Apocryphile's page

Souphin has some nice ideas above, I especially like the idea of the chalk circle.

That said, arcane casters are very powerful in Pathfinder..

A feat to add a spell or two (one of your highest level, or two others) to your spell list could be awesome, but could also create opportunities for huge abuse.

Some kinda Stamina or Burn system for casters could be fun, as could the "Sudden X" line of metamagic feats which allow you to apply X feat to a spell once a day without preparing it ahead of time.

I played Tears of Bitter Manor with an Arcanist who owned a copy of the Book of Harms. Being able to sudden maximise a spell once a day (even if I did take damage when doing it) was awesomely useful. I'll be interested in the spell books which are going to be included.

A Burn or Stamina system could allow you to raise Caster Level in return for fatigue (and Nonlethal damage). That'd be great.

Loads more low level magic items will be great too. I don't see why half or more of the items in Player Companions are hugely expensive items which will hardly ever see the light of play.

Magic item restrictions would be great, and could be used to bring the price down. It's a +2 Shortsword, but only when you're in dim light. If someone casts daylight it turns to a -1 Shortsword!!

I have a Hexcrafter Magus, who worships Gyronna, and has ranks in Profession Dominatrix and the rough and ready trait. Spellstriking with her "special club" always gets a laugh, and I'm really looking forward to her getting her hands on an Immovable Rod.

Not sure exactly how the rules will handle inserting said rod in enemy and then activating it...

She's one of my PFS characters too.

Chris Mortika wrote:

Yep. These days, I stick to Pathfinder Society play, so it looks like I'll be dropping most of my subscriptions for a while this winter / spring.

Certainly I don't expect this book to be useless for PFS players...

The Description wrote:

Inside this book you'll find discussions of what it means to carry out evil plans (especially for characters not themselves evil)

That sounds encouraging, but then there was plenty of stuff in Champions of Corruption that could have made it into PFS and nothing made it in.

Sounds like your random encounter rolls on the tables for real life and the Internet have come up with a few Troll encounters.

Ignore them. Play the class which matches your character concept. If you're having fun playing a character, you're doing it right.

Oracles and clerics are not pointless. And there's a big difference between being combat oriented (great if that floats your boat) and being able to contribute in combat (which is useful for everyone in the party).

As it looks like there isn't going to be an official version of the Ninja updated for the changes in Unchained, i thought I'd go through the class and do it myself.

Alignment, hit dice, proficiencies and class skills should all remain unchanged.

The original Pathfinder Ninja had surprisingly few alterations from the rogue, trap finding is lost for poison use, Evasion makes way for a Ki pool. Trap sense is swapped for No Trace, and rogue talents are swapped with Ninja Tricks. All this could remain the same in an Unchained Ninja.

The only real issue with a Ninja based off an unchained rogue is that the unchained rogue loses trap sense for danger sense. This isn't really a problem though, as we swap the new Danger Sense for No Trace, as it appears at exactly the same place and has the same progression as the old Trap Sense.

So the difference is in the new rogue abilities. All you need to do, is add them in at the same levels the Rogue would have got them. I don't see any of them being thematically out of place on a Ninja, in fact, they all fit perfectly.

The last issue would be Ninja Tricks. Any Ninja tricks which share a name with an existing Rogue talent would have to use the new Unchained version of that talent. And if the Ninja selected the Rogue Talent Ninja trick, then they would be restricted to selecting from the valid Rogue talents listed or mentioned in Pathfinder Unchained (Talents are on pages 20-22 and the sidebar for other talents is on p.24.

Comments?

Carlos Robledo wrote:

You could have an earth elemental with the fluff that it looks like a mass of plants, or a specific plant... plus, when they get the burrow speed, you can have them erupt from the ground as if they were sprouting.

That's a nice idea, but there's a brilliant summoner archetype which just came out in heroes of the wild, which is now illegal for PFS. That's a real shame as sections of that book are now obsolete before it was even published. That's very unfortunate.

More good reasons why I don't regret subscribing to the player companion line. As far as I'm concerned there isn't a single weak book in that whole line from here to September.

Heroes of the wild was the one I was most worried about, and I've really enjoyed being proved wrong by my pdf of it. It's so good, it wrestled reading time away from my pdf of unchained..

But since this is about the Pathfinder: Unchained book....IM EXCITED WHY CANT I THROW MY MONEY AT YOU AND GET IT NOW!!!!?!?!?!?!!!?

Right there with you mate. My order for it is in pending, and I'm awaiting the grace of the warehouse dudes and dudesses to ship me so I can download the pdf...

It's a good question.

I think, by the rules, the player can indeed draw a specific arrow from a quiver like this as a free action.

Now common sense might make you question this, as it probably already has. Before you seriously consider changing your ruling on it you should ponder the following questions;

1. Is the PC spoiling the game for the other players?

2. Is the player keeping track of which arrows have been expended, and then paying the correct price to replace them?

3. Is the player taking a disproportionately long time to take his or her turn in combat (many options for a character can slow a player down).

If the answers to these question in order are no:yes:no then there's not really a problem. GMing is about enabling awesomeness, so as long as everyone gets to be awesome, everyone is having a great time.

The PC must be chewing through the gold buying all those special arrows though, unless they have both craft arrows and alchemy?

But back to "Rules Questions" I think by RAW, they're fine. I'd probably insist they have colour coded fletchings (a different knock isn't easy to see at speed) and a partitioned quiver which cost a little more and weighs a little more too.

Hope some of that helps.

It does sound like both the GM and the rogue player are in cahoots.
the other players are being dices too for letting this go on. It's like standing by when someone is being bullied.

Form your own group. The others will join up when they become the target.

I'd rather not play than game with people like this.

A 30ft. Deep pit trap which is 10ft square.

20 ft. Down there's a proximity triggered trap which casts invisibility on anyone falling past it, and at the bottom of the trap is a Gelatinous Cube.

I see there's quite a few guys out there thinking this class through to level 20, which is great (keep at it fellas), but right now, I'm trying to get my head around a level 1 starting Occultist for a PFS game this Tuesday.

One of the first questions I had is about taking the same Implement twice at level 1.

Firstly, you'd only get one focus power, yup?

And secondly, is there any reason you couldn't take the same resonant power twice?

Obviously, the vast majority of them would give no benefit from being taken twice, but there are the odd one or two which could be useful. For example, a pair of legacy weapons for a two weapon fighter.

Does the class need some way to regain mental focus in the same way luck, panache, and grit can be?

And another idea.. The character's spell selection is very limited, and there are quite a few "bread and butter" spells many occultists won't have access to.

Should the class have a small "universal" spell list which all occultists have access to? That way any occultist will be able to use those essential spells and perform certain roles in the party?

A second level spell from the ACG, Stone Discus is marvellous, and gets better as your CL increases.

I'd just like to say thanks to Skeld for feeding us all these little nuggets from the book while we wait for our copies to reach us!

The FAQ also states that

it is the description and game mechanics of the archetype ability that matter.

So let's look at those game mechanics

Every four levels thereafter (9th, 13th, and 17th), a fighter becomes further trained in another group of weapons. He gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls when using a weapon from this group. In addition, the bonuses granted by previous weapon groups increase by +1 each.

So you get +1 at level 5, increasing by +1 every 4 levels thereafter.

And then...

At 5th level, a swashbuckler gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with one-handed or light piercing melee weapons. While wielding such a weapon, she gains the benefit of the Improved Critical feat. These attack and damage bonuses increase by 1 for every 4 levels beyond 5th level (to a maximum of +4 at 17th level)

So, in relation to the bonus, and how it progresses, (which is the only important factor in relation to Gloves of Dueling), the bonus progresses in the same way. The only differences are that Swashbuckler WT only applies to one weapon group, and provides Imp Crit as compensation for not giving WT on multiple weapon groups, as Fighter WT does.

As the FAQ states that it is the game mechanics that matter, and the bestowed bonus of both weapon training abilities (+1 at 5th Level, +1/four levels thereafter) on the first (Fighter) or only (swashbuckler) weapon group is identical, I would say it's fairly conclusive that the FAQ would cover Swashbuckler WT counting as Fighter WT for the purpose of rules that improve Fighter WT.

Chief Cook and Bottlewasher wrote:

Britons who harbour resentment tend to direct it towards Thatcher.

What, any resentment?

Pretty much, yes.

:-)

I was about 7ish when the Falklands war happened. The british press didn't do a particularly great job of being objective about the causes behind the war, Aubrey sums it up very well though.

It's quite simple really, the islanders wish to remain British. Nuff said.

And the English harbour more resentment towards Maradonna's blatant handball than we do over the invasion..

However, if your opponent is size Large, they will also occupy adjacent squares to your occupied square, and when they move, they will move through one of your adjacent squares. And that movement will trigger the AoO.

But if they are only taking a 5ft. step, the adjacent square movement won't provoke and AoO, even though the attempt to leave your square will. But you couldn't use stand still on them at that point.

Some kind of telepath/beguiler thing.

Using telekinesis on yourself (who's seen Chronicle??).

Body control feats in this book could turn the Monk & the Ninja into pure awesome.

There should be a crapton of archetypes, templates, feats and prestige classes allowing these options to be woven into the existing classes and monsters. Psychic Succubus... Pyrokinetic Goblins...

Gunslingers who can bend the bullet & using arrows as knife missiles.

Telekinetically augmenting your strikes, great for brawlers & barbarians.

Bards and enchanters using a touch of mind control to boost their abilities. Skalds who can send their enemies mad.

A rage so strong it leaks out of you and carries your enemies along too. Barbarians/Bloodragers whose enemies go mad in combat & lose access to spells/abilities beyond just the killkillkillkillkillkillkillkillkill song they hear pounding through their heads...

Inparting fragments of your own intelligence into items/ACs/familiars to give them limited sentience and autonomy. Your sword becomes your cynical subconscious. There's a Skald Archetype this would work brilliantly for, the one who boosts their allies weapons..

I made a 5th level Arcanist for Tears of Bitter Manor

I used the Occultist Archetype for a Summon Monster III Standard action SLA at level 5 (which is nice, cos I only have 2nd level spells).

The School understanding (Admixture) and See Magic exploits give me combat versatility and investigatorial abilities.

I've invested in an intelligence headband, and a page of spell knowledge and ring of spell knowledge to boost my prepared spells (I can prepare 6 first level spells.

Feats are extra reservoir, Spell Focus (Divination) and Arithmancy, which doesn't slow down the game at all because I've already worked out all the DCs for it.

Spell mix is mostly combat to be honest. The character is working really well so far.

I think you can do just about anything with an Arcanist. What spells are you thinking of?

No. I hate playing dead editions. Been there lots of times before & it's the main reason I'm playing Pathfinder in the first place!

If you want the game tweaked/improved, I suggest you wait to see what Unchained brings to the table.

But I can take it several times and apply it to different summoned critters, yes?

Indeed you can.

Take it twice and apply one 1 point evolution to two summoned creatures, or two 1 point evolutions to one summoned creature.

I like the idea of improved damage & natural armour on a celestial Aurochs.

Although Tentacles on a Giant Spider is deliciously creepy.

It's a pity the feat specifies Summon Monster spells cos I'd love to apply 1 point evolutions to the monkey swarm from Mad Monkeys..

Even if you just want to be boring, giving your summoned monsters Improved natural armour or improved damage (which will be on top of the benefits you get for Augment Summoning), will be incredibly useful.

How about take the feat twice, and have Giant Fiendish Spiders with Tentacles!! Or the same spiders with 2 extra Slam attacks. It's not like they're short of limbs for you to modify or anything..

There's not time leading up to Gen Con to put these fixes into print, but here are a few clarifications and corrections as I'm reading through posts.

Warpriests of Non-Core Deities
Change the text to read "To select a blessing, a warpriest must worship a deity that offers the domain of the same name." This should open up warpriest options for non-core faiths. It was not the intention to deny those character options.

Thanks for the clarification John, that makes a whole lot more sense!

Arithmancy
The feat is not too complicated if someone does the work ahead of time. At that point it's a matter of taking 30–60 seconds to explain the concept to the GM, report the spell's number, and roll a check. What made it a difficult sell was the likely prospect of someone not doing the math ahead of time. How much time should the GM allow before throwing up her hands and saying, "Sorry, but your character delays," among other related social and mathematical quandaries? In the end that meant not allowing the feat into the campaign. Perhaps in the future—depending on how the recent introduction of Harrow goes—we might revisit the feat.

I'm currently playing an Arcanist with Arithmancy in a Tears of Bitter Manor game (campaign mode), and as I've calculated the digital root & final DC for every spell in my spellbook and have them on my character sheet, the feat adds the time to roll one d20 to my turn. It also helps that my GM trusts my math and non-cheatyness.. if that's a word.

I do understand why it's been disallowed though. If a player turned up and hadn't worked these out before time, I'd do my nut.

Oh, and BTW, I created an excel spreadsheet to calculate all the Arithmancy digital roots. Shall I stick up a link somewhere if anyone else wants it?

Apocryphile wrote:

My payment method was also cancelled, which is annoying cost I used the same details to buy people of the river last week, and I've been paid since then!!

I was looking forward to reading my PDF too...

Hey there Apocryphile,

Just took a look at your order, and it seems the issue has resolved itself. I've sent you an updated confirmation email, and your order should be shipping out soon. Let me know if there's anything else you need in the meantime.

Thanks!
Katina

Thank you Katina!

You are all stars, I can't imagine how many orders you're dealing with right now..

Thanks again,

Steve

The Racial Heritage(Grippli) combined with the Agile Tongue feat, will get you a 10ft long prehensile tongue.

I'm so sad that this isn't PFS legal. It'd make a great addition to a White Haired Witch..

Instead of having the two characters going head to head from the start, I'd probably have the two run a gauntlet of monsters first.

Have both go up against a list of nice, high level beasties, one on one, and then, at the end of the gauntlet, they face each other. That'd give a better idea of which character is better.

A three round slaughterhouse benefits the sprinter. Fighters are distance runners.

HUGS!!!!

How can a Tyrannosaur hug? They've only got teeny weeny little arms….

p.s.

I'm guessing not much of this book will be made PFS legal…?

I got the scrollmaster! Lucky me...

And any attempt to bring real-world religion into the game should be avoided at all costs. That is just begging to start trouble.

This. A thousand times this.

Your first magic item needs to be a pair of bracers of starchery..

We may see some carry on threads from people trying to make Wave rider cavaliers viable in PFS.

Wand of Aqueous Orb, and Profession (Surfer Dude). "Gnarly Overrun, Dude!"

Survivor Druid.

Smuggler Rogue.

Monk of the Seven Winds.

True Primitive Barbarian.

Weapon Bearer Squire Fighter.

Gun Scavenger Gunslinger.

Arcane Bomber Wizard.

Greensting Slayer Magus.

...and more. Need more research.

I said to Chris and Simon that BBT would have some good suggestions. Thanks for coming through for us!

Surely, as the only continuing ability the MT gets is their spellcasting, that would be what you get for levels beyond 10th? Well, along with BAB, skills, hp and saves. All very easy to continue.

Apocryphile wrote:

The Aldori Feats in Inner Sea Combat (page 10) are listed as PFS legal, but a big part of those feats requires the use of the Duelling rules from Ultimate Combat.

Are the duelling rules allowed for characters who take these feats?

I don't see the dueling rules as being a big part of those feats, and I may still consider taking them even though my aldori duelist swashbuckler would never participate in a duel.

Oh, me too. The Feats are pretty good as they are without the dueling rules (especially if you're playing a Swashbuckler with an Aldori Dueling sword..). I just thought I'd ask.

Without a feat or special ability that says otherwise (there are some which let you do it in limited ways), you can't use a weapon as an improvised weapon.

Quote:

Improvised Weapons: Sometimes objects not crafted to be weapons nonetheless see use in combat. Because such objects are not designed for this use...

The improvised weapon rule is the only way to get game mechanics for a non-weapon, and it works by finding the closest actual weapon and modifying those stats.

But weapons already have those stats, and you can't ignore them and pretend it has different stats.

Even if the rules allowed you to use, say, a longsword as an improvised weapon, then the most similar weapon to a longsword...is a longsword! So you would use those stats.

This has already been hashed out in a thousand+ post thread. Please don't restart it.

Why am I suddenly wishing for Sean K Reynolds to drop by this thread?

+1

Next time I'm running a game (which is tomorrow), if a player asks if their PC can smack their opponent with the haft of their spear/polearm, I'll do the the following:

I'll see if I can picture it in my head. Check.
Does it look awesome? Check (well, awesome enough)
Can I use the rules to provide for this awesome action the player wishes to make? Check.

It's all good! The player gets to try to do something awesome, everyone has a great time!

Did I miss something??

I doubt the rules of this game were written to withstand forensic cross examination by amateur philosophers. Applying such ott attention to minutiae is an exercise in frustration.

And even if they were, I doubt it should be in the rules forum. The current discussion is beyond tangential.

From my experience most PFS sessions end up with at least one TPCU (Total Party Crack Up), two recent favorites are:

Glass River Rescue:

One PC has already used their animal companion to great effect earlier in the scenario to bull rush a guy off the side of a ship, so uses the same technique against the big bad at the end. Then we realised the big bad was leaning against a well.

So once the big bad was at the bottom of the well, someone cut the rope on the bucket, which swiftly fell to the bottom of the well & knocked big bad out.

Port Godless

While standing at the dog tracks, the Summoner asked the following question,

"Can I enter my Eidolon?"

My Character's reply was

"well I'm sure you could, but it's not really appropriate out here in public. You should probably wait until you're alone together."

Poor Dave (running the Summoner) blinked a few times, blushed, and said "I meant enter into the races…"

The spell description specifies the surface used to anchor the extra dimensional pit must be horizontal.

As soon as you attempt fold one, the surface is no longer horizontal, the spell ends. End of problem.

Also, Golarion's physical theories are different to ours. Earth's physical theories have little relevance to a world containing giants, magic, and so on. And don't try to use Arthur C Clarke's little quote as a come back. Really, we deserve better.

One of my fellow players has a PC with the Profession (Courtesan).

The mind boggles as to what tools she'd use for the Rough & Ready trait!!

Played The Dalsine Affair last night, and I know a lot of people find this mod savage but we had a great time!

On trying to enter the Dalsine Manor (and finding two lots of guards lined up at the gate):

Amongst other spoiler-linked stuff, our cavalier proceeded to don a masterwork fake beard (and I quote here, "all Taldan nobles have beards!") and strutted up to the guards with my well disguised ninja staring at the cavalier in awe muttering "look at the beard! a true sign of nobility! you must respect the beard… etc". Several newer players at the table seemed to be in fits.

We aced our Bluff checks, they let us through without a struggle! We now call ourselves the Order of the Beard, much to the cavalier's annoyance. And my PC immediately went out and bought a beard.

Respect the Beard.

And then there's We be Goblins. I was playing Chuffy, and during the snail eating contest two of us deliberately ate the poison sacs from the snails, and proceeded to flank-vomit the chieftains lickspittle.

Flank-vomit is now a keyphrase for us..

I couldn't resist mucking around with the Sorshen clone trap in ss2. None of the PCs were caught by it, so when Asha was killed, I had her transferred into the clone. She woke up, freaked out, and killed Gnaeus ( who the party had befriended and released). When the party turned up, they saw the dead body, and the Sorshen clone screaming and babbling insanely. They assumed that Gnaeus had tripped the trap, and was now in the clone.

I haven't felt the need to correct them yet... And they've let Gnaeus tag along.

The party are now attacking the hanging Manse in Bis, and "Gnaeus" is loose in Kaer Maga having fun..

Fast Musket Class feature applies to all two-handed firearms, letting me reload them as if they were handguns, rapid reload takes it from a standard to a move, alchemical cartridge takes it to a free.

Also, typically i have my back to a wall and we're assuming the culverins are old style hand cannons with the wooden arm coming off the back.

GM's ruled that since speed says explicitly "When making a full-attack action, the wielder of a speed weapon may make one extra attack with it" that it stacks.

They seriously threw an arbitrary ban on dual wielding two handed weapons when you have four arms? Link plz?

Ka-Boom indeed!!!

As for the 2handed weapons in TWF, there's several threads mentioning it right now, I'll see if I can dig up a link.

I wouldn't be able to point to a particular page number and say "this is legal" but I think there's enough similar almost-precedents that I'd allow it as a GM, but with one caveat.

The almost-precedents are the thing with spiked armour (which allows TWF with a 2 handed weapon) and the releasing grip on a 2 handed weapon and re-gripping as free actions. Taking these together, as a GM, I'd say allowing a character to punch and use their sword 2 handed was ok. it does less damage than armour spikes, and they definitely are legal.

Of course, the PC in question would take the -2 for TWF on all attacks, so they'll hit less often than a pure 2 handed fighter. They'll be doing less damage than a 2handed armour-spiker and hitting less often than a straight 2 hander. So really, I can't see this as an optimization thing. I see it more as a "I have such a cool image in my head for the way this guy fights!" thing, and the player is ok losing a bit of damage for it. I love it when players go less than optimal for flavour and/or roleplaying something. Credit to Malachi.

EDIT: kinda ninja'd by Lemmy. :-)

Also, although the character is gaining the x1.5 damage, they are losing damage for having such a cruddy off-hand weapon.

Look at these perfect hands. So supple, yet strong. Perfectly formed knuckles. Precise finger movements. Beautiful fingernails. This is truly a Masterwork Hand

This.

Make the PC pay the 300gp per limb to fully allow it, and why not? That's 1200gp plus casting spent for a +1 non-magical bonus.

Would that really be that bad? Is there a consequence of allowing this I'm not thinking of??