Alphonse Joly's page

Pretty much. I've yet to see a game ruined by the wizard out damaging the fighter. Most complaints with the wizard involve save or dies, debuffs, or extremely elaborate and extensive combination of spells that drain a significant amount of a wizards daily resources.

I can only agree there. Nobody claims that wizard is "terribly broken" because he does too much damage, that's a carry-over stereotype from 2nd Ed. They claim he's busted because their DM lets them misinterpret low level enchantments and they have a party of plastic characters who don't mind adventuring for exactly thirty six seconds (not at all a dramatic overstatement for some "pro wizarding" examples I've seen) between rest periods every day while the group goes "We rest. Okay spells back, so we wake up and go into the next room."

The power of an abusive player to turn the game into a constant tug of war of utter BS is the only thing that's wrong with ANY of the classes. I'd simply like the all the schools to kick about as much ass as the illusionist does, and I'd be double plus set.

In the necromancer thread Jason mentioned that he was thinking about a necromantic animal companion for the necromancer. This got me thinking...

Why not include an optional school-themed familiar as part of the familiar option? The classical Snake is great, but what if the Illusionist could get an Illusionary Snake? Or an undead snake? Or (gasp) an elemental snake themed to the evoker's chosen element? The specialist familiar could give a slightly better but more specific bonus to the wizard (+1 damage to fire spells instead of skill points for example)

Secondarily, this idea could be expanded to include special/specific powers for the item familiar as well. I'm sure all the DMs out there can assemble a few hypotheticals themselves without writing about a necromantic ring (though it would clearly be amazing and I defy any attempt to prove otherwise).

Third, these could easily be turned into an "Improved Familiar" style feat, Specialist Familiar, for instance. More is better gents. If you're running out of pages, charge $5 more for the book and fill the extra pages with AWESOME stuff and we'll definitely still buy it.

And of course the juggernaut Universalist could receive a stunning, brilliant, astoundin': Normal familiar/item familiar. That's right. Normal. Hey, he doesn't have prohibited schools. He can take a long walk off a short flyin' carpet if he thinks he's getting a necromantic ring.

I think the Universalist school needs some work, but this is not the thread for it. Instead, we should be looking at the necromancy school, which also could use a bit of work. I am thinking about changing this one to grant you an undead companion, that would tie into the animal companion rules, but I am not set on this yet.

Thoughts?

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

Jason,

Thanks for opening this up to review from the players. I for one wouldn't mind a school-themed familiar being an option for ALL wizards, but personally I'd really, really like to get away from the "pet class necromancer" if possible. Since animating dead automatically lends itself to making lots of undead minions to order around, how about concentrating the necromancer's special abilities on the magic aspect of necromancy rather than the more passe and diablo 2-esque "a skeleton for every necromancer and for every necromancer a skeleton."

I'd much rather see more energy drain, curses and other classic "black magic" necromancy as abilities to balance out Animate (which is a really cool ability, don't get me wrong!)

Thanks for reading! You're the best man!

It appears that Jason agrees with the multitude of players that feel that the Blackguard shouldve been made a base class.

Perhaps the only viable way to do this without using up the precious, limited space is to add an option for paladins who may choose to follow this path.

This man is correct. There IS room in the book for a sidebar that says "Blackguard: For lawful evil paladins, replace x class ability with x"

We've already been hooked, if you need to raise the price five bucks to include blackguard, everyone is still going to pay for the product. In fact, you could raise the price ten, or twenty or fifty and as long as you continued to provide new good content with the price increases, we'd still gladly pay.

Thus has Alphonse Joly's First Rule of Gaming Marketing been unveiled for the first time to mortals.

Hey there all,

I am going to be spending some time looking deeply into some of the math behind the monk. Specifically, I am going to be looking for solutions that do not raise the monk up to a full BAB. This will not be happening.

I am open to thoughts on how to make them work without this change. Let me hear them.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

The monk is really, really good at higher level.

Uh...no.

I like the sharing of ideas, but I dislike the "don't interrupt me while I'm on my soapbox" attitude.

Thanks for your input.

Bizzare.

The Pathfinder Beta Playtest edition of the Prestige Class rules are now available.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Awesome feats sir. I'm sure they shall see much use in my weekly game.

Tripping was nerfed in PF. Disarm also was (and last I checked, there's still a very cheap item that grants high resistance or immunity). Sundering means breaking your own important gear. Yeah, that's really helpful.

You used "nerfed" when what you mean is "I don't use it" which is a fallacy to begin with. Since you don't use it, you clearly have little idea how it plays out. Disarm is the same way. You clearly thrust your metagame knowledge of an item that helps against disarm into the thought process of NPCs and then complain about a legitimate and very useful ability. Also, sundering doesn't break your own equipment nearly as much as you might assume, and speaking of metagame knowledge of items and spells, make whole sure works really, really well in pathfinder. How about playtesting all three of these things before you post again regarding uselessness? Unless that was supposed to be an object lesson of some kind...

If you have a rules complaint about the way things were handled, articulate it.

Oh, I think that the other posters who articulated their complaints about permissive DMing and overly convenient happenstance in your favor covered it fairly well.

I was simply talking about (since you asked) the fact that you appear to have taken a pdf and spent half an hour writing down "the best" solution to each problem and then posting it. And despite this, you still felt the need to twist (and break) the rules, not to mention that when questioned about some blatantly abusive practices, the justification was "Well it wouldn't have mattered anyway."

Of course it wouldn't have mattered anyway! You could have built a tree stand and fireballed the village while whistling Dixie and they would have drank an invisibility potion and stood around (as far as I can tell). You've got a person who's supposedly experienced enough to have survived thus far leading a group of baddies who definitely was alerted to "something going on" at the very, very, very least, who then decides "Hmmm.. Bad times abrewin'... Hows about I stand here some more?"

This nonsense has brought me to the conclusion that you could have won any situation you played simply because that's "how you roll." I'm going to take a giant leap here and suggest that a character half your level with 1/4 as much equipment and zero of the abusive "well it doesn't exactly say I can't make a character with a leveled up cohort" and "Well I could have used ring gate correctly, but I didn't because it didn't matter." "methodology" you used could have steamrolled that situation legitimately, dare I suggest avoiding the sitting down with your DM and telling him "this is how things are going to go, you react this way." or whatever you like to call your pregame tete a tete that generates this type of shameful display.

Also it is hard to balance this with such factors as damage type (slash/bludg/pierce) and various bonuses to combat maneuvers, speed of use, etc.

This, my friend is where being a dungeon master comes in.

-S

This is exactly what I posted last.

He was never, or almost never hit. It wouldn't have made any difference. The Ring Gate is just to rub it in. If he had gone himself it would have went just as well.

Of course. If he had walked in naked with no spells prepared it would have gone the same way too with that DM running the show. The player would have simply needed to mumble some abstraction about the wording of how HP works and been invincible.

FIGTHERS AND BARBARIANS ARE BORING!

I really disagree. A character who's playing a slime mold could be an extremely interesting role player, it has nothing to do with their class mechanics or skills.

Scaling feats

I don't mind the idea of feats scaling. However, I don't believe that returning to the "fighter must specialize" way of feat writing is a good idea. Before inventing a bunch of new bull rush and such feats, I suggest you playtest the CMB rules a bit more and check out how hardcore they currently are.

Really! I'm not sure if you've ever seen a fighter disarm everyone in a fight or sunder all the crazy giant magic weapons the enemy bosses are swinging around, but the current rules are actually really powerful already without forcing fighters to hyperspecialize into "the bull rush guy" etc

False. Fighters have absolutely no ability to protect the casters, or anyone other than themselves aside from killing the enemies before they can attack. They cannot kill the enemies before they attack, as they lack the ability and power to do so. The only way Fighters could do a half decent job of protecting anyone is via being a Spiked Chain Tripper.

This is simply untrue. Our fighter trips, disarms, grapples, overruns to get to important targets, sunders important or powerful weapons, heck he even killed an important enemy spellcaster with an improvised thrown weapon.

Yet again, the fighter is useless camp starts shouting "absolutely no ability to do this, cannot that, lack the ability this, only way possible to do anything is to play a broken build". It's the same crap over and over again from people who seem to think twisting the wording of ring gate is the proper way to play DnD.

We already discussed (on another thread) about the possibility of the 'Shield Ward' feat (from PHB 2) to grant your shield bonus to REF saves and Touch AC in PF RPG. I don't think it should be a given that anyone can "parry" magical attacks with a shield, but it could be possible by spending a Feat.

In any case, I would rule that these bonuses do not apply against attacks from Incorporeal creatures...

At higher level, the AC numbers are plenty high without using shield ward.

Though I agree that the current system is good enough, I do believe that one could simplify my idea by creating a system in which any weapon in any category can have the stats of another weapon in that category.

So you might find 1d6 18-20 longswords or 1d8 19-20 scimitars, or 1d6 x3 shortswords and 1d6 19-20 hand axes etc, etc. This way we've both eliminated the problem I'm having with the current system and retaining the exact same balance that's in the current system.

Frankly, I think that's the only Specialist Bonus power that's really worthwhile out of all of them, but YMMV.

Oh ye of little faith.

This power was way broken when it was the reserve spell conjuration feat from PH2 and it's way broken now.

However, try having the cleric swift teleport his way into six defensive castings of acid fog by mimic sorcerers. Or, better yet, you fill in the blanks, my friend DM.

This is surely a pointless discussion from a Pathfinder design point of view...

I agree. Fighter is not only fine, he does his job very well. He's the undisputed master of fighting - 'nuff said. This type of "I don't like this, this, and this because I prefer (blank) type of discussion is like discussing air travel while you're halfway to your location on a boat.

Neat in theory, unlikely in practice.

I wouldn't mind seeing a feat exchange akin to sorcerer's spells known exchange, but I don't really dig the swift action "I'm forgetting something in combat to learn something else." It's illogical.

I'd be all for a "temporary feat" power for fighters, such as a feat that allows you to use any combat feat you meet the requirements for for 1 round 1/day.

Should I ask for a house rule that diviners only lose one school?

Absolutely not. Diviner is one of the more powerful wizards if used correctly.

Assuredly worse than Pathfinder.

I am not allowing the Fighter in my game.

Thanks for sharing.

I think that your X4 weapons should be your war hammer (or a great hammer) and Great axe.

This is the same problem rearranged. The point is that making all the weapons start with reduced, but different values and be able to be improved in various ways puts the x4 or the 18-20 in anybody's court. Of course, maintaining the balance so that no weapon gets better than scythe or scimitar are currently is pretty important.

And for the whole "save or die makes wizards better" debate, poisons used to help equal the playing field by giving warriors the option.

This isn't really accurate. Poisons were originally the type of thing that happened to adventurers, not for them. They still are, pretty much. I'd suggest Paizo add a bunch of higher level poisons into the core rules, but I know from experience that it's about two seconds to mentally adjust a poison upward.

I had a brilliant idea. What if the basic weapons (and armor?) in the core rules were more diverse in statistics? Here's what I'm thinking:
To avoid the pattern of melee combatants only specializing in the "good" weapons (scythe, scimitar, etc) and completely avoiding the more modestly statted weapons, why not make every basic weapon (and armor!) come in different critical ranges and damage dice?

The way the weapons are statted at this point is reasonably illogical to begin with. A scimitar doesn't really "critically hit" more than a longsword, they're both a piece of metal that was probably kept in poor condition at the time and the fragility of the human body made how often the weapon might "Crit" completely moot. So for our fantasy world where we're willing to stretch our imaginiations, why does a curvy sword = better than a straight sword?

I suggest that all weapons come in a basic form that's always x2 crit, and perhaps reducing the damage die on some of the weapons (say max 1d6 for a 1h weapon and 2d4 for a 2h). Then, it's possible (by paying for a masterwork weapon, or perhaps a less expensive solution (Sharpening?)) to have the crit range of a mundane weapon advanced to a certain limit (18-20, is the clear limit) OR the multiplier advanced (x4, making every weapon "good" for Devastating Blow). Perhaps these two considerations could balance each other (high crit threat range or crit multiplier = low damage die, vice versa) to avoid creating any weapons more powerful than those in the PFRPG core.

This same principal can easily apply to armor and shields as well, varying the weight type, as well as weight, armor check penalty, max dex and AC. Not only does this suggestion provide weapon balance among the choices, but makes it seem like the game has far more cool equipment in it than it really does. I mean, finding a 1d6 x2 +2 longsword is okay, but finding the 1d8 19-20 +2 shortspear is great! (Nobody likes finding magic shortspears as it is, :P)

Thoughts?

The Destruction Domain isn't great on its own, but if you have a Rapier/Scimitar-wielding fighter it can get deadly, especially at higher levels.

I really think this type of thing is why the weapons need to be diversified. You know, that gives me a great idea!

So I'm going to be playing a classic Halfling Rogue in an upcoming campaign. My first Beta PC. SO what are your opinions? Balanced? Weak? Too powerful? Etc. etc. etc.

The beta rogue is really fun to create and to play. I have made a few rogues for encounters and had a blast creating and running them.

My favorite? Go for Caught off Guard and improved disarm. Grab something from them that's important (wand, holy symbol, whatever) then catch it and stab them with it for sneak attack damage.

I'm curious if anyone has ideas or suggestions for improving the fighter's ability to make an opponent "stick."

I wouldn't mind seeing a feat that makes a character do extra damage with AoOs to the tune of flat, multiplied into criticals level x .5 or so. Stick it up there in the +11 BAB prereq range.

Superstition (EX)

You receive a morale bonus equal to half your barbarian level (minimum 1) to saves of a type specified upon use of this power. This bonus lasts until the beginning of your next turn. The following types of saves may be specified: Poison and Disease, Spells and SLAs or Supernatural Abilities of Monsters.

I like my barbarians superstitious. It's supposed to be a psychosomatic "mind over matter" kinda deal, so it's EX.

Edit: Looks like someone beat me to the name punch, but I don't have a better name. Superstition it stays.

Which one seems the most fun?

My group has very much enjoyed the current system. It's really not much trouble to keep track of rage points (for me as DM or for for our barbarian player, even at higher levels) and it's fun.