The Pathfinder Experiment, Part Two
We finished up our Pathfinder campaign last Friday. It wasn't a long session for a couple of reasons but the biggest being that we still had a couple of players who could dish out 60+ points of damage in a single blow.
This actually illustrates for me my biggest gripe about the entire Pathfinder experience, namely that the effectiveness of PC's in combat is directly proportional to how well you understand the game, and it's a steep climb. Many players just build fairly straightforward PC's without a lot of examination of the feats, etc. while others went online and spent quite some time figuring out the best combos. The latter group ended up dominating combat over the others, almost to the point of being detrimental. This was especially the case for younger players who really didn't understand the rules.
I don't blame the guys who spent time researching their characters--their PC's were by-the-book and totally street-legal. It's just the gaps that existed between people who were taking out CR 6 opponents with one blow (at fifth level) and the ones that complained that they were "just shooting toothpicks" were really painfully obvious.
After it was done my son were upstairs and later came down and apologized for how badly he thought it had been. He was one of the low-end PC's, a druid he built just to have an animal companion. I told him people had fun and there were some good moments in the game, but I think that he won't be hassling me to play this again for while.
This actually illustrates for me my biggest gripe about the entire Pathfinder experience, namely that the effectiveness of PC's in combat is directly proportional to how well you understand the game, and it's a steep climb. Many players just build fairly straightforward PC's without a lot of examination of the feats, etc. while others went online and spent quite some time figuring out the best combos. The latter group ended up dominating combat over the others, almost to the point of being detrimental. This was especially the case for younger players who really didn't understand the rules.
I don't blame the guys who spent time researching their characters--their PC's were by-the-book and totally street-legal. It's just the gaps that existed between people who were taking out CR 6 opponents with one blow (at fifth level) and the ones that complained that they were "just shooting toothpicks" were really painfully obvious.
After it was done my son were upstairs and later came down and apologized for how badly he thought it had been. He was one of the low-end PC's, a druid he built just to have an animal companion. I told him people had fun and there were some good moments in the game, but I think that he won't be hassling me to play this again for while.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete