Nicos's page

vital strike + symbolic mastery sounds even worse, now you are wasting to feats to do less damage than a single swing of a great sword use that has spent no feat on increasing damage.

I don't know that I would call it awesome but Symbolic Mastery is a weird little feat you can throw into just about any character with a decent Use Magic Device and a Good Fort save.

Your Holy Symbol now shoots lasers. Number of times per day equal to you Base FORT save. Damage 1d6+ half your ranks in Use Magic Device

The Neat thing is that the damage it inflicts depends on the Domains of the God you worship. so you usually get 3 or 4 different damage types out of it.
For example with Pharasma you get; Cold, Positive, Negative and Untyped (damage reduced to 1d3 + half ranks in UMD)

plus abilities and feats that affect all weapon attacks function as normal with symbolic bolts.

Maybe not awesome but a really neat trick to pull out of your pocket.

Found in Pathfinder Players Companion; Magic Tactics Toolbox

The damage of that ability is slightly better than the arcane bolt bloodline power from the sage bloodline. So, it is a feat to replicate a 1st level ability. It's quite bad.

I don't disagree with the fundamental point, but I find it weird to say that low-powered games are somehow playing the game in easier mode.

If a player wants a combat option that works 99%+ of the time, I would point them to other classes than a rogue.

That would be wise on your part. I'd add that if a player wants to play a good roguish character, I would point them to other classes too.

Nicos wrote:

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Nicos wrote:

Even with all their drawbacks, AD&D thieves had abilities that were hard to replicate. That is not the case in pathfinder with the rogue. If someone wants to play a rogue, the best path is not to choose the rogue class.

Really? For mundanes and most clerics, yes, but a Wizard could do basically everything with spells. Backstab might be the hardest to emulate but I wouldn't be surprised to find out there was a version of Tenser's Transformation that gave your Thief abilities instead of Fighter.

I didn't say impossible but hard. Wizards have way fewer spells per day compared to 3.x, and scrolls/wands were not a granted thing.

You said the abilities were hard to replicate, so I replied to that. Most of them aren't. Is what you meant to say that is it is hard to reliably replace a Thief for all occasions they are useful on an adventure?

E.g. a Wizard might have a Knock available, but that only works on one door, so a Thief is nice to have for all the other locked ones you find.

Yes, that was what I meant.

Nicos wrote:

Even with all their drawbacks, AD&D thieves had abilities that were hard to replicate. That is not the case in pathfinder with the rogue. If someone wants to play a rogue, the best path is not to choose the rogue class.

Really? For mundanes and most clerics, yes, but a Wizard could do basically everything with spells. Backstab might be the hardest to emulate but I wouldn't be surprised to find out there was a version of Tenser's Transformation that gave your Thief abilities instead of Fighter.

I didn't say impossible but hard. Wizards have way fewer spells per day compared to 3.x, and scrolls/wands were not a granted thing.

D&D/AD&D Thief/Rogue isn't meant to be the computer games Rogue that deals a lot of DPS. So if someone chooses to be a Rogue thinking he will be a DPS machine, he is playing the wrong game.

Even with all their drawbacks, AD&D thieves had abilities that were hard to replicate. That is not the case in pathfinder with the rogue. If someone wants to play a rogue, the best path is not to choose the rogue class.

No. And quite frankly I believe a lot of people give rogue a bad rep through a misunderstanding of how the class functions.

"you are playing the rogue wrong" is an argument that has been proven to be wrong from time immemorial.

I love the Investigator, but it's the single worst designed class in the system. Why? Because it has 100% overlap in design space with the Rogue. There's nothing a Rogue can do that the Investigator can't do better. They have more skills, better talents (they can even steal some Rogue talents), they can ignore flanking just decide when a "sneak attack" hits, and they have an in-built accuracy modifier. Oh yeah, and they're 6th level casters.

Ah, I remember this kind of argument in the ACG playtest. The fact that the rogue sucks should not be a reason to not create better-designed classes.

Now that's not necessarily a problem with the Rogue...

It was a problem with the rogues and the books upon books of Paizo giving the rogue awful after awful rogue talents.

What happened to the realms was the main reason I got into PF and not into 4e. Good thing they didn't continue on that path.

I also like a similar idea, but I prefer it to be able to use light armor (to differentiate it to arcane full casters). In absence of anything else, the priest from the tome of secrets is good enough.

I like feats that open interesting combat options, like Hamatula strike.

Fantasy NPC: Lady Illivaretha, The Unwanted Concubine

This needs to be expanded into a full novel.

@Sylvan Scott and @zza ni

It is not that I'm against these kinds of ideas, but my problem is that they just give numerical bonuses. Martials can already have big numbers but are quite limited to full attacking every round in all fights.

That is why I dislike CE, because it is an annoying gatekeep for options that allow martials to do something else beyond full attacking.

Nicos wrote:

I wonder how many feats have CE as a prerequisite in the books after the ACG

41, out of 109 feats in total that require it.

My gods...

The notion that people somehow relate combat expertise with "playing a smart character" has always baffled me. Nobody flips an eye when a 7 int sorcerer uses his spell with perfect tactical acumen, but int 12 is not enough for LOTS of combat feats in the game (for the record, int 12 is enough for a wizard to know how to turn invisible).

PF 1 would have been a much MUCH better game If the feat would have been called "improved defensive fighting" with no int prerequisite attached so the designers were not tempted to put it as a prerequisite for so many unrelated feats.

I have a tread about the topic, I wonder how many feats have CE as a prerequisite in the books after the ACG
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rgoq?Please-no-more-combat-expertise#1

Plenty of people disagree with me without me assuming anything bad of them. I have personally been critical at times of the "less dark" direction, but not about this sort of thing. If the question hits home, maybe take a step back and rethink some things.

That's quite a big and accusatory "if".

"less dark" - Where has Paizo said they are going to make Pathfinder less dark? Are you unable to conceive of a dark fantasy world that doesn't feature chattel slavery or sexual assault? Is the suffering of social minorities the only "darkness" you take seriously? Is fetishized slavery truly dark, and not just pulpy indulgence in old tropes that white people get to feel comfortable with because they don't have to think about outside their safe fantasy world?

while you put them as "question", KC, these are quite ill-intended and assume quite a lot from people that might disagree with you.

If people at Paizo don't want to write about X, Y and Z that's their call, if people like their new releases they would buy it, if not then they don't. The absense of X, Y and Z in new material should not affect anyone's that do enjoy meddling with X, Y and Z in their fictional games.

On the other hand, the self-proclaimed moral high ground from some people that don't want to see X, Y and Z in a fantasy game about fictional characters can reach quite laughable and cringy levels.

Should creatures that are all about subjugation and dehumanisation exist in Golarian and should they remain a fairly common creatures to encounter in aps ?

Yes.

Even more, since poverty and violence are very real things that affect hundreds (if not thousands) of millions of people, those themes should be left out of the game too.

Nicos wrote:

Combat expertise is not an issue on its own. The real problem is that it is a prerequisite for a LOT of feats that have nothing to with trading accuracy for defence.

That doesn’t make combat expertise bad though. That’s just a fault in those other feats

Indeed, that's why I pointed out ostentatious display instead. CE is still a very annoying weak point for the system as a whole.

Combat expertise is not an issue on its own. The real problem is that it is a prerequisite for a LOT of feats that have nothing to with trading accuracy for defence.

One of the most ridiculous things in the lore of PF1 (not sure if it has changed now) is that they put a lawful NEUTRAL god of "slavery is good as long as you write it down in a law". That was much much worse than "the devil-worshiping people are being evil by having slaves"

It does seem probable that as the Golarion timeline advances, there's going to be less in the way of slavery in the game world. Cheliax is likely going to figure out that an apartheid state is much cheaper to operate than a slave state, for example. It's just that you don't snap your fingers and say "that happened overnight".

There is no way in hell (pun intended) for an apartheid state to be much cheaper than a slave state. If they are going to move Cheliax in that direction I hope they have a better explanation.

I’ve never found any of the WoD or CoD games to be overly complex, more the in character Disciplines/Powers/Knacks/Rotes to be all that comparable to D20 content.

Vampire, demon, werewolf are all quite simple, because most of the powers exactly tells you what they do. IMHO, Mage is a different beast, a chart has to be consulted in order to calculate the difficulty of a spell.

Option complexity and Rules complexity are not necessarily the same thing, and I personally find 2e to be less rules heavy than 3.X/PF1

One of the things in PF1 is that character creations options are not linked to in-game solving problem options. Good look if your bull rush specialist wants to trip someone (the only reasonable way was with a lore warden but they nerfed it...why? why?).

I really like mage the ascension. It is a really complex game, and it (obviously) has its flaws. But I feel that the complexity of MTA is worth the effort because I don't need a calculator to make my PC and play the game, and the rules allow for a variety of in-game options that are way beyond PF1.

Nicos wrote:

Well, It is not that I don't like complexity, it is more that I found a good chunk of PF complexity to be not worth the effort.

Just so! Somewhere in the 3.PF days the game seems to have passed into the zone of labyrinthine-inanity-of-copious-rules and has dug yet deeper with the current incarnation.

For me, it was around the release of the advanced class guide.

Of all the people, I tend to remember Mikaze's disappearance from the forums. Such a nice person too suddenly disappear.

Well, It is not that I don't like complexity, it is more that I found a good chunk of PF complexity to be not worth the effort.

I guess some things never change

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2ox8t?Worst-feat-ever#1

Still my favorite

Ostentatious Display

5% of your wealth based level for a +1 to a specific skill? Oh boy! And it eats up an item slot to make extra sure I'm shooting myself in the foot. Maybe the bullet can be the accessory! +1 to diplomacy for the bullet in my foot, it only cost me anywhere from 50 gold at level one(as much as a masterwork item, which gives +2 circumstance) up to 44,000. Did I mention I have to find a way to buy the accessory to fill the slot everytime I level or I just lose the bonus unless I already have an accessory that cost me even more gold in the slot? The best part is everytime I level up I get to look through a different book and do the math myself to figure out how much in the bucket I have to be to receive my bonus! Oh, and its not scaling, because insult to injury.

You have two types of gamers: the dedicated ones and the casual ones. This is an oversimplification of course, but it's to illustrate the point. Dedicated players buy the books and know the rules and enjoy spending time away from the game thinking about the game and building characters. They design adventures or build characters or make worlds. Causal players show up and roll dice, seldom thinking about the game between sessions.

Dedicated players often end up as the DM and have to round out their table with casuals. And for casuals, a game like Pathfinder can be fun to play but hard to learn and pure homework between sessions, when they have to spend 15,000 gp to buy magic items, pick out a feat from a list of 50, and a new talent or spell.

I'd consider myself a dedicated player. For a while, I liked PF number crunching and character customization, but It grew tiresome with time. Too many options that were no-brainers and so many others that were just awful and nobody cared about. In my last games as a player, the idea of creating a character was painful, too much stuff, too much bad stuff, it was just not worth doing the involved math.

Not sure of good or bad is PF2, I'm not interested in learning yet other complicated games, and, more importantly, my old group of players hates it with passion.

If I were to introduce new players to the hobby I would use 5e or some world of darkness.

I maintain that much quantum behavior is deeply weird, even if you can follow the equations. It's very hard to wrap your mind around, because our intuitions are based on macroscale physics and the same approach just doesn't apply. That's why a lot of really solid hard science gets packaged up with analogies and thought experiments as an attempt to get at what's happening rather than just working the equations.

You're right that it's also where a lot of woo slips in.

But it's not just that the equations require training, it's that translating the equations into something that can make sense to laymen - or even to scientists, is really hard.

Uhm, more or less. Just using the "shut up and calculate" tend to give a very good intuition about what to expect from an experiment.

Things can get weird if we insist in an understanding of the microscopic world on an ontological level. It's strange since the measurement problem is the most debated conceptual issue in QM, but, IMHO, quantum mechanics is really a theory about getting probabilities of measurements. What happens between measurements? QM is silent about that.

Tacticslion favorited a lot of posts.

Business as usual then.

I think new Seoni is a straight improvement compared to the old version.

Consider that They are the best in the world because they are 5th level fighters not because the difference between 16 and 18 str. A 5th level fighter is elite by comparison to 1st and 2nd level dudes, str 18 or not.

so got no interest in carrying that "label".

Well, Labels can be dangerous even if the people who spoke them thinks they are fine.

Not sure about fiction (novels and the like), but I've never felt any intended connection between d&d Orc and black people (or black people stereotypes). Orcs as quite evil beings as a whole is perfectly fine for me.

There are images I don't like overall that still have some redeeming qualities to my eyes. Except for Sajan, whose new image seems to be a pure downgrade compared to the PF1 one.

Not a huge fan of the old art, but I find it superior to the new one in most of the cases.

Also, Several of them have weird looking bow-legs taht I quite dislike.

It is true that the most important thing is rule of cool** (though consistency is also important), It's just that It would have been way cooler for me (and others, apparently) if the inspiration for Amiri's anatomy were actual strong women.

**And not some dark reasons that some posters wanted to ascribe to people that don't like the picture.

I do think without gym machines you're not gonna look like a body builder, but I'm no expert, so feel free to correct me.

Steroids make it possible that people can grind rep after rep of isolation exercises and grow. But (steroids or not) you only need free weight (Like barbell and dumbells) to develop strength and size.

I'm not talking about Mr Olympia here. I would have been happier with the torso of megsquat or the like (aka, not the biggest or strongest girl around)

So don't expect mad abs on Amiri is what I'm saying

Sure. While shredded abs are cool, they are not a sign of strength. Strongest people around tend to have some (or a lot) fat, because bodyweight matters.

I find her midriff looks already muscular as is. It's the midriff of a strong person, in other words. That's my opinion. Maybe I'm wrong, to reiterate, but that's the impression she gives me.

If we are talking about the raw str of carrying, pushing and pulling things around, then it is not. Not trying to be conflictive or anything, I know it is your opinion (and in the end the only thing that matters is if people like the picture), but it is not an informed opinion.

As for the trapezius or the other back muscles, we just can't see them. She's facing us and wearing quite a bit of armor. We can see only the bulk of her limbs (admittedly not huge) and, again, her midriff - most everything else is covered.

We can see her torso thanks to the silly armor design, and from it can be seen that she doesn't have the width and thickness of a strong person.

The exact str can't be pin down (because it is a draw, it's a fantasy world, and stats are an abstraction), but that, compared to real world strong people, her look indicates a much lower str than the stated str is a 100% fact.

Nicos wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Fumbles_suck wrote:

I am stating it is a fact that Amiri in the art does not have the physique to justify her strength score.

And your “fact” is flat out false.

No it is not, it is quite accurate unless supernatural means get involved.

You’re stating you can accurately pin down fictional and real people’s metagame concepts of attributes and whether it’s true or not. That is just your opinion, to claim it is a fact is 100% false.

100% accuracy is not the claim. It is more a rough, but a good enough estimate of her physical capabilities based on the image.

Fumbles_suck wrote:

I am stating it is a fact that Amiri in the art does not have the physique to justify her strength score.

And your “fact” is flat out false.

No it is not, it is quite accurate unless supernatural means get involved in the argument.

As for Camille Leblanc-Bazinet and Megsquats, yes, those are very good example of someone who might have a Str of 18 IRL, true. Camille is also a CrossFit athlete and she probably uses a lot of specialized gym machinery to train, as does Meg. In the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, and on Golarion in general, there are no actual gyms (well, there are dojo...), much less machines to help you develop your muscles - Amiri's workout probably consists in running, climbing, fighting, swimming... she could certainly have a more powerful body (even though with the armor covering most of it it'd be hard to say how muscular she actually is - she could have a lot of lean muscles for all we know, and I think her midriff shows exactly that kind of "thin but strong" concept), but she never had the chance to bulk up regularly in a controlled environment with the help of leg presses and pulldowns.

Leg presses and pull downs? There is no need of gym machinery to have muscle. In fact most comercial gyms provide just an illusion for people who wants thing easy.

Have you seen crossfit?, I'm not a fan of it but it does have a lot of running, climbing and sometimes, swimming. Have you seen the upperback of a climber. They are well developed. Amiri doesn't have the latissimus dorsi to climb carrying the wights she supposedly carries.

The Trapezius doesn't lie. Carrying heavy things in your hads will give you beig trapezius. Amiri don't have it.

She have the torso of a person that is not strong, certainly not 18 str.

Finally, bodyweight do matter. That's why th strongest people are big and not lean. And body weight would matter more if your figthing style is swinging a heavy sword.

People like what they like in fantasy, so whatever. But the justification you provide just don't work.

Add to that the fact that Wayne wasn't drawing a weightlifter, he was drawing a swordswoman. Real world martial artists don't necessarily bulge with muscles - they're certainly very fit, fast and agile, and can often hit hard and endure a lot of fatigue, but few of them look as muscular as Camille

And they are divided in categories for a reason.

Yeah, most Real world fighters don't have bulging muscles, they aren't str 18 either.
Real world fighters would have str 12, 14 or 16. 18 and beyond would only be reserved for the heaviest categories.

We draw the gnome how we want the gnome to look.

"we" is a little too many people. The artists will draw such gnome however they desire. That doesn't make that picture to be except of criticism.

My conclusion comes from the look of her (ridiculously exposed) slim torso. Compare it to Meg squat's or Camille Leblanc-Bazinet's torso (and those women are probably not str 18 either)

The legs look slim too.

To me her build fills the requirements for a strength of 16

I see a str 10, 12 at most.

Nicos wrote:

Roswynn wrote:

Wayne is drawing swordspersons, not bodybuilders.

Sworpersons with the str of powerlifters though.

You do realize we can have Gnome and Halfling Barbarians with Strength scores naturally in the 20s right? Starting out they can have up to a 16.

Yes, and they can be drawn as fragile/weak physiques if the artist so desires. Some people would like that, others wouldn't. Just ast with Amiri art here.