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OK, PF2e came out, I loved Paladins so I wanted to make a Champion. After toying with several build ideas I just wasn't too excited by many of the class feats. With APG out I thought to myself that I could probably just find an interesting archetype to dump feats into.

Here we have the Snarecrafter Champion. I don't think this will be really optimized but I think it could be fun.

Ancestry/Heritage: Kobold/SpellScale (none of the other heritages really excited me that much, poison tail seems nice but I plan on using the flickmace so it won't really work. I was going to be taking the Dracomancer feats so this fit with the slight magic theme. With spellscale I would likely take something like detect magic, but maybe ray of frost for a ranged attack)

Dragon Exemplar: Silver (just fit with the theme of the Paladin so well, I picture a noble looking silver scaled kobold with a long neck)

Background: Squire

Class: Champion, Paladin

Str 18
Dex 10
Con 14
Int 10
Wis 12
Cha 12

(Took the extra flaws to boost Con)

Skills: Warfare Lore, Athletics, Religion, (some deity skill), Crafting, Diplomacy, Survival

Feats:

1-BF: Armour Assist
1-BF: Snarecrafting
1-AF: Snare Setter (this fulfills all the snarecrafter requirements)
1-CF: Ranged Reprisal
2-SF: Bon Mot
2-CF: Dedication: Snarecrafter
3: Shield Ally
3-GF: Weapon Proficiency (Gnome Flickmace) (then beg your GM to have access, or build one with crafting or something)
4-SF: Battle Planner (seems to fit with the snare stuff)
4-CF: Surprise Snare
5-AF: Snare Genius (more snares!)
5: Ability increases to Str, Con, Wis, Cha
6-SF: (whatever)
6-CF: Attack of Opportunity
7-GF: Toughness
8-SF: (whatever)
8-CF: Quick Block (more reactions)
9-AF: Dracomancer (truestrike and invisibility)
10-SF: (something)
10-CF: Giant Snares
11-GF: Incredible Investiture
12-SF: (Something)
12-CF: Powerful Snares
13-AF: Elite Dracomancer (Wall of wind, freedom of movement)
14-SF: (something)
14-CF: Divine Reflexes (MORE REACTIONS)
15-GF: (something)
16-SF: (whatever)
16-CF: Shield of Grace (or whatever)
17-AF: (whatever) (could grab kobold breath with ancestral paragon and then dragon breath at this level, which gives you 9d8 cold damage breath weapon in a 30 foot cone once per hour, not bad)
18-SF: (whatever)
18-CF: Celestial form (or something)
19-GF: (whatever)
20-SF: (whatever)
20-CF: Shield Paragon

So the idea is to max out on reactions, ranged reprisal with the flickmace, attack of opportunity, and shield block. Whenever you start your turn next to an enemy, which is hopefully often if you are fulfilling your role as party tank, use surprise snare to dump a snare right on them. If you aren't next to an enemy you are moving up, raising your shield, and attacking. I kind of wish there was a way to get the reactive shield feat early, so you could raise your shield in the same turn as you set a trap, but I don't see an easy way to do this.

The kobold spells are just for some flexibility, you have no stealth capability, but you can turn invisible once a day, truestrike for an important attack, wall of wind for ranged defence, and freedom of movement for those kind of emergencies.

Let me know if you can tweak this or if I got something wrong here.

Thanks.

Has anyone tried this archetype? The Entropist

At first the archetype seemed to make the Kineticist overpowered, but as I chose wild talents I realized the changing elements every day really hamper making any kind of build, because your infusions only apply to certain simple blasts and your simple blasts are changing every day. Also, several "always on" powers are dependant on having a certain elemental defence and that is also changing. So while you might have access to more powers, you really have to have multiple builds prepared for the different elements you shuffle into.

The upside of the archetype is having access to way more utility talents. The spontaneous talent feat seems like a must-have, I'll just leave a slot open on most of my levels for the more niche utility talents or infusions.

I will be playing a character coming into the campaign at 7th or 8th level and I went with the Esoteric Array and chose to have Aether as my favoured element at 7th. I know it will be lower damage than some other elements but the utility is so good. There is just so much battlefield control between all the telekinesis powers, along with some of the buffs and debuffs from time.

I also figure at 11th level I can take Composite blast technique. A problem with taking Aether is there are no composite blasts that work well with it, at least none of them seem to give you the full composite blast damage. With composite blast technique, whatever element I roll into that day I can treat it as if I had chosen it as my secondary element as well.

Other than that I would go for precise shot, stealth gathering, and burn resistance.

Has anyone else played this class and can offer some advice to how the actual gameplay goes?

Hello,

I am toying with the idea of a Bloodrager who was a failed science experiment. Basically looks like a normal guy but turns into a disgusting hulk when raging.

I am torn between a natural attack build or a reach build.

For natural attacks I was going to go for abyssal bloodline as a half-orc (with the toothy bite attack), and eventually trying to get the Dragon Ferocity style feat. This is a heavy feat investment with feral combat and that stupid weapon focus requirement. The end result would be massive bonuses to strength and x2 or x1.5 strength to damage, three natural attacks at full base attack bonus. Also, spell conduit, and maybe would have to have a 1 level dip into monk to get the unarmed combat and stunning fist feats.

Alternately the reach build would involve a crossblooded aberrant/abyssal build for the large size and aberrant reach, wielding a reach weapon. I would still have the two claw attacks in case things get close. I could even go for combat patrol later. This would likely be a human.

Also tumor familiar would be fun and fit the theme, maybe with protector archetype.

Do you think either of these are viable or how could I improve the concept?

Thanks!

Do abilities that allow you to ignore a certain amount of hardness reduce the hardness by that amount? Or do they only ignore the hardness if the amount you ignore is greater than the object you are damaging?

For example, the Stonelord's stone strike ability ignores 2 hardness per level. If I am level one and strike a wooden door (hardness 5) can I use the ability to reduce the hardness by 2? Or does the ability do nothing to a wooden door until I am level 3 and can ignore 6 hardness?

So I'm planning on starting a new Pathfinder game that will focus on the new downtime and exploration rules in Ultimate Campaign. The idea is to use the hex system in the exploration rules to have the players set out in a new frontier. They will embark on simple one-off adventures. They will be able to choose the pace of the game, what adventures to go on and when. When they have enough resources from adventuring they will be able to use downtime actions to create buildings and organizations.

I just have a few questions for anyone who has used these rules or knows more about them then I do.

1. The prices to purchase buildings seem pretty low. Small buildings like taverns can be created for under 1000gp. This means using the recommended treasure value per encounter (page 399 CRB) a party can pay to buy a tavern outright from one encounter at level 5 (slow progression). The most expensive building - a palace, is just under 20,000gp. A 10th level party gets 3650gp per encounter. So after like 6 encounters (about 1 or 2 sessions for my group) the party could build a palace.
This seems a bit cheap to me. Has anyone else seen these prices work as is? or was it a problem? do you just have to more tightly control how much money the players get?

2. Does anyone know a good source for pre-made adventures designed to be completed in one or two sessions? All of the ones from Paizo seem to be part of big epic adventure paths which is exactly what I want to avoid.
I would love a product that just includes a whole bunch of small adventures, like a book with an adventure every two pages or something. Back in the days of second edition there was this package by TSR of 16 adventures, each one was just a couple ideas for hooks, a few encounters, and a little map. That one product kept me going for a whole campaign.

3. Anyone with experience in this kind of game have any advise or ideas?

I had an idea to make a Drow fighter with the Drow Nobility feat chain, maybe with Noble Spell Resistance, but probably not the Umbral Scion chain. I know it won't be doing the damage of a fighter that only takes combat feats, but I thought it would be fun and more versatile then a normal fighter build.

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions for a template or other feats to take?

Something that frustrated me was that Drow don't have a way to look through their own deeper darkness. Other races like Fetchlings and Tieflings can eventually get the see in darkness ability, Drow seem to have to rely on Blindfight if they want to fight in their darkness. This could lead to the Moonlight Stalker feat, but it seems like a lot of feats just to get +2 attack and damage.

I had also thought about a monk instead of fighter, but I think they would end up even more feat starved. They could get Nightmare Fist though.

I have seen a few threads dealing with combining two or more archetypes. I find these very inspiring for character ideas. My favorite right now is the Bladebound Kensai (Magus), but I was also looking at a Monk of the Four Winds Tetori (Tetori of the Four Winds?).

Anyone have any other archetype combos with good synergy?

I am starting a new game with a mix of experienced players and new players. I would like the game to take place on some kind of demiplane. I am going for kind of a "lost" (from the TV show) experience.

The demiplane will be an island that the players wake up on, stranded. They might think it is just a normal island at first. They are ship wrecked, but the ship actually went into a maelstrom which was the portal to this demiplane.

I am a bit torn for the denizens of the island. I want some humanoids that can be allies, maybe a few different tribes. I was thinking about either anthropomorphic creatures (catfolk, ratfolk, that kind of thing) or various fey (satyrs etc.). A big thing would be that there are no humans (or other core races) native to the island.

I also would like a group of invaders to the island. The race for this group I'm not sure about though. I think they should be extraplanar (not demons though, overrused them in pretty much all my last games). I was thinking about maybe githzeri/githyanki, even though they are not supported by pathfinder.

Lastly I might want to have there be a creator of the demiplane. Maybe a wizard or powerful extraplaner being. There would be forbidden ruins or wizard towers on the island left by the creators.

The players would begin by surviving and exploring the island, discovering its inhabitants, and the threat of the invaders. The end goal might be to return to their homeland (back to my established homebrew campaign I have used before). The players may work to defeat the invaders, maybe allying with the natives, or even summoning help from the players homeland.

If anyone has any suggestions it would be much appreciated. Or if you want to steal these ideas for your own game go ahead.

Hi there,

Two weapon fighting vs. two handed fighting.

The consensus seems to be that two handed fighting is easier to pull off and has less restrictions then two weapon fighting.

It seems to be that the two styles can do about even damage on full attacks. Both get similar strength bonuses to damage - two handed gets 1 1/2x stregnth bonus, and the first weapon of two weapon fighter gets 1x, and the second hand gets 1/2x.

The two weapon fighter gets penalties to hit, but also more chances to hit, and more chances to crit.

The glaring inequalities the double wielder suffers seem to be the heavy feat investment, loss of power on single attack actions, and requirement of both high dex and str.

The idea behind two weapon fighting seems to be that an attack with a weapon in each hand should be equal in power to a single attack with a two-handed weapon.

This is why it makes no sense that a single attack action as a two weapon fighter only lets you get one attack with one hand. The simple and obvious solution to this is let two weapon fighters attack with both weapons once as a standard action. You could go so far as to allow an attack with each weapon during an attack of opprotunity.

To date wizards of the coast seems adamant about preventing this. In 3.5 I don't think their were any feats that allowed this kind of attack (at least in official wizards books). The two-weapon fighter archetype grants this ability at 9th level.

I don't think this ability is at all overpowered. And I think it fits well with the image of a two weapon fighter. They tend to be more nimble then their two handed counterparts (high required dexterity scores of two weapon fighting feats) so why do they have to stand in the same place all the time to be at all effective?

The only case this could be unbalancing is builds that give extra damage that can be duplicated in the extra attacks granted by two weapon fighting, such as sneak attack, high crit chances, or weapon specialization. But these advantages can still be justified by the high feat investment of two weapon fighting.

This is a simple solution that does not require much work to be house-ruled. You just have to replace the 9th level two weapon fighter ability with something else.

Hi all,

A character in my game is an archer ranger with the craft: bows skill. After the first adventure he is level 3 and naturally wants to craft his mighty +3 masterwork composite longbow. Seems simple enough to me, He probably has just enough money to buy it outright but he is a self sufficient ranger-type who wants to make it himself.

So, here we go.

Composite Longbow...110gp
Mighty+3...300gp
=410gp x 10 = 4100sp

Taking 10 on his craft skill he will be getting exactly 21, which is also the DC to make a mighty+3 comp. longbow.

21 x 21 = 441

4100/441 = 9.3 weeks to craft.

The masterwork portion takes another 7.1 weeks to craft for a total time of about 16 and a half weeks. I don't think the rest of the party wants to sit around for this amount of time.

This all seems fairly ridiculous to make one bow that isn't even magical.

I can kind of understand why this needs to take a long time as he is basically making a profit of 600 or so gold, so they can't have him able to do it in a week or he could just give up adventuring and make super bows all his life.

Does anyone else have a way of dealing with this situation?

One solution I thought of is that he could expend more resources to finish the job faster. He doesn't really care about the economics of it, he just wants to make a bow. So I figured if he spends twice the amount in raw materials on the bow he can finish it in half the time, and so on for different amounts. He could probably finish it in 5% of the time if he was prepared to spend 95% of the full cost of the bow.

Has anyone else had this situation come up and have some solutions?

Thanks.

I truly apologize for drudging this up again. This is probably 10% rules question, 80% b*$$$ing, and 10% suggestion for a house-rule.

The question is can detect magic pierce invisibility, and/or other illusions.

I am really disappointed that this is not clearly defined or even addressed in the Pathfinder book (at least no where I found it).

The problem for me has become worse with Pathfinder now that Detect Magic is cast at-will. I really have an issue with a 0-level spell that pretty much every magic user can cast at-will rendering an entire school of magic virtually useless.

What is the point of an illusionary wall in a dungeon when just about any good wizard is going to be detecting magic in every room. It takes no effort, they don't even need to spend more then a round for most rooms because they can clear them by just checking the presence or absence of magic.

I am aware of the limitations of the spell particularly around invisibility. It takes 3 rounds to pinpoint invisible targets. However even if the invisible person walks out of the spell area by the time the auras are pinpointed, there is a good chance the wizard can pick up the lingering trail of the faint aura that lasts 1d6 rounds. Then they can pretty much keep following the aura, and the invisible person can't run without being heard by the wizard.

The consensus of most of my Google search results seems to be that detect magic does detect illusions, because illusions are magic and there isn't anywhere that says illusions fool detect magic. I just think this should be stated somewhere, considering the debate the issue causes.

I know I would be very frustrated as an Illusionist, a specialist in trickery, if my magic was defeated by all of the 1st level wizards running around.

My feeling is that in a world where detect magic can be used so easily, illusion spells would have built in "Magic Auras" around them(in particular - no aura at all), fooling detection spells that are not designed to pierce illusions.

Maybe detect magic should just give you a bonus to your will save to disbelieve the illusion.

There could even be a 1st level spell Detect Illusion that would operate the same as detect magic but would only detect illusions.

Am I the only one who is tired of arcane spellcasting classes getting all their power "from within" or some such rubbish. I have always thought spells should have a definite source. Their are two classes in particular where I was disappointed that they don't use spellbooks.

These classes are the Bard and Summoner. Both classes cast arcane spells but offer no good explanation of how they acquire them. Bards offer no explanation at all, and all that it says for summoner is "their power comes from within" and that it is like a wizards, only limited because they summon Eidolons. Well, its not really like a wizards at all is it? For one thing they no longer need a spellbook, and now they don't even need to memorize spells.

I have no such issues with the other classes. No problems with divine casters, their source of magic is obvious (though I never liked that rangers cast spells, seems unnecessary).

Sorcerers are fine by me as well, their class is entirely centered on their source of magic being their bloodline.

Alchemists have their own interesting source of magic - alchemical mixtures.

Witches are very similar to wizards, but I really like that they have a mysterious patron and that they get spells from their familiar. I find the idea to be very thematic and seems to match well with the historical image of a witch getting her power from her familiar.

Arcane spells are pretty amazing and powerful. If you can get access to arcane spells without a spellbook and memorization then you'd better have a good reason.

There is no excuse for summoners to get arcane spells without a spellbook. They basically say in the class description that they are wizards who focus so much on summoning that they give up access to other kinds of spells and in turn get to summon an eidolon.

And for bards I feel that their access to magic is basically that they are so well traveled and such jacks of all trades that they can pick up some arcane spells. They dabble in magic just as a wizard would, they just don't dedicate themselves to the same extent.

Anyway this all really bugs me. I also think it is better to have more classes using spellbooks because it give wizards more chances to share spells, or kill each other to steal more spells. It makes arcane magic through spellbooks a definite mechanic that various classes have more or less access to.

I really want to house rule that Summoners and Bards must use spellbooks, prepare spells ahead of time, and be cast based on INT, just like a wizard.

I guess bards will suffer a little from MAD, having to cast based off INT. But they are supposed to be Jacks of all trades, master of none. Their spells known and spells per day would be changed to be similar to a wizard, though proportionally less I suppose. They would have access to the full wizard spell list. I guess their are some bard-only spells right? They could get those too, it takes a master or performance to pull them off, wizards just don't get it.

Summoners could be the same basically. Change the key ability to INT, no problems there. Spells known and per day same as bard pretty much. Same thing if their are summoner-only spells, their mastery of summoning gives them access to spells that wizards don't

The main balance issue might be that the bard and summoner are getting access to a much broader list of spells, but I don't think this is too powerful, they still only get so many spells per day, which would be much less then a wizard, and their advancement is much slower then a wizard.

This might take more work but it might be cool also to allow arcane spellcasting classes to stack their spellcasting ability when multiclassing.

tl;dr - I hate bard and summoner spellcasting, make them cast like wizards with spellbooks using int.

Is it possible to wield two shields at once and gain the AC bonus from both?

I guess even if you can't it would be pretty awesome to be a fighter with two spiked shields. Get all of the feats in the shield mastery tree, and weapon focus/specialization in spiked shield. Two-weapon fighting, improved/greater bull rush.

You would be bull rushing everyone all the time.

Ok, I had this idea for a character build. Let me know if you think it works/could be improved.

The idea is to have a character firing from the back of a mount that can climb and move fast. Since most things players fight don't climb or fly you will be pretty safe most of the time (at low-mid levels anyway).

I chose to go with a small character as it is easier to find a medium mount to ride then a large one, especially if it should also climb.

Goblins are great for this build because they are small, have +4 dex, +4 ride, and +4 stealth (in addition to +4 stealth from size). The problem, and it isn't a small one, is the -2 strength.

I think Ranger is the best class for this build.

The build below assumes a somewhat flexible DM. I will have to ask if they can allow a variant of the small cat animal companion, where instead of getting the sprint ability it gets a climb speed of 20 at 4th level. This seems reasonable as it basically assumes the small cat is similar to the leopard in the bestiery instead of the cheetah.

The progression of abilities until 7th is below. * for bonus class feats.

Goblin with 22 dex.
Ranger 1 - Mounted Combat
Ranger 2 - *Rapid Shot
Ranger 3 - Mounted Archery
Ranger 4 - **Get a leopard**
Ranger 5 - Boon Companion
Ranger 6 - *Manyshot
Ranger 7 - Deadly Aim

This is the core of the build, the rest is whatever. It hurts having to wait till 7th to get deadly aim. You could get it at first but then you push back all of your mount feats.

One nice thing is +18 stealth check at first level (+6 dex, +1 rank, +3 trained, +4 size, +4 racial). So you can pretty much hide from anything all the time, you can even snipe at only -2 to your roll(normal sniping penalty is -20). If you shoot from 100 feet away they have a -10 to their perception check meaning they will generally never find you, and it only gets better with level.

Also if you hide somewhere you could send your cat out to trip opponents for you or your friends.

So what else could I add to this?