Ghoul

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Goblin Squad Member. Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber. Organized Play Member. 356 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists.


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Shadow Lodge

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Truthfully, this item does to much that is unpredictable, and pricing will always be based on not whether it is useful to you, but whether it is useful to anyone who picks it up. A sorcerer can use the spell access a lot better than a prepared caster can. The randomness of it feels like it should be less random and more DM choice, as the whims of the Fey take control or give you quests. I think it works better as a Fey artifact, where the Eldest's will passes through it, maybe granting some more powerful abilities but also being a bit more tailored to what is going on. I think if you work with your DM on it you will have a much better time using it, and may give you slightly more control of things than the random useless item that really won't do much for you.

Just my 2 cents though.

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There is 1 other company actually looking at doing this. Legendary games is working on their Core Finder project to update and clarify the rules as well and are looking to generate more interest in it. I also prefer first edition style rules to the newer sets that have come out and am hoping one of these projects works out!

Shadow Lodge

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Is the bonus to widen flat then? that also increases the value of concentrated.

Shadow Lodge

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I think this is one of those contentious points about spell perfection. it increases all numeric increases to a spell that are modified by feats, not just damage. It effects any numerical change. meaning it increases the amount of dice concentrated fire adds per tick. so you get the extra 7d6 that way. It also actually doubles the bonusses of blood havoc and similar effects. hence the bigger numbers.

Shadow Lodge

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Mysterious Stranger wrote:

One slight problem is that Fireball has a maximum damage of 106. Concentrated Fire cannot raise the damage past the maximum. So, you could have a caster level of 1000 and it still only does 106. Intensified spell can raise this by 5 levels to 15d6. Delayed Blast Fireball has a maximum damage of 20D6 and can go as high as 25d6 with intensified spell.

Even if you are using mythic rules the most damage you can get with a fireball is 25d10. That is assuming you are 6th tier and casting an intensified mythic fireball.

Sorry but this simply does not work.

Concentrated fire specifically does break the cap

Shadow Lodge

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Huh, that is odd but alright. The other problem you are going to have which I have never seen cleared up is the stacking bonusses that don't stack. Caster level bonusses are not confirmed to stack from different traits. as they are both a trait bonus. I know these do not stack for initiative so some of your bonusses may not stack as high as you think they do. I'm not sure this has ever been clarified though. Same likely goes for multiple feats as I believe they are sometimes considered feat bonusses.

Shadow Lodge

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More importantly, although you can re-intimidate, I believe the +5 DC for each additional attempt.

relevant rules text:
Retry? You can attempt to intimidate an opponent again, but each additional check increases the DC by +5. This increase resets after one hour has passed.

Other than that it looks good.

Shadow Lodge

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I don't see a way for you to break the caster level cap for the spell, other than the bonus from concentrated spell. even with concentrate and widen and spell perfection I think you can only get to an extra 14d6 before empower. this means that at cap you would be at 36d6 after the empower bonus. still not bad but you really need the other bloodline mutations for this.

Also you are wearing 2 neck slot items. you can switch between them as a standard action I believe but maybe a full round. but both will not function at the same time.

Wayang Spellhunter- Race restricted, can't use

you have 3 traits not 2

Mad Magic does not work with your raging blood, although that rage is similar to bloodrage it is not bloodrage, so it will not function at all.

Blood Havoc cannot be taken as you have taken a familiar instead.

I think that is all that I noticed that was wrong so far.

Shadow Lodge

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For specialization and tactics I would still say Divination is better than illusion. And unless you have a lot of warning right before fights, illusion defense spells don't last long enough to really be useful all the time, or make you more visible (looking at mirror image) For BFC going first and knowing your enemy is paramount. Illusion does have some vey good spells for BFC until you run up against special senses. Those can ruin a lot of battle field control type effects illusion uses. Truthfully I wish Illusions were better at that. Heck if there was a meta-magic feat that allowed you to infuse even a little bit of shadow essence into illusions so they detected as real to those special senses they would be a lot more viable, but as it is. tremorsense, lifesense, blindsense, blindsight, all of these negate a loarge part of the BFC that illusions are good at. In fact I would say that illusions are very powerful at lower levels but fall off as things get better and better senses Truthfully the best effect to give you a miss chance is transmutation with blink and it's improved version, same miss chance as displacement, but not negatable as being on a different plane is probably the best defense you can get.

I like illusions, but with all of that stacked against them it really depends on what you are fighting. Outside of actual fights illusion is a lot more useful. fake walls and paths that people aren't really paying attention to are great uses of illusions. and spells like veil and hallucinatory terrain is amazing for BFC if it makes sense. The other problem with illusion is that it is often all or nothing thanks to the if it is proved not to be real you can disbelieve for free without a save. I hate that clause but it is there.

Shadow Lodge

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Alright, my 2 cents for what they are worth.

First - Conjuration is an amazing school and I would definitely have kept a pit spell or 2 on my list as they are really good against the creatures they still work on, not everything flies or is huge. Conjuration also gets around the most frustrating wizard killer; GOLEMS. A spell that does not allow spell resistance ignores their spell immunity. The saves on most golems are also usually really low, relying on said immunity to get by. A lot of the low level spells have a good chance of still working on them, with grease glitterdust and the pit spells being some of the best to use on them.

Secondly, BFC can mean a lot of things, and a big part of that control is being able to react to enemies and help your party perceive them and nullify them before they get to do their damage. For these reasons initiative and perception are really important. The most broken build I used for this was called Percival the Perceiver. A tiefling Diviner with an earth elemental improved familiar. The automatic bonusses to initiative along with the always act in the surprise round make for a very powerful combination. The earth elemental familiar also provides a way to detect things with tremorsense meaning you will almost always be aware of where the threat is coming from. and the divination buff spells often allow you to perceive what the party cannot. This makes glitterdust even better as if they can't see it because it is hiding you can reveal the target and possibly hamper it. Skill focus perception also proves very useful for this, and the ability to see beyond doors and walls with clairaudience/clairvoyance should not be underestimated.

Third - as for banned schools, necromancy is probably one of the better ones to ban and keep banned but if you are truly intent on only Battlefield control Evocation is also not a bad choice. Illusion also falls off later in it's usefulness and at level 11 you will start to run into a lot of enemies that can simply make the saves or perceive through the illusions with other senses. I would not ban transmutation, conjuration, and abjuration ever. as these are some of the best schools for protecting and ensnaring enemies with real problems. Enchantment has a few really good higher level spells for hitting that very nice "even if you save you are hampered" threshold of power. The spell that comes to mind for this is overwhelming grief. It will absolutely ruin a single targets day, save or not. Also Enchantment can make up for the lack of charisma if you choose to dump it as the use of wizard diplomacy (charm and dominate effects) can prove quite useful.

Finally - A BFC wizard has a lot of different options but the best is also often to give advantage or disadvantage to your allies. do not skip out on the fact that controlling the battlefield relies on you being reliably able to effect your enemies. This means whatever spells/schools you choose; always take a variety of spells targeting different saves. This means you can always pick something at the level and effect needed. To use this though your skill points need to be distributed leaning heavily towards knowledge skills that identify monsters, and that you need to be able to perceive them before they do their thing. Divination can be really good for this as it gives you a double sip in a lot of the perception boosting spells. See invisibility and arcane sight come to mind as excellent choices for this. Even skill focus perception and a trait that gives it as a class skill make a lot of sense to make sure you can control the battlefield before the enemy gets to a point where it doesn't matter.

Hopefully this helps, and take it with a grain of salt. Depending on the power level of your game this may be going to far, In a more relaxed game a lot of this will really put the damper on the enemies and even trivialize encounters to the point where it may not be fun if they are at a lower difficulty to begin with.

And above all else, remember that scribe scroll is your friend, and a cheap way to get the backup movement and basic spells where caster level does not matter. Need to get up a wall, scroll of spider climb is easier tan wasting a dim door, or a combat archetype familiar (I believe it is called mauler) where that earth elemental could literally become an elevator if it is a earth or stone wall.

Happy Hunting!

Shadow Lodge

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Adamarh said wrote:

But what do you mean when you said that ?

Cause in Elemental Might it doesnt specify a limit which mean that at lvl 3 you could have 7 burn (3+ 4 STR mod) then add like 4 steal power uses so you go to +11 to determine the bonus given instead of a maximum of +1 at level 3 for a normal kineticist. That's the limitation i was talking about. You dont overlap anything it use Burn number + Steal Power uses to determine the bonus there is no overlaping bonuses

Ah I see the problem. It uses the base max of 1 per 3 levels progression but adds the total number of times you have used steal power to it.

So for example, at level 6 your normal overflow max is +2, so you can add that as a static bonus as long as you are not suppressing your aura. You add the number of times you have successfully used Steal power to that number. The only thing the archetype modifies is that you can add that extra bonus of number of successful times steal power has been used to the bonus a normal kineticist would get.

It is quite powerful, but like I said also kind of limited as you can't be successful in the same area twice. You could try to wander around and do it everyday before adventuring, but that would likely lead to other repercussions. and the area escalates really quickly. Even at as low as 3rd level your radius is 750ft, a huge area. This will likely mean it will be usable successfully once in a dungeon or even as the level increases a little more per village. It gets very hard to actually get and maintain this bonus based solely on that value. That plus it taking a full month to reset means a more stationary campaign will quickly run out of areas to conveniently use it.

But as it is free additional damage, it is still very good.

Hopefully this explains it a little better.

Shadow Lodge

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As a heads up this looks like it double posted.

Adamarh said wrote:
- Does steal power affect insect swarm ? Cause it affect minor wildlife so locust in a swarm doesn't have individual stat so would it kill the swarm ? Cause i don't think just them staying close to each other would buff their vitality :/

I would say no, once they are a swarm they have stats, and at that point would be unaffected, other than the lowered birth rate part that affects all surviving creatures. I would think of it as the concentration of the vitality at that point is high enough that the drain is no longer able to leech them individually and treats them as a single life force.

Adamarh said wrote:
- In the Stolen Strength feature it say "A blighted defiler can never gain a defense wild talent or the expanded defense utility wild talent." but in steal power it say "Alternatively, they can use gather power to reduce the cost of a defense, infusion, or utility wild talent by 1, regardless of whether they gather power for longer or have abilities that increase the burn reduction from gather power." Is it a mistake or was their an errata that didn't make it to d20pfsrd?

This is a weird corner case where I think it may be about them being unable to gain more after that. It would make sense if they were to multiclass before they got this ability they would then not have this restriction. It's a problem with many archetypes giving up abilities later than they are granted.

Adamarh said wrote:
- Does Elemental Might have the same limit than elemental overflow which is the max bonus is equal to 1 per 3 kineticist level

It does not, but will be very hard to get a very large bonus on reliably as you cannot overlap areas for it. It adds to the bonus they already have.

Shadow Lodge

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As per the last line of the ability:
A monk with natural weapons cannot use such weapons as part of a flurry of blows, nor can he make natural attacks in addition to his flurry of blows attacks.

Shadow Lodge

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technically this is what Foresight does for a single specific target. Wizards usually target themselves with it but you can do it on others. SO I would have to say 9+ due to a more restrictive version already existing at that level.

Shadow Lodge

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It's a specific call out in the rules because many creatures have advantages in that way that would make a character much more powerful. They are "natural" but specific trumps broad and, in this case it seems very straight forward that you just can't do it. It probably also disallows Rend, rake, and pounce as those technically allow extra attacks. They wised up by the time they put out the summoner class. They stopped allowing all the natural attacks for free from being a thing as it was way to strong for a pure martial to get these abilities on top of what they already have.

Shadow Lodge

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I would point to the last boss of the original kingmaker AP who had levels in Sorcerer and then added levels of mystic theurge using it's inherent caster levels. It follows that these things do stack although as mentioned above class abilities will use the actual levels in the class and not caster level.

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I think it comes down to if mythic is common enough in your campaign to be a thing that people are going to do a bane against. A character I played got it, but only because he was fighting a lot of mythic enemies. If the demon lord is going to be the only mythic opponent I think it is something he may just not be able to find.

Shadow Lodge

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I would look at cost being the same as a page of spell knowledge if you want to make it a magic item? That exists specifically for sorcerer's to add more spells to their spell book. Also maybe take it as a favored class option? I know some classes get those for extra class abilities, something like 1 per 4 levels taken or so?

Shadow Lodge

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Bullette in the bestiary is listed as a Creature 8, but its stats align with Creature 10, I would say it's thematic if one stat was off but all of them seem to be at the higher level.

Shadow Lodge

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Ah we played it wrong but that is even worse for heavy armor types, reflex tends to be weaker than their athletics anyway. I think we superimposed some of the other athletic combat maneuvers where they do target the actual athletics DC, break grapple being one of the first listed in the book is probably where this came from. It still means the Monsters are at a severe advantage, and the fact that their ability also counts successes as critical successes means they are way to good at the checks.

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Mathmuse wrote:
Christopher Van Horn wrote:
The expected numbers do not take into account ACP or average PC's and this means the one person who is supposed to be good at combat manuevers is either lower on AC to negate ACP or realistically behind the curve because of it. The STR based characters who should have the best athletics don't because of ACP and this is a problem.

Page 176 under Armor and Shields says:

Check Penalty
You take this untyped penalty to Strength-, Dexterity-, and Constitution-based skill checks, except for those
that have the attack trait. Armor that is better than standard quality has a lower check penalty, as described
on page 190.

The Strength skill is Athletics. The Break Open, Grapple, Shove, Trip, and Disarm actions under Athletics have the attack trait, so they are not affected by ACP. The Dexterity skills are Acrobatics, Stealth, and Thievery. No skills are Constitution-based.

Which combat maneuvers were badly affected by the ACP? Escape and Tumble Through under Acrobatics, Break Grapple under Athletics, and Steal an Object under Thievery might count as combat maneuvers. Anything else?

Because it applies to the defensive skill DC since that does not have the attack trait. So manuevers against PC's are really easy.

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My group has been running through almost an adventure a week since the play-test came out. We meet weekly and play for approx 8 hours each session. We have been testing the mechanics and rules mostly to see how well they played and if we enjoyed the experience. We dd not do much social encounter/role-playing as we decided to delve into the mechanics and how they played out/felt to the group as a whole. I am writing this now because our group has concluded that the basic rules just aren't realty fun, although there are a few system changes we like a lot of the combat and mechanics are frustrating, poorly written, and do not fix the problems at all. It really feels like it just shifts them around.

First, the good things. There are some really positive things this edition that I do feel the group appreciated and took to. They loved the action economy and the nuances that gave to the game. We liked the increase in skill points (although not enough in some cases) and felt like touch AC getting a boost was an important thing for the game to function better at higher levels. I also took to the monsters having more special and interesting abilities that were flavorful and interacted with the new action economy in interesting ways. Also shield block is really good and gives a real reason to have a shield even when it is not a huge boost to armor class. I think it really opens up a lot of interesting things. Also starting hit points boost from ancestry is really good, that extra cushion was invaluable at low levels for keeping people alive early on and feels better than before.

The neutral, these things weren't eally good or bad and we could take them or leave them. I felt adding your level to everything was really problematic and was really a lot of fancy math and was almost better served with a simple system of if a target is above or below your level just add x amount to it's stuff. where x is the difference in level. I think this would have been a cool way of showing progression and making bonusses feel much more special without the feeling of levels are numbers that you have to have. but either way is the same play effect. Magic was kind of a sore subject and in the end was kind of a wash. The limiting of spellcasting was not necessarily a good or bad thing, some spells felt really useless, especially things like mage armor where I would just want an item since to be effective as a buff spell I have to use one of my highest level slots, versus shield which is now a really clever buff that works really well. Magic comes out nuetral because there were some really good examples,like tenth level spells and cantrips that really were useful long term, versus some really bad ones I will get to later. The limited spells per day otherwise reduced some of the spam casting issues and makes spells with an effect that is not damage way more powerful than before.

And now, the bad. There are a lot of things to go over here unfortumately, and I will try to get all of them out as best I can.

Starting with specific spells that just aren't worth anything anymore. Mainly buff spells that either have a duration so short that you have to waste alot of time in combat better used to fight the enemy than butt, resist energy is a huge problem here, to spells like mage armor that you now have to use a high level spell slot to keep up with progression and in doing so may lose all of that to a dispel check and not hae ht eextra spells to recast the buff. Mage armor being 24 hours is nice so I only have to cast it once. But if I only have spells at that level and I need a damage spell, I may just be wasting my time. both of these spells feel really bad an will most like;y only be used for crafting the items that give the bonusses without the penalties.

Speaking of items, one of the biggest gripes we had was that the magic item christmas tree actually got worse. It didn't get removed it just got redecorated into even more necessary level based items that you have to have to be competetive and effective. The last adventure we got to was The heroes of Undarin. Firat of all this is horribly written and no PC of mine would ever want to walk into a no win situation they either did not cause or were unaware of so all of my players were informed before hand that this was designed to kill them and was stress testing survivability. Next we got to the first encounter and we spent upwards of 4 hours on the fight because a PC without there christmas tree is absolutely useless in this edition. The first fight involved demons that coud disarm you with an almost automatic chance of success. And they are 2 levels lower than the PC's, and it's a reaction to a miss. This meant that after 2 hits and taking one of the four from full to 1/3 it's hit points, the paladin missed his third attack, was disarmed because I rolled above a 5 and then the demons got to go and decided that sword was a problem so one of them took it and left. after that the PC's managed to win only because the POaladin's AC was high enough they could not regularly hit him, bu tthey killed everyone else. without a weapon a PC simply cannot hurt things at high level and that is a serious problem if Enemies can dirarm you that easily. My group was already fed up with the rules but was pushing forward to see if things got better and because we wanted to help improve this, but they are done with it now as this was just the most horrible combat we have had in a very long time.
This christmas tree effect is even worse now that the math in the system is so tightly wound to make all of the numbers nearly identical. If you do not have the neccessary/expeted items/bonusses, you will fail. Sure the bonusses are smaller, but so is the success chance. Throw in the fact that enemies have no ACP and always maxed skills in things they are goos at and any combat manuever they try is probably going to succeed. It is so close to automatic because of ACP and stat distribution that I can't see why the monsters are built like this. The expected numbers do not take into account ACP or average PC's and this means the one person who is supposed to be good at combat manuevers is either lower on AC to negate ACP or realistically behind the curve because of it. The STR based characters who should have the best athletics don't because of ACP and this is a problem.

We also really dislike the ancestries, they do not give enough to start with, the choices do not feel meaningfull, half of the feats are really bad or so situational they really don't make sense to us and everyone feels kind of like their ancestry is really boiled down to their ability boosts beoing chosen for them and maybe a vision mode. This felt limiting not like it was otions, and felt like everyone was kind of just a generic human with a couple minor things that didn't matter. Overall the only races anyone realy wanted to be were those with darkvision, because light radius's are realy bad now and dim light is not really a thing anymore. And now that darkvision is infinite range it is the only ability orth having for the most part from any race at first level. It also felt like a lot of ancestry feats were not a choice, every halfling I can think of playing would take the luck feat, and the weapon familiarity thing was ok, but almost all the lasses that really care about hitting something with a weapon already gain those abilities so they really wash out as useless in the end.

The dying rules are also really bad. I need to know how far negative you are. I really have a proble with no matter how far you are down or how much you are hit you don't need more than point to get back up. At least under the rules before errata the wake up easn't automatif but even then it felt like negative numbers were measuring something before and now that we just get healed and stand up it actually caused more player deaths. Because if the players start getting back up a lot the enemies eventually start putting them down and making sure they stay that way. I let it go tyhe fist couple of times but the third time the fighter miraculously got better the enemies started focussing fire to make sutre he would stay down.

Some spells are just bad, cloudkill is now just awful, it doesn't really do a meaningful amount of damage, will likely only hit once, maybe twice if you are lucky, now doesn't hurt things that don't breathe (don't know if you can hold your breathe but it seems like this is poorly worded either way, and it has no lasting effect on people, it's a poison that doesn't even poison people.

Ranged combat is also very bad for PC's. Monsters do theexpected ranged damage, often with bonuses PCs do not get, while PCs have no real way to focus on reliable repeatable ranged combat.

Monsterloot needs to match their stat blocks as well. Telling a fighter he needs a magic sword to do real damage means that Gnoll had better also have one to do that kind of damage back. I will give large monstrous creatures a pass on this since they could actually have weapons like that as natural attacks but Humanoid NPC's need real gear or the it is just plain unfair for the PCs in all respects and that really made my players feel underwhelmed and chafe even more at their christmas tree requirements.

Critical hits are more common for the DM than players,because a monster who manages to catch a player flat footed without its shield up is going to crush it. The combat advantage of monsters having higher initiatives and better attacks than players means this is alarmingly true throughout the levels. With the math being so tight a boss fight monster just destroys what it gets into combat with. My players have not had a good fight against anything over their CR by more than 1 level the entire time we have play-tested.

Raising a shield to get it's bonus is bad, it makes sense for maybe the first round of combat and would be fatiguing to do long term but needing an action each round or you just forget about it is really taxing and should not be a feat that only really high level fighters can get. it should just be a thing.

Overall I wil be giving this system a pass unless it is changed drastically, it's promise of more options has hashed out to be less with more fidly things that don't matter and didn't need to be feats. It's classes are restrictive not open, It's multiclassing while interesting, feels like a patch to fix the issue of classes beiong to restrictive. Magic is underwhelming in areas it soesn't need to be and still netter in things that the skill feats could have, but for the most part did not, correct. Skill feats are abysmal and no one in my group felt that any of them that didn't require master proficiency were really interesting at all. Leading low level play to turn into a slog fest to get to interesting abilities that actually do something worthwhile. Resonance points fix a problem we never had in my group. Crits are awful and enemies get them so much more often than PC's, checks for skills have way to high a failure rate and taking 10 is a feat so even a reasonably skilled player has a chance of failing checks it isn't investing it's feats into. Signature Skills are still just a horrible idea, and fighters still get shafted on skill pints for no good reason.

The biggest thing we see, andf the biggrst problem I have with the system, is the push to be like later editions of D&D, crying out for balance and equality and losing all of the interesting fun elements a cooperative game can have when things are not so tightly wound as to make everything routine. It is exactly why I did not convert to 4.0 and it is why I won't be converting to this system either.

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I had a question about some of the abilities monsters have that seem to be sometimes stackable and sometimes not.

Most creatures have an entry if their ability is supposed to stack but I found 2 problems with this. first, vampires, I like vampires. They make really good villains and I want them to be interesting, but as they are written they cannot actually drink someone dry. The rules state a condition can never go higher than 4. so no matter how much they drink, they really won't kill anyone doing it ever.

The second problem with this is Wights and other level draining creatures. Enervatios can't go above a penalty of 4, ok I'm alright with that the penalty is really steep so that probably works out ok. It no longer kills, ok that is fine for penalizing spells I suppose but the ideathat a creature is actually stealing my life force does not really compute with this. Enervation from mulyiple wights doen not stack, it has no rule saying it does andd conditions specifically state they do not stak.

This means a ight will never drain you more than a little bit and even the beefiest of creatures seem to do no more than 2a value of 2. which means barring truly horrendous reeated failures at most day to recover.

THis doesn't tell the stories of these creatures it boils them down to math numbers with no meaning. No threat other than inconvenience and inneptitude (time to run away and try again later. and the fact that none of these conditions stack with each other means that once you are enervated, most other conditions don't effect you at all.

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truthfully I think it needs to be tied to creature level as it appears to be that way for all monsters. I found explaining to my players that a Gnoll seargent weilding a normal bow did damage like a +1 bow, but when they pick it up is just a normal bow is kind of immersion breaking.

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Sturdy Shields, with how objects work I see no reason to ever by the legendary heavy steel over the Master Adamantine

Quoted from rulebook:
"Type master heavy adamantine; Level 12 (Uncommon); Price
1,800 gp; Hardness 18; Craft Requirements Initial raw materials
must include 350 gp of adamantine.

Type legendary heavy steel; Level 17; Price 14,000 gp;
Hardness 17"

It seems inferior in every way... even price.

Shadow Lodge

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Also dump stats are definitly set up to be a thing with the way Potent items work. I think almost every optimized character will try to pick a sts too ignore and work towards getting that item as soon as possible. a +8 to +10 to a single stat is way to good to miss out on.

Shadow Lodge

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four the second adventure we are trying to run it twice. once with four players and an actual NPC healer that only does that. He won't engage in combat or do anything other than try to heal people out of combat. and once with five playing whatever they feel like. If the healbot fixes everything then but feels really neccesary then I will assume that I can run any party I just have to heal them after every fight. without using their precious resonance, or mybe one point to heal full out of combat with a certain amount of rest. I don't want to force party composition on my playersafter all this time where they didn't have to. That freedom of choice is very important to my group.

Shadow Lodge

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I had the opposite problem, ran the first level adventure and without a dedicated cleric healer the adventure just plain did too much damage for any lower tier healers to heal. The cleric seems to be what damage is balanced around and it's healing far outpaces any other classes ability. we had 2 backup hea;ers but between the alchemist having to double dip resonance to heal people, one from it to create the potion and one from them to drink it, and the palladin heal being only a d4 it really did not work out well.

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And the answer is no, they cannot because that is considered to be heightening and they cannot heighten without using spontaneous heighten or learning the spell at a higher level.

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The answer appears to be the multi-classing feats into any caster will give you access to all wands that are on that list, the same goes for scrolls. There is no longer a way to activate them with a skill chaeck it seems.

On a side note this really disheartens me towards certain builds, If I wanted to multi-class a rogue with fighter but also wanted to be able to use wands, I would need to have at least four class feats eaten up before I could do both as I would need three feats from one multi-class before I could take the other, and to be a master of magic items I would need to have 3 multi-classes to be able to use any item I came across.

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I understand the value of a higher quality item costing more because of the work and expertise put into making it, but requiring specifically 20 times more mithriil to raise the quality of an elven chain shirt seems ludicrous. It may require more specialized tools or a much more expensive sub reagents but because the crafting rules decided to remove time as a very limiting factor and instead make time = cost we need some other method. The shirts require the same amount of material to make, it's the quality that matters right?

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Wizards can sorcerors can't it appears, since a wizard can heighten a spell as long as he knows it he can memorize a lower level spell in a higher slot if he wants more per day. A sorceror cannot because heightening a spell requires them to know it at a higher level to do so as per the rules.

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This mainly is an issue for shields not getting an increased hardness for being a material that is supposed to be as good as iron. Especially mithril seems low as at master quality it has the same hardness as basic iron, meaning at normal quality it's hardness would be 1?

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Chrcking the math for cold Iron and a couple of others, it appears the + Hardness for expert quality was not added to the tables. As master quality should only be 1 higher than expert as far as I can tell based on the quality rules in the equipment section. Looks like it was probably skipped for most materials.

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I don't like the alchemists having to double dip for it. they should use SP not RP like everyone else.

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Cure your vampirism, even if the outsider can't twist your wish to their purposes the wish is so far outside the scope of a normal wish that the magic itself will most likely malfunction. That is a part of the wish spell itself not affected by the trait. I would be very careful with wish, outside the scope of it's normal parameters all bets are off.

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Eric Hinkle wrote:
Lilijobel wrote:
Eric Hinkle wrote:
I'll have to get this one just to see if I can use it to unleash an attack of the kiddy-snatching Phantom Clowns on some adventurers.
Try the sahkil for that.

The one they have listed here does sound like a kiddy snatcher at that.

And I just posted a review, I hope it convinces some people to try this one out. I love the monsters in here.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for taking the time to review it, I'll see if the feats for the Sahkil just accidentally got dropped. If I find them I'll post them here for you.

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any character who plans on becoming undead.

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Do the steam engine with a fire and water elemental in constant contact. Forcing the two forces to constantly battle each other, it could be really hard to find 2 elementals that are balanced enough to make it work and throw in a lightning elemental to power subsystems. Make it as techy as you want with elementals as a base powers source. That way you build on the classic golem power source just fluff it and explain it. Remember that a lot of the way magic actually works isn't flushed out and you can design it as you want, mitochlorians or no :D

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Most golems are fueled by elemental spirits, so Maybe the essence of a powerful and unique elemental?

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depending on what parts of monk you want you could also take the new aesthetic style feat chain.

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Vaite Belleran wrote:

Hi all.

I got in to a debate with a fellow Pathfinder enthusiast and friend of mine over certain character builds and we came upon a snag which I can't seem to get a clear answer to.

Suppose an 12th level Magus had a scroll of Dance of a Thousand Cuts he wanted to use, what would he have to do?

My understanding was:
1. Emulate the ability score required to cast the spell
2. Use scroll UMD check
3. Caster level check

And as a follow up question, what is a Caster Level check and what are the bonuses on said check?

And one more check to read the scroll if he doesn't have read magic prepared.

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Globetrotter wrote:

Somebody please help me with this spell. For some reason I confused myself .

How do you work the caster level and the AC bonus? You get the special at fifth level, which is castor level five. The spell says for every four caster levels you receive a plus one to AC. Does this spell start at fourth level? What is your AC bonus at 10 level?

I always thought when the spell mention caster level, your caster level was calculated as your character level as long as you only had one class. So, for example, a seventh level Cleric has A caster level of seven.

This spell seems to start at 4th level, gives you another bonus at 8th, then 12th, 16th and finally 20th. The math works out but it seems odd to me since usually when I see a spell reference a change bases on caster level I calculate from caster level one and then move forward. Originally, I thought this particular spell gave a +2 at 5th level since the wording is for every for caster levels and 5th level should be in the second tier: 1-4 = +1, 5-8 = +2, but is completely wrong.

Can someone help clear my head?

The actual text of the errata'd spell is:

You imbue a suit of armor or a shield with an enhancement bonus of +1 per four caster levels (maximum +5 at 20th level).

An outfit of regular clothing counts as armor that grants no AC bonus for the purpose of this spell.

Makes it a lot more straightforward, divide by four and round down.

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1. Familiars are smart enough to talk at level one (see some of the birds that can i.e. raven) They simply have to develop the ability so that isn't really much of a issue.

2. You can and your familiar will be able to understand you as well. It can definitely get clear if that is what you want it to do.

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I'm interested in trying this out, it looks promising :D

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Spellslinger with a single gun gets a x3 crit from level 1

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I will be bringing a wizard focused on detection abilities, most likely a tiefling diviner focused on status effect spells and very low on dps.

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Heladriell wrote:
If this is implemented (selecting spells as talents), it would surely be limited. Probably costing non-reducible burn and with the restriction of not selecting direct damage spells.

The burn thing I could see, but It doesn't need to be too restrictive, they are already limited by having to select them as a feat and having a reduced caster level, and since they aren't talents or blasts they wouldn't be able to use their other mods on them. I could see 1 burn but allowing it to be reduced by the move action reduction as an extra balance but damage should always be more efficient from the blast with the metas than any spell they would get (hopefully, but then again if a low level spell is that effective it's even better for the other casters who could get it.)

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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Christopher Van Horn wrote:

I think the thing this class needs is access to options, a feat that grants them spells at a lower progression that matches their element. something like this:

Expanded Elemental Control
Your control over the elements allows you to imitate spell effects with your chosen element.

Prerequisites: Kineticist level 3+

Benefit: Choose 2 spells that share the same elemental subtype as your blast and whose level is no gretaer than your Kineticist level divided by 3(So a sixth level Kineticist could take up to second level spells and a 18th level Kineticist could take 6th level spells). Your caster level for these spells is your Kineticist level -3.

Special: You can take this feat multiple times, each time you take this feat it applies to a new set of spells effectively adding more spells to your list.

How many spells per day does he get? That could be extremely overpowered if you're getting 3rd level spells as (effectively) cantrips.

I'm not sure it would be, he already has access to infinite blasts per day and this wouldn't allow him to swap out spells he would simply know them. At a certain point looking at it at will versus a sorcerer's 10/day with low level spells it doesn't make that much of a difference. Most of his things are at will anyways so I don't think it will be more effective as a major source of damage since blasts can be empowered/maximized and these spells will have no interaction with that.

They already get most of the spells at will so I don't think a reduced caster level and highly focused spells a few times per day is no better than an extra infusion or talent from a feat. In fact since you can still make talents for other spells of higher level this just allows for utilities that they don't get that way. The real point is to design a feat for versatility to open up page count for more new unique things instead of a bunch of talents that just copy utility spells.

Shadow Lodge

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I think the thing this class needs is access to options, a feat that grants them spells at a lower progression that matches their element. something like this:

Expanded Elemental Control
Your control over the elements allows you to imitate spell effects with your chosen element.

Prerequisites: Kineticist level 3+

Benefit: Choose 2 spells that share the same elemental subtype as your blast and whose level is no gretaer than your Kineticist level divided by 3(So a sixth level Kineticist could take up to second level spells and a 18th level Kineticist could take 6th level spells). Your caster level for these spells is your Kineticist level -3.

Special: You can take this feat multiple times, each time you take this feat it applies to a new set of spells effectively adding more spells to your list.

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