Pathfinder

Aren't there better solutions than outright banning the archetype, though? I mean, if you're worried about challenge, you could buff up your monsters; if you're worried about the synthesist outshining the other players in combat, you could give the rest of the party a free level or some.

Harder monsters, which would be so over leveled that the rest of the party would be worthless.

And no matter how many levels you give them, they still don't have the abilities of one of those things. They are just outright over powered and beyond any hope of being used in any game where you want more then one character to be able to do anything in combat.

Funny think is, the player wasn't even trying to be OP, he just wanted the archetype because he loves Lamia type creatures, and saw that as a way to play one. He just wanted the physical form it gave, not all the buffs.

Or encourage something other than the centipede of death build.

I had a kobold that looked fairly ridiculous carrying a size-inappropriate spear and heavy shield everywhere... right up until he transformed into a winged dragon-warrior via his eidolon. He was not heavily optimized, so he actually wasn't over-powered for the party. Fun though.

You don't need the centipede-of-death build. I built a Gnome Synthesist with the intention of basically making him Gnomish Iron Man, as his Eidolon was basically acting as a Dwarf-sized suit of armor.

I abandoned the character before I even played him because all I had to do was look at his Level 1 stats to realize how completely broken it was. And I wasn't trying to optimize, either.

I shudder to think what I could do if I actually tried breaking it.

edited 22nd Oct '14 7:48:37 AM by Frishman

Huh. My guy was a somewhat inneficient fighter of a non-existant race type in execution.

edited 22nd Oct '14 7:56:43 AM by zeromaeus

Huh, it hadn't seemed overpowered to me at a glance but I never built one either.

Its very easily optimized. You can use it to give yourself high physical stats for physically weak races and many (many many many) attacks at higher levels. It runs fine when un-optimized. My kobold was never any better than any other given character. I like it because it can lead to some really fun characters.

Forgot to mention that my kobold dipped three levels in fighter (phalanx). Very un-optimized. Still fun.

The problem is that, to some extent, you have to build unoptimized for the synthesist Summoner to not completely overshadow the rest of the party.

I'm in a game with one, and he's also doing the "kobold with a dragon form" build. He single-handedly keeps all of the foes off of all of the ranged characters, plus cleaves through massive amounts of foes by himself. It suits my plague master Alchemist just fine; gives me room to throw bombs everywhere, while a few stink and plague bombs soften foes up for the Summoner to finish the job. That said, the GM has had to ramp up the difficulty of various encounters appropriately, and he's had to end up rendering at least one or two other party members almost completely useless as a result.

If/when I run PF again, I'm going to ban the synthesist build as well. It's not like Summoner is a bad class as-is (I believe it's a high tier 2 class with the standard layout). And all of the other alternate class features are still available. Just that one is being thrown out.

In retrospect, synthesis isn't that broken when stats are rolled <_<

I mean, main reason why synthesist is broken is that it straight up says "Your physical scores are replaced by eidolon while you retain your mental scores" meaning you can dumb stats and create "best in everything character"

Well, one of players that might play if I run this game rolled magus with 13 as smallest stat and strength and int with 4 modifier. Sooo yeaaaah, synthesist wouldn't be that bad when you can't min max it

How, exactly? You'll still put your three lowest rolls inro physical and your eidolon's three highest rolls into physical, assuming you're rolling for eidolon, too. It winds up being the exact same.

If they roll, it just feels less.. minmaxed. More natural.

^^You can't min max really so there is greater chances of your best scores being something average instead of ridiculously high, plus other players have equal amount of chance to get really ridiculous scores just with rolling

edited 23rd Oct '14 9:37:05 PM by SpookyMask

EDITED:

My DM has us roll for each stat individually, so you can't arrange them like that.

I do something similar but I do it in such a fashion your guaranteed to have good stats.

edited 23rd Oct '14 9:46:11 PM by God_of_Awesome

Oh, so you roll "natural." I haven't seen that actually employed since Second Ed D&D.

"Natural" rolling has one major downside to it though: if you're stuck with the class you picked before you roll, you might wind up playing something unplayable with your rolled stats.

"Um, so I'm now a Wizard with a 6 Intelligence."

With my group, basic rolling and picking which stat gets what, but they are allowed to reroll till they get a stat spread with at least one 18 and that doesn't totally gimp them.

We make our characters after we roll. Also, I believe our DM is pretty old school.

Now, what I do when I DM, is lay out a stat spread of 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 and 8 and then randomly assign where they go. You don't decide what you'll get but it won't be anything bad.

edited 24th Oct '14 7:06:19 AM by God_of_Awesome

Granted even that leads t some hilarity. Like my Magus with 5 CHR. Who did most of he party's talking. Yeah we didn't make a lot of friends.

Or two players current sorcerers. One, because of his abysmal dexterity, can't make ranged touch attacks at all. And it's become a running joke in the game that he can't hit anything. And yet, because it's Ponyfinder and he plays a unicorn, he actually has one of the best melee attacks right now. (Unicorns can take a feat letting them use a one handed melee with their horn's magic, which let's them substitute their INT score for their STR score.) While the other sorcerer is the other way around. Has insanely high Dex, and almost never misses with ranged attacks, but can't make melee attacks, even touch ones that hit.

I'm not a fan of point buy: For me, it just boils down to 16, 14, 14, 10, 10, 10. My preferred method of stat generation is two sets of 4d6, drop lowest, and choose between which set to assign to your stats. I supposes a 5 or lower might get an automatic reroll...

You people who like rolling are certifiably insane.

Point buy makes things fair. Everyone's around the same power stats-wise. Rolling, you'll get someone with like three 18s, and someone else with nothing over 15. Ridiculous.

I like the standard-fantasy point buy option, since it kinda forces you to have at least one low stat of you want multiple high stats.

I've never really been down with random stat generation, just because I hate the idea of leaving such an important part of the character up to luck (unless I'm specifically trying to make a random character and I don't already have an idea for their personality and skills in mind).

But with point buy, you just end up making the same stats for everything, just end up with one "best" method. It's just churning out the same generic characters over and over, with the randomness, you can get something unique and fun to work into your character. Like the above 5 CHR Magus, or the sorcerer with such low DEX, his horrible aiming skills become a running joke.

That said, do need some leeway to make sure randomness doesn't give you a totally unusable character.

But with rolling, I can't fine tune my character to be exactly who I want them to be and how I want to play them. Hell, I'd take an array over rolling any day. At least that way I'm guaranteed to be good at something.

Hence leaving some leeway to reroll if you get an utterly crap set of stats.

I don't. I mean, I guess I don't really care about optimization very much, so maybe I just don't apply here.

I care equally about optimization and characterization, and consider both as good reasons to prefer point buy over rolling.