gnomersy's page

1% is about right for a standing army, 10% of population would not be unreasonable for a sustained drafted militia force anything more than that and logistics become difficult.

Although context is always important for example in a society where the entire population was expected to provide a certain necessary term of service in the army you'd probably start them all off at level 1-3 warriors(probably 66 22 12 ish for the split between 1 2 and 3, with 1/10 being a member of the standing army and therefore 3-5 and with pc levels, 1/10 of those being commanders in the range of 5-8 and 1 general/leader figure in the 8-11 range.

Also there's the question of who is fighting and where they're fighting because if a city is under siege you could have most of the population of men in the age groups of 13-40 serving in some capacity either as fighters or message runners etc.

At first glance, it's definitely not half bad. Though Rogues and Monks wouldn't get any usage from Greater Vital Strike admittedly. My only concern is it favoring high crit builds more, and in addition, escalating critical hit damage to an abnormally high point. +30 damage on a critical hit would be nasty, especially on x3 and x4 weapons. I'd personally lower the scaling on that damage a bit for the Improved and Greater options.

You could just make it precision damage no concerns with crit builds that way.

I have a feeling I didn't explain myself well. I didn't mean that professional rpg designers just sit around playing all day, nor that its easy to get a Playtest session happening. What I meant is that they know what kinds of feedback to give. They know the rules well enough to anticipate where problems are going to arise.

If you want someone to look over your product, Sean Reynolds is...

As a point steve the way the less rules savvy people read your rules is of critical importance for every rule you put in that is sufficiently needlessly complex/awkwardly worded as to be ignored you essentially wasted the dev time used to write up the rule for some percentage of the consumers.

They *ARE* just people. But the people that designed and built my car have a better understanding of how it works than I do.

Why? I compare my game to other games I have seen plus how JJ sez his games are bing played. I only said our games are "mainstream" i didn't say or imply other games are in any way "badwrongfun". Are you having fun? If the answer is YES! Then you're playing it RIGHT, even if not as envisioned. We get thru a 10 round combat in about an hour or maybe two. In a 4-5 hour nite we get in 2-4 combats, most of them at least 6 rounds. And RPing.

Heck, I played for a while with some guys who had an elaborate and deadly Critical/fumble system. Even spells like Fireball could be fumbled (usually by some typo, Fireball= Furball, etc). They were having HUGE fun. But then one guy had a dual wielding type who was getting a lot of fumbles. He then complained that D&D was nerfing TWF. Now true, it does- but not because
of their home-brewed fumble system.

The OP makes many assumptions himself, then complains the devs make 'faulty assumptions".

The people who designed your car understand the underpinnings and inner workings of your car better than you do but who do you think would be a better judge of it's handling? If you were asked to run it through a course all of their theory could break down and experience will hold out.

Also please spell says correctly.

Furthermore you have no basis for mainstream you have your personal experience and some hearsay to base it off of you could just as easily have said the way we play this isn't an issue. But you didn't you claimed you played the "normal way".

Frankly I don't know if I agree with the OP's original statements either although I do think the game could be altered in ways to make things better.

Gee, that sounds very much like a different ED, (maybe something that may go forth), which has been admitted by that company to be a failure after lasting only 5 years, half that of the previous edition (s).

Honestly I am pretty sure JJ & crew "understands their own high level game" better than you do.

But yes, play styles do differ. For example, some folks build glass cannon who go nova each combat, blowing the foes away by round 3. Other write up a stack of "toons", ready to drop another "better" one dimensional "character" into play the instant the old one dies. In neither case, for example, is in combat healing needed.

Our group plays like what JJ sez his own games do- combats take long enough so that rounds pre level spells sometimes go down, in-combat healing is a necessity, characters are built with serious background so that the Player dread their loss, RPing is emphasized too, etc, usually several encounters before a rest, etc.

So, perhaps your game is played not like what the mainstream does?

Honestly claiming that devs have a better understanding of the game isn't really true at all, they're just people. They're roughly as smart as we are and to be honest a lot of us probably have more hands on experience with the system than they do because we play more. They will almost always have a better understanding of the intent behind the rules but when they're written down wrong that doesn't really help.

Also claiming that the way you play is by default mainstream is a little jerkish. Round per level spells are combat spells by 10th level, why? Because a combat that takes more than 10 rounds is going to be a 5 hour sit down to run through and then there's no room for all that "serious background" or RP you apparently emphasize.

Have to agree it's easy to crap up a spontaneous caster.

As for the Barbarian I disagree to an extent, even with the poor rage powers he's still passable as long as you don't drill holes in your skull before assigning abilities.

For the fighter I agree though making a good and more importantly an interesting fighter is much harder because the raw number of interesting sounding but completely garbage feat choices in the game is too damn high.

I don't see any problem. Personally I never depend on bards having to pump the casting stat for dc's. That is a perfectly valid way to do things, but I prefer to make bards that buff themselves and others, and fight in one way or another. Your bardic performances will be minimally affected by this, if at all really.

If he does go Arcane Duelist he will get Medium Armor proficiency at 10th level, and way down the road Heavy Armor Proficiency at 16th. Since he is a dwarf he won't be slowed (anymore than he is already) by any armor.

He won't even have to bother with Mithril, unless he likes the look.

He really doesn't have to go Arcane Duelist either. Any of the Bard archetypes would work.

The real reason for Mithril isn't because he doesn't get the proficiency eventually but because when he has it the armor is downgraded a weight tier for all purposes except proficiency, as a result that means that his fullplate would be medium or his breastplate would be light armor and so if he got the full plate at 10+ or the breastplate before 10 he could cast in it without penalty(and if the check penalty is 0 he doesn't take any minuses to hit etc.) and since the build I made wasn't maxing out dex it could help him eek out a little extra AC at a flat cost albeit a fairly high one.

Why not just run him into the Arcane duelist bard archetype? It works just dandy.
Rallying Cry is pretty skald-ish.

Arcane Strike? Free damage on attacks yes sign me up.

Combat Casting? Yes please bonus to casting when getting into the thick of things.

Free armor proficiency at 10 means he can get away with putting his fav. class bonus into hp which makes him less flimsy.

Free proficiency with dwarven racial weapons gets him a solid weapon choice although maybe not the best options.

Dwarves get great bonuses to saves so he's not suffering too badly without putting points into those.

16 Str, 12 Con, 13 Dex, 8 Wis, 10 Int, 15 Cha Pre-racial turns into 16, 14, 13, 10, 10, 13. Which isn't great but he's got access to spells until he's level 7ish his to hit is okay and damage is solid with the addition of arcane strike, his saves are fine, he still has oodles of skill points and he's got very solid hp/level, his AC is going to be pretty low until he levels up a bit though. He starts at 15 or maybe 16 with a shield. Sadly not having the option of cranking his dex means that he really wants to have heavy armor on but combining the armor expert trait with mithral means that by 5 or so he could be wearing a breastplate plus whatever magic stuff he could afford to get.

He's highly MAD but not impossible or terrible and he still has inspire so he's still a huge boon for the group in a fight.

EDIT: This is not to say that this is the best build choice but you said you weren't running a high op. game and in that case this is a perfectly functional build with no heavy drawbacks later on just a bit of a rough start. But even so 16 AC isn't bad it's just not particularly good.

Honestly I don't think C.E. is necessarily bad just undesirable because of pre reqs and limitations.

In order to fix those I would go with

Combat Expertise - Prereqs. Int 13 or Martial Weapon Proficiency (Alternatively BAB +1 but I prefer this one)

Does as C.E. does now but in addition.

Combat Expertise may grant you it's bonus as a swift action so long as you do not engage in combat that round. Any attacks made by any other means until your next turn suffer the penalties as normal.

If you have Furious Focus, you may choose to apply it's cancelling properties to the penalty from C.E. instead of Power Attack, on your first attack per round.

Don't know if I could say most, but at least a significant percentage of the people I see using power attack for whom that doesn't enter in to it at all.

There is no learning the AC. There is no calculation. I have power attack therefore I must use it. So what if I missed 14 times in a row. I use power attack. I read on the boards that I should use power attack. It is best. I use power attack.

I will freely admit, I've seen really maxed out builds that rarely miss on their second iterative even with power attack. So yes, it makes sense to have it on most of the time.

But even then. If that guys is up against something bizzare and he is missing most of his attacks, seems like he might want to consider if it is helping more than it is hurting.

But I've seen characters that don't have their melee to hit bonus maxed but have power attack and a 2 handed weapon. They will still use it all the time.

As far as the guys that do the calculations. A few weeks ago there was someone at one of the PFS tables that was getting upset with the GM because he wouldn't tell the players what it's AC, attack bonus, and save bonuses were. He kept saying, "How can we plan what is the best thing to do if you won't tell us anything about it?" I did not hear if he had made a knowledge roll to learn anything or not. Even if he had, no GM that I know would tell you the stat numbers like that.

If for RP reasons you say, GORBASTOMP ALWAYS SMASH THINGS! That's fine.

Now if you do the calculations based on an average enemy, paying attention to your performance and the others in combat, trial and error as you play, etc... Then you say to yourself, ok I'm usually better off with power attack. That is reasonable.

If you actually think about it and realise since you have missed the last 7 rounds in a row. Maybe I should try to hit it rather than max my damage on another miss. That's even better.

But I've seen several guys that spout the holy mantra, "Check the boards. Everyone knows you should use power attack unless you...

If you missed 14 times in a row you may want to keep using it particularly if you have furious focus since the 14 misses means you're probably hitting on a 19+ on your first swing already at that point your second/third attacks are already 20+ anyways so you may as well take the extra damage.

Just saying math doesn't lie even crude on the cuff math using alot of assumptions is usually better than nothing.

EDIT: Also while the DM may not tell you AC etc etc. After 2 rounds you'll know within a 5 point spread probably maybe even less.

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.

Rogues and rangers make good scouts, but their 30 speed can lead to them being caught, surrounded, and generally in a bad way. Not a problem the scouting monk faces.

I mean, I love rogues and rangers and their scouting potential, but damn they are slow some days on a 30.

Move 40 or 50 doesn't save you when you walk into a trap that closes the doors behind you while the room fills with po'd nasties though and both ranger and rogue are not only more likely to have the spare skill points to handle that they'll have the ability to disarm aforementioned traps if they find them whereas a monk in that situation may be left with a "Welp nothing I can do about it but facetank the trap or head back to the party with my tail between my legs," situation.

And the monk should he stealthily(did I manage to mention his lack of skill points? Because chances are he has a max of 4 per level Perception, stealth, disable device(if he wants to handle even rudimentary mechanical traps), acrobatics(for his l33t battlefield mobilities) sneak up on the mob has 0 points of knowledge skills so he comes back to the party with a "It's a big scaly thing better be careful." "You mean a dragon?" "Maybe? I don't know about your funnymoney creatures." "Oh god it's a basilisk?! Damn you Marvin the Monk!"

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.

ok so im at work right now, so im going of memmory so bear with me.

13th level monk with dimension door and dimensional agility. once a grapple lands "Grappled creatures cannot move and take a –4 penalty to Dexterity. A grappled creature takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls and combat maneuver checks, except those made to grapple or escape a grapple. In addition, grappled creatures can take no action that requires two hands to perform."

if you cannot move you cannot fly or even hover, so by raw if you grapple a flying creature they hit the ground like a rock. my tetori has Boots of the Cat which allow me to take minimum damage from falling. so the dragon takes xd6 (height/10 -10).

he literally powerbombs dragons.

at 13 he has cmd of 45 and a cmb of 33 (+ true strike as a SLA)which is enough to grab a cmd of 52 on a 2+. my gm was thoroughly impressed, when he was thinking the dragon would just strafe us with fire breath. then i powerbombed the dragon from 400 feet up dealing 39d6 damage.

Fly checks are not technically speaking move actions there is no reason they could not take checks to stop falling.

And if you fail you just fell for 40 damage and accomplish nothing.

DM fiat made you look good, congrats?

Generally speaking I have to agree with the above posters it wouldn't really work since most casters can't scale based on anything but caster levels you might see some people going with clerics/oracles of the buff and battle varieties because you have to and do okay but all the arcane spell casters might as well be banned.

To be frank if I hated the idea of high level magic I might just "ban" all full spell casters and roll in one level of spell casting per 2 levels of any class you choose. So you take 2 levels of fighter and as a bonus you get 1 caster level of say sorcerer without the saves/hitdice etc. kind of like a gestalt-lite system. And since the caster levels are freebies it's not really that bad. You would still have to be careful with diseases poisons and drain effects though because they'd become killers very fast at the lower levels.

IMHO, the only real value of Weapo Focus is the fact that it's a very common prerequisite. And that is more of a flaw with feats in general than a merit of WF.

Hell, WF doesn't even make a difference 95% of the time!

The same could be said about dodge or the dex belt you just bought it's just the way the game works by stacking up 5% at a time you find yourself 50% more likely to land hits or avoid them.

As for Weapon focus I like it for Two weapon fighters using the same weapons and people with 3/4 BAB who need the extra just to break even compared to a standard full BAB 2h fighter.

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!

I think it was well established earlier that rods are not merely the equivalent of the feats in question but are downright superior as such they cost more there's your math.

As for the feats ... I kind of wish they sucked less as is they're pretty niche as far as usefulness.

No no no no nonononono. To put it simply don't go Rogue sneak attack on ranged attacks is bloody awful and they don't really have anything else to give you. Consider just using Trapper Archetype Ranger instead?

In my experience multiclassing is either a really bad idea (most of the time) or incredibly broken (in the case of specific, niche builds). I've never heard of, or seen, a multiclass build that was a purely lateral move.

I'm actually against multiclassing, although it's much easier for me to make that call since characters at my table advance at the most 5 levels total (the longest running adventure I've had, in terms of how many played sessions there were, was four months of weekly sessions). So far I haven't run a game where players were both at the level where PrCs enter the picture and had any desire to multiclass to get into one.

Splitting rogue and fighter 50-50 isn't bad but also isn't crazy awesome either. They complement each other fairly well.

Most of ours seem to be start at 1 run till around 11 when we lose players and have to restart.

All of the martials in our PFS group have at least greater trip, some have vicious stomp, and I have reach... this trivializes most encounters. Those things that can't be tripped are usually disarmed or have their component pouches stolen. We are built around complete CM synergy and it is mad fun.

I doubt many other groups have the fortitude to play such specialized characters to the levels required for things to really become broken, but for us I think it is fun enough to be worth it this time around. With all our party bonuses going this character can max out trip CMB's somewhere around 57-59 at level 11, I haven't fought anything yet that isn't immune to trip that wasn't sitting down at some point in the encounter. Also out of deference to my GM's I haven't added dueling to my horsechopper yet, that would get silly.

As a point I think part of the disconnect is that as I understand it(never played just based on what I hear so correct me if I'm wrong) PFS consists of much more humanoids than your average home campaign. At least I know at my DMs table we have 50/50 monsters vs humanoid encounters and this is the most humanoids we've seen in the last three campaigns we've done. Monsters are invariably the immune things so the lower number of them in PFS would be very beneficial to such builds.

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.

Alright, I'm seeing points for both sides. For my two cents, it seems too easy to get out of Grapple, except for the times that it's totally impossible. I've never seen anyone use Bull Rush, but it seems like that can be easily fixed by altering combat environments. Dirty Trick was pretty disappointing to me, it takes 4 feats to make it a worthwhile combat option.

Basically, my old DM and I were discussing a few homebrew options to encourage combat maneuvers:

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.

2) combat maneuvers and attacks can be chained together on critical hits (so you roll a 20 on your bull rush and get a free disarm or trip or attack at -2 or something). I realize there are feats that do the reverse of this (Bull Rush Strike, etc.) but we feel like having it as an option attached to the maneuver instead of to the attack encourages maneuvers more.

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.

The basic assumption here is that we really want maneuvers to be a more attractive option. These are pretty off-the-cuff, but I'm curious as to what more experienced players/DMs think of them. If you dislike it, please give a few examples of play to show why they would be a bad idea.

I don't think combat maneuvers are bad but the issue is that they require a fairly large investment of resources to be usable otherwise they're very bad.

This makes them completely inaccessible for some of the more feat heavy combat styles or feat light class options. Two weapon fighting and not a fighter? Goodluck with having any extra feats before level 8 for a combat maneuver and once you get it you're still significantly behind the curve because you don't have the greater feat etc.

This tends to result in people either being highly dedicated to maneuvers or largely ignoring them. If you wanted to make them more generally used I would probably say give full BAB characters access to 2 maneuver trees for free, 3/4 BAB get 1 tree, and half BAB get none. This means that you're going to be able to do it when you want to without needing to pull feats off of your core build to do so. You can make the tree as long as you like but I'd probably make it just IUS/C.E. @ 1, improved at 3, and greater whenever BAB +6.

It's alot of "extra" feats which some might say devalues the fighter but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing even fighters don't really enjoy having to dump a million feats into maneuvers and they can still go further into the trees if they want to than anyone else can afford to.

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.

Angel- blooded rage prophet with the 15s in str and cha and side step secret. There are too many ways to make these stats playable.

There are a million ways to make a character playable with them but if the rest of the players have a point buy of 30 to your 10 you're not going to be a star at any point in the game.

And it's far less about whether you can play the stats than whether or not you can comfortably play with the DM who seems to be singling you out for some reason.

I would not be opposed to playing a 10 point buy if that was the same for everyone.

However, GM secretly rolling stats for everyone sounds fishy. Psychologically, people are much more likely to make the best of what they have if they truly believe it was determined by random variables. If someone feels like there is foul play involved, they're much more inclined to be obstinate and disagreeable.

Truly a GM error, IMO. Unless he wanted you to leave the game.

Roughly, this.

Personally I might play a 10 point buy for myself in a hard campaign where everyone else did better if I rolled it myself, I'd consider it a challenge to my optimization skills but I'd know that my rolls were what they were.

A DM rolling stats for me would make me cautious just because I don't necessarily have faith in him and it's a little bit overbearing. A DM rolling them and giving everyone a set of rolls and then me another one would set off some warning signs, the other set being hugely better than mine would definitely have me upset and questioning wth was going on and considering whether or not I actually want to play with that guy.

I would probably ask if I could use the same array as the rest of the players or maybe get a reroll since we weren't anywhere in the same league depending on the answer I might stick around or I might leave depending if I felt like it was some personal issue that the DM was passive aggressively taking out on me or just him being anal about the rolls standing as they are or having some story arc he wanted to slip into it.

Too much paperwork and still worse than just making the rogue better in general instead.

blackbloodtroll wrote:

What about Trophy Hunter/Trapper Ranger?

You will have the Full BAB, two good saves, good amount of skills, Trapfinding, Firearm feats, and you can dip in to Gunslinger for more Firearm tricks.

Because touch attack+sneak attack rocks like none other. Yeah you get higher base attack, but with guns, honestly, it ISN'T needed especially if they are flat footed.

Except you still have no way to get them flat footed or deny them their dex. Sure if you go initiative heavy you can throw out a pretty hefty first hit but after that unless you pick up snap shot(this is DM dependent afaik) you can't flank with a ranged weapon so your options are blinding, there might be a gunslinger trick that does it, or being invis. A ninja gets the invis for free albeit he won't have enough rounds of it for it to be consistent until he gets the greater invis version.

And the rogue has to dump 2 feat equivalents just to get access to vanish plus 1 feat equivalent for gunslinging and that's before all the ranged feats he's going to want to have to make shooting the gun more than a gimmick. I'd rather just be a gunslinger with a dip into urban ranger or trapper ranger.

Personally I can't see why you'd want ki abilities and levels of Rogue.

But Trapper Ranger does trap finding then I'd go five levels in Gunslinger because the dex to damage ability is worth at least a +4 damage per hit with no limitations or drawbacks and it's only going to get better as you get more money, items, and levels.

I'd pass on Ninja and Rogue unless you have some specific reason you want to use them as their abilities tend not to synergize with ranged combat and specifically with guns.

However if the gun is a side arm and not a primary weapon I'd probably just grab it via a talent god knows only so many of them are decent anyways.

The whole humanoid enemy issue is just a DM thing. I love using NPC's for enemies. Heck, my BBEG was a bad MF'ing goblin with class levels in one game. The game that I'm playing in now, however, he uses tons of constructs, oozes, abberations, etc. The one I ran got to 13 or 14, the one my friend is running is around 8 currently. Just throwing it out there that you can't just make a blanket statement about what sort of enemies you should be fighting at late levels.

It really comes down to DM time usage, on average a DM has alot of stuff to manage on top of having their own life. Adding monsters just requires tagging a page in the bestiary while writing up npcs with class levels requires a lot more time invested.

It's not to say some DMs won't do it but on average you'll run into more monsters than humanoids as you level to keep the extra work to a minimum. Also monsters tend to have a more epic feeling/ambiance to them than Gobbo the level 20 Goblin Archmage would.

Except the Sorcerer is Cha based so not all arcane casters go Int. so the parallelism thing is really kind of a wash.

As far as MAD-ness I'd rather the cleric just swapped turn/channel to Wis as it's a better score to have all the time as it also nets them a sizable boost to their saves which means they aren't as subject to save or die/sucks which makes them better front liners in a tussle without shuffling points out of a primary stat and into a tertiary one.

I have to agree with the earlier statement that evil =/= psycho/murderer. Lets look at your character, he's now evil but he's also an adventurer by trade chances are he'll make more money/survive with the rest of the party along than he would alone.

Being evil means that he may conspire to get say a party paladin who's interfering with his plans killed but he'd probably do so in a way that would avoid implicating him openly to prevent further loss of assets(party members) or the threat of open combat against his equally badass friends.

Alternatively he'd encourage the party to turn to evil themselves subtly. That way he'd be safe and get his desires fulfilled. He'd probably become more arrogant around common folk and to a certain degree cruel or pragmatic, for example if you capture an enemy alive he'd kill them rather than trying to keep them contained if it was easier. He'd probably be okay with the idea of threatening or harming people's families and loved ones to get what he or the party needed and he would be unrepentant about it.

Urban Ranger -> Aldori Swordlord you can go raw dex based and be sneaky as balls just going to have a tough time getting all the feats you want maybe and a rather weak game from 1-5 iirc.

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.

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.

The answer remains the same. Absent the DM metagaming (but he can just negate an attack, why bother with the horse?) why wouldn't an NPC target the horse rather than the rider? Bring the guy down to the ground, negate the attacks of the (presumably) squishier horse. Now once they do attack it and find their attacks to be ineffective (due to the feat and/or high AC) then they may stop.. but if they never attack it because the DM knows they won't hit it then he's just metagaming and that needs to stop. :)

-S

Roughly this. Although I'd add in that even if they find their attack ineffective if they have the means of getting out more than one hit per round they may keep aiming for the horse anyways simply because a knight off his horse is way easier to kill(not in game but irl. Although in game even if they wound him seriously if the horse is up he can retreat faster than most land based bipeds). Particularly if he's wielding a lance since on foot they're just using a large unweildy spear.

Wind Chime wrote:

LazarX wrote:

MrSin wrote:

Its the only frontliner with D8 really, Ranger, fighter, paladin, barbarian all have more HD.

You forget the magus, the ninja, and the rogue.

The Magus I agree with but the Rogue and Ninja aren't designed for be in the thick of it.

Actually yes they are... otherwise, what ARE they doing at all? They just have to handle "the thick of it" in different ways.

They're being glass hammers to the front liner's anvil.

Also both the Rogue and Ninja have non combat roles they fulfill and the ninja in particular has ways to avoid being a front liner by virtue of being invisible.

And the Rogue is probably the second worst class in the game simply because just like the monk skirmishing isn't possible and because twfing is inherently weak so any classical themed Rogue is actually terrible.

Counter with your own invuln. rager with pounce and a greatsword, or double barrel abusing gunslingers with clustered shots or archers(probably better)? I mean the only reason you shouldn't beat these guys is the time stipulation really.

Yeah... Fist never get the amazingness that is critting a quarter of the time. Thats a thing with all natural attacks too. Unless your a barbarian, but pounce charger barbarian with 4 natural attacks is at the top of the list of things I don't want to meet.

I was trying to say Zen archer is one of the better ones. Can we go back to proving monks vs twf of another sort? Or how about monks vs barbarians saves and dpr?

Smite is situational, but in my experience the number of opposite aligned foes you run into far outwieghs the neutral and same aligned. Oath of vengeance is an excuse to spam it as I've seen, but PFS is an enviroment where almost everything is made of evil. Perfect strike on the other hand is highly limited and you have to call it before you attack.

1) Why are we comparing monks to what is widely accepted as the least effective fighting style to measure their competetiveness?

2) The only class which really has a reason to go TWF is the Ranger and that's because they skip the dex reqs.

So lets say that's what happens. The ranger has medium armor and as such needs no more than 14 dex likewise he needs no more than 14 wis(assuming he wants to have full access to spells with 0 further investment) so that's 10 points with the remainder he can pick up a 14 con and a 16 str with the race bonus.

Lets assume the monk is using the same stats since they're more or less equally applicable unless he's going for Agile and in that case he's worthless filler for the first 5 levels or so.

They both have full BAB when twf but the ranger has a +1 or more whenever he has to move. The ranger has +1 hp/level and +2 skills/level over the monk. The ranger has an advantage of 4 AC and armor enchants are cheaper than raising stats so they're probably going to stay ahead unless you're really pilling the money on the party. The Ranger has way better bonus feats for the base class(the monk's mostly suck) the Ranger has a smaller damage die but can get a 15+ crit range with the investment of one feat, the monk can never get his below 19+. The ranger can use his amulet slot for natural armor to further maintain his AC lead. And all of this is before you account for favored enemies. The monk has a better will save iirc. Faster movement which he doesn't want to use because it makes him worse in combat but which could be useful for running away or round 1 and flanking. Stunning fist which is either bad or incredible depending on if your DM can't roll above a 2 on a regular basis. The monk does however have access to style feats, unfortunately the only way to get them fast enough to make a huge difference is by going MoMS and then you don't have flurry and have to compare yourself to Twohand Fighters and cry.

I'd probably set it to 1 point but make it a pounce rather than a standard. This means that you have the potential to flurry with movement but that if you want to do so in terrain you'll be investing in supporting feats. This provides limitations to the power to prevent it from feeling overpowered while keeping it cheap enough that it won't be odd to see and since it's limited by ki points it wouldn't be unreasonable for the monk to get it pre 9 unlike the barbarian.

One of my most effective characters was a drunken master monk of the lotus with 8 Dex. You need the following things to make it work perfectly:

- Qinggong powers: Barkskin, True Strike, Spring Attack, Deny Death (optional: Dragon's Breath for damage and AOE, Poison for heavy and surprise debuff)
- Very high Constitution and Wisdom (go crazy on it, aim for 22/24 at 12nd level)
- Monkey Style (only the first feat)
- Drunken Brawler and Fast Drinker feats

At lvl 11, you can take Quicken Spell-Like Ability so you may use True Strike as a swift action.

You will basically stay prone to bluff your enemies into not taking you too seriously or running to strike you... only to use you flurry of blows at no penalty to trip, disarm/steal the weapons of or stun/calm (lotus monk) anything within reach.
Barkskin and drink before each fight for bonus HP !
Drink during combat for bonus HP !
Use your Ki when dying for bonus HP !

=> Become an unkillable nightmare !

As a full-round action by spending the Ki points for True Strike and Spring Attack, you can run, disarm a baddie with a +20 bonus to the roll and run away with the guy's weapon.
Avoid Power Attack, do not expect high damage, but be an unkillable SOB.

How exactly do you live through the first few levels? Shouldn't your AC be around like 14?

Edit: Or rather even lower, 10+4(wis which is almost definitely not going to be that high starting but whatever) -1 (dex 8) = 13 AC at level 1 and 2 this goes up to 14 at 3 and finally hits 16 at 4, I don't know if my DM will play with kid gloves to keep him alive if I pull that.

If you can, ask the GM to allow you to take Drunken Master and Monk of the Empty Hand from the Advanced Player's Guide; the ability to use the environment (or whatever is within arm's grasp) as a weapon really fits a Drunken Master style, albeit part of that is also skewed for my love of Jackie Chan movies. I'd just combine it by simply adding the Monk of the Empty Hand weapon proficiencies and bonus feats; maybe add the Versatile Improvisation, too.

Also add in the Accelerated Drinker trait if your GM will allow it (it's from a 2009 Golarion book, but still viable if the GM is ok). Also, assuming you can get the Con for this somehow, there's also the Fast Drinker feat from the APG that will keep you in ki as fast as you can generate it. Finally, eventually pick up a Ring of Ki Mastery. The ability for even more ki is always nice, but the secondary benefit of being able to use costlier ki abilities for cheaper is great! Combine that with some alternate powers from the Qinggong Monk archetype and you can really have some fun (I like the idea of drinking alcohol to repair Wisdom damage via Restoration :P).

Good luck with your drunken monk-y business!

Very interesting and while I love the idea of flurry of improvised weapons too I don't know for certain that my DM will give that the sign off, if he doesn't are their any weapons you think would suit a drunken fighter better than just his bare fists?

As for the drinking feats and traits these are great is there any reason to take both or are you just saying that if I had the Con req that the feat would be worth it? As I said with the high PB it isn't necessarily impossible to get an 18 in Con(just 10 points and a racial bonus) but it is a big point drop for it, how would you construct the stat array to make the monk still viable defensively and offensively while keeping the points there? Maybe Str 16, Dex 14, Con 18, Wis 14, Int 10, Cha 10? Gets you +4 to AC and sizable bonus to hit points but early game may be painful and his to hit will suffer as well ...

The concept of Drunken Boxing is all about agile maneuvers and unorthodox fighting techniques that catch your opponent off guard. Drunken Boxers are incredibly dextrous, so a high Dex is in order.

Assuming you are looking to emulate the Jackie Chan version of Drunken Boxing, take a look at the Drunken Brute Barbarian Alternate Class. Throw in some appropriate feats (Combat Reflexes, Catch Off guard, Throw Anything, Lunge), use unarmed attacks and you are good to go.

The key here would be to act out your characters actions as a Drunken Boxer while following the mechanics of the game.

Thanks some of this is certainly interesting and I considered the Drunken Brute but thematically I'm not sure I'm sold on it, but I'm looking less for concept advice than for how to make the mechanics work so he'd be viable in a moderate-high level optimized game.

Hi all just wanted to get some input on whether it's possible to make a functional drunken master Monk and if so how you would do it. My DM is usually pretty generous in letting us make our vision so if you think it isn't possible without something special extra let me know and I can work with him to see if it's cool.

We're playing with a 30pb and two traits we start off at level 1, the rest of the party will likely be a Paladin, a Cleric, and a Ranger. (I'm aware we lack an arcane caster, no I don't care.) All PF official books are open as is the equipment, we're playing with non standard races but humans are in there and most of the races bear some resemblance to the current ones so if a particular trait/feat is good mention please mention it.

Ideally I would like to make it using the Monk chassis but if it's easier or better using a different base class please mention why.

Also feel free to add what weapons etc you think would serve best, if possible I'd like it if he could pull some maneuvers as well like trip or disarm but if that isn't possible it isn't a deal breaker.

And lastly thank you all for your time and help, I appreciate it.

Albatoonoe wrote:

Didn't they errata the cost of the AoMF to be more inline with weapons? And, the obvious answer to this question is flavor. The nine-ring broadsword is just cool.

They cut its price down so that it's "only" twice as expensive as a weapon that grants an equivalent bonus. It used to be 2.5 times as expensive.

The problem is that it's priced appropriately for things like eidolons with like seven natural attacks, not for a guy who wants to use it to punch things.

Well technically it is in line.

The problem is that it's inline with what a two weapon fighter would pay, and they're considered a bit of a trap specifically because they pay double among other issues most of which also apply to the monks.

I am curious; for those who say Aid Another is not affected by concealment....do you allow characters a +2 bonus from flanking when attempting Aid Another?

I'd say no, the entry on Aid doesn't say you're rolling to hit the target merely that you make an attack roll vs AC 10 since you aren't attacking the target your flanking is irrelevant and hence no bonus.

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.

Imps if you're doing the warcraft burning horde angle.

Camp Dogs/Hounds of any sort, dire or fiendish would probably fit evil types.

Boars and Wolves are always good.

Carrion birds of any variety, vultures, crows, ravens and the like.

If you're going with goodly/noble savage type orcs you can go with eagles/falcons, still keep wolves, bears, bulls, or wild horses.

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.