Mighty Squash's page

I like the Metal and Wood planes, but I will miss the PF1 lore of wood kineticists drawing from the first world.

I am running a PF1E campaign for my local university roleplaying society - introducing 18 year olds to roleplaying using it. It is going pretty well (and is the only non-5e game that was being offered).

Especially considering how often PFS games would have the problem of no-one in the group having the needed language. Now with languages being much harder to gain there will either have to be a significant drop in the languages needed in adventures or the game will simple become more frustrating/less fun.

Rolled out of bed on a cold, snowy, morning and started the day with this blog.

I can see the thinking, but... ummmmm.

I think I might just go back to bed and pretend this start to the day didn't happen.

So, like with Unchained, there is no raging for out-of-combat feats of strength?

Disappointing.
I understand that some people like some simplified math, but when it costs utility/comedy then it seems a net loss.

I have really been not keen on PF2.
But now you have gone and put healing back in necromancy where it belongs and fixed one of the things that bothered me most about all of 3rd/3.5 ed.
Tricksy monsters, you may be winning me over.

Flicking through this book has just left me feeling that the core rules line has been devalued by this book's inclusion.
With so much setting specific reprinting, this book is just disappointing.

And the modernising of some of the few actual rule elements included seems a lot more about forcing the use of multiple elements of the book to only be used when used together than it does anything that would feel like improving the material.

If Golarion doesn't have half-drow about the place, then why do Golarion specific splat books have a bunch of half-drow options in the first place?

The boon text just says apply to your #-1, nothing about only at first level?

Check here

Hi!

The Welcome to Pathfinder boon is just that - a welcome and a way for brand new players to avoid an unfortunate first table.

It should be distributed to all new players. So whoever is coordinating the table should make sure their new players have it. I have sent it to VOs and event organizers over the past few months, so there are copies in circulation.

While no specific language is on the boon, the Welcome boon is limited to a first level XXX-1 character. This criteria will appear in the next Roleplaying Guild Guide.

The guide from this page covers the Warlock. Not in great detail, but it sorts the bases well enough to give you a feel for it.

I played the entirety of Emerald Spire with a Battle Host. I had started with full plate as my implement and just specialised in being a tank. It wasn't the most fun to play but it was very, very effective.

And you get a decent selection of long buffs from Occultist that are worth keeping as high level as possible. I was transmutation then abjuration, and it worked very well. Especially when such spells as Countless Eyes turned up.

Same thing is happening to me.

I assume with as major a glitch as it is that someone on the staff is probably having a very unpleasant weekend trying to fix it.

Having binding rules hiding down old threads, and not including them in either the campaign clarification document of the society FAQ makes compliance problematic for newer players.

The PFS specific weirdness on familiar weapon finesse introduced here doesn't seem to be in the Campaign Clarifications.

Adam Mogyorodi wrote:

Mike, I'm interested in knowing how this will effect familiars who normally get Weapon Finesse. That feat is completely redundant for familiars, because it is written into the familiar feature that they use Dexterity or Strength, whatever is higher. Is it as good as it sounds, or does a familiar who gives up Weapon Finesse lose access to this feature?

If a familiar gives up Weapon Finesse, they lose access to this feature.

Does that mean this ruling is not actually a PFS rule, or am I missing something?

Now we just need Grippli to go legal

James Jacobs on the subject of what Arcane Spellcaster level means.

JJ view makes the whole things make far less sense. His rational is weirdly irrational.

Gauss wrote:

Interesting James. Thanks for the answer.

So which of the following would be correct? (Note: the bard cannot normally have a familiar.)

NG Wizard1/Bard7 (using bard arcane spellcaster level) can get a Pseudodragon
OR
NG Wizard1/Bard6 (add the two Arcane Spellcaster levels together) can get a Pseudodragon

- Gauss

Only the first one, since you don't add those levels together.

But the pseudodragon would only have 1 level of wizard to get its powers from.

This approach just doesn't make sense of any sort. And makes it clear that a FAQ is pretty much required, when someone on the team is interpreting the requirement very, very differently from how most of the player base seems to.

It will be a bit harder to get people to play awkwardly merged Pathfinder/Spelljammer once there is this, which will probably do much of it better but with different fluff (i.e. not the fluff my nostalgia wants).

My regular pathfinder group may have run a whole campaign using Spelljammer ship maps and setting fluff relatively recently.

N. Jolly wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Letric wrote:

Honestly, and this is just an opinion, I feel like they usually nerf melee stuff.

Mnemonic Vestment begs to differ, as does QuickRunner shirt. Although quite frankly, buying racks of them was an exploit that needed to be plugged.

You thought of quickrunner's shirt as a non-melee buff? I always considered it pounce in a can. Not sure how buying multiple versions of an item is an exploit, but I will agree that due to the errata, it isn't how the devs intended it to work, which is just strange on their part.

I regarded it as a universal buff. I can see plenty of caster uses for it as well.

Which is a good thing for casters, I guess. Since it is now basically a caster only item, if now more rigidly once a day.

I understand that some items were a little too good for their price, but this just adds another book to the pile of heavy objects I have purchased from Paizo that become more trouble than they are worth to use.
Going to a PFS game and knowing that I can't trust the text of the books I have bought to even correctly indicate what things do is somewhat offensive.

I think the lesson may be that it really is time to stop giving Paizo my money.

A swashbuckler being unable to swashbuckle with a drink, or flower, or love token, in his offhand without being penalised for it is saddening.

That said, Paizo decisions saddening me is what I have come to expect.

Sivanah, as I have no idea what I am doing in life so would like a god whose goals were as mysterious to me as my own.

I suspect it is the result of the Ectoplasmatic and Mindblade archetypes being written by writer not fully aware of the -10 penalty for thought components. Possibly due to that rule not being finalised in time.

For all the griping, this errata did at least save me some money - the book now offers nothing for my PFS character, so I am no longer under any pressure to buy it....

Poor witches, losing everything appealing this book had to offer. I'd have much preferred the Spirit Talker nerf going some other way - Shamans get to cherrypick hexes from witches, it was nice that witches had the option of getting something back the other way.
I'd have been happier if the feat was turned in to a way for witches to get something off the Shaman universal hex list than with the once a day you can borrow a power for a bit, but not in a useful way, approach that they went with. 10 minutes to turn on a daily power that runs out in an hour - that is going to be reliably helpful. They have turned a fun feat in to something that will only be used for broken corner cases.
And then Hex Vulnerability no longer able to be used on Fortune, which is already less powerful than Misfortune. Said day to be a witch that doesn't want to be evil eye, misfortune and slumber spamming.

The Mind Trust line of spells are far from insignificant damage, and only the first is tagged as [mind-affecting] (though I suspect they are all intended to be).

I would just like to thank everyone who contributes to this thread.

I have wasted too much of my life being uncomfortable with my own sexuality to really think that much about what is happening out there. It has been a very enriching experience to read through this thread and learn something of the beautiful variety of human experiences amongst the members of this community.

The "Constructs Without Spells" section on p12 of Cohorts and Companions does seem to suggest that alchemists don't need master craftsmanship even without spells, which is going to create some table variation.

...In addition to spells and masterful craftsmanship, it’s possible to instill magic into magic items (including constructs) through alchemy.

The text does not attach any riders with that explaining what conditions make it possible, which seems like a declaration that alchemy counts for crafting (the text before it about more reliable ways of using Master Craftsman).

Another occasion when I am left wishing that softcovers had errata/FAQ support.

Congrats to Ireland and to any Irish Paizoites who this affects.

NZ passed gay marriage by private members bill on a conscience vote, I think last year. Our governing party was mildly against it but enough MPs crossed the floor for it to happen.
So now we get to be where Australians go on same-sex wedding holidays to....
While we had had civil unions that offered much of the same rights since the early 2000s and as a country like to pride ourselves on being socially forward, male homosexuality was only decriminalised here in the mid-80s (while I'm complaining from a social justice angle, personally I am very glad of it as if it had been legal earlier my parent would never have married and had me).

In an unrelated anecdote of LGBT, I was at a tabletop gaming thing waiting for my GM to arrive and chatting to other people waiting when the conversation revealed that 6 of the 10 people waiting had at some point been involved in the university student union's queer support group and that all the letter of LGBT were being represented. I choose to believe that shows that roleplayers are an inclusive lot, and that everyone feels welcome.

A cohort can be a generic mount (if they are of a size and shape that you can ride), but can not be a class feature mount.
You can not stack cohort powers on top of cavaliers' mount powers, though you are welcome to have one of each.

Put the witch in a wheelbarrow (or a cart hitched behind a donkey, donkey's are pretty cheap) and it can cackle all day long without slowing the party down...

On the one hand, we have racial FCB that are strictly worse than a skill point. To cite a couple, there is the Half-Elf Monk FCB that, with two levels investment, grants a circumstantial +1 bonus to two pre-set skills; a bigger offender is the Dhampir Inquisitor FCB that takes two levels to give a circumstantial+1 bonus to Intimidate. Both are clearly, inarguably worse than taking the skill rank bonus across two levels.

If you are making a build that is trying to maximise a single skill, then these can be useful as it gives a half level bonus above the maxed-out skill ranks you have in it. So for some builds these types of bonuses can be effective.

Healing is a valid approach if you have a little versatility to go with it.
I played a life oracle through a campaign that ran all of last year, and it was a lot of fun, though I also spammed a bit of blindness/deafness and silence so as to help reduce how much damage my team took in the first place (and the occasional Spiritual Weapon - which was the only damage dealer I had).
The character was fun to play and appreciated by the rest of the party (even if occasionally getting referred to as HealBot rather than by name).

Dwarf Fortress teaches us that carrying your baby in to battle increases the chances you come out alive, as the baby can take the fatal hits for you.

blackbloodtroll wrote:

I figure a small note in the Oracle class could work.

I was thinking the same thing. Right after the sentence "An oracle casts divine spells drawn from the cleric spell lists.", they could add something along the lines of "Any spell that references a cleric's wisdom score uses the oracle's charisma score instead."

Of course, other spellcasting classes would need similar language, along the lines of "Any spell that references a casting attribute other than intelligence will use the witch's intelligence score instead."

But all in all, it's a pretty small fix that would cover every spell.

This would solve the problem entirely within the classes, and not affect the core book. It seems elegant enough.

Dear OP,
I have a lot of friends who play Exalted. I like to think that Mythic is the sort of thing that would attract them in to playing Pathfinder.
Different people have different expectations of the game, and mythic opens up the options for that without requiring the broken maths of extreme high levels.
If your group doesn't want to play Mythic that is all good. I suspect my group will likely never use these rules, but I still approve of their existing (and will, even, almost certainly buy the book).
A larger range of stories is a good thing, and if GM don't want to use mythic stories (and I'm assuming they usually will not) then they don't use them. If they do, then players get to play with some fun new features and experience a different kind of Pathfinder.
Variety = good.

Has there ever been a definitive answer of what happens to items equipped on the eidolon when it is dismissed? As that may complicate things further.

Anyway, having played a summoner for quite a while now (a weekly game since late last year), I've had no problem with the no-shared-slots rule. Though that may be to do with the fact I've not had the money to have much in the way of extra magic about. My eidolon, without gear, still fights almost as well as the fighter while I through around a pretty impress set of underleveled buff spells.
The summoner spell list is too good for what it is. It's not bard casting, it is just dressed up as bard casting.

I find race and character concept often go hand in hand.
Sometimes the appeal is playing a character whose race and class aren't an obvious combo. In 3.5 Eberron I played a Warforged Soulknife purely for the appeal of having a Soulknife who may not have had a soul.

So far in Pathfinder I've mostly played gnomes and halflings, as they have worked for the character concepts. Next character up will likely be either human or kitsune, depending on the concept I settle on.

While I very much prefer the ARG style to the catfolk, the B3 art was more humanoid whereas the ARG art again brings up the question as to why the monstrous humanoid type exists if things that animalistic still count as humanoid.

I was surprised by how much I like ARG Sylph. I was entirely not taken by them as a bestiary race, but the ARG has won me over to their playability. The other three I-can't-believe-they-aren't-genasi also fared well in this book and are doing a much better job of standing on their own feet as races now, and leaving the unflattering genasi comparisons behind them.

The ARG also increased my like for Ratfolk, while cementing my dislike of Catfolk and Nagaji (as both seem a little mechanically good - the Nagaji, mostly, because of their archetype).

Kitsune have been my favourite since the Dragon Empires books came out, and still are - even if I've yet to be in a game where I've been allowed to play one.

What insanity drove me to read all of this thread.... It's left me wanting to smash people's heads together.

Though it has also left me further in the DM should have control camp than I was before hand - which is a mild surprise.

Well, we could, but it wouldn't accomplish much.

I don't think 'could' was the word you were after. I believe in this place 'will continually and bittery' is always the correct modifier on complain.

But you could go around complaining how you were an air adventurer until you took an arrow to the wing, probably adding "filthy human" to make your cover more believable.

How do you propose they stay in business?

Adventure Paths, so many, many adventure paths.

Adding extra setting neutral (and thus core) stuff seems to invite problems.

A Wizard can get beast shape I at fifth level - only one level after the Druid gets wild shape. Sure it might not last as long, but it does the exact same thing without requiring familiarity, just to have swung past a market and bought a component pouch.
I don't see how being mentally harsh about your definition of 'familiar' does anything except spoil the fun for anyone wanting to play a Druid.

Unless there is some reason you feel that Wizards need to be better at using beast shape than Druids are?

Also, beast shape doesn't allow anything particularly game breaking. Druids now are not the power houses that they were in 3.5, particularly with point buy as they are a little bit MAD. Is there a reason you feel they should be weakened further?

I'd also love to see Necromancy mug it and take the Healing spells...

+1