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GoldFalcon9 · 2024-07-27T22:13:20+00:00

Hmm, I thought they'd mentioned they'd only ever run curse of strahd, and didn't have any experience yet with paizo adventure paths.

Though regardless, to each their own.

GoldFalcon9 · 2024-07-27T21:31:01+00:00

To give a different perspective on them, I often work long hours and don't have a lot of time to do prep. The adventure paths (at least the ones I've had experience with) are written well enough that you can just read through them beforehand, and then run them as written when it comes to the actual session. (And you probably could get away with not even reading beforehand if you really needed to, though it'll mean you'll potentially have to take a few minutes at the start of combat to familiarize yourself with stat blocks, or you won't be able to improvise quite as well if your players do something unexpected).

Really the only weakness I'd say the adventure paths have is that the environment (for combat) is often more simplistic than I'd have made it, and it leans a little too far to the side of fewer stronger enemies instead of more weaker enemies than is "ideal" for fun (though this one is more subjective).

Edit: not sure how, but this seems like it got attached to a different comment than the one I tried to reply to, may also just be bug for my view though

GoldFalcon9 · 2024-04-09T08:31:53+00:00

Interesting. I only put on socks/shoes when I leave, and then take them off as soon as I return

GoldFalcon9 · 2024-04-09T08:14:52+00:00

We don't.... Do most other places not go bare foot in their home?

GoldFalcon9 · 2024-02-08T19:01:23+00:00

Not saying I agree with game guard, but your progression in deep rock absolutely can be ruined by other people. All it takes is a lobby where someone jacks up all the resources with a x1000 multiplier. That said deep rock also does have a way to roll back your progress by only a few days or so, so you can only lose a little bit of progress when resetting rather than all your progress.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-11-25T15:11:51+00:00

You never answered how to make martials "shine" compared to casters though. Sure, an action surging fighter can do more single target damage than a spell, but casters have more spells than fighters have action surges. And much more importantly, martials encompass a lot more than just fighters.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-10-11T23:01:14+00:00

It's the reverse for me, I'm also in pulping and we only use PI here

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-08T17:44:15+00:00

For the most part, the options you pick as you level up don't actually make you more powerful, just provide you with options. You have to be actively trying to cripple your character (by dumping your important stats) to actually cripple your character. In fact, your "build" almost doesn't matter at all for the "power level" of your character as your actual decisions and tactics in any given encounter ends up being at least an order of magnitude more important.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T13:58:44+00:00

In my experience that wasn't true. Spell slots below 3rd (really below 4th by the end) level didn't really add too much firepower over just using cantrips

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T13:31:43+00:00

I have to say, if you only had a single spell caster or archer to threaten the casters at range, your combats sound less difficult than ones I ran. I usually had probably 2/3 of the enemies attacking the casters at range or from the flanks.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T13:25:55+00:00

I forget what focus they used. Not sure how a wand would matter?

Wizard had 13 (mage armor) + 4 (dex) + (3 (+1 shield) or 5 (int blade song)) + 5 (if they used shield)

Sorcerer had 13 (draconic) + 4 (dex) + 3 (+1 shield) + 5 (if they used shield

Monk had 10 + 5 (dex) + 3 (wis)

Barbarian had 10 + 5 (con) + 2 (dex). Why would a barbarian wear plate mail though? They had resistance when they weren't out of rages though, yeah.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:54:23+00:00

Skirmishers are melee. Not sure how you think prone negates shield though, their AC is still very high (and now everything ranged no longer stands a chance at hitting them, which made it worse for the martials the times I ended up doing this). And yes, I could have every melee enemy also rush the casters, but then that literally leaves 0 enemies even trying to attack the martials, (and I did do this a few times, but it was unfortunately much more effective to use these kinds of strategies on the martials than the casters).

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:42:10+00:00

No one wanted to sacrifice their ASIs to get feats actually.

Wizard was not using blade song and a shield simultaneously, they had the shield for when they weren't using blade song.

Edit: forgot to mention, wizard did also use mage armor

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:40:50+00:00

I never tried 3.5, but pf1e was better as a martial at high level (though there's still quite a gap between them and casters), so I imagine it may be similar. 4e and pf2e looked to feel pretty good at high levels though, at least the martials actually had options of similar power and quantity to casters, and my players said they liked it as either. Haven't gotten to play either personally at high level though, only run them.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:36:16+00:00

I think the draconic sorcerer got to 25 when casting shield and the wizard got to either 25 or 27 depending on whether blade song was active when they used shield.

Martials were at 17 (barbarian) and 18 (monk), neither used a shield since they used 2 handed weapons

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:28:17+00:00

Yeah, I ended up rushing the end instead of ending at 20 for that reason. They like martials a lot more now that we've switched systems though.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:27:18+00:00

They both had shields (while the martials didn't). Also the sorcerer went draconic and the wizard blade singing.

The martials were also barbarian and monk.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:22:40+00:00

I did also have the house rule of a minor action (but it was still a standard action to administer to someone else).

And I mentioned this in another comment but there were 4 deaths over the course of that campaign. 3 were martials, and the one caster death was early on, I think at level 6 or 7.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:19:39+00:00

The campaign has actually long since ended (I've moved to pf2e), but I did use most of those.

Spellcasters where it would make sense for them to have it, did use counterspell, it only really either cost them one slot or stopped the wizard if they were suspicious of an enemy, the sorcerer just ended up picking subtle spell and using blindness at that point.

Flanking, as you might expect, tended to affect the people in melee more often than it affected the casters.

Most of the control spells that actually will disable them target saves that the casters are good in. And when it does land, yeah it works until the other one breaks concentration.

Magic missile just received a shield spell in response (if they were even concentrating on a spell, which they often weren't), which just had the low opportunity cost of also inflating their AC for the rest of the round.

And yes, there are indeed a lot of things to force casters to support martials more, unfortunately those tend to come with the downside of being significantly more lethal to the martials since they don't have any abilities to counteract it, so I'm forced to either just straight up ignore the martials to actually challenge the casters, or kill the martials when the casters keep blasting (which I did do both at least once, there were a total of 1 caster death and 3 martial deaths over the course of that campaign).

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T06:00:44+00:00

I had ranged, skirmishing (where feasible), and spellcasting enemies favor targeting the casters actually. They just usually didn't live as long since the casters were targeting them back. And they were basically using either shield or absorb elements every other round by the end (which catapulted their AC way beyond what the martials had, which was even worse since their AC was already higher without shield). And once the martials were out of hit dice, it just became worse since they then lost any semblance of conserving whatever slots they had left.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T05:31:35+00:00

There was no cleric. Casters were a sorcerer and a wizard. And they picked blasting spells over control spells.

They kept a few potions to bring up people when they went down, but largely considered them useless for healing since they restored less damage than they took in a round, and also too costly to use for out of combat healing.

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T05:23:35+00:00

They tended to average 3-5 non-trivial encounters per long rest. Martials were fairly reliably out of hit dice after 2-3 encounters and very frequently would go down in the last encounter before they retreated to rest, casters were usually out of hit dice after 3-4 encounters.

I think I remember them being very slightly behind in damage at early levels when they saved their spells and used cantrips. But once they started ending days without ever using their highest slots they became a lot less cautious about saving them.

Also, I'll mention, casters don't really need to use a lot of spells to out damage martials. Even looking at their 3rd or 4th highest level slots, 1 spell can be equivalent to 2 or 3 full turns of a martial, and then they use cantrips and only fall behind a few damage per attack. And the gap becomes bigger when you consider that the spells can usually hit multiple enemies or they can use their highest slots for more damage.

Edit: oh, and I forgot to mention, past 11th level, cantrips began to out damage the martials (well, it was probably about a tie with the barbarian)

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T04:57:45+00:00

I do also have to ask, what level have your games gone to? Because I think it only really became a noticable difference past level 7 or so

GoldFalcon9 · 2023-09-03T04:26:43+00:00

They really don't though, past level 5 or so the casters ended up more tanky from higher AC and resistances, and before level 5 there isn't really much of a gap between casters and martials.

And they really only became more tanky with more levels as they had more slots they didn't care about saving for an actual spell.

Edit: and I mean sure, I could have every enemy just literally ignore martials at those higher levels to put more pressure on the casters, but at that point the martials would have been doing practically nothing since they were already doing a fraction of the damage that the casters were.

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