Umbranus's page

Is the Trust system in play still in effect in the later modules? It appears to be a way to get players to be Good aligned.

I don't think so but as a player I can't say for sure.

If failure is your concern, you should've grabbed Accursed Hex long ago.

I already have it and use it from time to time with misfortune. But often enough on non boss fights the target is dead before a second turn misfortune does something and during boss fights I usually rather do something I'm more or less sure does something relevant than gamble with an all or nothing effect.

So in most cases against enemies that are dangerous I'd prefer to entangle them with a rimed frost fall or a rimed ice storm (entangle is automatic to everything without cold resist/immunity) and after that (depending on the kind of enemy) I hit it with an evil eye or a ray of exhaustion for another sure to hit debuff.

an Ennie-award winning 5-star average out of 26 reviews adventure.

I guess only those who liked the AP reviewed it.

I played from the beginning through to some of castle caromac and now left the group because, in my opinon, the only horror about this horror themed AP is how bad it is.
No noticable connection between the parts, no meaningful ingame motivation to only name the two top offenders.
And reading some of the threads about it I hardly seem the only one who thinks that way.
But as always YMMV.

Is that 22 unbuffed ? Get a belt of con or bears endurance to add another +2. Also getting rid of is sad :( I love that hex

It's buffed with a belt +2

Did he allow you to try it before he banhammered it?

He had a witch in another game prior who used it. And he didn't banhammer it but politely asked me to take other hexes. A big difference.

OP, how high is your INT as well? What is the save for your hexes?

I've a scarred witchdoctor, so con based and my con is 22. So at level 10 the save should be 21 (23 for misfortune). And I don't have slumber because the GM asked me to not take it. Which I understand.

So my witch reached 10th level and I get my first major hex.
Most witch guides seem to jump on the same hexes (Ice tomb, retribution sometimes agony) wich are all sos abilities but with the drawback that they are all or nothing, something I don't like. I already have misfortune wich is all or nothing and most of the time it's nothing (even with ability focus). In addition to that at least retribution seems unclear to me in that I don't understand if the target saves once or each time it deals melee damage.

For spells I tend to learn those, that do something useful even with a successful save. But there doesn't seem to be a hex like that.

Because of that I tend towards major healing right now. But it is generally voted rather low.

So wich major hexes would you recommend and why?

Edit: The witcxh is neutral so hexes from the "good" book don't work.

I would say: "If realism is in the way of fun, then its time to kick some realism out for a while.
Fun>rules and Fun>realism. what's more important, realism or rules is subjective.

Personally, I am worried about Barbs in particular in this campaign. As a class, they are -5 AC down compared to a Fighter or Paladin. Since all the major encounters aside from book 3 are urban, I worry that their skills won't really kick in. Same goes for Rangers/Druids, although they have slightly better skills.

I'd guess that a barb would fare better than a fighter. He doesn't have to rage all the time and if he doesn't he most likely has a higher touch AC than the man in plate.

If his skills help depends on what he spends them in. But even if he learns some useless skills he still hasn't less than the fighter.
There is even one rage power that lets you ignore negative levels and similar afflictions gives you an additional save to "heal" them.

The ranger can be quite good in CC is he chooses the right favored enemies. No matter what terrain he's in. And some archetypes get rid of favored terrain, so if you're not sure about which to choose, just exchange it.

Druids can be cool wherever they are. Just don't specialize too much in special spells that don't work everywhere too much. (I think entangle needs plants or roots for example).

I myself are playing a stonelord paladin and despite the earth servant being nearly useless it's a fun archetype. And the stonestrike he gets instead of smite evil already came in very handy.

I will say that I'm not a fan of Dual-Cursed; I don't see the additional revelations and spells as sufficient balance for having an unimproving extra curse.

There are curse combination that don't need any balancing.

For example if you already want to be a deaf oracle, you get no additional (mechanical) drawback by taking the wolfscarred curse as well.
After level 5 you have no drawback anymore from being legalistic in addition to having the wasting curse.

About Oracles in general: We've had one cleric in one of our games for a short time but we see several oracles played. And while I'd like to play a forgemaster cleric some time,it is much more likely that I play an oracle than a base cleric.

Based on this topic...

Can i make a Human Barbarian LVL10 with 2xSmall Lances, TWF, charging mounted with pounce? o.O

If mounted charge and pounce can be used together is a topic better left to its own threads. there are several I think.

As long as you are mounted the lance is a onehanded weapon if I remember right. So you could use medium ones.
If you pounce you can do so with two small lances.

deusvult wrote:

Would you allow a tiny sized glaive to add to a giant's reach?

No, since a tiny glaive doesn't have 10' reach.

A small glaive does.

Reach: "a typical Small or Medium wielder of such a weapon can attack a creature 10 feet away"

And a giant could not even use a tiny glaive, at all. So how could it add to his reach?

For a tiny creature it is twohanded
For a small creature it is onehanded
For a medium creature it is light
For anything bigger it is not usable as a weapon.

The feat has several drawbacks:
- You use a single onehanded weapon and can't do much meaningful with the other hand. No second weapon, no shield.
- As RDN said you can't use piranha strikes with it
- It only works with this one weapon and if you take it you have to sick with that one weapon for it to work

Why don't other classes take it that often despite the drawbacks?
- Most other classes are not that dependant on high crit range
- if they are thy can use twohanded weapons
- there is a whole archetype + prestige class about another weapon to use dex for damage: The aldori

Ashiel wrote:

Marthkus wrote:

Bah people keep saying summoners are overpowered, but when you compare them to fullcasters no one has yet to show that they are OP. Yet nearly every critique of the summoner on this thread alludes to them being OP.

If it makes you feel any better, my reservations concerning the summoner have absolutely nothing to do with its upper end strength.

Ok then what is the problem? I understand people not wanting to play a class, but many people don't want that a summoner at their table and I find that to be an unfounded opinion.

My problem is more with the master summoner than with the base summoner. And that problem is that it breaks action economy too much. He has not only 1 or 2 full round actions worth of screen time during combat but several.

Summoner himself, eidolon, summoned creatures.
If he summons lesser monsters he gets lots of them, I think 1d4+1 or so.

But even without this specific archetype I'm just not compfortable with the machanics how the summoning and the eidolon works. The summon monsters spells where balanced with a duration of 1round/level and a casting time of 1 round in mind. And that's the case even for classes like the druid with his spontaneous summons. So if nothing else the summoner makes the already mediocre druid class ability even weaker (at least in comparison).

If the standard summon monsters spell was a standard action as well and the eidolon had some fixed base forms to select from the base summoner would be ok in my book.

For the immunity to cold I'd take the rules for dragon skin armor made from dragon immune to some energy form.

They aren't anchored to a specific weapon type. This is a myth.

1. They get the maximum bonus to one type, but they get bonuses to multiple types. If you take the first bonus on melee and the second on ranged, they are actually more versatile, as they get bonuses to up to 4 different types of weapons.

2. Unlike other classes, they can retrain combat feats if they change weapons later.

I now await the post on how this doesn't work, because of a limited reading of the rules against martial classes from someone who has exceptionally liberal reading of the rules with regards to caster classes.

The fighter is about as versatile with his weapons as the ranger is with his enemies (without the ranger using a spell. With the spell the ranger wins.)

Everyone saying the ranger can't deal top damage to enemies who are not favored enemies should accept that the fighter can't deal top damage with weapons that are not his favored (trained/focused/specialized) weapons.

And while the fighter can exchange his weapon specialization for another he can't do the same for weapon focus (if he already has weapon specialization) without a houserule.

The old feat cannot be one that was used as a prerequisite for another feat,

So for using weapon specialization with a new kind of weapon you first have to learn weapon focus a second time. You can, after 4 more levels, change the first weapon focus because it is not a prerequesite anymore.

EDIT: Ninjad

So people seem to be dumping on the fighter, rogue and monk pretty hard.

Rogue I get why.

Monk I get why.

Fighters though... They fight, they do it well.

So my question to the people listing fighter as less than stellar is what specificly do they want out of the class that they aren't getting?

Genuinely confused here, not trying to throw fuel on the fire.

- Torger

Here is what I think about it:

- The fighter is ok at fighting. Sometimes he does it better than the other martials, sometimes he's worse.
- The fighter is less versatile about which weapon he can use because of weapon training and weapon specialization. He can ignore those but then he's worse than the other martials.
- No other class totally lacks out of combat capabilities. He can use feats to get them but so can everyone else. So if a fighter wants to be able to do something out of combat, he has to permanently sacrifice ressources he needs to stay on par with the other martials which already perform well out of combat in addition to their in combat power.

Why I think the fighter is worse than the rogue:
- the rogue is good (not the best but above ok) out of combat AND he can more or less contribute during combat.
- The fighter is just good (not the best but above ok)in combat BUT can't really contribute out of combat.

If you apply points for usefulness from 1-10 seperately for both the fighter (no special build but the class overall) and the rogue I think the rogue comes out ahead.
The fighter only wins in games where combat is more important than the rest or in games where the numbers on your sheet are irrelevant out of combat (roleplaying > stats) the fighter could come out better.

In my opinion it's nice but not worth a feat. Not a single one of my pathfinder PCs has it.

Ninja in the Rye wrote:

Bearded Ben wrote:

2 (class) + 2 (int) + 1 (human) = 5

So, like I said, Fighters don't get 5 skills a level. Any class benefits just as much from investing in INT and being human.

The idea that Fighters are less MAD than Rangers (who get bonus feats that allow them to ignore ability prerequisites), is kind of funny though.

a ranger need str+dex+con+wis... no room for int.

Rangers need Dex less than fighters.

They only need it for ranged combat. As do fighters. On top fighers need id for stuff like TWF.
Rangers just can cope with low int better. If rangers only got 2 skill points/level the'd need to take a higher int, too.

In the end fighters are more MAD than rangers because they need str+dex+con+int while rangers only need str+con+ a little wis

what i meant, is that fighters don't absolutely need 1 sort of item in order to prevail.
They can, in fact, use and benefit form almost all they find… much like rogues can

Except when they use their class ability of weapon training or even their special class feat of weapon specialization.

Fighters are the least versatile martial class when it comes to using loot as found.

Jack Rift wrote:

For me, acid splash, prestigitation, detect magic, and flaming sphere. Some much fun with these spells.

Detect Magic is the ultimate staple. It should be against the rules of the game to create a caster without it.

In a game I GM only one of the casters has both detect magic and spellcraft. So only one can try to identify stuff.

Above standard: Summoner
Below standard: Rogue, Fighter

Isn't Disrupt Undead, holy water etc still subject to the 50% miss chance for incorporeals?

As far as I know disrupt undead should work fine because it is positive energy. At least that was our consensus when we started CC.

I think the same is true for holy water. The only issue is that you can't throw it at an incorporeal but instead you have to pour it over it. Or you can throw it at the incorporeal's square but then you only deal splash damage.*

* This would be an option for an alchemist with his high splash damage but seems irrelevant for your game.

I would recommend the following classes:
Paladin, Alchemist, magus (yes, that's two you don't want in there but they can prevent a TPK in early combats vs incorporeals), any full caster.
Depending on the build the bard can work well.
I would recommend against having more than one melee pc that's not of the above classes.

(pro tip: Avoid needing multiple attributes to power your features).

The normal Cleric needs Cha as much as the forgemaster needs Int. So if you call the forgemaster terrible you should do the same with the core cleric and nearly every other cleric archetype.

I like the idea of the forgemaster. It's either good straight or as a dip. Even at a single level some of your spells are quite nice because they last as if cast with a higher CL.

Yes it applies but: The bonus damage only applies to rays that deal hp damage.

Paizo went out of their way to nerf casters so they couldn't make the martials second class citizens

They did? When and with which Errata did they? If you're talking about the core book as printed the statement is just plain wrong.

The true, non caster martials are very much second class to the casters.
And nothing in the magus makes him stronger than a full caster except at levels 1 and two. And then not even all of them. Depending on the bloodline/school powers chosen even a level 1 caster can be as strong as the magus.

My thought is that they wouldn't stack because they are both altering the original Rage ability.

I fear your thoughts are right in this.

They do both change the same ability and thus RAW they don't stack. So for FPS you are out of luck.

In a home game I guess I'd allow it as a houserule. But that's another thing alltogether.

bfobar wrote:

Burning hands because I really hate swarms.

Elemental Aura, because PFS loves swarms. (My magus carries a couple in scroll form)

For lowlevel swarms snapdragon fireworks is nice to reduce collateral damage. It targets a single square, deals damage to everything in that square and can be used for several turns in a row with one casting.

For higher levels the low damage which doesn't increase is just too weak.
Before I forget it: It's nice vs trolls and the like, too. If the melees pound it for good 1 point of fire damage per round is all you need to keep it down.

Whatever the answer: Would the same apply to shield of swings?

My 3.5 favorite spell was Servant Horde. Basically 3rd level wiz spell to summon 2d6+ CL unseen servants. Max of +10 I think. I would SO want that IRL. It'd take about 10 minutes to clean my house.

That's true. But IRL most people would choose other spells than as an adventuring pc, I guess.

1) combat maneuvers deal damage. This makes more sense if you view HP as morale or fatigue, so that then when you disarm an enemy, you mechanically get closer to the end of the fight. I'd probably do something small, like 1.5x Strength bonus, unmodified by enhancement bonuses or power attack.

I'd just go with a fixed fraction of the normal damage. Especially because basing it on str. would be bad for dex based guys.

Perhaps start with a quarter of the normal damage and add a feat to up it to half.

3) when using a full attack, only one attack can be an attack. Any other "attacks" made must be combat maneuvers. This only works if you also make maneuvers more accessible, such as by consolidating the feat chains. I don't love this idea, but it was part of the discussion, so I'll bring it up.

That is a totally horrible idea that nerfs melees so much I would not play in such a game if I'd get money for doing it.

About combat maneuvers in general:
I can't remember seeing more of it than the odd "I sunder the potion he's trying to drink" followed by a surprised look on the GM's face.

Once I tried a maneuver based monk but when I realized that I can't reposition as an AoO I ditched the concept. So for a couple of sessions I played a flowing monk with a reach weapon.

My suggestions to increase maneuver usage: Change all maneuvers to be made as an attack (as AoO or part of a full attack) and (as was already said) remove the prerequesites.

One of my favorite spells is one I didn't choose myself but learned from a scroll found in some ruins:

Last night we had to fight a lich and my witchdoctor used this spell and after that persued the lich using the flight hex to keep him from using his ugliest spells.
Sure it didn't do much damage and the lich could not be fatigued but the "can't speak or use spells with somatic components" part always works. Even with a successful save.

but a 20th level Wizard is only as efficient as a 1st level Wizard without feats;

You seem to be ignoring that the spell damage increases drastically with casterlevel in most spells.

Sure many are capped but still a level 1 caster deals much less damage than the level 20 caster when using the same spell. And they get better spells without spending feats. The fighter doesn't get better attack forms without feats.

Just skimmed over some parts so someone could have said it:
If you want Boob Plate, why not just fill the boobs in the armor. No more danger to your sternum ans you still have the looks.

This could be done with an inner layer of metal and hollow "boobs" or by filling them with something lightweight like cork.
This is not meant in any way to create realism. Just to make it work.

I think it depends upon which religions your kingdome will favor.
If the god of the hunt is to be one of your major deities it might be fitting to choose the temple of the elk or his holy statue somewhere else in the region. If you don't care about him it would not be fitting at all.

We used location A in our game because of the ruins we could use and because being on some kind of waterway is always good for a city.

Of course, I could ask my DM to house rule that in my case faith healing works with inflict rather than cure spells...Cheers!

If you'd be playing a dwarf, would you ask your gm to ignore the reduced base speed?

Why do dhampir players alsways think it is ok to make their GMs ignore the races' drawback? If you don't like it, don't play it.

I second spells that obscure vision.
They can't shoot you any more and you can close to melee range.

Other spells that would help:
Wind wall, protection from arrows (and communal), ablative spere, cloak of winds.

Looks good to me.

I would go cavalier. Order of the cockatrice and take antagonize as a feat so you can make people aggresive/attack you. Making people fight is what war is all about. not only fighting himself.
Perhaps I'd grab horse master at level 4 and then go on as fighter or barb.

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I have a rule in life. I never trust anyone who cheats at golf.

And I don't trust people who play golf.

If you are an aasimar and take celestial servant would it apply to all the ACs or just one?

Umbranus wrote:

minoritarian wrote:

I'd rather go Weapon Master as an archer.

If ever I play a fighter Archer I guess that's what I'll be doing, too.

from your words it sounds like you'd rather play another kind of archer?

which ?

I don't like to play a pc with such limited options as a single class fighter. So I'd most likely multiclass or dip. But until now I didn't get around to playing an archer at all.

One archer I did build (but not play) was a 10th level pc who was cavalier 4/weapon master 5/mammoth rider 1 riding into battle on his huge tiger mount. But even with him I did mourn the total lack of spells or similar versatile abilities.

I think 5% autofail is just too much.
And I think 5% autosuccess is too strong without some cap. If you use this houserule you should set fixed limits on what you can succeed in. If you don't there will be a time when a player announces to try something, rolls a 20 and you tell him that he didn't manage it because it is impossible while recently you allowed something seemingly similar hard for another player.

For example you can rule that a natural 20 is enough for tasks with double the DC of what you can max manage to roll. Or 1.5 times.
Example: A pc wants to climb a sheer cliff. The gm sets the DC to 35 and the pc has a bonus of +5 so with a 20 he can get as high as 25. With the 1.5 times limit he could do DC 37 with rolling a 20 so he succeeds. Would the DC have been 40 he would have failed despite the 20 because too much is too much.
Else jumping to the moon might become a topic.

I'd rather go Weapon Master as an archer.

If ever I play a fighter Archer I guess that's what I'll be doing, too.

I personally would not have agreed to any rolling of ability scores, period. But that's just me, I firmly believe that some numbers in the game should not be randomized, ability scores and hit points being chief among them. I CERTAINLY wouldn't agree to rolling different score sets for different people either, because that leads to some people getting awesome ones and others getting awful ones, etc.

This.

The Dan Bong is a terrible weapon because RAW it makes you worse at grappling.
If a humanoid who grapples doesn't have both hands free he gets -2 to grapple.
If you are using a Dan Bong you get +2 to grapple. That nets you a -2. Most likely the -4 isn't supposed to apply to tzhe dan bong but RAW it does.

And in addition, as the dan bong's damage is so low you'll never want to use it as an actual weapon.

So in the end you pay a feat for a weapon you will not use that makes you worse at grappling.

I (as a player) never felt as if it would have been an option to include her into our party or otherwise take her with us.

Carrion Crown feels a lot like a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Kendra seemed like a natural fit for that.

I'd love if that was the case but up to now, for me comparing CC to CoC is like comparing the dungeons and dragons movie to the lord of the rings movies.

In CoC, as I know it you try to solve mysteries and save someone or something (sometimes the world)while evading every possible encounter because each one has a high chance of killing you or making you insane. In CC you got dungeon crawl with undead and monsters and slaughter everything that looks suspicious. Sometimes just because you can.

It's something that very much depends on both the gm and the players.
Some do it good, some do it bad.

As a player I once had a situation that convinced me to never play a certain RPG with that GM wich resulted from a different world view in regards to the setting.

So while this is a roleplaying game and as such should include roleplaying it is more than everything else a game and should be fun. And I'd rather sacrifice the roleplaying before I accept that it reduses the fun someone has.
Not to mention insulting the players over a difference of opinion about the game world.

Wasn't there a mountless archetype in the creatures book? Houndmaster or somesuch? If I remember right he trades his mount for a dog or hawk animal companion.
But perhaps I'm mixing it up with another class' archetype.