In Praise of Nerfs

[Pex]

Hard disagree.


If there is one clearly sub-optimal option, it might as well not exist.

Likely because no one would take it. Those who do take it learn the hard way and never take it again.

Likewise, one clearly optimal option renders all others effectively nonexistent.

Not necessarily. If the other options are good enough people will take them. Despite the optimization of 5E paladin/hexblade players still play single class paladin, multiclass paladin/not warlock, and multiclass paladin/non-hexblade warlock. They also play single class hexblade and single class non-hexblade warlock.

[Rynjin]

An unoptimized wizard has picked bad/niche/redundant spells, feats that don't do anything for this character, has neither replaced the familiar with a ACF nor does anything with the familiar (outside of fluffy character moments), and consistently picks the wrong spell for the situation/target. A fighter on the other hand can botch all of their feat choices can still function at base competency thanks to hit dice, attributes and equipment alone.

Here is a quick example illustrating the problem with even an unoptimized caster vs an unoptimized martial.

It is my first ever Pathfinder game. We are playing Serpent's SKull, an Adventure Path.

I am playing a Monk.

The rest of the party consist of a Rogue, a Druid, a Ranger (archer), something else...I really don't remember, and a pair of GMPCs; a Cleric and a Barbarian.

Everybody makes it through the first book, relatively unoptimized, but I'm pretty unsatisfied with my character. I make a new Monk, much more optimized with the help of the forums. I begin to have a lot more fun, because I can actually punch people real good.

Anyway, we move on to book 2 with my new character. The Rogue dies. Because he's a Rogue, and his saves suck.

The Ranger is just kinda big chillin' the whole time, because he's a Ranger. They basically build themselves; a feature, not a bug.

The Druid is one of the most poorly built piece of **** characters I've seen in...ever. This Druid has 13 Wis. This Druid tries to cast spells as much as possible. This Druid has stuff like Skill Focus (Handle Animal) because we all thought it worked on Wild Empathy; these kinds of Feats fill up all their Feat slots.

This Druid is the strongest (non-GMPC) member of the party, besides maybe my rebuilt Monk. Because as it turns out, a ****ty Druid is still...a Druid. He can Wild Shape into stuff that puts the rest of the party to shame. He can, over time, learn how to take spells that don't really care about his borked stat scores, because he can change out his entire spell list every day.

Because he has more options to gain strength just within his class than most character have available from all intersecting options.

And that, in the end, is the difference between a poorly optimized martial, and a poorly optimized caster. The latter is still "good enough".

[awa]

I would argue that is less about casters in general then about the fact that the druid has a very high floor with individual class features almost equal to entire classes.

That said all the wizard needs to do to get good is pick better spells, finding just one good spell can change the entire situation. Some of them are so powerful they render everything else irrelevant.

[Max_Killjoy]

As a general observation of both tabletop and video games, what tends to happen that turns people off to nerfs in particular is wildly overdoing it. Big nerfs happen far more often, even when small nerfs or tweaks would do.

[kyoryu]

As a general observation of both tabletop and video games, what tends to happen that turns people off to nerfs in particular is wildly overdoing it. Big nerfs happen far more often, even when small nerfs or tweaks would do.

In video games at least, those "big" nerfs are almost always because somebody has found some combination that is wildly out of line, and has to be brought back in. The people using the ability "as intended" are the unfortunate victims.

While that sucks, it's pretty necessary because once the exploit spreads, it can seriously destroy the overall game balance/economy/etc.

[noob]

The Ranger is just kinda big chillin' the whole time, because he's a Ranger. They basically build themselves; a feature, not a bug.

Wildshape ranger is the ultimate "build itself" class.
Not only are your characteristics irrelevant thanks to wild shape but it also have the self building aspect of rangers.

[icefractal]

Another factor with the Druid - summoning tends to be strong in low-op games and weaker in high-op ones, since the stats are relatively static.

If your offense is an ubercharger and your defense is a stack of persistent buffs, then a summon is maybe a one round speedbump. If your party is more like a sword-n-board Fighter, a Rogue who spends every other round hiding, and a Wizard who thinks that Magic Missile and Fireball are the ultimate apex of spellcasting, then summoned creatures will be the MVP.

[King of Nowhere]

Here is a quick example illustrating the problem with even an unoptimized caster vs an unoptimized martial.

It is my first ever Pathfinder game. We are playing Serpent's SKull, an Adventure Path.

I am playing a Monk.

The rest of the party consist of a Rogue, a Druid, a Ranger (archer), something else...I really don't remember, and a pair of GMPCs; a Cleric and a Barbarian.

Everybody makes it through the first book, relatively unoptimized, but I'm pretty unsatisfied with my character. I make a new Monk, much more optimized with the help of the forums. I begin to have a lot more fun, because I can actually punch people real good.

Anyway, we move on to book 2 with my new character. The Rogue dies. Because he's a Rogue, and his saves suck.

The Ranger is just kinda big chillin' the whole time, because he's a Ranger. They basically build themselves; a feature, not a bug.

The Druid is one of the most poorly built piece of **** characters I've seen in...ever. This Druid has 13 Wis. This Druid tries to cast spells as much as possible. This Druid has stuff like Skill Focus (Handle Animal) because we all thought it worked on Wild Empathy; these kinds of Feats fill up all their Feat slots.

This Druid is the strongest (non-GMPC) member of the party, besides maybe my rebuilt Monk. Because as it turns out, a ****ty Druid is still...a Druid. He can Wild Shape into stuff that puts the rest of the party to shame. He can, over time, learn how to take spells that don't really care about his borked stat scores, because he can change out his entire spell list every day.

Because he has more options to gain strength just within his class than most character have available from all intersecting options.

And that, in the end, is the difference between a poorly optimized martial, and a poorly optimized caster. The latter is still "good enough".

well, let me tell you a different story, then.
I had a druid player in my first party, and he was bad.
He would never buff before combat, because remembering to do it would be too much. he had a wold companion that was the laughing stock of the table, to the point that we all cheered whenever it managed to actually do something.
he would start combat in human shape. first thing, he would try to wild shape, thus losing a turn and losing all the benefits of most of his equipment.
then he would take big damage. at this point he may realize the mistake, and try to wild shape again back into human.
or he would cast call lightning.
and that's despite coaching him. trying to coach him. after three years he became more competent and his druid became better (because, yes, you can still swap out bad spells for good ones). but he still was a support.
though that's mostly for the specific campaign; it was a high magic, high wealth campaign fighting against other npcs. So all the druid's buffs were useless because everyone had magic loot that duplicated those effects, and the animal companion and summons were useless because they couldn't realiably hit the enemies' armor class. and druid's damage spells are mostly sub-par, and getting fire resistance is trivially easy anyway. there may be optimization tricks i'm missing, but in my experience the druid is terrible at hurting foes with good defences.
he turned out pretty useful by summoning disposable stuff to use as walls.

on the other hand, there was a barbarian guy. also inexperienced. he tried to make a dual wielding ranger, of course he sucked. i told him that's not a good approach, and he was better off with a zweihander and power attack as much as possible. he took the tip, and he became - with a single-classed barbarian - the most powerful character at the table. on a party with a druid, a wizard, and a cleric. at some point, around level 10, he was probably strong enough that he could have soloed everyone else in the party. without any special optimization trick.

so no, a poorly optimized caster is not "good enough". a poorly optimized caster can suck much harder than anyone else.
and it's much easier to get "good enough" with a martial: just get a polearm and buff your strenght.
getting "good enough" with a caster requires knowing a bunch of useful spells. a little thing for us, but a steep wall to climb for the casual newb.

the one undeniable advantage of casters is that they can change spells. it's never too late for them to learn and get some basic effectiveness. while a martial with the wrong choices locks himself forever.
unless the dm is generous with retraining; and every dm should be generous about retraining first characters.

[Rynjin]

There's a difference between poor optimization (making bad build choices) and being an idiot (making poor decisions that make no sense). Your example falls into the latter category.

It doesn't help that your game was, admitted by you, houseruled so far outside the normal assumptions for the game that it caused problems of its own

[icefractal]

Eh, I've seen extremely ineffective casters due to poor spell selection, which I'd say counts as a build choice. And for spontaneous casters, not a choice that's easily changed. Even for a Wizard, if you're out in the wilderness you're pretty much stuck with what's in your book.

[Mechalich]

and it's much easier to get "good enough" with a martial: just get a polearm and buff your strenght.

Until you run into a flying enemy, or an incorporeal enemy, or a controller enemy. The latter's particularly important. One of the great weaknesses of the base Martial classes is that their low will saves make them vulnerable to being turned into the best weapon to use against the rest of the party.

At higher levels, brute enemies become rarer and rarer, almost everything characters of level 10+ fight has some special abilities of some kind, and that's when the martial/caster disparity becomes particularly acute. High-level martial characters often remain perfectly viable in terms of their DPS, but they struggle to actually come to grips with the enemy. One reason high-level martials retain much greater viability in D&D-based video games is that staged encounters make it much easier for such characters to actively engage.

Nerfs that compress encounter range are therefore particularly useful in terms of flattening the overall power growth curve. Just flat out removing flight from the game - no flying powers, no flying monsters - is a massive leveler (now D&D can't do this since the game is named Dungeons & Dragons and dragons gotta have wings).

[King of Nowhere]

There's a difference between poor optimization (making bad build choices) and being an idiot (making poor decisions that make no sense). Your example falls into the latter category.

so judgmental.

it was merely a case of not knowing what his own skills did.
which, for a martial, is quite easy. you move close to the enemy, you roll a d20 plus a bonus, if your roll is high enough you roll 2d6 plus a bonus. you want to increase that bonus if you can. you don't even need to be actually able to calculate that bonus, you can just declare you attack and the friendly dm will help you along.
for a caster, making informed decisions requires a passable knowledge of most of your spell list. for a druid, it requires that, and knowledge of your critters, and your abilities. it took me years to be able to handle polymorphs.
A green player will just pick the abilities that sound cool or have impressive descriptor. turn into a big animal to kick asses? nice. throw lightning at my enemies? great!
they don't have the knowledge to understand how the first is only good if adequately prepared, and the second sucks. and unless they are dedicated, the infrequent playing schedule (stemming from busy real lives) is not enough to learn very well.

It doesn't help that your game was, admitted by you, houseruled so far outside the normal assumptions for the game that it caused problems of its own

huh?
I gaveg everyone - including npcs - higher wealth, and I used npcs as main enemies. Where's the houseruling in that?

but the result was
- everyone has higher armor class thanks to loot, but the barbarian can still hit. he'll deal less damage, he'll power attack for less, but he still can hit the first attack reliably and smack for significant hit points. and he can use the extra items to cover most martial weaknesses
- everyone has higher saving throws thanks to loot, but the wizard can still hurt people. save-or-die will work less often, damage spells will damage for less, combat takes a bit longer; still, those spells are effective. same for the cleric, and people taking less damage actually makes healing more effective
- druids, on the other hand, couldn't reliably hurt people anymore.
and i've seen many druids, in different tables, built and played by different people, and i've never seen one that was effective against an opponent with heavy defence.
it's just that at my table, that was the most commonly encountered type of opponent.

[Rynjin]

huh?
I gaveg everyone - including npcs - higher wealth, and I used npcs as main enemies. Where's the houseruling in that?

In...the first sentence, my guy. Giving NPCs PC wealth is a +1 CR adjustment. Giving them higher than PC wealth is likely an extra +1.

You basically gave everyone the Advanced template in a roundabout way, making the game significantly harder than the average assumption.

[icefractal]

In...the first sentence, my guy. Giving NPCs PC wealth is a +1 CR adjustment. Giving them higher than PC wealth is likely an extra +1.

So ... they were a higher CR than they would have been without gear? But we don't know what level they were relative to the PCs, so we can't even say they were higher CR than "normal".

Using foes of higher CR than the PC's ECL is not a houserule anyway. Sandbox games don't care about the PCs' level, and any game with optimized PCs is likely using CR >> ECL for anything that's supposed to be remotely a threat.

[Rynjin]

So ... they were a higher CR than they would have been without gear? But we don't know what level they were relative to the PCs, so we can't even say they were higher CR than "normal".

Using foes of higher CR than the PC's ECL is not a houserule anyway. Sandbox games don't care about the PCs' level, and any game with optimized PCs is likely using CR >> ECL for anything that's supposed to be remotely a threat.

Let me put it this way, it's the exact same type of houserule as the ol' lazy standby of "I'm going to give every monster the Advanced template". Maybe not technically a houserule because it's within the rules, but it's the kind of encounter design no sane person would think is correct for a party of unoptimized characters.

[icefractal]

Let me put it this way, it's the exact same type of houserule as the ol' lazy standby of "I'm going to give every monster the Advanced template". Maybe not technically a houserule because it's within the rules, but it's the kind of encounter design no sane person would think is correct for a party of unoptimized characters.

Putting the Advanced template on what? Unless you're running a preset module, there is no "every monster" to compare it to!

Like, three Vrocks, CR 12. Two Advanced Vrocks, also CR 12. All that Advanced, or extra gear, or anything does is change the CR from one number to another number. And either the first or second number could be more appropriate to the party you have.

For that matter, you're implying that the party was being overwhelmed by too high a level of challenge. Which, from the post, they weren't. The Druid was simply the weakest link in a party that was overall doing fine.

I feel like you're trying to "no true Scotsman" this situation, but I simply don't agree that this is so bizarre it needs an extra factor to explain. While casters are stronger in general, the floor is still quite low, low enough for one to be underpowered relative to the rest of the party.

I don't agree that Druids are poor in political intrigue games though. They've got the stats to spare for decent Charisma, Diplomacy on their list, Wildshape is excellent for spying, and while not as wide as a Sor/Wiz in this area, their spell list does contain plenty of applicable stuff.

[Rynjin]

It matters because when we're talking about the basic skill floor of a class, taking actions that raises the global skill floor required to compete is going to completely change the metrics.

And you know full well what I mean by raising the CR. When you take global actions like that, everything is more powerful. Nobody is doing that so that they can then go back and use lower base CR encounters that are raised by the CR increasing effect; that's such a bizarre and convoluted way of thinking.

The only logical reason I can think of for making a blanket increase in enemy power is because you want the game to be more difficult. King of Nowhere can feel free to chime in if he was, for whatever reason, just intending for a CR 1 peasant to become a CR 2 peasant via gear or whatever.

[icefractal]

Except this isn't a generic increase in power, this is about having NPCs (who tend to be anemic unless you optimize them; decent gear makes them at least ok for their CR) as the primary opponents.

I still don't get how running a campaign that isn't an evenly random selection of all possible opponents is some outlier than makes results invalid. I'd say the majority of campaigns are themed to some extent - in particular I've seen a number of undead-focused ones.

Like, nobody is even saying that Druid isn't in general a strong class. Are you really arguing the position that "Druid will always be MVP in all campaigns, and if they weren't it doesn't count"?

[Rynjin]

No; the metric was that a poorly optimized caster is "good enough" (my words) for standard content. Touting non-standard content as a rebuttal is just weird.

[King of Nowhere]

Let me put it this way, it's the exact same type of houserule as the ol' lazy standby of "I'm going to give every monster the Advanced template". Maybe not technically a houserule because it's within the rules, but it's the kind of encounter design no sane person would think is correct for a party of unoptimized characters.

You keep being more judgmental at every sentence. you know nothing of my table, yet you presume.

It would actually take a long time to explain the specific situation. among the factors to be considered
- the party was also more equipped, so they gained power just as much as those npcs
- the main reason was worldbuilding, in any case. this is a high magic world, this is a world where it is normal to be covered in magic loot at earlier levels.
- for all their poor optimization, the party was still mopping the floor with anything that was remotely level-appropriate. because that's what happens if your party is even remotely optimized. yes, even my party. for all that the druid had no idea how to hurt his opponents and the wizard did nothing but cast fireballs, they still were more optimized that the expected foes. even taking into account a cr increase for their wealth
- and frankly, i never cared about CR and EL after the first few sessions. they are too swingy to be of much use. nowadays i eyeball the difficulty, if it's too easy i make the next encounter harder, if too hard i make it easier.
- the campaign was fun, and nobody complained about fights. it's worth repeating, they were still winning.

No; the metric was that a poorly optimized caster is "good enough" (my words) for standard content. Touting non-standard content as a rebuttal is just weird.

but my rebuttal is that the poorly optimized caster was weaker than the poorly optimized melee. doesn't have anything to do with opponents.if those opponents had less AC the druid would deal some damage, but the barbarian could have used full power attack and dropped them in one round.
that may depend on how you define "poorly optimized"; the barbarian was certainly closer to its ceiling that the druid is, and was overall a solid build with solid numbers, so you could call it decently optimized.
but then again, it took virtually no effort to build the barbarian, except to tell him to get a greatsword, power attack, and buff his numbers as much as possible.
the druid got a lot more advice, and still sucked.

originally, i was rebutting to the idea that new players will necessarily be stronger with casters.
the thing is that, yes, at 0 optimization a druid is still better than a sword-and-board fighter. and at high optimization druids rule.
but it takes very little effort to move a melee to decent optimization. the same effort applied on a druid will merely avoid some of the most egregious trap options (like the aforementioned shapechanging at the wrong moment).

EDIT: also, you already called my friends idiots and me insane. i suggest you revise your vocabulary in favor of a more respectful one if you want to have a civil discussion