Bagpuss's page

Don't forget there was the Known World (for which I think the FR setting derived it's name to emphasize how "different" it was), the featured setting for Classic (non-A)D&D. Classic D&D was supported , at least minimally, up until 3E making it the longest running edition of them all (take that, "advanced" D&D).
That was the system I was playing when FR came out and I immediately (and still) label it as the odd setting that was supposed to be somewhat a variant to the Known World.

I played Basic D&D for about 2 hours in 1980 (blue dragon set) before pursuing AD&D (which was the purpose of the blue dragon set, pretty much). So for me, it's Greyhawk and "the known world" is something from another game I never played.

And 3E was default set in GH with the "living campaign" set-up.
I don't doubt that FR was the most popular, maybe Dragonlance gave it a run for it in the day. But that doesn't inherently make it the standard, especially if one factor of it's popularity is the prevalence of magic items/spellcasters.

Well, Greyhawk isn't all that far behind; the default 3.5 setting, but the default 3.5 ruleset also has Ye Olde Magic Shoppe, pretty much, and the availability of magic items for money is factored into the intrinsic game balance.

A first level wizard with an AC 12 flat footed?
And mage armor? If flat footed he would not have cast it yet.
Hence AC 10.
Normal HP for an NPC Wizard would be 8 or 9.
Fighter PC vs. wizard NPC and at 3 or 4:th level?
Well there we go againg. Fighter vs. Wizard. Boring.

It's true that D&D combat can be a race for initiative (which is why Improved Iniative is a must-take feat for so many characters, including wizards).

My significant NPCs are as powerful as characters of the same level, pretty much. However, in the general discussion of wizard v fighter, to compare like-with-like it makes sense to consider both as PC-quality even if your game tends not to have NPCs of that sort, so, normal PFRPG hp for a 1st level wizard is 6 + Con (if any) plus whichever extra hp option you use (I have been using the flat six).

In 3.5, hp were lower, so you can expect happier results for the fighter if he goes first or else if he saves. But still, that save really is a save-or-die, so if initiative is a 50/50 split he's got about a 37.5% chance of dying before he does anything or makes a single decision. The fighter will shade the remaining 62.5% of outcome probability, but will he do it by enough to take him over 50% overall?

I’m getting tired of this rethoric, talking about the exception as if it was a rule. It’s not honourable.

If you are going to accuse other posters of being dishonourable, why on earth do you expect them to continue talking to you?

Bagpuss wrote:

No, we don't want it to be contingent on the success (or complete success) of an attack, we want it to be an option for characters with multiple attacks, to move and make more than a single attack, simple as that.

Sigh. I know we've been around and around on this, but... I'm just not getting it.

How is moving and attacking more fun, objectively? What does it permit you to achieve via board position that you can't get with the current scenario? Where are you going to go with that extra movement? What do you want to achieve?

Are we convinced that a full attack is the most successful use of a fighter's capabilities at high levels? Especially since there is a school of thought that "hit points don't matter"? There are several ways that a fighter can debuff an opponent in straight 3.5 - you can do it at least three different ways without a feat at all, four with Improved Overrun. The consequences of the failure of these options - a drawn attack of opportunity - is meaningless in the example commonly cited (an enemy mage). The playtest feats increase that debuffing power dramatically.

The example of enemies ignoring the fighter and moving past him at high levels is cited. Why aren't you bull rushing on the attack of opportunity?

How much does board positioning, cover, concealment, and terrain figure into this decision making? I keep seeing "save vs. suck" spells brought up as fighter killers; where do these examples take place? In forested terrain? How about in the rain, where your visibility's cut in half? Mages demand line of sight and line of effect for most of these spells; fighters generally do not.

I'm very much convinced that the conclusion that "fighters suck" ignores large swathes of the rules involving alternate attack modes, terrain, and movement. In other words, "fighters suck" seems to be a hypothetical, when fighters demand placement on the tabletop and a thorough understanding of all your options to be fully effective.

The point is that at higher levels, we are saying the damage from a single attack is insufficient for the meleers to be making significant contributions given typical length of combat. Full attacks only happen once you get there and then if they move, the best you get is a single AoO attack, the damage from which tends not to be terrible enough to be unignorable (this is a different problem and one where, of course, Stand Still, which isn't in PFRPG but is in the SRD, and Shall Not Pass, a new feat Jason proposed, are useful) and then you're chasing and doing single attacks.

I can't speak for a lot of the other people who want to see some movement and multiple attacks, but one of the things I liked about 1e was that additional attacks didn't screw your movement; you were still a mobile damage-dealing combatant. In 3.x, you're not anything like so much of that, and although damage from a single attack can be increased more easily than in 1/2e, it doesn't scale as fast as do opponent hit points (and this before the Power Attack nerf in PFRPG!).

No, we don't want it to be contingent on the success (or complete success) of an attack, we want it to be an option for characters with multiple attacks, to move and make more than a single attack, simple as that.

Fair enogue. But a full attack as a standard action - no way.
and this 1:ed argument that keeps poppin up. PFRPG is baesed on 3.x, the whole mechanics is based on 3.x. So the sollution is to take the mechanics from 1:ed that benefits the melee clases without balence things?
Let med quote Bad news on Tour: "how come you think you can interfere with the way we talk and not interfere when the van's broken down"

Well in 1:ed clerics and rogues sucked. And wizard did to until the hit level 6 or so. Is that what we want?

I wouldn't speak for anyone else, but for me, looking at things that work elsewhere is generally a good thing, particularly when it's telling us what people enjoyed about previous versions. No one has to want to return to unpopular parts of previous editions to talk about the bits they liked, though.

For myself, rather than putting a Full Attack into a Standard Action, I'd allow Full Attacks to include some movement, with penalties to the attacks (say -2 per 10', or something, although that would perhaps put monks further into the swamp of suck, as their increased movement wouldn't gain them anything in this scenario), or else having to trade attacks for movement (but effectively trading iterations, so a TWF would lose/trade two attacks for each attack a single weapon fighter was losing/trading).

Not to mention that sometimes it is PvP.

The whole idea with The Paizo project is to give those players who don’t like 4E a way to continue to play 3.5 but doning it with a fresh and updated version.

SO going 4E is not the way to go is it? You want Paizo to drift into 4E. Well I suggest you play 4E and let us other play 3.5 updated by Paizo,
“Full Attack only promotes your character from rooting yourself to the ground and makes for a boring tactical challenge. “
Or one could say: “Full Attack promotes for a tactical challenge”. Team work and Devastating Blow is a nice combination. But yes, at higher levels this might be a problem at times. But I don’t want to change the mechanics and go 4E. Adding a feat or two to smothen things out a bit might be nice (and nerfing spellcasters) but a full attack as a standard action – no way.

He's not saying he wants Paizo to make PFRPG into some 4e version. He, and many others on the boards since at least the playtest started, is I think expressing the opinion that the lack of ability to move and multiattack is a serious flaw in 3.x that wasn't there in 1 and 2e. I don't think that there's necessarily a feeling that 3.x was perfect, after all, in order to not like 4e and to hope that PFRPG is the game for them.

Interestingly enough, the DC for that color spray spell from a 1st level caster is anywhere from 11-15, so it's not a "one-shot kill"; there's roughly a 75% chance of success at best.

By the same token, the fighter's chance of hitting an AC 10 caster is roughly the same. And one greatsword swing will take out that caster.

So in all honestly, it's down to initiative. And if the caster fails, he's done. The fighter can swing again on round 2 with no opportunity cost. When the 1st level caster is done, he's done.

I would say that less than DC 15 is pretty rare, with (say) a 20-point (PFRPG) wizard. AC 12 is also, in my experience, more typical for a 1st-level wizard (and that tends higher with Mage Armour, which they're preparing by 3rd level at latest). So if I was a fighter, and with the extra hp variants in PFRPG, I'd be looking at a caster with a hp total of as high as 12 and I know I'm not normally one-hitting that. On the other hand, a DC 15 Will save to avoid dying (and winning iniative won't win me this one because of the hp)? I'd be better off running away, optionally screaming like a little girl. As levels advance, as Sneaksy Dragon points out, the situation becomes rather worse.

Of course, why wouldn't a wizard beat a beatstick most of the time? The problem, I guess, is that the gap widens to the point of "wizard beats fighter nearly all of the time" and arguably with a smaller fraction of their total resources.

Personally, I don't like iconics. And also I somewhat resent the amount of space they take up in adventure material (particularly in the APs -- two godamned pages that could otherwise be cool PFRPG stuff; "put them in a web enhancement for the people that want them" although of course not everyone uses the web), although I understand why they are there (so, you know, I don't need an explanation of that; I just don't have any use for them myself whereas the space they occupy could have stuff I'd like a lot).

Hmmm, it would be cool if some of the unique Paizo monsters got Crocodile minis made for them... Having Sinspawn minis has been great (as I said in another thread)...

I put in a reorder with Crocodile early this month but I haven't heard if they have shipped the order yet or not. I just sent them another email so hopefully I'll hear something over the weekend.

Sweet, thanks.

These minis are great (so I'm sad that they're not able to keep up with the APs). I don't care about the PC iconics -- I don't use them and wish they didn't take up a page or two in each module or AP issue -- but stuff like the Skinsaw man and Xanesha, etc, is just great. Also, as the Sinspawn look so completely different to other monsters, it's fantastic that I can buy them...

If the item were as dangerous to me as a shotgun is in real life, then sure. But not that much in D&D-world is. If they were using a weapon that, if I had it, could well save my own life later on, then I'd be trying to end up with it for myself (again, depending on the risk to me).

Anyhow, if the characters just don't pick up something that's hidden in a room after a fight, the RaW are presumably OK about them getting less than their xp would deserve, right? I see sundered stuff as the same.

The idea sundering should not be a valid tactic, because you 'destroy your future stuff' is a false dilemma fallacy. The RAW gives and expected GP value of treasure that your character should have by level x, if items are destroyed in an encounter, the DM, if following the rules as written should ensure that equal treasure value is found else where in that adventure. You can never 'destroy your future stuff.' while using the RAW.

If I write an adventure or use a pre-written one, stuff that gets broken is the same as stuff that gets thrown away or that they miss after the fights; it was there and they don't have it. I imagine most other people run it the same.

Incidentally, I don't think that there's anything wrong with the role-playing/narrativist aspect of "kill him but don't damage the X". If someone I'm fighting is using a Faberge Egg in some magical way, I'm sure as hell not going to smash it up if I can at all avoid it...

That's cool, I do however take issue with this here. FR is certainly not the "standard D&D world" ,even from it's inception it was the "off brand" D&D world. It has gained a lot in popularity (maybe even eclipsing the "standard" worlds), but it was not the standard.

I would say that it became TSR's favoured setting (but not mine; I've always been a Greyhawk guy) not long after it came out (I imagine Gygax getting the boot was a fair part of that). Certainly in Second Ed, they produced masses of FR stuff and it's my understanding it was the most-played-in world, as you say.

Not anyone with a high enough INT can become a wizard. At least not as easily as it sounds.

You can certainly make it that way in your own world. It's not that way in the rules, though, really. Wizards aren't that uncommon in many game worlds, either (including the standard D&D World for the previous 20+ years, Forgotten Realms), certainly not enough for magic items to be particularly rare. There's no distribution of magical talent; even if you merely have to find a teacher, there's no obvious reason in the rules why there wouldn't be many wizards, given that rareness would make them valuable and the large reservoir of people, in terms of those that meet the rules' requirements to become a wizard, who could pursue it until that premium were reduced. As a byproduct, magical items would also become less scarce (particularly in PFRPG, where even xp costs are gone).

So, again, it seems to me that your solution is based on individual world-building decisions. That's fine, although as I say, you will tend to throw the game balance assumptions farther off. But then, of course, the game is already not very well balanced in some regards, and CR is often wrong anyhow, so there's work to be done in that regard even before you start asserting, for example, rareness of wizards. I don't disagree that people may wish to build additional assumptions into their worlds to get the flavour they want -- for example, having literate barbarians, or chaotic monks, or lower magic levels -- but that's not a generic fix for the rules' being balanced on things including the assumption that financial treasure levels convert into desired and useful magical items moderately easily (although, yes, you do have to go to bigger cities to get fancier items, but it's not like moving around large distances quickly is a problem for the parties that would be able to afford those items). And, of course, attempts to design CR and general balance certainly are predicated on how easily magic items can be bought and how much each item costs, because magical items make characters more puissant.

As for whether or not you find that things work well without a magic store or with it in your own games, I would say that there are just too many variables to have a meaningful discussion on it without a fair amount of text and even then, concrete general principles would probably be hard to find (it's probably easier to discuss how the "fighter blows at high levels" problem does, or doesn't, appear in different games, for example). It's my belief, however, that the game designers did assume interconversion of money to magic items at the published rates, more or less.

Sure, and that is the sort of thing you can describe in a paragraph or two, without needing his hit points, exact skill and feat allocations, and so on. I'm not knocking the utility of describing what a ruler can do, but rather the use of valuable print space on the ruler's melee attack bonus. ;)

Personally, I've always like combat blocks on important NPCs. Other than it being interesting to read right back since I first got into rpgs (in 1980!) I like to see the major players (and they needn't be high level, of course) and get an idea what they're good at, etc. So I'm sad that there'll only be one more book containing them...

Yeah, in essence, the argument is divided first into "Mystic Theurge isn't good enough" vs "Oh yes it is", and then (with much less heat) the former group are debating how they might make it better. Pretty much everyone know what the reasoning behind the PrC is and what the design balance is supposed to be -- no need to point out that you make sacrifice X for gain Y, when the debate is not about whether that happens but more about whether Y is worth X or not -- in any case, I think.

That Rogue role is in 3.x all through, because of sneak attack. So no, it's not WoW.

I agree that it's boring to roll that many dice. I don't agree that the damage output is too high, though.

Regarding feint: Improved or otherwise, it only affects next attack; I would say that should mean (and probably does, anyhow) next single roll with weapon, rather than next (standard action or full)-attack.

You can't make me "dead" if you're not even at the table. I certainly would not care to show up at any game where a player with your attitudes was playing. It has never been worth it, in my experience.

In general, when someone appears to be so awful that you'd feel compelled to say something like this, one might wish, perhaps, to consider that it's perceptions that may be awry rather than fact (of course, it may not be the case -- some people are, after all, completely awful -- but the word flies, as Horace said, and cannot be recalled). In particular and with regard to the next post, derek's DM points that out from experience of having Derek at the table. Furthermore, Kirth Gerson, who posts here quite a bit and who's pretty well-liked and well-respected, rps with Derek.

If you're newish, you wouldn't have known that, but isn't it more likely to be you that looks silly anyhow, as a result or saying the sweeping, condemnatory thing when there are people around that know the guy you're condemning?

Yeah, 'damage output' is a dubious figure of merit at any level when comparing wizards and fighters/meleers. You want to be victorious in/over encounters, but how you do it is less relevant.

Ambush

Noun (plural ambushes)

1. A disposition or arrangement of troops for attacking an enemy unexpectedly from a concealed station. Hence: Unseen peril; a device to entrap; a snare.
2. A concealed station, where troops or enemies lie in wait to attack by surprise.

I was talking about ambushes, or at least that's what I -think- my post was about, so all the Rogues have to do is wait for their 1/round buffs (ie ALL their buffs) to expire before laying the smackdown on them... either that or just use their staves (or rods) to dispel them... and just in case, the one who posted that scenario said those mages didn't have items.

The problem with the "we can use ambush" argument that it pretty much works against everyone to some degree or other (although at least D&D doesn't have a spiral-of-death mechanic, which is a lot more realistic but tends to make surprise even more important). "We can them if they don't know we're there!" isn't a compelling argument that one class is too good, or one too bad.

So, any idea on the lag time on the restock for these? I have two as I said above, but could do with at least one more except I'd need it soonish (or else I could get it at leisure and just in case I DM RotRL again)...

*Feats only become useless when their not being used or the fighter isn't given a chance to use them in new and intresting ways, or even at all.

To address this particular point, I believe they were saying that some feats don't scale, which means that their usefulness deteriorates. You would presumably admit the possibility that such feats could exist, that even with this creative play that you can achieve and apparently others cannot, the utility of some feats would decrease as you gain levels? In which case, it's really an argument about specific feats and how the fighter being "given a chance to use them in new and interesting ways" will save them, which will no doubt become as boring as most of these arguments do but would have the benefit of specificity, but at the cost of generalised conclusions.

As an aside, with your talk about fighters being 'given a chance' to use feats in particular ways, you presumably allude to the DM being the guy that creates the opportunities for fighters not to suck. Now, most people on either side would agree that that's the case across the board, not just in discussions of feats -- it's used, for example, in DMs playing opponents in a particular manner so that they don't just ignore the fighter -- but I guess the question is whether the class's alleged reliance on the DM (which you implicitly add to this discussion) is too great, particularly if it's considerably more than for the other classes. In the end, of course, a great DM can make nearly any game good to play, but that doesn't mean that all games are equally good, for almost any mechanical definition of whether a game is good (and even if you based your metric on 'player enjoyment', you'd have to average over DMs).

I think this is where are style of play changes. Wizards in my game are rare, while you make yours sound as common as shoemakers.

Firstly, it seems to me that most game worlds have wizards as pretty common, and given that anyone with a high enough Int can become a wizard in the game unless you add extra restrictions, it seems like a reasonable enough assumption to make. Even otherwise, if you use the magic item creation rules as they are written, your own wizard can kit out the group with items. So either the rules only apply to players in terms of ease of becoming a wizard, or you specifically add extra difficulties and even if you do that, the party wizard can make items if you use the magic item creation rules. And on top of that, the CR system assumes WBL and magic item Christmas tree.

Sure, you can run a game differently -- it's not brain surgery and there is, of course, nothing wrong with it -- but yours is the larger deviation from the rules as written, I would say.

Actually, I was thinking Shall Not Pass for the adjacent squares, Stand Still for the reach ones. Still, it gets nuts pretty quick. Honestly, though, isn't this sort of an iteration of the infamous spiked chain tripper? (I hate spiked chains - they just annoy my sense of aesthetics. Kind of like the double weapons - I still refer to the dire flail as "the autogelding machine".

It is indeed like the Spiked Chain Tripper, but in my opinion the Spike Chain Tripper shows us what meleers should be able to do, mechanically; become an unignorable combatant with reach. I'd just like to see some feats that allow it with less cheese than Spiked Chain Tripping. We are, I think, part of the way there with the extra feats Jason announced.

For much the same reason there are not "ye olde tanque shoppes" in the modern world. Some states may actually criminalise or heavily regulate magical item trade (I would). And even in the "loose" kingdoms the shop owners may actually be in more danger meeting customers just as likely to rob or kill them over an item then pay 1,000s of (heavy) gold coins.
Most magic items cost more then most commoners will make in their entire lifetime. And you think someone in an area loose enough to allow such sales would stock a shelf full of them and wait behind a counter.
I'm drawing upon much experience with campaigns wrecked due to magic item shops. Either the PCs rob it, or die trying. In one case they are vastly overpowered ("pass me another wand of magic missles"), in the other they all die trying.

As Hogarth pointed out, I did specifically exclude state intervention, although if we consider it I would note that people in our own society that wish to get hold of substances and items banned by the government generally can. It makes it more expensive, of course, but the real issue is supply and the magic item creation rules give you that supply. If people want it and people can provide it, there'll be a market in it of health appropriate to the strength of the demand and the supply and although governments can limit it, I suspect that many would just prefer to tax it in the case of magic items, which from the item creation rules must be relatively common in our D&D worlds unless you put a real crimp in how easy it is to become a wizard or otherwise limit their numbers enormously (the effect of which will again just be to drive up the price)...

So let me get this: 1e/2e multiclassing is nearly twice as good as single classing (12/7ths in the one example). d20 devised multiclassing that isn't overpowered, so that one has to give up something to take the option. MT allows a far greater measure of spellcasting, comparable to or even better than 1e/2e style multiclassing if it were allowed, at the expense of other class features. And people complain that isn't good enough.

(!) I know, let's just make a PrC for each pair of core classes, and give it all the powers of both classes! There, problem solved.

You're quoting me, but I am not sure why. You appear to be addressing someone else.

God, why does that sound so wrong?

Once you've spent too long on the internerd...

As for the Campaign Setting, it's not competing with anything, but nor is it a prerequisite, so I don't have any idea what Paizo's plans would be for it. Lisa or Vic would probably have to pop in to give us an answer for that one.

It seems to me that it's a prerequisite for playing in Golarion, though, unless you just wanted to stick to official modules and even then, you'd lack a lot of the flavour for players. Also, although it's rules-light, it could benefit from a PFRPG version update (which, addict that I am, I'd buy)...

Absent state intervention or some other shadowy forces, I just don't see why there wouldn't be magic shops, in the sense of 'magic items for sale'. Everything of value has a market (whether legal or illegal). So, if you want low-magic worlds (which to first order will require abandoning the magic item creation rules or else doing something like making wizards really rare or placing strictures upon them), that'll just drive the price up. So, yeah, 'ye olde magic item shoppe' may not exist if the prices are too high, but there'll still be a market for the stuff and money will still talk.

It's what people are like. I have it, you want it; easiest thing is to arrange a trade for something you have that I want, such as money. If you can't pony up, then of course we may have a conflict over it.

Bagpuss wrote:

I must be one of very few that doesn't care about the art, I guess.

Blasphemer! Heathen! Get your "black and white text only" out of this thread.

Hey, I appreciate a good italic and the occasional bolding.

Bagpuss wrote:

and a much bigger issue for stuff like the PFRPG rulesbooks.

Would you be surprised to know that under TSR AD&D went out of print? Multiple times if I'm not mistaken.

So did 3.5e under WOTC. I'm sure 4e will be out of print by the end of 2009.

Out of print doesn't mean not ever again. It just means the publisher no longer has a supply and does not have immediate plans to produce more. Whatever supply is out there is out there.

Functionally, it was never a problem, though. We could continue to purchase books from numerous outlets, because the relaxation time was long enough. I am talking about the sort of 'out of print' that means you have to scour ebay and pay over the odds for second-hand copies. That's where Ptolus is, that's where Iron Kingdoms is, etc. If the PFRPG rulesbooks are going to end up like that, I'd like to know now because it really will stop me DMing it. My players mostly like to own hard copy rules and to be honest I don't think that it's going to be easy to attract new players if the game rules aren't available from the normal outlets. Same goes for stuff like the Pathfinder Campaign Guide (personally I'm hoping a PFRPG edition appears at some point); I obviously don't care whether it's 'in print' or 'out of print' so long as it's available through conventional outlets and will remain that way for considerable time.

In other news, my local B&N has a copy of the Pathfinder Campaign Guide, which was nice to see (although I see that their second copy of Monsters Revisited still hasn't sold; I bought the first one).

I don't think that 'realistic' has been a great motivator for D&D combat, at least not in detail. For example, It doesn't even have locational hits. I think that the thing we should be aiming for is probably 'logical' and then cotton together some explanation as to how it maps to reality.

Once you buy it, why do you care if it goes out-of-print? That doesn't mean you can't continue to use it. Hell, I had a hard time getting my hands on Expanded Psionics Handbook.

If I get something that then goes out-of-print, I'm just relieved I managed to get it while I could.

Because I want to be able to get new people involved (this is an absolute necessity, as people move away, etc) and I like to be playing something that I feel will get continuing support, which also makes it easier to get new people involved. Not as big an issue with stuff that only GMs will care about and which is scenario-based (such as the APs, although as I say it still saddens me) but a bigger issue for the Campaign Guide and a much bigger issue for stuff like the PFRPG rulesbooks.

There wouldn't be much point using one weapon if TWF got you multiple attacks on standard action. However, it seems to me that both TWF and single-weapon fighting should have the possibility for multiple attacks on a standard action (as we have discussed at great length).

I think for sneak attack everything might works best with a skill check such as knowledge. A rogue needs to determine where the weak spot is. A rogue would need to know where the week spot is in a vampire for example. With out that knowledge the sneak attack will always fail. It would be automatic for most living creatures but for undead I'd require the knowledge same for constructs or any other monster that normally in 3.5 couldn't be the target of sneak attack.

Apart from the fact that it'd add further overhead to combat, logically having successfully fought and sneak-attacked them before (or maybe even specifically preparing for the combat) would allow for sneak attacking without the knowledge roll... and even more overhead. I can't see it catching on, to be honest; there's enough going on as it is, in 3.x combat.

When other gaming products go out of print, most don't get reprinted. That's why Green Ronin's Book of Fiends was so hard to find, as well as things like Iron Kingdoms and Ptolus. For smaller publishers, it's just par for the course.

Sure. It's one of the reasons that in general I am wary of buying stuff from smaller publishers (Paizo being the exception at present, although it'll give me pause if PFRPG material, or the Pathfinder Campaign Guide, were to go out of print).

8 dinosaurs would be more than enough.

as noted before, the + 1 to hit in a way does scale already

I referred to that in my answer (it's why I was talking about opportunity cost).

Considering +1 as 5% of a d20 is the wrong way to look at it, though, I think, because it ignores the other bonuses and the amount you're trying to get over (and at higher levels, one of the complaints about D&D is that the roll itself becomes less important than the bonuses).

As for me disliking fighter-only feats, the way I prefer it, there shouldn't be only a few good feats for cherry-picking (and the existing fighter-only feats aren't that great anyhow). The other meleers should be able to take good feats and the fighter should be able to take good feats, just more of them. Additionally, feats will be a part of fixing combat, and the problems with combat affect all the meleers.

if said fighter slips and falls prone he is majorly s*&%^ed, even a prayer effect tips the balance more scary is a surprise round followed by a full attack action. That fighter better run.

Although his flat-footed AC won't be far off his actual AC, at least. Also, a rogue making a full-round attack on the fighter is going to be the lucky winner of a full-round attack in return even if he did win initiative (likely).

Bagpuss wrote:

Shall Not Pass stops them dead (new feat Jason suggested) and Stand Still is SRD and would stack with Lunge (proposed by Jason at same time as SNP)...

And if you use a reach weapon, you can use the lunge to add 5 and get 15 feet of movement control out of the enemy. That's a huge footprint.

It's a four-feat chain: Combat Reflexes, Lunge, Stand Still, Shall Not Pass. A dedicated build. But it does what it does damned well.

Add a guisarme, and add improved trip? Or even the infamous spiked chain? Oh, if only the whip did jack squat for damage. Ow. What a painful build.

Shall Not Pass doesn't stack with lunge or standard reach weapons because it only affects adjacent squares. However, a half-haft feat would add more options so that the build would have something to do, in terms of stopping opponents, at 5, 10 and 15 feet of range. Even better if enlarged...

I must be one of very few that doesn't care about the art, I guess.

On the other hand, the value of my collection is increasing. ;)

And mine! But it makes me sad when rpg stuff goes out of print. It's one of the reason I haven't bought into Monte Cook's stuff (even though I think he produced some great material).

If the problem is the conception that fighters loose their oomph... keep in mind that ALL classes have things that start to suck at higher levels, be they self-obsoleting spells like cause fear, sleep, or circle of death

Unless you're a sorcerer or bard, you can just not pick those spells to prepare at higher levels, unlike the fighter that can't retrain in the PFRPG rules (and may need those sucky feats for gateway purposes).

Why not, as suggested above, scale it? Say, +1 then +2 at BAB of +8, then +3 at BAB of +15, etc?

As for the existing scaling, all plusses to hit scale like that. The question with the feat is opportunity cost, ie, are other feats better? Can I get my plusses more cheaply otherwise?

In other news, I hate fighter-only feats. Hate them.

Shall Not Pass stops them dead (new feat Jason suggested) and Stand Still is SRD and would stack with Lunge (proposed by Jason at same time as SNP)...

Magic shop access is completely prohibited in my games. Purely for the sake of realism. Luckily i game with a fantastic group of the same mind set. My worlds usually follow a keep it simple motif and generally are low magic worlds. Ill allow item creation if they have the cash and or materials. But chances are high theres no wizards around with a high enough skill or if there are there might not be a skilled enough blacksmith... or so on. If its something they NEED then maybe the moons will aligned and a visiting wizard MAY help but it takes roleplaying to convince him and hes a real cantankerous old geazer...if you get my meaning.

Because wizards are really rare in your game or because you don't use the magic item creation rules? If it's the former, surely your wizard can kit everyone out with magic items anyhow (at less cost!)...

There are no character traits in Osirion. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? We're still experimenting with the type of content we're putting into the Companions, after all, and we weren't sure if having character traits in every one would get old or what.

So yeah, no traits in Osirion. Is this good or bad?

Really bad. Not Very Happy.

I know it's a Chronicle not a Companion (but then, we didn't get any in Osirion, either, and we did get regional feats, the precursor to traits, in the Campaign Guide, which was also a Chronicle), but couldn't we have had some traits? I love traits but there appears to be a pretty patchy commitment to them...

I am also disappointed that there's no traits (and we were rather given, on page one by a reply of Vic's, to expect them!). A real missed opportunity, given that I guess Osirion won't be revisted at the whole-nation level.

Also, why no traits in the Absolom books. Yeah, it's a Chronicles book, but really I am not sure why there can't be any traits in that, unless they're going to appear in a future Companion.

So, a bit fed up with the lack of traits in these two books, but most particularly in the Osirion book given what Vic had said on the first page of this thread:

Bagpuss wrote:

Are we going to get new traits in these books (and future race books, etc)?

You can expect to see new traits in most—probably even all—Pathfinder Companions.