Geckilian
Leadership Council
Empires Mierely require time.
Posts: 1,026 
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Post by Geckilian on Aug 22, 2016 2:16:41 GMT -7
Hello everyone,
As you may have heard in the Discord (which is being used more than IRC these days for those wondering) we will be going through some rebalancing next month around the 18th as we'll have been around for two years, and it will mark the start of 'Season 2'.
The main changes will involve narrative, rather than mechanical, downtime as well as the removal of player crafting and in general toning down power levels. We've received a lot of feedback concerning character power levels and how min maxing and the abundance of wealth (for some) has caused sessions to scale wildly, often resulting in some members of a party barely being able to keep up or contribute. As such the balance changes are designed to help people make characters that could be seen as sub-optimal but fun and be able to play in sessions without frankly being utterly hosed.
One change that has been suggested is to remove Path of War material from DragonsGate. PoW was introduced to help combat the disparity between martial characters and casters, to bring martials up to if not the same power level, then to at least close the gap. However as with all powerful toys, casters just took them too. What this has resulted in is even more optimal builds for characters and less 'correct' choices for making a character if the player wanted to keep up with the average party strength and contribute in sessions.
A lot of GM feedback has concerned PoW as not necessarily contributing much to a session aside from the need to ramp up challenge, which leaves a lot of players unable to survive or take part with any real degree of success. There has also been player feedback that the levels of challenge needed for some characters has directly resulted in them being far more cautious about joining games in general, and that's not something we want to be an issue.
As such this is a poll about whether we should keep or remove Path of War from DragonsGate. If we remove PoW then anyone with PoW material in their builds would of course be receiving a free rebuild. For those concerned that casters would once again steamroll ahead in terms of power compared to normal martials, a mitigating response would be that most GMs haven't had issues with casters in sessions, but rather PoW characters. Furthermore, with the changes for Season 2 removing age categories and several miscellaneous stat increases such as the Succubus' Profane Gift, caster will generally have lower stats and thus lower spell DCs compared to before, again closing the gap in terms of power.
The poll will close on the 31st of August, at which point the result will be confirmed in this thread and actioned.
Gamingly,
The Leadership Council
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xemadus
Leadership Council
Sure
5000
Posts: 798
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Post by xemadus on Aug 22, 2016 8:41:40 GMT -7
Copied from Discord to encourage discussion here:
My biggest reason to support PoW is that Paizo martials barely even validate their own existence. They're not even the best at being martials. A fighter with an extra feat every other level is just about matched by the exploiter wizard's ability to get extra feats. The fighter gets 1 extra feat over what an exploiter wizard can work out, a barbarian gets out damaged by a magus any day of the week, and rogues may as well not even exist thanks to the vivisectionist.
The question of whether or not PoW is healthy for paizo martials is irrelevant, nothing else existing is healthy for paizo martials. The question that needs to be asked is what makes PoW unhealthy, and the answer to that is simple; Pow is powerful, casting is powerful, both of them together are stupidly powerful. The fix to this is simple, ban the co-existence of initiator levels and caster levels. If a character has one, they do not have access to the other. Naturally, alchemists and similar not-quite-caster classes should be included in this ban, since alchemy based classes have already proven to be top of the food chain for "non-caster" martials.
The only exception I can think of off hand is the kineticist, since, quite frankly, it takes some serious cheese to even make kineticist viable.
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CRC
GM
Posts: 150
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Post by CRC on Aug 22, 2016 9:39:17 GMT -7
We could also limit the multi classes that would also settle some of the min-maxing that's happen
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Post by lakeel on Aug 22, 2016 11:06:26 GMT -7
Overpowered my A**! even with warlord being paired with oracle which is basically a charisma fighter mixed with a charisma cleric Im still fairly underpowered. and even if I hadn't died 25 times the sheer ammount of money I would be able to spend towards magic items would'nt really improve my character all that much. my saves would cap out at around +20 and my AC would stop at 41. The Counters I get From warlord are the only things I have that stop me from being 1-shotted by any random caster that walks by.
The issues I see here are:
A. Melee combat is a joke: Unless your able to instantly teleport in and stab one or more enemies to death in the round you might as well not even bother carrying a weapon around because a caster 'any offensive caster for that matter' is simply going to nuke and desintigrate every living thing on the bettlefield in less that 3 rounds.
B. Classes gone wild: one incredibly commonplace Min-maxy thing I've noticed is that once someone has their Caster all planned out they'll start sprinkling in random path of war classes into their build incorperationg 1-2 levels from several classes (usually stalker) or even core classes just to obtain certain types of bonuses those classes give in the first 2 levels.
C. Would melee classes even serve a purpose in combat when casters are around? by the time the enemy is within range the casters have already melted them. at that point the only roll melee serves is to keep the casters safe from being over run by hordes of weak enemies they cant pick off at a distance with their spells....Even then that's what Time Stop + Delayed Fireball is for.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
how did i get here i am not good with computer
Posts: 684
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Post by Zanos on Aug 22, 2016 12:47:27 GMT -7
I think your experiences have been derived from your rather unique style of play.
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Post by sythus on Aug 22, 2016 13:18:04 GMT -7
Zanos, king of the diplomats! Any how, -if- for some wretched reason P.O.W. is allowed to stay, I would definitely agree with not allowing initiator & caster levels on the same character. As for martials not being valid, that's because most people don't build them right. A non-pow martial can handle a lot more than most pfs minded people give them credit for. That being said, are casters more powerful? Yes. P.O.W. is just unbalanced garbage imo.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
how did i get here i am not good with computer
Posts: 684
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Post by Zanos on Aug 22, 2016 13:40:52 GMT -7
It seems like Path of War solved the problem of Paizo martials not being good at things outside of combat by making them a lot better at combat.
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xemadus
Leadership Council
Sure
5000
Posts: 798
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Post by xemadus on Aug 22, 2016 17:10:07 GMT -7
PoW allows martials to exist without being optimized to an extreme degree. Yes, it raises the ceiling for what you can do with a martial, but from what I've seen and done PoW does nothing that a caster can't already do. The main reason I figure people complain about PoW is because you expect the wizard to break the encounter with a single action, not the normal looking guy holding a sword.
I've already cracked PoW. You can do so much more with it than you can with a paizo martial, but it still doesn't keep pace with full casters. Remove caster classes from the equation for PoW, and it'll be perfectly fine.
To clarify, the absolute strongest PoW build I can think of that uses 20 levels is stalker 14/dragon fury 6. This allows for two maneuvers to be used in the same turn, which allows for either two full attacks, one full attack and 6 attacks to all surrounding creatures, or 9 attacks to all surrounding creatures. Taking two full attacks leaves you with 16 attacks, with each of them being able to do about 58 damage at the high end. If all of these attacks hit, it'll be 888 damage. The much more reasonable scenario is that you'll be doing in the 400-500 range with a single full attack and your choice of a boost. I'm not sure how to math crits into the equation, but I'd imagine roughly a 30% damage boost because of crits and 1s, assuming you hit on a 2.
With an optimized Sorcerer, you're looking at 733 damage in a single round, against up to 30 enemy targets in a 60' radius. Again, this level of damage can only be done twice a day, but it only goes down by about 16.6%, rather than by about half when you run out of super empowers. For single target, you're looking at well over 1k damage with disintegrate, repeatable pretty much as often as necessary. SR can be pretty much ignored 5 times per day, and the DC on these can get up to 40+ without too much of an issue. Of course, dropping enemy saves is rather trivial
The single target numbers go up even more when you throw magus into the equation with it's crazy crit multiplier options, but I don't have exact numbers for it's ceiling. I do know that you're looking at a full attack and 2 spells per turn with the magus option.
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Post by Michael T on Aug 22, 2016 19:11:18 GMT -7
Which Maneuvers are you talking about Xem?
I get Dual strike allows 2 Martial Maneuvers that are standard actions, as a full round action.
At 14th level it is twice per day btw.
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xemadus
Leadership Council
Sure
5000
Posts: 798
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Post by xemadus on Aug 22, 2016 19:17:17 GMT -7
Thrashing dragon mostly. Little bit of scarlet throne.
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Post by curse on Aug 23, 2016 16:46:43 GMT -7
I've been working on a character concept, but with the prospect of PoW being removed I feel I need to wait to see how this plays out.
My personal feelings is that PoW gives martials some neat things that are less mundane than just swinging a weapon or charging or maybe a bullrush or trip here and there.
I get that combining PoW maneuvers with spellcasting leads to even more powerful casters, but I feel that separating casting and maneuvers is the right way to go rather than removing PoW materials.
From a roleplaying standpoint I'd think that spellcasting requires far to much devotion to develop martial skills to the level of PoW maneuvers and vice versa.
I remember hearing that the majority of characters are already heavily favoring casters and there's likely a glaringly obvious reason for this.
Either way, I've always appreciated having more options rather than less.
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Post by gaston on Aug 23, 2016 17:19:35 GMT -7
It's a significant problem when every martial character i've seen so far in a game is SOME form of PoW class. The reason for this? PoW is just better than core martial classes. There's a whole lot of cherry-picking and it always involves dipping into PoW for any character. We're going to get similar builds, similar fighting styles and one or two uniformed and streamlined ways to go through an encounter. It's not fun, it's not cool, it's a giant big d*** contest and I would rather let the PoW character fight encounters on his own, than be belittled just by being in their presence.
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Post by curse on Aug 23, 2016 18:06:30 GMT -7
It's a significant problem when every martial character i've seen so far in a game is SOME form of PoW class. The reason for this? PoW is just better than core martial classes. There's a whole lot of cherry-picking and it always involves dipping into PoW for any character. We're going to get similar builds, similar fighting styles and one or two uniformed and streamlined ways to go through an encounter. It's not fun, it's not cool, it's a giant big d*** contest and I would rather let the PoW character fight encounters on his own, than be belittled just by being in their presence. I think you indirectly summarized how most martial characters feel in the presence of spellcasters. |
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Post by Haskalah on Aug 24, 2016 9:00:53 GMT -7
PoW is better than -most- core martial classes, but from what I've seen/heard, Rangers/Paladins are still decent comparatively speaking, and then there are things like Slayer that are also close or on-par. The whole reason we chose to allow PoW to begin with was to give Martials a boost so that they weren't so far behind casters. Some contend that Min/Maxed PoW characters are even more unbalanced than casters, but as far as I know there hasn't been any study of how the new Season Two rules would affect them.
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CRC
GM
Posts: 150
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Post by CRC on Aug 24, 2016 10:01:16 GMT -7
i can contest the only thing broken about kage is his stealth im luck if i hit with my attacks since i dont really put my feats into them i put my feats in to stealth or intimidate and other things like that that i think would fit kage.
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Post by Michael T on Aug 24, 2016 15:46:02 GMT -7
Just remembered Deadly Agility is PoW. Which will kill most of the Dex based Martial builds if PoW is banned.
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Zanos
Leadership Council
No
how did i get here i am not good with computer
Posts: 684
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Post by Zanos on Aug 24, 2016 17:33:03 GMT -7
There's still Fencing Grace, Slashing Grace, Dervish Dance, Starry Grace, and Agile weapons.
I kinda think getting your AC, Reflex, and big skill stat to attack and damage is a bit busted, but whatever.
If it were an option, I'm pretty sure every strength character would take two feats to apply their strength to their armor class reflex saves, and many of the best skills in the game.
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Post by curse on Aug 24, 2016 18:26:30 GMT -7
I guess the safest bet is to just make a spellcaster.
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Post by Michael T on Aug 24, 2016 19:48:13 GMT -7
No doubt that Deadly Agility is better than all of those from a mechanical point.
I was thinking of 2 dual wielding characters that do not have PoW classes but will be greatly effected by not having the Deadly Agility feat.
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Post by Michael T on Aug 24, 2016 19:49:07 GMT -7
I guess the safest bet is to just make a spellcaster. Yep. |
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CRC
GM
Posts: 150
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Post by CRC on Aug 24, 2016 22:54:03 GMT -7
Kage dual weapons if path of war gone I can go put the weapon enchantment on to dual weapons the only real change would be lose of hp from umbral blade and the maneuvers. I already have idea for a monk build or just refunding kage in to valkyrie to make her stronger
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Post by gaston on Aug 24, 2016 23:23:44 GMT -7
CRC, Curse, this isn't contributing to the discussion of PoW and why it should stay/be removed.
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haksanlulz
Approvals
Filthy deviant plagiarist
Posts: 191
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Post by haksanlulz on Aug 24, 2016 23:41:20 GMT -7
PoW allows martials to exist without being optimized to an extreme degree. Yes, it raises the ceiling for what you can do with a martial, but from what I've seen and done PoW does nothing that a caster can't already do. The main reason I figure people complain about PoW is because you expect the wizard to break the encounter with a single action, not the normal looking guy holding a sword. I've already cracked PoW. You can do so much more with it than you can with a paizo martial, but it still doesn't keep pace with full casters. Remove caster classes from the equation for PoW, and it'll be perfectly fine. To clarify, the absolute strongest PoW build I can think of that uses 20 levels is stalker 14/dragon fury 6. This allows for two maneuvers to be used in the same turn, which allows for either two full attacks, one full attack and 6 attacks to all surrounding creatures, or 9 attacks to all surrounding creatures. Taking two full attacks leaves you with 16 attacks, with each of them being able to do about 58 damage at the high end. If all of these attacks hit, it'll be 888 damage. The much more reasonable scenario is that you'll be doing in the 400-500 range with a single full attack and your choice of a boost. I'm not sure how to math crits into the equation, but I'd imagine roughly a 30% damage boost because of crits and 1s, assuming you hit on a 2. With an optimized Sorcerer, you're looking at 733 damage in a single round, against up to 30 enemy targets in a 60' radius. Again, this level of damage can only be done twice a day, but it only goes down by about 16.6%, rather than by about half when you run out of super empowers. For single target, you're looking at well over 1k damage with disintegrate, repeatable pretty much as often as necessary. SR can be pretty much ignored 5 times per day, and the DC on these can get up to 40+ without too much of an issue. Of course, dropping enemy saves is rather trivial The single target numbers go up even more when you throw magus into the equation with it's crazy crit multiplier options, but I don't have exact numbers for it's ceiling. I do know that you're looking at a full attack and 2 spells per turn with the magus option. i agree with xem, i think the while pow being op thing is a joke that got out of hand. the most op stuff related to pow has to do with mutilclassing it with casters. if its straight progression any caster will still kick the ass of any pow, cause magic. if were being objective theres no reason for pow to be nerfed anymore than it already is, worst case dont allow it to be multiclassed with caster stuff i guess. but even that seems very unnecessary to me. edit: talked to invincabal and i said something out loud to him that i thought was as well spoken i'm gonna get on my opinion. the only people are really gonna get hurt by this are actual martials, the multiclassing casters couldn't really care less about losing the +12 or whatever they're getting to the fort saves of 90 (exaggeration) (another) edit: also its come to my attention that the pfsrd is finally adding expanded and i wanna make char into a cage breaker to make him even more WACKY!!! so lets not get rid of it k |
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CRC
GM
Posts: 150
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Post by CRC on Aug 25, 2016 0:02:43 GMT -7
I do agree in a straight up fight kage who is straight pow would lose the only advantage kage has is that she has a stealth check through the roof. Now I think some of these new pow classes and maneuvers need to be reviewed to see if they get accepted in to dg or night or if we sticking with what we currently have and use.
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Post by sythus on Aug 26, 2016 8:35:47 GMT -7
Not to troll, but also to troll mercilessly, but maybe if you guys knew how to build martials, you wouldn't need PoW?
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