Realmwalker's page

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All the prayers I can muster headed his way.

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Thank you Mr Bulmahn, this is what got me interested in Paizo and Pathfinder in the first place, you have a crew that listens to the people that play your games and you guys often come in and answer said questions in person.

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Distant Scholar wrote:

Here's a big project: I'd like someone to take on the Words of Power system and modify it into something that feels more robust and complete. I don't think it's necessary for the system to simulate every Pathfinder spell, or even all the core spells, but I think it needs some re-tuning.

I second this. I LOVE the idea of the Words of Power, and to me what it should be is a way to make casters (especially spontaneous casters) even more flexible by allow a lot of effects to be given more target modifiers and the like, especially for allowing casters to stick to a theme but replicate the same effects. If I want to shift a fireball into a forceball, for example I should be able to. And it seems to me that WoP doesn't quite do that, with all of the target restrictions. Some are reasonable, yes (Dominate Person shouldn't be allowed to be used in a 20 foot radius, obviously) but others don't seem to be in my eyes.

That's the thing that stuck out at me from it, but I'm sure some more great changes could be made.

Some new Monk archetypes or Unarmed fighting oriented Feats would be good too.

Edit: I'm going to try to phrase this a little better. I want WoP to be more simplified, but also more flexible.

I don't really think there needs to be so many power words. There just needs to be a word for each effect (Energy types, undead creating, and so on) the Target words (and there need to be more of them, to allow for defensive uses of the effects), and then the Meta words.

What I would like to be able to do is quickly and easily put words together. If I want a fireball, I take the word for Fire, the word for Burst, and then the Meta word of my choice, and that makes an X level spell that I can cast if I'm the correct level. And then just as easily pick the Fire word, shift the Target to "Wall" or something, pick my Meta word, and then I have a Wall of Fire.

Seems like it would be much better and easier if every caster started off with all the words, or a good chunk of...

I second this one I would love to open a can of whoopass using the Genius Guide to Martial Arts. :) Archetypes, Feats, class options for Monks, Ninja's, Magus Fighters ect.

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You should compare the paths and the Special Tier attacks to mythic feats for one reason it is setting the precedent as to what mythic abilities are and can accomplish. So yes they should stand up to the power level being thrown around using mythic rules otherwise just make them regular feats not Mythic ones.

Many people are assuming that mythic is going to be the new core so they compare Mythic Feats to Regular Feats and they seem over powered, but when you put them in context with what mythic characters can accomplish using their "mythic" abilities they seem much less overpowered.

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Jason Bulmahn wrote:

So... yeah.

This feat somehow slipped through as an older version. It is supposed to only apply to the weapons that you can use with Weapon Finesse. That said, I am still a little worried about the balance on this one. Obliviating the need for Strength was not the intent, although even with this revision, assuming the right character build, that might still be an issue.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Please tread carefully with this. Strength is already one of the weakest stats in the game. Please don't invalidate it more.

I don't see where strength is being invalidated, sorry from actually playtesting this and having other characters with either Dervish Dance, or Agile Weapon enchants it does not break the game, the option is actually weaker that a lot of the other options out there such as Suprise Strike...as a swift action and a Mythic Power point I get to make a person flat-footed and bypass DR! My rogue says Yes Please. Fleet Charge spend a mythic power and a swift action to move gain an attack (and bypass DR) and still full attack that round? Again my Warrior and Rogue both say YES!!!!

When put up against what Mythic is supposed to bring to the table Weapon Finesse (Mythic) is hardley OP.

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I'm working on 1/1 and 6/3 Saturday.

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Picked this up and going through it. So far it is a real good addition the the Anachronistic Adventurers series.

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Jackissocool wrote:

DM Wellard wrote:

Kieviel wrote:

DM Wellard wrote:

I will be getting this book..but I doubt I'll ever use it..the subject matter and the basic premise leave me cold..and with concerns that PF is going in a direction it should not even look at.

Huh? What shouldn't the company look at?

Monsters as PC's is just WRONG.

So if any of my players is reading this..Blood of the Night is banned from my campaigns..

I said that the goblins book was going to be the thin end of the wedge and it seems my fears have been realised.What next I wonder..Alu fiends and succubi as PC's?

Having said that I'd love SKR to do something along the lines of Ghostwalk for Pathfinder.

You know this isn't for actual vampires, right? It's for dhampirs, a player race that's half-vampire.

really..then let us look at the actual wording from the Fluff about it

Blood of the Night wrote:

Join your next campaign as a day-walking dhampir from a variety of vampiric heritages, or infect your game with the vampiric curse as a full-blooded jiang-shi, moroi, nosferatu, or vetala vampire—complete with details on how to integrate such deadly and deathly characters into existing campaigns

seems to me that they are quite explicitly saying that this book allows you to play undead characters..

Those options get added in to the Dhampir race as racial heritages much like "Blood of Angels" did with Aasimar and "Blood of Fiends" did with Tieflings. Each Heritage will for the most part get a different set of Ability Modifiers, and alternate spell-like ability and 2 traits. There is likely going to be additional Dhampir Feats, and hopefully a random chart of vampire-like abilities on can roll for at the cost of their spell-like ability.

These are player options that are playable, it is smart to wait until you actually read a book before banning it from your game, you miss out on a lot.

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Heaven and Hell 6 racial traits for Aasimars and Tieflings pick things that would work equally well with both Races

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If the Magister is anything like the other Genius Classes they are going to be pretty well balanced. None of the Genius Classes I've allowed have been overpowered. Godlings (Adept, Clever, Eldritch and Mighty), Time Thief, Time Warden, Vangard, Shadow Assassian, Deathmage, Dragon Rider, Death Knight, Templar, and Mosaic Mage. All of these seemed to fit in fairly well with no issues of being grossley overpowered compared to the Core Classes and the Base Classes from the APG, Ultimate Combat and Ultimate Magic books.

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Black Widow = Ninja

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Then whats to say that you can just confront an evil intelligent humanoid who has not committed an evil act kill him and drink his blood. In effect you can, then try to point out that it is ok he was evil scum. Sorry but a Paladin needs to be better than that.

I draw the line at intelligent beings in my games.

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People seem to forget that the cool thing about Pathfinder is there is something for everyone to use. You can have a game with an anime feel or not, you can use advanced guns or not etc. This allows your games to go the direction you want them too. The Catfolk as a race does not have to be cutesie anime catgirls, can be instead a barbaric race of catpeople you can have their look be more house cat like or base them off of big cats such as Lions or Tigers.

A lot of people saw catfolk and immediately saw "Anime" and hated it with out looking at any thing else about the race.

Catfolk do have some mythological reference ie Bast, Rakasha, and Japanese folk lore, I've read quite a few Japanese folk tales that included women that could turn into cats, which is in part where the Japanese Catgirl evolved from. Most of those stories were more creepy than cute.

The best thing about this race is with nothing more than a base description change and maybe different art Catfolk can be just about anything and fit any setting.

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I think an Anachronistic Feat that allows for extra talents would be a very good option. Something to think of for the Genius is a bullet point for Anachronistic options.

So far I'm a big fan of this series and can not wait for the next to be released.

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Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, and soon to be released Advanced Race Guide.
All this me and my group consider Core.

Super Genius Games and Rite Publishing have earned an automatic approval with their products.

Other 3pp must have approval and if a player wished to use must buy a copy of it for the GM.

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I want someone to post that stat-block.

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That's me, biased and immature.

Never said otherwise.

. . . . Honestly, my vitriol against the Gunslinger here is as much to illustrate my point about "best Class" being hard to judge based on fun as it is to reveal my immaturity. There are lots of gamers, myself included, who just won't play with Gunslingers.

Which is YOUR choice, many of my friends have included guns in our game world since 2E and like your so called "GUN-DORK" I personally enjoy the Gunslinger class and how it was done. It is not overpowered and is just under the fighter in combat effectiveness in our campaign.

There is also a lot of unjust hate for the Alchemist which is a very good class.

There are also a lot of gamers that think the Gunslinger is just fine and play with Gunslingers in their campaign.

@Thalin I find the Summoner not to be overpowered, every single instance I have seen where the Summoner looked OP was when the player playing the Summoner did not build his Eidolon correctly, ignored certain things like maximum number of attacks. If built correctly the Summoner is no more overpowered than any one else.

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I guess here's the bottom line for Paizo...

Are people buying a lot of PFS adventures for home use? I suspect not.

If not, isn't there money to be made in a short adventure compilation mag like Dungeon was? Because plenty of people bought that, even before the APs. Besides the other advantages like onboarding authors, experimental adventures (PFS has to be balanced and watered down out the yin-yang...).

I've bought 7 of the PFS adventures, they are well written and good for a solid nights play. They don't take a lot of set up and are a lot of fun.

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@mahorfeus: Undead costs 16 RP.

@TOZ/Cheapy: it's not a question of a dumpstat. (i personally think charisma is very useful - all those bluff/ disguise /intimidates). Nor am i really concerned as i'm not a min/maxer. But paizo asked for feedback and this seems "damaged" as a mechanic.

You can improve two differing sets of abilities with one ability score. It's not huge but i feel it is an issue and undead may need some revision...

EDIT: @ lincoln hills: good points. And it does cost 16 Racial Points. Still there may be some advantage when you have 20 ability score points and only five abilities, one of which is doubly effective while your buddies try to stretch 20 points across six abilities.... ;p

As far as you getting 20 points but only have to spread it across 5 attributes, you lose the option of getting the points from dropping an attribute from 10 to 0 which also balances out you actually lose a dumpstat so it is even harder to abuse.

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Realmwalker wrote:

You are way off base about those of us on the boards as well, we care about game balance otherwise there would be no need for a public playtest.

Sorry -- not ignoring you above, just wanted to answer posts in order.

All I can say is that more than one person has voiced the suspicion that "open playtest" is really mostly "free advance publicity." I'm not saying that's totally true, but the number of times in the past that Jason has replied to what seemed like potentially legitimate concerns with things like "I understand your issue, but it's not going to change, this thread is locked" suggests that identifying bugs isn't necessarily the primary purpose.

I should also point out the threads choked with comments like "I don't care a fig about balance," and "balance is impossible, so don't bother," and "balance is meaningless because a good GM will still make the game fun for everyone." If you, personally, care about game balance in any manner (whether or not you agree with me on it), I strongly believe you're in a minority.

First of all I've been involved in playtesting since the Magus and most of the locked threads have been boarderline troll attempts, not all but most. The single thread that was locked in this particular thread was a troll attempt as it was nothing but complaints and had nothing to do with the actual playtesting of the product.

Each of the playtests did what they were intended to do give feed back to the devs on the product in hand so that they could fix each of the items. The Magus round 1 was horribly under powered and is now a good choice to play, the Gunslinger was also underpowered round 1, the Ninja was slightly overpowered the Samurai was actually on target. The current versions have all improved from round one.

Why is that? because enough people do actually care about game balance and they give good accurate feedback in these playtest threads, the DEVs listen to this and for the most part alter the product based off the feedback given.

Threads in the Playtest section that go off saying that Paizo does not care about game balance and that it is only a way to get publicity should be locked because it has nothing to do with the actual playtest, it gives absolutly no useful information.

I am personally happy and thankful that Paizo trusts it's customers enough to do a public playtest, it does show that they care what our opinions are. Seeing how everything from the Magus Playtest to this one shows they actually listen to our feedback and care what we say.

In a couple of threads in this playtest a major concern was brought up and the Devs acknowledged it a said they would work on a fix. Showing that the feedback was useful and was listened to.

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Realmwalker wrote:

I built 7 races with the race builder and made one of my players roll a human to act as a control. I had a five person table we played a few encounters from the Jade Regent Adventure path oddly enough no one out shined anyone else. I was able to build races that had unique features but it did not effect the difficulty I even had a Cat race with claws.

My take as a DM tool it can work and I really want to see the book when it is done now.

The problem is that there's a lot of other variables at work too. Character level (racial bonuses tend to be more powerful at lower levels), the party composition, whether or not the races were min-maxed to their full potential (halfling fighter with 2h sword =/= human fighter 2h sword; you gotta play to each race's greatest strengths), level of the new races (standard / advanced / monstrous), just to name a few.

So far as written there has not been many problems I GMed a play test with over seven races I built. I chose a variety of choices and builds as I would want them in my campaign as it was intended to be used. I used a Human Character as the control building 10 point standard races none of them were worse or better than the control. I ran them through the first third of the first book of the jade Reagent adv path. So they got a good non combat as well as a good combat run.

There are a few changes that need to be made and they were brought up in multiple threads and acknowledged by the Devs. The Language Arrays as written are fair in my opinion, but I use and make languages important in my campaigns.

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I don't think you can take the same ability twice, but I could be wrong. :/

EDIT: *looks it up* Rather, I think it must specify whether or not you can take it more than once.

EDIT EDIT: Another funny thought. IF you could take Adaptability more than once, you could start with over a dozen feats at first level. xP

Except for the fact that a Standard Race may only take 3 choices from any trait section, Advanced Races get 4 choices and Monstrous Races get 5.

So a Standard race may take Adaptability 3 at most.
A monstrous race only gets 5 not a dozen.

@Nemitri you are looking at this as a Player Tool it is not, it is a GM tool that is used to design races. The GM has the last say as to if a Race designed with this tool is allowed.

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All of these comments are predicated on the idea that players will only play Standard races.

The stat modifiers favor casting classes heavily. For almost every martial class, maximizing a mental stat is rarely a concern, and in many cases an afterthought. Likewise, most martial classes need all of str/con/dex, and cannot easily bear a penalty to one of them. This would make for interesting tension, except for the fact that spellcasting classes can easily manage either Greater Paragon Modifiers or Weakness Modifiers by putting the penalties in dumped stats. Clerics, druids, bards, and similar classes don't mind splitting their bonuses between mental and physical, and non-martial casters like wizards, sorcerers, witches, and summoners have three or four dump stats to take advantage of whatever they can get. I'm not sure how to fix this system, but it magnifies existing MAD/SAD problems.

I don't see how +2 Str +2 Con favors Casters more than fighters or +4 Str -2 Int -2 Wis -2 Cha, or +4 Str -2 Dex -2 Cha each of these are easily done and all of them favor fighters/barbarians the first screams Monk as well.

As far as Sparkle Elves are concerned they take two advanced choices which makes them an advanced race not a standard race which Goblins are. By definition Advanced races are superior to Standard ones. So lose advanced Intelligence twice and guese what your point becomes null and void.

It seems to me that many people are not reading the playtest therefore adding advanced traits to Standard races then calling it broken much like every summoner thread that I have read claiming summoners are overpowered only to be disproven when you find out they did not follow the rules when building thier Eidolon.

So far I have built 10 different Standard Races they don't look any more powerful than any other race I have seen from Core to 3pp. Saturday I'm running a full playtest using one of the Tier 1 PFS Adventures Using a Human as the control and will go from there.

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Why oh why are things like claws advanced only? Why does a player need to have a CR bump to have a pair of innate natural weapons that really don't do that much damage.

Perhaps I am just ignorant of the bonus this ability would grant. It is only worth a feat - "Aspect of the Beast"

Please, why?

I'm for adding a Standard Power that gives claw attacks at 1d2 Tiny, 1d3 Small, 1d4 Medium, 1d6 Large for 1 RP as a standard trait.

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Some of the Eidolon Evolutions could also work for the race books.

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ShadowcatX wrote:

Why does everyone only want to compare the power of the archetypes at level 20? How about comparing the holy gun paladin at level 5 to a normal paladin using a gun at level 5? I know which one I'd take.

Is it normal paladin? Because for me, it's normal paladin at every level.

For me however it would be the Holy Gun, it may not be the "optimal" choice but not all of us try to cram every single point of damage into a build.

I like the Archetype, and I have fun playing it. In the end if I enjoy playing a character then it is a win in my book.

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Treantmonk wrote:

Can anyone explain to me how this would be less relevant than comparing "Role playing" to optimization?

First, viva la Rant threads!

Second, there is an optimizer and a min-maxer. An optimizer wants to build the most effective version of what they want to role play. If you want to play a Fighter, you want to be the best damn fighter you can be.

But you are playing a fighter, and therefore you realize a fighter isn't a bard, so you aren't going to be the suave charismatic person in the group with your dumped charisma. But that is cool, because you came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum...

Now a min-maxer wants to have his cake an eat it too. They want to be able to "role play" around the mins while enjoying all the benefits of the maxes.

The problem you have is that while your are a respected optimizer, you are sometimes lumped in with the dirty min-maxer. Which is unfair in the same way Kirth gets lumped in with the loophole seekers despite the fact he is actually trying to create new rules, not circumvent existing ones.

What I think you try to do is create ways for different classes to be good at what they are designed to do, understanding they aren't going to be able to do all things. Your wizard can dump strength, for example, because if he ever finds himself swinging a sword he's in trouble.

Similarly your fighter doesn't need to be that bright, since if he searching for traps or trying to sneak around in platemail he's in trouble.

The Fighter does not need to be that bright but he does not have to be dumber than dirt either, this is my problem with Optimizer/Min-Maxers you often end up with every fighter being for the most part an idiot jerk (Int 8, and Cha 7) almost every so called "build" prefers to do this. Then you get people that claim if you don't optimize then your build sucks. Sorry I prefer to have characters that are not retarded, douche bags (even my fighters).

Nor do I want to every Wizard build not be able to carry their spell book and staff because they gimped Str down to 7 (23 lb light load and 47 lb heavy load).

Many threads on this board will blast certain Archetypes because they are optimized or "subpar" mainly because it is not as good at combat as other choices, forgetting this game is not all about combat.

One of the most fun games I've played was with a player whose back story was he was a farmer that was hunting down the Goblins that burned down his farm. He took non-optimized feats such as Catch Off Gaurd (He fought using a shovel), and Handle Animal and Profession Farmer skills. He did not have a single attribute below 10 using a 20 point buy. He played that character to 15th level before we switched to a new game.

Many of my players panic when they have not taken any Knowledges or Non-Combat skills, because I happily make non combat scenes just as important as the Combat scenes. All of a sudden things like Knowledges, Professions, and Sense Motive become a little more important as well as being to speak an additional language or two.