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Contributor

Did you get to work any on this month's Advanced Class Origins book?


Prays for a halfling with throw anything and a crystal ball archtype

I'll call him Carmine...

Designer

Alexander Augunas wrote:
Did you get to work any on this month's Advanced Class Origins book?

The design team's fingerprints are all over that book, as it turns out. If you open it up (when you get it), we'll be listed as developers. I wrote a reasonable chunk of Familiar Folio as author too.

Liberty's Edge

Mark Seifter wrote:
David Neilson wrote:
Hey do not let the boss know you are telling everyone about lepidopterist feats.
I'm just brimming with butterfly-related spoilers. With the new subsystem, we're thinking of updating the Beast of Lepidstadt to the Beast of Lepidopterism, an intelligent flesh golem who collects butterflies.

All creatures related to cats should get a bonus in attacking butterflies, but they should have a negative modifier when trying to deal them non lethal damage.


David Neilson wrote:

Funnily enough there was a book "Moth Diaries" where the vampire turns into a swarm of moths. Though I have not read it personally.

These, no doubt..


Mark Seifter wrote:
I wouldn't say that Bravely Default has influenced my Pathfinder RPG design, no. It's very soundly a JRPG. But it's a fun game, and that's what it wants to be—a throwback to the early Final Fantasy games.

On that note, favorite FF?


Jeez. You maxed out all the jobs when I had the game for 3x as long. Makes me wonder when you actually had a chance to play, as I thought you played PF all day. When was the last time you slept? ;)

Designer

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Orthos wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
I wouldn't say that Bravely Default has influenced my Pathfinder RPG design, no. It's very soundly a JRPG. But it's a fun game, and that's what it wants to be—a throwback to the early Final Fantasy games.
On that note, favorite FF?

VI is just a timeless classic.

Designer

Cheapy wrote:
Jeez. You maxed out all the jobs when I had the game for 3x as long. Makes me wonder when you actually had a chance to play, as I thought you played PF all day. When was the last time you slept? ;)

I haven't played Bravely Default since ~July. That's actually Linda who maxed out all the jobs with every character and has played most recently. I have some jobs unmaxed for each character. We each have a save file on the same Bravely Default.

Silver Crusade

Mark, would it be possible to get a enlarge outsider spell. Right now
assimars, oreads, thieflings, Ifrits and undines cannot use the enlarge person spell as it targets Person type not outsider type. could that spell be added to the Magus, bloodrager, sorcerer and wizard spell lists.

Designer

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Lou Diamond wrote:

Mark, would it be possible to get a enlarge outsider spell. Right now

assimars, oreads, thieflings, Ifrits and undines cannot use the enlarge person spell as it targets Person type not outsider type. could that spell be added to the Magus, bloodrager, sorcerer and wizard spell lists.

I think that the inability to use beneficial "person" spells is a tradeoff for being immune to detrimental ones. Honestly, I think the immunity is a far better trade-off for the native outsider in most cases. In my home games, when I allow native outsiders at all (they are rare and need to fit the story), I allow "Scion of Humanity" style deals where you trade your outsider language for counting as a humanoid (human) too, just like the aasimar ability but for any native outsider.


Do you also institute a varient of the tiefling trait 'Infernal Bastard' which basically makes you a runtier tiefling? Cutting out your energy resistances and reducing the spell like ability to a zero level one?

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Mark Seifter wrote:
Alexander Augunas wrote:
How does it feel to know ALL of the secrets that forum-goers are dying to hear?
Often it makes me really really eager for the shoe to drop and the secrets to get to you guys!

I look forward to commiserating as best I can with you.

Mark Seifter wrote:
VI is just a timeless classic.

This is why we cool.

Grand Lodge RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Alexander Augunas wrote:
How does it feel to know ALL of the secrets that forum-goers are dying to hear?
Often it makes me really really eager for the shoe to drop and the secrets to get to you guys!
I look forward to commiserating as best I can with you.

*strokes chin and raises one eyebrow*

Designer

David Neilson wrote:
Do you also institute a varient of the tiefling trait 'Infernal Bastard' which basically makes you a runtier tiefling? Cutting out your energy resistances and reducing the spell like ability to a zero level one?

So far, I've allowed three native outsiders total. One is a sylph, so she already has a runty SLA, and the other is a reaper, so she doesn't have any SLA. I suspect if I was going to run a campaign where tieflings were a major theme, like Council of Thieves, that I would just go with the normal tiefling, probably rolling on the d100 chart of amusing alternatives for darkness. That's what Linda did when she ran CoT. With aasimar, I would certainly not allow it without significant reductions. The third I allowed was an oni-spawn tiefling, which really fit Jade Regent. It's also worth noting that our group does not normally use the odd-duck ignore-prereqs rule (I allowed it as a carrot for the PC of the hungerseed tiefling, who was making an arcane trickster and was either going to pick a race with actually non-terrible ability score adjustments for an arcane trickster or a hungerseed tiefling because it fit the story. I just had so many evil GM complication plans, that I dangled the ignore-prereqs as a special option, and eventually the player bit. It was a long decision for him, so it seems it was balanced for that situation. Of course, then that player quit the campaign anyway and the character died).

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Jiggy wrote:
*strokes chin and raises one eyebrow*

I'm nowhere near as deep in the inner circle as he is, but I do have my own shiny forum tag now. ;)

Silver Crusade

Mark, would it be possible to add the angelic aspect spells to
the bloodragers bonus spells if they have the celestial bloodline?

What is you favorite class and arch type from the ACG?

Two other questions if you get a racial resistance bonus and a bloodline
resistance bonus why don't they stack.

The other question is on dragon hide made into armor why don't you get the armor bonus for the natural armor of the dragon. IF you bring in the skin of a great wyrm you should get the natural armor bonus for a great wyrm not a generic bonus based on the type of armor it is being made into.

on the same line if you have dragon hide armor made from a dragon that you killed why don't you get the elemental resistance for the type of dragon that the armor is crated from. Perhaps a flat bonus based on age category of the dragon.

Can you suggest a new product to your fellow devs an Iconics codex like the NPCs codex? For all the Iconics thru the ACG.


Is it gauche to ask rulesy questions here? I'm pretty confident of the answers anyway, but I would be interested in your take.

I made a character build that dances on the edge of a ton of different rules, so I figure asking them all in the same place wouldn't hurt

1. Can an elf take both the kapenia dancer and the spell dancer archetypes?
2. Can an elf magus take their favored class bonus (+1/6 of a new arcana) before they get the arcana class feature?
3. Can a kapenia dancer take the feat Slashing Grace for their bladed scarf?
4. Can a magus use the arcana 'Arcane Deed (Precise Strike)' during a round in which she uses spell combat?
5. (This one is sketchy) Can a spell dancer with the Arcane Dealer arcana grant an enhancement bonus to cards with her arcane pool?

Designer

Lou Diamond wrote:

Mark, would it be possible to add the angelic aspect spells to

the bloodragers bonus spells if they have the celestial bloodline?

What is you favorite class and arch type from the ACG?

Two other questions if you get a racial resistance bonus and a bloodline
resistance bonus why don't they stack.

The other question is on dragon hide made into armor why don't you get the armor bonus for the natural armor of the dragon. IF you bring in the skin of a great wyrm you should get the natural armor bonus for a great wyrm not a generic bonus based on the type of armor it is being made into.

on the same line if you have dragon hide armor made from a dragon that you killed why don't you get the elemental resistance for the type of dragon that the armor is crated from. Perhaps a flat bonus based on age category of the dragon.

Can you suggest a new product to your fellow devs an Iconics codex like the NPCs codex? For all the Iconics thru the ACG.

1) Given that it's a sor/wiz spell, I'd say that's something I would probably allow as a home GM (subject to my usual rules for spell research of non-core spells). I'd give them at the same level as the paladin version.

2) Oh, someone asked me this earlier. It's in there somewhere. I think I picked a few that I'm liking for different reasons.

3) Resistance bonuses never stack. That said, races in most cases should probably give racial bonuses, not resistance, and racial bonuses stack.

4) Dragon hide armor is a particular material for armor that makes your armor more tremendously badass-looking and special, but in the end, you're using the choice bits of the dragon's hide, but you aren't that great wyrm, so you don't have the body structure that it did to take advantage of the flex and interworkings of its titanic armor. Plus also it would break the game into the next dimension if you could buy a great wyrm's nat armor. As to elemental immunities—well, the armor is immune to that element, just like the dragon. Your fleshy bits can still be affected though, but dragonhide costs less to add those energy resistance enhancements due to the lingering affinity of the dragon, so the game already covers that aspect.

5) I'm not really in a position to pitch products to my fellow designers, or to the developers (which I'm not, so that would be even harder). However, an Iconics Codex seems like it would not generate enough pagecount for a Pathfinder RPG line book, while also repeating itself quite a bit since the NPC Codex has all the CRB iconics.

Designer

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ohako wrote:

Is it gauche to ask rulesy questions here? I'm pretty confident of the answers anyway, but I would be interested in your take.

I made a character build that dances on the edge of a ton of different rules, so I figure asking them all in the same place wouldn't hurt

1. Can an elf take both the kapenia dancer and the spell dancer archetypes?
2. Can an elf magus take their favored class bonus (+1/6 of a new arcana) before they get the arcana class feature?
3. Can a kapenia dancer take the feat Slashing Grace for their bladed scarf?
4. Can a magus use the arcana 'Arcane Deed (Precise Strike)' during a round in which she uses spell combat?
5. (This one is sketchy) Can a spell dancer with the Arcane Dealer arcana grant an enhancement bonus to cards with her arcane pool?

In general, you will need to sound out your specific GM with this one, as you correctly state that it's pretty edgecase in a lot of places, so you could get an unfavorable response where you least expect it. That said, if you were playing in my game (assuming all these options were in play), here's what my rulings would be:

1) Due to the weirdness of Kapenia not losing medium and heavy (and the odd contradiction that they cause), this seems 100% OK. I can't see a reason why this would be disallowed, unless the GM was already houseruling to give Kapenia a replacement for thos abilities which may do nothing for it. So definitely yes in PFS.

2) While I had previously thought this was definitely yes, a few months before I joined up, in the PFS FAQ about the overpowered aasimar FCB for oracle, it was also confirmed that you can't take a FCB for something you don't have yet. So in PFS, no, but I would likely allow it in my home game.

3) Since they wield it "as a one-handed melee weapon", I would allow this. Some GMs may not and use the lance FAQ as backup, but I'm not convinced that should apply, so I think you can use Slashing Grace.

4) Let's take a step back. Arcane Deed says

Quote:
When a magus takes this arcana, he can pick any one deed from the swashbuckler class feature as long as that deed can be used by a swashbuckler of his magus level. The magus can use that deed by using points from his arcane pool as the panache points required for that deed. A magus can take this arcana multiple times, each time gaining a new deed.

So it doesn't give you an effective swashbuckler level for the purposes of determining the deed's power (only affects precise strike) and it doesn't say that having points in your arcane pool counts as having points in your panache pool, only that you can spend arcane instead of spend panache. The first note is probably an oversight, but I think that the second may have been an intentional decision by the freelancer, since it is far easier for a magus to not have pressure to spend his last point of arcane pool, combined with the fact that they may have been intending to block precise strike particularly (which, if so, was a good call, since it is a massive surge in magus power, given that precise strike was created to balance the damage loss between a one-handed and two-handed weapon for swash, but the magus class already in and of itself is balanced around only having a one-handed weapon). Anyway, long story short, I wouldn't even allow Arcane Deed (precise strike) to begin with.

5) It's like you thought. Arcane Dealer lets you spend your pool to grant enhancements as if they were a ranged weapon. Since you don't have any choices for enhancements in your pool as a spell dancer any more, this would then leave you having spent your pool point and gained nothing. So as you expect, no. I could see a minor potential in strict wording to try to go the other way on this, but I don't see why a GM would want to use that reading to short-circuit the spell dancer archetype's main tradeoff on a technicality.


Mark Seifter wrote:
2) While I had previously thought this was definitely yes, a few months before I joined up, in the PFS FAQ about the overpowered aasimar FCB for oracle, it was also confirmed that you can't take a FCB for something you don't have yet. So in PFS, no, but I would likely allow it in my home game.

Isn't that restriction pretty much pointless now that you can use Ultimate Campaign's rules to retrain stuff?

Designer

Lemmy wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
2) While I had previously thought this was definitely yes, a few months before I joined up, in the PFS FAQ about the overpowered aasimar FCB for oracle, it was also confirmed that you can't take a FCB for something you don't have yet. So in PFS, no, but I would likely allow it in my home game.
Isn't that restriction pretty much pointless now that you can use Ultimate Campaign's rules to retrain stuff?

Oddly, FCB and traits are, I believe, the only things you can't retrain. As I said, I'm not sold in my own games about not allowing this. I do agree that it curbs the level of crazy of some of the combos with the aasimar's FCB, but I'd rather just not allow or change that ability and allow other abilities to start applying at lower levels. That said, with the PFS pregens I built who gained, for instance, 1/6 of a slayer talent, I took hit point at 1st level just to avoid contention. Besides, since they only exist at levels 1, 4, and 7, it won't hurt anyway in that case.


Mark Seifter wrote:
Lemmy wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
2) While I had previously thought this was definitely yes, a few months before I joined up, in the PFS FAQ about the overpowered aasimar FCB for oracle, it was also confirmed that you can't take a FCB for something you don't have yet. So in PFS, no, but I would likely allow it in my home game.
Isn't that restriction pretty much pointless now that you can use Ultimate Campaign's rules to retrain stuff?
Oddly, FCB and traits are, I believe, the only things you can't retrain. As I said, I'm not sold in my own games about not allowing this. I do agree that it curbs the level of crazy of some of the combos with the aasimar's FCB, but I'd rather just not allow or change that ability and allow other abilities to start applying at lower levels. That said, with the PFS pregens I built who gained, for instance, 1/6 of a slayer talent, I took hit point at 1st level just to avoid contention. Besides, since they only exist at levels 1, 4, and 7, it won't hurt anyway in that case.

I think changing the offending ability would be a much better solution. Making changes that include completely unrelated rules can create all sorts of unexpected consequences... Sadly, this seems a common way to deal with these things, like the idea of limiting free actions to 3 per turn instead of simply fixing weapon cords. Fortunately, in that case, the devs saw the light (after a very loud backlash from the community, but still...)

On a completely unrelated note... How old were you when you started working with game design? And how did you join the industry?

(Who knows... If engineering doesn't work out, I might decide to create Lemmyfinder someday XD)

Designer

Lemmy wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Lemmy wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
2) While I had previously thought this was definitely yes, a few months before I joined up, in the PFS FAQ about the overpowered aasimar FCB for oracle, it was also confirmed that you can't take a FCB for something you don't have yet. So in PFS, no, but I would likely allow it in my home game.
Isn't that restriction pretty much pointless now that you can use Ultimate Campaign's rules to retrain stuff?
Oddly, FCB and traits are, I believe, the only things you can't retrain. As I said, I'm not sold in my own games about not allowing this. I do agree that it curbs the level of crazy of some of the combos with the aasimar's FCB, but I'd rather just not allow or change that ability and allow other abilities to start applying at lower levels. That said, with the PFS pregens I built who gained, for instance, 1/6 of a slayer talent, I took hit point at 1st level just to avoid contention. Besides, since they only exist at levels 1, 4, and 7, it won't hurt anyway in that case.

I think changing the offending ability would be a much better solution. Making changes that include completely unrelated rules can create all sorts of unexpected consequences... Sadly, this seems a common way to deal with these things, like the idea of limiting free actions to 3 per turn instead of simply fixing weapon cords. Fortunately, in that case, the devs saw the light (after a very loud backlash from the community, but still...)

On a completely unrelated note... How old were you when you started working with game design? And how did you join the industry?

(Who knows... If engineering doesn't work out, I might decide to create Lemmyfinder someday XD)

I don't think the intent was to change it. I can't tell you one way or the other, as I was just a RPG civilian too at the time, but I believe that just officially that's how they had always taken it to work, and some of the stronger FCB were designed assuming that restriction. Or something like that. I can see the reading, even if I might not use it myself.

I started working with game design with a lot of fan work in my late teens and early twenties, most of which was never published. For 3pp, I pitched some ideas for my first product and was accepted, and I was invited to work on my second product (published first). It's usually not hard if you have a good idea. As to Paizo, I applied for the open design position vacated by Sean and, after being surprised and excited to receive it, switched gears from my PhD work on AI at MIT to game design full time!


Mark Seifter wrote:
good stuff

welp, that's that. I guess my backup 'things go haywire' character will be Galeena the Conqueror Ooze, rather than Elfstar the Dancing Queen.

hmmm.


I see.

Anyway, on an unrelated topic... I asked this question to JJ, so I decided take the opportunity to ask you too!

BY THE POWER OF CTRL+C; CTRL+V!

1- What kind of music do you like?
2- What are 3 of your favorite bands? (Here is hoping for a fellow fan of classic rock and heavy metal! XD)

I'll even add an extra, just for you...

3- What feat would you say is a good example of great design?

(I personally like Cornugon Smash, because it's useful, simple, balanced, unique and has no crappy prerequisites)


Mark Seifter wrote:
So it doesn't give you an effective swashbuckler level for the purposes of determining the deed's power (only affects precise strike) and it doesn't say that having points in your arcane pool counts as having points in your panache pool, only that you can spend arcane instead of spend panache. The first note is probably an oversight, but I think that the second may have been an intentional decision by the freelancer, since it is far easier for a magus to not have pressure to spend his last point of arcane pool, combined with the fact that they may have been intending to block precise strike particularly (which, if so, was a good call, since it is a massive surge in magus power, given that precise strike was created to balance the damage loss between a one-handed and two-handed weapon for swash, but the magus class already in and of itself is balanced around only having a one-handed weapon). Anyway, long story short, I wouldn't even allow Arcane Deed (precise strike) to begin with.

I agree that Precise Strike on the Magus probably needs to be banned, but by this interpretation doesn't that mean that the Magus can't Parry either?

Designer

Matrix Dragon wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
So it doesn't give you an effective swashbuckler level for the purposes of determining the deed's power (only affects precise strike) and it doesn't say that having points in your arcane pool counts as having points in your panache pool, only that you can spend arcane instead of spend panache. The first note is probably an oversight, but I think that the second may have been an intentional decision by the freelancer, since it is far easier for a magus to not have pressure to spend his last point of arcane pool, combined with the fact that they may have been intending to block precise strike particularly (which, if so, was a good call, since it is a massive surge in magus power, given that precise strike was created to balance the damage loss between a one-handed and two-handed weapon for swash, but the magus class already in and of itself is balanced around only having a one-handed weapon). Anyway, long story short, I wouldn't even allow Arcane Deed (precise strike) to begin with.
I agree that Precise Strike on the Magus probably needs to be banned, but by this interpretation doesn't that mean that the Magus can't Parry either?

It would seem they can't riposte. But honestly parry is by far the stronger half of that ability.


A Magus with Amateur Swashbuckler can still pull it off, though... Although at the expense of 2 Arcana and 1 feat, so I wouldn't be worried...

Designer

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Lemmy wrote:

I see.

Anyway, on an unrelated topic... I asked this question to JJ, so I decided take the opportunity to ask you too!

BY THE POWER OF CTRL+C; CTRL+V!

1- What kind of music do you like?
2- What are 3 of your favorite bands? (Here is hoping for a fellow fan of classic rock and heavy metal! XD)

I'll even add an extra, just for you...

3- What feat would you say is a good example of great design?

(I personally like Cornugon Smash, because it's useful, simple, balanced, unique and has no crappy prerequisites)

1&2) My interest in music is...hard to describe. Once some years back, some friends attempted to use experimentation to figure out what kind of music I liked, by playing stuff and noting whether I liked it or not, but they couldn't consistently come up with any rules for it. There were a few heuristics, but they didn't really correspond positively with any of the popular modern music styles (there were some negative correspondances of things I just didn't like).

3) I like feats that fill a niche and expand a character's options in an interesting way, while making sure not to step on the toes of class features, since a feat slot is a lot less expensive than multiclassing. For instance, I find the design of Combat Reflexes pretty interesting. The mere existence of that feat opens up a ton of potential options for characters that wouldn't work with one AoO per round. One thing I think is important is that simple is not the same as trivial, and sometimes something that seems obvious in retrospect is actually great design. Combat Reflexes might qualify there. As opposed to, say, Strike Back, which does the opposite and closes off options that some GMs might have allowed without a feat, or Divine Protection, which poaches one of the paladin's most powerful features and supercharges oracles for no real reason.

Contributor

Mark Seifter wrote:
or Divine Protection, which poaches one of the paladin's most powerful features and supercharges oracles for no real reason.

I agree that Divine Protection supercharges oracles, and honestly the mystery class feature should have been kept from the feat's options for qualifying for it. But I think the intent was to allow warpriests to be more like the "paladins of any alignment" that people wanted them to be.

Divine Protection IS the paladin's most powerful ability, and its to the point where people (mostly min-maxers) will dip paladin and try to skirt around all of the roleplaying "baggage" of actually BEING a paladin just to add their Charisma bonus on saving throws. As a result, I personally think that having a feat like this is a good thing for the same reason that having both the eldritch knight and the magus or having both the duelist and the swashbuckler is a good thing. The new option allows the older option to define itself better. People will take levels of paladin because they want to belong to a very specific character idea while people who want a more general concept can have their cake.

Also, its rather difficult for me to get mad about a feat stealing divine protection when we've made a regular habit of doing that to the rogue. One base class, one alternate class, at least half a dozen archetypes, at least a dozen prestige classes, and the Precise Strike feat can be used to grant a d6 of precise damage to a character. That's not including the number of ways to steal trapfinding, uncanny dodge, improved uncanny dodge, evasion, trap sense, and rogue talents from the rogue.

But yes, I agree that the feat should have been limited to blessings and domains. The flavor of allowing mysteries doesn't even work that well considering that the oracle's "divine powers" actually impose a very real negative side effect upon them.

Designer

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Alexander Augunas wrote:
Divine Protection IS the paladin's most powerful ability, and its to the point where people (mostly min-maxers) will dip paladin and try to skirt around all of the roleplaying "baggage" of actually BEING a paladin just to add their Charisma bonus on saving throws. As a result, I personally think that having a feat like this is a good thing for the same reason that having both the eldritch knight and the magus or having both the duelist and the swashbuckler is a good thing. The new option allows the older option to define itself better. People will take levels of paladin because they want to belong to a very specific character idea while people who want a more general concept can have their cake.

No, not really. It's still too powerful for a feat. +2 to one save is a solid feat. Using ability scores instead of static amounts is dangerous design in general. A feat that adds an ability modifier to all saves gives somewhere between -3 and around +13 to all saves. It's swingy, it's unpredictable for the designer, and de facto anyone who takes it is going to get way way way more than the value of a feat from it. In fact, for Cha-focused characters, it would be worth trading your entire saving throw chart for this one feat, by which I mean, just getting +0 as your base saving throws instead of what the chart says. 2 levels in a multiclass is a significant sacrifice for most characters who would want to focus on Cha above all else (aka casters). The fact that people still do it shows how powerful the ability is. Perhaps it means that a new class should come out that has that ability as a level 2 ability, one with less RP baggage than paladin has. But it doesn't mean it should become a feat and thus up for grabs for a full caster. There is no comparison between multiclassing 2 levels and a feat.

Quote:
One base class, one alternate class, at least half a dozen archetypes, at least a dozen prestige classes, and the Precise Strike feat can be used to grant a d6 of precise damage to a character. That's not including the number of ways to steal trapfinding, uncanny dodge, improved uncanny dodge, evasion, trap sense, and rogue talents from the rogue.

Precise Strike is extremely limited, and everything else you mentioned is a class feature. I'm OK with class features repeating (though I agree I wish the rogue hadn't had so many of them poached), just not of feats poaching powerful class features.


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I have to say though, Oracles have simply terrible saving throw bonuses without the divine protection feat. They kind of needed something. They get only one good save and none of their saving throws match up with their primary stats. In Wrath of the Righteous our GM allowed Divine Protection because without it the Oracle would have needed 20s to make the DC 35-40+ saving throws that high tier mythic enemies and Demon Lords throw around.


Matrix Dragon wrote:
I have to say though, Oracles have simply terrible saving throw bonuses without the divine protection feat. They kind of needed something. They get only one good save and none of their saving throws match up with their primary stats. In Wrath of the Righteous our GM allowed Divine Protection because without it the Oracle would have needed 20s to make the DC 35-40+ saving throws that high tier mythic enemies and Demon Lords throw around.

That's a good point... Although I really dislike Divine Protection, Oracles do need help with their saves. I don't know why they didn't get good Fort like every other divine caster in the game. :/

Sadly, Great Fortitude and Iron Will don't help much due to not scaling at all.

Contributor

Lemmy wrote:
Matrix Dragon wrote:
I have to say though, Oracles have simply terrible saving throw bonuses without the divine protection feat. They kind of needed something. They get only one good save and none of their saving throws match up with their primary stats. In Wrath of the Righteous our GM allowed Divine Protection because without it the Oracle would have needed 20s to make the DC 35-40+ saving throws that high tier mythic enemies and Demon Lords throw around.

That's a good point... Although I really dislike Divine Protection, Oracles do need help with their saves. I don't know why they didn't get good Fort like every other divine caster in the game. :/

Sadly, Great Fortitude and Iron Will don't help much due to not scaling at all.

I can understand what Mark is saying, though. Its like saying, "Oh man, the rogue really needs help with her attack bonus. Let's give her the ability to cast true strike as a swift action at will at Level 2!" You go from one extreme ("I feel like I miss too much") to the other ("my iterative attacks NEVER miss").

Mark" wrote:
No, not really. It's still too powerful for a feat. +2 to one save is a solid feat. Using ability scores instead of static amounts is dangerous design in general. A feat that adds an ability modifier to all saves gives somewhere between -3 and around +13 to all saves. It's swingy, it's unpredictable for the designer, and de facto anyone who takes it is going to get way way way more than the value of a feat from it. In fact, for Cha-focused characters, it would be worth trading your entire saving throw chart for this one feat, by which I mean, just getting +0 as your base saving throws instead of what the chart says. 2 levels in a multiclass is a significant sacrifice for most characters who would want to focus on Cha above all else (aka casters). The fact that people still do it shows how powerful the ability is. Perhaps it means that a new class should come out that has that ability as a level 2 ability, one with less RP baggage than paladin has. But it doesn't mean it should become a feat and thus up for grabs for a full caster. There is no comparison between multiclassing 2 levels and a feat.

Not to say that you're wrong, because I don't think that you're wrong in thinking that Divine Protection is too strong to be a feat because the reasons you noted here are good ones, but I think its also fair to point out that Power Attack, Cosmopolitan, Anticipate Dodge, and Childlike are all feats. Meaning that the "Power Level" of a feat only really exists in the context of other feats. This is also somewhat true for class features, as bravery is a class feature and Iron Will is a feat (and Iron Will is undeniably stronger than bravery).

That said, your point makes me wonder if divine grace and Divine Protection should be changed to function like the duelist's canny dodge class feature in that you get to add up to 1 point of your Charisma modifier per paladin level you posssess, or 1 point of your Charisma modifier per level in the class that granted you your mystery / domain / blessings class feature. Even that would probably be too good for Divine Protection, but without a doubt it would curb the practice of dipping one level of paladin for divine grace. This would begin to have other, similar abilities (like the inquisitor's cunning initiative) questioned, however.

To ask an actual question, (even though I do enjoy having someone on the Paizo forums to talk shop with), from what you've experienced in-office so far, do you think that using an errata to change Divine Protection is something that is on the table for the design team, or is it a case of, "We unleashed the kraken and now must live with the consequences?"

Designer

Lemmy wrote:
Sadly, Great Fortitude and Iron Will don't help much due to not scaling at all.
Alexander Augunas wrote:

I can understand what Mark is saying, though. Its like saying, "Oh man, the rogue really needs help with her attack bonus. Let's give her the ability to cast true strike as a swift action at will at Level 2!" You go from one extreme ("I feel like I miss too much") to the other ("my iterative attacks NEVER miss")...

Not to say that you're wrong, because I don't think that you're wrong in thinking that Divine Protection is too strong to be a feat because the reasons you noted here are good ones, but I think its also fair to point out that Power Attack, Cosmopolitan, Anticipate Dodge, and Childlike are all feats. Meaning that the "Power Level" of a feat only really exists in the context of other feats. This is also somewhat true for class features, as bravery is a class feature and Iron Will is a feat (and Iron Will is undeniably stronger than bravery).

These are both correct Alexander. However, I believe that the high end of what a class feature should be allowed to do should be stronger than the high end of what a feat should be allowed to do.

To get back to Lemmy's fair point that I quoted at the top, and how it ties in here, it's undoubtedly true that +2 to a save of your choice is a mathematically solid expenditure of a feat, but certain saves may still fall behind at high levels because of high level math, so it may be an interesting modification to add to all 3 of those feats the following "At class levels 7, 13, and 19 in a class that has a weak progression in this save, the bonus from this feat increases by 1". If you did that, then mathematically, those feats would precisely change a weak save to a strong save, or add a +2 to an already-strong save.

I have more to respond to your other questions, Alexander, but this reply stands on its own for now, so I'll post the other below.

Contributor

Mark Seifter wrote:
I have more to respond to your other questions, Alexander, but this reply stands on its own for now, so I'll post the other below.

Isn't it like 7 am PST? What the heck are you doing up at 7 am on a Saturday answering questions?!

Designer

Alexander Augunas wrote:
That said, your point makes me wonder if divine grace and Divine Protection should be changed to function like the duelist's canny dodge class feature in that you get to add up to 1 point of your Charisma modifier per paladin level you posssess, or 1 point of your Charisma modifier per level in the class that granted you your mystery / domain / blessings class feature. Even that would probably be too good for Divine Protection, but without a doubt it would curb the practice of dipping one level of paladin for divine grace. This would begin to have other, similar abilities (like the inquisitor's cunning initiative) questioned, however.

It's certainly possible that divine grace would be better balanced if it added +1 per paladin level to a max of your Cha modifier. That still puts the paladin with enough Cha above all other classes starting at level 3.

Quote:
To ask an actual question, (even though I do enjoy having someone on the Paizo forums to talk shop with), from what you've experienced in-office so far, do you think that using an errata to change Divine Protection is something that is on the table for the design team, or is it a case of, "We unleashed the kraken and now must live with the consequences?"

To be honest? Fixing something just because it's unbalanced--not because it's in error or has a murky interpretation but because it's crystal clear but unbalanced--is considered a dangerous game. I've been watching closely enough to know that pretty much everyone on the forums considers Divine Protection to be broken and would not cry if it was gone or weakened or something, but I would say that due to the thing I was talking about in that other thread about psychological conditioning vis-a-vis FAQ responses, it's going to be less likely, or at least take a while. If something is truly shaking the pillars of the earth, also, then it helps gather more data about that ability if it's allowed in PFS, which Divine Protection is not (a good thing for PFS, though).

Designer

Alexander Augunas wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
I have more to respond to your other questions, Alexander, but this reply stands on its own for now, so I'll post the other below.
Isn't it like 7 am PST? What the heck are you doing up at 7 am on a Saturday answering questions?!

Getting ready for my 11AM EST game with my Boston gaming group.

Contributor

Mark Seifter wrote:
To be honest? Fixing something just because it's unbalanced--not because it's in error or has a murky interpretation but because it's crystal clear but unbalanced--is considered a dangerous game. I've been watching closely enough to know that pretty much everyone on the forums considers Divine Protection to be broken and would not cry if it was gone or weakened or something, but I would say that due to the thing I was talking about in that other thread about psychological conditioning vis-a-vis FAQ responses, it's going to be less likely, or at least take a while.

And I'm sure that the Crane Wing change, which happened a good year or two after Ultimate Combat was published, helps to support this mindset, hm? ;-)

Mark wrote:
Getting ready for my 11AM EST game with my Boston gaming group.

That's great that you still get to play with your group from back home! I've had to think about moving to a place where I'd be more likely to get a teaching job, and I'm honestly not sure if my group would do the same for me. We barely meet in-person as-is and the furthest player lives 15 minutes away.


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Alexander Augunas wrote:
Lemmy wrote:
Matrix Dragon wrote:
I have to say though, Oracles have simply terrible saving throw bonuses without the divine protection feat. They kind of needed something. They get only one good save and none of their saving throws match up with their primary stats. In Wrath of the Righteous our GM allowed Divine Protection because without it the Oracle would have needed 20s to make the DC 35-40+ saving throws that high tier mythic enemies and Demon Lords throw around.

That's a good point... Although I really dislike Divine Protection, Oracles do need help with their saves. I don't know why they didn't get good Fort like every other divine caster in the game. :/

Sadly, Great Fortitude and Iron Will don't help much due to not scaling at all.

I can understand what Mark is saying, though. Its like saying, "Oh man, the rogue really needs help with her attack bonus. Let's give her the ability to cast true strike as a swift action at will at Level 2!" You go from one extreme ("I feel like I miss too much") to the other ("my iterative attacks NEVER miss").

Oh, don't misunderstand me... I despise that feat. It's unbalanced and steps on the Paladin's toes with an iron boot! All I meant is that Oracles (and Sorcerers... And most Cha-based casters) have pretty weak saves. And many of them are very feat starved, but even when they can afford Great Fort and Iron Will, it doesn't help much beyond 6th level or so.

Mark Seifter wrote:
To get back to Lemmy's fair point that I quoted at the top, and how it ties in here, it's undoubtedly true that +2 to a save of your choice is a mathematically solid expenditure of a feat, but certain saves may still fall behind at high levels because of high level math, so it may be an interesting modification to add to all 3 of those feats the following "At class levels 7, 13, and 19 in a class that has a weak progression in this save, the bonus from this feat increases by 1". If you did that, then mathematically, those feats would precisely change a weak save to a strong save, or add a +2 to an already-strong save.

While I understand the point. Wouldn't it be unfair in giving less of a benefit for characters who need it the least? I mean, a Barbarian doesn't need Great Fortitude, so it's already not as good as feat for him as it's for Rogues (from a cost/benefit PoV). If a player takes that feat for that Barbarian, it's because he really wants a great Fort save and is paying a valuable resource* for it. Besides, unless the character is focused on Wis, chances are his wills ave will be mediocre at best anyway... Even a Wizard with 14 Wis has trouble making will saves once the levels hit the double digits (admittedly, Wizards have means to boost their defenses, but that's not the case for every class, or even every caster if they are the only supporters in the party, making them the only real source of buffs in the party). And even n the case of casters, allowing them to benefit the same from these defensive options encourages their players to focus on buffing their friends, since they don't need to spend as many resources protecting themselves.

* Feats are the scarcest resource a character has (a fact that many devs seem to forget, often requiring 2+ feat prerequisites, which may or may not be useful/interesting for benefits that are simply not worth that much of an investment), so they should be truly useful and fun to get. Sadly, more often than not, they aren't, which is why I doubt more than 50% of feats ever see play in any game where the players have more than 6 months experience with the game... There is not more frustrating in character building than having to get Combat Expertise (or similarly crappy/boring feat) just to be able to grab what you really want 2 levels later (which could be weeks or months of real life time).

Wow... This ended up a much longer post than I expected... Sorry for the wall of text. :/

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I look forward to my Winter Oracle taking Divine Protection in our Reign of Winter game.

Silver Crusade

As someone who never really cared for Paladins I am okay with that feat.

Designer

Lemmy wrote:
While I understand the point. Wouldn't it be unfair in giving less of a benefit for characters who need it the least? I mean, a Barbarian doesn't need Great Fortitude, so it's already not as good as feat for him as it's for Rogues (from a cost/benefit PoV). If a player takes that feat for that Barbarian, it's because he really wants a great Fort save and is paying a valuable resource* for it. Besides, unless the character is focused on Wis, chances are his wills ave will be mediocre at best anyway... Even a Wizard with 14 Wis has trouble making will saves once the levels hit the double digits (admittedly, Wizards have means to boost their defenses, but that's not the case for every class, or even every caster if they are the only supporters in the party, making them the only real source of buffs in the party). And even n the case of casters, allowing them to benefit the same from these defensive options encourages their players to focus on buffing their friends, since they don't need to spend as many resources protecting themselves.

The math depends on the way you look at it. Leaving barbarian aside due to superstition and looking at fighter or monk instead, if you have a rogue with +8 Fort and a Fighter with +12 Fort and you go up against a DC 19 save, they each have a set chance to resist (50% for the rogue and 70% for the fighter). The current version of Great Fortitude eliminates 1/5 of the rogue's remaining failure chance but 1/3 of the fighter's remaining failure chance. It's the reason why many other games charge diminishing returns on increasing things you are already good at.

Quote:
* Feats are the scarcest resource a character has (a fact that many devs seem to forget, often requiring 2+ feat prerequisites, which may or may not be useful/interesting for benefits that are simply not worth that much of an investment), so they should be truly useful and fun to get. Sadly, more often than not, they aren't, which is why I doubt more than 50% of feats ever see play in any game where the players have more than 6 months experience with the game... There is not more frustrating in character building than having to get Combat Expertise (or similarly crappy/boring feat) just to be able to grab what you really want 2 levels later (which could be weeks or months of real life time).

Point taken, and while I agree with your final thrust, there are some characters for whom feats are actually less rare than other important resources (heck, it's possible to build a character with more feats than skill points, if you dump Int enough, though that's not what I mean).

Lemmy wrote:
Wow... This ended up a much longer post than I expected... Sorry for the wall of text. :/

No worries at all! I always go long too.


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Mark Seifter wrote:
The math depends on the way you look at it. Leaving barbarian aside due to superstition and looking at fighter or monk instead, if you have a rogue with +8 Fort and a Fighter with +12 Fort and you go up against a DC 19 save, they each have a set chance to resist (50% for the rogue and 70% for the fighter). The current version of Great Fortitude eliminates 1/5 of the rogue's remaining failure chance but 1/3 of the fighter's remaining failure chance. It's the reason why many other games charge diminishing returns on increasing things you are already good at.

I see your point... But I don't see why a character should be punished for being good at something (e.g.: Have a lesser return for the same investment). I think the return a feat gives you should be proportional to how much you invest in it, not to an artificial limit. It feels unfair (and needlessly complicated).

To put it more simply, instead of imposing an artificial limit to how good a character can be at X, far more often than not, it's a much better idea to just let him be great at X, but not so good at W, Y and Z by simple virtue of he not dedicating resources to better himself at those aspects of the game. After all, the character only has so many resources to spend, so he can't be great at everything anyway. That Fighter with Con 18 and Great Fort only fails Fort save on a 1? No problem. That means his Reflex and Will probably aren't as good as a more balanced character... And chances are he has gaps in other areas to.

Saves are a weird case, since they are so binary. Their DCs wouldn't bother me nearly as much if there weren't so many saving throws that are basically "Roll a die. If you're unlucky you're out of the game". Especially when so often it's just a matter of luck... You can have a +900 to Fort save, roll a 1 and you're just as petrified as the guy with Fort -3. If saves had scaling consequences based on how badly you failed them instead of the current All-or-Nothing system, they wouldn't be a problem... (Hey, there is an idea for PF:U!).

Honestly... Once my characters reach 12th level or so, I tend to go paranoid with saves, since I know they will basically kill my character with a single unlucky roll... (If that! There is always stuff like Maze, which I honestly don't understand how someone can see that spell and decide it's balanced enough to go to print and never be errata'd).

Mark Seifter wrote:
Point taken, and while I agree with your final thrust, there are some characters for whom feats are actually less rare than other important resources (heck, it's possible to build a character with more feats than skill points, if you dump Int enough, though that's not what I mean).

True... But that's mostly class specific. Feats are universally scarce (even for Fighters, since all their strength comes form feats, meaning they have more need of them and are weakened by feat chains. In fact, feat chains do little other than limit character concepts and rob Fighters of their one true class feature). Besides, you have to gimp your character's Int really hard to have more feats than skill points... Except for Fighters, of course, where a simple Int 8 already means they have more feats than skill points, but Fighters are hardly an example of good design...

Sorry, sorry... I know I can come off as unnecessarily harsh, but sometimes it's really difficult to not be frustrated when I start talking about SoL effects and needlessly long feat chains with awful prerequisites. >.<'

Also, thanks for taking the time to reply. Enjoy your weekend! :)

Designer

Lemmy wrote:
I see your point... But I don't see why a character should be punished for being good at something (e.g.: Have a lesser return for the same investment). I think the return a feat gives you should be proportional to how much you invest in it, not to an artificial limit. It feels unfair (and needlessly complicated).

In this case, I believe the math of +2 on a d20 is about right for those feats in general, but I'm willing to admit that weak saves can be so low at higher levels, that the chance to shore them up sort of as a patch isn't a bad thing, just to help with save math at those levels. So in this example I spitballed, it wouldn't be to punish the high performers so much as benefit the low performers.

Lemmy wrote:
Saves are a weird case, since they are so binary. Their DCs wouldn't bother me nearly as much if there weren't so many saving throws that are basically "Roll a die. If you're unlucky you're out of the game". Especially when so often it's just a matter of luck... You can have a +900 to Fort save, roll a 1 and you're just as petrified as the guy with Fort -3. If saves had scaling consequences based on how badly you failed them instead of the current All-or-Nothing system, they wouldn't be a problem... (Hey, there is an idea for PF:U!).

In my home games, we use telescoping rolls, so a nat 1 becomes -20 + your next roll (and if you roll nat 1 again, then it's -40 + your next roll, and so on), so the +900 would almost certainly make the save. I agree that scaling consequences for things like saves and attack rolls could be a fun mechanic to try out.

Lemmy wrote:
Also, thanks for taking the time to reply. Enjoy your weekend! :)

No problem. You too!

Silver Crusade

Shouldn't the Hunter pregen have an efficient quiver?

Designer

Joe M. wrote:
Shouldn't the Hunter pregen have an efficient quiver?

Wasn't worth the price. She can carry her stuff alright, and I don't think a 60 arrow quiver really helps her that much over a 20.

Silver Crusade

Mark Seifter wrote:
Joe M. wrote:
Shouldn't the Hunter pregen have an efficient quiver?
Wasn't worth the price. She can carry her stuff alright, and I don't think a 60 arrow quiver really helps her that much over a 20.

My concern is how she's going to find just the arrow she needs in the middle of combat. I always thought that was more the point of the <quiver> than the (admittedly nice) extra capacity.

Efficient Quiver wrote:
Once the owner has filled it, the quiver can quickly produce any item she wishes that is within the quiver, as if from a regular quiver or scabbard.

Doesn't seem helpful to have all those specialty arrows if they're not coming to hand when you need them!

Designer

Since it says you produce it as if from a regular quiver or scabbard, I figured it was no easier to choose arrows from it than a regular one (but that it was hugely helpful if you have multiple larger weapons for the other sections or if you have enough attacks that you routinely empty out a normal quiver). It seems unclear.

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