 14, Con 13, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 7 (20 point) - Level ups go to strength, 1 in con if you need the HP.

1 - Combat Expertise, Improved Trip, Combat reflexes (3 AoO/round, trip is about 80% effective)
2 - Power attack (good for 2-handed weapons)
3 - Weapon Focus: Guisarme - Armour training I (full movement in medium armour, -1 ACP, +1 max dex)
4 - Specilization: Guisarme
5 - Cleave? Iron will? - Weapon training: Polearms +1
6 - Greater Trip
7 - Lunge - Armour training II (full movement heavy armour, -2 ACP, +2 max dex)
8 - Greater Weapon Focus: Guisarme
9 - Improved critical? - Weapon training: Polerarm +2, bow +1
10 - critical focus?

One variation on this would be to do Heavy Flail for the specializations instead which trades reach (which can be gained with Enlarge and/or Lunge) for better critical hit range. In that variation, I'd probably add quick draw in there somewhere so you can switch hit (Bow to polearm to flail and would spread the weapon focus feats around).

For skills, as a human, you can do the same cross-class stuff as that horizon tripper because you have 4/level to work with and the cross-class penalty is much less severe than in 3.5

I conceded that shock trooper fighters do more damage in a charge.

What I don't care for is that 3.5 makes it so that only a couple of fighter builds using a couple of late-release optional books aren't low-op, to borrow your pejorative.

Comparing core to core, there is no comparison. Comparing core PF to shock trooper 3.5+, the core PF fighter is a little behind but he is nowhere as far as you and your ilk intimate. This is because in a full attack routine, the PF fighter hits more often and crits more often. He hits more times per round for less damage per hit, so there are situations where he does better (high AC opponents) and there are situations where he does worse (low AC opponents).

In a PF-only game, a moderately optimized core PF fighter does by far the most damage for the first 10 or so levels and is pretty tough to hit because he is good at fighting and it's easy to make a concept that works. In the latter levels, he starts to fall behind the spell casters (who he led for half the game) but frankly, that's how it should be. He still leads in raw DPR but he can't function without the universe-controlling action of a high level spell-slinging ally against other universe-controlling mobile opponents. Again, that's how it should be as the wizard has been either doing crappy damage or debuffing or buffing or doing battlefield control for 10 levels and he deserves a time to shine.

To mention the other martial classes and compare them internally to the PF fighter:
The ranger does slightly more DPR against his chosen enemy if he's maxed it out the whole way.
The paladin does slightly more DPR against evil creatures when he's smiting.
The barbarian does slightly more in a charge and less toe to toe but has skills and cool feats that are effective at every level.

The monk and rogue are in a lower tier - weaker in combat than the previous three but more useful out of combat. They are similar to the ranger and paladin when they are not fighting their favoured enemies or smiting.

To answer this last point, this is a discussion about comparing optimized characters. You can make useless fighters and poor wizards in 3.5 too.

Anyway, I mentioned sickened because it's automatic and something you take first or in conjunction with some of the big SoS critical effects (blinding, stunning, staggering). Sickened and bleed happens at 11th level so critters will be lasting more than one round and that damage/debuff will contribute. To further pick nits, the crit range is 15-20, not 16-20 so these kinds of effects are more than 50/50 probability every round with a full attack, even at 11th level.

You were misinformed.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/c...mbat-maneuvers
They not only stack with each other, they stack with every other bonus like Morale, Luck, Size etc. So, while the 3.5 trip fighter looks for buffs in two ways, size or strength, the PF trip fighter gets help from his weapon, his training, his bard friend, his cleric, and size and strength. I showed bare minimums there - the realities are more like 100% trips for anything above the lower levels. This interpretation has been confirmed by the game designers.

The - to hit is counteracted with weapon training as in my power attack discussion above. He becomes a -2/+whatever with a slightly dampened progression than the chart I produced. His average DPR is higher because he doesn't have to move around most battlefields to get a full attack off every round and as a bonus, he doesn't have to go toe to toe.

Why is this theoretical caster standing in arms reach of you without buffs up? At level 20? Sounds pretty daft for a guy with the common sense of a god (cleric) or the scheming intelligence of an illithid elder brain (wizard).

That amount of damage isn't enough to kill melee monsters in one round. Have you SEEN their full attacks? And that's stock monsters, at CR 20. Melee monsters, the kind the fighter does best against. How does that fighter deal with dragons strafing him with breath weapons? Dragons that have buffed themselves, unlike that poor caster? What about pit fiends summoning other pit fiends and casting implosion on him from the sky?

I can make a fighter, in core, that does about that much damage. It's not even particularly hard. I can make a fighter that does much damage at like, level 5, using non-core 3.5. And I don't care! Fighters are STILL boned vs remote summonings and phantasmal killer and having rocks dropped on them and being teleported onto other planes and all the rest of it. Even against melee monsters they're not amazing. JUST LIKE IN 3.5. You're saying you can do some damage in PF? That's great. So can I in 3.5. Changes NOTHING about the fighter, or his nature, or how he stacks up to other classes, or anything at all really. It's easier to be a mediocre fighter in PF who struggles against even basic enemies. Whoopee.

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How do these things change the way the ranger interacts with the party and the monsters - > do they make him noticeably better compared to say, a 3.5 Swift Hunter.



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So what you're saying is fighters get +4 to hit, +4 to damage, and +4 to AC while using specific armour and weapons, over the course of 20 levels.

Do you really think that changes fighters? Why?
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+4 to hit does not compare with the ability to move between planes, summon powerful monsters and force them to do your bidding (Planar Binding), wipe out whole rooms of enemies without a saving throw or SR, buff yourself or your pet until you glow in the dark and explode everything, be able to craft epic weapons and items, teleport instantly out of danger, have 'if then else' spells that activate if you're in danger...

Did PF turn pit fiends into melee creatures? Pit fiends summon another pit fiend while flying away, and then come back and implosion you and other spell-likes from extreme range. They also go invisible and shit in order to mess up casters in melee, but if there's a fighter lurking, why wouldn't they explode him from the inside out first just for funsies?

In PF alone, not counting 3.5, there are a half dozen ways to negate or shut down the pit fiend that don't even involve SR or a save. Forcecage, for one.

Even in PF there are items and feats and spells and shit that help you punch through SR if you REALLY MUST USE A SR: YES SPELL. I mean, you could just use a SR: No spell that does something murderous, like Maze, or whatever. Looking up those two things, oh hey, Maze has SR now, and Forcecage allows a reflex save (how cute). Solid Fog don't, though.

Well let's see. A level 20 wizard, a quick search finds me spell penetration and greater spell penetration, there's got to be some item of gear that gives a bonus but lets ignore it, and oh hey, whats this, 'Spell Mastery' eh, alright, sure, we're going to fire off a Spell Mastered Piercing Persistent Dominate Monster, oldschool style. That's 1d20+29, or, we get through on anything but a 1. Then we have say, 20 starting int and we've put 5 in there and we bought a tome of +5 and we have a +6 item, so 36, and greater spell focus and some random gear/feats/traits for another +2, so now the Pit Fiend has to make 2 will saves against DC, hm, what ****ing spell level is Dominate Monster in PF.. 6? we'll go with 6. So it's DC 33. So the pit fiend now needs to roll two 15s (persistent spell) or he's our prospective Enchanter's meatpuppet for the next 20 days.

If we fail, oh well, quickened solid fog! We now have another round to try the same thing or something else while the pit fiend teleports out of the fog.

Meanwhile the fighter is using his flying horse to try to chase the pit fiend and get into a melee fight he will (maybe) win while the pit fiend explodes his horse and then him, while the Enchanter takes his pit fiend home to brush it's hair and straighten it's teeth.

Just like in 3.5.

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I love this barrage of insults on my integrity from you and others the instant I ask for proof of the points that you have stated oh so emphatically.

Indeed, asking for proof or WHY you think something is so is indeed so very ignorant of me.

By the way, 'moot' 'seem' 'does'.

If you can show me how a PF fighter has any ability to make a pit fiend his personal plaything in a single round, then we can talk about the classes being even SLIGHTLY on the same playing field.

Your example so far has been a melee fighter that does possibly 200 damage in a round at level 20. Which you seem to consider 'awesome'. In a system whose TOUTED CLAIM is that it made the wizard and fighter balanced. Not even beginning to address the HUGE out of combat utility difference between a wizard and a fighter, 200 damage at level 20 is NOT IMPRESSIVE. You need to be able to full attack, how does your fighter get that? You need to hit ACs considerably better than a pit fiends, how does your fighter do that with more than his +40 to hit attacks? You need to survive spell-likes from pit fiends, breath weapons from dragons, full attacks from melee monsters... how does the fighter do that?

The wizard does it with contingencies, instant actions, divinations, and buff spells. The fighter just.. doesn't. How does the fighter 'work on his saves' to make it so he can resist dual implosions? Buffs from the wizard? How does the fighter dodge breath weapons? How does the fighter deal with a dragon that doesn't stand there in a cave waiting for him to full attack it, but instead flies around setting the fighter on fire? What about a dragon that uses some of it's sorcerer casting to cast some of the MANY buff spells on itself, making it basically unhittable (AC 60+), blinking, mirror imaged, ethereal, and shooting will saves fort saves ref saves breathing fire etc? The wizard can deal with that. Fire Immunity, fly, Ray of Exhaustion, Feeblemind, Dominate... I DON'T PLAY CASTERS, and I can still list half dozen ways for a wizard to defeat encounters like this that the fighter just CAN'T, he relies on the INT THIRTY DRAGON sitting in it's ****ING CAVE like a goddamn MOLE-RAT.

Did you see the new Beowulf movie? You know the end scene, where he fights the dragon? It takes houserules and DM fiat for the fighter to do anything even LIKE that. The fighter is just not capable of BEING that awesome, and Beowulf lucks out and grabs onto the dragon before it launches... DnD Dragon just goes 'Freedom of Movement' and beowulf drops. Except beowulf doesn't, he has a ****ing class ability called 'Dragon Puncher' that lets him ignore that and get dragged through seven kinds of crap and beat the dragon to death with his face. The 3.5 Fighter has nothing like, and neither does the PF Fighter because it is a carbon clone with free weapon focus.

In point. in point. Seriously, spellchecker is no substitute for proof-reading. As an additional benefit, you can find where you don't make sense or sound dumb, and fix it!

Random Capitalization is Also jarring.


I made a bard in 3.5 that cleared 500 damage/round at level 10 in 3.5. That wasn't even particularly the high point of the build. I've played basic bards that used their spells and fascinate and songs and whatnot to be really effective. In no way is bard a weak class like the monk is. However, i've found it's an enduring belief amongst low-op groups that 'bards are weak' and in a lot of them 'monks are OP'.


You aren't. As a Bard you are giving other people buffs and taking care of groups of smaller creatures. That's the bard's job, and what he's good at.

That said, there's some stuff you can do against bosses with abilities (like fascinate, I think, it's been years since i've played a bard) that scale from Perform check and pumping up your perform check.

They took away a lot of stuff for bards in PF, like dragonfire inspiration and good spells and whatnot.

That said, there's no reason why a bard can't have the same penetration bonus as a wizard. It's based on CL, and bard has a CL of 20. Hell, he could do that casting of dominate monster I outlined up above, it's only a 6th level spell, right? All he needs to do is take those same feats, and bam. Hell if he has that music and thingy feat, and Pander, he can be giving the party +4 to hit and damage (same as a fighter 20! burn) and one guy +10 to hit and damage (Lotus Geisha Bard and Pander, found it just the other day looking at alternate bards in PF out of idle curiosity) while he does it.

I don't think bards are 'amazing'. I just think that thinking they 'suck' is one huge sign someone doesn't understand how DnD works and plays really low op games where swinging for crappy damage is the norm and dragons sit in caves waiting for you to kill them.
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Another sign that someone plays low-op games is assuming that the strength of a class is based on it's arena 1 vs 1 in a cagematch potential against another class.

I can make a fighter that gets a huge initiative bonus and leap attack a buffless bard to death, sure.

Less sure I can do that in PF. Disruptive and shit are NO replacement for the Mage-Slayer line. As long as the caster isn't like 10 levels lower, he'll make his concentration check easily and blow you to smithereens while laughing.

If we're talking about, y'know, the POINT OF BALANCE BETWEEN CLASSES, the ability of characters to FIGHT MONSTERS, ESPECIALLY IN A GROUP, it's not exactly the same as 'going down easily'.

That said, in 3.5 I can build a bard at nearly any level that will easily take down any fighter. In PF looking at the spell list it's much the same. Fascinate the fighter, put up some buffs, dominate him until it sticks, have him shove pinecones down his throat until he chokes to death. (not really, that allows a save, instead make up believable lie about why you have to tie him up, make him stand there while you do it (no save if he believes the lie and it's in his best interest), coup de grace him until the breathing stops)

Or just buff yourself and dawnflower dervish him into tiny, mole-sized chunks.

There are a lot of great spells that don't have saves and are SR: No. You can also trivially boost your spell penetration and saving throw DCs to levels where you have a good chance of succeeding with any given cast.

Not even mentioning the fact that you have a portable hole with 3 cryohydras in it thanks to animate dead, and you can use Shadows against things that don't have magic weapons thanks to create undead, and you can teleport away if things start to look hairy, and there are immediate action spells that help you out, and you can Bind outsiders to be bodyguards, and you can walk around with all day buffs that make you very hard to harm, and you can boost your initiative with other spells, and at high levels Foresight = you act in all surprise rounds and divination spells are very specific about how you can find out if you're going to attack and when if you play 20 questions. Taking away divination entirely is DM fiat. It is not 'how the game is meant to be played'. It's a houserule. 'DM should punish them for it/stop them doing it' is stormwind fallacy and bloody stupid defense for the game system itself. If the game doesn't want it there, the ****ing spell shouldn't be in the ****ing book.

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Why are you going to the arena with this? Why aren't we talking about how wizards murder monsters and fighters don't, and fighters don't get to fly or teleport or have minions or affect entire battlefields in one turn or bind creatures or

It's more like unless the wizard is really dumb, the wizard breaks the game the fighter is playing in half. And PF says 'that doesn't happen anymore!' and I see no signs that they've either a) made the fighter good against monsters in the monster manual (or 'bestiary') without the DM making them SIT IN CAVES and NOT USE THEIR SPELLS or b) made the fighter either able to do stuff the wizard does (get minions, affect wide areas, travel quickly, travel between planes) or better in combat so the wizard doing other stuff is fine.

Meanwhile, you're comparing wizards who don't cast buff spells standing in melee range of fighters so fighters get to full attack them and talking about that and I just do not CARE that is not a thing that happens except in incredibly low op games where it only happens thanks to social pressure on 'munchkins' who don't toe the line, it is in no way indicative of the way the rules work.

You could socially engineer people to all play gnome barbarians, it doesn't mean the 'natural state' of the game or the only thing the rules support is gnome barbarians.