Pinky's Brain's page

Sleep is a low level Save or Suck, if that annoys you now ... well you're just going to love the psion at higher levels ...

I think the biggest problem with Leadership is the same as with any other OP Feat/Mechanic etc. - players don't read it correctly, DM neither and both interpret it wrong.

I don't see how the interpretation matters to balance ... whether the DM makes/plays it doesn't matter much, unless the DM only makes gimp cohorts. You are still getting an extra character in the party for a feat, almost equal in power to a PC.

So basically, you are going to ignore all the problems and balance nothing at all. You realize that if they want to magic users can deal absolutely obscene amount of damage that will also end a fight in 1 or 2 rounds and while this might limit them a bit, it by no means makes them one trick ponies.

Not without using rules in ways they were never really intended to be used. Simply throwing a metamagic'd damage spell (or two) isn't going to do it.

I don't really care about chain summoning, astral projection, telekinetic thrust, falling object damage abuse etc etc ... balancing the game around those kind of tricks is a foolish exercise, very few people actually play like that.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about making martial characters that can work as well as full casters.

First let me make clear that I'm ignoring stuff like chain summoning abuse, astral projection etc ... balancing around that sort of stuff is folly. I'm also going to ignore the half caster classes Paizo published in splat, I'm talking about balance between true martials and true casters.

The only ways to give martials flexibility are cost effective magic items (like in 3e before it almost everything is overpriced in PF) and weeaboo fightan (ie. casting but on a fundamentally different resource mechanic to differentiate them from the classic casters).

BUT the game is already balanced in a way even without that flexibility ... not a very satisfying way but a way nonetheless. Good martials (ie. archers, pouncers, mobile fighters, spirited chargers) can kill almost anything in 2 rounds from plain damage ... and plain damage works on almost anything. They are a bit one trick ponies in this regard, but it is a very very good trick.

If you want to give martials flexibility then this damage first has to be nerfed ...

All high level melee fighters should be mobile or small mounted skirmishers.

You're right ... although it doesn't really matter, if it's on a hit which would have downed it or not at all in neither case vorpal made an impact.

And some of the time you get 6 decapitations a round ...

Really you're looking at it from the wrong probabilistic angle ... the EV of the time to first success is more important. Once every 20 attacks (3 and a bit rounds) on average you hit something and decapitate it. Sure, once every 12 or so attacks something dies from damage as well ... but since the two events are uncorrelated it will still bring down your average time to down an opponent significantly. It can happen on the first hit, it can happen on the hit which would have downed it any way, or any hit in between.

As for the value of taking opponents down faster only in a probabilistic manner rather than dependably, well that figures into the daily resource use ... 3e/PF are designed from the perspective that daily (ie. averaged) resource use is relevant, so being swingy is not necessarily useless.

Unearthed Arcana.

You get a decapitation every 3 rounds on average, not after 3 rounds ... the HP of critters at the moment of decapitation will be a roughly even distribution of 0-100%.

You're not serious, by the way, about using a TWF build with a vorpal weapon, are you? Unless you've got TWO vorpal weapons, you're only getting half of your attacks using the vorpal property.

If you make it cheaper like the OP suggests it becomes a distinct possibility, with 6 attacks (11-15 mobile fighter) you're going to get a decapitation once every 3 and a bit rounds on average. That's enough to make a difference.

By allowing haste, you provide a 100% increase from the base attack to most melee characters.

At level 5 for a THF full attack and they won't be full attacking all the time.

The full BAB martials pretty much auto-hit their first attack, which makes iterative more likely to hit than not too, so at level 6 the extra attack from haste will only add a little more than 50% for a THF full attack. At level 7 they are supposed to have boots of speed any way so the spell becomes irrelevant.

PS. I think if the OP's player switches to stinking cloud he will soon find something else to nerf as well ...

Next up boots of speed. Next up competently build ranged attackers (who already get so many attacks that haste isn't that important). Next up SoX casters.

With a feint you can force a behaviour ... with a stealth check you can't force someone to close/avert his eyes.

I've found that it is just completely ruining the campaign, making boss fights incredibly (and I mean INCREDIBLY) easy.

The problem is not really with haste, it's with full attacks period ... if they don't get the extra attack from haste they will get it from boots of speed the next level. Basically Pathfinder pumped full attack damage to balance the casters with the non casters.

Which worked off a sort ... but at mid level 2 full attacks from competent builds take down most opponents, this is on one hand fair since 2 SoXs take down most opponents without SR. On the other most people never played with a lot of SoX casters in their party, so it kinda comes as a surprise to them.

You could take out all the haste granting items and nerf the spell, but then you are just nerfing melee compared to archers and especially the SoX casters. Pathfinder really needs a rather fundamental redesign to correct this "problem".

As it stands, use encounters with larger numbers of enemies (and monsters are better than NPCs when you have a lot of martials, since they are better at soaking up hp damage).

OK... I read the RAI of DD as not working if you use any off-hand weapon, including Unarmed Strike

Unarmed is synonymous with not carrying a weapon ... if they wanted you not to make attacks with your offhand they should have been more clear about that.

The magus dervish dance builds which make touch attacks with their off hands are already universally accepted at this point, bit miserly to disallow unarmed strikes then. If you're going to rule out one you should rule out both IMO.

It really needs some resource management system or stunt system to work, as something you can just spam it's going to get boring ... blinded is the only game in town really.

Cool ... so what ways are available to the Oracle to get a temporary combat feat?

Unfortunately, the most common "solution" to this problem is just make the merchant a high enough level to deter theft which results into a plethora of magic shops being run by level 10+ spellcasters which is reminiscent of Forgotten Realm's wonkiness.

No, the most common solution is to just require everyone to be good aligned and not worry about it.

For who though?

Merchants, aristocracy, army, police, adventurers (of which the PCs are but one group). The first two tend to buy stuff for it's value and rarity too, whether they can make good use of the magic items isn't even that important.

As for finding magic items in shops ... in some ways the PF world is actually a smaller place than the real world ...

You also have to remember that permanent magic items are permanent. Once you sold the baron's family a set of periapt of proof against poison, you won't be making any more of those because they can simply hand them down to their descendents and no one else in town can afford them. You won't be making any of them for anyone...

Conversely, if he only has a single child they might get sold off after he dies. The propensity of magic items to hang around is more a good reason for their availability than the converse IMO.

D&D worlds have an advantage the real world doesn't, instantaneous transportation ... it's perfectly possible to sell stuff in shops but keep your high end stock with a friendly Red Dragon you pay to treat your wares as part of his hoard (or some other type of special storage) and just use say a planar ally to go get it if a customer is interested. You might also have a chain of shops which share inventory in this way.

Eberron somewhat explored this in offering worldwide accessible bank vaults, but unfortunately they stopped short of giving rich shopkeepers access to such things for their shops.

As a person that has played a summoner who used only ONE slam attack I can safely tell you it is not to be underestimated.. especially with Strong Jaw... And Haste.

In this limited circumstance the vital strike chain starts becoming interesting.

I see where you're going with this ... but damn that's hugely deoptimized.

You can't use a single slam for all your natural attacks ... which nicely explains why you never take slam, 3 points per attack == useless. I get that you want an "ordinary" mummy, but even so a single slam at a level where a normal Eidolon has 7 natural attacks ... he's going to be a cheerleader, there to look nice and do nothing.

The Magic Attack evolution is pretty useless, between an amulet of mighty fist and greater magic fang it's unlikely to be relevant.

I'd use a mummy with IUS and tentacles, it will still have IUS for its iconic "slams" and then the tentacles as secondary natural attacks (cheap evolutions). Fluff it as a mummy infested with some otherwordly parasite or something.

The problem with a second character is that there is no precedence for the action it takes to hand over weapons ... in the 3e days a good argument could be made for gloves of storing, but even that don't work any more. An extra appendage capable of holding a weapons is the only thing that works without a little help from the DM.

I'm NOT (I'd like to repeat NOT) asking about repercussions or whether or not they're evil, what I AM asking is, how do I handle this interrogation?

When people start torturing you you start talking.

It's beyond skill checks. Basically an intimidate check is about getting him to believe you will do bad things to him, torture is proof positive of it ... anything which can be accomplished by an intimidate check is immediately accomplished by torture.

An especially strong person might play for time, but only an especially stupid person would try to resist torture.

What you could do is the guy trying to send them on a wild goose chase, giving the other gollum's time call in some favours (scroll of planar ally to call some angels perhaps) to bust the guy out and punish the wicked (ie. your players). A bluff vs. sense motive check could prevent this.

PS. torture is useless to get evidence, but "good" to get verifiable information ... if information is not easily verified after it becoming known to you torture is indeed pretty useless.

PPS. I think torture of the nature they used automatically qualifies them all for a single step alignment change on the good/evil axis.

The problem with al lot of these ideas is that there might be characters in the group with a fairly good in game guess of what a phylactery should be ... what good is knowledge arcane if the DM just makes s*$# up to make it useless?

A little too many press this button to make the paladin fall type suggestions for my taste ... the game doesn't sound like a grim derp game to me. If I were to houserule it I'd say only an evil creature could be made into a phylactery ... so the demi lich is fine, an innocent (or necessary body part thereof) is not.

Unfortunately no because of the way the errata is stated ... the errata makes your start of turn special, which is stupid but it is what it is.

Stealth can only be used as temporary invisibility if you start your turn stealthed.

PS. I have to make the addendum that I didn't even realise that the errata was only valid for a corner case of a more general case until you brought it up ... but I don't write rules for a living, so meh ... it's still silly.

And i have no idea what im doing.

You've been mind***ed ... normally your character is your own and alignment follows the way you play him, but not in this case. You need to start showing respect for authority, be true to your word, admonish your party when they break the law or place their sense of justice over local law (you're neutral so justice shouldn't be that big on your radar) etc etc.

That said you should consider if you really want to fundamentally change the way you play your character to reflect what happened. If you feel you can't do the alignment change justice or if you simply don't want to do it you should probably retire the character.

If the party is relatively close you could also talk to the group OOC and make a plan for them to reverse it after a while because they want their old friend back. Wish should do it, although you probably should get a save, which your character would try to make ... so they should probably dominate you first and tell you to accept the next spell.

The rogue is not using his stealth skills to cast invisibility. He is using his years of experience to outsmart your guards. He sees their patterns and finds the perfect moment to slip past all of them at once.

He has a couple seconds to pick from at best (since he can get full round of movement in there isn't much time to wait around).

One of the main points of the prestige class is making a touch attack to do negative levels.

What exactly do you want out of this? Draining commoners for extra spells a day can be considered useful I guess, but you need only 2 levels in the PrC for that ... all the other class abilities are complete dross.

I'd recommend using the Demoniac or Diabolist PrC instead of Soul Drinker if you want to take a complete PrC ... they're not great either, but at least a bit better.

Generally with gestalt you can only take one prestige class at a given level and dual progression prestige classes aren't allowed ... although gestalt games are generally heavily houseruled any way, so it might not apply to you.

An example casting heavy gestalt character using standard gestalt rules would be this :

wizard 5//cleric 5, wizard 1//souldrinker 1, souldrinker 1//cleric 1, diabolist 10//cleric 10

So that would get you a level 17 gestalt character with full wizard casting and 16th level cleric casting.

If you're THAT good that's the sort of thing you're SUPPOSED to be able to pull off because its a game of heroic fantasy, not a heist simulator.

I agree up to a point, but skills generally shy away from being Ex abilities pre-epic ... temporary invisibility for exceeding perception by one ore more breaks the mold.

If all skills were a little more potent pre-epic it would be more palatable.

My one concern/question now is: "Did they, under the feat, really mean it does the work of a 7th level spell?

Yes, because it's derived from 3e where the control was absolute ... 3e had pretty harsh limits on the max HD of the creatures you could command though, which PF doesn't.

Even though PF introduced the single day save renewal it's still a lot more powerful because of that.

I don't want to nerf my player's ability

An undead controlling player is broken as hell ... don't worry too much about nerfing it. Personally I'd shorten the duration, making it more about short term domination than a long term thrall for which you just keeps renewing control every day.

@Pinky, And... refer to my post up thread. Do you want to nit pick every corner case situation?

No, just your fluff justifications for applying the rules as is in those corner cases ...

The bonus to flanking could be:

- Because the opponents attention is divided.
- Because in real life both attacks go off near simultaneous and one attack messes up the flanked individuals attempt to dodge the other attack.
- Various other reasons. Invisible guy is making noises to make his presence known, sticks his foot between the guys legs just to make him stumble a little, grabs a hold of his clothing/backpack/belt and yanks on it as the attack is made, shouts 'boo' in his ear just at the right time causing the flanked person to jump, etc.

None of these possible fluff explanations for giving the barbarian +2 to hit require a house rule. They give possible explanations for why RAW allows the barbarian +2 to hit.

Do you notice the communality of all your examples? In each and every one of your example the flankee is aware of being flanked ... the RAW however grants no such awareness.

The argument simply doesn't work.

Wrong again. It in fact requires house rules to rule that an invisible creature can't flank.

Where did I say otherwise?

How the rules work is obvious, but no internally consistent argument for their operation can be formulated. For his argument to work houserules are required ... which is why I said "This line of argument still requires houserules".

You begin to dodge out of the way.

Invisible rogue hits you in the back and throws of your dodge (doesn't matter even he does damage or not).

This line of argument still requires houserules ... because you need to tell the flankee the invisible rogue is flanking him. Something like "You perceive weapons probing your defences, some invisible creature is flanking you".

If he can't perceive the semi-attacks at all and can remain completely unaware the flanker is there it would be silly to say his dodge could be thrown off.

if you were to allow it, you would NOT be flat-footed, rather you would be HELPLESS.

That makes bugger all sense if you disallow invisible creatures to grant flanking ...

If you allow invisible creatures to grant flanking I guess you could make the argument that ignoring is somehow a stronger benefit to the attacker than invisibility ... making the opponent helpless ... although it's a rather thin argument.

In a home game I'd allow ignoring enemies. Means you're flat-footed to them, though.

The problem is that for a low dex opponent like say a giant there is not much to lose by ignoring a rogue's flanking buddy ...

Flat footedness should really be a bigger penalty even for low dex characters to make the option to ignore not a nerf to rogues.

The change was fully intentional. At best, we could use an updated errata, but they never have contained every single change.

Then Paizo has always been doing it wrong.

No, it warrants an updated errata.

Only at start, while the invisible guy has not yet done anything to the other, he would not be aware.

You can be flanking him without him ever becoming aware you're there ... not during the 6 seconds and not after the 6 seconds.

It's a silly corner case of the rules ... just houserule it if you're the DM.

If it wasn't such a huge nerf to rogues I think there should be some way to just outright ignore opponents too ... but that would change the game a bit too much.

As I said before, get a blade of binding ... you initiate grapples with normal attacks and you get a +5 to grapple, what's not to like?

I just noticed something cute about Body Bludgeon BTW ... it doesn't say "melee attack".

I'd trade brawler, greater brawler and animal fury for the beast totem line ... how can you say no to pounce?

RL the English army trained his men on patrol to cover all angles, first men straight ahead, second the left, third the right, fourth the back of the squad, the next mens covering again the same field of vision, and they were still ambushed or failed to see the enemies.

Ambushing or hiding are different from normal speed (ie. upright) movement 5 foot in front of them.

I simply said where the idea came from and how IMO most DMs would rule on this. Everything can work, if the DM says it can work.

Being overly literal and semantic bullying don't tend to impress DMs either.

Or you can go for the other alternative, in which everyone has 360 degree vision and you can never sneak up on anyone at all. No one can ever just not notice someone walking up to them.

Which in combat or approaching guards actually doing their job, who don't have good reason to only expect trouble from one direction, is the better way to handle it IMO.

It's got nothing to do with 4e or 5e.

Using a conceit as an explanation is 4e like, adding caveats for arbitrarily changing/removing the ability to make checks is 5e like ... recognizing it is a mess but still wanting player usable rules and thus houseruling the mess is 3e like.

I'd add facing for out of combat use of stealth personally.

Except of course if you rolled high and you're higher level and/or optimized for stealth a 20 won't be enough, no amount of BS will cover it ... it's temporary invisibility.

You can do that in real life, you need to time your movement so that you avoid the spotting character field of view.

That's a 4e like conceit, use some BS explanation which on the face sounds reasonable ... but in the actual game simply can't always apply. As I said, you can walk through a courtyard full of soldiers for 6 seconds, 5 feet away from them in passing.

Either they're all conveniently looking away ... or it's temporary invisibility. I'll go with the one which doesn't strain my immersion more, which is to say temporary invisibility.

PS. you could also of course add a caveat that the check can only be made at the DM's discretion ... and then it becomes 5e like, which is not much better.

- Permanent Extra 5ft of reach (or at least useable a couple of turn per day) stackeablewith lunge?

20K, this is a mid game ability.

Free use of a metamagic feat, on the fly, a couple of times per day?

75K this is a mid to high game ability ... and you better give melee a belt of battle type ability which allows them to make a second full attack in a round or you're just proving once again that only casters get nice things.

At will given the flaming/shocking/whatever property to any melee weapon?

10K, this is a lowish level ability (assuming it can only give +1 abilities).

The ability to use a melee weapon to send a strike to the air and hit at distance, lets say once every 1d4+1 of rounds?

1K, this is a low level ability which becomes useless at higher levels.

what people think about this idea? what abilities would be fun and balanced?

Just give the bonuses from the big 6 out for free ... the rest is gravy.

Now you can dash from cover to cover without being noticed if you beat their perception check.

I guess I'm the only person who has trouble with a non epic stealth check basically granting single round invisibility now.