hogarth's page

Hellknight qua prestige class is open game content, but Hellknight qua organization is not.

I find that a witch makes a pretty good cleric/magic-user substitute. If you want to boost his melee power a bit, you could take a level of ranger (for "thief-ishness") and then take the Eldritch Knight prestige class.

The monk in the original post has 24,000 gp worth of defensive items and has an AC of 26 (with an additional +3 when fighting defensively). That doesn't seem outrageous to me. That's comparable to a character with 12 Dex using +2 full plate armor and a +2 heavy shield (except much more expensive).

Note that the wealth by level suggested in the core rulebook for a 7th level PC is 23,500 gp in total, so that's a very heavy investment in defensive items compared to a "standard" PC.

That's weird -- I don't know why it's marked "answered in the FAQ". There's nothing about overrunning in the FAQ.

Arcane Strike costs a swift action, but nothing else in my build uses swift actions, so it's essentially free damage (hence why I originally considered it).

(Well, there's Arcane Armor Training, but most of the time you wouldn't be casting and attacking in the same round.)

2. I'm half-BAB. Power Attack at 3rd means a +5 to hit instead of +7 (if I took Weapon Focus) for 1d8+5 instead of 1d8+3. And it doesn't scale up until BAB4, which will be 7th level.

I'm not sure why you're not using your longsword two-handed, by the bye. (At least when you're not casting.)

hogarth wrote:

I'll be boring and add a vote for Power Attack.

Given that I'm essentially half-BAB for most of my career - and use a one-handed weapon - PA is probably worse than AS.

I think Weapon Focus and Power Attack are about equally mediocre, in your position. Arcane Strike is worse (IMO) because it takes a swift action.

As you're seeing, there aren't a whole bunch of awesome, low-level melee feats that aren't part of a chain.

I'll be boring and add a vote for Power Attack.

Be careful, though -- not every player appreciates "your character was a chump all along, isn't that hilarious?" plot twists.

(I'm not saying that's what you're asking for, but that's the kind of thing that should be avoided, IMO.)

Wasn't there a SORD Pathfinder edition that tried to squeeze all the necessary information from the core book into a compact form?

I think this is it:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=81817

wait what a lvl 7 spell wins encounters?

REALLY????

I agree that a Holy Word spell (for instance) would probably do a number on a bunch of

If the oracle is using all of his actions to summon a T-rex and heal it, then I don't think that's particularly overpowered. A T-rex isn't really any more deadly or disruptive than a level 14 melee fighter (in my experience) so if the PC were a fighter instead of an oracle, you'd have the same amount of monster-bashing going on, wouldn't you?

I do agree that a focused grappler will tend to greatly outclass a non-focused grappler, particularly at high levels. Whether you think that's a bug or a feature is a matter of personal opinion.

EDIT: I don't see any limit on the number of creatures you can swallow in the Swallow Whole ability, but as a practical matter I would probably limit it to one Huge creature, two Large creatures, etc. for a T-rex.

It's not clear if you can coup de grace with a touch spell.

I'm on the side that thinks that a weapon-like melee spell is close enough to a melee weapon to apply in most things that specify using a melee weapon. However, I've had a GM that ruled otherwise and I couldn't really blame him. (In my case, it was an assassin trying to do a death attack with a touch spell.)

You can only take 20 on a knowledge check with some bard abilities

Some oracles get the ability, too (Lore mystery or Enlightened Philosopher archetype).

No, because you can't retry a Knowledge check.

EDIT: 20 seconds too slow. Under the Take 20 rules, it says: "Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding."

Just to repeat what others have said:

At level 1, you only have level 0 and level 1 spell slots. There's no way you can cast a 6th level spell like Murderous Command (heightened to level 6). I don't know where you're getting that idea.

Uh oh. I hope there aren't any giant candirus...

So paizo wanted to improve their hit percentage so the boosted the bab of flurry [..]

Actually, the Pathfinder monk and the 3.5 monk are fairly similar in hit percentage, I think.

Level 1:
Pathfinder monk -1/-1
3.5 monk -2/-2

Level 8:
Pathfinder monk +6/+6/+1/+1
3.5 monk +5/+5/+0

Level 11:
Pathfinder monk +9/+9/+4/+4
3.5 monk +8/+8/+8/+3

Level 16:
Pathfinder monk +14/+14/+9/+9/+4/+4/-1
3.5 monk +12/+12/+12/+7/+2

As an aside, I actually like the Pathfinder decision to use Two-Weapon Fighting as a base for how Flurry of Blows works. I think it's quite elegant.

If a monk can flurry with one weapon (not an unarmed strike), they are greatly overpowered when compared to a melee Two-Weapon Fighting <insert your favorite class>.

I don't know what to tell you. I don't think monks were overpowered in 3.5 (ha!) and I don't think they were overpowered using the more advantageous weapon flurrying interpretation in Pathfinder.

Have you ever played a monk who used a weapon?

I'm new to Pathfinder, and I don't currently have a gaming group, or even know people who would be interested in my life long geeky hobby. Instead, I am forced to run PbP games online.

I have the stupidly ambitious idea of trying to run the CotCT adventure path in this format. If it's taken your group a year to play through on the table top... wow. Hope I don't die of old age before this is over. I'll be amazed if any of my original players make it through.

You never know -- I've been playing in a play-by-post of the Savage Tide adventure path for almost 4 years so far, and most of the players have been playing for almost that long!

We're not even half done, though... :-)

The equipment in question is likely the longspear and various other reach weapons.

Reach+Flurry has been a holy grail for monk players for years. Now we have it, and the Devs may not like it's implementation.

Flurrying with a reach weapon isn't particularly new. In 3.5, the Eberron Campaign Setting had a feat allowing a monk to flurry with a longspear. And before that, the Shou Disciple prestige class from Unapproachable East had the ability to flurry with any martial weapon.

Not surprisingly, neither of those abilities caused anyone's brain to explode.

Paradoxically, in my experience the more of a personality-less cypher an NPC is, the more a party gets fond of him.

If your party is up for recruiting another member, I'd suggest tossing up three or four bland possibilities (Morgan Ironwolf, Black Dougal, Gutboy Barrelhouse) and allow them to pick and control the NPC of their choice.

The thing that drives me nuts (in the case of the changes of heart on intelligent animal companions and weapon-using monks) is when people say "it's always worked that way" even when there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. Sigh...

This thread is almost 5 years old... Not sure if Zealot's even around anymore.

He's posted as recently as a couple weeks ago.

Ironically, when this thread was revived for the first time, I was also skeptical if he'd notice. He hadn't posted in three years! And yet, he came back to finish the tale. :-)

I agree; Bouncing Spell is quite good, too.

I'm guessing it also means that if I heightened a spell at level 1 for example, even though I have no level 6 spells, it'll allow me to heighten it up to level 6?

It reduces the effective level by one. So if you heightened Murderous Command to level 6, it would take up a level 5 spell slot.

@Hogarth - Would I not need to heighten and extend the spell at level 1 or would extending it be sufficient?

If you took Magical Lineage (Murderous Command), then you could fit an Extended Murderous Command in a level 1 slot (base level 1, +1 for Extend Spell, -1 for Magical Lineage). I'm not sure why you're getting Heighten Spell mixed up into it.

I won't have Magical Lineage unless I have to swap out a feat for it, as I need the starting gold and have to have a campaign trait, so what's been decided can't really change.

I doubt you'll actually get much benefit out of the extra gold; certainly I don't think you need to be spending 300 gp on a masterwork crossbow right off the bat. Although money doesn't hurt, of course. :-)

It says in the Duration line:

instantaneous or concentration (up to 1 round/level)

So I'd say the control lasts concentration (up to 1 round/level). I guess you could make the case that the concentration duration only applies to the portal form; I never thought about it before.

As I'm going with Complusion spells over anything else, I'm planning on Heightening and Extending my spells wherever possible. Is there any point in getting myself Magical Lineage because of that? I think the spell level slot will be high regardless.

At high levels, you probably won't care; you'll be casting spells like Greater Command instead. But at level 1, it's nice to be able to toss out a 2 round Extended Murderous Command (using a level 1 spell slot) instead of a 1 round Murderous Command.

As a GM with lots of PFS under my belt, I feel all f the GMs' pains with scenarios that prove to be cakewalks when there are 5-7 players at the table. This is the first change to help GMs also have an enjoyable experience at the table.

What about scenarios from previous years? Will there be any guidelines about scaling those scenarios up in difficulty?

Personally, I don't care if scenarios are easy or hard or somewhere in between (well, I'd probably prefer the latter). But I really don't care for a wildly varying mix of difficulties. Then I end up in a situation where if I make a character strong enough to survive Season 4, then I might be bored playing a Season 0 adventure, for instance.

Is there not a bo staff now that does all the cool stuff you want to do with a quarterstaff?

There are a couple of quarterstaff-specific feats, I guess.

Yay for scaling guidelines!

Boo for making scenarios more difficult in general.

I am still not seeing any pregens for the classes in the APG. Am I missing something or is it simple no longer there?

Didn't you read Mark's comment? They won't be ready until after Gen Con.

Which Gen Con is an interesting question. :-)

Not sure where from, has this changed from the original edition/3rd ed DnD perhaps?

The same somewhat-confusing line was in the 3.5 SRD:

"A creature wielding a double weapon in one hand can’t use it as a double weapon -— only one end of the weapon can be used in any given round."

As far as the nostalgia for purchasing this I just don't get it. My only AD&D nostalgia from 1E comes from my 1E books. As in the actual books I used to play, not reprints of them. I'm not sure what anyone would do with this reprinted 1E PHB from a nostalgia perspective.

My brother and I purged our old RPG collection almost 20 years ago, so our original copies of the AD&D books are long gone. As I noted before, I think there's still some interesting reading value in the old DMG (lots of random tables, rules for dice games, a mini-Monster Manual appendix, lists of gemstone properties/types of insanity/synonyms for "lady of the evening"/etc.). Less so for the PHB, I'll admit.

You miss my point. If you have a 1st level ray spell, what damage should you give it? Well, if a 2nd level ray does 1d6/level or thereabouts, 1st level will have to 1d4 per level, because you do not want to create a 1st level spell that is better than a 2nd level spell (at 5th level it would be 5d4 damage to scorching ray's 4d6 damage, more would be unbalanced).

In effect, you have the damage of burning hands, but not the area effect, and you could miss. I don't see what you stand to gain from that, really, over the spells available, except that it would look thematic for your character concept. I have no problem with that, if that's what you want, I just don't expect Paizo to produce such a spell.

As I noted before, there are two level 1 Words of Power spells that effectively work that way (1d4/level, can be used either as a ray or in a cone a la Burning Hands, depending on the target word used) -- Burning Flash and Shock Arc.

Waffle_Neutral wrote:

You can already fight with a quarterstaff one-handed, because it's a double weapon. Why is this restated in this feat? The only thing this feat does is let you take another feat. If you're taking this, you're probably a monk, and there are so many better options.

You cannot fight with a double weapon one-handed.

I think the confusion comes from this sentence: "A creature wielding a double weapon in one hand can't use it as a double weapon —- only one end of the weapon can be used in any given round."

My interpretation is that it's referring to a Medium-sized creature using a Small quarterstaff in one hand (for instance), but it's definitely a bit cryptic.

EDIT: Sorta ninja'ed by Waffle_Neutral

I play in cycles. I'll get a hankering to play a tabletop (or virtual tabletop) game, but then I'll end up playing one of the randomly interspersed extra-hard scenarios and that will turn me off Pathfinder Society for a while for a while.

People will buy this for nostalgia's sake and then never play it (or at most play the odd one-shot session).

I don't quite understand why they're doing this. Is it just to grab some quick profit by tugging on people's heartstrings?

I'm not terribly interested in buying a copy of the AD&D PHB, but the DMG made for interesting reading, back in the day. How else are you supposed to know how to convert your characters to BOOT HILL (tm)?

I'm still waiting for examples of a published monk flurrying with a single weapon (that's not a double weapon).

Funny, I was going to ask for examples of the opposite situation: a monk with a one-handed weapon who mixed weapon and unarmed strike attacks in the same flurry!

Seriously, the text hasn't changed.

Well, except for the hastily added explanation that makes Zen Archer work under the new (or original, in your reading) interpretation.

Again, Zen Archer's flurry is allowed due to point 1.

Let me see if I understand this, then.

A human Zen Archer can do a flurry with one bow because he's incapable of holding two bows and hence doesn't have any non-identical potential attacks.

But a xill Zen Archer would need two bows to do a flurry because he's capable of holding two bows which might be different and hence has a potential attack form that is not identical.

Am I reading that right?

Was anyone doing it this way before? I hadn't heard of that interpretation.

If you look at some of the old threads, yes, there are people who thought you needed two weapons.

Here's an example from October 2009

Alright, now I understand the widespread confusion. People were just assuming it worked the same way as 3.5, while the devs assumed that mentioning two-weapon fighting was enough.

The issue (as has been discussed in other threads dating back two years or more) is that it's not clear whether "any combination of [..] attacks" or "as if using the Two-Weapon Fighting feat" takes precendence over the other one. It's ambiguous.

Clearly whoever wrote the Zen Archer class thought the same way I did, though.

To address one of your points, the duration of the calling aspect of Gate is "concentration", so casting more than one Gate spell is counterproductive (barring some oddball feat or class ability that allows you to concentrate as a free action or something).

I'll let other people chime in on the other points.

hogarth wrote:

(according to Jason and Sean's goofy new ruling)

Could we stop with the condescension toward the Devs, please?

I'm criticising this one particular decision, not either of those fine people. Seriously.

hogarth wrote:

You beat me to it. According to Sean and Jason's new interpretation, a Zen Archer's flurry of blows does nothing.

Hooray?

No. According to their new interpretation the zen archer is fine. It does not have potential flurry of blows attacks with its unarmed strikes because the text explicitly removes all the normal weapons from their options.

I don't know what to tell you. There's nothing in the Zen Archer description that says "this no longer works like Two-Weapon Fighting" and as long as it works like Two-Weapon Fighting, you actually need two weapons (according to Jason and Sean's goofy new ruling).

Maybe the Zen Archer class is intended only for xills. (Xen Archer?)

;-)

Which doesn't go up in d6's per two levels of damage, and is still considered a 0 level spell, unless using the Heightened Spell feat. No. Not good enough.

How about Shocking Grasp with the Reach metamagic feat added for free (either with a metamagic rod or via the trait Magical Lineage)?

EDIT: Another possibility is to use the Words of Power subsystem, which has two ray-like level 1 spells (Shock Arc and Burning Flash).

I will just leave this here:

Quote:

Flurry of Blows (Ex): Starting at 1st level, a zen archer can make a flurry of blows as a full-attack action, but only when using a bow (even though it is a ranged weapon). He may not make a flurry of blows with his unarmed attacks or any other weapons.

So, is the Zen archer a special case on single weapon flurries?

You beat me to it. According to Sean and Jason's new interpretation, a Zen Archer's flurry of blows does nothing.

Hooray?

I find it quite curious that it seems that no one really realized the implications of "as if two weapon fighting".

A quick search showed me that there have been at least half a dozen threads discussing it, going back at least two years.

Your experience may be different from mine, but how much time is your 12th level PC really going to spend casting 1st level spells?

If you really wanted to, you could buy a Metamagic Rod of Reach Spell and use it in conjunction with Shocking Grasp.

Shouldn't a direct statement from SKR be ending the discussion, rather than starting it?

I'm not going to change my opinion based on an off-the-cuff remark someone made in the middle of a spirited discussion.

One trick that I've used is to take the trait Magical Lineage and the feat Extend Spell. An Extended (Murderous) Command is significantly more useful than a regular Command, in my experience.

If you took a level of Sorcerer with the Fey bloodline, that would give you a +2 on compulsion spells, for what it's worth.

Also note that the Inevitable subdomain would give you Command as a (Su) ability usable 5 times per day -- as a bonus, it avoids SR and the DC automatically scales with level.

(a) We play it that all attacks can be made with a single weapon.

(b) In my opinion, Paizo designers shouldn't be writing Talmudic commentaries on what the rules technically say as written. They should just state "the intent was X, so that's how it's supposed to work", full stop.