Aksess's page

We missed the bracing mechanic, so the golem didn't get +10 to its climb skill, making the pit impossible to climb, which removed the golem from the fight with 3 rounds to spare before the pit expired. The defeated caster had the golem control rod on them, making the golem a non-issue. IMO the pit spells should have a reminder about larger creatures being able to brace against the sides.

In the AP we're playing almost all the combat takes place in ruins/dungeons, I don't think any rooms have been larger than 30 squares/150 ft to a side, so the point about distance is somewhat moot without redrawing all the dungeons. A PC with haste can charge 120 ft per round, and the PC wizard can dimension door himself and both martial PCs on top of enemy casters.

The AP specifies which buffs the enemy casters begin with if they have time, and they usually do. They have been using mirror image, but our brawler also has flurry of blows, which tends to shred through it immediately. The action economy of 4 PCs vs 1 caster boss really works against bosses, I think giving them some adds would really help.

Grappling in itself is tricky to balance around, because it goes both ways. If a big enemy grapples a PC then the other PCs have to try to free them before they're killed/swallowed and makes for some good mechanics. But when the PCs grapple enemy casters (unless the enemy caster is a very strong race, like giant or ogre) it just locks them down entirely. 2 turns later the enemy is pinned and gg.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. My playgroup are all a group of friends and we've been playing together for a long time, so we're trying following the official rule #1 that everyone should have fun.

We're playing through Return of the Runelords. We know each runelord is a wizard, we have a wizard in the party, so there's no reason our characters couldn't know the strengths/weaknesses of wizards.

I was going to suggest using the minions concept from 4e, which are adds that only have 1 hitpoint to add complexity to boss fights without pumping up the CR...although a multi-target magic missile would kill them all unless they SO HAPPENED to be under the effects of the Shield spell, which ties directly into the original problem of this post.

On a slightly related note, fighting enemy casters just sucks because their biggest weaknesses are being grappled and taking damage from prepared actions while they try to cast. The entire combat turns into prepared actions to attack if the caster tries to cast or grapple them.

For reference, acid pit spell specifies the climb DC of 30, and clay golem has a STR mod of +7 and no climb skill. Even on a natural 20, resulting in a 27 climb check, it will never reach 30. Even invoking the bracing rule to effectively reduce the DC to 20, the golem would have to roll a 13 to, per RAW, climb at 1/4 of its 20 ft movement speed per round, which is 5 ft. At our level, which is 10, the pit would be 50 ft deep, and require 10 consecutive successful climb checks to climb out. Even if you gave the golem the benefit of starting 10 ft high, if any climb check that rolled at or below at 15 (so 8 on the d20) the golem would fall, and any roll 16-19 it would make no progress, and any time it took damage it had to make another climb check at the DC of the climb to not fall.

Should players be prevented from trivializing an enemy with an obvious weakness?
Non-flying enemies with low reflex saves fall into pits for entire encounters, wizards get grappled to prevent casting and can't escape.

DM wasn't happy with the results because the combat is so binary. We're playing published adventure paths and these are the encounters in the book. Should the DM just keep playing the APs as written and let the players trivialize fights? Counter all player tactics in advance by giving all enemy casters talismans of freedom and all the golems levitate spells? Spawn extra minions in each boss fight, thus spiking up the CR of the encounter? DM discussed the issue with us and asked us how we'd like him to handle it.

Sorry for necrothreading, but I've just come across this problem for a character, and despite this thread having exactly the right questions, it doesn't really have answers.

How do commoners/adventuring parties detect other demi-humans?
If a changeling child is left with a commoner family, the DC to identify something is 10 + CR, right? So maybe a knowledge (nature) DC 11? The commoner family has a decent chance of recognizing the changeling.

However, that means that as a changeling acquires class levels, she gets harder to identify simply because her CR is higher.
A changeling child isn't in disguise, since no disguise check was made.

But there is no DC to identify a dwarf, people just know what dwarves are.

What are the consequences of someone passing the Knowledge (nature)/perception check? Lathiira suggested a good open-ended option that I like, that just suggests that this person isn't exclusively human. If the party met an NPC who appeared human, they probably wouldn't get suspicious and wouldn't attempt to roll a knowledge (nature) check to see if that NPC is demi-human. So I suppose that the act of rolling a knowledge (nature) is the same as being suspicous of someone.

You are absolutely correct. The type of game the DM expects to run should have been laid out in session 0. The players are all a bit fed up, so our solution is actually to form a new group, new adventure path, new DM. Thanks for the input, and cheers.

I performed a bit of necro-threading, sorry if that annoyed anyone. I was doing some research to see if groups were having a similar problem to mine, that is, the DM not allowing the party to make saving throws or resist energy damage against supernatural/extraordinary abilities that monsters have. The DM doesn't want the players to point out that there is a saving throw against 2d4 STR drain to reduce the effect to 1d4 STR damage, or all energy damage that monsters inflict bypasses any/all energy resistances the players have, or not allowing the rogue to use evasion on Reflex saves vs Ex/Su abilities. In this case, it's how much metagame information do the players provide to the DM that we know he's fudging the CR?

And let's not forget my personal favorite:

DM: two boulders come flying out of the darkness, what's your flat-footed AC?
player: 28
DM: you get hit twice, take X damage!
player:...does this boulder come from a giant?
DM: You don't know
player: I have giant defiant armor. AC +2 and DR 2/- against giants. How much damage do I take?
DM: you only get hit 1 by boulder, and take Y damage instead.
player: looks like we're fighting giants!

My DM prefers to keep players as in-the-dark as possible, which can cause some serious issues. In a Paizo adventure path, we had acquired some special items that had some rather unique defenses against certain spells, except the DM forgot said effects and we didn't know what they were because the DM assumed that since the spellcraft DC to identify the items wasn't listed, he made it 50. Over the next several chapters we were affected by multiple spells that we should have been immune to because the DM forgot to track the buffs that he wouldn't tell us that we had, so when we finally beat that DC 50 spellcraft it let to some awkard questions about why those spells hadn't been resisted.

Also, you can get consumable that grant temporary immunity to certain effects, like a stone of newt prevention, that the DM would have a very difficult time tracking for each character.
DM: make a Will save
Me: *rolls*
DM: you fail. you turn into a frog
Me: my very human faces becomes startled when the bead of newt prevention in my pocket turns into dust

Let's say that you have a dwarf alchemist with a plague mask. whew boy. +2 racial bonus vs poison, spells and spell-like abilities, not supernatural or extraordinary abilities. plague mask gives a +4 resistance bonus vs diseases, stacking with the racial, but only if it's a disease originating from a spell. If it's extraordinary or supernatural you only get the +4, otherwise it's +6. You also get +2 untyped bonus to saves vs poison from the class, stacking with the racial for +4 vs all poisons regardless of origin. If a dragon casts its racial spell-like ability Fear on you, you get +2, but no bonus vs its frightful presence, since that's Ex.

I call it information filtering, and I'm not sure if there's a way around it. High-level paladins get DR 5/evil, so since the paladin is tracking his/her own hitpoints, they will immediately know if any damage they take is from an unholy weapon or evil source, since they'll have to ask the DM how much damage to notate on their own character sheet. If the paladin also has Stoneskin cast on him (DR 10/adamantine), he/she can easily discern properties of the weapon the enemy has.

Maybe I'm still missing something, but how did it ever get worthwhile? On the surface I don't see anything that looks particularly worthwhile about specializing in the Weather sphere. Maybe it'll get a handbook to flesh it out more? I love the idea of a weather mage, but when you're measuring your damage output in terms of 1d4/d6/d8 per minute or hour, something seems wrong.

Perhaps I'm just too used to the very explicit spell effects spelled out (no pun intended) in the spell description in the core rulebook. The main advantage of that method is that you don't get into an argument with the DM on abstract physics methods. Focusing in on the difference between a flash flood and a great flood...is there a difference? It doesn't describe how deep the water is. Can you sail a boat in one but not the other? The ability to use wind to fell trees seems potentially useful, but you pick an ability because it WILL be useful, not because it might be useful. How often does the need to wreck a city arise?

As I was reading, it seems like this sphere is most useful when you use it to cancel out difficult weather...but that's just not interesting or fun.

I've been reading through this book, and so far I love it. I was curious how a weather specialist would play out, so I started reading through the Weather sphere...and I'm wondering if I'm missing something. It looks very underpowered for being effective in combat. It takes several rounds to get to higher severity weather, whose effects often aren't felt for *hours*. The maximum effectiveness of the weather sphere seems rather weak.

The effects of the Wind section are detrimental to ranged weapons, flames, and a DC 10 STR check is pretty easy to overcome. It seems pretty ineffective until you get to Tornado.

Cold/heat damage are measured in terms of 1d6 per hour to start with, capping at 3d6 per round. You don't even deal damage per round until severity 6. Granted, you can fatigue opponents, but it still feels lacking.

Precipitation by itself deals in line of sight penalizing, and at higher severity has the nebulous effects of "flash flood" and "great flood", lacking some description like "creatures made of clay or fire take X damage" to help players and DM's figure out what those terms do. Heavy snow seems somewhat useful, but only occurs after multiple hours of snowfall, which is almost irrelevant to combat.
The lightning strike from storm is random unless you get the accompanying talent, and caps out at 10d8 per round at around character level 12-14, which is decidedly underwhelming in an isolated context.

Am I taking the wrong thought process in how the fantasy of a weather mage should play out? Am I missing some beneficial interactions, or the utility of being able to concentrate to increase weather severity while doing something else?

I think you have a really good argument here and I will concede the point. I think my issue is that my group doesn't have weapon/armor master's handbooks, which contain a lot of your solutions. My Path of War warder has been getting by quite well using stances and counters, but as I was using those to survive encounters it got me wondering how a 1st party-only character would fare. I suppose those splatbooks really are nearly a necessity if one wanted to go that route. Thanks for the pointers!

I've always preferred shields as offering a stackable source of DR or situational bonus to a save. The concept of a shield is more in line with soaking dmg than "dodging" it.

I agree. Providing a bonus to REF saves would be nice, to embody the fantasy of a shield-user bracing behind his/her shield against an explosion or dragon's breath attack. Oddly, even though adamantine armor gives DR, the rules specifically state that adamantine shields cannot provide DR, perhaps because it would stack with adamantine armor and give you a whopping (sarcasm) DR 6/-. Path of War has the Martial Power feat, which gives temp HP per round at the same to-hit penalty as Power Attack and increases it by 50% for shield users. That's about the best system I've seen so far.

The bonuses that a shield provides feel a little lackluster at higher levels (10+), which is what prompted the creation of this thread. I haven't crunched any numbers and only have the narrow experience of playing a third party shield-based class, so I was curious what the community had to say.

Shields provide no bonuses to anything other than AC. If an enemy relies primarily on rays, breath attacks, gaze attacks, spells of any kind, touch attacks, or grapples/combat maneuvers of any kind a shield provides no benefit, and higher CR enemies often use all of the above. If the enemy has such a high to-hit that the shield rarely prevents them from hitting you, it's also pointless.

Shield bashing without 3rd party content seems pretty terrible.

As someone pointed out, +7 to AC is pretty high...but when you factor in other gear that you could have at lvl 20: +5 full plate, +5 amulet of natural armor, +5 ring of protection and the base 10 AC, a DEX mod of 1-2 and possibly haste, maybe the dodge feat, blur/displacement (total of 36-38 AC with 25-50% miss chance) it's not THAT significant, even if CR 19-20 creatures attempt to attack, rather than cast spells or use abilities.

Not a fan of using Str to get an AC boost.

Fighters currently have a choice between Str for damage or Dex for AC...this would make Str a no-brainer, giving them benefits for both for high Str.

Well, it would be reduced, since my proposal would be to get a fraction of STR added to your shield bonus (which is bypassed by touch attacks anyway), not the full amount. By the same token, a DEX-based character gets full DEX to AC as long as they're not flat-footed, to-hit with light weapons using weapon finesse, to damage (with caveats) using slashing grace. DEX also applies to 6 skills as opposed to STR's 2 (although swim and climb are pretty important), REF saves, applied equally with STR to CMD, and DEX builds almost always use mithral chain shirt which has no Armor Check Penalty, while builds with other armor types can get a significant ACP until they get mithral everything. For any martial class that can get damage types not based on STR, DEX is 'a no-brainer'.

Aksess wrote:

We have a sorcerer who can distribute the Shield spell ...

How does the sorcerer distribute a personal spell?

That's a very, very, very good question. I just whack stuff until it stops moving.

My friends and I have been going through RotRL campaign and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm writing from the admittedly limited perspective of a warder from Dreamscarred Press' Path of War, which has its own options . At level 13 I have an AC of 36 (5 of that is the shield), and bosses have around +28-34 to hit. However, a lot of the threats at our level seem to come from things that don't target AC, but saves.

We have a sorcerer who can distribute the Shield spell (+4 bonus to AC, no ACP, doesn't take a hand, protects against magic missile) to anyone. He has plenty of uses to cover the normal 3-4 encounters per day, and so right off the bat a physical shield is 2 AC behind, has an ACP and actually costs money. While a shield can eventually have a +5 bonus applied to it, for most of a campaign it'll be unenchanted or up to a +3, so that's a +2 to +5 AC bonus. While shields can be used offensively, there isn't really a reason to, and you need the improved shield bash feat to keep the shield bonus to AC.

Problem: Shields aren't that great.
Problem 1: Between armor check penalty, a flat +1 or +2 shield bonus to AC (without magical enhancement) unless you burn a feat on shield focus (+1 to the AC bonus your shield provides).
Problem 2: Shields compete with the ability to use a 2-handed weapon, which will have higher raw damage dice and that x1.5 STR mod to damage.
Problem 3: Shields are both treated as armor and/or weapons arbitrarily, and there's no benefit to shields of a special material except mithral (to reduce ACP).

Tentative solution to problems 1 and 2:
Would adding 1/2 STR modifier (rounded down) to the shield bonus to AC that shields provide sweeten the option? That 1-2 flat bonus to AC just feels a bit wrong in comparison with the scaling 1.5 STR modifier bonus to damage that 2-handed weapon-users get. Or perhaps adding 1/2 STR modifier OR the base AC bonus of the shield (1 for light, 2 for heavy), whichever is greater?

I could be completely wrong here, and it could be that the potential +5 magical enhancement bonus in addition to the +2 of a heavy shield is sufficient. I was thinking that it'd be nice crunch AND fluff if shields scaled off of the abilities of the user rather than their money/amount of magical enhancement, reflecting the concept that a skilled combatant could use a shield more effectively than a commoner.

We had a similar occurrence in our Paizo published campaign. A character (witch) picks up another, flies several hundred feet away to threaten him alone (he thought the PC he had abducted was stealing from the party). He runs into a BBEG + mini-boss encounter (Published campaign, mind you, so the DM didn't make it up on the spot). BBEG immediately hits him with scorching ray, with only 1 of the 3 rays hitting him for most of his total hp.
He escapes, reports what happened, so the rest of the party starts making its way on foot towards the encounter. He chooses to fly back to the boss while the party is struggling with climb checks, which had prepared an action to scorching ray again. He approached from the same direction in which he escaped, gets scorching ray'd to something like -18 hp, instantly dead. Player gets extremely upset, exclaims that he is "tired of overpowered bosses" (again, published Paizo campaign), storms out of the host's house and drives home, never to return.

I've found you can reduce the comedy aspect of fumbles if you add an element of "your opponent did this to you". For example, if instead of you rolling to confirm a fumble, you and anyone you're in melee with make attack rolls, and only if your opponent rolls higher does something bad happen. So instead of "you somehow get your sword tangled in your trousers and fall over" it becomes "your skillful opponent seizes upon a slight flaw in your defences and makes you fall prone".

I would much prefer this idea over a lot of the others out there. So in essence if you fumble while in a threatened square you may provoke an AoO? Although then only melee martial characters would really be affected by this. Archers would still be unaffected and so would most casters.

At the moment I'm recommending the crit success and crit fumble decks to my group (in free android app form), but I'd recommend that we only use them on confirmed natural 1's and 20's, although I'm seeing a variety of ways to confirm a fumble.

Yes, the odds certainly do seem to be stacked against the PC's. Each time a PC attacks AND is attacked there is a chance of a critical fumble/success respectively.

I think that just about all the points we've discussed have turned me off from keeping our current 'system', but as was correctly pointed out, isn't really a system. At bare minimum I think we should implement the crit fumble/success apps, which would stop a player from feeling singled out. I felt pretty singled out on our last session when the BBEG's weapon slipped out of his hand (aiming at a PC next to him) and hit me 25-30 feet away on a crit fumble for 20-ish dmg. The DM probably didn't want his BBEG looking incompetent or wanted to not make the fight too easy, but that's the consequence of crit fumbles.

The only real upside I see people writing about crit fumble/success is that it keeps combat interesting, but I already find combat interesting.

It seems that responses to crit success and fumble decks run the gamut from the forums.

The decks would prevent players from feeling singled out if their fumble is more penalized than someone else's since the results are random.

It would remove any suspicions of favoritism on the DM's part for same reasons as above.

As far as negatives, some posts describe how it creates a new system since crits are so much more powerful so all the players delve into the new metagame and exclusively use weapons with a high crit threat range. Ditto for casters; why would they risk a ranged or melee touch spell (equal chance of fumble or success) when they could continue to use spells that are roll (and therefore risk) free?

To make my point a bit more clear; i love fluff and narrative and houserules that i feel improve on some of paizo's content (our group houserules pretty conservatively in comparison to other stuff i've seen on these forums). At what point is fluff/narrative becoming too intrusive on the game rules or flow of the game?

For example: I would put critical fumbles into a homebrew/fluff category. We play that if you roll a 1 three times consecutively on an attack roll you kill yourself. The inverse happens with triple 20's (resolved a boss fight really fast once) This also applies to enemies. If it were to occur, our fluff would literally have killed a player and required significant resources to restore, so the fluff is now directly impacting a player's experience rather than enhancing it.

I believe the hit was pretty hard, about 30 dmg out of my 72 hp, but we only do massive damage rolls if its over half your max hp. I believe the reasoning for the armor damage was that the weapon the enemy was using had an acid enchantment on it, which ties into the narration vs rules. Luckily a player had make whole, but he had to burn a spell. We're playing a Paizo campaign, and we've seen other things at about the same power level.

Exactly how critical fumbles are confirmed and resolved are all exclusively DM discretion. Ive seen other posts that are whinefests about a perceived DM, but this is different. I wanted to see if people run similar systems and if they have any insightful opinions on it.

Thank you for the well-thought replies.
I'll probably phrase it as:
1. Our iteration of the critical fumble system only affects those who make attack rolls rather than cast spells
2. It unfairly hurts a TWF character because fewer rolls = fewer chances to fail
3. The overall effect is rather slapstick
4. If we REALLY need a critical success/fumble system, there are ways to implement it other than semi-random DM discretion.

I feel our method is akin to having Smashballs as well as the trip system from Super Smash Bros Brawl turned on, where a person at a clear disadvantage can still win a fight due to sheer random rolls. It might be nice in a casual videogame (except for tripping!), but with character lives on the line less so.

I've done some cursory searching through the messageboards, but not knowing what kind of keywords the topic would have it's hard to find a thread for it.

We're going through a Paizo campaign, and my DM likes to do things narratively, but blend the narrative into in-game consequences. After a particularly powerful hit, I was told that I have a hole in my magical armor despite no sunder maneuver being used. A big boss swung at an ally but rolled a 1, his weapon slipped and hits another player 30 feet away. If a player or NPC rolls a 1 on an attack, it's not merely a miss, but a chance to have a catastrophic combat failure regardless of character level, sometimes just restricted to dropping a weapon (entirely up to the DM).

At first I just rolled (pun intended) with it, but the overall effect seems to create an environment where the simplest action (an attack against a mook) can turn into disastrous consequences (falling prone, etc). Combat, in my mind, has almost developed into roadrunner and wile e. coyote complete with falling anvils (a slight exaggeration). Enemies will literally kill themselves in fights. A thrown weapon might impale a player and reapply its magical on-hit damage each turn until the player un-grapples himself from it...or it might deal normal damage.

Do other people play in an environment like this? 2/4 of the players are brand new so don't really have an opinion. Everything is up to the DM's discretion about what events occur and how. Would you object to having such randomly applied consequences, or perhaps even appreciate it? How would I even phrase such an objection?

I've had several terrible DM experiences.
Every NPC in his homebrew campaign was ridiculously intractable, and couple this with relatively few plothooks and almost no loot, but when you try to get either you run into yet another almost-hostile NPC who acts identically to all the others. This was a planescape-style game, and all the NPC's from all the other planes acted the same way.

Was playing a TWF ninja, used invisibility to get into a flanking position on a werewolf. While I was still 50 feet away the DM said "he smells you" and had the werewolf charge and attack me. The rules for scent clearly state that the scenter only knows the direction of the scent. In the same fight, I got hasted and flanking and got ready to open up with some TWF sneak attack fury...and the DM said that it does too much damage, he'll only allow one attack to apply sneak attack damage per round. There was so much griefing from multiple players for multiple reasons that the campaign got cancelled.

Disclaimer: I never played with the Path of War rules. I have only read some of the playtest documents and never bothered to dive further into the system because it uses the same basic mechanics as described in the Tome of War, with which I am familiar.

I have a problem with the system because of its dissociated mechanics, i.e. the vancian fire-and-forget approach for something as mundane as combat abilities that are acquired through training. There simply is no in-game reason for a non-magical character using an ability and then not having it available for the rest of an encounter.

A quick and dirty fix for that problem with my Warblade was making a Sorcerer out of what used to be a Wizard before. The spontaneous spellcasting system emulates fatigue better than the memorisation system while keeping the spellcaster flexible in the application of his maneuvers. It worked equally well.

Or flavor-wise a good martial combatant would know that performing the same maneuver repeatedly would be risky because he would be predictable (in a swordfight it would be unwise to perform the exact same twice, especially back-to-back), so he prefers to go through his repertoire of attack angles etc.

My playgroup has decided to get 3"x 5" notecards for all spells/maneuvers. What if your character is muted for some reason and you need to know which spells have verbal components? What if your hands are full and you need them for somatic components? Is that enemy in range? All that stuff's on the notecard.

This is doubly nice for the mystic, because you can record what bonuses spending animus points provides for each maneuver.

ok, thanks. Yeah, I'm having a bit of a difficult time keeping all the improvement types types (dodge, deflection, competence, etc) straight from Path of War, and it seems like the authors use non-stacking buff types as a way of preventing players from breaking classes. Thanks for the clarification :)

Most of the Path of War classes are a little skill-starved (4 + INT is the most common) so I suppose Discipline Expertise could go a long way to assisting PoW classes be useful in out-of-combat situations. If a low-level skill monkey rogue had access to this feat they might be able to get a bit crazy, but I guess the +2 to 4-5 skills is only a significant boost at lower levels.

My DM refers to the "+2 to 2 skills" as "feat traps" that will put you on a path to suboptimal (unoptimized) play. I get a bit tired of seeing them repeatedly as prerequirements for so many prestige classes when there's so many more interesting feat choices that you could grab. I do like how Dreamscarred Press made the Path of War classes incorporate skills directly into their combat effectiveness by having skill checks for some maneuvers/counters. In this sense Discipline Expertise directly gives you a minor combat buff to every maneuver that you could perform that requires a skill check.

Something I noted was that the text for Discipline Expertise does not say whether you can take it multiple times, so I would assume that you can only take it once.

Ooh, good point about path of war classes geared to be a bit more powerful than core martial classes. Thanks a lot for the advice :)

Text for the feat Discipline Expertise:
"Choose a class you have at least one level in. You can a +2 competence bonus to checks with the skills associated with maneuvers available to that class".

If I'm interpreting this correctly that means that the Warlord, which has access to Golden Lion, Primal Fury, Scarlet Throne, Solar Wind, and Thrashing Dragon gets +2 Acrobatics (Thrashing Dragon), Perception (Solar Wind), Diplomacy (Golden Lion), Sense Motive (Scarlet Throne) and Survival (Primal Fury)?

How is this not completely better than core rulebook feats such as Deceitful (+2 to bluff and disguise. If you have 10 or more ranks, the bonus increases to +4) or Skill Focus (+3 to a skill, if you have 10 or more ranks this bonus increases to +6)?

The Core Rulebook feats require you to be level 10 and have 10 ranks in those skills to get a total of +4 to two skills or +6 to one skill. Discipline Expertise lets PoW classes get a total of +10 spread across 5 skills at level 1.

Would you folks consider this balanced (specialization in 1-2 skills vs broad skill increases across the board)?