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Posts
 Recent Posts
I think a revised edition that was 100% compatible but took much of what was learned in creating the beginners book and brought it into the core would be great. The tricky bit is all the page number references in various other sources.
There needs to be a flag for "Yes, with a little sleuthing we figured out what you mean but it but really this should be written more clearly".
I agree strongly with both views expressed in this post. I might deviate slightly and suggest that since it's not specified, if you fail to move through an opponents space you would default to the normal Attack of Opportunity rules. Though it could be argued that when you attempt to move through a creatures space you have to enter it and that itself would provoke... Either way failing is going to mean you don't get to the other side.
I am running Ogre's Sewer Dragons of Absalom in slots 8 (1:00 p.m.) and 9 (7:00 p.m.) on Saturday. Looking forward to it!Excellent, I'd love to get some feedback. Sounds like you have your expectations set about right ;)
Personally, I find both martial weapon and exotic weapon proficiency feats annoying. No single martial weapon type is worth a feat, and most exotic weapons aren't even worth a trait without something else included. The rest of the exotic weapons probably need to be broken up like the bastard sword, with proficiency being martial and the special trick being exotic, so that a single feat isn't overpowered. The martial weapon proficiency feat would be a lot better if it gave access to a weapon group rather than a single weapon type; it would be worth the price of the feat, but not particular overpowered as many of the weapons in the weapon group would be ones that the character taking the feat could already access. I have a lot of gripes about the way stealth works. I hope no-one ever suggests Paizo fixing it with a trait in the Player Companion line of products to address those concerns. Similarly, I don't think a trait in Adventurers Armory is a good way to fix any perceived weapon proficiency issues.
*opens UC PDF, marks out Ninja and writes in Rogue* This is exactly what I was going to say. Ninja is a better rogue than a rogue? How does it compare to the rest of the game though? I didn't follow it too closely but nothing I've seen makes me think ninja is going to dethrone the more powerful classes (whichever classes you think are the most powerful). I did see something in the rogue archetypes that I liked though, there is a knife fighter archetype that gets you 1d8 sneak attack if you use daggers (or some other weapons). I suspect that archetype is going to see a lot of play. The other rogue friendly think I see is the Sap feats which seem like they would play well with some of the intimidate rogue builds. Those are a little more off the wall though.
I'm coming from the opposite direction I guess. Martial Weapon proficiency isn't worth a whole feat. So by using my version, you get a trait that is as good as the weakest feat, or a trait that allows you to get a slightly better feat. *shrug* The problem is you have to use the existing feats as the basis for comparison. Many people would say Greater Fortitude or Weapon Focus aren't worth a feat and by extension any traits based on it wouldn't be worth it either, yet these traits exist and strangely no-one complains about them. And in the RAW verison, the weapon isn't free. Yeah, I forgot it didn't give you the weapon. I think that's a bit of a lesser thing regardless.
*shrug* personally, if you want a campaign trait put it in a campaign. Right now it's something generic, a GM *might* take it up and run with it, but I think it's far more likely that it just gets added to the character sheet and it becomes another character ability. Many players just want to pick up the trait for some small mechanical benefits and a little role playing hook and move on. I think the idea of having more powerful starter/ campaign traits is great. This just isn't the right book to do it in.
You are ignoring the fact that the feat generally works fine when you are playing the game. It's only 'problematic' when you craft higher level characters with the assumption that they get double wealth. I don't even get how this applies to what I said. In the mean time the pirates are invading the city or... insert plot here. In most adventures that I've run or played in, a whole lot happens in a short period of time. By the time they are over the characters are 2-3 levels higher and a lot richer. Then the players get a break for a month or two before the stuff hits the fan again. A lot can happen in that 90? days it takes you to craft enough gear for a 10th level character. In the mean time the character has either gone without items for a while or bought things at full price like everyone else. By the time they have crafted everything, total wealth for the party will have gone up and things will have equalized to a more reasonable state.
I guess what I don't get is the lack of value placed on getting access to a weapon you wouldn't otherwise have. The only other way to get this is by taking a feat or something like Bracers of Archery which don't exist for many weapons. Considering most characters only use one weapon at a time how would you get any more benefit from actually taking the feat? I can think of a few situations where you benefit a bit more from the feat, if you have dual weapons, or if you want to take a feat that requires proficiency. But if it weren't limited this way then it would [b]be[/b Martial Weapon Proficiency which already exists as a feat. That's exactly the point, it delivers a close approximation to 1/2 of the MWP feat, plus you get a free weapon.
Something like that would prevent it from vanishing whole sale from society play but still close an obvious exploit. It will still get used in PFS. I want a wizard with a longsword like Gandolf. I want a halfling rogue with a slingstaff like Taslhoff. It just won't get used by the DPR/ optimizer crowds as much.
Also I've not seen anyone saying that the trait as originally written was balanced in quite a while. I'm seeing that many people, myself included feel it went too far. My feeling on traits is that they are simple things that get you a small benefit. Heirloom weapon gets you access to a weapon you didn't have access to previously. Isn't that pretty valuable in itself? If you are a martial character instead it gets you a +2 bonus on a specific CMB check. Isn't that comparable to many other traits? The thing is not every trait is going to be the most powerful trait in the game. Not every trait is going to be useful to all characters. A trait should be appealing enough that some percentage of players will find it appealing. Considering the number of traits out there that percentage should probably be less than 10% but more than 1%. From what I can tell the current version falls pretty squarely in that range. Take a serious look at other traits and what they do and compare it to the benefits of this version. Some are more powerful but many (most) are less powerful. combat traits:
(I've bolded the ones I think are as good as or better than the revised Heirloom Weapon trait) Anatomist: You have studied the workings of anatomy, either as a student at university or as an apprentice mortician or necromancer. You know where to aim your blows to strike vital organs, and you gain a +1 trait bonus on all rolls made to confirm critical hits. Armor Expert: You have worn armor as long as you can remember, either as part of your training to become a knight's squire or simply because you were seeking to emulate a hero. Your childhood armor wasn't the real thing as far as protection, but it did encumber you as much as real armor would have, and you've grown used to moving in such suits with relative grace. When you wear armor of any sort, reduce that suit's armor check penalty by 1, to a minimum check penalty of 0. Bullied: You were bullied often as a child, and you are now constantly ready to defend yourself with your fists when an enemy comes near. You gain a +1 trait bonus on attacks of opportunity attack rolls made with unarmed strikes. Note that this trait does not grant the ability to make attacks of opportunity with your unarmed strikes—you must have a level of monk, the Improved Unarmed Strike feat, or some other similar power to gain the use of this character trait. However, that doesn't prevent you from selecting this trait. You simply cannot make use of it until a later point if you do. Courageous: Your childhood was brutal, yet you persevered primarily through force of will and faith that no matter how hard things might get, as long as you kept a level head you'd make it through. You gain a +2 trait bonus on saving throws against fear effects. Deft Dodger: Growing up in a rough neighborhood or a dangerous environment has honed your senses. You gain a +1 trait bonus on Reflex saves. Dirty Fighter: You wouldn't have lived to make it out of childhood without the aid of a sibling, friend, or companion on whom you could always count to distract your enemies long enough for you to do a little bit more damage than normal. That companion may be another PC or an NPC (who may even be recently departed from your side). When you hit a foe you are flanking, you deal an additional 1 point of damage (this damage is added to your base damage, and is multiplied on a critical hit). This additional damage is a trait bonus. Fencer: You trained with blades for long hours as a youth, either taking lessons in the genteel art of fencing from tutors paid for by your parents or by being taken under the wing of a disenfranchised fencer who may have turned to a life of crime. You gain a +1 trait bonus on attacks of opportunity made with daggers, swords, and similar bladed weapons. Killer: You made your first kill at a very young age and found the task of war or murder to your liking. You either take particular pride in a well-placed blow, or find vile pleasure in such a strike as you twist the blade to maximize the pain. You deal additional damage equal to your weapon's critical hit modifier when you score a successful critical hit with a weapon; this additional damage is added to the final total, and is not multiplied by the critical hit multiple itself. This extra damage is a trait bonus. Reactionary: You were bullied often as a child, but never quite developed an offensive response. Instead, you became adept at anticipating sudden attacks and reacting to danger quickly. You gain a +2 trait bonus on Initiative checks. Resilient: Growing up in a poor neighborhood or in the unforgiving wilds often forced you to subsist on food and water from doubtful sources. You've built up your mettle as a result, and gain a +1 trait bonus on Fortitude saves. Do you honestly think the current version is worse than half of these?
We were talking about forgoing the trait forever remember? Sunder is repairable. The party gets captured and everyone loses access to their gear.... then they fight their way out and recover it. There is no reason/ incentive for a GM to actually destroy the weapon, it's much more fun to make them squirm and fight to get it back. Then they suffer the loss of separation and the joy of recovery.
I guess I have to ask, how many modules have you read where this sort of tactic is employed? I've read all the adventure paths and I can't see where this sort of tactic could make sense to any of the villains. It's certainly not written into any of them. Does your GM also destroy spellbooks? Kill witches familiars? Sunder and steal arcane bonds? All of these sort of techniques are widely recognized as being not fun and destroying an heirloom weapon permanently is right up there with them. Search the forums for threads titled things like "How do I protect my spellbook from my GM?" and you can see how much people enjoy that sort of thing.
"I really don't want to spend a feat, so for HALF A FEAT can't I just be proficient with THAT ONE weapon I'll be using for the rest of my adventuring career on the proviso that if something vastly improbable happens I have forgone the trait altogether as opposed to being able to simply acquire another one?" Fixed it for you.
Yeah, animal companions are a bit weird. My wife has a summoner with an eidolon so there are no issues with directing it, it has a brain of it's own yet she still has a lot of GMs who insist on her running both character and eidolon on the same turn which frustrates her. Having the companion/ eidolon who doesn't get actions of it's own also robs it of the ability to act in the surprise round. Your super fast, super alert guard dog has to wait until his slow druid buddy can act.
You are ignoring the fact that the feat generally works fine when you are playing the game. It's only 'problematic' when you craft higher level characters with the assumption that they get double wealth. One other 'fix' to the crafting problem is time. Give everyone X gold worth of items or gold. If they choose to craft everything they can buy the material components with gold and start crafting but they don't benefit from their crafting until they finish creating it. In the mean time the pirates are invading the city or... insert plot here.
But they do. Half elves can. Thus, rules as written, first level characters with no BAB may use an exotic weapon for the price of feat. And I believe now you are the one arguing how the game *should* be, not how the game is. So, tell me, have you banned half-elves from your game? These are benefits to being those particular races. You are essentially suggesting these benefits get watered down. Elves get early access to elf weapons, dwarves to war axes, etc. That's the benefit of playing those races.
I don't think it affects flurry at all. There are a ton of feats that say things like "When you use unarmed strike..." or "When you hit using unarmed strike...". This feat enables you to use those feats with your claws/ teeth/ talons/ whatever. I would have to re-read the feat to see if there are some other things going on but that's what the intent was.
How does this work with the Greyflame weapon enchantment? Do we use the higher number of dice to determine the rounds it lasts?Ogre, if you're reading this, can you shed some light on Channeling Scourge? Was it a left over from an archetype that gave Inquisitors channel energy? That is an interesting question. If you are looking for any sort of real, official answer I'm not the person to ask, the only ones who can make those calls have little golems next to their names. On the other hand, if you were sitting at my table: You've spent at least one level multi-classing to pick up the cleric ability, you spent a feat to increase it. It's definitely in the spirit of the feat. I would say yes.
Ogre, if you're reading this, can you shed some light on Channeling Scourge? Was it a left over from an archetype that gave Inquisitors channel energy? I believe there is a comma missing from the prerequisites. It should read "Prerequisite: Inquisitor, channel energy class feature". The idea is to allow multi-class inquisitor/ clerics (or oracle or paladin) to be able to use their inquisitor levels to bolster their channeling when they are attacking enemies of the church. So a Cleric 3/ Inquisitor 4 would be able to inflict 4d6 points of positive energy damage versus undead (but only heal 2d6 damage). A fine point sharpie will fix that ;)
...And I feel like I would be a crumb-bum to observe that the time for rolling the Training checks was well before she sat at my table. So I let her write down her list, assuming that her druid's succeeded at every roll. I feel like I have to do that, because her previous GMs have let me down. What bugs me is that they didn't bother to read the rules to begin with. Incidentally, it appears that I'm the only GM in Pathfinder who requires his players to roll a separate initiative for their animal companions; just about everybody else has the animals act on the PCs turn. (Indeed, a few people asserted that such were the game rules as written.) Several animal companions get the feat Improved Initiative. It would be a shame to throw that advantage away. Nope, I give players the option.
This is more or less what I was trying to point out. I think this very much depends on the group, the treasure the GM kicks out (or the module), etc. In my experience the advantage of crafting feats is that given enough time you (and often by extension your group) are going to have more appropriate gear than the character who doesn't take the crafting feats. When you build a higher level character most groups just assume you can shop everything which means this benefit doesn't really exist.
I have no idea. If so, all the falchion builds DPR went up by ~1.5 points damage per round at 10th level. From what 100 to 101.5?.. I'm sure someone will be along with some real math. Regardless, I think the game will survive.
Well, compared to the other two-handed 18-20/x2 weapon, the falchion, the Nodachi is better in average damage and in the addition of the Brace quality. Technically it's better but the difference is trivial. Average damage on a falchion is 5, average damage on a Nodachi is 5.5. Typical damage bonus from strength, power attacks, almost always dwarfs base damage. Similarly, the brace quality is probably the least used and least valued of the weapon qualities. I'm not sure I've ever seen someone brace a weapon. Regardless, my guess is the majority of falchion users are half-orcs using it with weapon familiarity. I just don't see a lot of human or dwarf fighters picking it up. It's going to see plenty of use.
Again, this still doesn't address stuff like your weapon getting randomly lost during epic adventure. "Goodbye space sword!" There is nothing about the sword that makes it the in-game equivalent of a 'lightning rod'. It's far less conspicuous than say a wizard's arcane bond with is generally pretty conspicuous. As far as anyone is concerned it's just a sword like any other. The only reason enemies would target your heirloom sword is because your GM wants to be a jerk. I file that sort of tactic right up there with destroying spellbooks. There is another possibility which is your GM does swipe it because he wants to use it as a plot hook. That isn't really anything to complain about either, because it puts your character in the spotlight and presumably it means you are going on a quest of some sort to recover it.
Again, this still doesn't address stuff like your weapon getting randomly lost during epic adventure. "Goodbye space sword!" Over 200 people were killed by lighting last year. Does that keep you indoors during rainstorms? Personally, I don't plan my life around extremely improbable events and I don't plan my characters around them either.
Weapons similarity has always been a 'problem' and always will. Some game systems don't even mess with it and just have generic categories and let you flavor the "Big Slashing Weapon" however you want. That's kind of my preference. You could have a table of about 12 weapon types and a chart showing what weapons fit in which type. That kind of goes against the way the worlds most popular role-playing system has done things though. And FWIW it goes back further than 11 years, more like 30.
Actually, it's not equally likely. A confused target who is attacked doesn't even roll, he automatically attacks his attackers on his next turn. So as long as the barbarian is actively engaged in melee there is a fair chance he's going to just keep attacking the enemy. I suppose you could have the enemies ignore him but that's pretty meta.
Are there any alchemist discoveries that are super awesome for anyone not doing a melee focused alchemist or are they mainly focused on the newer archetypes? This book is very discovery light. Only six discoveries, three modify bombs, one make a siege weapon bomb, and the other two are more or less generally useful. Alchemist section is pretty thin, but it got a lot of love in UM so it's not a big surprise. They can benefit from a lot of the feats and nice spells (extracts).
Other than that one feat is there anything in there for sorcerers?Lots of new spells. Thanks! I guess I wasn't clear, there is not a lot of sorcerer specific things, maybe a couple feats? I just meant that a lot of spells that there are a lot of solid spells in the book that sorcerers can take.
My thought on the Empyreal Champion is it's an archetype that dumps many of the charisma related abilities (other than smite) of the class and gets a set of other abilities that are less tied to charisma. Seems to me like a less MAD Paladin. If you have a 16+ charisma, you do give up a lot but if you have a low charisma it's worth the benefits you get. That's just my 30 second scan.
This works if you assume 100% of items are sold. I've never played in a group that ran things that way though. Generally we wind up keeping 70-80% of the treasure we find and everyone has a hodgepodge of random gear but frequently most of the bases are covered using found stuff so there is no savings. Rings of protection, cloaks of resistance, magic armor, etc are all pretty common and all very useful to PCs so there is little or no savings for Cleric B there. In an organic campaign Cleric B is almost certain to have a gear advantage bit it's nothing like twice the gear of Cleric A.
Ok so nothing to do with the class but crafting feats the rules are a gray area and its more of DMs discretion then? Pretty much yes. Any idea what would have given him this idea? was it that way in a one of the old D&D editions? Some gaming groups run things where characters who take crafting feats can use their starting 'wealth' as gold and craft all their starting items they could create using the feats. We don't run our game that way, but then we also don't tend to start at 10th level either so it's not much of a problem.
How do you become a contributor?Did they contact you about writing for it?They not only contacted 0gre, but he is a bona fide contributor. I can attest. Jim and I were both in RPGSS in 2010 and we were tapped along with a few others to do some work. In my case I think there was more to it than just RPG SS but it's definitely a huge inroad. To put thing in perspective, of the designers for Ultimate Combat: Dennis Baker, Jesse Benner, Benjamin Bruck, Brian J. Cortijo, Jim Groves, Tim Hitchcock, Richard A. Hunt, Colin McComb, Jason Nelson, Tom Phillips, Patrick Renie, Sean K Reynolds, and Russ Taylor The ones I've bolded are former RPG SS contestants. Sean and Patrick are Paizo employees, and Brian, Colin, and Tim have a long history of freelancing.
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