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3 months ago ::
Feb 20, 2013 - 1:14PM
#21
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The healing can easily become rediculous in a game were healing is already rather easy. I have seen it really negatively impact game balance, making it all too harder to challenge the PCs
Yeah, no. That wasn't happening. Pacifist doesn't do that.
What was happening was the players were taking longer to win the fights, and taking more damage in the process, and spending the same number of surges. They weren't harder to challenge, and the game wasn't unbalanced, it was just *moving more slowly*.
They were getting more HP per surge spent, but taking more damage per surge spent, too.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 20, 2013 - 1:29PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Jun 19, 2004
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The healing can easily become rediculous in a game were healing is already rather easy. I have seen it really negatively impact game balance, making it all too harder to challenge the PCs
Yeah, no. That wasn't happening. Pacifist doesn't do that.
What was happening was the players were taking longer to win the fights, and taking more damage in the process, and spending the same number of surges. They weren't harder to challenge, and the game wasn't unbalanced, it was just *moving more slowly*.
They were getting more HP per surge spent, but taking more damage per surge spent, too.
This.
Although it feels less "threatening" because everyone knows a single heal pops them to full. Now, the cleric isn't generally doing much else, but they are being an excellent healing totem.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 22, 2013 - 2:20PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2012
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I tried playing a pacifist character in a hack-and-slash game. It didn't go very well.
That said... if the DM and players are focusing on role-playing rather than combat (and understand how they are not the same thing), then the pacifist can role-play his efforts to seek peaceful resolutions and be an interesting character in the doing. I might recommend for such a character that the player who is playing the pacifist for such role-playing opportunities to have a less pacifistic disciple or more violent guardian if combat is going to be a part of the game and the player is expected to participate.
As far as a pacifistic healer... such a character might heal BOTH sides of a violent conflict, thinking the lives of BOTH sides are sacred.
There have been very intriguing and interesting characters in history, even in our own time with a pacifist bent. They sometimes must be very creative in order to keep their values, creating very interesting stories. They lead interesting lives. It is a challenge for a DM to create challenging situations for such a character... there are even forums that seem to think characters must meet some sort of optimization standard to be playable. Even the base rules for rolling up characters hints toward this mentality... throw away characters who don't have a certain stat criteria. This is because the standard D&D game has combat... and quite a bit of it.
In a game where the DM is willing and capable of creating a variety of non-combat challenges, a pacifist character is just another personality type to draw from. In a standard game, you may need some alternative way to keep the pacifist's pacifism to not hinder the party... be it an understanding that the pacifist will stay out of combat, but be more important in role-play encounters, hirelings that aren't so peaceful to help fight when needed, or some other manner agreed upon by the DM and players to overcome the challenges. Maybe the pacifist can bend his philosophy a bit so that he will certainly attempt to make peace, but will defend himself until his opponent his subdued or beaten... even going so far as taking care of his former enemy (hopefully you have a good enough DM that he can handle complications).
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells?
DM: Awesome. Yes.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 22, 2013 - 2:39PM
#24
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2012
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When you're running, don't allow one.
Problem solved.
P.S. Contrary to apparently popular belief, just because one lives by a code doesn't mean you have to try to force everybody around you to live by it as well.
It humors me you can contradict yourself in less that 40 words.
It humors me that you can miss the point so severely.
Vegetarians don't have to run around telling people they have to be vegetarians, and pacifists don't have to run around telling other people they have to be pacifists.
Irony overload.
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells?
DM: Awesome. Yes.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 22, 2013 - 5:20PM
#25
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Every ability score, feat, skill, background, theme, race and even class are a collection of numbers and mechanics and nothing more. They apply to what they need to apply to mechanically. That they have words on them with plain English connotations can be used for the purposes of creating constraint to your roleplaying, but that is an active (and certainly common) choice, not the default. Mechanics and fluff are completely separable. It's a player's choice to perceive fluff and mechanics as the same. Pacifist Healer feat means some extra healing and you're stunned if you do damage to a bloodied creature. The word "Pacifist" means nothing unless the player wants it to.
My friend created a great "pacifist" healer recently: Driftwood Sally, a hamadryad cleric. She's a total hippy beach bum, floating along through life. She doesn't "act like a cleric" outside of mechanics. She's just who she is.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 22, 2013 - 5:29PM
#26
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Every ability score, feat, skill, background, theme, race and even class are a collection of numbers and mechanics and nothing more. They apply to what they need to apply to mechanically. That they have words on them with plain English connotations can be used for the purposes of creating constraint to your roleplaying, but that is an active (and certainly common) choice, not the default. Mechanics and fluff are completely separable. It's a player's choice to perceive fluff and mechanics as the same. Pacifist Healer feat means some extra healing and you're stunned if you do damage to a bloodied creature. The word "Pacifist" means nothing unless the player wants it to.
My friend created a great "pacifist" healer recently: Driftwood Sally, a hamadryad cleric. She's a total hippy beach bum, floating along through life. She doesn't "act like a cleric" outside of mechanics. She's just who she is.
Another variant on the Pacifist Cleric I've seen is one where "Pacifism" is not a philosophy or a goal, it's a compact: the cleric has sworn an oath/made a pact/learned a magical style, whereby his healing magic is way more formidable but if he ever harms a wounded person there's a nasty feedback loop that incapacitates him.
He's not a "pacifist" in any sense other than "because of the kind of magic I use, it reacts badly with the kind of karmic resonances created by directly harming someone injured". Like a taboo prohibiting shedding blood in a location, therefore using strangulation instead of stabbing.
That's another perfectly good way of doing "pacifist cleric" in an adventuring party without making your allies want to hurt you.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 22, 2013 - 8:22PM
#27
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Date Joined:
Apr 15, 2007
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And then there are "technical pacifists" (if you're a Whovian, most incarnations of The Doctor tend to be this...most of the time). These individuals rarely deign to pick up a weapon, and seem to have a marked distaste for martial characters and their implements...but regularly travel with people who have no problems bonking the bad guy over the head.
" The man who abhors violence, never carrying a gun, but this is the truth, Doctor: you take ordinary people and you fashion them into weapons... "
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -The Doctor, Remembrance of the Daleks
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3 months ago ::
Feb 22, 2013 - 9:32PM
#28
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Date Joined:
Mar 12, 2011
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Now you might say "Well the vegetarian is a vegetarian because of the inhumane treatment of chickens in the chicken farms." At which point we have something that is interesting and the start of a character. This automatically puts it a step ahead, in my book, from every pacifist cleric I have ever seen.
In one of my current games, I missed the party-planning session and was told in no uncertain terms to play a pacifist cleric with healer's lore (and given a bad stat array, and forced to be a half-elf (I ended up with a 13/13/12/10/16/16 post-racial)). It was stupid and annoying, and I would have made none of those choices on my own. I was really on the verge of leaving the group over being forced into it, but after writing up a backstory, I decided to give it a chance.
For my character, pacifism isn't a philosophical issue, or a pact/source of magic, but rather the result of not trusting himself. He believes he's posessed, and until he learns more about the manner of the possession and/or exorcises it, he does not trust himself with any weapon or any harmful magics.
It's created some interesting plot hooks.
Mechanically, he's as awful as you'd expect. But I've played LFR with a pacifist cleric in paragon, and I have to say, with the right choices, the pacifist can be a very decent single target controller, on top of the healing and enabling (Cause Fear is an enabling power). With messenger of peace and vistani heritage, you can keep a single target out of the fight for 3-4 rounds, or greatly mess up a solo/elite's day with attack/defense penalties/vulnerability with no save ends.
It's true that the bonus healing is entirely mitigated by the extra round of damage monsters get to deal, but the very strong controller secondary mitigates the damage at least (and probably only) one target gets to deal, and defense penalties speed combat back up a bit if your allies have **** accuracy or dice rolls.
I'm not arguing in any way that they're better than, well, any other leader choice (other than a sentinel), but I don't think they're as far behind as lots of CharOp does. Which is to say I don't feel that a sufficiently optimized pacifist in the hands of a tactically-minded player is remotely unplayable or a major hindrance to the right party. To be sure, you need good stikers, but particularly if you lack a controller, I don't think of it as a RED option so much as a BLACK one.
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3 months ago ::
Feb 27, 2013 - 9:03AM
#29
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2012
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Pacifist? You need a net. Choose spells like hold person, fear and other spells that stop the enemy. Divinity spells to help you be better prepared for potential dangers so you can overcome them with as little violence as possible...and allies you respect and who also respect you. This will help also: have a DM who is willing to occasionally throw a non-psychopathic-kill-you-at-all-costs NPC at you instead of simply throwing hordes of mindless insects or oozes or hungry rabid dire animals with an equal lack of sense of self-preservation. Player: Okay. I have my character... a priest who has taken vows of peace and non-violence. DM: Your adventure begins in a gladiator pit. The crowd roars loudly as a savage beast leaps from its cage like a jaguar after a gazelle... and you're the gazelle. Player: 
A rogue with a bowl of slop can be a controller.
WIZARD PC: Can I substitute Celestial Roc Guano for my fireball spells?
DM: Awesome. Yes.
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3 months ago ::
Mar 05, 2013 - 2:48AM
#30
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one of our players chose to make a pacifist healer for a party that consists entirely of evil characters
I suppose my hate for that decision could be interpreted as "in character"
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