kyrt-ryder's page

Nobody on here (I hope) genuinely worships Calistra, or Asmodeus or the like. I don't have a shrine to Jubilex in my basement.

Funny story. I had a friend who used to say she worshiped Elhonna for real. (We haven't discussed religion in ages, so who knows if she still says it.)

So... it turns out that at this point in my life- between education and work- I can't reliably handle a local table game. Here it is, Wednesday afternoon, and I'm still not certain whether or not I'll be able to make it Friday.

I'm really sorry guys, but it's unfair of me to continue this unreliable GMing. I wish you all the best of luck in finding a new GM (and more players if you still want them.)

Here's hoping I'll still be welcome when things settle down, but I understand if that's not possible.

Peace guys.

Tempest Stormwind wrote:

I don't think you have a conflict with the Stormwind Fallacy.

I think you are unhappy with the misuse of the Stormwind Fallacy.

This is not the fault of the idea, nor of the original Tempest Stormwind; it is the fault of those who misuse the Stormwind Fallacy.

For those who are unsure what the Stormwind Fallacy is...

It's not a law that these players are going to automatically be rollplayers, but in these games, the players who are heavy into optimization and mechanics and min-maxing etc. are much more likely to be into rollplaying at the expense of roleplaying. If a player is heavy into mechanics and spends 2 hours working on his character to figure it out to 18th level and find all the little rules and options and strategies to optimize his character for max abilities is it likely that he's also that roleplay heavy to spend another 2 hours working on his backstory and personality and such? I doubt it.

Just to open up the discussion and see how you respond kmal2t...

Most of the most advanced optimizers I know are heavily into the roleplay. They spend laborious hours fine-tuning their character to be exactly what they want to play, both in terms of their mechanical capabilities as well as their identity, origin, and personality.

To give the example I know best, I will present myself. In designing my character Tsuneh (An Onispawn Tiefling Mercenary working as an adventurer) I can guarantee you I've invested well over thirty total hours researching rules from every resource under the sun, comparing their benefits, and aligning them to create the capabilities I want in my character.

During that time, however, I also put in a great deal of thought and contemplation as to who Tsuneh is as a person. Where he came from and what caused him to become the man he is 'today.' (Today being the time of the events in the campaign.) Because of this, despite playing with many so-called 'role-players not roll-players', I'm usually the one most in-character, the one who most thoroughly assumes the role, and one who actively metagames as little as possible. (To the point of highlighting Tsuneh's history of conflicts through his 11 levels, such that I know exactly what sort of creatures/equipment/magic/terrain he knows before resorting to knowledge checks.)

The Stormwind Fallacy is there to explain people like me. People who are BOTH dedicated roleplayers and skillful optimizers. For me, the optimization facilitates the roleplay. If my character is incapable of doing what I want it to do, or is likely to get screwed by iterative probability, then that hampers my roleplaying because either the character isn't who I envisioned (thus breaking my immersion and ripping me out of the role) or s/he is going to die before their story unfolds and I'd be forced to abandon this character I lovingly and painstakingly crafted and start all over again before I was ready.

I would say the extremely powerful barbarian with its class bonuses and rage powers is not an inferior class to the pf fighter, but at level 3 your version of the fighter has got a level 13 barb ability.

Quick note, he wasn't comparing PF Fighter to PF Barbarian, he was comparing his target power level to the PF Barbarian.

(Ostensibly, he would eventually either upgrade the Barbarian to roughly the level of his Fighter- if indeed there is a disparity- or would eventually integrate the Barbarian into the Fighter class, negating the need for a balancing act between the two.)

On the subject of 'getting things too fast,' one complaint I've occasionally seen levied against 3.X by 'old schoolers' as they call themselves, is the concept of 'growing into your class.'

To clarify, these individuals have complained that many classes seem to start out incomplete, and only over the course of many levels become the concept they should have been from the beginning.

Designing to satisfy this line of thought would mean laying out most class features in the first 3-5 levels, and having those same features grow and evolve over the course of levels.

In this respect, those who want a lot of abilities might multiclass more than is typical in Pathfinder, but I consider that a feature rather than a bug (in my experience multiclassing in Pathfinder is usually a severe nerf rather than a comparable option) and besides that these abilities won't have nearly as much punch as they would had those characters dedicated themselves to the class.

I might even encourage introducing a 'Master Multiclasser' sort of feat, wherein one treats half of their levels in alternate classes as class levels for purpose of class abilities they already have.

Vital Strike and its counterparts isn't strictly worse than Weapon Focus, just more situational.

Weapon Focus is one of those feats that's only taken to fill prerequisites. Certain Druid Builds actually use Vital Strike.

How many adepts do you think are out there that are that highly focused?

NPCs don't get traits. Therefore, they have to spend a feat on Additional Traits. Skill Focus and Craft Magic Arms and Armor are two more feats that they will need.

Your 5th-level adept has just used ALL of his feats and half his base skill ranks in order to be able to craft said +5 weapon (or all his base skill ranks if you assume he crafted the actual sword too)--and meeting said DC only really works if he has that 14 intelligence to back it all up.

Yes it's possible, but also highly specialized and unlikely.

If he's made crafting magic weapons his job, he's almost sure to take Skill Focus Spellcraft, and a 14 int isn't unreasonable, so ignoring the trait our Adept would only need to be 7th level to take 10 and craft a +5 weapon.

Actually, I take that back (forgot to account for the Masterworked Tool involved in the enhancement process.) 5th level is all that's required with the Skill Focus feat. This Adept still has 3 skill points per level to distribute (because he has a 14 int) and has only used up 1/2 of his feats. This is also without assuming the Adept was a Human.

So, I have another way to look at it.

I built a basic level 10 TWF fighter with a pair of +1 agile Kukris. Against AC 24, he gets about 50 damage per round.

I gave him a feat that gives dex to damage and swapped the +1 agile weapons for +2 weapons. That gave him a 15% increase in damage dealt.

For reference, weapon focus nets you are 5% increase in damage on average.

A straight dex to damage feat is 3 times better then weapon focus in a TWF build, and about 50% better than weapon focus in a two hand build.

Except that as far as feats go, weapon focus sucks hard.

Here's my Feats:

Mighty Quickness (Combat)
Your mighty muscles enable you to leap out of the way of attacks.

Prerequisite: STR 15.

Benefit: You may use your STR modifier instead of your DEX modifier for your Armor Class. Situations that would cause you to lose your DEX modifier will cause you to lose your STR modifier instead.

Special: You may not get the benefits of this feat unless you are wielding a two-handed weapon or a one-handed weapon and a shield.

Mighty Reflexes (Combat)
Your mighty muscles enable you to react faster than a weaker man.

Prerequisite: STR 15.

Benefit: You may use your STR modifier instead of your DEX modifier for your REF saves and as a bonus to your initiative rolls.

Special: You may not get the benefits of this feat unless you are wielding a two-handed weapon or a one-handed weapon and a shield.

There you go. Balanced.

You know I actually wouldn't have a problem with these, except that I think I'd want to shuffle them just a bit to make them more distinct.

(Furthermore, the restriction on Mighty Reflexes is kind of a weird one and not a restriction I'd support. A character with the Mighty Reflexes feat would have no lesser Mighty Reflexes if he were less armed than that.)

Ravingdork wrote:

How do you "buy" anything over 16,000gp?

All +5 weapons are beyond what even metropolises can easily offer up.

In any case, as I'm sure you know, equipping a high level character is not "buying his stuff" so much as saying what he's accumulated, inherited, found, and bought.

Bought, of course, includes commissioned. Somewhere out there was a spellcaster willing and able to make the weapon you want, and before the campaign starts you don't have to worry about how long it takes to make it.

To make matters better, a simple +5 doesn't require any given spell, meaning even an Adept could have done it.

Wait, people actually assumed it didn't stack?

MrSin wrote:

Huh, thought I'd get more commentary.

Why? All you're doing is giving people better stat bonuses... its not a deep philosophical change, its a very simple mechanical change that will make most characters a bit stronger, and a few no different, depending on how the stat bonuses of their chosen race matched the optimum stats for their chosen class.

There's all of one paragraph of discussion. What more is there to say?

I'd actually argue it makes no difference, really. People take classes for races that have synergy between them. All this does is institute a bit more diversity. (For example, Elven Bards become pretty interesting.)

2) That Gnomes were given ridiculous hair colors like pink, purple, green and blue. Seriously? The designers will abandon concepts that were purely created for the use in D&D games (and this IS a D&D game) or have basis in myths or faerie tales and embrace a concept coined by World of Warcraft?!

Honestly when I look at the funky gnome hair color it always makes me think of Troll Dolls rather than World of Warcrack.

Heh, it did seem like I threw you guys for a loop with that. It was a pretty low save DC, but without evasion some damage was likely to get through. As I recall it never seemed overly threatening though (although I have been continuing to contemplate it, to see exactly how it should expand to larger units.) That being said feel free to PM me whenever you like.

I normally note how to use Genius Archetypes with new Genius Classes in the next Archetype book.

I hope this means there's one on the agenda in the near future, that's one of my favorite lines in all of 3.X (alongside loot4less of course)

Regardless, thanks for the Talented Fighter Archetype package.

So here's what I'm wondering. Is a Talented Fighter compatible with Genius Archetypes?

Brief note: Monk has ALWAYS been top-loaded. In 3.5, effective 'monk' builds took as few monk levels as possible (2 being a common choice) for the build in question. (Pathfinder seems to go too far the other way, deliberately attempting to screw multiclassers imho.)

Pathfinder applied a general nerf to Flurry, by turning it into two-weapon fighting whereas the 3.5's flurry eventually became 3 attacks at full BAB without imposing penalties.

I haven't thoroughly studied the monk proposed here, but I like what I see so far Boz.

Violence in sufficient quantities solves every problem.

Violence not solving your problem? Apply moar violence.

God bless you all and may your hip points run out.

Sorry Nick, but I'll never run out of hip (cool) points ;)

On the Perception is Overpowered bit, I scrapped Perception as a skill entirely.

Every PC class grants +1 to perception at every level, and characters who train in stealth add 1/2 their stealth virtual ranks (ranks+class skill bonus + feats) to perception checks.

Mr. Robertson is what the Christian community refers to as an uberchristian. For context, we put Wesboro in the same category.

Now that's just offensive. I've got a lot of family who line up 90% or better with Pat's philosophies, and while I certainly wouldn't agree with them they're nowhere near Westboro's crap.

He said in his Halloween video (paraphrasing) "We don't believe in haunted stuff or ghosts."

This is pretty funny though, given his beliefs regarding the demonic. Who's to say that haunted house doesn't have a familiar spirit clinging to it making s&## go crazy :P

You're confusing evil with arrogant.

So apparently my memory was bad and I feel bad.

Last night I used the wrong armor / description on the goblins I was using. Oh well, everybody said it was fun despite a few more misses than I personally would have preferred (although really guys, I like critical feedback :P 'it was fun' is good to know, but if you can be more detailed that would rock.)

That being said, we've got a total of four players, so I am comfortable with 1 or 2 more, if anybody's interested.

Well, I do have a quick suggestion for you Byrd.

Rather than go through the work of integrating them into the Rogue class, why don't you simply adjust the Rogue class into only having X levels (5, 10, whatever) and thereafter they have to take something else, possibly one of the above prestige classes (might as well add Assassin to the list as well.)

If you feel the above prestige classes are fairly balanced (I don't) then you can simply note that a Rogue who takes one of them treats levels in the prestige class as levels of Rogue for purpose of Favored Class bonuses and let that be that. If you don't, there will be a bit more work ahead of you.

I suppose this is a bad time to mention my Crimson Throne character, who the DM foolishly allowed to have a Large Mercurial Greatsword (plus Monkey Grip and XWP: Mercurial Greatswords.)

Just for reference, this particular sword was a 12', 34# sword that did 3d6+(1.5 Str) damage, with a 20/Q critical modifier. He was literally the only person in the entire continent who could safely use it.

8 foot tall, barely Large, stocky Tiefling, wielding a 9 foot long, 2 foot wide, several inch thick Huge (houseruled Big Arms on Large Tiefling) Platinum (3.0 Heavy Weapon) Mighty Sword (Bigger Greatsword 3rd party exotic weapon [2d8 medium damage]) that weighs 96 pounds.

I was going for a Dragonslayer (Berserk) look and feel.

This Osla figures in two medieval prose tales, Culhwch and Olwen (c. 1100) and The Dream of Rhonabwy (12th- or 13th-century). In Culhwch he is a member of King Arthur's retinue; he is named in a list of Arthur's followers, and his weapon "Bronllavyn Short Broad", which is wide enough for Arthur's army to use as a bridge, is described.[10] Osla later participates in the hunt for the great boar Twrch Trwyth, during which he nearly drowns when the sheath of his great knife fills with water.[11]

Heh, it's a rare day we agree shallowsoul. I never claimed they shouldn't be incorporated into the game, only that such wasn't their primary purpose.

(Sidenote: even if the DM didn't do much with a backstory there's still a lot a creative spirited player could, gradually revealing his identity to the group over time.)

EDIT: just a note to the people insinuating Shallowsoul is throwing an unbeatable hitsquad against the character, see this post. Now, how he defines as 'what they can handle' remains to be seen, but he's not sending intentional unbeatable executioners.

The whole reason for PC back story is to include it in future plotlines.

OBJECTION!

While including a backstory in the future plot-lines is something useful and interesting, I'd hardly call that the reason for PC back story.

The reason for PC backstory is to give depth to the PC's. To elaborate on where they came from, and to establish a groundwork for who they are and where they are going.

That, and brilliant energy weapons don't even ignore natural armor, so... honestly holding onto a brilliant energy weapon is usually money that could be better spent elsewhere, IMO

I don't.

To clarify: anything that would normally make martial attacks, still makes them anyway, unless it reaches the point they feel they need to retreat because they realize they're likely to die before winning.

Combat Maneuvers are an option (as is Aid Another among a group) but use these things very sparingly, lest you invalidate the high AC character's build.

And Atalarst's comment is why I've completely given up on the Rogue as an independent class for my more distant-from-pf homebrew, and instead merged it with the Fighter for my own games. The era of the 'thief' class is long over.

Removing the d6's isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some players take FOREVER to roll and count their d6's on Sneak Attacking Full Attacks.

When every hit means rolling multiple d6 and adding them to the weapon die and the static bonus... things can get sluggish sometimes.

Removing the d6's both accelerates play, allows a simple = level progression for non-sneak attacks, and allows a Rogue's bonus damage to be applied to crits through the normal rules (which state that bonus d6 are never multiplied on crits.)

I'll agree with something said above, if you want a low magic game playing E6 or E8 is your best bet.

This. By level 8-10ish in a normal campaign, even the most mundane of the martials should be pretty damned magical. In an explicit low-magic campaign I can't really see that working.

One thing I did, was rewrite sneak attack for Rogues as follows (this is not made for the archetypes that get a sneak attack at a reduced progression compared to the Rogue 1d6/2 levels)

Rogue Sneak Attack: A Rogue is well trained to target the vitals/weak points of his opponent. Against any opponent vulnerable to precision damage, a Rogue deals 1 additional point of damage per Rogue level per hit. This value is doubled when the opponent is flanked or denied his dexterity bonus to AC.

A few points here.

A: it provides a marginal increase in sneak attack damage at the even levels, although at the cost of a moderate decrease at the odd levels below level 7, after which the odd levels slowly gain ground over the norm.

B: it provides some damage when Sneak Attack isn't available, making Ranged Rogues more viable and screwing the rogue less when he can't pull off a feint/lacks a flanking partner.

B: this damage is multiplied on critical hits, and lets face it, which class do the new guys expect to do well on critical hits? The rogues of course!

Lvl | P.F. | KR

001 |' 03.5 | 02
002 |' 03.5 | 04
003 | 0007 | 06
004 | 0007 | 08
005 |' 10.5 | 10
006 |' 10.5 | 12
007 | 0014 | 14
008 | 0014 | 16
009 |' 17.5 | 18
010 |' 17.5 | 20
011 | 0020 | 22
012 | 0020 | 24
014 |' 23.5 | 26
015 |' 23.5 | 28
016 | 0027 | 30
018 | 0027 | 32
019 |' 30.5 | 34
020 |' 30.5 | 36

(The apostrophe's are just there to make the table fit as close as possible)

How do you think about this. Do you think that having characters that legally can see an invisible pixy from 100 feet away adds to the game or breaks it.

Adds to it.

should the GM, fased with unreasonably focused characters simply bend the story to mitigate those insane skills or should the players basically get to cake walk where ever their special skills are concerned as a reward for focus?

cakewalk

I am considering a home rule that limits ultra high skills without taking away all incentive to level up a skill.

please don't do that.

something relativly simple like at some point skills increase at a rate of 2 for 1 and later 3 for one...

I'm begging you, please don't do that.

or maybe some kind of RP penalty for excessiov skills (some one with a super high perception gets a penalty to sudden light or sonic attacks as an example.

I could kind of see this one, but not with the limited benefit skills currently provide. MAYBE a -1 penalty per +20 to checks?

Balancing on wires/tips of tree branches < Balancing on clouds/fog/smoke < balancing on nitrogen

Leaping small buildings < Leaping skyscrapers < leaping mountains

etc etc etc

yes please

Ravingdork wrote:

NPCs do incredible things like that all the time as part of their backstory, thejeff. Why couldn't/shouldn't a PC have something similar as part of its background?

I've rarely seen an NPC's background include anything incredible like that as the start of the NPC's career. If it's a high level NPC and and it did incredible things when it first came to fame, but not to start with.

Would you accept a backstory that included "And as part of my training, I slew a huge dragon on my own" for a 1st level character?

Late on this one too, but I wanted to highlight it.

'Summoning a Celestial' could be as simple as doing a non-spell ritual to call a 'higher power' for advice. Call in one of the 1 HD celestials (like the ones used as familiars) and siphon it's power, injecting yourself with Celestial Juice and obtaining the Celestial Bloodline.

All totally doable at level 1, if the GM agrees to it, which the hypothetical GM did, and which I would.

1. Not moot, Divine Spells don't suffer ASF in armor, while Arcane Spells (including Bard spells in armor heavier than Light) do.
Unless that scenario is changed in Kirthfinder, I haven't read much of it since version one as of yet.

2. Makes sense, although I would have suggested allowing the player to choose at the time he takes the Theurgy feat.

ikarinokami wrote:

Animals and monsters can get by with 2 int, humanoids cannot.

Why can a humanoid not get by like an animal? Especially one that can grow claws and fangs?

It's even in myth. Take a look at the Book of Daniel in the Bible. Nebadchanezer II spent 7 years living that way.

Normal Feint action: a character may feint as written in the CRB, except it occurs as a swift action

Improved Feint:
Requirements: None (or BAB+1)
Effect: The character who takes this feat can make a feint as part of each attack it makes.

Lasting Feint: (replaces Greater Feint)
Requirements: None (or BAB+1)
[i]Effect:[/b] the victim of a successful feint by a character with this feat loses his dexterity bonus until the start of this character's next turn.

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Same of a DM who railroads the adventures unmercifully and fudges the dice and/or ignores them until everything goes according to his "plan."

There's a point where every GM has to pick one: pretend you're Tolkien, or play Pathfinder.

Are you trying to win or are you trying to tell a collective story.

If your trying to tell a story, part of the GM's job is to supply plot twists. Some of those plot twists may occasionally have a profound impact on a character. How the character reacts is the next part of the story.

I know I'm pretty late with this reply, but this thread's resurgence finally caught my eye today.

Speaking personally, yes I'm trying to tell a collective story, but that's the point right there. Collective.

The DM's job is to play author the rest of the world, it's my job to author my character. Don't take away my authorship or I'm no longer a player, I'm just a puppet on the DM's string.

What Genuine said, a thousand times.

Actually, a 2 in Intelligence is perfectly playable. Trust me, I have a dog who's smarter than some of my friends. If she's a 2 int, then a 2 int can manage just fine.

Lets say I am a multiclassed level 20 character with 1 level in Wizard, have max ranks in disable device and a cat familiar with a 6 intelligence.

That cat has a +22 bonus to disable device, and can out-disable device the best level 1 rogue in the world, even if that level 1 rogue is an elf with a 20 intelligence and dexterity and 300 years of lockpicking experience. He'll be pulling a Meowth or Scooby Doo, sticking a claw into a lock, and picking it like a mid-level pro.

dealwithit

Epic Meepo wrote:

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Yes, this does mean that in a realistic setting, there should be game-mechanical differences between an int 14 character with a +2 bonus and an int 7 character with a +6 bonus. The GM would be completely justified in imposing higher circumstance penalties (or lesser circumstance bonuses) on the int 7 character to reflect the fact that adaptation to new circumstances is harder.

No. The "circumstance penalty" for having a low Intelligence score is the Intelligence modifier that comes with the Intelligence score. That's what the penalty for having a low Intelligence score is in this game. Period.

And that's completely and entirely wrong.

You have a +10 to Disable Device, but have never opened this specific type of lock before? Intelligence is the attribute that lets you figure out what you need to do differently. Even on a Dex-based skill. That's the way intelligence works.

wrong

If you have +10 to Disable Device, but have never opened this specific type of lock before, you apply your Disable Device skill to the lock in the same way you did every other lock.

It's not about Intelligence, it's about Disable Device.

Kolokotroni wrote:

The op said they wish to play in the game, they understand the that the dm is being a jerk, but want to try anyway and think they can have fun. A ton of people have said dont play in the game. The OP gets it, but that isnt what they are asking for. They are asking what to do with the stats they have. People get to make their own descisions in life, the op has made it. Lets move on and see if we cant help a bit rather then hammering the smae point over and over.

No.

The OP may have read the posts with people saying to leave the game, but obviously doesn't "get it", or we wouldn't still be having this conversation. Sometimes, people refuse to accept the truth, but that doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't point it out, or should play along with their delusion.

The only correct answer here is "Get away from this abusive relationship". All other advice given in this thread is just plain wrong.

It's wrong to objectify someone and try to take away their agency like that. S/he has been told the ramifications of the situation and it is their responsibility to choose how to deal with it.

At this point the best that can be done is give advice according to the original poster's desires.

That being said, my suggestion is put the 2 into constitution and bring a good book or a handheld videogame. Go full-burn leeroy jenkins and do all the crazy s@*# you can think off.

If by some miracle you survive, awesome. If not, who cares. If you keep dying and making new PC's with a 2 in constitution, eventually the party will pressure the DM to either make encounters easier (because they essentially have one fewer PC) or let you have better stats.

Frankly it seems the two sides are mostly talking past eachother at this point.

Speaking of my personal preferences, I prefer to separate the conflict resolution mechanics from the roleplay as much as possible. If I want to play a stupid character then I will, 16 int be damned. If I want to play a smart character, then I will, 7 int be damned. Yes such concepts are burdened by the conflict resolution mechanic at points, but part of the fun of it is dealing with those problems in some way that remains consistent to the character in question.

He wasn't saying women wouldn't make such jokes, but rather that most guys wouldn't make them in the presence of women.

Remove Improved Feint from Greater Feint's requirements (possibly change Greater Feint's name to remove the implication of progression.) That way if someone wants to go the Swift Action for a single Feint attempt (and help their party in the process) they can, but they don't have to pay the feat tax of Improved Feint to get it.

Some of those people have an issue with the concept of full BAB because they have it ingrained in their head that an everyday thief is going to be a Rogue rather than an Expert.

For an example of a Fictional Rogue, look at Aladdin. Yeah he ran away from the group of town guards (for multiple reasons, killing guards would only make them more intent on finding and capturing him, and a group would have been sure to overwhelm him) but when we see him actually engage in combat, it's pretty clear he's at about on par with the lead guard during their first encounter.

EDIT: I will restate my earlier point though, regarding the combat feats (so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle.) I'm of the opinion Rogue Talents should be raised to the level of Rage Powers, rather than introduce a mechanic to bypass them for as many combat feats as the Rogue's Player wants.

Damn and here I thought I actually read the OP entirely. I'm just going to go hang my head in shame now :P

Honestly... unlimited Combat Trick doesn't feel like the way to go. Rogue Talents should be raised up to more on the level of Rage Powers, rather than encourage Rogues to bypass Rogue Talents entirely.