Having been granted rulership over the city of Vanhoover, and confessed their feelings for each other, Lex Legis and Sonata Dusk have started a new life together. But the challenges of rulership, and a relationship, are more than they bargained for.
By Lex’s estimation, they had maybe forty-five minutes left before the ghouls arrived.
That was an approximation, of course. The Night Mare had said that they’d be there in “a little over” an hour, which left the exact time indeterminate. More important was that her pronouncement guaranteed them a minimum of sixty minutes before the undead ponies would make it here, though he’d already wasted more than ten minutes in fruitless pursuit of the spells that had been embedded in Xiriel’s scroll.
Of course, Lex wasn’t willing to bet the safety of everypony here on someone else’s word, even that of a goddess. To that end he’d left Severance at the western edge of the camp, reiterating his orders that it was to cut down any ghoul, monster, or anything that wasn’t a pony that approached the place. Even then, he planned on heading back there once he made a statement to everyone about their current situation. Not that he knew what to say, besides that they were about to be attacked by what had to be a horde of undead creatures and he had no idea what to do about it…
“Okay, so I just want to make sure that we’re totes on the same page,” spoke up Sonata, glancing over at him with her usual happy expression. But a second later her eyes widened, lips twisting into a grimace. “Oh geez! I’m really sorry!”
Lex frowned, confused by the sudden change in her temperament. “What?”
“I said ‘page.’ You know, like ‘scroll’?” she admitted sheepishly. “Too soon, right? That was super thoughtless of me.” She finished with an apologetic smile then, apparently not understanding that the look he was giving her in reply to that statement was one of incredulity mixed with exasperation. “I won’t do it again. Anyway, we should really book it to-, aw nuts, I did it again!”
Rolling his eyes at her inanity, Lex tried to steer the conversation back towards something less nonsensical. “You wanted to coordinate something with regards to my public address?”
Now it was her turn to furrow her brow. “Huh?”
Letting out a slow breath, Lex tried again. “What did you want to make sure we were ‘on the same page’ about?”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, understanding blossoming on her face before her expression reset to its default look of happiness. “Yeah, so listen, we’re gonna do our usual gimmick, right? You use that whisper spell, and tell me what you wanna say, and I’ll totes turn it into stuff that sounds good.”
“Yes,” nodded Lex curtly.
“Because it’d be a really, really bad idea if you tried to do this by yourself.”
“I’m aware of that,” he huffed, glancing at her irritably.
“I mean, you sorta screwed up the whole thing with Garden Gate in a major way, and Spit Polish wasn’t much better, plus you did kinda do a bad job with letting the cat outta the bag about what happened to Cloudbank and the others, not to mention that you never really told everyone what the deal was with Block Party, and-”
“Sonata!” snapped Lex, stopping in place as he turned to look at her sharply, jaw clenched in irritation. For a moment he was ready to lambaste her for rubbing his nose in his previous failures, but his ire fell away an instant later, and he closed his eyes for a second as he let out a slow breath. “We’ll do this the way we usually do,” he confirmed. “I’ll speak, and you translate it into whatever you think is both accurate and palatable.”
Sitting up on her haunches and clapping her fore-hooves together, Sonata gave him a toothy grin. “Right!” she cheered. “Accurate and palpable are my middle names!”
“The word is…nevermind,” sighed Lex. Turning, he continued toward the center of camp, Sonata walking beside him happily.
Despite the relative brevity of the distance, Lex was already feeling winded by the time they approached their destination, his body aching all over. Although the explosion that had destroyed the scroll had been extremely localized, with only the very edge of it catching him, he knew that it had exacerbated his current condition. But right now he didn’t have the luxury of letting that impede him, despite the fact that he had to fight down a grunt of effort with each step he took. Refusing to think about what this meant with regard to his fighting the undead ponies that were likely already on their way here, he instead looked toward the crowd.
Sonata had indeed managed to gather almost everypony together. Although he could see stragglers still coming to join the crowd from every direction, the sheer number of ponies that were already there was considerable. It was impressive that she’d managed to gather so many of the camp ponies together so quickly…then again, considering what she’d just outlined about how he’d provided these ponies with so little information about what had been happening, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they were hungry for answers.
“I made sure to get everything ready. See?” bragged Sonata, her expression making it obvious that she was exceptionally pleased with herself as she waved a hoof toward the crowd. “I totes remembered that you wanted a ring of fires around everypony, so check it out!” She nodded toward where small campfires – most of them little more than makeshift braziers composed of bowls or buckets with a few burning sticks in them – had been set along the ground at various intervals in a loose circle.
Lex gave a grunt of acknowledgment, not bothering to inform her that he’d been envisioning a single, unbroken ring of fire surrounding the camp ponies on all sides to act as a final barrier between themselves and the ghouls. In hindsight, that had been unrealistic anyway; such a thing would require massive amounts of fuel, and that simply wouldn’t be possible in the little amount of time they had. Worse, there was no indication that the ponies along the outer edge of the group – at least from what he could see – were armed. That was likewise unsurprising, since there were no real weapons to speak of in the camp that he knew about, but it was still disheartening. At the very least, it looked as though the edge of the crowd was formed by healthier ponies, but there was no way to verify that impression…not that it mattered anyway, he knew. With no weapons and no defenses, the composition of the group would be meaningless anyway. One way or another they’d all be slaughtered. The realization of just how helpless and exposed these ponies were was enough to make his stomach clench.
For her part, Sonata pointed off to the side, not even slightly daunted by his apparent lack of a reaction. “Plus, get a load of these! Boxes!” She said that last word in a voice that was practically gushing with enthusiasm, as though she couldn’t get over her excitement at having boxes there. “This way we’ll have something to stand on so everypony can see us! I brought them here ahead of time. Pretty smart, huh?”
Lex paused, not so much to consider her question – he wasn’t sure if it was rhetorical or not – but because he was rapidly reaching the limit of his suspension of disbelief over how she could be so positive in the face of what was about to happen. Normally, he would have suppressed his interest, at least until a more appropriate time, but at the moment he found that he couldn’t hold back his curiosity. “Are you really so unconcerned about the danger everypony here is in?” he asked abruptly.
She tilted her head slightly, her smile turning into an amused scoff. “What, the ghouls?” she snorted, the very picture of nonchalance. “Are you kidding me? We’ve dealt with stuff a bajillion times worse than that. I mean, yeah, you made it sound like there’s going to be a lot of them, but so what? You’re you, and I’m me, and we’re totes gonna fight them together, which means we’re gonna kick their flanks all over the place and look good doing it!” She went over to grab one of the boxes then, planting it right in front of the crowd, who started to murmur as they realized something was about to happen. Oblivious, Sonata looked at him as she went to fetch another one. “So yeah, I’m, like, not worried at all. For realsies. So, let’s give these ponies a pep talk, go school some ghouls, and show everypony that we’re super-awesome heroes!” she grinned as she plunked the second box down beside the first.
Lex wasn’t sure if he should be horrified by her naiveté or… No, he decided silently. Horrified is the proper reaction.
Before he could say anything to her, however, Sonata jumped up on one of the boxes and turned to address the crowd. Taking a deep breath, she began to speak. “Everypony! Listen up, like, please!” she yelled, her voice projecting powerfully. A moment later the crowd’s speaking died down, all eyes turning toward her. Smiling at being the center of attention, she had to resist the urge to prance in place. This is gonna be so sweet! Things were finally getting back on track after all of the stuff that had happened!
“Thank you! Ahem… So, you’re probably all wondering why I’ve asked everyone to gather like this in the middle of the night. Well, I have a special treat for you! The pony in charge, Lex Legis, has a special announcement, presented by none other than me! He’s here right now, so everyone give him a big cheer!” Whooping that last word, she apparently didn’t register that her request earned no more than scattered applause and more than a few murmurs, instead turning to look at her boyfriend, beckoning him toward the box next to her. “C’mon Lex!”
Fighting down a grimace at her jovial tone, he paused just long enough to cast his whisper-spell, before climbing painfully on the box next to Sonata’s. Glancing at her eager expression, he turned his eyes toward the crowd, noting that they didn’t share her excitement. Quite the contrary, more than a few looked perturbed while others seemed confused or suspicious, and a minority looked upset for some reason. Normally he wouldn’t have cared in the slightest, but right now the cold reception made him think back to the list of his communication failures that Sonata had so recently articulated, and he felt bitterness welling up inside of him, suddenly regretting having agreed to this. “This was a mistake,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t-”
But he didn’t have a chance to finish as Sonata nuzzled him, the open display of affection causing him to go rigid in self-consciousness, his faltering confidence momentarily forgotten, and sending a murmur through the crowd. “Don’t worry about them,” whispered Sonata warmly. “Just say what’s in your heart. I’ll do the rest.”
Lex tried to figure out what that meant, but between the exhaustion of his recent activities, the resurgent bitterness he felt at not knowing what he was supposed to say, the embarrassment of Sonata being so amorous toward him in front of so many people, and the mounting anxiety of the imminent disaster facing everyone, it was all suddenly too much. The maelstrom of emotions that flared up in him then was enough to make a reasoned evaluation impossible, and instead he whispered the first thing that came to mind. “I let them down.”
Sonata blinked, not having expected that. “Huh?”
“I let them down,” he whispered again, turning to face the crowd, forcing his face to remain stoic. If she wanted what was “in his heart,” and that’s what she and everypony else would get. “Cloudbank. Thermal Draft. C. Shells. Sandbar. Turbo. Block Party. Pillowcase.” He recited their names mournfully as he looked out over the crowd, refusing to make eye contact with anyone.
“I should have saved them.”
Sonata manages to get Lex to speak about his feelings, but will she be able to translate this into something that everypony will appreciate?
Meanwhile, the ghouls are growing ever-closer!
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Sonata's confidence in Lex's brilliance while well intentioned, likely hurt almost as much as the tulpa's verbal assaults to Lex, Or more considering how guilty he feels about his failings, which Sonata listed out. 'Ouch' would be an understatement.
No weapons, no armor, exhausted and not to mention no plan that could be acted upon with such a short time, Lex is up a creek without a paddle and he's forced to face that fact and his failings at the same time. If he's not at his breaking point, it feels like he's awfully close here.
Hopefully Sonata can pull him back from the brink though she'll need to deal with the gathered crowd on her own first before they catch on.
Lex is up the creek without a paddle where teh creek is on fire, approaching a waterfall, with a pyroclastic flow approaching from one side and an avalanch from the other.
And the natural response in these conditions is to stampede and let the weak be used as distrctions.
Lex tries to use teh power in th gem and gets slapped down, decrying his deity as why they forsake him in time of need when going directly against her demand, never mind word?
As Gods usually go.
Sodd em.
8896012
Your version of Lex being up the creek made me laugh. Thanks for that.
Though I doubt Lex would ever allow anyone to be used as decoys. It'd be more likely he'd serve as the distraction if it would save an innocent life...well, an innocent pony life.
8895655 I suspect that you're right that admiration that he doesn't feel that he's earned is just as painful - maybe even more painful - to Lex than scorn. As someone who's set extremely high standards for himself as a way of (over)compensating for a poor self-image, not living up to them likely hurts him dearly. That would certainly explain why he tends to fly into a rage at the prospect of failure, and is constantly thinking more about what he hasn't accomplished than what he has.
Of course, here the stakes are somewhat higher than that, as they're on the brink of disaster without any apparent way of averting, avoiding, or defeating it. As of right now, Lex has forty-five minutes to come up with a way to save everypony, which would be difficult enough if he were in tip-top mental and physical shape. Given that he's in neither, this has gone from "a very tall order" to "appears hopeless."
But he's been in situations like that before and found a way out. Will he be able to figure one out this time?
8896012 Heh, that does seem like an apt description of the situation. Maybe a possible solution would be to leap from the boat as it goes over the falls, watching the other disasters smash it as you grab onto the legs of a passing condor and let it carry you to safety? ...though I'm not sure how to translate that allegory back to what's happening in the story.
8896541
I blame Discovery Family for leaking that episode.
wow so Lex is baring his sole, this is going to be a vary good speech.
8896740 I suspect that's a typo on your part, but it's still a rather Sonata-like joke all the same!
That said, yeah...this might be a make-or-break moment as far as Lex's authority over everypony else goes.
8896749
yep i live for typos. i am extremely dyslexic.
8894917
I guess it depends on the definition of "imminent."
Yup, that's a point in favor of not-novaing, not enough lag for the leaders to notice missing patrols.
Then maybe I should have said fully nomadic? I haven't ever read anything mentioning a farm for humanoids, though presumably they are stretching their meat diet by scavenging plants in the area.
I don't know if that's needed. I mean, human tribes have survived before the invention of agriculture, let alone trade.
That's combat prowess, I think that's different from military prowess (unless they are putting points in Professions Soldier). You can be a 15th level barbarian but not know how to fight effectively in medium to large groups, follow orders, obey contingency plans, hold fire until the enemy walks into an ambush, etc.
Man, I've read every book on Menzo from the Drizz't series, and the 6 part rebirth of the Spider Queen. The city is definitely in a state of constant low-grade warfare. Heck, Elaine Cunningham had a piece in her story about one of the Baenre daughters on how drow would do this weird dance thing before mating, since that was the only way to make sure a lover wasn't sneaking a dagger up on you.
In golarion you kind of do though, perhaps that's what those giant monsters are usually eating, orc for breakfast, goblin for lunch, troglodyte for dinner.
That a larger issue of, how do they sustain a breedable population then? That and if you look at an encounter table, probability of result, you're going to see half the keystone species in the area cross your path in a given day.
Based on the recent stuff, the environment is supposed to be deadlier their than it is on the surface. And powerful monsters are far more frequent than on the surface, thanks to shenanigans like the Vaults of Orv.
Neutral Evil characters are often loners who are somewhat more likely to kill others on sight is a fair statement, though if you strip out rational qualifiers it's definitely simplistic. And yes, I think you can give a higher probability on alignment alone.
Outside of PC adventure parties, I would say potions are pretty ubiquitous, wands less so. That matters for AoO reasons in this case.
Exactly! If PCs would let their allies die, then monsters gain no benefit from doing extra attacks so that an enemy is killed, since a PC would not revive them anyway. But since a PC will lose actions and rounds trying to revive their unconscious friend means that a monster can let an unconscious PC bleed out, then wait for an ally to approach and start attacking while the ally tries to pour a healing potion down the unconscious enemies throat, then get an AoO or just attack prone the newly-revived, barely conscious enemy.
It's usually 2-3 rounds, especially if you're healing. How long do fights usually last for you? I've found most combats last 3-6 rounds, so if a PC drops on round 3, they probably won't get back into the fight until round 6. (Obviously that's different if you have a channeling cleric). A smart move if you can't channel is to just stabilize the ally, then keep going.
The few times I've been in TPKs, it usually started with a PC dying around round 2 or 3, then key party members breaking off the attack to heal them, and by the time they are able to get their ally revived they drop as well, then the barely-healed PC drops again from multiple attacks, and before you know it either everyone is dead or the lone support character in the far back runs off to tell the tale.
When you run groups of intelligent monsters without a healer, do they carry healing potions? If so, do you ever have your frontline fighter monster break off his attacks to retreat and heal up another monster? Probably not, because it's bad tactics.
Look, if you want to say that orc bloodlust or whatever monster is fighting means they loathe their enemy and want to kill off their foes immediately because they are enraged then go for it, I'm just telling you that you are actually making the fights easier for your surviving players by relieving them of the risk and duty of performing in-combat revival.
I wouldn't say un-optimized, though I would say that if the enemy is using this magic, he should be able to actually join in the fight then and there. Also the latter two methods probably don't count as seeing them directly.
I think it would be pretty hard to tell PC blood apart from your own orcs blood, unless you are saying the PCs got cut up by a trap in a different room.
That works. A good side tip for a mid-level divine caster is to just blow a lesser restoration that morning and then they can stay up with no penalty!
There's also this "The 10-foot-radius visual requires the target to move in order to provide a clear idea of the layout of the destination, and the spell doesn’t directly indicate the location. The PCs must use contextual clues to figure this out, unless they already know where the target is." Besides teleport, unless the PCs are in a 10 foot radius of some key feature you recognize, you can't send your minions out to find them. "Looks like they are in a clearing with some rocks" is not that helpful unless they sleep near that one clearing with the weird-shaped rock. If you want to tell your entire army to spend all night sweeping the forest because you recognize the terrain type of the 10-foot radius, that could work.
Oh, I was going for the opposite, get as many enemies in place as possible, all buffed. The only reason the leader sends them on ahead is so they can tank for him while he casts spells, which Pathfinder does a pretty good job of representing, provided has enough minions to block corridors.
My experience is that usually a caster will have light prepared, though it sounds like your players may be too relaxed to have that memorized.
Unless they are in the same room, dungeons tend to have poor lines of sight between rooms. Are all the denizens in the front room at once? That could be a smart tactic, provided there's room, but often there isn't. If not, many dungeon denizens are going to be relying on hearing to know when the PCs are there. (Unless they have extra scrolls for Arcane Eye or something.)
Yeah, the current guy in the tribe being told by his chief he better make a fantastic axe tomorrow or he's going to be dead.
Not enough difference between humanoids and humans for this to be relevant most of the time, compared to numbers differences. For more powerful races, that's getting into "why don't dragons have their own country" syndrome, a whole different can of worms. I can see the point about class levels, it makes sense. And yet we rarely hear about that in lore. Perhaps the idea is that high level individuals are a function of population. There was an old 2E thing that had something like 1 2nd level for ever 100 commoners, and like 1 19th level for every 50 million people or something. If that's the case, the nation with the highest population is going to have the most powerful and numerous heroes.
I wouldn't say they don't count, just that they are more anomalous than all the various humanoid tribes with similar social structure to each other, and that their constant low-grade warfare seems to be held in check only by the divine will of Lolth.
Who do you think has more trade, Abyssal cities or Dis?
That's from reading the Campaign Setting Belkzen.
I think we're coming to a values-difference, we both recognize the gap between the lore and the mechanics, the difference is I love the lore and think the mechanics should be made to fit it, you prefer the mechanics and think the lore should be changed to fit it.
I have to admit that's fair, as much as I love Golarion. Golarion was built to fit every type of adventuring setting or theme you could want, and then attempts were made to reverse-engineer those settings into logical existence. Oerth was made from building out from cities to nations to eventually the world. It's got a lot more verisimilitude as a result, at the cost of less diversity of settings and themes.
So here's how I think that's supposed to work. You got the crossbow pointed at the door, but you don't know I am right outside right? I'd say you readying like that means you're actively making Perception checks. You almost certainly Perceive me turning the handle, and you get a surprise round where you shoot me as I open the door. If you don't perceive me and my initiative beat yours, the idea is that I opened the door and you weren't able to react fast enough to shoot me, in terms of actually firing the bolt.
I think in my experience, it usually seems like when we come upon a dungeon, it is because of a series of scripted events, but that's probably my experience with society play in particular. In society, even more than in APs, most of the time if you are sent in to a dungeon it is because you tracked an enemy to that lair, or an NPC party of pathfinders went in there 2 days ago and didn't come out.
Though I will admit there does seem to be more longing for less scripted play in pathfinder. Everyone seems to say Kingmaker is the best AP, but they don't write anymore like it.
Ooooh, me too! I always say, if you're in a fair fight then you know you screwed up.
Oh, if only there was some sort of modified d20 game system with a huge emphasis on customizability, requiring lots of GM and player trust..... why, it might just Eclipse lesser systems! Sorry. But seriously I think I'm understanding a bit more why you love that system so much. If you can get the right group of people to work with it, it lets players control their characters to an unprecedented degree, and GMs control the world to an unprecedented degree.
Typed the last comment before I read this paragraph, so I thought I'd leave it in.
That's an interesting point, and a good one. Who doesn't want to be able to throw the system under the bus when they get complaints about their slumber-witch?
Not just contemporaries, Lovecraft went around organizing all the other horror/sci fi writers of his time to deliberately write in each others settings frequently. It's why Conan the Barbarian takes place in the Lovecraft setting.
8897337
Fair enough, since the exact measurement that constitutes that particular modifier is going to vary for everyone, but the overall point remains: knowing ahead of time that there's going to be an attack "very soon" will let you prepare yourself better than if you didn't.
As a note, patrols are generally something you only need to send to areas that are remote or otherwise unable to viewed from afar; otherwise you have lookouts instead. The point being that "patrols" are going to be comparatively isolated, and presuming that the patrolled area in question isn't a complete bottleneck or some other enclosed area (and sometimes even then), you might be able to just avoid them rather than fighting them.
Well, fully nomadic tends to conjure up the idea that they're literally not treading over the same ground twice. That is, that they're literally just traveling to new areas all of the time. That's something of a problem, because popularly orcs and other evil humanoids have regions/territory that are recognized as being where they dwell, whether it's Belkzen, the Pomarj, Mordor, etc. So they're pretty much going to be seminomadic by nature.
Now, there's certainly scant mention of them engaging in any sort of agricultural practices, and I'd venture that they're not nearly as advanced as human and demihuman civilizations with regard to what they do practice in that area. However, my suspicion with regard to why that's never mentioned is because, quite simply, it's considered prosaic enough that it barely comes up in most game-related materials. Issues of infrastructure are considered to be boring, which sets them in stark contrast to what most fantasy novels and especially RPGs want to evoke. It's why so many dungeons don't bother to include a latrine in the floor-plan (though some do), or why there are no rules about feeling itchy and uncomfortable if you don't bathe or change your clothes. That doesn't mean that such things aren't presumed, however.
Again, that requires that such groups be kept to extremely small numbers, or continually be on the move. This doesn't work for humanoids as popularly depicted, which is that they're generally hordes and are known for their fecundity.
The problem is that, as mentioned before, the d20 System invalidates a lot of those issues. It's why we've never gotten a mass combat system that's been widely adopted (including the one from Kingmaker/Ultimate Campaign). A fairly undisciplined horde of 15th-level barbarians will absolutely destroy a group of 1st-level warriors one hundred times their number, even if they're all human, if we compare their character statistics. Issues of military strategy and tactics don't really come into it very much unless the two sides are relatively equal, and even then we run into the aforementioned problems of logistics (e.g. not having enough food) playing a very small overall role in fighting ability.
I've read most of them too, and I suspect we're having disagreements as to what constitutes "low-grade warfare." While there's absolutely a pervasive atmosphere and backstabbing, that stops short of being outright anarchy or of having everyone kill everyone else. Noble houses conduct attacks on each other in quick, decisive strikes, and don't engulf the entire city or disrupt (much) in the way of trade. Murders will happen in back alleys, but they won't spill over into open fighting in the streets.
The problem with this is that we know that sapience tends to screw with the Lotka-Volterra equation that showcases the predator-prey dynamic, since at that point the "prey animals" can start fighting back with something that approaches success. I say "something that approaches success" rather than "success" or "complete success" because those don't really matter. The ratio of (apex) predators to prey, remember, is that the prey have to outnumber the predators massively in order to maintain their ecological relationships, otherwise the predators quickly exhaust their food source. But that means if the prey, who outnumber the predators massively, can start fighting back with any sort of effectiveness, then they'll quickly turn the predators' numbers from "small" to "nonexistent," since they'll be able to make feeding a dangerous enough exercise to knock their numbers below a stable breeding threshold.
This means that there needs to be a massive imbalance between humanoids and whatever preys upon them, in terms of both power and numbers. But again, we know that sapience throws that wildly out of whack, since cognition means that there are all kinds of ways to avoid or resist predation...and that's before you get into how sapient beings can level up in d20 universes, allowing them to increase their personal power drastically. Throw in higher breeding rates, and that means that if some local hero/warlord/champion/etc. succeeds in killing off some "natural" predator, then the humanoids will effectively be able to breed unchecked unless and until some other monster that eats them moves into the area.
Again, this is the sort of issue that the game world doesn't really bother to model, and you can see why its plausibility collapses in fairly short order once you start poking at the underlying logic (and find out that there isn't very much).
Ironically, the fact that there are so many monsters now means that - even if we take away ones that aren't part of a terrestrial ecology (i.e. the constructs, undead, outsiders, etc.) - so many remain that we rarely see the less-popular ones in printed materials, suggesting that they're very rare anyway, so that works for keeping their numbers believably low. The problem there, as you noted, is that this makes issues of finding breeding partners problematic. There are ways around this (such as if they go on long migrations to find a mating ground, or have an extremely long lifespan which places less pressure on them to have large numbers of children), but for the most part the issue of given creatures being apparently the only examples of their kind in a given region is left unaddressed, which isn't really a surprise.
Of course, once again, sapient species are less burdened by this problem, since they can logically comprehend it and try to go looking for a mate. (That, and the d20 System seems to allow for insane amounts of crossbreeding.)
That may be what they say, but that doesn't seem to actually be the case when you look at it. The number of monsters that dwell on the surface is at least comparable to what's underground, and the underground only seems to have a few areas that are inherently deadly to live in. For the most part, you have to deal with all sorts of creatures no matter where you live; the Underdark/Darklands are only deadly for humans due to being dark, desolate of other humans/demihumans, and simply not to the standards that most people consider to be livable.
I disagree. You can have plenty of Neutral Evil characters who live in cities and aren't murders or psychopaths; quite the contrary, many of them are going to be corrupt guards, simple thieves, con men, and other unsavory elements who nevertheless aren't going to want to live alone nor simply murder anyone who looks at them wrong. Alignment, by itself, doesn't tell you how brave they are, what interests they have, what connections they'll make, etc.
Either way, healing magic can be taken for granted as being present with regard to any group that engages in violence. Hence, it makes perfect sense to make someone "dead" rather than "mostly dead," lest they be healed back up to fighting ability.
Again, I don't think that what you're outlining here works. I said in my previous post that I don't find it plausible that PCs would be so considered with combat efficiency that they'd ignore another PC who'd been dropped to negative hit points.
With regard to the outline you posted above, the "benefit" is that the monsters have assured that a downed foe stays down; it's not about what you gain so much as it is with assuring that what you've accomplished won't be undone. Likewise, the idea of "wait for an ally to approach" engages in the very same inefficiency that you're saying characters wouldn't plausibly partake in, since they'd have to give up an action to just stand there, waiting for the PCs to approach, and hope that they're not going to used any ranged healing such as channeled energy. Likewise, attacking an unconscious creature is more effective than attacking a conscious creature, since a conscious creature will have a much better AC bonus, even with the -4 penalty for being prone.
I'm having a hard time how you get to thinking that it takes three rounds for a downed character to get back in the fight. The only thing I can think of is that you're presuming that the healer acts one round later (to draw a healing item and move), heals on the second round and has the character stand up and pick up their weapon, and then finally takes combat actions in the third round. But that's the absolute maximum, and essentially hinges on, as you noted, no other sort of healing being available. It's also predicated on the idea of fights being short as a rule, which I don't find to be true. Some fights are short, certainly, but I find that any combat encounter that takes place against 1) foes with numbers equal to at least half of the PCs, who are 2) of sufficient power to challenge them (which admittedly usually means skewing upward against foes with CRs higher than their level by a few points), tends to last longer.
(I suspect you'll find throwing multiple higher-CR creatures against the party to be unusual, but this gets into a tangent of mine about what CRs actually measure, and issues of encounter frequency.)
However, all of this misses the wider point: it presumes a fetishized take on combat efficiency that really only happens in spreadsheets and online theory-crafting. Most of the time, when a PC is near death the player in question will want and expect the others to save their character, which they've invested so much time and effort into reaching that point. And the other PCs will usually recognize that and try to get them out of danger quickly, rather than take the chance that the NPCs are also operating on damage-per-second maximization plans and healing efficiency calculations. The game might use a mathematical engine, but that doesn't dictate the course of play despite what a lot of people online seem to think.
This sounds like your PCs didn't have any conception of retreating until only one person was left. It also sounds like they were going to die anyway, since the amount of damage they were taking was enough to drop them in one or two rounds per PC. You don't like Armor Class value while healing, after all, so if they were being killed off that quickly it's somewhat difficult to presume that they would have survived if they'd all focused more on attacking. Unless they were suffering from very bad luck (or rather, their enemies were rolling spectacularly well, which does happen sometimes), anything that could drop them all that fast was probably a TPK waiting to happen. (Or, again, sometimes you just get a streak of very bad rolls in a row.)
The problem with this comparison is that we were talking about PCs before, who have a metagame interest in their characters which makes them a poor comparison for most NPCs. NPCs, by that same metagame stance, don't receive that level of consideration, which is why so many GMs have no problem with them dying in droves, often stupidly. Having them slaughter the PCs might very well be possible with smart tactics on their part, but most GMs wouldn't exactly call that a victory. That said, if you're playing a party of intelligent monsters, it's even worse tactics not to designate some sort of dedicated healer up-front, or retreat when things look bad.
Again, I don't believe that to be the case; it's smart tactics for a monster to finish off a downed character, because even if in-combat healing is a tactically inefficient option, it's still a strategically-sound one. The tactical encounter might be the atomic unit of D&D/d20 combat, but when you look at it in isolation you can lose sight of the larger picture, which is that encounters typically take place sequentially as part of a larger adventure. In that case, killing your enemies is something that assures that they're worn down over time, since they can't easily heal up between encounters. Presuming that your NPCs are intent on surviving from one encounter to the next, that's a win, since that means that next time things will be easier and you won't be fighting the same enemies over and over. That's not something that gets taken into account if you hyper-focus on each combat encounter as its own thing.
I'd say that it does count as seeing them directly, since they're personally observing them rather than hearing about them secondhand. Likewise, I don't find it implausible that the character wouldn't want to join the battle directly, since they might not have much in the way of combat-focused spells prepared (the place wasn't expecting an attack, remember).
On the other hand, when your blonde elf left some hairs on the ground after a glancing blow from a sword, that's probably going to pretty obviously not belong to any of the local goblins.
Even then, that's only if they fail the incredibly modest save that's called for. It's entirely plausible that a mid-level character with a good Fort save could stay awake for something like a week without magical assistance and with no penalties! Of course, given that such a character could fall off a hundred-foot cliff and survive, is that really so implausible?
If you're taking the uses beyond those of figuring out half of what you need for teleporting there (i.e. knowing where the destination is and being able to visualize it), then yes, scrying does drop in value in terms of figuring out your surroundings, at least insofar as direct observation goes. While you might get lucky and see some sort of identifying mark, that's not really the purpose of the spell in that case; the purpose is to see what they're doing. It's not a very good tracking spell, but I don't think that's really its purpose. It's more about spying on someone than pinpointing their location. If you just want to run down where someone went, that's a rather modest Survival check, or using something like trace teleport if they used magic to come and go.
Which, again, is why Pathfinder doesn't do a good job of modeling that tactics that even lay people in the real world know to take for granted. As it is, you only need people to "tank" for you while you cast spells so that you can cast more of them, rather than worrying about being disrupted. Given that casting defensively is such a modest check (and now skill-free), you can cast a spell that takes less than a full-round with little fear of it being interrupted.
The thing is, if they have an ioun torch then there's little reason for them to bother preparing that particular cantrip, paticularly if enemies never bother to try and snuff it out.
The context you were discussing was someone casting summon monster I and then running away. I'm saying that if they wanted to do that where it would be at all meaningful, they'd want to have line of effect to place the summoned monster amidst the monsters, in which case there's probably also going to be line of sight between them as well.
The point being that nothing in the Steel Eater entry suggests that they're the only ones making items, just that they're the ones making the best.
That depends on the humanoids in question; having two (gnolls) or three (bugbears) represents a huge jump over your average level 1 commoner, to the point where you an reliably say who will win in an engagement between an equal number of by-the-book human commoners versus by-the-book gnolls or bugbears. Likewise, class levels throw those off even more (though again, racial limits on classes and class levels helped, there...certainly, population tables that are more expansive than individual cities and towns would also be useful in that regard).
Dragons aren't a good point of comparison though, because the underlying presumption of "like humans unless told otherwise" is weaker. Dragons are taken to be loners who have alien urges (e.g. sleep on your money) and operate on timescales far and away different from humans. Even things like how long they sleep or how often they have to eat are exceptionally different, and this extends to their psychology and so in turn to their society.
Except I'm positing that it isn't really that much of an anomaly. I suspect that most large-scale humanoid settlements of Chaotic Evil humanoids operate in a similar manner, albeit with the details being notably different since they have less in the way of actual culture than other societies.
There's no way of knowing, particularly since Dis seems to be the only major trading city in Hell (I think there's another on Stygia, but I'd have to double-check), whereas the Abyss arguably has more than one. That, and there's no metric that measures this at all, unless you want to start reading into things like purchase limits in settlement stat blocks. But the point is, the Abyss still has those, and demons are at least as Chaotic Evil as orcs, if not more.
Right, which is campaign-specific, and so of limited use when discussing generalities.
I'm not sure I agree, but I'm willing to stipulate to that for now, if for no other reason than changing the lore is not only easier to do than rewriting the mechanics, but strikes me as largely mutable anyway, since so much of it is dependent on what world you're playing in.
Again, that's a fair way of phrasing it, though I don't think that Oerth - or rather, the Flanaess - is too terribly lacking in setting diversity. Admittedly, it doesn't have an Egyptian-themed area, a Gothic-themed area, and a few others, but for the most part it handles your standard high-fantasy setting well enough (and places like that are lingering on the edges of the known world, albeit with virtually no fleshing out whatsoever). To my mind Golarion, in trying to be everything, became fairly generic, regardless of the history they add in their myriad books.
So you're saying that you just wouldn't get to ready an action outside of initiative? Like, at all? Because its fairly clear that if you prepare to fire at whoever opens the door, you've got your finger on the trigger and are going to squeeze it when it opens, regardless of who comes through. You might still miss, but that's what the attack roll is for. That, and I'm not sure that surprise would come into play there, since someone watching the door for when someone comes in isn't really going to be surprised when it opens.
This gets back to what I said before about how there's an entire alternate play-style that's been largely banished from the "new school" of play, to the point where episodic adventuring, rather than engaging in a single grand campaign, has become the default narrative. It's now more Lord of the Rings and less "here's this week's plot hook." I can understand why that happened, and I appreciate a grand narrative some of the time, but there's a lot that's lost when that's pretty much all we see, and I don't just mean issues where the dungeons are on the alert because the story has you going up against them like the Untouchables versus the mob. Kingmaker was the closest they came to allowing for a self-directed, sandbox-style game, and they had to invent a whole new series of rules to pull it off!
Yeah, I enjoy that sort of thing too, though largely in terms of issues of strategy rather than combat-based tactics.
That's exactly right. I mean, even the author has admitted that if you A) sit down and use everything in the book with no restrictions, and B) are trying to just build around particular mechanics, then you can make a horribly broken (i.e. overpowered, in some area) character very easily. But everything shouldn't be available from the get-go; the GM should be tailoring the rules - in terms of what's allowed and how the allowed mechanics can be customized - for the campaign, whereas the players should be trying to build a particular character concept, rather than "win" or otherwise leverage mechanics. Idea, rather than effectiveness, is the primary factor.
Well, I'm glad you understood what I was saying either way.
Yeah, and that's a shame, since that point of view has gone mainstream among Pathfinder players, at least according to what I've seen online (which might be part of the problem). The idea of "What's wrong with leveraging absolutely everything I can? I'm just trying to be effective! It's the rules' fault for leaving an exploit open!" is one that makes me shake my head in sadness. To be fair, some of that is true - bad rules and smart character-construction are a player's prerogative - but like all things, it can be taken too far (and of course, there's no real agreement or measurement for figuring out where "too far" is).
It wasn't so much encouragement as it was just them writing to each other and freely borrowing from each other, but yeah, that's what I meant.
Don't worry, we'll get there eventually (I hope).
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Here's a thought. There's a common refrain in the Underdark/Darklands that the magical radiation is able to feed plants, which sustains the ecosystem. I've certainly seen caverns full of fungi right next to humanoid tribes. With that kind of supernatural assistance, even goblins could manage a sustainable source of produce by just grabbing fungi from the fast-growing fungi cave when they are hungry.
Actually, that's a good point, especially since a really primitive farm probably doubles as a latrine, since that's where they're getting their fertilizer.
Oh mass combat rules, may your troops be buried deeply and forgotten about soon.
I'm pretty sure from earlier books it was implied that one of the 60-70 houses was openly raiding another one almost every night (for a given value of night in the city). People stand on their balconies and watch for entertainment.
I remember plenty of times some drow would just stab someone out in the street because he accidentally stepped on a spider. Heck, one of my favorite scenes in that city was in Dissolution, where Pharaun and Ryld stop by the equivalent of the hot dog stand, Pharaun says the food is of poor quality, and immediately guesses that the goblin running it must have murdered the previous owner. Then they go to the apartment complex where some of the tenants have realized someone else is sick and are planning to murder her ASAP to get her stuff.
comparing both sapient and non-sapient carnivores with available meat calories, there's definitely too much of the former for the latter. That said, like you say, this is such a deeply problematic rabbit hole we would probably never be able to theory-craft our way out of it.
Hehe, sheep-dragons!
There are large lifeless areas in the underground, but I think the idea is that the average CR of the monsters you do meet is significantly higher, at least in the middle or lower levels, than in most of the areas on the surface.
Yes, this is all true. That's why I meant those with that alignment had a likelier tendency than other alignments, not that they were always going to do that, or even more likely than not to do that.
Most NE and even CE people are not going to kill you on sight, but most of the people who will kill you on sight are NE or CE.
Of course, if you exclude out all the NE and CE people who are fit to live in cities and go through only NE and CE characters who also live as hermits near orc tribes... that's combining alignment with their environment, living connections, and likely interests, I would wager more than half of those people would kill you on sight if they felt like it.
If you see a holy symbol, it's not a good tactic but if someone is going to channel they almost always have a holy symbol visible. And most of the time you don't have to choose between guarding a dying foe and attacking a new one, unless you are in a large room where other enemies are not nearby and can easily move around you to reach their comrade. Often the next nearest foe is person who would be pouring a potion out, so you can 5-foot between them and their friend to attack them, get an AOp when they move, then stand next to their friend attacking the healer and getting an AOp when the healed guy tries to stand up that will probably drop them right back down.
Have you counted rounds recently? I was shocked when I read that most fights last 3-4 rounds on the messageboards, but then I started paying attention and counting rounds, and I've found in society at least that is usually true. (APs tend to be more like 5-6 rounds).
Round 1 Enemy drops character. If Ally's initiative is first they wait for Round 2, otherwise they move and pull out a healing item. Round 2 if Ally's initiative is ahead of character they move and pull a healing item, otherwise they can use their wand as a standard or their potion as full-round action. Round 3 the character is revived, either because their ally acted first and their healing went off on round 3, or they go first and they lost their actions until round 3. In Round 3 they grab their weapon and attempt to stand up. In Round 4 they are back in the fight with a handful of hitpoints. During this ally has taken at least 2 attacks, possibly dropping them as well, probably with an AOp in there (especially if you are using higher CR monsters to melee support characters), and then probably an AOp on the standing up character that quite possibly drops him back down.
This isn't theory crafting for me, I'm playing in a melee-heavy campaign on the slow experience track, and we're often incredibly inefficient because half our party is unconscious and the other half is reviving the first half. Led to a Party Wipe that was only averted because we sent the well-trained animal companion to a higher-level NPC guarding the entrance to rescue our butts. A similar thing almost happened at the next fight. I've started getting people with divine spells to just memorize stabilize, and it's made us much more effective.
Right, the smart NPCs can force the PCs into an emotional action to help them win the fight. And if your NPCs are also sentimental over practical, then its fair for the PCs to use that against them.
Usually higher CR monsters with a fair amount of hit points and lots of attacks, not too much AC, if we'd focused fire and revived after the fight it would have gone a lot smoother.
Maybe, but isn't this about NPCs fearing they are going to die right now, and doing everything they can just to survive this encounter?
Eh, that Survival's probably going to average over 20 if they stay on stone and flee at night, so hopefully they run through some mud on the way out. If you've got a dedicated range on the hunting patrol with a really solid Survival modifier, you're golden. Otherwise using it to track people can get tricky. And Trace Teleport is a Sor/Wiz 5 that almost never works unless you can cast it within a minute of the Teleport. The spellcaster better have that scroll on their person and be pretty close-by when the PCs flee.
Aren't your players readying attacks on spellcasters?
Yup. Often I've found is that characters have light ready because they never bothered switching out the cantrips on their sheets.
That would make sense for an actual attack, I meant using summon monster if an opening room to set off perimeter alarms/traps.
It's like a microcosm of our entire thing with dungeons here. You can ready things and be alert enough to act before the triggering action in the next 6 seconds, sure. In the next 6 hours, even if you're standing there putting 4 pounds on a 5 pound trigger, I think there's still a chance someone could swing that door open and surprise you. If you're not surprised, and you know exactly when they will open the door, that is different, that's when action should go into rounds.
Yes, that's it exactly!
This is true, and I also wish it wasn't. I'm kind of tired of saving the world all the time! I'd love to be able to say "this week I want to go travel to the Fangwood forest, I hear there's some interesting monsters there." But ever GM I know either wants to run APs, or wants to run their own tightly-plotted homebrew adventure. To be fair, sandboxing for players creates a lot more work for GMs, which is why I think we've been trending the way you pointed out. Sometimes when we're exploring the dungeon and there are like 8 rooms we could explore, I'll just ask the GM what is the next one on the list so he doesn't have to flip back and forth.
It's why I'm so psyched for the Kingmaker video game coming out soon!
My general guidelines are if the other players don't feel like their getting to do their "fare share," then I know I'm taking it too far. I have actually run a slumber witch through, Accursed Hex, Int Headband +6, the whole nine yards. What I did was follow 3 rules:
1)Never slumber the primary threat in the encounter
2)Never slumber a monster if they are the only active threat (ie, one monster fight or the only one conscious or awake).
3) If a player is about to perma-die, ignore #1 and #2.
Often I'd hang around misfortuning enemies from the back instead. everybody loves the misfortune guy, he doesn't steal the spotlight and makes sure the frontliners never get crit!
A recent thought occurred to me: Pathfinder 2nd Edition is going to have so much more nova-ing. Have you heard about the resonance system? It makes it so that after a few magical effects on a character, they need to start making progressively higher CHA checks or the healing has no effect. And worn magical items count towards the number of magical effects on a character. Say what you will about wands of CLW, they encourage parties to tackle many more encounters in a day than they otherwise would. I suspect many parties now will only adventure until they hit their "resonance limit," when a front line character will need to start making resonance checks to get healed, that's when it is time to camp for the night.
I love how Sonata is learning how she needs to manage Lex.
Sometime you gotta do a flash-forward to the stuff from Lex and Sonata's character sheets.
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Sure; I have absolutely no doubt that sort of thing is not uncommon. Heck, that passage about the Pomarj (on Greyhawk) flat-out mentioned exactly that being among the ways that the humanoids there sustain themselves. But keep in mind that this leaves them at the mercy of fate in terms of finding such a thing in the first place, instead of being able to choose where such things grow to begin with (and, of course, it leaves them at the mercy of anything else that affects the food supply as well, such as a disease that kills it, something burning or otherwise destroying it, a powerful predator taking it for itself, etc.). Even if we leave aside the verisimilitude issues of placing those things close enough to other people for the purposes of the humanoids coming into conflict with them, this still leaves them with Malthusian problems, since they can't control the rate of production either.
It's an overall example of some level of detail just not being considered worthwhile. And for what it's worth, I can appreciate that too. You don't need rules for when your character has to go to the bathroom, or make a check at random times to see if you trip over something. But if you want to get into actual world-building, and make a setting that runs on internally-consistent rules, then all of a sudden questions of that nature start to become more important.
That particular hill seems like one that will never be taken, no matter how often a boulder is pushed up it only to then roll back down again. Still, it's interesting to compare them.
That doesn't match with what I remember, but then again I haven't read the books in some time. That said, the issue was still one that was kept away from disrupting the city overly much. The city was a dangerous place, but not in the sense that it was a battlefield wherever you went.
Killing a spider is a matter of religion, in that doing so is justification for being tortured to death. But that's not emblematic of how things operate normally with regard to everything. The example about someone being sick, and therefore open to predation, is an example of the city being dangerous if you're not strong enough to protect yourself, but that doesn't mean that the city is engaged in constant internal warfare. The place still functions with regards to having merchants, inns, schools, social gatherings, etc. You just need to be watching your back at all times.
Yeah, even if you posit that the larger creatures spend a lot of time hibernating, there simply isn't enough food for the sheer masses of creatures out there, even if you scale their numbers way back. For that matter, most of those creatures shouldn't be able to move anyway thanks to the square-cube law, so there you go. Personally, I've always wondered if a lot of those creatures can simply eat basic matter such as dirt and derive some nutrition from it (I could swear I saw that written about dragons once somewhere, which ties nicely into how Spike eats gems).
That really is the epitome of the issue, isn't it?
Given the sheer number of creatures that can potentially (and often seem to) inhabit most d20 worlds, and the relative paucity of space underground compared to the surface or the oceans, I'm skeptical that there are any truly lifeless areas in the Underdark/Darklands, though not everywhere can be inhabited at once. Even then, those areas sound perfect for undead creatures that want to be left alone, such as the classical image of a lich acting as a solitary scholar. That said, I'm not sure the idea of "you mean higher CR monsters underground" is one that's played out anywhere. I'm not even sure how you'd compare that, except maybe by looking at different random encounter tables.
Well, even the whole "they're most of the killers" argument is iffy. Plenty of good-aligned creatures are going to be quick to kill you as well, the difference is that they'll be somewhat more discriminating about why that is. You won't find too many angels that are willing to just let a demon go, at least when it wanders into Heaven, for example. To say nothing of all sorts of creatures without sapience (having an Intelligence of 2 or less), who are still very deadly, including all sorts of animals, insects, plants, etc. which are very deadly to the PCs that encounter them. Which tells us that overall, alignment really doesn't decide that much about how someone's going to act, as it does why they're acting that way. Other issues, therefore, have a tendency to be just as important, if not more important.
This still contradicts what you mentioned earlier. Before, you said that most characters in a group wouldn't bother to heal a downed foe, because the fight wouldn't (typically) last long enough to make such a thing viable anyway. Then you posited that most monsters would hover around a downed character in order to try and get AoOs on anyone that did try to heal them (unless there's an obvious cleric there). Now, you're saying that there's no contradiction, because the quarters are (typically, again) going to be close enough that if someone does try to undergo the multi-round process of healing a downed character, the monsters will just be able to 5-foot over to take the incumbent AoOs anyway, and so they wouldn't really be hovering in the first place, if I'm understanding you correctly.
Presuming that I am, this is the sort of analysis that tends to happen more on message boards than in actual play, at least in my experience, due to its hyper-focus around combat efficiency and treating each singular encounter as something to be considered in isolation, rather than in any sort of larger context. Even if we posit that everything is happening as you say (i.e. short combats, tight spaces, no cleric, and the only healing available requires you to move->draw a potion->apply it->have the character stand (and provoke an AoO->pick up their dropped weapon(s) and provoke again) - which is already an fairly specific series of circumstances - then this still falls into the trap of treating each encounter as an atomic unit rather than as being part of the larger situation. If the enemies want to survive, rather than just act as drains on the PCs resources (which is how a lot of GMs tend to run them), then they're going to not only prioritize falling back when things are looking dicey for them, but also make it harder for the invaders to continue their attack. In that case, killing downed foes is the smart thing to do because it means that after this encounter is over, the next one is going to have less enemies in it. And the humanoids should be taking it for granted that they're going to be alive to see that next time, and so planning for how to make it easier, particularly when it doesn't cost them anything besides one attack to finish off said downed foe.
Again, I see that as being a consequence of the structure that's sprung up around how fights are already structured. If you stick to "level appropriate" encounters (by which I mean you're facing enemies whose CR is within 1 point of your group's Average Party Level), then it's not surprising that you're going to have relatively short fights. That's because the system is meant for those fights to be little more than drains on your overall resources, and so are already heavily slanted in the PCs' favor (which is the big "secret" about encounter design in the d20 System: "balanced" encounters are those that are already heavily slanted in the PCs favor from the get-go, even before hyper-optimization and issues of nova-ing get taken into account).
When the enemies are played smart, where they try to play up every advantage they have and try to win, then that oftentimes isn't going to be the case, because the PCs are going to have a major fight on their hands if they're not careful, and that can take some time for them to deal with.
So leaving aside any other in-character considerations (such as the rescuing character caring more about saving their companion than about combat efficiency, or the attacking humanoid enjoying killing, etc.), you're saying that the situation you outlined above would never actually happen, because the PCs are focused on minimizing their chances of being hit (that is, they don't want to provoke AoOs, such as by drinking a potion), while maximizing how often they get to attack (i.e. not "wasting" actions healing someone else) regardless of any other circumstances, and the fight will probably be over in another few seconds anyway, so why bother?
Needless to say, even if we ignore the in-character considerations I outlined above, this doesn't match the majority of the combat encounters that I've seen while playing. That's because - even outside of the numerous specifics that underly this "generic" scenario (i.e. lack of any other sort of available healing, the close quarters, the reliably-short duration of the fight, the focus around melee to the near-total exclusion ranged attacks, etc.) - this also necessarily discounts everything else that could conceivably be a salient factor in the considerations being made above, whether mechanical or not. Given the sheer level of diversity in both monsters and character builds (the latter of which can also be used by monsters that take class levels) - as well as other possible circumstances - this strikes me as reductive to the point of being very nearly useless for most at-the-table considerations. That's probably less true for people running Society games, or ones based on them, because of just how tightly those tend to script their scenarios and restrict character builds, but outside of those there's a lot more diversity with regard to what happens.
The issue here isn't that the type of situation you're describing isn't inefficient in terms of overall combat effectiveness. It is. It's that positing that level of efficiency as being the most salient consideration is what we've been debating. Having cruel and vicious monsters that are trying to kill you not kill you because they think they might get an AoO off any potential rescuers strikes me as being more about meta-gaming than about tactics. So does the consideration that a downed foe doesn't need to be finished off because even if they're healed, you can just AoO them back down below 0 hit points when they try to stand up. I know that's a function of the ablative nature of hit points and the way that AoOs are handled, but even if that's the case in a given combat encounter (which it often isn't; as it outlined above, this is already a reductive scenario, even without presuming something more varied being present), it flies in the face of verisimilitude for how the characters involved would likely act.
That's a fairly generic description, since "higher CR," "fair amounts of hit points," "lots of attacks" and "not too much AC" are all wildly relative. I get that you're saying that "the best defense is a good offense," but I'm trying to say that there's potentially more to consider than that.
It's not a question of "sentimental over practical." It's that "practical" isn't "meta-gaming." What constitutes "tactics" and what constitutes "leveraging the rules for (melee) combat in my favor" have some overlap, but they aren't the same thing.
This is what I meant in terms of treating encounters in isolation. If you can take it for granted that still-living enemies will heal up when combat is over (if not sooner), and that they'll continue their assault at some point (which means that you'll likely come face-to-face with them again, since you live there), then you're going to be better off if there are less of them when that happens. Killing someone right now means that you probably won't have to deal with them later, whereas leaving them alive in hopes that you can get a free attack will screw you later on if you then find yourself running away when you're down to 25% of your hit points.
A static DC of 20 isn't going to be a big deal for someone with even modest ranks in the skill. If you put in 5 ranks, gain a +3 if it's a class skill, and have a Wisdom modifier of +2, then you can just take 10 (since you're no longer in combat), and you've got it. Other than a few hours of rain, most of the modifiers aren't that punitive; even a moonless night isn't a big deal, especially since the DC only goes up by 1 every 24 hours, and you can retry a failed check after 1 hour when outdoors. As for trace teleport, that -5 penalty to the caster level check to get a glimpse of the teleport's other end if you cast it more than 1 minute after the teleportation happened is certainly punitive, but hardly impossible. Even presuming that you're of equal level, you'll get it 25% of the time...and the point is that for the PCs, they won't know if that 25% of the time is this time or not.
No. It's too easy for the spellcasters to just take a 5-foot step away, since the PCs don't typically take Step Up. That, and readying an action means that they only get one attack if the spellcaster does what they expected anyway, so no iteratives (they don't usually take Vital Strike) either.
Honestly, I don't care for how Pathfinder made cantrips and orisons function without limits. I get the reason for why they did it, in that they wanted the PCs who played dedicated spellcasters to always have some sort of magic available, but it runs into problems explaining why this magic is unlimited and other magic isn't.
But doesn't that run into efficiency problems for you, since those spells take an entire round to cast, leaving the spellcaster open to being hit?
I want to stress, I don't think it's believable for someone to spend hours or even days in hair-trigger readiness either. That's my point. These are the sorts of things that don't fall under the scope of the rules but are still presumed to be in operation, except that those presumptions are not only selectively applied by a lot of the people playing the game, but there are also disconnects between which presumptions are in operation and which ones aren't. Some of this is because there are different backgrounds in play for various characters and creatures, situations and circumstances, and numerous other particulars, but some of them are just because enough thought hasn't been put into things.
Right, except for the times when it's not.
I agree completely (though the latest AP isn't about saving the world, for what it's worth). But really, this gets back into what we outlined previously about having top-notch GMs, self-directed PCs, and open "sandbox"-style worlds. But as you said, that's an extremely hard thing for a lot of GMs and players to pull off, compared to just pulling out a pre-fab adventure. Which is really a shame because I find those to be incredibly fun, compared to moving from combat set-piece to combat set-piece. It's harder, at least for me, to feel invested in the campaign when my character is just being shuffled around in a perpetually-reactive position, instead of figuring out how he can make a mark in the game world on his own.
Meh, video games are even more restrictive than railroad-style tabletop games. They can be fun in a lot of other ways (I like platformers, for instance), but for RPGs I tend to enjoy them for the stories they tell, rather than what I can do in them.
I'm struck by how much what you've outlined here could be taken in a lot of different ways, regarding the intersection of specialization and efficiency versus team-play and what keeps the group happy. There's something to be said for focusing on a power that can be fight-ending as soon as it's used, for instance, but at the same time there can be problems of being screwed when that power isn't applicable (i.e. versus undead enemies), though as a full-progression spellcaster you won't be completely helpless when that happens. From another angle, you have to wonder if this is the other players punishing you for the fact that you're playing the game "better" than them enough to make their characters moot, or if they have a legitimate point about you overshadowing them. There's no right answer to any of these, which is probably why we're all still having these same debates decades after they originated.
Honestly, I'm not a fan of that idea, and I fully expect that it won't survive the playtest to make it into Pathfinder 2E proper. What irks me the most is that resonance itself is a band-aid for a problem that Third Edition created, which is the proliferation of magic items. I don't mind that the game made magic items so much more modular in what they could do, or even that their crafting is so simple now; the problem is that the system ties their expected utilization to character growth so closely that it necessitated "wealth by level," and so subsequently made magic items shops a necessity. Was anyone surprised that things like the big six were eventually identified, showcasing that there were gaps in expectations (i.e. wanting "cool" items) versus effectiveness (i.e. the big six)? Resonance, like Automatic Bonus Progression, is just an attempt to keep the underlying expectation of magic item augmentation to personal power while still leaving room for "purchasing" magic items that are more thematically satisfying.
Needless to say, I have no expectation that it will work, or even survive the playtest.
8899319 Sonata is slowly but surely managing to figure him out. Remember, they've only really been a couple for a few weeks now, so there's a lot of room for them to get to know each other better.
That said, I'm curious about what you meant by "do a flash-forward to the stuff from Lex and Sonata's character sheets"?
Lex is learning. This can't be good.
9219853 He's at the end of his metaphorical rope. That does seem to be when a lot of lessons sink in for him, doesn't it?