gnomersy's page

I've long allowed edits, sooo, you can have the monk as is, or you can lose something to get something that you want.

Some go vanilla and choose good feats and really solve the puzzle of combat, others go nope, I more want a brawler drunken master.

The issue with this 3.5 is that we aren't all playing in your game. For every DM who will fudge base rules for the sake of fun you have one who will play RAW because it's the rules.

Most of us are hovering in the middle somewhere and while DMs are often willing to fudge a little(giving you access to a 3.5 feat or maybe taking a feat a level late whatever) there's a certain point at which they tend to get mighty skeptical and reworking the classes tends to be off limits.

Sadly for people playing PFS this is even worse because they have zero latitude to work outside the box. And really when we're talking about the classes their labeling or balance etc you have to talk about the base rules not your houserules because that's the standard assumption we make when we're talking about playing Pathfinder not 3.5 Loyalist-finder.

yes, i admit the weakest class is the monk.

but the monk, isn't as far behind the other martials when he uses a weapon than when he uses his fists. he is still very far behind though. in fact, the cheaper weapon and freed amulet slot make up a fair bit of difference.

the monk's weapon based flurry attack bonus, is much like a 2weapon ranger against nonfavored enemeies, with the exception that he requires one weapon instead of 2.

or like a nonsmiting archery paladin without the range but with less feats spent. those 2 classes and build types, bearing a similar level of M.A.D.

While I agree with you Lumiere I think this is just a case where the rules shoehorn you into a different build than the flavor of the class encourages.

I actually saw the same thing when I was discussing the Rogue in another thread where the Strength based Rogue was actually almost on par with the Ranger vs non favored enemies but very few people who make a Rogue are looking to go with a burly musclebound guy just like few people making a Monk are looking for a guy who swings around a sweet magic sword people looking for that tend to gravitate towards a fighter etc. who's flavor just fits better.

As a result while the ideal builds for the monk may be okay in terms of functionality the sacrifices necessary to get to the okay/good state kind of kill the class overall. This is my personal opinion and while I would love to be proven wrong I haven't found a way to make a generally good monk using non ideal picks of archetype or weapon while doing the same with a paladin, bard, etc is quite feasible. That in my mind is a bad class.

Sooo....your suggestion is to alter the AP so the Monk sucks enough to justify this thread??

The fact is, against a humanoid AP or encounters, CMB monks (even vanilla, like this guy) are pretty badass.

You mean against the things in the game against which it is the easiest to perform combat maneuvers against where they put zero effort into preventing it Monks can be badass?! My god stop the presses next you'll tell me that monks are awesome against mooks 6 levels lower than they are!

Honestly I've always been confused by the people who say rolling for stats somehow discourages min maxing. You still get to pick where your stats go 95% of the time you still have a high primary low secondary stats. Unless you're all rolling them and playing them in order after you pick your race and class you're getting min maxing. You just limit the extent to which people can control it in character creation.

You're mostly right the only reason people don't pick ninjas over rogues more often is that
1) Ninjas are an equally mediocre dip.
2) Ninjas aren't as fluffy as rogues. Aka the flavor is wrong.
3) We don't like your fantasy 'round hea boy! Refer to 2, aka nothing eastern allowed games.
4) Ninjas don't have trapfinding.

Now why I don't think the Ninja is an overpowered archetype, they're still not the best at anything. Bards do skills better, rangers still fight better etc etc.

But Ninja's are more powerful mechanically than Rogues are so if you want to call if overpowered by comparison you could. I think the issue is that Ninja was essentially what Pathfinder wanted to do/should have done with the Rogue but was too afraid of alienating the 3.5 compatible crowd to do.

gnomersy wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

Trained horses are very expensive, and worth a fair bit as loot. Some critters might not care, but that's a decent reason to target the rider and spare the horse.

Edit: Whoops! I see that Ilja beat me to it.

War trained horses tend to be rather unpleasant to catch unharmed after their riders are downed because they're vicious, this would be even more true of cavalier horses.

True, but there would still be people that would try.

Agreed but there would be others who would just try to kill the thing and loot whatever was in the bags or on the dead rider. I'm just saying that imo it would differ from person to person so having every single sentient enemy following the same attack pattern wouldn't make sense to me. So these bandits maybe want to sell the horse but kobolds are probably going to use the horses for draft or food because who the heck are they going to trade it to anyways? I think it's more of a case by case sort of evaluation the DM needs to make to make combat a little less beat up on the player-y and more immersive.

Roberta Yang wrote:

JiCi wrote:

The Temple Sword is 1d8 and the Quarterstaff is 1d6...

HOW does either of them get better than a 1d10, 2d6, 2d8 or 2d10 unarmed strike exactly?

Better bonus from Power Attack, since you can two-hand them, and better enhancement bonus, since they cost half the price of an AoMF.

Come on, it was written right there in the very post you quoted.

Oh, my bad... I thought you guys were gonna go with some weird calculations and mathematics that resulted into a better damage output.

There's also 1.5x str scaling which isn't the best on a monk necessarily but still adds a bit.

A level 1 str fighter with a crummy 1d8 weapon can be doing a minimum of 7 bonus damage with a 16 in str and power attack, up the str to 18 and he's doing +9 on his attack that's the equivalent of rolling 3d8 on average but it's consistency is an advantage as well he can't have a bad string of dice rolls and do a total of 4 damage between 2 hits.

Because your aim is not to harm him

As a point there is already a type of AC which pertains specifically to interacting with the target without harming them and it is called Touch AC given that you are not rolling against Touch AC nor any other type of the creature's personal AC you are clearly not interacting with it.

I'd say the AC 10 target exists to provide a credible threat. Flanking provides that threat regardless of whether or not you show you're competent because you can't see behind you, where as the aid action would be something like flicking your sword out, making a sudden move forward etc that results in a reaction from the target to deal with the potential threat thus making your friend's attack easier to land the roll is more of to show that you aren't a bumbling incompetent with a sword which would not require any attention to be paid to you.

Dark Immortal wrote:

So I am partial to being about as greedy as it gets with crafting. It's mine, all mine!

Well, hopefully your party never finds out how much you're gouging them for. That'd get you killed in one of my campaigns.

I really do love this logic. You're giving me up to a 25% discount compared to items I'd buy from anyone else, as well as doing custom orders?! F-UUUUU I'm going to murder you!

Yeah no.

In my game I'm charging my allies 60%, cost +10% is minimum because my time has a value as well and I have no reason in character to give away things for free. As far as out of character, giving everyone the advantage of the feat without taking it actually would make my character weaker per capita than my friends so it's bad imo either way.

Most players are big cry babies who expect their GM to bow to their every whim.

You. Can't. Let. THEM. Win.

Most GM's are big cry babies who expect their players to bow to their every whim.

You. Should. Push. Them. Down. The. Stairs.

It's fun both ways really, nothing bad could ever come of it.

I agree with Kirth that you know IC when you have rolled badly and can react appropriately without it being meta gaming. I have always played that way and I am frankly surprised at the number of people in the "you can never react to a poor check" camp.

Reminds me of the DMs who cry meta when a character applies knowledge based on experiance but does not necessarily have the knowledge skill. Also I think it correlates to the kind of DM who strives for "realism" which winds up often not working like reality.

Meta gaming is sometimes necessary, otherwise how can you realistically play an intelligence which is smarter than you are. It is a tool in the roleplaying toolbox, you just need to know the correct time to use it.

I'm really not sure I agree with this at all. While some rolls have active feedback in them for example I'd accept knowing your stealth roll is crap because you can tell when the floorboards creak or you stumble etc. But for listening and looking? Hell no you don't know how well you did.

As opposed to rewarding his whining by giving him the outcome he was whining for?

If you think player unhappiness is best solved by telling them to nut up and respect mah athoritah! I really hope your face is harder than your gaming tables are because that isn't going to solve the problem.

What it will do is piss off the player and make him conclude(validly) that you are not on his side in the game. As a result hes going to game the ever loving bejesus out of the system and you will come back in a week crying about the currently valid OP ragelancepounce equivalent build he's using in your game ruining your fun. And every time you ask him to take a save or roll an attack is going to be like sitting at a chess game where he won't make a move until he's quintuple checked everything to make sure you don't screw him.

Just say no to bad DMing.

Right, except even with all the right feats, the gunslinger's got one trick - shoot it. The skill list is meh, most of the social skills aren't on it, and even the ones that are don't have any attribute synergy with the gunslinger's dex and wis. it basically suffers from the fighter's problems, except it's more focused. Comparing it to a save-or-suck caster is silly.

I never said the Gunslinger is super awesome but building one wrong and then complaining that they suck is downright stupid.

The Gunslinger does only have one trick yes just like the Two Hand Fighter has one trick.

In fact the Gunslinger has a pretty advantageous starting point Dex is a great attribute to focus it nets him damage, saves, and AC bonuses, on top of that the wis that he wants to boost for grit points nets him better will saves and a higher score on perception which is arguably the best skill in the game. He can also use it to boost his Sense Motive if he feels like it. He also has two good saves unlike the fighter which means he doesn't have to worry as much about spells knocking him out of the fight.

Yes with the right feats instead of shooting badly he shoots things well but he loses nothing in terms of skills(he still has more than the fighter and at least enough to get by on), he has full BAB growth coupled with targeting touch AC which makes it laughably easy for him to land hits on the target most fighters would have a terrible time trying to hit, and he can still get past DR using clustered shots, specialty ammo, or just putting out enough damage to ignore it once he has deadly aim and gun training.

Hell if you really want to with advanced guns you even have the option to make a pretty decent acrobatics using shot on the run style gunslinger as you level up.

And really you can get all of your core feats done by like level 5 as a human at least. 1st level Point blank, human bon. Precise, level 3 Rap. Reload, level 4 deadly aim, level 5 Rapid shot. Done everything from there on is gravy.

If you want death to be non trivial then one of two things has to happen, either death has to become significantly less likely(almost certainly not what you're aiming for), or character creation has to become significantly simpler.

If you're going to kill off a guy every game session don't expect anyone to show up with epic backstories and roleplaying genius or optimized characters you're going to get generic Bob the Barbarian #5 and Wally the Wizard #2.

At least I know I'm not willing to put the 5+ hours of time it take for proper character creation under the current ruleset along with thought time on making him a proper person on some schmuck you're just going to kill off in like 3 sessions before telling me to do it again because death is supposed to be "hard".

The rogue is not underpowered, not by a long shot. I have found that the majority of people who think that fall into two categories: 1) players who don't really know how to build them effectively, and 2) players who are stuck with GMs who don't know how to build an adventure that suits the rogue. I will agree that Pathfinder and 3.0 have been pretty bad about nerfing the things rogues are supposed to be good at, but they've tweaked them in areas they were never meant to be good, such as front- line fighting (and before anyone protests that they're not good on the front line, see category 1 above).

Set up a build and show how they're better/on par with any of the other frontliners instead of just showing up and telling people they're crap at building Rogues.

Sigh. After having examined many of the classes, AND your collective arguments, I think I'd rather have a Rogue along whilst dungeon crawling, or indeed just about anywhere in the typical 4 man team. Rangers really don't have the skills Rogues do, and thus aren't as adaptable. Plus, Rangers are straight out warrior types, and should be treated as such.

I don't see why the lot of you seem to think crappy uber specific spells or the limited ki pool somehow compensates for lack of skills. A Rogue can do what he does, time after time, all day long. Spells have to be recharged, and ki pool has to be as well. But then, most of you have grown up on playing video games, and don't think economically (or tactically for that matter). Me, I'm used to having to scrounge for resources in most games, indeed, I find the typical video game shooter to be damned boring, as I always have ammo coming out of my ears.

I've done more damage with a dagger and a stupid Sleep spell, or lantern oil and a spark, than the lot of you seem to think is possible. Really, do you Rogue haters ever stop and consider just how flexible and all around useful it is to simply be good at more skills than anyone else? Do we have to constantly focus on combat, because the *game* certainly isn't solely about combat? Why does it have to be all about how much damage we can do in a single shot? Heck, do you know how many times I've smoked much higher level players with nothing more than a pack of kobolds or goblins armed with bows and a knowledge of the terrain?

You seem to have no idea what you're doing or talking about mechanically, I'm sorry but really re-read everything and play the game according to the rules then start talking.

For starter the ninja has the EXACT same skill points per level as the Rogue so ... yeah ...

im very confused as to how a gm choosing to open a flank for a rogue, or let the rogue scout forward is gm fiat? where is this rule that GMs MUST KILL ALL PLAYERS MUHAHAHA,

what page is that? 35? 67? 551? common give me a page...

wait you cant? wait your gm can choose to play a creature how ever he chooses? he can set up the board how ever he chooses and pick the monster you fight how ever he chooses?

REMEMBER PEOPLE level one of a video game has rules and a predetermined path, while in pathfinder the gm can do it how ever he chooses.

as i said before a good gm will allow all players at his table to have fun.

/end thread

Have you ever played a video game where the ai was too stupid to live? Where you run up to the enemy while they spin in circles and shoot at the ground while you kill them with rusty spoons? After killing the guy did you ever feel a sense of accomplishment? No. Why? Because you didn't accomplish anything the game was such a pile of donkey dung that it gave you everything on a silver platter.

No GM I have ever seen or played with will do that to his players because it completely invalidates the idea of playing the game.

A GM is also perfectly capable of skipping the entire dungeon saying the monsters aren't there they're off having tea and crumpets and just handing you a fat pile of loot but that doesn't make the game any better.

If you don't understand this I encourage you to play with some different DMs and figure out how the game normally works.

Guys I'm going to need a way to explain to my wife that we are both playing and enjoying the wrong class and need to give up our rogues.

I'm really sorry this happened, we didn't know the rules.

It's okay there's a 50% chance she won't divorce you over it, and for Rogue players that's pretty good odds.

Sidenote: Why don't these boards have a flag for trolling option?

So far, it seems to me that the arguement so far is not the Rogues suck, but that Rogues suck at being Fighters/Rangers/Barbarians.

:)

Not really the argument has mostly been that Rogues suck at being Fighter/Ranger/Barbarians and don't do anything else outside of that that someone else can't do.

thejeff wrote:

Except that the various casters who study those things and who enchant them can tell by looking at them what they do and how powerful they are. They may not say +1 or +2, but...

I would expect a character who has studied magic and has invested in other knowledge (arcana) or skills (spellcraft) to pretty much accept that a cloak of resistance provides a "measurable" edge.

A rogue or fighter who has no interest in either of those things would not necessarily be so willing to accept that they really help.

Let's say it's a +2 cloak of resistance. That's a ten percent improvement in your probability to avoid a magical effect. When you do avoid a magical attack, you might not even know it.

To assert that a typical person would be able to quantitatively "prove" that a cloak of resistance actually helped them is simply an assertion, nothing more. That's like saying you would notice if you had a 10% improvement in your chance to beat a red light in traffic.

I sincerely doubt you would ever even notice.

Just because they can't prove it doesn't mean they won't know it or accept it AD.

For example I can't prove that in a vacuum a bowling ball and a feather fall at the same rate, but I know that somebody who knew what they were doing tested it and did prove it and that I believe that they told me the truth.

I imagine you'd have some ignorant people in the PF universe as well but there should probably be just as many who would tell you, "Yes the cloak gives you an actual benefit it's not a good luck charm you backwoods Podunk hillbilly dirt farmers!"

My own 2 cents:

Tumbling is fine as is. I think that Khry has made the point it does not take that much to still tumble past monsters at level 20, let alone npcs. The argument that you shouldn't have to buy gear or feats to do it well is absurd. Plus, there are yet other ways to boost stats. By level 20, a 30 in your classes primary stats is a little the low side.

18(16 base + 2 racial) + 5 levels + 6 enhancement + 5 inherent bonus(tomes or wishes) = 34 dex. Which you could get as high as 38 if
min maxed harder(a 17/18 stat investment and a +4 dex mod race like goblin).

Point is, at this level of play where stuffs "harder" to do, the game gives You the means to do it. Sure in a no magic game you couldn't do it, but then You got a lot more problems than just that...

If dex were strength or int I'd agree with you but it's not, and anyone with that much focus in dex except a gunslinger is going to be miserably useless in combat unless the GM is allowing agile weapons or dervish dance.

It's not that it's a "no magic" game it's that Khry is inventing magic items that don't necessarily exist in everyone's game as justification for the ease with which he can tumble late game. And that's like me saying "Oh rogues don't do good damage? Well if you use agile weapons to add dex to damage they're fine." Sure it might be true but it's not something you have any reason to expect at every table you sit down at.

And saying that it doesn't take much is kind of laughable it's 10% of your total feats probably 10% or more of your skill points, and all of your stat ups over leveling to achieve, along with a tome and a belt in the applicable stat. And lets say you don't have access to the items(which you might not) your chance goes from 5% of failure to 50% failure which is awful odds.

Surely you are joking. This is actually a problem? You just described me and everyone I've ever played with! (And we all range from 25 to 28 years of age and posses varying levels of maturity.)

My brother used to fall asleep all the time. I slam minis together in mock battle like a kid with action figures from time to time. Other players not only do drum rolls, but bring about other odd sounds ranging from farts to show tunes (generally from their smart phones). We've all discussed how minis are rarely accurate representations at one point or another. And I for one am TERRIBLE at math, often making mistakes even with simple calculations (which can be terribly frustrating and embarrassing).

Is this not true of other tabletop roleplayers? Judging from the number of people who want to migrate to your table, I'm thinking it is.

If you slam minis together they'd damn well better be your own at least as far as I'm concerned. I put a fair amount of time into making my minis table worthy and while I'm also awful at the job it doesn't mean that I'd welcome somebody smashing my work poor as it may be compared to someone with real talent.

Apparently some people have awful groups, at mine we occasionally have tired people in the corner of the table not being very helpful if we run out of caffeine or if the day's been long but nobody outright sleeps, we have models fall on uneven terrain or get hit with dice but nobody picks them up and just smashes them together for giggles, and if phones go off it's usually accompanied with an apology and silenced before we move on or the player steps outside to take it if it's important.

As for bad math well that happens I mean I'm good and even I lose track of things every so often particularly when you have a lot of temporary effects going on either poison, buffs, terrain issues or whatever but it usually doesn't get game disrupting since the people who can't manage it in their head have calculators.

Mind you setting it up to teleport them ontop of the pressure plate which dumps them into a pit full of spikes or other nasties might be amusing.

Theres nothing in Arcane Strike that requires the weapon to exist during its usage. You could just as easily Use Arcane Strike, pick up a dropped weapon then strike with it for example. the wording is clear "Your Weapons" not "Weapons you are wielding" not "Weapons on your person when you cast this spell" or anything else.

The term "your weapon" would imply possession if that is the case then the weapon must both exist and be on your person.

Of course that said I do believe it does work by RAW but frankly it shouldn't nor do I believe it is intended to.

GRRR... is there NOTHING you can do with 0 level rays? Rhime Spell or others that cause a condition mean nothing because the duration is dependant on ORIGINAL spell level (0). You can't Arcane Strike them or use them for Dazzling Display. Heck, if you take a crossbow they're not even worth much as ACTUAL attacks.

The only other thing I could come up with was the following:

Opening Volley - hurl a ray then make a lucky attack into melee if you've got initiative

Shot on the Run/Parting Shot - nuff said

Vital Strike (it'll take a REALLY long time)

Other than these I can't see a lot of reason to cast low level rays. Ever.

Cheaper that crossbow + bolts and easier to land the hits too but other than that you're right they're pretty useless but if they were good they wouldn't be 0th level infinite casts per day spells.

I like several of the talents, however, as sad as it sounds the arqueologist bard can take them all, making the rogue non-unique.

True but the Bard has access to half as many of them as a Rogue so that's something but you're right the Bard is too much better than the Rogue. But the Bard is just better than most classes in terms of generalist functions and many specific uses. They needed a nerf batting imo but what can you do.

I'd also like to add

Utility Talent:
Smoke Cloud - The Rogue may throw a Smoke Bomb at his own feet or at an enemy as a ranged touch attack the bomb encases a 10ft area in thick black smoke which blocks both sight and scent this expands by 5ft in each direction for 2 rounds after the first round, after which the smoke disperses. In a light wind this disperses after 2 rounds, in moderate winds it disperses in 1 round and in high winds it disperses immediately.

And maybe suggest doubling the availability of rogue talents or at least starting them from 1st level maybe.

So here's some things I'd like to see on the Rogue.

Combat Talents:
1)Roguish Flair - A Rogue may take the first Style feat in a tree this ignores the need for the Improved Unarmed Strike requirement but nothing else so long as he wields light or one handed weapons.

2)Defensive Blade - Gain the Combat Expertise feat as long as you fulfill all of the requisites.

Deadly Sniper - A Rogue may sneak attack as allowed by the stealth rules for sniping within the first range iteration of your weapon instead of 30ft, if attacking with Greater invisibility or a similar effect this ability still only allows you to make 1 sneak attack per round.

Master Sniper - Advanced Rogue talent, requires Deadly Sniper, A rogue may apply sneak attack on all attacks within the first range iteration of his weapon so long as the normal condition for sneak attack are met.

Scouting Talents:
Keen eyes - Grants the Rogue Low Light Vision.

Heightened Eyesight - Gain Darkvision 60ft requires Low Light Vision from any source.

Perfected Vision - Gain True Sight requires Darkvision and Advanced Rogue Talents.

Hide In Plain Sight - A Rogue with this talent may ignore the need to have cover or avoid being observed for the purposes of making use of the Stealth skill.

Utility Talents:

Poisoner - A Rogue with this talent can no longer accidentally poison himself while creating or handling poisons and may create poisons at double the normal rate.

I Know a Guy - The Rogue may use Knowledge Local to gain favors from people in an area which he has spent more than 2 weeks in. This ability requires the locals to not be hostile to the Rogue, and has a scaling DC based on the difficulty/danger of the favor.

Smuggler - A Rogue with this talent can attain unusual goods at either a discounted rate or with particular haste. The Rogue may commission magical item creation from NPCs for 80% of Normal Market Value to arrive in an amount of time equal to their creation time plus one week, or the Rogue may receive magic items which are not particularly obscure at full market price in 1d3 days regardless of whether or not they are available in the town or city he is at. The DM may limit the availability of certain items on the basis of obscurity and this ability on functions in a location larger than a village. The benefits of this ability cannot be shared with the group or others or local merchants immediately become hostile.

Well that's all I've got off the top of my head. Any opinions or things you guys would like to see the Rogue have?

Full BAB won't help the rogue.

More skillpoints is a bad idea, imho: I want that whole "skill-monkey" concept gone! It's just making the rogue the center of attention out of fights and everybody else just gets bored while the skill-guy does his dice rolls. That's roll-playing, not role-playing.

What I would like to see for the rogue is some kind of skill-tricks that rogues can use in combat. Basically some cross-breed between Ninja Tricks and maneuvers from the Swordsage (Tome of Battle).
Rogues could be choosing a "type" of tricks depending on their flavor:
- swashbuckler (cha to maneuvers): charisma to defense or dazzling tricks
- assassin (int to maneuvers): crit multiplier if he studies his target
- cutpurse (dex to maneuvers): gets to cut laces of armor and disarm with better chance even at high level

something along those lines...

Well since many people don't really care for the idea of increasing to hit for Rogues, I'd like to suggest switching the topic of conversation from what we think was done right/wrong so far to ways to get the Rogue to do what we think it should be able to do via new Rogue Talents. If we're very lucky somebody from paizo will like it and grab some of our ideas when they want to release a new Rogue related book. Maybe this would be better in another thread but I feel like it's a decent transition.

To this end I'd like to separate the Talents into several categories:

Combat Talents: These exist to provide the option for the Rogue to focus on his/her combat efficacy either in terms of increasing his defense, his to hit, or something special.

Scouting Talents: These exist to allow a Rogue to scout the way we thing he should.

Utility Talents: These are supposed to make the Rogue a true skill monkey by allowing him to use skills to do otherwise impossible things which bring true utility.

3/4 BAB should have been eliminated when PF rewrote the rules. Then BAB would have matched the Good/Poor paradigm of saving throws.

I like 3/4 BAB existing but solely for hybrids.

So essentially you get full BAB and few or no spells but some abilities, 3/4 BAB and 6 levels of spells, and 1/2 BAB but 9 levels of spells. This would also bump Clerics down a notch but I feel like it's the best way to go about it and if the hit was too large just change some of the Divine touch spells to Save spells or some alternative therein.

No offense to any one but the idea that you "need" a full caster is absurd. It's purely theory-craft to say that a full caster dominates the game so much that other classes can't compete.

I assure you that you can indeed advance into the high levels without a full caster.

Also the game does not assume anything. The CR's are balanced for 4 PCs, it doesn't quite matter what there classes are, as long as it's a PC class.

That's just wrong man. I mean really are you trying to say that a group of 4 melee fighters are just as powerful in just as many situations as a proper varied group?

But are you allowed to consume your weapons natural enhancement bonuses? For instance a lv 5 magus with a normal weapon could only add +2 to it's weapon, and since you need to keep +1 that means you could only add flaming, keen, shocking, or frost. but say you had a lv 5 magus who had a +2 weapon. the weapon already has a magical enhancement, so you can use the additional +2 that you can enhance it to add shocking burst, frost burst, or flame burst.

now MY question is can that lv 5 magus also use 1 point from his weapon (also using the 2 from enhancing his weapon due to his arcane pool) to make his weapon a speed weapon?

Why would you ever assume you can cannibalize your weapon's bonuses? I mean nothing in the rules says anything about that whatsoever so it's pretty clear that you can't. Any bonuses on the weapon stay there of course but you can't eat them up and change them randomly.

Also vorpal and keen don't work together vorpal goes off on a natural 20 only and keen increases crit range, vorpal does not go off with any crit.

The reason you can use vorpal at 17th is because the preexisting magic properties remain so a +1 sword is +1 therefore adding vorpal to it is kosher and costs you your maximum 5 points but you're right a Magus couldn't pick up a mundane sword and make it vorpal regardless of level.

And no you can't use speed at level 5 for the exact same reason you can't do vorpal you can't consume bonuses, speed is a +3 weapon property therefore you need at least a +3 only from your arcane pool in order to use it.

For starters create encounter profiles. So lets say you have a party with APL 6 just write up say 5 combat scenarios involving creatures from any 3 terrain types or so that would be more or less suitable for fighting the party. This way you can be fairly certain that you can successfully drop in a fight where ever they go and whatever they choose to do.

Set up a rough layout for a few different areas, say a dungeon, a crypt, a forest, and a guildhall oh and a jail you always need a jail. These will be your fall backs when they want to randomly go into an area and mess around then you can wing a reason for them to get into those areas and what happens in those areas.

Keep a stock of level appropriate traps written up and just mark off the places where there will be traps in each layout for yourself so you can toss them together on the fly.

Generally sandboxing relies on knowing your players knowing their usual habits and then planning for the likely occurences then being able to invent if they wander off, so if you could give us more insight into your players maybe I could give you something more specific?

wait so your telling me its wrong to give the player struggling with combat a b#!+*en magic item and not give an equally powerfull weapon to the guy who is absolutely dominating?

are you serious?

and for doing this I am a power hungry egomaniac?

and wtf is player advocacy? some group that sends your DM angry letters if somebody else gets a +5 sword and you only got a +2 sword?

and yes, I will reward the players who play the game the way I like it IE non-powergaming and I will find a way to penalize powergamers, and I will "shape the game" so powergaming is curtailed not encouraged...

absolutely guilty as charged.

Lets put it like this Baal:

Lets say I'm a wealthy man throwing a fancy dinner party you and 3 of your friends are sitting at a table with me.

You and your friends all have the same income but your friends squander it on useless junk while you wisely invest yours as a result your much more wealthy than they are. Since you are wealthy you have nice things to eat on a regular basis already, based on your logic I should give your friends gourmet food and I should feed you gruel and fishheads.

If someone did this to you at their table would you come back?

Roll your reflex save hidden, put on a big smile and say rejoice for the natural 20 you rolled.

Worst suggestion ever. Honestly you pull that too often and players know you're full of s!$* and stop playing with you.

Alternatives that aren't likely to get a table flipped into your face are 1 creatures too large to fall into the pit, 2 creatures with natural climb speeds or burrowing, 3 creatures with high reflex saves, 4 flying monsters, 5 creatures with good climb bonuses, 6 creatures with the ability to teleport/dimension door via either magic, potions/scrolls, or inherent abilities.

Kolazi wrote:

Killed one of my players. What now?

Decide how you're going to kill the rest of them.

Nonono if you waste time deciding one of them will get skittish and rat you out, better to just kill them quick by whatever means are available then you can decide how to dispose of the corpses that's much better.

They are not forced to lose a level though, there is no level to lose, their old character is dead.

The new char is close to the level of the adventuring party, but not quite there.

Or you could instead phrase it as the new character is inherently weaker than the rest of the party. Creating internal power disparity is a problem there was a bajillion post long thread about that which you were in this is just one of the many ways you can create power disparity and that usually results in people being unhappy.

Yea that sums it up, but the GM kinda added fuel to the fire when he allowed such ridiculous things in his game...Advanced Races, Dice Rolls, Poor Decisions on how to handle melee powerhouses, etc.

Honestly I think it could have all been managed in game. Advanced races while on the whole superior to other races are not necessarily game breakers, neither are rolled stats (honestly this comes down to a preference more than a balance stance since between a good point buy player and a moderately lucky roller your important mods should never be more than 2-4 bonuses off.), I'll give you the poor decisions though on the whole he went about it wrong and really I don't particularly care for the entire idea of bringing in new players underleveled either from a balance stand point.

And when you couple that with abysmal system mastery on the part of both the DM and the OP it's not really surprising that they're having problems.

No need to come onto the boards and cry about the system being broken when you aren't even following the rules properly though.

A paladin could be easily a member of an Inquisition, as that the society/laws he respects are those of the Inquisition Order, and those are a bit different from the usual paladin rules

A paladin's code in the rules supersedes any local law, personal code, or church law so no the rules wouldn't change and it would still be evil and would require a minimum of an atonement and possibly a permanent fall for both evil in the act of torturing someone for the sake of personal gain(making your own job of killing the lich easier) and because he lied which outright violates the code even if you want to rationalize the torture.

Therefore no dice on the whole being holy murderers thing. Fun fact you know those people who strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up with a whole bunch of other people they think they're "serving" the wishes of their god it doesn't make it any less morally reprehensible even when I can see where they could make it out as a lesser evil.

They use Cha because it's the only other mental stat that isn't leaps and bounds better than Int. =P

...

How about this

GM: Here's a magical trap that you've been carrying around with you for the last 3 weeks while you've almost certainly made use of the detect magic spell but never noticed. You all die.

PC: *Punches GM in the throat*

Everyone wins!

Some great advice in this thread, let me throw my 2 copper pieces in and suggest that you can't control powergamers, and you can't stop powergamers. All you can do is take their love of the game and redirect it back into your campaign in a more constructive fashion. Show 'em how and why YOU love the game, and maybe get them to play along, and forget all of the +2's and +4's for a while.

Of course just because you want the +2's and +4 doesn't mean you can't love the roleplay and the group play and all that jazz.

I mean I'm a serious powergamer I spend days working on the perfect 20 level builds for my character including planning out every stat point and feat.

On the other hand I think it is safe to say that I'm also one of the most active roleplayers in our game at least as long as you don't count hulk smash and being a t!!# as roleplaying.

little off here, DM wasnt working with the players to take out the powergamer, the DM was complaining as were all the players, me and one other player sorta got to talking about how to build my character, and figured it would be good if my character could take his out if he failed a wil save again, which later kind of lead to "and if the DM cant fix this maybe we can..." but it never got around to that. but pretty dead on about the lizardfold barb... there was one point in the adventure where there were some...

People have been trying to tell you for 5 pages there is no such thing as imbalanced. The game has a slew of subpar and superpar choices and the only way to decide what is and isn't okay in your game is on a case by case basis.

For example in a monster difficulty game the Barbarian is doing just fine in fact he's carrying his weight but you're dragging the whole team down with you right into the dumps.

In another game you have a halfling fighter who's dedicated all his feats into using a sling and disguising himself as a human child and your character is horribly OP and breaks the game.

You can't define balance because the game isn't designed to be at one single powerlevel it's designed to allow for many different levels based on what sort of feel they want the game to have.

Yes. Exactly. "Similar" isn't yes or no, there are degrees and conditions of similarity. So I'll ask (PURELY as a thought exercise): what degree of similar qualifies?

I would say being the exact same qualifies as similar at least more similar than if you compare it to the spell Haste. Just saying.

To those who are concerned about the rules: Why wouldn't an accomplished spellcaster be able to cast a spell the same way he did several levels ago (at reduced caster level)? That's like saying now that you've picked up Power Attack, you HAVE to use it.

In this case, he only needed to reduce it enough that he would automatically fail the check.

Sorry RD but for starters he wasn't capable of flubbing the roll at reduced caster level either the rules are the rules and they exist for a reason.

If you start arbitrarily rewriting the rules just to give your characters a benefit I see no reason to not counter with "Sorry *Insert my race here* is Immune to all elemental effects so I ignore the effect." Then just pack up my stuff and leave because a GM who's so engrossed in having his own way that it negatively impacts the game is one I have no interest in playing with.

Given that you posted this here I think it's a fair assumption that you were the GM in question and pulled this trick and that your players were pissed and now you came here to look for validation of your concept. Is this false?

Oh right I forgot about this but the option for more White necromancy spells for the good arcane necromancer as well as maybe a sub school for good necromancers.

Something for low to mid level staff wielding wizards would be ideal for me maybe rules or feats for making rudimentary staffs that can only cast cantrips - 1st or 2nd level spells but can be created much earlier at a moderate cost. Or possibly feats that grant benefits to spells while holding a staff or when the bonded item is a staff.

Because the lack of reason for a wizard to carry a staff until he's at end game seems to fly in the face of fantasy wizardry imo.

Check the called shot rules I think (though am not sure) that those might allow limb removal.

But outside of those its a storytelling or fluff moment when it happens such as a guy dealing a huge blow to a troll being told the arm was cut off sending the troll fleeing only to have it grow back before the party meets said troll again.

Hmm called shots might of course it requires that a single attack when called deal more than half the creatures total hp which is fairly unlikely unless you're a caster or are fighting something way way out of your weight class.

EDIT: Also called shots are optional rules and would constitute GM ruling them in anyways.

Anything unmentioned is against the rules because the rules don't tell you what you can't do they tell you what you can do.

You have yet to show any of what you claim as being RAW. You are choosing one of the definitions to back up your interpretation which is fine but it still leaves the ability open to DM interpretation. What you have done is made an argument for your interpretation, not an argument for RAW.

You do know that you've done exactly the same thing right?

unnambed wrote:

...Solution: create base classes that are a a marriage of 2 classes into 1.

The other solution is to redesign these PrCs to make them more potent.

Paizo has been clear on their policy of archetypes not being more powerful then the base classes, and I believe they have the same policy for Prestige classes as well.

As for more base classes, I doubt they will be doing more of those.

Like I said in the post, we probably should look to third party publishers for our prestige class fix.

If that was their policy they really failed miserably because there are several which are just outright better than the base classes not the least of which is the pistolero/musket master vs base gunslinger.