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 Recent Posts
Since I haven't played any Pathfinder Society yet, I'd be interested in low level adventures. I'm not sure I'd even want to join one of those adventures rated for levels 1 through 5 and have my character be the weak link sitting at level 1 while the rest are 3rd+.
I don't like them since I already get all the maps in the APs and don't feel the loose maps add any value to my game. I would rather see a different product in place of the folios (at least as part of the subscriptions). My views are pretty much in line with erian_7's:
How "good" does one have to be as a DM to run a game? I do a lot of DMing at home, but I don't know if I'd be qualified to run a game at a con. (Cue neurotic worrying about ruining someone's con with a bad game experience) Ditto. Been DMing since 1983 for my home games, but never DM'd a con game (and only played in one once in 2001).
I'm of the opinion a bard is a poor substitute for a cleric for healing. I give bards a boost in my campaigns akin to the clerics channeling: Song of Healing: A bard has ability to provide healing to all those in an area around the bard by performing a song of healing. This ability requires a full minute of performance, at the end of which time all living creatures who remained within 30’ of the bard during the entire performance are healed 1d8 hit points plus an addition 1 hit point per level of the bard. This ability may be used a number of times per day equal to 1 + her charisma modifier.
...that would make melee fun for this player again... I still think my suggestion would allow her to have fun in melee. Just because you have the Two Weapon Fighting feat doesn't mean you have to try and use it every round. Up against a dangerous opponent? Use stealth or hit&run tactics until the opponent is focused on another character then unlease the full attack. Also, the Two Weapon Fighting doesn't preclude taking Shadow Dancer levels beginning at 11th level instead of 10th...but at least the rogue will have some damage potential for when it might be needed.
This character will be fine if she can pick up Weapon Finesse and Two Weapon Fighting. She'll get another feat at 9th level and at 10th level of rogue can choose to pick a feat instead of one of the rogue abilities. My suggestion is to stick with rogue and get those feats..her combat abilities will be excellent when she flanks with 3 attacks (2 main hand with a rapier + 1 off hand with a dagger) each doing an extra 5d6 sneak attack damage each round. She doesn't need non-core stuff to make her better, just add in Weapon Finesse and Two-Weapon Fighting and she'll be a death dealing machine as long as she's willing to manuever herself into flanking position at every available opportunity.
All printed products put out by Paizo still use 3.5 rules. The Pathfinder RPG rules you have is the Beta, not the official Pathfinder RPG rules. Paizo will be publishing Pathfinder RPG this comming summer and all of their products will use the Pathfinder rules from that time forward.
I'm not interested in a world guide of any sort - I'd just like a good module to read through, preferably one that has a city adventure at its core, as opposed to a dungeon crawl. Both the second and third adventure paths started off with city adventures at the core. (and Pathfinder #1 had about half the adventure located in a mid sized town). Pathfinder #7: Edge of Anarchy
I think both adventures are excellent. Also, you can download the players guide for Curse of the Crimson Throne (which is the adventure path that starts with Pathfinder #7) for free.
With 6 PCs who know how to optimize and play together well, I would add 2 levels (or HD) to every boss and make sure to never let a boss fight your group solo. Add in 2 to 4 of the typical monsters the party has been encountering to act as guards and distractions for the fight with the boss. Otherwise +50% numbers for the standard encounters will work.
Looking at what people like the egyptians and romans did, I have no doubts that intelligence hasn't risen over time (at least not in the last two thousand years...100,000 years? Yes, it probably has). I'm also confident that a game with very bad house odds would get a bad reputation and at the very least suffer from people not wanting to play it.
If your offer still stands, I'm willing to split the cost. I'll be arriving Thursday evening and leaving Sunday evening, but I'd rather pay for Sunday and not have to move my luggage out in the morning. I'm not in dire need, but wouldn't mind lowering the cost of the trip to some extent.
Having DM'd the Keep on the Borderlands at least 5 times makes me really want to play this particular game.
Yes, perhaps I misunderstood. Overall, I think Fantasy Grounds is a better tool but it's also hard to argue with Maptool being free. And it sounds like with the improvements being made the two products may end up being equal in features, but not price.
You improve your own stats. Playing a shapechanging wizard or druid and planning on using the shapechange spells in order to deal melee damage isn't a very good option under the Pathfinder Beta rules.
I'm unsure if you've made any tweaks to the Beta Druid, but I'm concerned it is turning into one of the least desirable classes. First, cleric healing far outshines druids with the option to use channel energy to heal. I would give druids something like this: Nature’s LifeBlood: A druid has the power to call upon the life giving powers of nature to heal living creatures in the area around the druid. Nature’s Lifeblood is a supernatural ability you can perform as a standard action which does not provoke attacks of opportunity. When you call upon this power, all living creatures in a 30-foot burst gain Fast Healing 1 for 3 rounds plus 1 round per druid level. A druid may call upon nature’s lifeblood a number of times per day equal to 1 + her wisdom modifier. Second, the Beta rules for wild shape is a very poor option for combat for the druid. This was discussed in some recent threads on the classes forums, and it's pretty obvious a druid in wild shape form trying to enter melee combat is going to be ineffective. The forms for a druid needs something: a size bonus to stats or some inherent druid bonus for fighting in wild shape form.
While I do believe the 3.5 fighter needs a boost, giving him bigger numbers in the form of Armor Training and Weapon Training is not the way to make him better, it only causes a much LARGER rift between the fighter and the other classes (making it much tougher to balance high level monsters). Fighters need feats (or talents like rogues) that do the following:
Some of these abilities shouldn't kick in until higher levels, but considering what power levels are being reached when characters are 15th level and higher, I don't think these abilities are out of line.
Now as far as fantasy goes, The game is based mostly on European style combat than on the oriental style, and the "generic" weapon q-staff in the game is NOT a monk specific weapon. Here's a quote from the SRD: "When using flurry of blows, a monk may attack only with unarmed strikes or with special monk weapons (kama, nunchaku, quarterstaff, sai, shuriken, and siangham)." Right there, a quarterstaff is a special monk weapon. YOU are the one with the wrong vision of what a quarterstaff is.
However as I have pointed out before, the RESULT of Maul Fighting with a Staff/two bladed sword, could ONLY be accomplished by an extremely skilled master... And that's why we play this game, to become the hero...the powerful wizard, the honorable and evil smiting paladin, the master of weapons. The idea of a quarterstaff master is compelling and works much better when you imagine it as someone like this japanese samurai using the weapon with his dexterity than having Conan dancing around trying to use a staff that way. And besides, D&D isn't about reality or there wouldn't be wizards and clerics. It's about fantasy adventure.
That sure brought back memories. When was growing up I remember when there was pretty much 1 type of each product and then it grew...sodas, candy bars, chips, cookies. I noticed the selection grow with most of the unhealthy foods, but then that's the type of food I was interested in buying for myself when I was 10. Hopefully we can get our light, original, and extra chunky maps too. :)
I'm impressed at the issues you've brought up over the last few days Neil. So far every one of your concerns were very hot topics when the new rules were revealed. In this particular case quite a few people didn't like the fly skill, but Jason pretty much said it's staying no matter the outcry or not. I'm with you and feel the fly skill is unneeded. Reminds me of the weird add on rules from the good old days of 1st edition. I'd prefer some simplified guidelines for flying and manueverability (simplified compared to 3.5 anyway) and let's not have everyone rolling skill checks every time someone moves while flying at high levels when it becomes common.
If it included the entire Adventure Path, I'd pay up to $30 for every path that the product was available for and as they came out. If the price were higher I'd still buy the product, but would probably limit it to buying the product as I ran each Adventure Path (going as high as $50 per Adventure Path under this scenario).
I agree Masika in appreciating that you guys are willing to talk so openly about issues like this, especially when there's disagreements. So I'll finally take no for an answer. For the foreseeable future, I will be making my own pixelated Pathfinder battle maps (or grabbing copies of the maps Tintagel or other people decide to redraw).
Increasing the resolution does solve the problem for what a battle map is made for though. No more detail needs to be added, because if it is, it just gets in the way of trying to use the minis to play out the battle scenes. What the higher resolution (with the same detail) does is get rid of the pixelating problem that happens when you blow the standard size maps up when creating the battle maps. So yes, I seriously believe it would take the same time.
Please also note that it heals EVERYONE in its area, including opponents. :) Yes, but with the Selective Channeling feat and when fighting lots of mooks (who are either dead or uninjured), then healing your enemies doesn't come into play as much as I thought it would. Also, the cleric can strategically place himsef to limit healing enemies.
Is this good or bad, I dunno. Certainly your mileage will vary, as you may use less or more spells to trade, or not fully use CE to heal (until you get selective channeling which makes it way easier). However, it does seem like overall, there will be more points healed in a game day than in 3.5, and this may have an effect on Challenge Ratings. In my home games I DM a 3.5 game, but I switched clerics over to using Pathfinder's Channel Energy. I've noticed a substantial increase in healing, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing either. I like it in that it allows my players to continue on aventuring for longer times between rests, but the channeling has also made a huge difference in some of the larger battles where the most of the party is getting damaged. Against one tough foe it doesn't help much, but when everyone is getting damaged at a relatively slow rate the channel pretty much negates the threat. I'd almost like to see Channel Energy have 2 forms. In the first it could harm undead (at d6/level will save for 1/2) and cause them to cower (maybe for 1rnd/level, but allow the undead a save each round). In the second it would trigger Fast Healing 1 in all living creatures within 30' for 2 rounds per cleric level. This would still allow Channeling to help with healing, yet effectively limit it to non-combat situations.
I'd allow that for sure and I don't see anything in the rules that says differently. I think armor and shields with the Wild enchantment would be easier to deal with, but putting on armor or using a shield or weapon after the change works too.
So I took the liberty of comparing that to a very quickly generated fighter. Wow, the that fighter puts the druid to shame and you didn't even include Weapon Training (+2 attack, +2 damage more). I don't mind the fighter whooping the druid in melee because that's what a fighter should be doing, but wow the druid looks like merely an annoyance compared to the effectiveness of the fighter in melee.
Try out Rise of the Runelords if you can find it in print (or if you don't mind using PDFs). That first AP features cackling goblins, gruesome ogres, plenty of giants, even more giants, and eventually one of the Runelords himself. If you liked the old Temple of Elemental Evil/Scourge of the Slave Lords/QDQ 1-7 series, then you'll like Rise of the Runelords. That said, I think all of Paizo's adventures are top of the line and you'd also be happy with Curse of the Crimson Throne or Second Darkness...or just pick up a Pathfinder subscription and start Legacy of Fire with the rest of us.
Also, the detail required to do a regular map isn't increased just because it's bigger. All that has to increase is the resolution so when they're printed bigger they don't look pixelated. I'll agree that if it looks bad more work may have to be put into it AND I did go on to explain that if more detail work needed to be done then people like Tintagel could make amazing looking battle maps. Have you seen what Tintagel is doing with the battle maps he makes?
Yes, I agree a spear should be a double weapon that you can finesse with just like the quarterstaff. For both of these weapons I'd have a blurb stating that if you use the weapons as a double weapon then the weapons are finessable, but if you use the weapon as a two handed weapon, then they are not.
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