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Jamie Charlan wrote:

The AC is just 36. You'll miss anyways on a 1 so a 'certain hit' is actually +34. Total 35 (rolling a 1) would miss anyways after all.

Conservatively it's easy to get up there: 20 BAB, +6 stat bonus, +4 magic weapon, +2 weapon training and gloves of dueling. Sure you'll have some penalties from power attack or rapid-shot-and-friends but your actual to-hit bonuses will be higher than this anyways. Don't forget that your extra attacks (from haste, rapid shot, first TWF, etc) are all at your highest BAB. That full attack is not costing you expenditure of a 4th level power to do either, so it does have its advantages even if a few beams can hit as hard more easily.

There's probably a feat or optional that lets you retrain some spells, which is why I'm not being adamant about "never swap spells" for sorcerers, but generally speaking neither they nor psionic classes are going to be changing out their powers with any regularity.

Psions do have "more" fuel to burn, but at the same time much less: augmentation is not free. While magic auto-scales with level for duration, damage and so on, psionics do not. If you're firing off a 10d6 fireball, you're expending a level 3 slot. If you're firing off a 10d6 energy ball (it started at 7d6 because it's a 4th level, not 3rd, power) you're using power in between a 4th (9d6) and 5th (11d6) power.

For Metapsi, increasing cost by 2PP is in fact pretty much exactly "+1 spell level slot", as 2(Lv)-1 is the price formula. Expending focus is an affair of action economy, actions being on of the most precious things a character, monster or NPC has at their disposition. You do get to save a little (6PP is not +4 spell levels) in exchange on the more expensive stuff though. A Wizard firing off all his spells per day, slot by slot level by level, vs a Psion attempting to act the same way would EITHER be much more powerful or last substantially longer; depending upon whether the psion is augmenting his powers to match the level-scaling output of his magical caster friend....

Well 36 is achievable but i meant being able to hit with every iterative, which is much harder.

Being able to switch spells every day would be a huge advantage for a sorc. It lets the player freely experiment with what spell list would suit him best, lets him get utility spells on the fly that he would otherwise have to pay for temporary access, lets him easily meet spell requirements for crafting, lets him prep for encounters with ease. The ability to spontaneously cast spells is huge..thats why sorcs are under so many restrictions compared to wizards.

Augmentation is not free but its still an advantage over normal casting. For one, many powers allow you to augment them...this is not an option for wizards. Being able to take one power and have it be useful all the way till level 20 is amazing. You generally cant do that with spells because they just do not scale well in general.

Sure your fireball scales...but at 10th level 10d6 damage is a very ineffective way to spend your actions. Most arcane/divine spells that do scale are blasting spells which are crap, and they hit a cap so you are forced to use metamagic feats or get a new spell to push it higher, in which case you would be better off using PP to augment it.

You can also change the element type of a power just by gaining psionic focus. HUGE advantage right there if you are into blasting spells. Want to do a 40 ft burst as a sorcerer, but you are up against fire resistant enemies? Tough luck. Elemental spell is a metamagic feat that lets you switch the energy type, but you still need to prepare it on the fly/increase casting time and it adds +1 to spell level.

A psion can just gain psionic focus, and can easily do it out of combat. Oh hey going to fight fire giants today? No problem, change energy type to cold. Its totally free! A wizard would have to spend precious feats to do this, or spend gold/time researching new elemental varities. You even get free bonuses depending on energy type, so at 5th level, you are already doing 5d6+5 damage as opposed to a wizard's flat 5d6.

The only downside is that the spell is "centered on you" which is pretty sucidal for squishy casters, but the psionic lightning bolt equivalent doesnt have this restriction.

Funfact : Persistent power increases PP cost by 2 only compared to Persistent spell (+2 level). Applying metamagic feats to powers (which are all spontaneous casting) does not increase casting time either.

There are definately spells that are better than powers, but overall, psionic powers and their system are simply better. Its weird that psionic fly doesnt seem to exist though (sustained flight is overland flight). Most of the psionic buffs seem to be self only, not sure if they were trying to make psions a blasting skill or something else.

I meant that any psionic character can expend focus to take 15, not related to the autohypnosis skill.


I dont see how you can get get like +51/+46/+41/+36 power attacking to hit a balor at level 20 pretty much 100% of the time...at least not without crazy optimisation and/or buffing.

At level 9 i managed to get about +19/+11 power attacking as a full bab melee martial and that was with furious focus. CR9s have 20+ ACs usually so my iterative would miss about half the time. If i had average BAB i would be missing more than half the time.

Sorcs can swap spells out though i believe? All psionic spellcasters cant?

Overall i think psionics are much stronger. Theres no arcane failure chance for example, which really helps for all the gish types. Manifestation displays are also nowhere as obvious as vocal/somantic components...cast a spell, everyone knows it was you, even if you used either still or silent spell, because they are just so obvious. Manifest an auditory only power, well, all everyone heard was some noise in their head, theres no indication of WHO made that noise. And nobody wants to admit they have been hearing noises.

The ability to augment powers is incredibly useful...the biggest weakness of a spontaneous caster is limited spells known, and you dont need to worry about that if your level 1 spells are useful all the way to level 20 just by augmenting it. Some spells even allow you to change them to swift actions, without needing the quicken spell feat.

Psions are essentially sorcerers with wizard spell progression. At 4th level you have 5 level 1 powers and 4 level 2 powers known. Thats a lot more than the sorcerer, and you cast them spontaneously. The sorcerer also has the equivalent of 15 PP vs the Psion's 17, except the Sorcerer is limited to spell slots while the Psion can mix and match whatever he wants.

Metapsionic feats tend to have lower costs than metamagic feats too, empower spell only increases the PP cost by 2 points. That is way less than using +1 spell slot. The downside is that you need to expend psionic focus...which means that you cant blow a ton of metamagic spells in the same combat (but you dont really need to anyway). Normal casters generally dont have the spell slots to throw around metamagic spells like crazy.

Many spells which had little to no real use had much better psionic equivalents too. True strike is a great example. Spend one standard action to get a +20 on your next attack roll? Lame, you cant attack for a whole round! The psionic equivalent is a swift action for +5 to hit, that is far more useful for gish classes since they can cast it and attack in the same round. And you can augment it to increase the bonus.

Autohynopsis is a fantastic skill and any character can expend psionic focus to take 15 on a check. Since regaining psionic focus out of combat is no problem, this lets you effectively take 15 on any skill check out of combat with no downside.

I take 15 to search this room, i take 15 to sense motive, i take 15 to disable device...


I didnt run the maths but i did get the impression that at higher levels a single sneak attack wouldnt be very impressive.

But the way combat is designed, your first attack is almost always going to hit, your second has a decent chance, 3rd and 4th are luck or require heavy buffs. Being ranged touch, with disrupt attack you can easily land all your attacks. It also bypasses all DR.

So at later levels i suppose its pretty likely for the Cryptic with minimal buffs to do insane damage. But theres probably a gap between 5 and 10th level where the damage starts getting lacking, and its a bit dissapointing the class is very reliant on a particular power.

I didnt realise that some of those insights were supreme insights, thanks for pointing that out.

Also i cant seem to find this anyway, but a psychic spellcasters in general cannot switch out their powers known right? I thought i read somewhere that they decide the powers known every day and then can change them the next day, but i may have been wrong about that.


Too situational, and too expensive. You took one feat that does nothing except against one very specific kind of enemy and they can, if they want to, neutralize your toppling MM by a number of different ways, at which point your feat was wasted.

You want to take feats that you can apply to as many situations as possible, same goes for spells, unless you know in advance what you are going up against. The issue is that you cant switch feats on the fly (which is also why bane is a terrible weapon quality unless your DM tells you very clearly that its going to be a particular type of campaign), so 99% of the time your feat is there, doing absolutely nothing. With spells you CAN prep for a specific type of encounter because you can switch spells given time to do so (unless you are sorc), so taking a rarely used spell is not a terrible idea as a wizard.

If you wanted to disable a caster with a good chance of doing so, you could use a spell that targets fort/ref or just cast black tentacles off the bat. Those are options that do not require any feat, do not require a expensive rod of quicken, and work well against a wide variety of enemies.


I just kept face palming while skimming this thread.

As others have pointed out, magic missle has several pluses, but they are all very situational.

Force damage bypasses DR? Well in general all spells that don't do a specific damage bypass DR anyway. And the ones that do, well, you just dont use it against creatures resistant to that particular DR.

Not to mention the damage is so low that who cares if it bypasses DR? It's still going to tickle the enemy.

Yes of course if the BBEG has 5 hp left and is going to slap down the fighter next round and you are the last party member left who can act, then sure magic missle is great.

But chances are that perfect scenario never happens, not to mention rpetty much any character could have stepped in and saved the party at that point. Even if you did nothing, your party would likely survive the next round to act and kill the BBEG anyway.

At 9th level, action economy is king, not spell slots. And we all know that using spells to do damage is a very poor choice anyway. You have so many spell slots with save or lose spells at your disposal, why would you be using magic missle...at every level you have choices like sleep, color spray, glitter dust, web, that are all vastly superior choices to magic missle. No they dont do damage, but the entire point is that the fighter should be doing the damage anyway. Doing the equivalent of stabbing someone with a few daggers really does not help.

You would be way better off filling the level 1 spell slots with utility spells (that remain useful as you go higher up in level).

Only time i saw magic missle be effective was in baldur's gate where the devs thought a level 5 mage vs your level 2 fighter and a level 2 thief was a balanced fight.


Sigh, i forgot the forums randomly inserts spaces into long URLs which makes you unable to copy and paste them to be opened...should be fixed now


http://tinyurl.com/o58z7xu

In progress, this is for the Dreamscarred Press psionic class Cryptic.

Any comments/suggestions? Planning to add color codes at some point.

Edit : Neither the publish link nor the sharing link appears to be working? Anyone have any ideas?


Wow the amulet of mighty fists is really expensive though. Why is it so expensive? Its way more than just putting +1 on a weapon?


You mean UMD?


Yea but a biped eidolon cant get pounce? Also how is a eidolon supposed to bypass DR/silver and stuff like that? The evolutions only allow you to bypass magic and alignment.


Oh, thanks.

I was looking for any way that would let you have your Eidolon ready to fight in a pinch.

Im guessing at level 1 theres no way to do it?


Arent there feats or attacks that grant them the ability to make 2 or more attacks while moving though?


For example, when the party gets ambushed, or when he cant have his eidolon out all the time (walking in the city, etc).

I checked the spell list but i dont see a spell that lets him do that...


Yes but what happens if you take improved natural attack, improved damage AND grow large?


Okay im confused.

If i take both improved natural attack and the evolution, the slam attack should do 3d6 damage right? Since they both increase by one step.

The slam entry specifically says that it deals 2d6 damage if large. Does it then go from 2d6 - 3d6 (improved natural attack) -> 4d6 (improved damage)?

Also im guessing all natural attacks have crit multipliers of 20/x2?


Im confused by how these work.

An eidolon can deliver a devastating slam attack. This attack is a primary attack. The slam deals 1d8 points of damage (2d6 if Large, 2d8 if Huge). The eidolon must have the limbs (arms) evolution to take this evolution. Alternatively, the eidolon can replace the claws from its base form with this slam attack (this still costs 1 evolution point). This evolution can be selected more than once, but the eidolon must possess an equal number of the limbs evolution.

So, questions :

A biped form has 2 claws AND limbs (arms). Would you be able to take this evolution twice (once to replace claws, once to replace arms)? Also what is the point of replacing the 2d4 damage claws with a 1d8 slam, given that the claws still attack at full BAB with full str bonus?

The slam damage also scales weird, normally 2d6 scales to 3d6, not 2d8. Lets say you take the "improved natural attack feat" : http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/monster-feats/improved-natural-attack AND the improved damage evolution.

The evolution increases the damage from 1d8 to 2d6, then the feat increases it to 3d6 (rather than 2d8). What happens when the eidolon becomes large or huge then?


But im talking about actual world results. It doesnt matter if the average is 5.5 if you cant actually roll 5.5.

Oh you were referring to using a large one handed weapon with EWP. But you still get the -2 to attack rolls right?

Its possible zombies would be too stupid to charge though...

Also unless im missing something, a elven curve blade at 1d10 should go to 2d8 when large?

I just found a great option if you want to use vital strike.

Take the psionic class Aegis.

There are two 2 point customisations that give you powerful build and another that lets you treat the weapon you are wielding as one size larger.

Those two combined effectively give you two size increases. So with a greatsword you would have 4d6 base and 4d6 vital strike. You can also pick up +str customisations and use a belt of con for additional hp, which most melee martials cant do usually (as you would be limited to only the belt of str due to gold issues).

The downside is that your have a pretty low AC as the astral suit AC doesnt scale very well and you cant enchant it. You do get DR but thats pretty useless (giant hits you for 20+ damage, a few points of DR does nothing). Then again AC does nothing against the first one or two attacks anyway...


5.5 means nothing in reality because you can never roll 5.5...that was my point.

Why is Falcata being mentioned? Its a longsword with a x3 multiplier...its not a very good choice for vital strike?


I dont know why people have been suggesting warpriest with vital strike. The sacred weapon die is inferior to the regular weapon die until very high levels or mid levels + enlarge. You also dont have the BAB to get power attack/vital strike as you only get full BAB "when attacking", not for the purpose of feats.

IMHO 2d4 is superior to 1d10. Statistically speaking you will get higher rolls with 2d4. 5.5 being the "average" of 1d10 means nothing as you can NEVER get a real world result of 5.5 on a 1d10.


Well its rather min maxy i supose, DMs might not react well to that. I guess you are still spending a feat to go from 2d6 to 2d8, which is not a very large improvement for a feat...


Okay but in that case you are still paying a -2 attack penalty just to go from 2d6 to 2d8.


How does wielding oversized weapons work? I was under the assumption that you could only wield a oversized, one handed weapon with two hands, but you would still take a -2 penalty?


Huh i didnt realise it was nerfed to having a 1 round casting time in PF. That makes it much less useful.

The psionic version does have it as a standard action to cast, but thats kind of hard to get with the build i was thinking of.

I was thinking of having a soul knife with vital strike and psychic strike to do lots of damage on a single standard action.


? Its a cheap, low level buff that massively increases the damage of any martial character.


I cant remember the exact argument...

But since vital strike is so dependant on number of weapon dice, i was hoping to find a weapon like the falchion with 2d4 or better damage and a 18-20 crit range.


On second though im not sure if impact is a good idea in this case. It doesnt stack with enlarge person IIRC, and thats a level 1 buff that should be going up every battle unless you are fighting in a small space.

So we have two scenarios : +1 impact no dachi vs +3 falchion with enlarge. The falchion would obviously be doing more damage here...


Right, but i meant just with base stats.

Its kind of funny...but it looks like its better to enlarge a 1d10 -> 2d8 weapon rather than enlarge a 2d4 -> 2d6. I thought a 2d4 weapon would get enlarged to 3d4 or something, not a measly 2d6. The difference between 1d10 and 2d4 is minimal, the difference between 2d8 and 2d6 is much larger.

Is there a complete chart for this, the one in the equipment section only includes small to large sizes.


Basically a exotic Falchion that does 2d6 instead of 2d4 damage.

Does it exist?

I think the closest is the elven curve blade at 1d10?

Trying to come up with a crit weapon for a vital strike build...


Good idea but only 25% of cracked stones have resonant powers right?

Also yea i could make custom magic items but that could get cheesy fast...

For example some kind of item that sits in your pocket but grants you a +1 luck bonus to saves would only cost 4k gp?

And you could have one each for insight, morale, competence, sacred, etc...


Oh thanks, still pretty pricey and it takes up a headband slot though...


Does anyone know of a magic item that gives a +1 luck bonus to saves ONLY? I know theres a really expensive 10k gp item that gives +1 luck bonus to saves, skill checks and ability checks, but thats a tad expensive...

Preferably not a ioun stone (as it attracts attention).


Shoga : Thats not a bad idea although it does force the DM to come up with on the fly side quests to get more material components, and crafting can take substantial time as it is. Cant really go looking for some rare component in the typical "save X" plot.

Although im wondering whether you can have another character "take over" the crafting...like do 4 days worth of crafting then have someone else (might be a NPC) take over for the remaining 2 days.

Also it looks like the DM ruled that :

-We can craft if travelling on a boat

-No take 10

-1s auto fail

Not sure if he will allow re-rolls using fortunate charm, but im guessing the answer would be a no.


Do spells have to be casted every single day when crafting or just once?


Hmm...i was thinking that with a spellcraft mod of +18, it shouldnt be that big of a deal, but then i realised that a lot of high level items have much higher CL requirements, plus missing item/feat requirements, plus rushing.

Although im not sure if this is the type of campaign we would have time to spend one month crafting something like a robe of the archmagi anyway.


A dc 20 check determines the value of a common item. Ok.

What about non-common items (especially magic items)? And how is a common item determined anyway?

A valuable gem, is that common or not? A potion of cure light wounds, a masterwork sword?

Has anyone actually used the appraise skill in their games? Seems like one easily skipped over bit.


Uh ok but thats not really the issue here...


In my campaign the summoner just told the DM to assume we have message up always. That has allowed us to work in battle just as if we were talking to each other in realtime no matter the distance or distraction and enabled effortless scouting...

Im not sure if its for good or bad though.


Okay this is what the DM says :

Hes fine with crafting. He will allow crafting on the boat while its in motion, but still no take 10.

How do you think this would affect things?


I was thinking more for the major hexes and it could be like 60 ft within a crowd. The perfect assassin.


Wow...so you could have a witch using hexes to kill people and nobody would have any way to catch her...


Hmm i think detect magic doesnt allow you to figure out the spell or its properties though? Just the aura and strength.

Are there any options that allow you to identify spells in general, AFTER they have been cast? Because spellcraft seems to indicate you can only identify spells as they are being cast, but if you come across, say, a pre-existing wall of fire, you cant use spellcraft to figure out that its a wall of fire (excluding the common sense option).


Quote:

Certainly, it isn't as though Paizo owns the word "longsword" after all. And I know there's at least one kickstarter that is currently in the process of finalizing their replacement magic system.

But if you publish something like a d10 damage long sword, people will point at your product as an example of a poorly balanced product and you will fail to gain even a small foot hold. Putting out options that are strictly better than Paizo options is one way to kill your business just as suredly as if you were publishing with no grasp of the English language. Unless the whole point is to upgrade what you're doing, like say the Talented Class line. (This is all assuming, of course, that you're not copying anything, which the rest of my answer will continue to assume.)

I was thinking more along the lines of "This paizo feat is so bad that nobody actually uses it without house ruling, so heres a house ruled version of it to make it playable". Kind of like what the replacement crafting rules PDF did.

Quote:

Now, this is something I don't know. Taking someone else's rules and re-releasing them in a large scale, well that's not good. But also, why would you. Quite frankly, if you put out a book modifying, say Rogue Genius Games's rules, why on earth would I buy your product when I can get the original rules from a source I know and trust. And if it was from a source I didn't know and trust, then why would I want to buy your take on their rules to begin with?

You'd be much better off coming up with your own ideas and putting out original work rather than seeing how much you can get away with.

And it isn't uncommon for 3pp to have similar ideas. For example I believe there are 2 somewhat similar books on covenant style magic from different publishers. As long as your idea is your own and not stolen, you will be fine.

Well lets say someone has released a spell that is basically fireball but does cold damage. Im pretty sure there are plenty versions of that out there already. And i release something very similar, maybe because im releasing a themed spell list or whatever. Would there be any problems with this?

Quote:
Here I'd really, really like to know exactly what you're asking. Are you saying you want to publish in 4 columns instead of 2, and are wondering if that's allowed?

More along the lines of, do i need a contents page, do i have to stick to a particular format when writing rules, etc....


Marc Radle wrote:
Thanael wrote:
Question wrote:
I mean there are plenty of 3rd party publishers doing it. Not sure how hard it is to get permission to sell a PDF in the Paizo store exactly, but quite a few of the 3rd party stuff is, well, not very well written, so the requirements cant be very high...

A) If that's why you want to do it, I suggest you rather don't.

B) I got the impression that 3PP material for PF is quite high quality overall. This feeling seems a holdover from the 3.0/3.5 3pp glut...
Much of the Pathfinder 3PP material, particularly from the main 3pps, is extremely well-written and quite arguably as good as what Paizo puts out. The "quite a few of the 3rd party stuff is, well, not very well written" comment was rather uninformed and, quite honestly, a pretty rude.

I disagree, but thats because ive looked at several PDFs which had very badly written rules. One for example included a feat that was basically that of a core feat, except with a much higher level requirement and a significant disadvantage.

The author then proceeds to go on about how powerful this feat and how he had to carefully balance it as if the core game doesnt have existing rules for it already. It would have taken only a few minutes to search the SRD and find that oh hey theres something like this in the core rules already, but he didn't do that.

And the 3rd party stuff on d20pfsrd is full of very badly written rules. These range from imbalanced options to stuff only written using the rule of cool and which have rules that dont work out in real gaming situations.

Of course theres a lot of well written 3rd party stuff there and a lot of badly written paizo stuff (see the incomplete rules for the ice tomb hex that took more than 2 years to get an errata), but that doesnt change the fact that theres some 3rd party stuff out there that is badly written.


bump,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,


By RAW, is there no way to :

-Detect when someone is using them, or identify the effect in question?


Thanks for the links. All the legal stuff is a huge headache...im guessing theres no easy template to follow...

The other threads are really confusing so im hoping someone here might know about the following :

-Are you allowed to have modified paizo rules in your PDF? E.G. Longsword that does 1d10 damage or a feat that is the same but modified.

-Are you allowed to modify and release other 3rd party rules? With/without changing the name or making any changes to the rules? What if it turns out that two or more 3rd parties had a really similar idea (could be a spell, a feat, something basic)?

-Are there any restrictions on formatting, etc, besides not copying a paizo book, etc?

-How easy is it to get erratas in place, for example is there a way to let all the purchasers of a PDF know when a more up to date version is out?

I was wondering if it would be possible to put together a small PDF, no fancy drawings or anything, mostly some rules in a simple and clear easy to understand format. Or would people just go "boo!"?


I mean there are plenty of 3rd party publishers doing it. Not sure how hard it is to get permission to sell a PDF in the Paizo store exactly, but quite a few of the 3rd party stuff is, well, not very well written, so the requirements cant be very high...


From the conversations we had so far it seems that he is fine with crafting as long as there are serious restrictions with it, such as not being able to take 10.

But it might be simpler to just not do crafting in that case.

Anyway we will be talking more in the next few days...


Its not really a low magic setting but more of a low wealth campaign i guess. The BBEGs are a lich and some kind of outsider monstrosity and the party has never had trouble buying magical items, just getting the money for it.


To clarify, its another player that took leadership. He wants to have a dwarven forgemaster that can help craft for the party and also buff the party. I dont think he wants the cohort to just stay at home and craft.

We just finished talking with the DM (half the party anyway). This is what he told us basically :

-He doesnt want crafting on the move because he doesnt like the idea of being able to craft while theres a lot of movement or distractions, not even if we are just sailing down a river.

-He doesnt want us to have lots of magic items because it makes things complicated.

-He doesnt want us to make too many magic items either, and not being able to take 10 is supposed to help with this.

The conversation ended inconclusively with the DM saying he was going to think about it.

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