Tournament Arc, Part 6/8
I learned this lesson in Azeroth. It wasn’t an issue of mounted combat, but the same principle applies.
“Hey,” said I to my guildmate, “Remember how I was a pretty OK bear tank back at low level?”
“Yeah,” he said, wariness in his voice. “That was 20 levels ago.”
“Well I was thinking. Couldn’t we queue faster if I went tank?”
“Dude, you’re a cat druid. Be a cat druid.”
“But it takes forever to queue DPS!”
“Do you even have tank gear?”
“Well no. But how hard could it be? Ima change specs real quick.”
My more-experienced buddy humored me. We signed up for some instance or other, and I charged gamely into the nearest group of mobs. I don’t think I have to belabor the results. Suffice it to say that the words “cancer” and “please kick” were being thrown around in chat. And I, being a very bad old bear, fully deserved the abuse.
By and large, RPGs of all stripes reward specialization. If you’re a grappling dude, you’re not going to be nearly as good at archery. When you’re an archer, you probably aren’t going to be as effective on the front lines. And when you’re a front line melee combatant, hopping on your newly-summoned mount and pretending to be a stick-and-move equestrian is going to result in disappointment.
This mess doesn’t just apply to martial characters either. I can remember a time when my poor sorcerer pal wanted to cast from a divine scroll back in Pathfinder.
“I have a few ranks in Use Magic Device. How hard could it be?”
See also disappointment. After a quick survey of the relevant rules and calculating the (absurdly high) DC, the injured party member remained thoroughly un-healed. The scroll in question remained stubbornly un-activated, and the Sorcerer asked if she could redistribute her UMD ranks.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we talk about the poorly thought-out “respec moments” in your games? Have you ever tried a combat style that was better left to the professionals? Maybe you tried to pick up a little offensive magic only to realize your save DCs were abysmal. Perhaps unarmed striking turned out to be a waste of an action. Whatever your SNAFU, let’s hear about it down in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
Way back when I first tried out some 3rd edition books lying around (and then ignored tabletop until 5e came out), I built a shitty half-orc monk.
I was crap at hitting things, worse at dealing damage when I actually managed to hit things, died if goblin tickled me roughly, had all the intellectual power of an especially smart armadillo and no mentionable skills whatsoever due to my aggressive averageness.
Not a very fun class those 3e monks. Fortunately my 5e monk was much much better at “doing cool stuff”.
I’m glad I found the Treantmonk guide before I tried to make my first monk. That’s the only reason I didn’t make the same MAD mistake.
yeah, UMD is a waste if action and skill points till about level 10.
luckily, with a high INT rogue it takes only one level to max it out.
It’s great to be a fighter with a wand collection at UMD +10 and +19. The other numbers just make me angry, lol.
It’s pretty good for out of combat stuff before then since it’s only “activate blindly” that has a penalty for failing (beyond maybe not getting to try again).
Spending an action in combat is definitely not worth it until you are good enough that you can safely assume that you’ll succeed and actually get something out of it.
The nat one rule can still be a bit annoying when success rate is low, in that it means that you the player have to actually roll the dice again and again and again, instead of just taking 20.
In the current module we’re in, one of the fights apparently assumed we’d pick up the random magic items and use them. I’m not sure UMD was ever considered good at 3rd level though.
Though I am currently making a backup with UMD and crafting magic items as their gimmick. I determined it was only really viable at level 10 as well. Also took a trait to use Int instead of Cha to maximize those skill points.
Well, there was no actual redesign of a character in play, but I have had a few occasions of applying my characters to tasks they were entirely unsuited for, to the party’s detriment.
One of the most memorable was something like this:
Our party were approaching an orcish watchpost along a ravine path, where we woupd be under fire from a half dozen archers for a long time before we could actually cross the gap. It was 3.0 and we were, I think, only level four, so we had few tricks in our repertoir.
Our Dwarfen ranger, Demer, reckoned that the best approach was to simply shoot our foes down first, rather than let them harry us all the way along, but he wasn’t keen on going 6 vs 1; but, he thought, in a two-man team with Arinen (my character, mainly a sorcerer), it shouldn’t be to hard.
I was enthusiastic, thinking one of my underutilised talents was finally going to be recognised. We two being also the more stealthy characters in the party, we sneaked down to a vantage point behind some rocks to start Orc hunting. Demer drew and shot, scoring a hit with his bow. I proudly hefted my crossbow and plinked off a shot. It went wide by a mile.
The game paused.
“Arinen, what the f*ck was that? I thought you were going to use spells!”
“But I don’t have any offensive spells.”
“What kind of sorcerer has no offenive spells?”
“Um, I’m an abjurer, but I’m proficient with a crossbow. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“But you have no dexterity bonus!”
“… I didn’t think that would be a problem?”
My next shot also missed, and Demer and Arinen were under fire, and I was gettin dirty looks from the rest of the table, so in the end I did what I did best – the wall of +7 AC that was shield in those days – and we just managed to get through alive. But Demer did swear that if he ever saw me pull out a crossbow again he would take it from me and smash it.
He didn’t hold true to that threat in the end, but I did wait a long time – and some magic gear that boosted my archery – before I dared try ranging again. I also got attack spells at the next opportunity.
My current 5e game, I’m playing a bard, and did something similar – bards don’t get a lot of good offensive spells, especially at first level, so I was relying on a crossbow. My first attack roll of the campaign – with advantage – was a pair of ones. My second attack roll – without advantage – was also a one. Although things did improve from there (how could they not?), it became a running joke that the party ducked for cover whenever they saw me reach for a weapon, and threatened to confiscate it.
Look, I’m an abjurer. I’m supposed to take defensive and only defensive spells. Get off my case!
I always thought it would be interesting to make the casters of the world actually do that, btw. Could limit the problems brought on by the tier system.
psh, offensive spells are overrated. My usual sorcerer build took the necessary magic missile, but the next spell that I took that dealt damage? disintegrate. That’s right, 11 levels between damage spells. And the next one was black tentacles, mostly for the grapple, as opposed to damage. I was often asked why, or mocked (in character, mind you, not out of character), until the the thieves guild.
the thieves guild had a nasty surprise waiting for us. our rogue picks the lock, and a flurry of readied actions go off: the first rogue (on the right of the door) opens the door. the brawler in the middle drags our rogue forward 5′ into the flank, and grapples him. the last rogue … closes and relocks the door. there was a minute of stunned silence. The rest of the party starts frantically looking for ways to save our squishy flanking-powered death machine. and I calmly cast knock. there was a long pause.
“why do you have that? we have a dedicated rogue in the party!”
“are you complaining NOW, of all times?”
“fair point.”
TL;DR:
Any caster can make things go boom. Good casters make contingency plans in advance.
It’s not something I’ve done a lot, but yeah, utility-casters can be a lot of fun… particularly if you’re playing a game that’s a bit lighter on combat. You get a big box of oddly-shaped tools, and the challenge of figuring out how to make use of a can opener when what you really need is a screwdriver.
Counterpoint: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fire-guy
The campaign that I recently finished actually started as a different edition. we had started in 3.5 dnd rules and I had intended to be an arcane archer. Queue my like level 5 blues having 2 levels in wizard and 3 levels in scout and being effective at nothing. Through a discussion of various things, we actually changed systems to pathfinder and remade characters mid-dungeon. I took as many traits and such as I could to keep the original feel and intent of the character including some cross class skills and whatnot.
I found a magus archetype that got ranged spellstrike at like level 4 so I could do my arcane archer thing out the gate and also because magus be pretty ok at melee combat. One of the layovers from my old build was also having several initiative bonuses.
Next combat I won initiative by a staggering amount, and because MAGUS IS COOL and gets to cast a spell and make a melee attack and the enemy had been waiting around the corner and I didn;t even need to move the following happened: Cast burning hands, roll nearly max dmg, a bunch of hyenas fail saves and several die, roll a sword crit on the gnoll captain and drop him to 1 hp. My bf/dm almost jumped out of his chair and was like HELL YEAH THATS HOW ITS DONE BABE! THATS HOW YOU BE A MAIN CHARACTER! (one on one game so i get to be plot relevant yay, and one of the pre-change conversations was that I should be more, ya know, hero-ey as the “main character”)
It was plot relevant that main campaign enemies included evil priests so I built anti-spellcaster with feats and stuff and our group was stupid effective at putting them DOWN which was funny considering how much of a pain enemy spellcasters usually are. I kind of over the course built away from my original arcane archer deal though, but the campaign just developed that way. And I could still technically do it as backup if needed.
Nicely done. When the magus goes off, it goes off in a big way. 🙂
I’m surprised at the amount of 3e stuff that seems to be in the conversation so far. Makes me wonder if the famed”ivory tower game design” of the system exacerbates this problem.
It may be relevant that both 4e and 5e have much less variation between trained and untrained modifiers… e.g. a 10th-level 3e character is rolling about +18 in their peak ability+skill, whereas a 5e character at the same level is going to be about half that unless they’re a class that gets Expertise.
The comparison with an untrained character isn’t quite so overwhelming… especially if the latter has at least some bonuses in the relevant ability. And the difference is even less significant at lower levels…
The bounded accuracy thing definitely helps. Still, imagine the big dumb barbarian player participating in tower defense after switching over to a bow. Or trying to grapple with a specialist adding x2 modifiers to athletics. It’s not nearly as severe, but you can find yourself mechanically inferior in some situations.
Honestly unless Battlemaster Fighter has the mounted combatant feat, there’s not that much difference between your ability to fight mounted, and fight on foot. That said Devotion Paladin probably has a lower Strength (Athletics) check than Fighter to avoid being knocked off his mount since he needs strength and charisma, whereas Battlemaster presumably dumped all his mental stats.
A base character is competent by default at most things, and can specialize extra hard via feats. Any 5E strength character can already grapple well if they have Athletics proficiency. A Bard or Barbarian can grapple extra hard through Rage‘s advantage, or the Bard’s obnoxiously broken at high levels Expertise.
So we were a 3 man party. I was playing a Goblin Kensei Monk whose focus was skirmishing. We also had a Lore Bard, and a player who had never played before who was playing a Rogue. I got the first initiative, ran in, did my thing then ran out. The Rogue’s turn came up and they didn’t have an option to trigger Sneak Attack unless I backseat gamed and taught them the Cunning Action hide/shot combo.
I realized for the new player’s fun I would have to sacrifice my build and be the party’s heavy, standing next to the foes and getting chewed on so the newbie could Sneak Attack.
Way back in ye olde days of the pathfinder playtest, I built a dual-wielding ranger to join a group at the local game store. Soon as we found a magic greatsword, I was the only one who was proficient with it. Pulled it out vs the first enemy that had DR, and realized I was doing so much better with this weapon I hadn’t specced into rather than my chosen fighting style.
Ouch. That seems to be the opposite problem to today’s comic. Poor two Weapon fighting builds…. 🙁
This story is close but I never actually did the thing. I did the math before making the attack and stopped but I figure it still fits.
In previous stories, I’ve mentioned my Fey Adept has like 10 daggers of various compositions; silver, cold iron, etc to bypass DR and a few just to throw. After all, with my STR of 6, even a crossbow is risking medium encumbrance. This is my default for any character but with Mendax I took a wrist mounted set up to quickly get the dagger in hand and thought my rogueish sorcerer was well kitted out.
Until I tried to use the damn thing. The GM was nice enough to say that for daggers we can use dex or str, so my 14 Dex meant I had a +2 to hit and a to hit of +5 at the time. My main damage ability is either a destructive illusion that does get 2 saves but does around 13d8 and costs me a ton of spell points or a full round action for 5d8 that costs nothing.
In this fight we were up against a bunch of thugs trying to kill someone and it turns out the victim was a surprise werewolf. Now enraged and attacking everyone, we check for silver weapons. I’m the one of the only ones who prepared for this sort of thing and I feel elated that its also the one in my sheath. As I’m low on spell points, I decide to spend the swift action to apparently conjure the dagger, use my free teleport to get in range and throw it.
Math time. Str of 6. Dex of 14. 1d4 silver dagger. On a successful attack, I’ll do 1d4 -1 for silver and -2 for my strength. Max and Min damage is 1. Sure it will bypass the DR, but it might be better to do something else. As I was never enthralled with directly taking on the werewolf anyway, I passed the dagger to the fighter and teleported to the back room looking for the medicine to suppress the werewolf.
Puts on pedantry glasses.
Actually, I think that the minimum damage is 1 non-lethal.
But for real: that STR dump do hurt sometimes, especially at low level. And gods forbid you try to become a ray caster with a low DEX.
Yeah, daggers are pretty much useless as weapons – unless you’re placing a rogue who’s adding so many sneak-attack dice that he really doesn’t care what the base weapon does. I played such a character in my previous 5e campaign, and by the end, was rolling about 8d6+1d4 on most attacks… or an awesome 18d6+2d4 on the occasional critical.
They’re good backup weapons thanks to their versatility; with both the thrown and finesse properties, as well as the ability to hide them about your person and dual-wield in a pinch, they can be used by just about everyone. It can also be handy for if your packed a warhammer and find yourself trying to describe to the DM how, exactly, your plan to cut the ropes. But rogues aside, they do make for pretty bad primary weapons.
Why would the horse have been the problem? Don’t all they have to do in jousting is run in a straight line? Surely the bigger problem is Paladin didn’t wear any damn armor and couldn’t hold onto his mount.
Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of training (and even outright breeding) that goes into a good jousting horse (through some of it overlaps with a combat horse). It need to not panic (the natural instinct of a horse if another horse is barreling towards it, is to move to the side to give it space, which is not what you want in a joust), to be able to recognize the riders signals to accelerate and/or hold it’s speed and to be able to actually do that (if it slows down when it comes closer to the other horse for instance it’ll be harder for the knight to move his lance in the optimal way).
Like you point out the riders lack of skill is just as, if not more relevant through. Paladin does wear armor through, it’s the gold/bronze plated thing that looks yellow.
You’re right. I thought they were just fancy cloths, not armor.
Look, if you try a brand new combat style and get trounced by the guy who is built for it, that’s plainly everyone’s fault but yours.
For serious though: in my headcanon this is a Ser Loras situation.
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/55150/why-did-the-mountain-slaughter-his-horse
Wouldnt your “headcanon” just be canon since you make these comics?
Once they’re out in the world, my opinion is just an opinion.
and, as with certain body parts, everyone has one. 🙂
My most recent ‘respec moment’ was actually a good idea and totally worked out. It was a three-person team, vs a two-person team of more experienced gladiators. Our team consisted of two rogues and a wizard (me) with Evocation and Necromancy as her banned schools, vs some kind of ranged character, and a Hellknight. My respec moment came when I entered melee range with the hellknight and stabbed him with an arrow. Unsurprisingly, I missed. However, it did cause him to stay put while he full attacked me into the dirt, which let the two rogues I was with flank him and knock out three-quarters of his HP, and disarm him. Then one of them stole his sword and ran away while the other poured a couple of potions down my throat.
At low level, being an effective speed bump is just good wizarding.
Oh boy, plenty of experience with that one!
My first proper Pathfinder character, a Tiefling Bard, got himself a dire bat mount. In theory, it was cool – he could fly on it and do magic and all sorts of shenanigans! In practice, it’s a hell of handle animal checks and difficult to stable.
My second mount-related example occurred with my Ratfolk Wizard, riding a custom Jerboa mount. The theory was sound – sit on mount, mount moves you whilst you focus on spells. In practice, concentration checks, and the sheer low durability of said mount made it ineffectual, and worthless once he acquired overland flight. That, and he didn’t want the mount to die. It was too adorable not to!
I feel you on the mounted combat issue. In Pathfinder 1e, it deserves to be added to this series of comics:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/grappling-with-grappling
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/pool-rules
You speak of overspecialization being rewarded, but for Pathfinder, I feel much like it is the opposite – not overspecializing is outright punished. The mere attempt of doing something cool outside of your sphere of expertise being hampered by a ton of rules or dissuaded by crippling downsides that can kill you if you’re unlucky.
Let’s take the most basic example – tripping. Simple, right? You roll CMB vs CMD, if you succeed, enemy is tripped. Hooray!
Except, what’s that, you don’t have improved trip? Enemy gets an AOO. You just took damage before you even did anything to the enemy.
But that’s alright, so long as you trip them! Unfortunately, your enemy is likely larger than you, has several legs, or is flying, or is outright immune to tripping in some other fashion. And if you didn’t go out of your way to boost your trip CMB, you’ll likely roll low enough that you get tripped instead (or drop your weapon, if you had the forethought to have a trip-quality weapon). So your attempt at a cool maneuver was punished twice now!
And in the end, if by some miracle you’ve still tripped your enemy… Well, that’s it for your turn, if you don’t have any feats that exploit it. If you’re lucky, you get an AOO when it gets up. But to get that AOO, you had to go through hoops of rules and probably do the trip instead of a regular (or full) attack. So was it worth it, mechanically?
And this repeats for a lot of other features. Every other combat maneuver, grappling, counterspelling, mounted combat, firearms, exotic weapons, even ranged combat (precise shot – which even casters need if they want to hit their ranged spell attacks. Good luck justifying two otherwise useless feats for it, though…).
And the worst part of all this? This is just for PCs. Monsters, who get to be custom-built by the DM, get to do all their cool gimmicks for free, so long as they’re withing (or even outside of) CR range. Pouncing tigers. Engulfing cubes. And so on. So if you want to have fun with such unique rules and styles of combat – be a DM, not a player.
A couple of things.
Trying to trip when you’re not specialized as a trip build is exactly what I’m talking about.
Also, tripping is one of the maneuvers that replaces an attack in your attack routine, not your full iterative.
The Combat Maneuvers thingis a very big problem, and part of why I like the Elephant in the Room Feat Tax rules. The ‘Improved X Maneuver’ feats are all bundled together into two feats (Powerful Maneuvers and Deft Maneuvers) and Combat Expertise is gone as a feat. Power Attack and Weapon Finesse are both just inherent things characters can do (though Finesse still only works with some weapons) but it lets non-fighter classes pick up the ability to do some combat maneuvers with just one feat, and it lets fighters specialize into them even more without giving up the ability to fight normally!
I had this issue with spells that do maneuvers too, literally impossible to do stuff how the heck do some of these mobs have such stupid high cmd and why is the dismissal effect base don succeeding on the knockback?!
Things are looking up for Lumberjack Explosion’s love triangle!
<_<
Interestingly enough, my first experience with trying a non-specialised manoeuvre came only recently, as opposed to when starting out D&D. When I started, I saw most things as just number; I would make my numbers big numbers and use those big numbers to hit other numbers, and if my numbers weren’t big I would avoid using them.
Now, though, I’m no longer much of a power gamer, and don’t look at the numbers so much… which I probably should, every once in a while. Case in point: my 5e cleric had been facing a lot of enemies with magic resistance, so cantrips weren’t going to cut it; fighting with weapons MUST be the better option, yes? And clerics have good armour and weapon proficiencies, yes? Well, yes… if you build a cleric that way. Which I hadn’t. I’d created a support caster, with con 14 and str 6. So my melee excursions would consist of enemies either missing me while I stab them for 5 per round, or hitting me once and forcing the barbarian to come to my rescue. Not a proud moment for my 3.5 power gamer sensibilities.
Yo… STR 6? Where’s your finesse weapon!?
But for real, I sympathize with you as a fellow recovering min-maxer. I remember watching a revised ranger plunk away for crazy damage while my multiclass paladin/rogue was putting up similar sucky numbers. Not a good feeling when you want to try a characterful build.
My weapon choices were cut out for space; I can get quite wordy. I started out with a non-magical rapier and dex 14; I was soon to discover that a large number of creatures with magic resistance also have resistance to non-magical physical damage, as well. The party eventually came into some loot and a shopping session, which lead to me grabbing up gauntlets of ogre power and a +1 mace. Alas, magic items still require the skills to back them up, so even with this gear I found myself doing 8 damage/round on a hit. I used to play a few clerics in 3.5, and it wasn’t too hard to make them better fighters than fighters, once I knew the system. It was quite a shock in 5e to find myself without righteous might and similar spells, but I think I’m starting to warm up to being a support caster.
A 3.5 story which is in many ways the reverse of respecing. Back when I started playing 3.5, I built an elf cleric who wielded a rapier in combat. He wasn’t super effective; however, clerics are still alright when it comes to melee, so he wasn’t bad, either. The only issue was levelling. As the other classes levelled up, they’d get new abilities, with the sorcerer throwing great fireballs, the range getting even more dual-wielded attacks, and so on. Things mostly stayed fine until the most recent session, when the bard managed to dole out around 45 damage via some UMD check, while it hit with my rapier for 1d6+3, same as I had during level one.
That is indeed relevant to the discussion. When you look at your class and go, “Hey, I’m supposed to be good at the thing,” only to find out that you are woefully under-invested in actually doing the thing well, you are in Paladin’s shiny golden shoes.
During the same 5e game described above, we found an NPC rogue, who had been captured by the evil forces of evilness ™. His stat block had him fight with shortswords, though obviously they had been confiscated. The DM decidedthat like any good rogue he had a number of daggers hidden throughout his person; so the moment we got into combat, he saw his chance for a sneak attack, pulled out a dagger, and rolled a one. Fortunately, he had two attacks, so he pulled out a second dagger, and rolled a three. For round after round, combat after combat he kept missing. Even once he got his shortswords back, chokeholds in the dungeon meant that only the fighter and barbarian were allowed to be in the melee, once again forcing the NPC to hurl daggers into the walls. Us PCs all had a good laugh at the NPC’s fate, and carried on our way. Until we had a battle outside of chokeholds, in which the rogue was finally able to close to melee. At which point he suddenly became capable to rolling higher than an 8. A lot higher. Rolling 19’s and 20’s left and right, with sneak attack on top of that, he became a blender of death. He murdered everything in his path until he encountered a flying enemy, at which point he returned to daggering with predictable results. I swear, he must have been taught sword fighting by Inigo Montoya, and knife throwing by stormtroopers.
I am jealous of that last line and wish I had written it.
I guess it’s a good thing that some characters shine in situations more than others. But by the same token, it sucks out loud when the dungeon prevents you from doing your thing. Trying to be a back-rank ranged character when you’re designed too mix it up in melee is exactly one of those times.
Lets talk about games, in many of them you have an account bonded to different characters with different classes. You have your Warlock, your Wizard and your Rogue on one game, your Sith Inquisitor, your Sith Warrior and your Imperial Spy on other and your Sram, your Xelor, your eliotrope and your Huppermage on another one. And then in Warframe you have warframes. In that game you change class, individual WF, as easily as you change equipment, in fact that much easy because you change WF the same way you change equipment. Need to do a defense, go Limbo or Vauban. Spy? Ash or Loki. Mobile defense, Nidus and Chroma at your orders. In Warframe you have only one account and can change between WF without problems, this is great for me since i am that kind of player that like to play a little everything. I can play Nekros and rise the dead or change to Ash and be a ninja or go for Equinox and maim my enemies during the day or mend the team at night. Unless you go wrong with the formas there is build you can’t change. Unlike other games warframe too allows you to customize your WF to great extent. Each WF has 4 abilities, they are unlocked as the WF levels up and improve three times, then you have statistics like ability strength, range, duration and efficiency that you can mod and the two arcanes slots. Warframe is forgiving you don’t need to respect your character, unless you want to change your [SPOILER] affinities tree that is. Still you can screw things. In excavations people can insist in giving the excavators energy instead of waiting to have enough reactants to open the relics. Oh, and lest not forget about people activating the life support capsules when the LS is still at 95% or activating each and every capsule like they give you Orokin cells. But Warframe is a game with a lot of firepower. It’s not like in other games in which you need to chain your abilities to defeat a single enemy by shredding his life bar. In Warframe you can kill hordes just with a initial ability before modding it. The game as a whole is more forgiving, not easy, or at least at high levels, but you will not die and loose your equipment for a simple mistake 🙂
That sounds more like switching between characters to me. Sort of like playing League of Legends.
Are you the same character throughout?
Yeah, you can see it like changing champions on League of Legends. You choose what you will play and can’t change that for the current game/mission. In Warframe you go to the armory and change WF as you can change your weapons, using it aboard the orbiter and in missions.
As for using the same character throughout, well, when you use your WF you are really using your [SPOILER] to [SPOILER] the [SPOILER] [SPOILER] the WF, they are not mere robotic things, because for real the WF has a [SPOILER] inside which is what you [SPOILER] with your [SPOILER] as the [SPOILER] mission reveals. And lets not forget the fact that your [SPOILER] can [SPOILER] other things like the [SPOILER] in the [SPOILER] [SPOILER] mission. When you finally achieve the [SPOILER] [SPOILER] with Excalibur Umbra in the [SPOILER] is really incredible and emotive event. Even when you have been doing it all the time without knowing 😀
Mechanically, yes, you’re swapping out characters who all level extremely quickly, with long-term progression consisting of leveling as wide a variety of frames, weapons, et cetera as possible but with the capacity to commit to a new frame or weapon you like without needing to poopsock.
In the narrative, [spoiilers]. They do justify this all within the context of the game’s storytelling.
Well then. I’ve learned my new word for the day.
Or Monster Hunter, where you can change your build just by swapping out your gear and go from a hard-hitting Greatsword build that’s constantly dipping in and out lloking for an opening to deal massive damage in a single strike to a fast-hitting, ironically in your face Bow build that plays like a completely different genre. I love games that let you do that instead of locking you into a particular specialization, it lets you enjoy much more of the game and makes it much easier to play with friends without needing to worry about the viability of having four DPS characters queuing together.
I missed the previous page due to being out of minutes on my phone, but horse Druid continues to be cute.
Regarding doing things your character isn’t particularly good at: I think I’ve already told this story, possibly a year or two ago in response to a different question, but here it comes again…
The party had to help a ghostly paladin pass on by convincing him that his lost love was forgiving him for failing to protect her, or something like that. They decided to put on a play, of sorts. The emotionally-challenged android witch had to play the ghost’s love, since she had shape-changing magic. Costumes were crafted by the orc barbarian who definitely did NOT have any unexpected skill at tailoring, and the script was written by the lizardfolk ranger who got distracted while writing it, causing the heartfelt speech to quickly go off on a tangent about the practicality of eating one’s fallen allies. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, we quickly went off-script due to the ghost not reacting as expected and saying things that weren’t planned for, and our Android was soon improvising while an orc and a lizard man stage-whispered advice at her through a crack in the door.
SOMEHOW the ghost failed to notice everything that was off about the whole situation. He wanted his lost love to forgive him so badly that his heart was ignoring everything his brain might have been trying to tell him.
He passed on peacefully.
…In other news, I’ve been running 5e recently, and it’s nice to see how pretty much anyone can just ride a horse if they want to. No plethora of feats necessary to be okay at mounted combat. A lot of things are like that in 5e, and that’s a good thing, I think.
Love the tangent about eating your allies. Very on-brand for a lizardfolk.
And yeah, I’ll take nearly any Ride system that doesn’t make me bang my head against the keyboard after trying to make consistent rulings for a wall-crawling riding gecko cavalier in Pathfinder.
I kinda hope Snowflake gets that date with Lumberjack Explosion. And that said date doesn’t get ruined by a nearby catastrophe needing the sudden appearance of completely-different-equine Horsepower.
I mean, what are the chances of that? <_<
The chances are generally inversely proportional to how well the date is going so far.
Firstly… no one starts with tank gear. And the only realistic way to get it is to go in there and get it. People need to relax. That said? Pour one out for the tanks.
Secondly… I frequently see Pathfinder’s brand of specialization to be a trap. Grapple guy is great at grappling, but is a second rate fighter. In a situation where there are several mid level threats, Grapple guy is borderline useless.
But some specialization is rewarded-like specializing into a top tier tank. You might argue that ‘tanks’ can’t really exist in Pathfinder, but being big, tough, and difficult to move around is usually sufficient. Similarly, although we rag the DPS guy all the time, being an absolute top flight damage dealer is great too.
Specializing can be strong… but it can backfire horrendously. Also? We’ve talked a bit how maybe it can be important for the health of the game/your table to NOT min max everything? Some specializations can become one man party’s. Let’s not go there either.
What? Who would argue that ‘tanks’ can’t really exist in Pathfinder?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/tanking
…Oh.
That’s one of the things I like about Pathfinder 2e, you’re overall much more capable of doing things serviceably without specializing in it, and if you do want to specialize in something, it isn’t likely to take up your entire build.
In particular, combat maneuvers like Tripping or Grappling can be accomplished by anyone that’s got a decent Athletics modifier, which gives meaningful options for players to do things other than just the one thing they specialized in over and over. Even casters can actually hit with weapons without investment, and while it takes a lot more investment for them to be decent in the front line due to all the other things you need (HP, AC, combat options other than just a basic Strike, ideally a reaction of some sort in the vein of AoO), it’s not a complete waste to think outside the confines of what your class usually does.
Now that my megadungeon is finally drawing to a close (read: should be over in another two years) my group has begun talking about the next thing. The elephant in the room house rules are in the mix, and combat maneuvers are a big part of that:
https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/
No, you did not ‘absolutely deserve the abuse.’
The sort of person that calls other people cancer because video games is the sort of person I dislike most in the world.
Internal thoughts like that have a bad habit of sticking around, and leading to others. Nuke’em. The memory of messing up, even if it might not be a glorious moment – should be something kinda silly, kinda fun. If your peers couldn’t handle one instance that wasn’t hyper-perfect competitive raid –
Well, I’ll shut my mouth. Just re-read the first line again.
Fair. I think they were right to be annoyed (I was wasting other people’s time), but there’s no call for that kind of talk in any forum.