Baval's page

Otha wrote:

But, as you say, the RPG market is probably different. I just don't know if Paizo can afford to lose the majority of their Grognards unless they can get at least a matching infusion of new players...

Thing is, grognards will eventually leave the game, it's a group with dwindling numbers by definition. You cannot add new grognards to the group there are, but you substract some of them every year. If not because some other reason, at least because they'll die of old age someday.

The game NEEDS new players for long term success. The game does not need grognards, can survive without them.

The problem here is just that picking up new players is riskier. It might work, or it might not, and if it doesn't work, Paizo will suffer, a lot. So it's a choice between taking a risk, and succeed or die in a blazing fireball of glory, or sit down and slowly wait your death.

You can certainly add new grognards, depending on your definition. Sure you cant add people who have literally been playing the game for years and wont leave the edition they started with, but you can certainly add new people who started on older editions and prefer them if grognards start them on that edition. I myself prefer 3.X almost exclusively (play some 5E now and then and other game systems) and have added plenty of other people who also prefer 3.X to the hobby.

Wait... Animal Companions attack at -10? They don't get their own MAP iteration?

It depends on if youre riding them or not. If youre riding them they count yours as part of theirs and vice versa. See page 315 "Mounted Attacks"

If my main character concept is a mounted warrior, I can best achieve that by being a Druid rather than being any other class and picking up the cavalier archetype, and by quite a lot. Why? Because Animal Order Druids get the ability to let their horse move without them spending an action to make it move at level 4, while Cavaliers dont get it till level 10.

That is a remarkable dissonance between concept and rules, as I think most people who want to ride a horse dont want to be a druid and vice versa (i imagine most druids want a wolf or hawk or something)

Im not suggesting nerfing animal order druids, because that ability makes sense for them, but how about letting cavaliers get the ability to have a beneficial horse at the same level, seeing as horses bring a ton of inconveniences with them.

It gets odder than that. If Rover is an animal companion, it's a Minion and gets two actions. If you bought it from the pet shop, it gets three. So a stock horse the wizard bought at auction that morning runs 50% faster than the ranger's AC.

necromancers only ride living horses because undead horses lose an action.

Its amazing to me considering Pathfinders origins how much worse than 4E PF2 feels. So many restrictions and so many things ruined in the name of "balance".

Let me give you an example. My favorite character is a necromancer/warrior who uses a whip and a shield while mounted. I like the idea of a terrifying master of the undead riding proud amongst his minions. Now in PF2, he has to spend 1 action to ride his horse (with a feat), 1 action to use his shield, and 1 action to command his 1 skeleton I guess. No actions left to actually use his whip, and no way to have more than 3 skeletons ever, and even commanding 1 hes never actually using his whip or making intimidate checks or anything. I might as well just have him on the ground with no weapons commanding 3. Even the whip if I could use it is completely useless with its 1d4 damage and no reach because reach 10 weapons have no reach when used from horseback now.

I will never play PF2 released as it is now, or anything close to as it is now.

The minion system feels so video-gamey and a ton of the limitations in the system in general feel like attempts to limit players from being able to break anything. It just feels like an attempt to make an MMO rather than an RPG

I love Pathfinder for its ability to make pretty much any concept I want because the rules (when I ignore the "erratas" like hands of effort) dont limit me in what I can do. This new system is trying to put restrictions on everything the developers dont like. Restricted multiclassing, restricted summoning, restricted minions, restricted everything.

Riding a horse while using a shield takes up all your actions in a round unless you have the ride feat, and then it only takes up most of your actions. These are things that are passive in real life! And unless i overlooked something its impossible to be mounted with a lance and a shield since the lance has no rules for being one handed while mounted.

And on topic if a necromancer wants to invade a town as currently written he needs 1 necromancer for every 2 undead he has (2 commands for the undead and 1 action to move with them) and they cant go to sleep ever (leave an undead alone for more than a minute and they regain free will if theyre intelligent).

Its incredibly ironic how much PF2 feels like 4E because of this crap.

I very much agree with Baval, Lady-J, and BNW. In my home game I specifically suggested our Hunter/Samurai to put her Tiger's first stat point increase in Int, and a skill point in Linguistics when she could, cuz it saves me a headache (since I'm inexperienced as a DM)...

Then again I also allowed her to take Beast Rider (at 1st level) in exchange for Mounted Archer, and suggested Hunter and specifically Pack Master when she found a second animal she wanted to add as a pet. She now has found a Roc egg she wants to hatch as well x3

good dm.

"this is your concept, lets see what we can do to make it work in the rules and if it doesnt exist we'll bend them a little"

thats what youre supposed to do. Its about fun before anything else

At least in some edition of 3.X, quarterstaves were free. This meant that by the crafting rules, creating them took zero time. Thus, just make quarterstaves. A virtually infinite number of them. The nukes will detonate and char the jigillion quarterstaves, but enough people will survive far below the surface of the new sea of wood. And hey, not even a wizard.

A common misconception made popular by a certain fanfic. Craft skill represents one week of work, and thus this is the minimum time to craft anything. There is variant rules to let you craft by the day by dividing by 7, but this then becomes the minimum time. There are no non house rules to craft anything other than either potions or scrolls, i dont remember which, in less than a day.

In pathfinder this extends to being able to reduce the craft time by multiples of 2 bydoubling or tripling the DC, but there is no double or triple of 0

Theres also the question of raw materials. Any claim to the gm of having the 0G in raw materials can be countered with "you have no raw materials" and both are valid claims by strict raw

On a cosmic balance level you are destroying any good that person might have done and any evil he might have destroyed or redeemed, thus slightly tipping the cosmic balance towards evil.

In a more grounded explanation youre causing unnecessary suffering to the person. Even if its only brief, it didn't have to happen and theres no good reason for it to happen, so its evil.

What is justice? A miserable little pile of secrets.

Destroying a redeemable soul is inherently wrong.

Baval wrote:

Right ok fair enough, so then why isnt the bard and the barbarian crafting? They dont need feats, craft up some ammo or some daggers. Otherwise theyre not doing their full share, and so they get less of a share.

After all, if the crafter has to fight, why doesnt the fighter have to craft?

And again, the Barbarian and the Bard do have a contract in place, they get a share of the loot. The Crafter is also making the same contract: Ill do what I do best at no cost, and in exchange i get 25% of the loot. Thats only fair. Were not expecting the Barbarian to translate ancient tomes or the Bard to tank hits because thats not what theyre good at, so why expect the crafter to do what he isnt good at?

No, a party member doesnt earn its share by "doing whatever they can for the party", a party member earns its share by contributing to the adventure. If the crafter is there and hes fighting with you hes earning his share, he doesnt also owe you a free axe just because its within his power to make one. You can argue all you want "but he has a better chance of surviving if he gives me what I want" but he has an even better chance of surviving if he just hires and outfits a few mercenaries to do similar work for him and bring back a share of the profits.

The starting point for me based on my own experience (and while i have been playing for a long time i recognize that is a drop in the bucket compared to the collective table experience of the forums) is that the party splits loot equally among all PCs; Cohorts, hirelings and NPCs do not normally get shares and instead are either along for their own story reasons or charge flat fees for services. The shares that PCs get is due to the characters providing their services to the party.

The argument that Crafter chose one feat over another and the party should pay Crafter to use that feat is a slippery slope. Why not have Cleric charge per spell, domain or channeling that someone else benefits from. Sure Barbarian doesnt have to invest as...

absolutely. thats exactly what they should do. Negotiating what share of the loot each character gets is something I do every game, often every adventure until the characters get more comfortable with each other. As a crafter I usually take a lesser share of loot won in combat and then charge for my crafting services.

Baval wrote:

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

Brain in a Jar wrote:

You see if i invest in a crafting feat. I'm planning on investing my downtime, which could be very limited base on the adventure to make the items i want with it.

So my items take priority. I usually offer a small discount to stop working on my items to work on someone else's item.

I mean there are plenty of entitled players floating around. So when i encounter one of them who get pissy at me wanting to benefit from my investment. I just tell them to go to the market or learn to make it themselves if they want to b+%@~.

Yeah and under that same attitude, I'm sure the party cleric charges full price for raising people from the dead or restoring those negative levels after a wight encounter. Or maybe the bard starts charging a "I diplomized us out of an encounter" fee and the barbarian starts asking for a "I gibbed this guy before he acted saving you all resources" tax. After all, those poor guys are just demanding fair compensation for their character investments and if someone's unappreciative, you can direct them to a bunch of hirelings they can use instead. Obviously.

I dunno, maybe my parties are just a bunch of wierdos where the party is meant to be a vaguely cohesive unit that works together and expensive components ranging from cleric restorations, to communal cure wands, to yes, stuff made by the craft guy, are covered at cost for the good of keeping everyone chugging forward at the best rate they can.

They sure do get compensation for that!

I havent been in a single party where the cleric was expected to pay for other characters resurections.

Exactly--the party covers the cost of the material component--*not* the charge listed for spellcasting services which goes above and beyond that.

Look, folks, I'm an actor. Getting proper compensation for what I do is a nightmare, so I completely understand every argument being made here about economics and not being taken advantage of. And...

OK, sure. Ill agree with that. The cleric can charge me for spellcasting services, and ill charge him for items. Lets see who needs who first. (quick reminder, the most expensive spellcasting service you can buy, a 9th level spell from a 20th level caster, costs 1800 gold. Ill toss him 90k and use him as a wand)

There is a very significant benefit to giving the crafter your gold, namely that he can use it to craft better gear so he can contribute better in combat. Because no matter how much you might want to say "feats arent even that big of a deal" the fact is they are, or everyone would just be a crafter all the time.

Baval wrote:

Tarik Blackhands wrote:

Brain in a Jar wrote:

You see if i invest in a crafting feat. I'm planning on investing my downtime, which could be very limited base on the adventure to make the items i want with it.

So my items take priority. I usually offer a small discount to stop working on my items to work on someone else's item.

I mean there are plenty of entitled players floating around. So when i encounter one of them who get pissy at me wanting to benefit from my investment. I just tell them to go to the market or learn to make it themselves if they want to b+%@~.

Yeah and under that same attitude, I'm sure the party cleric charges full price for raising people from the dead or restoring those negative levels after a wight encounter. Or maybe the bard starts charging a "I diplomized us out of an encounter" fee and the barbarian starts asking for a "I gibbed this guy before he acted saving you all resources" tax. After all, those poor guys are just demanding fair compensation for their character investments and if someone's unappreciative, you can direct them to a bunch of hirelings they can use instead. Obviously.

I dunno, maybe my parties are just a bunch of wierdos where the party is meant to be a vaguely cohesive unit that works together and expensive components ranging from cleric restorations, to communal cure wands, to yes, stuff made by the craft guy, are covered at cost for the good of keeping everyone chugging forward at the best rate they can.

They sure do get compensation for that!

I havent been in a single party where the cleric was expected to pay for other characters resurections. And last I checked, the bard and the barbarian get a share of the loot for their contributions of doing what theyre meant to do.

So by your logic, the crafter earns his share of the loot by crafting. Therefore, he doesnt need to adventure, he already did his share. He gets 25% of the loot, and he stays home and crafts; you go risk your life and

...

Right ok fair enough, so then why isnt the bard and the barbarian crafting? They dont need feats, craft up some ammo or some daggers. Otherwise theyre not doing their full share, and so they get less of a share.

After all, if the crafter has to fight, why doesnt the fighter have to craft?

And again, the Barbarian and the Bard do have a contract in place, they get a share of the loot. The Crafter is also making the same contract: Ill do what I do best at no cost, and in exchange i get 25% of the loot. Thats only fair. Were not expecting the Barbarian to translate ancient tomes or the Bard to tank hits because thats not what theyre good at, so why expect the crafter to do what he isnt good at?

No, a party member doesnt earn its share by "doing whatever they can for the party", a party member earns its share by contributing to the adventure. If the crafter is there and hes fighting with you hes earning his share, he doesnt also owe you a free axe just because its within his power to make one. You can argue all you want "but he has a better chance of surviving if he gives me what I want" but he has an even better chance of surviving if he just hires and outfits a few mercenaries to do similar work for him and bring back a share of the profits.

This is a hotly debated subject. Its either

1.) Each of your classes has its own animate pool and limit

or

2.) You only have one pool, its equal to the class you last cast animate dead with, same with limit.

Its definitely not combine your caster levels together.

Personally, I believe its 1 as thats the only way the old 3.5 True Necromancer makes any sense.

I want to disagree with rainzax here. If for example your stretch goals were "10k, every backer gets a pencil eraser, 15k every back gets a new car" then swapping those stretch goals after the fact might technically be a breach in contract, but that doesnt make it bad form.

Sure, some backers *may* have been investing hoping to get 20 monsters with Sphere of Might talents added to them, I cant say for sure. But it seems to me like a ridiculous thing to add extra money for. Unless im misunderstanding something, its literally just going to be existing monsters with stock talents added to them. I think some people who are keen on keeping this option think its going to be something more than that.

On the other hand, Im 100% positive at least some people added more money to try to make it to every class included. Some people may actually be feeling regret that they added more money to a goal they arent going to see. I was unable to add more money due to it being a bad timing for me, but I had wanted to and would have been feeling that regret now if I had.

Now im of course not saying that my opinion is law. Im just saying I think more information needs to be gathered to make the correct decision. If it turns out a significant number of backers spent extra money to unlock the monsters, then by all means it should not be changed; but if its a vast majority that like me, were looking forward to interesting new classes and can handle adding talents to monsters on their own, then you should put forward the best product you can and swap it.

Baval wrote:

There are no rules to support what youre saying.

I dunno, we must be reading different spells or something 'cause that's all I've been extrapolating from.

Baval wrote:

Sleeping in a breastplate would be very uncomfortable, much more than sleeping in mud or on stonework, as you would have inconsistent levels of hardness and the edge of the armor in your side all night.

Okay, I think you missed the concept of what I was saying. At the point you argue sleeping in rocky mud is better than armour there's really nothing else to discuss. I didn't think understanding physics had to be employed to explain why it wouldn't be a place to sleep at all but that's just me assuming it isn't magical +3 mud of slumber.

is that so? Which spell makes the peasant railgun work?

@jader

magic. Obviously. You cant really say "how come we have gravity?" since many cosmologies the material plane is flat. You cant say "why is light so fast" because in many spells, lasers can be dodged. You cant say "why does the ocean not overflow when it rains because in many cosmologies, it drains into the elemental plane of water or falls off the side of the earth. In addition, swimming in lava is not often lethal, and getting near it doesnt do any damage at all, it isnt even hot. Lightning causes no heat either. For that matter flames themselves rarely spread. Poison can hurt your personality and is rarely lethal. Swords can pass right through people and not kill them.

Oh yeah, and theres undead and magic and dragons (which can fly despite it being physically impossible at their wingspan). And peasants can pass a spear thousands of miles in a single second if theres enough of them.

So no, it doesnt work like our world at all. Why would you assume it did?

Youre assuming physics and making up your own rules to support them. There are no rules to support what youre saying. There are rules to support what this thread is saying, and there are no assumptions made. Thats the difference.

An orc is proficient with a sorceror only if that sorceror is a weapon. There are feats to do so, but those feats already make you proficient with the person youre swinging around, so its a moot point.

Greatswords dont say theyre not made of metal, they just fail to say they are. You technically can make a greatsword out of stone or bone or the like, and there are rules for doing so.

There are pants in the game, theyre listed in different clothing options. For example, cold weather clothing says it includes "a heavy skirt or pants"

Sleeping in a breastplate would be very uncomfortable, much more than sleeping in mud or on stonework, as you would have inconsistent levels of hardness and the edge of the armor in your side all night. Its also assumed that even if you dont have a bedroll, your character doesnt just plop down on the spikiest patch of gravel he can find.

Every single on of your points is either you not knowing the rules, not liking the rules, or extrapolating things they dont say. Once again, this thread does not do any of that. It uses exactly what the rules say to the letter, with no speculation. That is the difference.

skeleton mail can help with them too ;)

Baval wrote:

Peasant railgun actually doesn't work. It involves applying physics to rules, which unfortunately doesn't apply as there are no rules for physics in Pathfinder. It allows for instant transportation or items, but objects dont gain momentum in Pathfinder unless an effect says they do, so even if peasants pass a spear for thousands of miles in 6 seconds it still only does as much damage as the last one can do while throwing it.

Sure the railgun function may not work, but the peasant mass transit system on the other hand...

skeleton mail is better than peasant mail

Paladin's mounts aren't summoned creatures, they are 100% legit material creatures that can be teleported to you like a summon.

But that's neither here nor there. If a horse could cast wish I would have already fait'd this to work.

I'd like you to find a GM bonkers enough to not imagine this otherwise. Are you wishing to fight the local kingdoms peasant railgun?

No theyre not, but they are mounts. Mounts act like mounts, so if a Paladins mount can attack, any mount can attack. (unless something specifically says they cant)

Already said no DM would allow this exploit. pretty sure we all have. its a question of whether it works, not if anyone would allow it.

Peasant railgun actually doesn't work. It involves applying physics to rules, which unfortunately doesn't apply as there are no rules for physics in Pathfinder. It allows for instant transportation or items, but objects dont gain momentum in Pathfinder unless an effect says they do, so even if peasants pass a spear for thousands of miles in 6 seconds it still only does as much damage as the last one can do while throwing it.

I dont see any reason why it wouldnt work. people are trying to apply summon monsters restrictions to the combination, but the alter summon monster does not say to do that, only to exchange the summon with one that *could* be summoned with summon monster of the same level.

That said, obviously no DM will let you do this.

@wraithguard

again, the class can of course function completely well without it. We could cut off entire spheres from SoP or entire schools from Vancian and Wizards will still work, but youre still taking away choices and options and that isnt fun.

If I want to be a heavy armored barbarian or even rogue, let me and enable those choices in a balanced way. Dont say "thats not how i see that class being played, ill allow it but im going to make it hard to do it"

Like ive said several time, the reason SoP is so successful is because it enables options. people are flocking to a system that inherently nerfs their power because it allows them full customization. We as role playing gamers want to make the character we want to play. The sooner we can start playing the character we envisioned, the happier we are. Make SoM feel like were able to play what we want at level 1, or 2 at the most like SoP does and it will be just as big a success.

@adam

I agree with that on the sage, it was feeling really mystical for SoM. I didnt say anything because the monk isnt much better.

@grovestrider

or just seperate them into three talents. light armor proficincy, medium, and heavy all as seperate talents. Problem solved, no tax.

A sorceror can use his bloodline powers, a witch can use hexes, an armorist can summon his weapons etc. If were going to bring class abilities into this, it goes back to a moot point. Lets compare Incanter to Conscript to make it a look at the systems, not the classes that use it.

A martial doesnt have the mental stats to be good at stats, again if were going to bring in ability scores then its not going to be a fair comparison. That said, a caster should certainly have a decent dex to fire a bow or crossbow, and strength wont apply to those until they get a composite bow, which is expensive. If the "you wont have it at level 1" argument applies to full plate, it applies to bows too. BAB is a moot point because a level 1 character has either 0 or 1 BAB

The martial can spend 1 talent in the guardian sphere and control a 15 foot radius of the battlefield....but hes also fumbling around with a simple weapon and doing a piddly 1d6 damage. He also isnt doing "several times the damage of the Destruction user" as he is reliant both on enemies provoking, and AoOs, of which he gains 1 bonus one at level 1.

A caster does meaningful damage at level 1 with destruction. In fact, due to the fact that he likely cant miss (touch attacks being what they are) hes likely doing more dps than the martial in many situations (armor is common in low levels, boosting touch AC not so much)

You keep falling back on "look at all the weapons practitioners can choose from!" Yes i get it. Weapons are fine. Im not required to take longsword proficiency and bastard sword proficiency before im allowed to take elvish curved blade proficinecy. Lets talk about armor shall we? The thing I keep trying to get us back to on every post, and the thing my original comment was about?

Im very concerned with the amount of taxing going on with the equipment sphere. Classes not getting proper proficiency as admitted taxes, proficiency still being gated behind tangentially related proficiency (seriously, light armor is in no way related to heavy armor. Just let us pick the proficiency level we want)

I said in the document, but it is gone now with no response: stop putting unnecessary taxes on martials. Heavy armor is not inherently better than light. Tower shields are not inherently better than heavy shields. All playstyles are balanced around each other, so there is no reason a light armor character needs to take no talents for his build, while a full heavy armor tank needs to take as many as 4. (medium armor, heavy armor, shields, tower shields)

The thing that makes spheres of power great is it enables players to build any character concept they want right from level 1. With these proficiency taxes, martials are forced to wait till level 2,3,4 or higher before they can actually start picking fun talents.

Some excuses ive seen that dont cut it:

"A sphere caster without talents is a guy in robes, a martial still can attack"

Yes, but a sphere caster will never not have talents. He will have them from level 1. And he will be much better than that martial, who used up his first few talents enabling his equipment and so can still just attack.

"You cant even afford plate armor at level 1, so you dont need heavy armor yet"

No, but you can afford it before level 3. And honestly, you usually find a set or something before then. Meanwhile since you cant get the proficincy due to talent taxes, youre stuck playing your low dex character (intended to wear heavy armor) in light armor, having lower AC than the rogue. Help you if you wanted to be a tank, cause youre certainly not one until you can finally get your correct proficiency and then the guardian sphere, and probably the shield sphere. Meanwhile caster mcgee has been summoning his personal angel from level 1.

You bundled a bunch of feats together in certain talents to get rid of feat tax. Dont add other taxes to make up for it. Stop taxing martials, just let them play.

i mean, ive just been calling them mighty martials. or Mighty Xclass when relevant ie Mighty Monk etc.

mentioned on the Kickstarter update, but wanted to post it here in case this has more visibility.

I want to request if possible a Gish archtype for the Commander as some sort of Deathknight, specifically one who can buff his undead minions effectively. Many large area buffs in the game are moral bonuses, which undead cannot benefit from, and there are very few ways to treat them as humanoid or allow them to benefit.

Pally shouldnt fall for doing any of the things in the first post, unless he literally never even asked them if they wanted to surrender or killed them for no reason

The problem with the example as a whole is it always uses goblins or demons or something else that either is too stupid to be likely to comprehend good easily or unlikely to change its ways even if its possible.

Put the same scenario but make it elves instead and suddenly when you hear "the town has a policy that all elves who commit a crime are to be tortured to death slowly" the Paladin wants to do something about it. But when its goblins its fine because "thats how the town is"

pretty sure this was already talked to death in that thread.

But to respond to your numbers.

1.) Inconvenience is not an excuse to not be good. Thats neutral talk. Calling them a liability is just an excuse to back up the inconvenience excuse. Honoring life is more difficult than just killing all your enemies, but the life of the exalted is not easy.

2.)If the goblins are out of any jurisdiction and havent committed any crimes against any towns, then the only person they wronged is you and its your right to try them. If you decide they deserve death (and Pathfinder Goblins probably do, but not all of them) then you have a right to execute them as per your duties as Lawful. If they have committed crimes against a town or are in a countrys jurisdiction then it is your job to make sure the appropriate punishment is carried out. The key word is appropriate. If they stole bread and the local law is thieves are skinned alive, you dont do that. If the local law is all thieves get a trial, you take them to trial. If you cant do that because Archoriak the forsaken is 2 hours away from raising a dark god onto the mortal realm, you can tie the goblins up and get them later. If you think theyre likely to escape being tied up, then you are free to kill them if you think they will be an immediate danger to others. This should be your last thought, not your first.

3.) If they are not considered citizens they are neither protected nor directly bound by the laws. You can hold your own trial. If they are racially profiled as vermin you should take the time to explain to the citizens why this is unfair and does not allow the chance of redemption for goblins. Being hated without any recourse is only going to drive any who might not be completely evil farther towards evil. Showing mercy and the chance of redemption will draw them towards good.

4.) See above. If the towns reaction to goblins is "they deserve to be slowly tortured to death for the crime of not looking like us" then you should be working on removing the corruption from the town, not worried so much about routing the local goblins. You should capture the goblins, oversee their trial, oversee their execution, and explain exactly why youre doing what youre doing. If Angels took a view on humans that these humans are taking on Goblins heaven would be a terrible place.

5.) If the Paladin is the ranking authority in the area how are 3 and 4 concerns? If hes not then hes not. Either the Paladins word is law and the Goblins wont be tortured slowly to death, or his word is not law and he should bend to a just authority and work to better an unjust one.

Ive said it before, a Paladins primary role should be to make the world better. Sometimes, indeed often, that means ridding the world of darkness and evil. But if you kill an evil person youve removed their evil. If you inspire an evil person to be good, youve removed their evil and created one more protector to protect people you might not be able to.

Its also important to realize that sometimes even if the person youre trying to redeem isnt swayed, your actions wont always go unnoticed. A Necromancer might be fully devoted to undeath, but his cultists might decide theres a better life. Some creatures are evil just because they think being good is weakness, so showing them strength can change their mind. Some neutral bystanders might be inspired by you to move to good.

And conversely, ive said this before, any time you choose the evil or the neutral path when a good one presents itself, youre showing the people around you that good isnt always the answer, that the good path isnt always the best one. At the very best thats going to inspire people to become neutral. You want to show people that its possible to live a strong and fufilling life while still doing whats right at all times.

Note that I hold Paladins to a higher standard of good than your typical Lawful Good. Paladins to me are exemplars of what it means to be Lawful Good, thats why they are granted powers for it.

I may or may not respond to other things in this thread, because quite frankly I started the last discussion with essentially "It always amuses me when people decide a Paladins two choices are either be a naive idiot who forgives everyone or kill everything that even smells a little evil" and just today I saw people making fun of me for saying a Paladin should let a Succubus say "oh im going to redeem now" 8 times and still believe her. If people are going to completely ignore what I say and continue with this black or white, kill everyone or kill no one definition of Paladins then so be it. Wont affect my game.

Want to make a suggestion you guys probably already thought of, but just in case: A talent to let you use an AoO to use your shield to make a zone of safe space behind you vs area of effect spells, 10ft cone for heavy 15 for tower. So I can do this:

Knight vs Dragon

I like Prowess, considered suggesting it last night, (Schools of Prowess specifically) but didnt want both systems to have the same acronym

Cool, though id like to put in my two cents to recommend considering some specific support (or maybe support for whip like weapons, a chain fighting sphere?) since i can see moves like grappling crossbeams and using it to do swinging kicks and stealing enemies gear from range and the like.

Although..."Vaulting: You use your weapon in such a way that you can move with your strike, causing you to move distance equal to your weapons reach and do some crazy thing" would be a good ability that would both work for whip swinging and using spears to pole vault.

Also, Whips require way more feat investment than any other weapon for very little reason in base, so it would be nice to loosen that a little.

Also, id like to put in my vote for Might too, because then instead of "Sphere Wizard" and "Sphere Fighter" we can use "Powerful Wizard" and "Mighty Fighter"

3) That's NOT the good thing to do. The GOOD thing to do is to kill evil creatures that are bent on disrupting the law abiding folk.

No, that is the just thing to do. The GOOD thing to do is to respect all life and not cause undue suffering. The good thing to do therefore is to stop the evil creatures while causing as little harm as possible.

The neutral thing to do is to kill them because its the easiest way to stop them.

@sundaken

I am not making any assumption, but if they do not have trials the Paladin should be working to make the civilization more Lawful Good. It is his job to set an example, not just kill evil. Thats why theyre Paladins and not LG Fighters or Clerics

Note even your article says its possible for outlaws to get a pardon if they surrender.

Paladins ARE required to be nice, because like it or not being nice is good and Paladins are supposed to be examples of the virtues of exemplary goodness. Again, if they want to purge evil and nothing else, they are not doing their job as Paladins, they are just being Fighters.

There is a very clear alternative here: not killing helpless people. If taking them back to town would be worse, the good alternative is to detain them yourselves while you work on fixing the corruption of the town.

Executing them is a possible solution. If you are in a hurry due to some other important matters, you dont believe the villain in question will repent, and you cant easily detain them, then you can execute them. Otherwise, showing mercy is demonstrating the virtues of good, and sets an example for others to follow, which might lead to more repentions later on. Killing because its convenient sets the opposite example.

Paladins are always required to take the good alternative, thats why for example they cannot lie. Lying is not in itself evil.

If there is a good, neutral, and an evil way to do something and you do not choose the good one what you are doing is demonstrating that good is not the best way to solve problems. By doing that you inspire people to be neutral or evil. This is not what a Paladin should be doing.

I think combining spot, search, and listen to perception, as well as making class skills essentially worthless except for the +3 bonus, made it the case yes. making perception so easy to get means anyone not taking it is the equivalent of if there was a skill called "HP"; youre just needlessly nerfing your survivability by not taking it.

There is reasons not to of course, but theyre all roleplaying ones. Its a big part of why im seriously considering going back to 3.5 skill system for my home games (the main weakness of that was so many prestige classes required skill ranks, and prestige classes are pretty much dead for pathfinder, or at least dont require more than one of them)

Miri Pindles wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Rynjin, your GM must be a extremely harsh, 'cause I find Silent Image to be the most-used first level spell in the game when taken over the course of a character. It's just so versatile it's ridiculous.

I've used Minor Image to some effect (turning myself invisible and sending "myself" ahead in the hallway), but that's about the extent of it.

Silent Image especially gets screwed because, well...it's silent. About the best thing you can do is make a wall or something with it, and even then, most of the time even the hired goons are going to be like "Why is there a wall here?"

Making a wall is super-useful!

Say you're fighting a bunch of ranged mooks. Cast silent image, but flavor it to appear like you're casting a spell that uses the surrounding earth to make a wall. So yeah, the mooks know you cast a spell, but until they get close enough to touch or shoot through the wall, they think you used a spell that actually makes a wall and will act accordingly (try to move around, most likely, giving your party time to plan).

Which delays them for, at best, one of the mooks' turns when he runs up, tries to smash the wall, and hits thin air.

The jig is up, mates!

Since Wall of Stone is so trivial to smash through, except at very low levels when you're fighting Warrior 2's or something like that nobody's going to take the time to move around the wall. They're going to barrel right through it.

Firstly, since Silent Image is a 1st level spell, youre probably going to be using it to beat exactly the kind of low level mooks that *cant* smash through a wall of stone in a single round

Secondly, a good number of bandits arent going to think "BIG WALL HULK SMASH", especially not the archers.

Thirdly, even if you are fighting high level hulk bandits and using Silent Image, you dont have to make it a wall of stone. Make it look like a wall of Admantium, or a wall of force, or a wall of spinning blades and chains that look nasty to get near, or a wall of silently screaming souls of the damned floating around their corpses piled up. The point of illusions is being creative. If you want to block off a path you dont make a smooth wall appear where they know one isnt, you make it look like the cieling is collapsing and piling up rubble so they stand back to wait for it to "end". And if your DM still has the enemy try and hulk smash his way through any of those, remind him thats how bandits in his campaign act when you *actually* cast wall of force or blades or flames.

Andarion wrote:

So again, RAW has no loss of reach; RAI, maybe it was intended. It is an old archetype and new and fun toys for fighters have come out. In the grand scheme of things, does being able to threaten at both 5' and 10' break the game?

Broken/Not broken is only a useful argument when, given two competing interpretations, one is broken (either suspiciously powerful or completely useless) while the other is not. When neither interpretation is broken, but one is stronger than the other, "not broken" isn't really an argument in its favor.

I'm going to put this down as a RAW/RAI disparity and hope it never comes up in my group.

I disagree. If neither interpretation is broken, the one that is more fun should be used.

This may be what youre looking for

Not really good aligned undead per say, but might as well be. Theyre undead fueled by positive energy

Baval wrote:

oh no?

no

You do realize when we say spear in a thread about reach were probably talking about the one with reach...right?

Normal spears didnt have reach in 3.5 either.

especially since he said

I will be illustrating the grip on a longspear via text.

I guess you could take expanded knowledge though. I had forgotten that was a thing

So, a Paladin walks in on a Necromancer, but he hasnt done any necromancy in 12 years and is sleeping. Still worships Nerull though.

Wat do?

That should keep this thread alive.

Fighter. Weapon training.

Baval wrote:

A Paladins first goal should always be redemption, followed closely by protection. It should never be extermination.

Shouldn't a Paladin's first goal be to destroy evil before it has a chance to corrupt, destroy, poison, torture, enslave, or otherwise harm anyone else? That IS protecting others.

No. Preventative annihilation is not protection, its genocide. Theres no redemption in genocide. This kind of action just makes good a different shade of evil, one that is considered acceptable to the common folk because "hes just killing the people who do the bad things"

Good, especially Paladins, should be good. An evil creature should not be able to say "were really not so different" to a Paladin. A neutral character should be able to be inspired by him to switch to good because he sees the benefits of good, not just because hes against the concepts evil enjoy.

Redemption will always be the number 1 goal in any conflict. An evil person destroyed at best stops his particular evil, but an evil person redeemed goes on to propogate more good.

A LN cleric of asmodeous has gone well beyond complicit. They are in all likelyhood beyond redemption, and killing them would help save others.

Neutral = Beyond redemption now.

Ok.

If i don't erradicate evil it will hurt someone else. This is as natural to a paladin as breathing. Something may hold a paladin back (such as the possibility of topling the social order and leading to galt, or no one trusting any paladin ever again if they wantonly break laws) but a paladin...

Or, you could redeem the evil, thereby stopping it from hurting anyone and also making another champion for good.

Immediately jumping to the conclusion of "im against it so it must die" or worse, "it looks like i might be against it at some point in the future so it must die" is evil.

Methings someone is a Gray Warden who thinks hes still a Paladin.

Baval wrote:

This for example is why the Flash is better than Batman. The Flash actually tries to redeem his rogues gallery, and succeeds. Batman doesnt kill them, but he doesnt even bother trying to make them better people, not even Two-Face who used to be a friend of his.

1) the flash is a god. Batman is a mortal. The flash can, and should, take risks batman doesn't because if batman tried that he'd be dead and a lot more people would be hurt

2) The flash's rogues gallery is nowhere near as crazy or evil as batmans. There's no redeeming the joker. The better argument is that NOT killing him is the easy way out that gets people hurt.

1.) these "risks" youre talking about are the flash talking to his enemies in prison and trying to make sure they get rehabilitated. Im pretty sure Batman can do that too.

2.) Maybe not the joker, but Ivy? Harley? Mr Freeze? (admittedly in some stories he does redeem this one) Two Face? Riddler? Bane? Penguin? All of them are crazy due to circumstance, not mental illness.

Baval wrote:

Thats neutral thinking at best. "the world is better off without them" is a very evil line of thought.

No. It isn't. It's a very violent line of thought. It's a very extreme line of thought. But if you haven't noticed paladins are both extreme and violent.

And good.

Paladin abilities are all about finding things that the world would be better off without and then killing them with large pointy objects. In a world that needs paladins this is a good thing because that world is so horrific that it IS markedly improved by people doing this.

The chaotic neutral follower of lamasthu is going to leash some unholy spawn of something and something upon the populace. The file clerk of asmodeuous is freeing up resources to run an oppressive empire. They are helping to advance an evil cause. If a paladin chooses to stay their blade and attempt the Unlikely process of conversion that's a legitimate way to be a paladin... but so is winding back up for that second hit.

Violence without provocation is evil. Filing the books for Asmodeus is not provocation requiring a violent response. Unleashing unholy spawn on the populace is one that may require violence if you dont make it in time or have no alternative choice, but a simple arrest would be much better. There are plenty of ways to stop evil without murdering the potential practitioners on sight.

This for example is why the Flash is better than Batman. The Flash actually tries to redeem his rogues gallery, and succeeds. Batman doesnt kill them, but he doesnt even bother trying to make them better people, not even Two-Face who used to be a friend of his.

Baval wrote:

A Paladins first goal should always be redemption, followed closely by protection. It should never be extermination.

On the other hand, someone willingly gave their lives over to an evil god and is furthering their cause. Even if they are "just the front man" or whatever their excuse is they are enabling a great deal of evil and the world is better off without them.

Thats neutral thinking at best. "the world is better off without them" is a very evil line of thought. A good character isnt just "not evil" he IS good, and a Paladin even more so. He should want the best for everyone, not just an end of the worst, and the best for an evil person is to be shown the error of their ways, not to be sent to the lower planes

Jeraa wrote:

So your typical fully redeemed Lawful Good succubus would detect as, and be affected as, a lawful, chaotic, good, and evil creature all at once.

Did you just say "typical fully redeemed LG Succubus"?

Lady-J, as the paladin likely doesn't know the succubus is good, wouldn't he get a pass for accidental smiling?

"smite first ask questions later" tends not to be a valid excuse, even if the situation dictates its likely. It sets a bad example for others who might want to be redeemed. They will think "why should I bother trying to become good if all my allies will turn on me and Paladins will still smite me on sight"

A Paladins first goal should always be redemption, followed closely by protection. It should never be extermination.