You know the best way to best a Knight in full plate? A blunt object that dents armor and knocks them down. A shield is perfect for that.A two-handed pollaxe with a lancepoint, hammer/axehead and spike/hook is perfect for that. A shield is a clumsy and inefficient weapon compared to anything that has proper weight and leverage. Getting butted by a Greek hoplite's shield may be nasty, but it's not nearly as lethal or efficient as a thrust from a leaf-headed spear.
Or even this.
Hell, you can use Shield of Swings, and get a shield bonus to AC.
Yeah but dropping half your damage for a +4 bonus to AC hurts. Of course all the feats spent on shields hurts too so at that point its a pick your poison situation, I would rather find some way to grab the shield spell.
Honestly a ring of spell storing and a couple of pearls of power for the wizard would run.. eck 20k... I guess it depends on how badly you want and how you want to get that shield bonus.
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Also, actually, yeah +50% defense isn't really an unfair thing to claim for shields at high level. A shield will contribute far more to your defense than a 2 hander will to your offense in the long run, and since you can put things like energy resistances, fortification, and it accounts for 7 points worth of AC.
To put it into perspective, a top-tier martial will be pushing +50s with their primary attack routines against major foes (20 BAB, 10+ Str, 5 enhancement, 6+ class features, 6 morale, 1 ioun stone, etc). You need some serious AC to not get wrekked by major foes, and fortification gear is a good idea since most will auto-confirm crits. Shields go a long way towards warding off those attacks, especially iterative attacks.
Base = 10
Armor = +14
Natural = +5
Deflection = +5
Dexterity = +7-9
Insight = +1
Total = 42-44
A shield brings you to 49-51, which is enough to not get insta-gibbed from your opponent's iterative attacks (and also makes Power Attack less attractive). Against enemies who don't auto-confirm, it reduces your chance to be critically hit. It also means that if you fight defensively (+3 AC w/ranks in acrobatics) that you can severely punish someone not using a shield (their full-attacks are getting tanked, power attack is a bad idea, and their AC is 7 points lower than yours already so even with the -4 to hit you're at an advantage, or you'll just hit with all your iterative attacks as well, which can handily land you an extra 75 points of damage on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th iteratives).
Hell, you can use Shield of Swings, and get a shield bonus to AC.
Yeah but shield of swings is horrible. It halves your damage in exchange for a +4 shield bonus. In essence, you spend a feat to deal less damage than you would using a 1 hander for less AC than a sword & board with a +2 heavy shield and no feats invested.
Honestly a ring of spell storing and a couple of pearls of power for the wizard would run.. eck 20k... I guess it depends on how badly you want and how you want to get that shield bonus.
Why would you do that?
The wizard would still need to spend actions to cast shield so that's not good. Just pack some Potions of Shield instead. Plus, that makes you dependent on the wizard.
Or have UMD and use scrolls.
Having Accelerated Drinker would mean you could chug it as a move action in case that's important to anyone.
This jacket is also really nice and costs only 5,000 gold; the downside is you need to spend a swift action each time you want to use a round of the potion. It works if your build doesn't really use Swift Actions that much, but I probably wouldn't take it.
The spell lasts 1/min a level, so you can use the potion just before a fight starts just fine, especially if the potion is CL 3 or more. This, of course, means you need to be able to anticipate battles - but don't you want to be doing that anyway?
Basically, just drinking a potion of shield is the most cheap and effective solution.
As an aside, I really enjoy making and playing shield characters. I have to agree with what a previous poster said though: the most effective way to do it is to two-hand your shield and wield that bad boy offensively.
Can one combine combat expertise and fighting defensively? If so this gives Me a great idea to aggravate my PCs to no end..
Also, isn't their an enhancment that let's you add touch ac from shields?
Spell Dodging gives +4 touch AC versus spells/SLAs.
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Can one combine combat expertise and fighting defensively? If so this gives Me a great idea to aggravate my PCs to no end..
Also, isn't their an enhancment that let's you add touch ac from shields?
Yes. Humorously for all its hatred, combat expertise is just strait up the way to ruin 2-handed martial characters with a sword & board guy. Remember how their AC is about 7 points lower than yours and yours is 7 points higher? Well combat expertise gives you a -6 to hit but a +6 to AC. Since their AC is already bad by comparison, you can still hit them more reliably than they would have hit you previously, except now you're pushing a 95% evasion rate even once they've popped all their cooldowns like smite evil, instant enemy, quarry, divine power, etc.
Damage mitigation is very important at high levels where enemies can be swinging at +25-50 damage per hit and your base HP is only 114.
A two-handed pollaxe with a lancepoint, hammer/axehead and spike/hook is perfect for that. A shield is a clumsy and inefficient weapon compared to anything that has proper weight and leverage. Getting butted by a Greek hoplite's shield may be nasty, but it's not nearly as lethal or efficient as a thrust from a leaf-headed spear.
Or even this.
Yeah, the Germans didn't call that the 'murder-stroke' for nothing. Crunch.
Also, actually, yeah +50% defense isn't really an unfair thing to claim for shields at high level. A shield will contribute far more to your defense than a 2 hander will to your offense in the long run, and since you can put things like energy resistances, fortification, and it accounts for 7 points worth of AC.
To put it into perspective, a top-tier martial will be pushing +50s with their primary attack routines against major foes (20 BAB, 10+ Str, 5 enhancement, 6+ class features, 6 morale, 1 ioun stone, etc). You need some serious AC to not get wrekked by major foes, and fortification gear is a good idea since most will auto-confirm crits. Shields go a long way towards warding off those attacks, especially iterative attacks.
Base = 10
Armor = +14
Natural = +5
Deflection = +5
Dexterity = +7-9
Insight = +1
Total = 42-44A shield brings you to 49-51, which is enough to not get insta-gibbed from your opponent's iterative attacks (and also makes Power Attack less attractive). Against enemies who don't auto-confirm, it reduces your chance to be critically hit. It also means that if you fight defensively (+3 AC w/ranks in acrobatics) that you can severely punish someone not using a shield (their full-attacks are getting tanked, power attack is a bad idea, and their AC is 7 points lower than yours already so even with the -4 to hit you're at an advantage, or you'll just hit with all your iterative attacks as well, which can handily land you an extra 75 points of damage on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th iteratives).
Just a simple question, but how do you get a +7-9 Dex Bonus while wearing a full plate? Armor Training would give you +5 tops, where are the other 2-4 coming from? What are you using to circumvent the maximum Dex to Armor limit of the full plate?
Can one combine combat expertise and fighting defensively? If so this gives Me a great idea to aggravate my PCs to no end..
Yes.
This was how my Aid Another halflings (I actually made two - one male and one female) made himself/herself annoying to the world, in fact. I would bunker up with Combat Expertise, Fight Defensively, use Crane Style... I had 3 ranks in Acrobatics for another +1, and then I'd use Cautious Fighter and Blundering Defense...
...which meant giving myself a LOT of AC and giving my allies something like 3-4 AC as well. All of this was done while I was making combat maneuvers to hinder the enemy or tossing out Aid Another as a standard action.*
Then I'd just use Bodyguard and Swift Aid and so forth to provide more bonuses to my team, laughing at the enemy the whole time.
Also, isn't their an enhancment that let's you add touch ac from shields?
I think so... but I can't remember off the top of my head and I'm heading off to bed.
*Using Aid Another with Fighting Defensively has been a source of debate only on the forums and only one time when I explicitly asked if it was legal (with answers landing on both favorable and unfavorable grounds); elsewise everyone I've ever played with hasn't even considered it a possibility that you can't do that.
You can combine shield of swings with combat maneuvers. You get the full benefit but no drawback (except making combat maneuvers instead of doing damage)
Can one combine combat expertise and fighting defensively? If so this gives Me a great idea to aggravate my PCs to no end..
Also, isn't their an enhancment that let's you add touch ac from shields?
If you want to combine combat expertise and fighting defensively you should give the (n)pc in question the threatening defender trait and the madu shield.
Edit: And always remember that having 3 ranks in acrobatics increases the AC bonus gained from fighting defensively.
If using mithril you get +3 max dex mod.
Still one short ;) Any other sources?
Now if only shields could do something to offset the greater number of at will SLAs outsiders will target you with over the course of the longer combat permitted by an emphasis on a single aspect of defense. If you only had to ever worry about mundane threats they'd be a better deal, but that's not Pathfinder.
Remember when I said it's like an extra item slot? You can drop things like energy resistances, defiant (weapon property), etc. Defiant is really good for your shield because you won't drop it because of a condition which keeps you strong to last long.
Chip damage with SLAs and the like is a major problem PCs must contend with at high levels. Some are completely unavoidable, but your primary defenses against them will be good resistances, save bonuses, and items that immunize you or help you resist/shake bad effects (things that grant multiple saves vs mind affecting, immunity to poison/disease, etc).
Your shield doesn't actively hurt any of those things and can serve as an extra receptacle for defensive enhancements that you wouldn't have otherwise. Likewise the offense lost wasn't going to be enough to reliably end chippers anyway (more likely your casters are going to need to sweep them rather than make the martial chase around groups of teleporting demons like a fat kid chasing the icecream truck).
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Hell, nab a Quickdraw shield, and you need one feat, to get the boons of both.
Quick Draw.
Attack with two-hands, then Quick Draw the Quickdraw Shield as a free action, and when your turn comes up, then you put it away as a free action, and proceed to attack with two hands.
Repeat as described.
Just a simple question, but how do you get a +7-9 Dex Bonus while wearing a full plate? Armor Training would give you +5 tops, where are the other 2-4 coming from? What are you using to circumvent the maximum Dex to Armor limit of the full plate?Also, actually, yeah +50% defense isn't really an unfair thing to claim for shields at high level. A shield will contribute far more to your defense than a 2 hander will to your offense in the long run, and since you can put things like energy resistances, fortification, and it accounts for 7 points worth of AC.
To put it into perspective, a top-tier martial will be pushing +50s with their primary attack routines against major foes (20 BAB, 10+ Str, 5 enhancement, 6+ class features, 6 morale, 1 ioun stone, etc). You need some serious AC to not get wrekked by major foes, and fortification gear is a good idea since most will auto-confirm crits. Shields go a long way towards warding off those attacks, especially iterative attacks.
Base = 10
Armor = +14
Natural = +5
Deflection = +5
Dexterity = +7-9
Insight = +1
Total = 42-44A shield brings you to 49-51, which is enough to not get insta-gibbed from your opponent's iterative attacks (and also makes Power Attack less attractive). Against enemies who don't auto-confirm, it reduces your chance to be critically hit. It also means that if you fight defensively (+3 AC w/ranks in acrobatics) that you can severely punish someone not using a shield (their full-attacks are getting tanked, power attack is a bad idea, and their AC is 7 points lower than yours already so even with the -4 to hit you're at an advantage, or you'll just hit with all your iterative attacks as well, which can handily land you an extra 75 points of damage on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th iteratives).
Mithral Celestial plate found on the SRD. If you're using core-only options, then replace it with mithral celestial armor (which is by default chainmail), though it's understood in PF that you can change the base armors of specific magical items (celestial plate is just a full-plate version of celestial armor).
Celestial armor has a higher Max-Dex making it perhaps more attractive to serious Dex-users (those who are going to have Dex-prime or Str/Dex hybrid instead of secondary), but the plate version is +7 Max Dex which is what you'll have if you started with a 14 Dex and never raised it except through inherents and enhancements), though a Fighter's armor training can allow you to go higher in plate while speccing Dex-prime.
Druids have the most impressive AC of all (exceedingly so if they dipped a level of monk) thanks to wild armor. A +5 wild tower shield and +5 wild dragonhide full plate) puts the druid at 33 AC naked, then you add deflection, natural, natural enhancement, then Dex. It's trivial for druids to hit AC in the low 60s, but they act more as tanks in the traditional sense at this level (their bite isn't really that bad, it's just peeling them open while dealing with their DoTs).
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Hell, nab a Quickdraw shield, and you need one feat, to get the boons of both.
Quick Draw.
Attack with two-hands, then Quick Draw the Quickdraw Shield as a free action, and when your turn comes up, then you put it away as a free action, and proceed to attack with two hands.
Repeat as described.
Something worth mentioning that you've reminded me of is, there's no reason to lock yourself into one combat style. If your opponent's to-hit / AC is garbage, you can always 2-hand your 1-hander and rip their heads off, while having your shield for when you're fighting a competent opponent. In the same vein, always keep a good ranged weapon or two because you don't actually need to be super invested into it to make use of it when needed (this is especially true in battles involving highly mobile enemies).
Honestly a ring of spell storing and a couple of pearls of power for the wizard would run.. eck 20k... I guess it depends on how badly you want and how you want to get that shield bonus.Why would you do that?
The wizard would still need to spend actions to cast shield so that's not good. Just pack some Potions of Shield instead. Plus, that makes you dependent on the wizard.
You can't make potions of shield. The wizard would cast the spells in the morning *not in combat* and then you could access them when you needed. Ideally you won't actually need all three spells in any given day so you typically will not be a drain on the wizard.
Or have UMD and use scrolls.
Quite possible but going to be awkward and cost action economy.
Having Accelerated Drinker would mean you could chug it as a move action in case that's important to anyone.This jacket is also really nice and costs only 5,000 gold; the downside is you need to spend a swift action each time you want to use a round of the potion. It works if your build doesn't really use Swift Actions that much, but I probably wouldn't take it.
The spell lasts 1/min a level, so you can use the potion just before a fight starts just fine, especially if the potion is CL 3 or more. This, of course, means you need to be able to anticipate battles - but don't you want to be doing that anyway?
Basically, just drinking a potion of shield is the most cheap and effective solution.
And again you can't make potions of personal spells.
Something worth mentioning that you've reminded me of is, there's no reason to lock yourself into one combat style. If your opponent's to-hit / AC is garbage, you can always 2-hand your 1-hander and rip their heads off, while having your shield for when you're fighting a competent opponent. In the same vein, always keep a good ranged weapon or two because you don't actually need to be super invested into it to make use of it when needed (this is especially true in battles involving highly mobile enemies).Hell, nab a Quickdraw shield, and you need one feat, to get the boons of both.
Quick Draw.
Attack with two-hands, then Quick Draw the Quickdraw Shield as a free action, and when your turn comes up, then you put it away as a free action, and proceed to attack with two hands.
Repeat as described.
So much this. It's not like in 3.5 where the assumed wealth meant you had no means of having extra for choosing other styles too.
With pathfinder wealth you can have a spare shield +2~3 sitting around for when you *need* it.
While quickdraw light shields exist, quickdraw heavy shields don't. Just 1 AC point less but the feat has an opportunity cost worth at least 1 AC, and so a marginal style becomes more marginal.
And again you can't make potions of personal spells.
But infusions. All hail to the alchemist and investigator.
But infusions. All hail to the alchemist and investigator.
And again you can't make potions of personal spells.
This was about using a sipping jacket and that is about potions (and not minute/level duration potions even)
But i guess if you have a pocket investigator you May have a point.
Mithral Celestial plate found on the SRD. If you're using core-only options, then replace it with mithral celestial armor (which is by default chainmail), though it's understood in PF that you can change the base armors of specific magical items (celestial plate is just a full-plate version of celestial armor).Celestial armor has a higher Max-Dex making it perhaps more attractive to serious Dex-users (those who are going to have Dex-prime or Str/Dex hybrid instead of secondary), but the plate version is +7 Max Dex which is what you'll have if you started with a 14 Dex and never raised it except through inherents and enhancements), though a Fighter's armor training can allow you to go higher in plate while speccing Dex-prime.
Druids have the most impressive AC of all (exceedingly so if they dipped a level of monk) thanks to wild armor. A +5 wild tower shield and +5 wild dragonhide full plate) puts the druid at 33 AC naked, then you add deflection, natural, natural enhancement, then Dex. It's trivial for druids to hit AC in the low 60s, but they act more as tanks in the traditional sense at this level (their bite isn't really that bad, it's just peeling them open while dealing with their DoTs).
Thanks for clearing that up :)
And i agree with the druid. Having Barkskin, Seamantle and the natural armor bonus from wildshape simply rocks. And considering wild lets you ignore any Armor Check Penalties (as far as i remember also Dex limits) AC 60 is definitely reachable.
But i disagree, that the druid can only work as a tank at that level. High level gives you access to Shapechange, which gives you Form of the Dragon III, which is 6 attacks, plus breath weapon. That still gives you your 9 spell levels to use. And you can switch into any other form once per round as a free action. E.g. pounce as a dire tiger then switch to dragon. And if you use improved spell sharing your Animal Companion can be a dragon too.
But yes, druids can profit disproportionately from a wild shield, because they lose none of their attack capabilities while taking all the advantages. Cost is a +3 enchantment though...
I mostly only use shields at low levels... Or when I'm playing a Ranger or Slayer! Because skipping prerequisites and being able to 2-hand your shield is awesome! The only downside is the poor critical threat range. :(
I'd like S&B much mode if it didn't need a bazillion feats to fully benefit from your shield... TWF alone kills any excitement I could have for shields...
Hell, nab a Quickdraw shield, and you need one feat, to get the boons of both.
Quick Draw.
Attack with two-hands, then Quick Draw the Quickdraw Shield as a free action, and when your turn comes up, then you put it away as a free action, and proceed to attack with two hands.
Repeat as described.
One of the few really competent medieval martial arts types I've seen pretty much did this with a classic kite shield/ longsword combo. The moment the opponent is off-balance, the hand of the arm the shield is strapped to also grabs the longsword in a high grip, and the weight of the shield is just added to the two-handed smash that follows.
Thanks for clearing that up :)
You're very welcome sir. ^_^
And i agree with the druid. Having Barkskin, Seamantle and the natural armor bonus from wildshape simply rocks. And considering wild lets you ignore any Armor Check Penalties (as far as i remember also Dex limits) AC 60 is definitely reachable.
Yep. You're essentially naked, but you keep the armor/shield bonuses. It's functional and sexy.
But i disagree, that the druid can only work as a tank at that level. High level gives you access to Shapechange, which gives you Form of the Dragon III, which is 6 attacks, plus breath weapon. That still gives you your 9 spell levels to use. And you can switch into any other form once per round as a free action. E.g. pounce as a dire tiger then switch to dragon. And if you use improved spell sharing your Animal Companion can be a dragon too.
I was mostly remarking in regards to the limitations of natural attacks. Druids have few ways of really cranking out the hurt like martials do even with lots of natural attacks as the majority of their damage is going to come in the form of raw Strength bonuses and your usual +5 enhancement bonuses, and they lack the to-hit that primary martials have which relegates their attack routines to roughly that of a martial's 3rd iterative attack when the martial is ready to get down and dirty. They also suffer more heavily against foes with DR as they are generally going to emphasize lots of slightly lighter hits (since they lack stuff like favored enemy, divine power, smites, etc) which are cut down a bit by DR (some vital strike druid builds can be good for punching through DR with big single-burst hits but that's got its own separate issues to deal with).
I'm not saying that they're bad at being a martial. Far from it. More that their defense > offense naturally, where most martials are offense > defense, and that they are particularly frightening as heavily armored mobile artillery that bites if you try to hurt it.
For example, a druid can drop a maximized (incense of meditation) dazing call lightning storm and poke at enemies with 50-damage save or dies each round while being a tough nut to crack. If you manage to get on top of them, they're still sitting on a 95% evasion and more than likely have some crit resistance to boot, which means popping their bubble or putting them on the defensive is tough. The fact that at any time they can also wreck their enemies with a dragon-sized full-attack is icing on the cake.
That said, if you have a bard in the party, those massive full-attacks they get are muuuuuuch nicer.
Of course, if you have a martial AND a druid, well clearly the former should be riding on the latter. Then you've essentially got a fantasy hellfire dreadnaught just daring anything to screw with them.
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Funnily enough last night I created a sword and board paladin, dex based build, to maximise the use of smite damage.
I take the point, of course, that you need a full attack to make use of this, but at 13th level I had 6 attacks - three with a rapier and three with a spiked buckler - and with a high charisma build smiting was pretty good. As a paladin with oath vs fiends, I'm mostly interested in killing fiends anyway (I was thinking of this for Wrath of the Righteous).
Richard
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No dice. You don't get buckler AC any round you use a weapon in your off-hand or use it to cast somatic spell components.Deals more damage and doesn't require a million feats...
...And you can always use a buckler fot a nice boost to AC in exchange for a mere -1 to attack rolls.
A 2-handed attack is not an offhand attack... Or at least it wasn't... Paizo idiotic FAQ for Schronsigger hands made everything needlessly complicated and confusing...
That said, if you have a bard in the party, those massive full-attacks they get are muuuuuuch nicer.
Or a conjuration wizard/summoner with a lillend Azata ;)
But yes at level 20 it is -5 to hit from BAB alone, let alone things like weapon focus, which are usually based on one weapon and hurt having natural attack versatility. Of course having mostly primary natural attacks mitigates this a bit, but you won't challenge a Barbarian or Fighter for to hit. In the damage compartment, you might have a chance due to more attacks, and +5 circumvents most DR, but that's not what druids are primarily doing and it depends on the opponents AC. So i agree defense > offense. (Being capable of grappling dragons and demons after their freedom of movement has been dispelled though is something that i cannot see a martial doing, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as grappling a Wendigo :D)
And back to topic: Quickdraw Shield? Had never heard of this before now, need to try. Finally a good use for Quick Draw :>
Let's take a level 20 fighter. Give em all the bells and whistles
30str, 20 dex (all we need ATM)
Said fighter has +5 sword (or great sword)
SnB fighter is doing 10(str)+12(PA) (spec/magic weapon/ect are a wash)
Same fighter with two handed is doing 15(str) + 18(PA) for a mere 11 damage more, and the SnB fighter has potential to use TWF.
The SnB fighter can get up to +8 AC over the Twohander (+5 heavy shield, +shield focus)
Sure it takes away gold spent on other items, but only 100k (heh, only,)
I see the point if you use the two handed fighter archetype, but then you are giving up even more defense.(for IMO ridiculous damage the archetype IMHO should be nerfed the damage is stupid good.)
You do not need the two-handed archetype. Just using a weapon in two-hands is all it takes to be more effective.
at 13th level I had 6 attacks - three with a rapier and three with a spiked buckler
Can you put armor spikes on a buckler? Normally you can't make shield bashes with a buckler. Or is the buckler a special item?
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Funnily enough last night I created a sword and board paladin, dex based build, to maximise the use of smite damage.
I had a classical Arcadian hero type character based on the same idea, crossed with the Monk stuff I mentioned before - a Guide Ranger using a falcata and Monk unarmed strike with the two weapon Ranger style and Snake Fang, carrying a heavy shield. When you're adding a substantial ab and damage bonus to a character that can go falcata/falcata/unarmed/unarmed with one-hand strength and power attack on all hits, and then retaliate on misses with more punching, it's pretty brutal.
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Can you put armor spikes on a buckler? Normally you can't make shield bashes with a buckler. Or is the buckler a special item?at 13th level I had 6 attacks - three with a rapier and three with a spiked buckler
Beg your pardon - light shield.
I went with human +2 on two stats (dex,cha), for a starting build (20 pt buy) of str 12, dex 15(+2), con 14, int 7, wis 10, cha 16(+2), with increases all in dex, and feats: finesse, twf, imp shield bash, imp twf, shield slam, shield master, greater twf.
At 13th level my kit was +1 agile merciful rapier, +5 mythril breastplate, +5 light spiked shield, belt of con +4, headband of cha +4, cloak of resistance +5, ring of prot +1, amulet of natural armour +2, ring of feather fall, feather step boots.
(from memory)
Richard
You can't make potions of shield.
That's interesting - yeah, I'm a bit flabbergasted that's not written in the Magic Items section but specifically in the "making potions" section. As a player and a GM, the games I've been in / run have never really used Magic Item Creation rules, so I haven't had to look there before.
That's... annoying. So, this would have to be a scroll or you'd have to spend 20k... Or have an Alchemist buddy; thank you Alchemists.
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I wonder if the next Pathfinder will be less "rocket tag". It'd be easy to fix the game to reduce the offence advantage. The most obvious is to double or triple the hit points of everything. When you can't end a combat in few turns, then defensive options become more meaningful.
But I also think this is something that most players don't want. 4th Edition DnD had much larger hitpoint tables and people didn't like how long the combats could take. I'm afraid the playerbase wants rocket tag, whether they know that they do or not.
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4th Edition put the variety of Wizard spells into pretty much everyone's hands, though. I mean, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but everyone had multiple "spells" (at-will powers and encounter powers and daily powers) to keep track of on top of everything we're used to in D&D (such as flanking and modifiers to their attacks and such) as well as their new "Bloodied" system (which enabled or empowered a lot of abilities) and so on and so forth.
Larger hit point tables would be fine with a system that's a lot simpler than the current system we use in Pathfinder. I wouldn't doubt that it could, with the right tinkering, work...
The trouble is actually making such a system simple and still feel like Pathfinder. I have very serious doubts as to that. This is a community that was born from people who wanted to see 3.5 D&D continued or "fixed," and the result is a system that's very complex - much as 3.5 is.
I'm pretty sure any attempts at simplifying the game would be met with outcry and a lot of it.
I wonder if the next Pathfinder will be less "rocket tag". It'd be easy to fix the game to reduce the offence advantage. The most obvious is to double or triple the hit points of everything. When you can't end a combat in few turns, then defensive options become more meaningful.
But I also think this is something that most players don't won't. 4th Edition DnD had much larger hitpoint tables and people didn't like how long the combats could take. I'm afraid the playerbase wants rocket tag, whether they know that they do or not.
The rocket tag phrase is not so much a matter of depleting hit points. It is about the fact that whoever goes first wins. As an example if the one party goes first and they put the other party on the defensive then it is just a matter of time.
The rocket tag statement is also a nod to who fires the rocket first will likely win, not just how devastating attacks(to include magic) are at higher levels.
A battle can be basically over when you still have over half of your hit points remaining. At that point the soon to be victors are in the mop up stage.
Even if a fight last 5 rounds I can normally tell by the end of the 2nd or 3rd round who is going to win barring a miracle.
I wonder if the next Pathfinder will be less "rocket tag". It'd be easy to fix the game to reduce the offence advantage. The most obvious is to double or triple the hit points of everything. When you can't end a combat in few turns, then defensive options become more meaningful.
But I also think this is something that most players don't won't. 4th Edition DnD had much larger hitpoint tables and people didn't like how long the combats could take. I'm afraid the playerbase wants rocket tag, whether they know that they do or not.
I like that combats only take 2-4 rounds. It leaves room for the tanky stuff that i also like.
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People generally prefer two-handed combat because there are so many non-frontliners who refuse to build defense.
If your party wizard is standing there with an AC of 14 at level 8 and no spell defenses, you need to kill your opponent FAST, otherwise you'll be ignored and the monster will go eat them.
If your wizard/archer/bard etc have defenses which aren't auto-hits (which they should) then you don't have to focus so hard on offense. (By level 8 a wizard should an AC of 20+ and in areas where combat is expected, they should have blur etc up.)
Basically - as soon as someone in the group goes glass cannon, everyone else in the party is forced to go high offense to keep them from dying.
I thought sword and board paladins all took antagonize as either first or second feat....
Historically, shield use declined proportionally to the effectiveness of armor and the strength and skill of the warrior. By the time the 100 years' war was in full swing and effective plate armor was common for the elite, the preferred weapon was the pollaxe. Nobody was going to weigh themselves down and tie up one hand when they already had solid defense from head to toe. Even in earlier periods, two-handers were often used by elites - just wiki 'dane axe'.
Quibble the first: POLEaxe.
Quibble the second: I see that the other way 'round. Once plate armor got really good and less uncommon, you needed the extra power of a two-handed weapon to overcome it. The warrior didn't give up the shield because he was more confident in his own armor, he gave it up because he needed that hand to wield a weapon that could overcome the OTHER guy's armor.When mounted such heavily armored knights would still equip a shield when they could since only one hand was needed for that lance.
I thought sword and board paladins all took antagonize as either first or second feat....
There are a lot of people that do not like that feat. I for one have banned it because it kills verisimilitude for me.
If there was a way to trick the enemy into taking a bad tactical position that would be fine. The problem would be that some GM's who take things to extremes may count that as lying or being dishonest and make paladins fall.
PS: I have no idea how to make that would work mechanically, and in a way that is acceptable to the players(including GM's).
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I thought sword and board paladins all took antagonize as either first or second feat....There are a lot of people that do not like that feat. I for one have banned it because it kills verisimilitude for me.
I agree that the original writing of Antagonize was silly. The wizard is really going to go melee the full plate guy? But I like how it is now.
The whole 'taunting your enemies' into coming after you instead of your weaker/wounded buddies is a pretty common fantasy trope after all. And it's not like it's game-breaking or anything.
I thought sword and board paladins all took antagonize as either first or second feat....There are a lot of people that do not like that feat. I for one have banned it because it kills verisimilitude for me.I agree that the original writing of Antagonize was silly. The wizard is really going to go melee the full plate guy? But I like how it is now.
Me too.
Less killing verisimilitude than a lot of other things in the rules.