Pathfinder 1E Specific examples of how easy Pathfinder is broken.
- Thread starter Evenglare
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GMforPowergamers
Legend
Take a 11th level dungeon, any 11th levely dungeon. Then find 4 players of about equal skill in both building and playing . Have them draw up 2parties. Explain this is a power test.
Have team 1 be a 14th level fighter, a 14th level rogue, a 5/5/5 fighter/wizard/cleric and a 7/7 paliden/gunslingef
Have team 2 be a 9th level wizard, a 9th level druid, a 9th level summoner, and a 9th cleric
Run the dungeon 4 times, once with team 1, then twice with team 2 then a final tine with team 1... see who has the easier times, witch one the dungeon is easier for... on paper the team with many levels above should have the easier time and have mire options... but in play the team with more spell casters will.
If you want to take this farther make a team of 4 "basic" characters 1 fighter 1 rogue 1 wizard and 1 cleric.... then find a 5th player with high rules mastery...let him build a summoner, an alchomist, and a ranger all 2 levels lhe lower then the part then let him draw up a fighter 2 plevels above the party... run the experment again and see how much mor eeffective the group is with an extra spell slinger instea dof weapon fighter...
If level is suposed to be an indecator of power or even how easy or hard a challange is pathfinder breaks at that level
Have team 1 be a 14th level fighter, a 14th level rogue, a 5/5/5 fighter/wizard/cleric and a 7/7 paliden/gunslingef
Have team 2 be a 9th level wizard, a 9th level druid, a 9th level summoner, and a 9th cleric
Run the dungeon 4 times, once with team 1, then twice with team 2 then a final tine with team 1... see who has the easier times, witch one the dungeon is easier for... on paper the team with many levels above should have the easier time and have mire options... but in play the team with more spell casters will.
If you want to take this farther make a team of 4 "basic" characters 1 fighter 1 rogue 1 wizard and 1 cleric.... then find a 5th player with high rules mastery...let him build a summoner, an alchomist, and a ranger all 2 levels lhe lower then the part then let him draw up a fighter 2 plevels above the party... run the experment again and see how much mor eeffective the group is with an extra spell slinger instea dof weapon fighter...
If level is suposed to be an indecator of power or even how easy or hard a challange is pathfinder breaks at that level
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
Pathfinder isn't really less balanced than 3e. Arguably better, since there's less material to squish together. However, Pathfinder didn't fix most of 3e's problems either, and introduced a few new ones.
Save DC shenanigans.
We have a DM who used to run a lot of Pathfinder, though he now runs 13th Age instead. The last Pathfinder campaign we did was Kingmaker. This DM likes to use high stats (25 point buy, the equivalent of 32 point buy in 3e terms) even though the system was built around 15 point buy (25 point buy in 3e terms).
In Pathfinder, elves get a bonus to Dex and Int, making them flatly superior mages. I can't say the flavor doesn't match. We had an elf wizard from level 1 with very high save DCs, but it wasn't so bad at that level because he had few spells per day. Still, it put stress on the encounters. A starting wizard could have Int 20, so when casting a 1st-level spell such as Color Spray is dishing out a save DC of 16. I think the typical goblin has a Will save bonus of +0, but maybe I'm overestimating and they have a Will save bonus of -1 instead! The player of that particular elf wizard left the campaign at 3rd-level.
Very high point buy allows you to start with an 18 (before racial bonuses) and still have enough stats to increase your Dex and Con scores to reasonable levels.
Later on, at level 10 (when we were facing the level ~14 portion of the adventure path, the DM was having us gain XP by the book) one player who had been away for a while came back with an elf necromancer. Despite taking that subclass you couldn't tell he was a necro, since he mainly used Enchantment and Illusion spells. He started with Int 20 (18 + elf bonus) and got the highest Int boosting item he could afford (+4, the DM nerfed that to +2) and simply destroyed the opposition with spells that couldn't be saved against. As this player hadn't even put their character sheet on the mailing list before, he caught us all by surprise. Other than the headband of intellect issue (which might have been legal), the character was perfectly legal and using only the core rules. The save DC/saving throw system does not work properly, especially in a high point buy campaign. The PC had low Wisdom (so a low Will save for a mage) but of course the DM didn't know that. We don't play with this person anymore.
Spells vs Skills
The same PC abused Greater Invisibility. That spell as written is broken. It's effectively giving you a +20 to Stealth, in a game where most skills do not automatically increase with level. My own druid would have difficulty spotting an invisible creature (at level 7, the minimum level to cast that spell, my druid would have Perception +13, from training as a class skill with levels and Wisdom) against a typical DC of 22 or so (wizards tend to have a little Dex). At minimum that spell should have a scaling Stealth bonus, starting a lot lower, or emulate the 4e "Hide in Plain Sight" mechanic instead. It's actually worse in Pathfinder than in 3e because the bonus is to Stealth, not just Hide, so you can't use your sharp hearing to locate them ... oddly enough.
Sleet Storm said:
A spell used by our witch when they joined the party. It's 3rd-level and covers a 40 foot radius cylinder. What is so broken about it? We once got in a fight with a bunch of barbarians. They had decent Dex scores but no ranks in Acrobatics. They had about +2 total to Acrobatics, despite high levels, because of the way skills work. The barbarians were lucky to make their checks and move at half speed, while our magus blasted them with Lightning Bolt. (They were also hemmed in by my druid's Spike Stones, which don't deal that much damage but cripples their movement even further, plus the Perception DCs are obnoxiously high.) Most spells that force skill checks aren't balanced in Pathfinder. The Create Pit line of spells is a great example. The good news is this is fixable... with house rules.
Random Nuttiness
We twice ran into really unfair swarm monsters. The first time the monster was a swarm of bats, which consisted of Fine creatures, so was literally immune to weapon damage. We ran into them in a tomb, and being only 3rd-level (without our wizard, who had left) that we had literally no AoE spells. We had to leave, and my druid prepped a Gust of Wind to deal with the situation the next day. That actual plot-relevant villains were easier to handle.
The second time, with a few more levels under our belt, we ran into swarms of ravens, which could pluck out your eyes as a standard action, at will, and of course this is permanent blindness. Half the party ended up blind. Worse, we didn't have a cleric, only a druid and oracle. Druids don't have Remove Blindness as a spell, and oracle spell lists are very limited. If your oracle doesn't have Remove Blindness as a known spell, then you're in trouble. Trudging to a town to get some potions was painful, and the DM didn't throw any encounters at us during that time period. Once again, the plot-relevant villains were not nearly so hard to deal with.
Long-term crippling effects suck. Also oracles just aren't as good as clerics, leaving me a little mystified about their popularity. (The oracle had the curse that prevented you from speaking in combat. No quips, no tactical discussions, no taunting, no warnings, nothing.)
I'm playing (a sorcerer) in a 16th level/ 1 Mythic Tier game and there is a fighter with just insane damage. With feats like Vital Strike and Mythic Vital Strike, with Improved Critical, he averages 400 to 500 damage per round. That's just stupid broken, IMHO but the DM allows it.
(Psi)SeveredHead
Adventurer
Broken usually isn't about numbers, but whether it works or not. By the time a fighter can do that, an opponent can drink a Potion of Fly. Then create some fog or turn invisible when the fighter pulls out a bow.
Crothian
First Post
Then the fighter turns invisible and you have the most boring fight ever.
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