Aspel's page

Ooh, really exciting. I want more gish options. So far the Thaumaturge has been the closest to "is swording but also magicking" that I really like, and I don't expect to ever see more of that class.

It seems clear to me that you're just trying to flex in more free Class Feats than you'd normally get without any downsides, not to seem confrontational but I don't buy the "flavor" you say that you're aiming for here at all.

How on earth do you justify a half-elven ANDROID?

Honestly? I don't. But it's mechanically legal and I think that's funny and neat. Android Versatile Heritage is a cool concept to me. I figure somewhere along the way she just Renewed into an elven form. The concept of an android that remembers its Renewals is one I've had since back in 1e, when I thought that they Renewed whenever they died. It's

Isn't PFS all about hierarchy? You can ask the venture captain general or something that manages your continent.

The Venture Officer I asked said "I don't make the rules, so my opinion doesn't matter".

Is Ancient Elf a viable option for an Android with the Auivarin Heritage and the Elf Atavism feat?

Your elven blood runs particularly strong, granting you features far more elven than those of a typical aiuvarin. You may also have been raised among elves, steeped in your elven ancestors’ heritage. You gain the benefits of the elf heritage of your elven parent or ancestors. You typically can’t select a heritage that depends on or improves an elven feature you don’t have. For example, you couldn’t take the Ancient Elf heritage unless your non-elf ancestry also has a lifespan measured in multiple centuries. In these cases, at the GM’s discretion, you might gain a different benefit.

My reasoning is that while the individual souls of an Android are only alive for a century or so, they're both a) adults during that entire century and the body itself persists across multiple souls, and b) some knowledge is implied to stick around, even if the character resets to level 1 each Renewal.

Yeah, it's ask your DM. It's also not the PFS section, so you're unlikely to get an official clarification on what works there here unless they've already covered this in their rulings.

Sure, but since it's a rules question about whether something is within the rules as written is a broader question than simply a PFS question.

So, because this is the place I'm most likely to get an official ruling, I've got a character concept that is an Android that can remember it's previous Renewals. I'm looking for official clarification on whether or not this would be allowed (specifically for PFS).

Your elven blood runs particularly strong, granting you features far more elven than those of a typical aiuvarin. You may also have been raised among elves, steeped in your elven ancestors’ heritage. You gain the benefits of the elf heritage of your elven parent or ancestors. You typically can’t select a heritage that depends on or improves an elven feature you don’t have. For example, you couldn’t take the Ancient Elf heritage unless your non-elf ancestry also has a lifespan measured in multiple centuries. In these cases, at the GM’s discretion, you might gain a different benefit.

My reasoning is that while the individual souls of an Android are only alive for a century or so, they're both adults during that entire century and the body itself persists across multiple souls, and some knowledge could stick around.

Am I the only person constantly bothered that the Androids have a penalty to social rolls for being "emotionally unaware"? Creatures that don't even have the same sensory organs as the other ancestries don't take that penalty, why do Androids? The original Androids were created so that Androffans would have something more human to interface with besides computers, so why do the androids have social penalties while the computers don't?

Androids and Skittermander are the only Ancestries with penalties, and I don't really understand why mechanically they should have them.

I haven't tested the class myself in an actual game, but looking at the playtest itself, it seems like it wouldn't be the worst idea to do this (the main advantage being that you can near-entirely dump STR/DEX in favor of other attributes).

This is actually what I've been doing, using Commander's Steed. I like it when it works, but there's so much against it. Animal Companions just aren't strong, and while getting it to Pincer Attack or letting it Form Up! is really useful at helping it with mobility. The Off-guard from Pincer Attack can help, but I'm just not sure it works out well. But I've been testing it in Pathfinder Society, so there's the inherent thrown together nature of the groups, which means I've stumbled into several scenarios where everyone is ranged, which really cuts down on how useful many of the Tactics even are. Coordinating Maneuvers or Team Up matter a whole lot less when there's no one to actually do a Shove or Reposition and someone to Strike. You being the one to do the Strike can help, but I don't think it does it by much.

I don't actually think two action tactics is what the class needs. I think what it needs is more variety in tactics and more tactics that you can prepare. I think there's a consideration that the Commander shouldn't have the ability to throw a Strike at someone, but considering it takes your own action and someone else's reaction (or using your Drilled Reactions for the turn), and you can only Command each person once a turn, I think that instead of "you get another attack" the mechanics and balance should more treat the Commander like a caster, just using other people's Strikes instead of your own Spell Attack.

It's a little surprising that Tactics don't let people trip or anything, it's all just shoves and repositions. Actually, it might be worthwhile to allow you to have your squadmates Trip, Reposition, Shove, or whatever with your Class DC instead of their Athletics. As-is, there are very few things with your Class DC, and all of them are Will based.

To me at least the Lazylord feels like the thing the class wants to be, since you don't benefit from your own tactics except for a handful, but it's poorly supported, even with the Commander's Steed. Even Combat Medic feels like it wants you to hang back and play support, but you're bad at it because as a Class Feat, Battlefield Medic feels pretty bad. Once per day is pretty brutal for a class feat.

But at this point I'm just typing up things that I should really be putting down in my playtest notes.

I don't understand what your point is. Are you saying it's too weak or too strong? I don't really agree either way.
That you can shoot a bow and tell the Fighter to Strike (or for someone to Shove/Reposition and then the Fighter to Strike) is the point of the class. There's absolutely no need for that to have MAP. Why would you even suggest that.

Also why are people calling it "Lazylord"? Is that just based on the 4e Warlord?

I playtested a Lazylord yesterday and had a blast. I had Commander's Steed and had my raptor fight for me, using Pincer Attack to debuff the enemies and shuffle everyone around, and then when it was low on health I used Form Up! to recall it without using it's own actions and used Combat Medic to heal it, then Commanded it to cause some trouble. I think it's an extremely fun play style so far, and look forward to playtesting it more.

I agree that Tactician is a better term, and that "Commander" sounds more like a Charisma based class. That said, I'm testing a no-physical, 4 Int, 3 Cha build.

I don't necessarily think that the term Tactician necessarily implies someone sitting back in a tent. *That said*, you actually... don't need to be in your own aura. You could Plant Banner or use a Commander's Steed and give orders from a mile away with the Bullhorn cantrip at 7th level, or something else.

Suggestions and feedback from all of one (1) very fun combat as a Commander:

* Top of the list, I *REALLY* want the Folio to act more like a Spellbook. I want to learn new Tactics by copying someone else's homework or even just buying Tactics, and I want to steal someone's folio to make them have to rewrite everything if they want to prepare them again. A spellbook mechanic that doesn't actually matter is boring.
* I think this class *really* depends on the reactions of your team. A team with a Champion and a Fighter and a Guardian is going to not benefit from a Commander because Drilled Reaction only gives one of them a free Reaction to actually listen to the Commander.
* Needless to say I'm on team "everyone gets a free reaction".
* This class really feels like it wants subclasses. Stuff like Commander's Steed or the Deceptive Tactics/Combat Medic have the vibe of a subclass choice more than a level 1 Feat.
* Banner Options, maybe as a Subclass, maybe as Feats, maybe as something you can swap like a Stance.
* Tactics that are more utility. Tactics to help the casters. Tactics to help with Skills. Maybe tactics to grant access to Feats; the Commander really reminds me of the 1e Cavalier, which had Teamwork Feats.
* More Tactics known, more tactics prepared.
* There are some weird interactions with the Commander's Steed: If the banner is on the Steed, you can issue tactics from outside your banner aura at essentially no listed range other than however far the GM decides your voice carries (applies to Plant Banner as well). Your Steed doesn't have a Reaction. It really feels like it should, so you don't need to waste Drilled Reaction on it instead of the Champion. Steeds can move, such as with Form Up! and even if their movement would take them outside of the 20 foot aura, they'll never be outside of it because they're carrying it. I don't think these are problems but I do feel like they should be pointed out, but I'm hoping they're already known and those are fine.
* A lot of the Tactics, particularly ones like Shields Up! and Reload! and many of the ones that allow for Steps, feel like they should include the Commander themself. A tactical retreat where you stay behind and get mauled is not great.
* Mountaineering Training and Naval Training are **extremely** niche when you're very limited on how many tactics you know, and especially how many you can prepare, and should be a single tactic.
* In fact, there should be Favoured Tactics that you can always prepare.
* Tactics should probably have advancements. Like maybe at level 10 you can now have allies Step 10 Feat for Pincer Attack, or Step through difficult terrain.
* Feels like the Commander should have some Reactions of it's own besides Shield Block, but I'll admit I haven't looked far deeper into the class beyond what I played.
* I think the iconic should be a trans lesbian.

Where is the dedicated forum for posting about the playtest?
I had a short Quest in PFS as a level 3 Commander and it was so much fun, I want to document my observations.

With regards to the "Boob plate" query, please refer to my earlier comments. Especially those regarding my female friends with a larger chest size, who wear modern sports breastplates for martial arts training that feature boob plates to accommodate their body shape.

They don't see the boob plate as a liability. Nor does it compromise their skill in combat. Being a flat...

The problem with "boob plate" is that it deflects attacks into the center of the chest. There have been female fighters throughout history, but none of them wore shapely armour that cupped their breasts. They were usually bound.

But a better question is why all your characters have such ridiculous breasts. I mean, I love your art, I really do. You're one of my favourite artists, and Kor Hookmaster is one of my favourite looking Magic cards. But man, even the half-orc has some tig-ol' bitties that she shows off. I've joked that Imrijka is proud of her chest and shows it off to detract from her face. Even Merisiel has cleavage, and she's an A cup. I recently put this together and a lot of the comments on Reddit were saying that I should cut out a few of the iconics because they're too scantily clad or have ridiculous breasts that might turn other girls away because they're needless eye candy.

Alahazra, Imrijka, and Freiya had the most complaints. They're nice designs, with nice silhouettes, but, again, they have such stereotypical fantasy breasts. I would like to add that I'm glad that it's changed, and most of the Advanced Class Guide characters are allowed to have collars on their shirts and armour that covers their chest.

2 gp per dose

Jeez, the only viable way to be transgender in Golarion is to put your life on the line as an adventurer, isn't it?

Then again, since the average person seems to survive on 6sp, Golarion seems to have an adventure based economy.

Shardra Geltl: Great Iconic, or Greatest Iconic?

Aren't you a little biased?

Transgender shaman is interesting, though. A lot of ancient cultures saw transpeople as being liminal, and a lot of ancient trans culture involved them being treated as shaman.

Also, isn't one of the existing iconics also rumoured to be trans? My money is on Seoni. I don't remember why, though.

Too bad she didn't have a tincture that would make her not-a-dwarf

You mean like the rules for Vehicles?

There is also a cart listed HERE.

That doesn't actually tell me how much the cart itself cuts from the encumbrance, though. Unless the cart adds 200lbs to what my mount is carrying and then can carry 300lbs of gear. Then again, I don't actually know whether my wolf's encumbrance is any different from a two legged animal with Strength 13, in which case the cart is actually something of a hindrance. Then again, if there's no difference in encumbrance, then just me and my weapons and our armour is encumbering Kiva.Nevermind, found that, Using the PRD, book, and an app to find things seems to be less helpful than you'd expect. Although my 88lbs is still more than his 75lbs light load capacity. That means with me on him, my mount takes a -3 to all his checks to jump and do fancy things that I need my mount doing :I

I thought this would be fun/good to figure out, but now I'm kinda wishing I hadn't put in the effort...

Of course,

I thought I remember seeing somewhere that all vehicles were not PFS legal?

Didn't know they were legal.

The original question of the cart itself is apparently moot.

I'm a samurai and I figured it would be a good idea to kit myself out with a bunch of useful gear, and a cart to hold all of it and act as my character's home.

But there are no real rules for a cart, much less a wolf-sized cart.

Presumably my wolf isn't treated as if it's dragging everything along the ground, but how do the wheels alter the encumbrance? How much weight can my cart hold?

And could I have the rest of the party ride in the cart if we ever needed to travel somewhere at a forced march?

If you have multiple PFS numbers, you can email customer.service@paizo.com with both numbers requesting that we merge them.

~Justin Riddler
Customer Service

Cool then. Thought customer service was only, like, "I ordered X and got Y". I'll do that.

So it isn't something as simple as just start using the new one*? Darn. I'll talk to the Venture Captain, though. Doing this while there's only three sessions of backlog seemed a much better idea until waiting down the road when it might cause more problems.

* I've kind of done this a lot with my DCI number...

Last month I played in my first Pathfinder game, more or less being given a link to the PRD and a due date and not really understanding much more than a loose grasp of what 3.5 was like. When I showed up at the shop, the Venture-Captain dude gave me a number and told me to write it down.

That night I'm getting my friend to help get me set up here on the site, and I end up clicking the wrong button and getting assigned a new character number, and my email is now tied to that (this) Pathfinder ID #.

Now, I had to make a new email and reregister, but for some reason the site kept me logged into this one, and now I've got four or five PDFs and a forum account that aren't tied to my character. I just leveled up, and I figure this is probably the time to sort this out.

(also to top it off, if I look away from this page for more than four minutes it asks me if I'm the same person still, like the site is afflicted with some extreme Capgras delusion)

I don't think I can really get away with refluffing it as something else, since this is for Society play. I was also kinda dead set on using the big sword once I realized I couldn't do a finesse build with the katana. And unfortunately my Strength is pretty crappy due to my size... My Strength Bonus is basically negated by the -2.

I guess I'm essentially always going to be using a not-as-good Power Attack :/

Then again, I think I'm better off, since it's [+7 to hit with 1d6+2 damage] versus [+5 to hit for 1d8+4 damage] with my Str +2. And at +5 it's still my highest attack bonus until I get other Masterworked weapons.

Worrying about these numbers makes me want to just take a step back and remember I'm a tiny samurai riding a wolf, and that this is the cutest thing ever.

I'm just getting started in Pathfinder Society and my character is a halfling samurai who uses his dead master's daisho. He's Small size category, and his mentor was a Halfelf, so her katana and wakazashi were Medium size.

I'd thought that since I was using a weapon that was a one handed weapon (if you have proficiency) that it'd just be a two handed weapon. But now that I actually have the book, it seems like it's actually a -2 penalty on top of that? Is that right? Am I basically screwing myself by taking a weapon of the wrong size for personality/fluff/d8 instead of d6?

I really like the idea of a cute little halfling samurai using a larger weapon (if nodachi had been one of the samurai's Weapon Expertise choices, I'd have used that) but especially if I'm playing a cooperative game with random people I, don't want to make my character worse when I'm already playing something as unoptimal as a halfling melee fighter.

Basically, is this a Bad Idea?