Matrixryu's page

Mortuum wrote:

I couldn't disagree more. That IS optimizing, to an extent. Without any attempt to optimize at all, you will find your groups power level all over the place and people's characters will not match their concepts well.

If you honestly think optimizing means using the resources available to balance the party and make everyone useful, then optimizing is great!

I'm not really sure other people will know what you're talking about, though.

Cheers!
Landon

A certain amount of optimization and good character design is necessary in order for a character to work properly and contribute to a fight.

A good example is this: a friend of mine in a game we just started is playing a tripping focused + dex based flowing monk. His starting feats were Dodge and Agile Maneuvers. I had to quickly explain to him that he *needed* weapon finesse to be able to hit things consistantly with normal attacks, and that he also *needed* Improved Trip as his first level monk feat if he didn't want to be provoking attacks of opportunity until level 6 (the next time he could get Improved Trip while ignoring prerequisites).

Sure, he could have just not picked these 'optimal' feats, but he would have regretted it. Even if the gm was going to scale enemies for him he at least needed Improved Trip to avoid getting beaten to death.

As for whether or not there is any point to higher level optimization.... I have to point out that if you are tracking EXP, and the GM scales enemies to suit the party, then the party is going to level up much faster if they are well optimized. That could be considered a plus.

Matrix Dragon wrote:

No fantasy world aside from D&D style worlds have Vancian style casting.

Dude, it's called "Vancian" for a reason. Google it, or better yet, read The Dying Earth (1950). Also, Roger Zelzny's 2nd Amber series (1985-1991) used it, and there's at least one line about memorizing spells in John Bellairs' The Face in the Frost (1969) -- even Wikipedia notes that "Prospero's practice of studying his book of spells the night before he might need them may have helped inspire the game's [D&D's] requirement for magic users to do the same."

None of those are D&D, although they're all cited (substituting the 1st Amber series for the 2nd) by Gygax as being foundational to the game.

I figured someone would come along and correct my exaggeration eventually. Maybe I should have said something more like: "No fantasy world that people typically think of today" ;)

I don't hate the idea of Vancian spellcasting itself. I just hate that it is the default kind of spellcasting in pathfinder/D&D.

The core spellcasting classes (Wizard and Cleric) are supposed to represent the iconic spellcasters of fantasy worlds. If this is the case, then why do they not actually have spellcasting systems that reflect this? No fantasy world aside from D&D style worlds have Vancian style casting.

Vancian casters should all be special setting specific classes and not the default assumption.

For the Love of Desna, please, PLEASE stop releasing an endless stream of additional spells, races, classes, feats, archetypes, etc. Talk about BLOAT!

I can agree with slowing down the release of spells simply because of how it automatically makes certain types of spellcasters more powerful.

However, there is no such thing as too many classes, feats, or archetypes as long as they all serve a purpose and remain relatively balanced with each-other. There are still plenty of character concepts that I want to play that I can't build properly in Pathfinder.

If you think Paizo is releasing too much content, please just stick to the core rules (or whatever level of complexity you prefer) instead of ruining things for those of us who love extra options.

This may get me labeled as a 'Japanophile', but I play kitsunes simply because I'm a big fan of the legends that are behind them. There's a huge amount of depth and variation to them that I like to try to emulate in my characters.

The problem is that in pathfinder they're simply fox folk who are good at enchantment spells and have some shapeshifting abilities. Kitsunes in pathfinder don't have nearly the depth to them that 'real world' kitsunes have, so most people will look at them and see very little that is interesting about them.

I have to say that aside from the skinwalkers, one of the things that I'm really looking forward getting some better rules for dealing with players who become afflicted lycanthropes. The only options currently seem to be either for the character to become an NPC (at least part of the time) or for him to get a free power boost.

Oh no, is that Cthulhu in that picture? That's Cthulhu isn't it, and not just one of those CR 20 spawns... D:

I knew that you guys specifically made him at demigod strength so you guys could stat him up, but I didn't expect him to come up so quickly. One of my GMs will be happy.

lol. Amazon just updated me to say that they're changing the release date to July 11th.

Clearly it's throw another dart at the calendar time for Amazon.com

...this is exactly why I don't get my Paizo books from Amazon. I would go crazy waiting for them.

Nope. The curse is a class ability. It's part of their power and theme. You're not missing something at all—I would say folks who want to get rid of the curse are the ones missing something.

As a player I agree: the curse is an important part of an oracle's power and theme. Though, I do have to say that I've played an oracle character with the blackened curse who would have been very interested in getting the curse healed even if he lost some of his power (aka fire spells) in the process.

Basically I'm just saying that some people are asking just because it is something their characters would be interested in achieving. I don't think a lot of characters are going to care that the curse is a 'class feature' ;)

I also have to point out that 2 years ago when some people were begging for an epic rules book there were other people who were begging Paizo to NOT make an epic rules book. Why? Because they never play that high level and they didn't want to be left out when the next big rule book came out.

Paizo saw Mythic partly as a way to satisfy both crowds. I really don't see such an decision as a bad thing.

Perhaps the most confusing thing to me is the 'need' for Mythic rules. It would seem that character progression beyond level 20 would be sufficient.

The main answer to this is that a lot of people don't like epic/20+ rules for various reasons. Some don't like them because they don't scale well. Others don't like them because they never reach level 20 anyway.

In theory, the mythic rules will work around both of these problems. It doesn't really extend the standard stat progression (not in the usual way at least). Also, it gives an option for low level mythic play for people who hate high level games.

I'd say the main reason Paizo is doing mythic rules may be for the people who never see high level play. Allowing mythic to be available at all levels greatly increases the possible userbase of the rulebook. It was both a smart design and business decision in my opinion.

"Operation Dragon Hitler"

I don't think I'll be able to look at Hermea the same way ever again. D:

Out of curiosity, how likely is it that we'll see a module or maybe even an adventure path on Hermea at some point?

Honestly, the only real solution will be to add more enemies so that the other players will have things to fight.

Yes, I know that you want to run the adventure path as is. Unfortunately, that isn't always possible if you want to challenge your players and keep things interesting. Heck, in both serpent's skull and rise of the runelords I had to buff things continually and even combine encounters together to keep things interesting.

Personally, as a GM, I hate rules lawyers. They are up there with power gamers/over-optimizers. i have had to deal with too many who feel the rules are set in stone and immutable.

But saying that, I have learnt to utilise them. When something comes up that I can't remember (usually something involving grapples) I turn to the RL and ask him/her. It helps me and the group out, and allows to feel useful with their knowledge.

But RLs do need to learn that the rules are just guidelines and if the GM feels the need to alter something it is their perview to do so.

A sensible rules laywer is alright with the GM not following a rule if the GM is doing it intentionally. The issue is he'll often mistake not following a rule as not being aware of the correct wording of the rule or not understanding it, and will want to 'help'.

Of course he should be holding back and avoiding irritating the GM in the first place.

Not quite what I was expecting when I opened this thread. A "rules lawyer" in my understanding has always been someone that bends the rules to their advantage. The dead characters can still act, because while the rules have "dead" as a condition, they don't place limits on it, or you can talk while holding your breath, because talking is free action, and free actions are allowed while holding your breath. That is a "rules lawyer," a person that does his best to ignore reality, because the rules don't define it.

There is also a rules lawyer that always needs the game to follow the rules in the book. If the rules in the book aren't followed then the lawyer becomes confused because he is no longer certain that taking a certain action will lead to a certain result. In effect, the laws of physics that drive the game world become unstable, and this leads the lawyer to become frustrated and unsure of how to interact with the game world.

In order to get the game world to make sense again, the lawyer will feel that he has to fix things by stating what the rules say *should* have happened.

At least, that is how it works with me. Luckily, I've brought my rule correcting compulsions mostly under control ;)

I love Pathfinder. I’ve spent hours and hours poring over the rulebooks and know most of the rules inside out. I share my knowledge with other player’s and GMs at the table whenever a rule dispute pops up. I only do this so everyone has a clear & fair standing, but this annoys a lot of people.

Since I'm a bit of a rules lawyer myself, I think I know what the problem is.

The thing is, if you stop the game to state that either a GM or a player is doing something wrong then you're breaking up the flow of the game. Plus, people simply don't always like being told that they are wrong in mid game. It is generally better to just mention the issues to the GM after the game is over. If the GM actually cares, he will catch on and improve over time.

There are only a few cases where it is generally alright to interrupt a game by 'clarifying' a rule:
1. When people are obviously unsure of what the rule is supposed to be and are asking what the correct rule is.
2. When a major and game breaking event will happen because a rule is being broken.
3. When it will save another player's character.

Even in the above cases you have to be very careful because people can still be annoyed if it happens too often. You also need to try and keep the event from happening in the first place because GMs hate undoing events that have already happened.

For most rules problems, just hold it in and mention the issue to the GM after the game is over. Try to be non-confrontational about it. Be careful about this because some people will be annoyed even by this. If you're playing with a group that doesn't even want to discuss the correct rules AFTER a session, then you might want to find a new group because they'll just drive you crazy.

You may also want to make sure that you know all of the GM's house rules before each game so you don't end up arguing about those.

Ashiel, we are NOT talking about “acting in a restricted manner for a bit” or “getting 'chanted for a short while to progress the plot“.

THE BBN WAS DOMINATED FOR THE ENTIRE CAMPAIGN. Pls read all the posts.

I think you missed the fact that they houseruled Dominate a bit so that the player in control could choose to stop specific actions and let the other player do whatever he wants the rest of the time. The barbarian was really only effectively dominated for one action in each session. That's very different from completely losing control of your character for an entire campaign.

I'm not taking either side here. I'm just saying that you're blowing the situation out of proportion.

It is a game. Why do you have to accuse and insult the guy who is being generous enough of his time and effort to be a GM for you because you didn't get one little thing? It is a game. I just possibly didn't give you something you wanted, but I didn't take anything away from you. It is a game. Maybe you could say thanks for going to all that effort so we can play. It is a game.

I'll admit that I once made the mistake of coming out a bit too against a GM of mine who wanted to start us all off with npc classes. He wanted to do a campaign where we didn't start off as 'heroes', but some of us (including myself) didn't want to start off unable to do anything. The GM got upset enough that there were no games for months, lol.

This is the sort of thing that requires tact on both the player side and the GM side though. Before giving your players a list of restrictions for the coming campaign did you try to get them interested in the campaign itself? Maybe you should get them willing to accept the idea of restrictions for the sake of the campaign before giving them the list of restrictions.

At the very least, by asking them this question first it would save you the time of building a campaign that they players wouldn't play.

Obviously at specific jobs other classes will surpass the Synthesist. The advantages that make Synthesist broken are 1) double HP, 2) incredible stat arrays, 3) switch-hitting between melee and casting, and 4) choice of evolutions.

Just to clarify a few things...

1) Synths have high hp, but not double the hp of a real melee class and especially not a raging barbarian. This is because eidolons have reduced hit dice, non-maxed hp at first level, and the summoner uses d8s.

2) This depends on whether it is a low point buy or high point buy game.

3) You mean switching between melee and support casting, right? Even with maxed Cha, a summoner isn't a very frightening offensive caster due to their lowish spell DCs and limited spell selected.

4) Won't argue here.

Summoners and Synths are powerful, but I find that their abilities are often exaggerated.

Looks like someone just put in a really big donation :)

What is yiffy?

If you don't know, it is better that you never learn ;)

For someone who doesn't like kitsunes, you sure post a lot in the topics about them ;)

Maybe it would be better to leave these topics alone instead of bringing furries up in them over and over?

A weremantis? Now that's a were-type I've never heard of before!

*looks* Wow, that thing's freaky. And yea, the clothing and weapons on that one works well because it tells people that the thing was once human, hah XD

Just curious, are you planning on basing minis on the other two pictures on the kickstarter page as well?

Well, I would post some links to pictures of their anthro form, but I'm worried that I might be breaking a forum rule by posting links to the official art. I suggest doing a Google search for 'kitsune pathfinder', and you'll find a few pictures in the first few image results that come up.

As for a regular fox form, there is a feat for that.

I think it is very important that all mythic spells should remain useful all all levels of play. Otherwise, you'll have situations where characters who gain their mythic tiers late in the game will have better mythic spells than characters who gained their tiers at low levels since they had a wider variety of choices. Either that, or you should allow casters to replace their mythic spells with new ones as they gain tiers, similarly to how sorcerers can replace their spells as they gain levels.

It is important to make sure that mythic spells are always in some way better than non-mythic spells when they are cast at the same level. Or at least they should be useful in some unique (and mythic) way. Otherwise, the caster will ignore the useless mythic spells in favor of recasting his better spells with Divine Surge or Arcane Surge.

For example: why would a high level Hierophant Cleric ever cast mythic cure light wounds or cure critical wounds when he could simply use either Recalled Blessing or Inspired Spell to cast Heal? Heal is better in every way when compared to the Mythic Cure spells, and by using Recalled Blessing or Inspired Spell, he didn't even have to expend a spell slot.

Think if it this way: Using a mythic point to cast a mythic spell should always be at least as effective as using Recalled Blessing or Inspired spell (or the equivalent arcane versions) to recast one of your most powerful spells. This means that with the current way things are set up a 1st level mythic spell has to compete with 9th level non-mythic spells.

Is the "no more than one spell per round" restriction really that bad? I was thinking that it would make things more interesting by forcing spellcasters to mix in spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, and items (such as staves, which suddenly become really useful for a mythic spellcaster).

Anyway, thanks for thoroughly looking into the new Amazing Initiative rules. It is definitely a good point that we don't need rounds getting longer, and I think upping the cost of using the old Amazing Initiative to 2 points would balance things out.

Actually, how about a middle ground? Keep the extra action happening on a different spot in the initiative, but still restrict it to a standard action and keep the one spell per round limit. Anything that forces people to invest in things that doesn't involve simply doing yet another full round attack or spell is something that I would think would make the game more interesting.

Then again, I'm just theorizing. I haven't actually been able to test any of this yet.

Edit: Another option would be to allow people to spend 1 point to get an extra standard action -20 init later, and 2 points to get a full round action -20 init later. This could favor spellcasters though, if the melee doesn't invest in things like vital strike and cleave.

The class is too powerful as it is. Better just to ban the class or dump that power.

Sorry, but the summoner happens to be one of my favorite classes due to its flavor, so I'm not going to ban it. I'd rather let my players have fun with it, but implement a few houserules that prevent powergamers from abusing it (while fixing some issues at the same time, such as the reach evolution).

I really wish people wouldn't have such a knee-jerk 'ban' reaction to such a fun class. It isn't like everyone abuses its mechanics, and there are plenty of classes that are just as powerful (if not more powerful).

Edit: Well, that's just my opinion on the situation at least. I'll try to avoid further derailing the thread with summoner talk ;)

I think in my games I'll simulate the entire "you need to do awesome but difficult to repeat things to be mythic" situation by just using hero points. Want to do something which should be impossible? Use a hero point and mythic power at the same time.

Again, as a result of the "Paizo needs to get its house in order," thread, I'm not going to be answering the wall-of-text complex rules questions. What qualifies as a complex rules question (or its commonly spotted variant—the "please render a ruling on a confusing bit of rules text") is not something I'm willing to post guidelines on. If it qualifies to me as something that's better served being posted in the rules forums, I'll make that decision based on my own gut feeling.

This question's one such example. Please repost to the appropriate rules discussion forum.

"This is why we can't have nice things!"

???

It has the rogue class and the skill to steal stuff. You grow more powerful by killing things to get xp. Things like that.

My players generally only kill things that are threatening either their lives or other people's lives. The only exception involved an incident where metagaming took over when they realized they could hunt down animals for EXP. I've also seen rogues who only use their skills for getting a party through a dungeon, bluffing the group out of trouble, and using stealth to steal important things from the bad guys instead of innocents. There is a reason why they're called 'rogues' and not 'thieves'

Basically, the things you're mentioning don't necessarily have any impact on the playstyle of a gaming group.

It is Quarterly, but they're twice as long. These could be interesting. In my opinion the old Modules seemed too short to be worthwhile, but these might have a good balance between being long but not taking up an entire adventuring career. I think I might have to renew my subscription.

I AM going to find some way to throw a dracolich at my players just because of this miniature.

If there isn't something about the campaign that motivates players do want to do the right thing, then why should they be expected to think of right things to do on their own?

This kind of baffles me actually. If it is a heroic campaign, why would someone *need* to be motivated to do the right thing?

I guess I just have a very different mindset compared to a lot of other players out there.

Heh, the funny thing is that I'm the exact opposite way: I can't stand the idea of playing a non-heroic character. Every single character I create has to be some flavor of good-aligned, or Lawful Neutral at worst.

Playing a character (or playing with one) that goes around fighting with innocent commoners and setting fires to towns would just bother the heck out of me.

So if Karzoug is running a campaign, and needs Flip-Mat: Country Inn, Merisiel can just let him use hers.

Trying to picture this kind of blew my mind.

This all depends on the GM and the backstory. For example, one of my GMs decided that he wanted eidolons to actually be 'real creatures' that were being summoned.

One of my summoners was summoning an 'aspect' of an extremely powerful gold dragon when he summoned his eidolon. When the summoner became more powerful he was able to summon more and more powerful aspects of the dragon. In this case, the eidolon didn't really have a life of its own outside of when the summoner called it, because it was a small part of a larger creature.

In another case, I had a synthesist summoner who had a shadow creature bound into his own shadow when he was very young. Eventually he learned to summon it around himself. The shadow creature by itself was relatively weak, but my character was able to strengthen it and modify it with his magic as he grew in power as a synthesist. This eidolon was constantly aware of what was going on around the synthesist whether or not it was summoned, and would try to help and protect him (both benefited from the shadow creature 3.5 template). The funny part is that I created this character before the Shadow Caller archetype came out...

I remember a dm who threw three level 3 weretiger rogues with spring attack against a party of four level 8 pcs. The downside was, the weretigers combined spring attack with pounce. That was a devastating combination. Top it off with the fact that the weretigers could feint as a free action and had a bluff modifier so high that even the party cleric with maxed out wisdom and sense motive couldn't see through the feints and disaster strikes. Party was dead within 3 rounds. Dm congratulates himself on a job well done and then looks up to realise that everyone has left the game and his house.

Did anyone eventually tell the DM that you can't combine spring attack and pounce? Assuming the two abilities worked the same way in that game as PF at least, lol.

So, do GMs in this thread remember to apply all this when a PC with a Haversack falls into the villain's create pit spell?

For the sake of sanity, I treat effects like Create Pit as still being in the same dimension (even if it makes no sense geometrically). Otherwise you have silly things happening like eidolons getting dismissed when they fall in.

So many people are getting in on this Kickstarter that I'm starting to wonder how many people will be left to buy the minis at normal price when this is all over.

Time for me to add to the pile of Mythic questions! :D

So, I've read in a few places that even with the Mythic rules that Players won't be able to fight even lesser gods. Does this mean...

Just so you guys know, there is a theory going around that oil isn't actually a 'Fossil Fuel'. It may actually be produced deep within the Earth. If this is true, our oil reserves may simply never run out. You just have to wait a bit every once in a while for the right wells the refill themselves.

In the right places, you can make far more than 2k gold with 24 hour time stop.

Well, I think many of us have already decided to ban time stop with this. I believe my house rule will state "If you try to use this ring with Time Stop, the Mantis God will come and kill you." ;)

The one issue I see is that it prevents you from casting any other spells with a range of 'Personal'. Sure, you could get 24 hour long shapechange, but you won't be able to benefit from a long list of *other buffs* that have short durations.

Still, it is pretty powerful. You can do a day long time stop and walk through entire dungeons without the slightest worry of being caught as long as you don't run into an anti-magic field.

Heck, you could be about to die in mid battle, use this ring + time stop, and rest for a day. Regain your spells and full health, encircle your foes with delayed blast fireballs, and then end the timestop...

I'm totally going to have a BBEG do this. Well, if I don't decide to limit the max spell level this thing can take in at least.

Haladir wrote:

Oh, and why is the tavern owner ALWAYS a retired 9th-level fighter?

No, I'm pretty sure he's a retired Barbarian 1/Bard 1/Cleric 1/Druid 1/Fighter 1/Monk (Martial Artist) 1/Ranger 1/Rogue 1/Sorcerer 1/Wizard 1/Alchemist 1/Cavalier 1/Gunslinger 1/Inquisitor 1/Magus 1/Oracle 1/Summoner 1/Witch 1/Expert 1/Commoner 1. Why else does he know ALL the things?

... By the way, he's a totally legal character.

I'm suddenly curious about what the typical tavern owner's oracle curse is. Can't be haunted, or that tavern wouldn't last very long. Maybe tongues, since that would explain why no one can understand what he says when he starts cursing at people.

Long ago, back when 3.0 was first released, I wanted to recreate a 1st edition AD&D monk, who used a weapon in one hand and unarmed strikes in combination. The sheer expense involved makes that prohibitive in 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder.

The Amulet of the Mighty Fists costs 5,000 gp x bonus squared (it cost even more in 3.5!); a magic weapon costs 2,000 gp x bonus squared. To have both of them, at the same bonus is 7,000 gp x bonus squared.

Ironically, the Bodywrap of Mighty Strikes (or whatever it is called) that everyone is complaining about is perfect for this build. Use the bonus from the bodywrap for the unarmed strikes, use a weapon for everything else.

So, yet another case of illegal eidolons making the class seem overpowered. At level 8 the eidolon will gain just one evolution point compared to the current (illegal) build, while the fighter will get +1 BAB and a feat. That might even the odds a bit.

In my nearly 30 years on this planet, I have noticed an odd trend by people to stand in front of the "Steamroller of Progress" and try to stop it.

Well, quite simply, different people have different definitions of what "progress" really is. One person's progress might be what another person thinks is the world's descent into madness and immorality. Certain groups just manage to get their beliefs about what needs to change in the world labeled as "progress" so that they can get everyone else to think they're right and create that unstoppable "steamroller" you mentioned.

So far I've made two changes to the plot to make things flow a bit better:

1. I made Yarzoth be affiliated with the Serpentfolk that the players have to deal with in books 5 and 6. She used a spell to send the location of the city to them, and they arrived there ahead of the players. Doing this gives the campaign more of a heroic feel because you're trying to get to the city for a greater reason than just discovering and plundering it.

2. Eiando Kline's pathfinder group did NOT discover the city before the players. I wanted the players to feel like they were the ones who were there first. Eiando arrived with the Pathfinder expedition, found a portal to the underground city, and then was captured. This works best if the players are allied with the Pathfinder faction however.

I think I got both of these ideas from somewhere on this board...

An interesting thing about synth is that if the summoner doesn't qualify for a feat without his eidolon, then you can't take it. Kinda hard building a STR build without power attack isn't it?

The general rule of thumb is that if you can qualify for a feat for 24 hours straight, then you take the feat. So, synth summoners don't have to worry about this since they don't have a time limit on their eidolon form.

At least, this is the rule of thumb I've read some of the developers using.

I would go with A simply because it leads to a more even power progression.