Saint Bernard's page

Can you give us some information on how and how often you plan on playing. Will this be interactive or everybody posts once per day? If interactive are you going to use one of the applications to assist play?

Depending on what kind of committment you are looking for, I would be willing to play a magus, bard, or cleric.

I looked at the rules on both last night and while the combination would be a bit unusal I could see someone role playing it. It would take a bit of planning and restraint to pull off. The Sould Forger gets a weapon arcane bounded object at 1st level. The weapon must meet the criteria to be a black blade and the Soul Forger can't enchant it using the arcane bound rules. At 3rd level, the Bladebound kicks in and it is now a sentient black blade. The ability to enchant the weapon would be lost but it can still be used to spontaneously cast a spell known.

From a role playing standpoint I can see a dwarf or a half-elf/orc trying to be more to the community than just a warrior blendng the two paths.

No problem!

One of the (many) tasks that I feel "Wrath of the Righteous" needs to accomplish is to provide proof of concept for Mythic Adventures.

The hardcover itself is fine and good, but without us also putting our money where our mouth is and giving an immediate example of how to build an entire campaign based on mythic elements... the hardcover is nothing more than another book of options that would and could rightly be called power creep.

But by showing that using these rules can create brand new storylines that, when the powers available in Mythic Adventures are taken into account, actually ENHANCE the story rather than simply being a power-boost to PCs, I hope that we'll be able to convince a lot of folks of the viability of Mythic Adventures as a legitimate GM storytelling tool, and NOT just as a "shopping list" of new powers for PCs.

Overall, I have not been a fan of the adventure paths but I plan on purchasing this series just to see how to integrate Mythic Adventures into a campaign.

The ones I have taken so far for my air elementalist (W10) are fast learner, opposition research, and arcane builder(wonderous items).

Looks like they listened to the need to expand options for characters; Pathfinder Player Companion: Mythic Origins (PFRPG) is coming out in the fall. More options - good!

Thanks, Radiarch. I will look into that. :)

You'll have at least one sale.

Just got Green Lantern Extended Cut last night. It was a much better movie than the one in the theater. The added scenes showed the parallels in both Hal's and Hector's lives and why it was inevitable they faced off in their final showdown. It is a pity they didn't show it instead of the edited one as the extra material really told the complete story.

When I was browsing for Kindle ebooks I noticed you produce an ebook version of one of your books. Will you be releasing Ultimate Psionics as a Kindle ebook? It would make a great addition to my color copy I am getting through the kick starter.

My guess would also be no due to the fact a certain percentage of buyers (of which I am one) would always wait for the compilation instead of buying the orginal soft cover book. Example, I would love to see a Races of Golarion book especially if it included all of the errata since the original soft cover book.

Looks like some wonderful stuff. The Paths of Power II looks great. One question will we get Player's Options: Half-Elves and Player's Options: Half-Orcs or will they be rolled into the Player's Options: Elves and Player's Options: Orcs book. I would really prefer a book dedicated to half-elves and half-orcs.

Back in the 2E era, it was first written up in the Complete Book of Elves. The closest equivalent is the magus particularly if you can include 3PP content.

Well, I'm running this currently, in book 4. Here are my personal takes on the various classes. Mind you, these are just my opinions.

Magus-3/5-In addition to the normal difficulties of spell casting under water, the Magus will be hampered slightly by the interactions of water and scrolls/spellbooks, though his martial prowess makes up for this.

Can you expand on the magus, having played the class I would have expected it to be a better fit of S&S.

At first I was going to pass but I have preordered it.

Personally I am hoping the badguy is the Immortal AKA Flint from the orginal series. He has been a factor in some of the more recent books.

Melf's Minute Meteors, it was a faviorite spell of mine due to charging fighters getting in the way. I did not want to fireball my party members.

I had to wait until the following payday but I got it. Galliard of Blades is awesome. It is powerful, complex and cunningly balanced for what it does. The fact it uses swift actions to maintain takes arcane strike off the table and since it is using bardic performances no inspire courage to buff you. Unless you preplan and cast Good Hope before you start it, no buffing from that front. I would show this as a way to balance a really powerful option so the buffing does not get our of hand. Well done.

For my first magus I set strenght to a 14 both to get power attack and use an Oathbow (+2 str). I never put any more into strenght after that but it is important to have other options when you can't use your primary attack.

Owen, you just sold another copy. I'll buy it tomorrow, payday.

Owen, does Galliard of Blades work with a rapier? Based on End's review I may have to pick this up.

I would still like to see a Blood of Elves and Bood of Orcs to give more variation to half-elvs and half-orcs.

The way I would rule it is Spell Combat is not problem at all. The Spellstrike would only affect the first target. As a GM I would have no problem with a magus hitting 8 different targets but multiplying the spell to affect all 8 would be too much.

The problem with 3 + twice your mythic tier is instead of a linear increase in power, it now goes exponential. At tier 10, instead of 13 you have 23 mythic power points to use. If you are worried about providing more power points at lower levels, you should consider 5 + mythic tier.

Jason, those all are very good changes addressing some of the problems we have identified during this playtest.

I agree this looks really good especially since the only active character I have is a magus.

I have another suggestion, this time for the Bullet Points lines. I would love to see more Oaths for the Oathbound Paladin.

I am amoung the group which has not received an email yet with the coupon. Neither here or on my AOL account.

Saint Bernard wrote:

James, I am participating in the mythic playtest and I am impressed with the increase in character power even at the lower levels. The power of a wizard 20 archmage 10 is incredible. My question for you is where do these mythic individual fit into the Inner Sea region? I can see a fighter 6 champion 3 quietly living in a small village or town; Achilles that didn't sail to Troy. Someone like the Whispering Tyrant would be a wizard 20 archmage 10.

My impression is the Inner Sea region is composed of mainly low level characters, with very few truely high level characters. Can you give me some insight on how mythic characters integrate into the region?

The Inner Sea region is indeed built with the assumption that it's a Core setting for 1st to 20th level play, but there ARE parts of it that can relatively easily provide challenges for more powerful play. The Worldwound is one obvious location.

But really, once you become super powerful, you'll be spending more and more of your adventuring time elsewhere than in the Inner Sea Region. Maybe in Orv. Maybe on other planets. Maybe on other planes. Etc.

Wrath of the Righteous is, at this point, going to be an Adventure Path that goes to 20th level and tier 10 mythic power—whether or not it stays with that plan remains to be seen, but at this point, a significant part of that Adventure Path will be taking place on the Abyss as an example of how the increased power opens up new adventuring locations.

As for examples of mythic NPCs currently alive and operating in the Inner Sea region, you need look no further than pages 5–7 of Inner Sea Magic. Any character in there with a "+" after their level is a mythic character (we just couldn't use the word "mythic" yet since we weren't public with what that word officially meant).

That includes:

Three of the runelords
Arazni, Queen of Geb
Artokus Kirran, inventor of the sun orchid elixir
Baba Yaga, founder of Irrisen
Elvanna, ruler of Irrisen
Geb, ruler of Geb...

Thank you for your reply. Even though I am no longer a GM I will have to pick up Wrath of the Righteous just to see how Paizo integrates it.

James, I am participating in the mythic playtest and I am impressed with the increase in character power even at the lower levels. The power of a wizard 20 archmage 10 is incredible. My question for you is where do these mythic individual fit into the Inner Sea region? I can see a fighter 6 champion 3 quietly living in a small village or town; Achilles that didn't sail to Troy. Someone like the Whispering Tyrant would be a wizard 20 archmage 10.

My impression is the Inner Sea region is composed of mainly low level characters, with very few truely high level characters. Can you give me some insight on how mythic characters integrate into the region?

Dual focus can mitigate some of that, if you are willing to spend a mythic feat to add some mythic power points.

Thank you for your insights, my own play testing has run into some of these same issues. However, I was not as able to describe them as you. I completely agree these rules are not for the novice or casual players. Mythic rules allows a level tactical combat I have not seen since I dabbled with Iron Heroes (IH). The tokens I acquired for IH have come in handy with mythic rules. For one play test I was playing a magus and had tokens for my arcane pool, mythis power pool, hero points, and spell and feat cards. Even my least favorite classes, fighter and rogue, are more complex and interesting with mythic rules.

For some Bards (Arcane Duelist), dual path Champion and Archmage makes more sense than Marshal. Part of the problem is few of us play a class exactly the same.

Sabastian - Tim the powerful is a beast. I created a similar magus only using a rapier with weapon finese and mythic weapon finese and I would not want to meet him in a dark alley. Using MWF, M arcane stike, black blade strike, and M power attack,my magus can generate 30+ damage bonus before criticals and spell strike.

Saint Bernard

In your feat section, you might want to mention Fast Learner for humans out of ARG. In my opinion this is a Blue feat due to allowing a human to get both a skill point and a hit point each level.

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The owner of Iron Heroes was woking on PFing Iron Heroes but I have not folowed their progress for almost a year. You might consider going to the website and seeing if any of the ideas for version 2 are usable for your conversion.

That was what I had thought about, I look over the material again tonight with I advance the characters.

I haven't decided on which mythic feat the magus is grabbing next. The arcane duelist is much more straight foward. Any suggestions?

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wait I missed the rules where you can dual path, you can do that or you're just making that up to play with the idea?

There is a mythic feat called Dual Path on page 24.

Dual Path (Mythic)
You excel in many areas, allowing you to select path abilities from two mythic paths.
Prerequisite: 1st mythic tier.
Benefit: Select a mythic path, other than the path you selected at your moment of ascension (see page 3). You gain the 1st level ability of that path (archmage arcana, champion strike, divine surge, guardian’s call, marshal’s order, or trickster attack). Whenever you gain a path ability, you can select from list of abilities presented for both paths, as well as from the list of universal path abilities.

Both characters are built to be PFS legal with the Mythic tier added on. The playtest environment is World's Largest Dungeon, which is the most plain vanilla environment I have. Both characters are using rapiers as weapons and leather armor. The magus is a dual path Champion/Archmage and the bard is a arcane duelist with Champion. Both have selected weapon finesse as their first feat. The bard has taken path ability, mythic spells, and the magus has taken competant caster. Both have taken the fleet charge from the champion strike and the magus has taken mage strike from archmage arcana. The bard selected weapon finess (mythic) as his mythic feat.

The first thing I noticed about the two characters is how resource intensive they were. Each character has three finite pools of resources; spells, arcane pool/bard performance, and mythic power points. My solution was to use spell cards and pull out my Iron Heroes tokens for the two pools each character had. I expect this aspect to be the same for any class with some kind of uses per day pool.

In fighting the goblem, the lack of BAB became apparent. It was not so bad for the bard; 0 BAB but a +3 from weapon finesse. Spell combat with the magus was a lot of flurry of misses. Bardic performance was a necessity in combat. Fleet charge is absolutely awesome for closing the distance to an opponent. With the magus, the fleet charge followed by a spell combat using ray of frost killed a hobgoblin chief in one round. Not having to make the concentration roll due to competent caster made the magus much more effective. Weapon finesse (mythic) allowed the bard to be more effective in any round the magus did not use spell combat.

Conclusions: At L1/T1 the characters did not appear to be significantly more powerful that a L2 character. The biggest difference was more options in combat. The next mythic feat for the bard will be arcane strike (mythic), which I can see will negate any need for bladethrist. Arcane strike (mythic) is just better both for power and versatility. I can't see using the ability to expend a mythic power point for anything other than bane, something neither the bard nor magus can do naturally.

Mythic rules make the characters more complex and probably not a good addition for casual players. Next playtest I will jump the characters to L6/T3.

Phasics, I agree with your analysis, which is why my playtest magus is dual pathing Champion and Archmage. Being able to pick and choose between the two sets of path abilities seems ideal to me.

I am testing the same assumption as Epic Meepo in the Mythic Tiers are temporary and were added to the characters for the quest.

I like how dual path mythic characters can synergize well with eldritch knights, mystic theurges, rage prophets, and arcane tricksters.

Dual path is also appplicable to the bard and magus. The only other option for them is mythic spells. With the magus, dual path may be the better option allowing a champion/archmage to select Mage Strike and also Fleet Charge. Both of which enhace the tatical ability of the magus. I can easily see a magus using his swift action to activate fleet charge to get to the opponent and deliver the single attack then finishing the round with a full attack. Next round using a mythic power point to activate Mage Strike and follow up with a full attack. Either or both of the full attacks could involve Spell Combat/Spell Strike. I may be reading too much into fleet strike and mage strike but it seems to be possible for the character to do.

Anyway, I am going to start my playtest tonight going the dual pathed magus champion/archmage and see how it goes.

In my playtest I am planning on basing the wealth by levels on the acutal character levels without adding in the mythic tiers. Since the mythic tiers can be a temporary boon, I feel they should not affect the WBL guidelines.

Blending Pathfinder and Iron Heroes classes will be difficult, the rule sets and design principles are very different. Having said that, I can give you some advise from my experince. Magic using classes from IH will be horribly outclassed by the PF classes. So, if you want to see the IH classes, you may have to prohibit the PF classes. The other classes from IH can compete but they need to prevented from having magical items or they will overly competitive. Example, a 20 level weapon master rolling out of bed and grabbing her favorite weapon can have the equivalent of a 30 AC. Her fighter counterpart can not begin to compete with that. The other problem is difference in PF feats versus IH feats. Just one example, Weapon Finesse 2 allows the weilder to use their dex bonus for both to hit and damage. Armor will also cause you some problems and here I recommend using one system or the other.

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Great start, my one recommendation is use Green for the middle rating. Black does not stand out as a rating color.

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I would really like to see a Genius Guide to Paladins, with some advice on how to play them without being a thorn in the side of the party. Mechanically, I would like to see more archetypes, feats, and oaths. Some of the feats I would love to see deals with adding to the list of options available for adding properties using the Divine Bond feature.

I mentioned Feats of Strenght in a thread on Vital Strike and Spring Attack. Suggested feats could be made to allow the Vital Strike chain working with either Spring Attack or Shot on the Run similar to Headlong Charge. Great work by the way.

Feats of Strenght by Abandoned Arts has a feat, Headlong Charge, which allows the Vital Strike chain to work with a charge action. Something similar could be made for Spring Attack and Shot on the Run. Personally I feel anything that makes mobile combat more attractive is good. The stand and deliver style of combat gets boring after a while.

I was following the Pathfinerization of Iron Heroes last year and one of the things they did was limit everyone to poor BAB to get rid of iterative attacks. All of classes got speical bonuses to hit making up for the loss of BAB. The effort was to force players to use a more mobile fighting style and improve flavor of the game.

It's kind of a niche, but I think Furyborn and Impact properties go hand-in-hand.

I just read over Furyborn and Impact and they are a cool combination. Pity there is neither a Magus Arcana nor a Arcane Duelist Bladethirst to add them to a weapon.

I have to agree with Endzeitgeist that Headlong Charge may be problem at higher levels. A 16th level paladin with spirited charge, greater vital strike, and headlong charge is going to do a lot of damage on smite evil on a lance charge. 3*d8 + 3*dmg (spriited charge) + 3*d8 (greater vital strke) and if crits 2*d8 + 2*dmg. I ptiy the poor, ancient red dragon at the receiving end of this charge.

BTW, I begged Jason B for such a fit so I could do the above.

When I get home tonight I will have to look up in Faiths of Purity (I think that is the title) to see if a bard of Saerenae (sp) still gets flameblade. Black Powder Chocobo, dervish danace would work.

Is there a college in the Inner Sea region that teaches elementalism instead of or in addition to the traditional schools?

Thanks, Saint Bernard