<3
Bard has something similar in flavor with Pageant of the Peacock. That comes online at 4th.Imagine if Rumormonger was a Supernatural ability that allowed the Rogue to change reality by making people believe in a falsehood until it becomes true, a la Persona 2. Now that would be a tenth level ability.Designing weak rogue talents was probably the design choice, which is weird.Amen.
Similar in flavor, but not in mechanics. For those unfamiliar with Persona 2 a strong rumor can retroactively change reality (for example, a rumor spreads that the woman behind the counter at the ramen shop is an arms dealer... and then she becomes your first equipment shop); a Rumormonger Rogue would be able to do things like that. A Rumormonger Rogue would be limited only by her creativity, sorta like the Wizard.
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Five things the Pathfinder message boards taught me that were wrong:
Wizards are invincible.
If you go by these boards, wizards will never lose to any opponent(s) ever. They're all diviners who will always have perfect knowledge of anyone who seeks to oppose them, will always know and have prepared the exact correct spells to foil any threat. They always have an army of golems & planar bound minions to fight for them, and killing them is pointless because they always have a dozen or so clones secretly stashed away in the exceedingly unlikely event they are killed.
In the RotRL game I'm playing in our party has killed at least a couple of wizards, but I guess the GM was either being deliberately easy on us or is just a bad GM who doesn't know how to properly play a wizard.
"Wizards are Invincible" is incorrect.
"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.
A sufficiently paranoid, clever, hyper-optimized wizard is hilariously overpowered in a fair fight. In an AP, the wizard is not optimized, does not use overly meta broken tactics, is heavily outnumbered, and usually gets taken by surprise and, this is important, is played by a character who WANTS YOU TO WIN because the wizard scry'n'frying the party in their sleep or evading them forever is boring.
I think what you are saying is that the player who uses guile and smarts and all their available resources to make the rogue "very playable," will make a wizard "invincible."
I just want to make sure I'm following that correctly.
They certainly could, though in my experience a wizard becoming "invincible" depends on both (a) a player deliberately setting out to destabilize a campaign and (b) the GM being okay with that.
"Yes, you can have any spell you find on the internet."
"Yes, you can freely abduct genies as slaves and get 15+ wishes a day without any repercussions."
"Yes, you can have an infinite army of absolutely loyal snow sculpture demigods."
And so on.
IMHO, there's a fairly fine line between clever tactics and rules abuse, but, much like obscenity, you'll know it when you see it.
(Disclaimer: I define rules abuse as using the RAW to the deliberate detriment of the game. I.e., just because it's legal does not necessarily mean you should actually do it. I'm aware other folks define rules abuse very differently.)
@ BookRat - In case you're not joking (because this is the Internet),
** spoiler omitted **
** spoiler omitted **
Edit: Not sure if Karzoug's level is really a spoiler, but spoilered out of an abundance of caution. Sorry. I added more detail on Book 5 since I spoilered it.
Yeah, I was being facetious. Cool info, though - I never made it that far into RotRL because my GM got bored of it and quit running it. Sad. I realy want to be able to finish an AP (and I'm really trying to keep my players on track with the Iron Gods AP I'm running).
I think BigDTBone really has the right of it: with the power discrepancy between classes, a huge amount of system mastery can make some classes simply "playable" while making other classes "nearly invincible."
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Five things the Pathfinder message boards taught me that were wrong:
Wizards are invincible.
If you go by these boards, wizards will never lose to any opponent(s) ever. They're all diviners who will always have perfect knowledge of anyone who seeks to oppose them, will always know and have prepared the exact correct spells to foil any threat. They always have an army of golems & planar bound minions to fight for them, and killing them is pointless because they always have a dozen or so clones secretly stashed away in the exceedingly unlikely event they are killed.
In the RotRL game I'm playing in our party has killed at least a couple of wizards, but I guess the GM was either being deliberately easy on us or is just a bad GM who doesn't know how to properly play a wizard.
They have also taught me people are good at taking things out of context and/or exaggerating claims.
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@ bookrat - No real dispute there, especially considering the power difference you can have between members of the same class depending on how they're built.
Similar in flavor, but not in mechanics. For those unfamiliar with Persona 2 a strong rumor can retroactively change reality (for example, a rumor spreads that the woman behind the counter at the ramen shop is an arms dealer... and then she becomes your first equipment shop); a Rumormonger Rogue would be able to do things like that. A Rumormonger Rogue would be limited only by her creativity, sorta like the Wizard.Bard has something similar in flavor with Pageant of the Peacock. That comes online at 4th.Imagine if Rumormonger was a Supernatural ability that allowed the Rogue to change reality by making people believe in a falsehood until it becomes true, a la Persona 2. Now that would be a tenth level ability.Designing weak rogue talents was probably the design choice, which is weird.Amen.
Makes me think of systems like Fate or Numenera where you can spend experience to make temporary or permanent changes to the story by spending experience. I love mechanics like that, but that requires a rather fluid system. I'm not sure how well that would actually work in a game like Pathfinder where everything is mechanically set in stone by design.
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@ bookrat - No real dispute there, especially considering the power difference you can have between members of the same class depending on how they're built.
Indeed. In my gameplay experience, the system mastery gap between players at the same table will often be bigger than the gaps between the classes themselves.
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Five things the Pathfinder message boards taught me that were wrong:
Wizards are invincible.
If you go by these boards, wizards will never lose to any opponent(s) ever. They're all diviners who will always have perfect knowledge of anyone who seeks to oppose them, will always know and have prepared the exact correct spells to foil any threat. They always have an army of golems & planar bound minions to fight for them, and killing them is pointless because they always have a dozen or so clones secretly stashed away in the exceedingly unlikely event they are killed.
In the RotRL game I'm playing in our party has killed at least a couple of wizards, but I guess the GM was either being deliberately easy on us or is just a bad GM who doesn't know how to properly play a wizard.
"Wizards are Invincible" is incorrect.
"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.
A sufficiently paranoid, clever, hyper-optimized wizard is hilariously overpowered in a fair fight. In an AP, the wizard is not optimized, does not use overly meta broken tactics, is heavily outnumbered, and usually gets taken by surprise and, this is important, is played by a character who WANTS YOU TO WIN because the wizard scry'n'frying the party in their sleep or evading them forever is boring.
I think what you are saying is that the player who uses guile and smarts and all their available resources to make the rogue "very playable," will make a wizard "invincible."
I just want to make sure I'm following that correctly.
They certainly could, though in my experience a wizard becoming "invincible" depends on both (a) a player deliberately setting out to destabilize a campaign and (b) the GM being okay with that.
"Yes, you can have any spell you find on the internet."...
The point is, if someone is going to claim that the rogue is fine as published because clever players can use extreme system mastery and superior tactics with planning and preparation; then that same person MUST be prepared to admit that the CRB only wizard breaks the game in half.
They have also taught me people are good at taking things out of context and/or exaggerating claims.
Isn't that what this whole thread is about?
I think all the "debate" and misunderstanding boils down to many people on the paizo boards saying xyz is bad, and others reading this and concluding that people don't like xyz, think it is unplayable, and should always be avoided. Perhaps it is not as extreme as some say, but it is easy to see how these "xyz sux" (and abc rulz) memes get started.
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@ BigTDBone - no serious dispute, just quibbling - it doesn't require extreme system mastery to build a useful rogue; it "merely" requires good system mastery. If Pathfinder was a fighting game, the rogue would be the equivalent to Street Fighter's Dan. It's completely possible to legitimately win with Dan, but it's still an uphill battle.
And while a CRB-only wizard can break the game, whether he's actually going to is between the player and the GM. I suspect the vast majority of games with well-played wizards in them still don't devolve into player-GM arms races, because most players don't deliberately set out to destroy their friend's game =P
I'm also sort of bothered by the implication that a well-played wizard SHOULD set out to destroy the campaign. I think there's only one or two people on the boards who actually take that stance, but it's still a really odd one to me.
(And, IMO, when you get down to it, the issue isn't actually the wizard class itself; the issue is a handful of spells on the sorcerer/wizard list that are easily abused.)
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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You know, it's funny: I've never seen anyone explain how they "use guile and smarts and all their available resources" to make the wizard "playable", nor have I seen anyone explain the importance of players who aren't "setting out to wreck their friends' games" with their rogues.
You know, it's funny: I've never seen anyone explain how they "use guile and smarts and all their available resources" to make the wizard "playable", nor have I seen anyone explain the importance of players who aren't "setting out to wreck their friends' games" with their rogues.
Because some classes have being awesome handed to them on a silver platter =P
Out of curiosity:
Who expected this thread not to explode?
...nor have I seen anyone explain the importance of players who aren't "setting out to wreck their friends' games" with their rogues.I'm sure there has been at least one claim about that.
Yeah, there have been. Those usually come down to the rogue's player actually being a terrible person, rather than any rogue class abilities.
Yeah, there have been. Those usually come down to the rogue's player actually being a terrible person, rather than any rogue class abilities....nor have I seen anyone explain the importance of players who aren't "setting out to wreck their friends' games" with their rogues.I'm sure there has been at least one claim about that.
What do you mean they can sneak attack undead in Pathfinder?
Heh. I still have to remind my players that they can crit plant monsters, and we've been playing Pathfinder for years now.
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...nor have I seen anyone explain the importance of players who aren't "setting out to wreck their friends' games" with their rogues.I'm sure there has been at least one claim about that.
I've seen a couple. But they're more about the GM allowing the rogue to steal from party members (because... rogue!)while not allowing the other players to beat him over the head for his trouble.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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You know, it's funny: I've never seen anyone explain how they "use guile and smarts and all their available resources" to make the wizard "playable", nor have I seen anyone explain the importance of players who aren't "setting out to wreck their friends' games" with their rogues.Because some classes have being awesome handed to them on a silver platter =P
Yes. The irony is that the people who usually make the statements that I was reversing often vehemently deny that fact.
That was kind of the point: there's quite a segment of the community who will describe their hard-earned meager success with the rogue, admonish the near-accidental destruction of gameplay with the wizard, then frantically oppose any assertion of a power imbalance between the two. :/
Out of curiosity:
Who expected this thread not to explode?
I honestly never thought that people would take this stuff personally. I thought the original post was made partially in jest, or at least with a good dose of hyperbole, so I took it as a humorous poke at some of the extreme views that pop up on the boards fairly frequently.
I don't know, I see enough "statements of fact" about the game on these boards that are wrong (or at least highly debatable), that I thought there was room to poke fun at that mindset. Again, I didn't think people would get so worked up by it.
Apologies to Chuck Palahniuk the author of Fight Club, but:
"You are not the Paizo messageboards"
Out of curiosity:
Who expected this thread not to explode?I honestly never thought that people would take this stuff personally. I thought the original post was made partially in jest, or at least with a good dose of hyperbole, so I took it as a humorous poke at some of the extreme views that pop up on the boards fairly frequently.
I don't know, I see enough "statements of fact" about the game on these boards that are wrong (or at least highly debatable), that I thought there was room to poke fun at that mindset. Again, I didn't think people would get so worked up by it.
From what I've seen on the boards, people get offended and upset at what people half a country or world away are doing in the privacy of their own games. Most threads devolve after a few posts. :/
"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.
Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
Doesn't the system mastery usually start coming out when some posters disagree with them and the people who say that wizards are broken then go ahead and describe why those posters are wrong in gory detail.
Besides, it does kind of beg the question of why people who are "invoking Shrodinger's Wizard" are the only ones who are showing off their system mastery. I haven't seen anybody go "Hey, look. I made a rogue that outDPRs AM BARBARIAN while having better saves and I can never take AOOs, escape any grapple and kill Mr Diviner in the surprise round barring 5 consecutive natural 1s". The fact that people can only show off that high PO/TO shenanigans with wizards and a few other classes suggests that those classes are the only ones that can do it.
Out of curiosity:
Who expected this thread not to explode?I honestly never thought that people would take this stuff personally. I thought the original post was made partially in jest, or at least with a good dose of hyperbole, so I took it as a humorous poke at some of the extreme views that pop up on the boards fairly frequently.
I don't know, I see enough "statements of fact" about the game on these boards that are wrong (or at least highly debatable), that I thought there was room to poke fun at that mindset. Again, I didn't think people would get so worked up by it.
Apologies to Chuck Palahniuk the author of Fight Club, but:
"You are not the Paizo messageboards"
It never seemed like a joke to me, especially when he came back and gave real life examples. Most rants are not jokes. They tend to come when people are upset about something and have to release the tension. If you missed his unhappiness(to put it lightly) at a GM going out of his way to kill a rogue and how it contributed to this thread I can find it for you.
"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
Don't you mean Schrodinger's fighter? :)
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"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
I feel the same way when people brag about how their rogue contributed meaningfully to a game once.
"The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
When push comes to shove and builds are required for a contest, you will find that it is the Fighter's who invoke Schrodinger's, while the Wizards have full builds.
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When push comes to shove and builds are required for a contest, you will find that it is the Fighter's who invoke Schrodinger's, while the Wizards have full builds."The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
Do you have an example of other than after you incorporated 1000 posts worth of prodding into your hypothetical build and then produced Schrodingers actual wizard? Or the time that there were serious questions about how mythic rules should be interpreted where the "arbiter" went with his bias, and against raw, to nerf the fighter? Or the time that the "arbiter" declared that the fighter couldn't take a CRB feat? Or the time that people actually agreed with your general premise and agreed also to serve as your foil, but you acted like a friggin three-year-old with out his biddy everytime someone actually make you prove a statement rather than just accept your knowledge as fact?
Oh, wait... Those were actually all the same time.
Do you have an example other than that?
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When push comes to shove and builds are required for a contest, you will find that it is the Fighter's who invoke Schrodinger's, while the Wizards have full builds."The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.
Coming from you, that's utterly laughable. I can't remember the exact thread, but I remember you talking about how easily your wizurd could overcome something, but point blank REFUSING to provide a build until such a time as you were given full metagame knowledge about the other character and the exact circumstances of the situation. And even then you still refused to give a build.
It's actually not the builds for a wizurd that are so fluid, it's the fact that nobody ever seems willing to lock down their spell selection. And ESPECIALLY what their contingency entails. I'd say that 95% of all wizurds discussed on this forum seem to have the following contingency:
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Still can't believe people think that the Fighter taking Leadership for a Wizard cohort to compete with just one Wizard says good things about the Fighter.
Still can't believe people think that the Fighter taking Leadership for a Wizard cohort to compete with just one Wizard says good things about the Fighter.
Ah, so that's what the CRB feat was.
I find that both amusing and depressing.
Still can't believe people think that the Fighter taking Leadership for a Wizard cohort to compete with just one Wizard says good things about the Fighter.
It doesn't if that cohort was supposed to participate in the match up. It's a little different, though perhaps cheesy, if the cohort wizard in question was just for use as a magic item factory - i.e., spending a feat to get a (very significant) resource advantage.
Now I'm thinking of a 3.5 campaign where we had a melee cleric take leadership just to get a dedicated craftimg wizard cohort. (My wizard was the party's crafter, but hated the cleric's guts - LG wizard and CN(E tendencies) cleric who were stuck with each other because of our mutual enemies - and the cleric knew he was at the bottom of my wizard's priority list. =P) I don't know if the cohort wizard even had a name.
I think the complaint is more around, "If you are going to run the stupid RAW snowcone Wish factory then the Fighter should be able to abuse equally valid quirks".
The real goal is not to have a wizard cohort, but instead to get the wizard to stop abusing RAW that rarely get past an actual GM.
I think the complaint is more around, "If you are going to run the stupid RAW snowcone Wish factory then the Fighter should be able to abuse equally valid quirks".
The real goal is not to have a wizard cohort, but instead to get the wizard to stop abusing RAW that rarely get past an actual GM.
I think that it is a little less to do with RAW abuse, and a little more to with the fact that the point of building the fighter was to show that they, as a class, have the ability to take on a wizard.
Taking a feat available to everyone and getting another creature that is basically the wizard but somewhat weaker (not by much) defeats the point of the exercise (to show that high level wizards have so many things that range from powerful to completely silly and broken that the fighter has no hope).
Do you have an example of other than after you incorporated 1000 posts worth of prodding into your hypothetical build and then produced Schrodingers actual wizard? Or the time that there were serious questions about how mythic rules should be interpreted where the "arbiter" went with his bias, and against raw, to nerf the fighter? Or the time that the "arbiter" declared that the fighter couldn't take a CRB feat?You mean the time that you wanted to demonstrate the ability of a level 20/mythic rank 10 fighter to even reach the same playing field as a level 20 non mythic caster by having a high level wizard cohort via leadership or twisting the wording of the archmage path ability. The event where I was so biased against the fighter that I denied various of Anzyr's attempts to create simulacrums of Cthullu and other elder gods and gave a fairly strict time limit which greatly favoured the fighter.
Yeah, that one where despite several claims to have fighter builds none actually materialised.
You allowed snow-cone wish genies...
I'm going to do something off the cuff and bring up the D&D 5e monster manual: Genies being able to grant wishes is a variant rule. If genies can grant wishes, only nobles of that race could do it. Even then a noble could only grant wishes to a mortal once. Planar Binding also requires that the outsider in question be present for the entire hour of casting (Although no HD limit). This makes binding genies a very difficult thing to do. Simulacrum has a similar restriction.
I'm not sure of the point to that tangent, but sometimes I word vomit after reading lots of things.
When push comes to shove and builds are required for a contest, you will find that it is the Fighter's who invoke Schrodinger's, while the Wizards have full builds."The Wizard/Sorcerer/Arcanist Spell List is sufficiently powerful that a sufficiently clever player with good system mastery can solve basically any problem the GM can come up with" is correct.Which is the crux of why it's so obnoxious. Because on the boards when people invoke Schrodinger's Wizard what they're really doing is using it as a premise for bragging about how smart they are and how much system mastery they have, which gets annoying.Do you have an example of other than after you incorporated 1000 posts worth of prodding into your hypothetical build and then produced Schrodingers actual wizard? Or the time that there were serious questions about how mythic rules should be interpreted where the "arbiter" went with his bias, and against raw, to nerf the fighter? Or the time that the "arbiter" declared that the fighter couldn't take a CRB feat? Or the time that people actually agreed with your general premise and agreed also to serve as your foil, but you acted like a friggin three-year-old with out his biddy everytime someone actually make you prove a statement rather than just accept your knowledge as fact?
Oh, wait... Those were actually all the same time.
Do you have an example other than that?
I can literally taste the salt in this post.
Of course I wanted there to be established metagame rules, otherwise "provide a build" is completely irrelevant to the discussion. And believe me, I had many things ruled against me, and I still put in an observable build. Complete with multiple spellbooks and everything.
The fact remains:
Wizard = observable.
Fighter = Error 404 - No build found.
Also, the reason I hate builds is because they don't actually prove anything. I provided a build that shows how powerful Wizards are and it has failed to change your position. So really what was the point, other then to prove Fighter defenders rely more on Schrodinger's Law then Wizards?
I can literally taste the salt in this post.
I promise I'm not being figurative. Quite literal in fact. Try tasting it.