Boyan Penev's page

"Nice to make your acquaintance, Kayela," Hasmir nods at the Shoanti, then turns towards the strange warrior, and replies. "And you too, Mister Dedlock. No need for a sir, though, I have not been knighted just yet."

He gives the newcomers a bit more time to calm down and get themselves to speed on the will and the rest, and regards them with a curious expression. He raises an eyebrow slightly at "Kendy" - apparently the man was a lot more familiar with the Professor than him. Speaking of which, playing cards in a dead man's house? He does appear to be a harrower - curious enough - but courting misfortune like that is quite strange, the harrowers he knew were usually superstitious to a fault. Unless they were trying to get someone else to risk their luck, but that was another story...

"Indeed, although I think it sounds familiar to one I've heard along the way. Not a very common one, though," Hasmir says, interested. "Well, from what we've seen so far there does seem to be a... possibility of foul play in all that. There was a plan to go to the ruin and see if we can find something at the scene of this "accident."

Anyway, there is more," he continues with a sour look on his face. "There was some commotion around the Harrowstone memorial this morning, apparently someone wrote a "V" in blood, or something looking a lot like it. However, so far they've been unable to clean it off, and there was the slight feel of. ah, magic about it - Dryden believes it a necromantic residue of some sort. I checked with the sheriff, and he said that he'll have someone watching it from now on. However, what with magic being involved and us being strangers here, we should try to get to the bottom of this before it turns into mass hysteria. The sheriff said he wouldn't mind if we looked around a bit, as long as we don't cause any trouble. So, ah, is any of you a bit of a night owl?"

Can we tell she's speaking celestial if we don't know celestial, but have heard some before? It would be like knowing if someone's speaking French or German.

Or BE the arcanist... I once had a monk 8 / empyreal sorcerer 2. He had shield, mage armor and jump I believe (expand arcana for one of those). He was very hard to hit and could jump like nobody else ;-)

Yeah, that works quite well. I personally would prefer using psionics if the game allows - there was a pretty decent monk/psionicist PrC as well.

Don't forget bracers of armor. You do not lose your WIS bonus to AC or other monk abilities because of it but still gain armor bonus.

One of the standard items for a monk to gain high AC :-)

Well, at lower levels the pearl of power is usually considered a better option if there is an arcanist in the group - mage armor is a staple buff for a monk :) .

I wish the star knife did more damage. IT only does 1d4 where a chakram does 1d8. I need to look more into the Inquisition stuff.

It could use a boost to 1d6, which is what the hand axe has, so feel free to do that; on the other hand, there are a few light martial weapons with similar stats (then again, the standard dagger isn't much worse mechanically, and is a simple weapon). IIRC the chakram was 1d8, but has a x2 critical and a chance to shash your hand if you use it in melee and don't have heavy armor.

See the manga is what inspired me to make a sailor moon character.

Okay this is what I have so far.

I am thinking Chakram as the primary weapon going off the magic tiara she uses. I am leaning towards the inquisitor class. Why is there no Moon domain? And am I missing something or is pathfinder lacking a moon goddess?

Not as such. Desna is the goddess of the sky, and the night sky in particular, so she'd probably be the main deity worshipped by most lunar cults. Her weapon of choice - the starknife - is somewhat close to a chakram anyway. That's actually the deity I'd suggest if you do go inquisitor (the illumination Inquisition sounds appropriate for your theme), although I think a bard or oracle would work better. I think you definitely could do worse than playing her as an oracle of Heavens.

Aura of justice. Who expects a puny scavenger bird to attack, much less do anything with that pathetic peck of its?

The large lizardman, following the two nearly, shakes his head sidewise, then speaks up in a practiced, slow manner. "Calm down, hostility will benefit no one. What has happened here?"

I played a Katane back in 3.5 though. and I think I liked them better than the Dhampir.

Weren't they pretty much the same concept-wise?

I've been meaning to try a half-elf ninja with eldritch heritage. In general, I'd prefer if the ninja was using two weapons to maximize the number of attacks, but since most ninja will have a good charisma score there should be some way to make use of it.Lepermachaun already mentioned a few (although they are not my favourites), and as I see it, there are two other very good options:

- Skill focus diplomacy and the Serpentine bloodline: the snake clan ninjas are master orators, able to sway their listeners and turn them into allies or cat's paws eager to do their bidding.
- The first feat - Eldritch Heritage - gives you snake bite several times per day. This is an additional attack on top of your regular routine that you can do sneak attack damage with. At higher levels this attack comes with con-draining poison. Several bites and an enemy may die even if they try fleeing!
- The second (Improved EH) gives you either at-will speaking with reptiles and a viper familiar or snake skin. The familiar gives you a bonus to bluff, the awareness feat if you keep it around (bonus to skills you likely use) and can use your skill ranks. For a wizard, that's meh - but a ninja likely has 10+ skill points each level, and a familiar means an effective reroll on many of those skills. Oh, and since it's tiny, it gets a significant modifier to stealth checks in case you need a scout. Oh, via the wildblooded variant (envenomed) you can trade that for swift poisoning of weapons a few times per day... not that I'd bother.
- The snake skin is simpler - bonuses to natural armor (stacks with enhancement bonus to NA), saves vs poison and escape artist checks. Not that good, but potentially handy
- Greater EH isn't that good imo - creeping doom with vipers 1/day.

The draconic bloodline isn't bad either, and dragon clan ninja are phenomenal scouts. SF (perception) can be great for a half-elf ninja (who already has bonuses on perception), and from then on things aren't bad either. For the price of a feat you can get:

- Eldritch Heritage: either claws (not very good) with enhancement, or spit attack you can sneak attack at range with via the linnorn wildblood bloodline. I'd say go linnorn - you will have a ranged weapon you can sneak attack with that ignores many forms of DR and no one can find on you. Claws can also be nice for a surprise, but they aren't quite as good.
- IEH gets either:
- scaling bonus to NA that stacks with most things as well as resistance to one element (quite decent imo, especially if you adventure in areas where one element dominates) or
- scaling breath weapon with decent damage a few times per day
- Greater EH is simple: flight at will.

Now, I can't guarantee that it will be the most uberleet ninja of all times, but it seems to me to be an interesting way to combine the mechanics of the class and provide for interesting fluff bases. Given that ninjas are essentially magical rogues anyway, a little extra magic certainly helps. Look over the SRD for other bloodlines you may like - the Rakshasa (Ghost Tiger Clan), Shadow/Umbral (Creeping Darkness Clan), and Abyssal (Daemon Warden Clan) bloodlines are just a few that might look interesting to you.

Apart from that, I treat the ninja as a rogue that gives trap goodies and delays evasion for some other stuff. TWF and flanking is still your best friend, you still have a lot of skills but aren't that tough. I'd advise against going all out on charisma - it still applies only for your ki pool and couple of other things. Dexterity is still where it's at for ninjas, imo - it helps you wield two weapons and make more attacks, hit (with weapon finesse), defend yourself, avoid various hazards, etc. I've heard stories about strength-based builds, but I'm not sure how good those really are. After UC, there is certainly an option to dual-wield weapons for nonlethal damage via sap adept/sap master, together those should give you a lot of SA damage.

There's nothing stopping you from combining levels of fighter with levels of duelist. The BAB requirement aside, a fighter can qualify for duelist by level 2.

With 6 levels of fighter and 10 levels of duelist you can get a damage bonus of +13 from precise strike, weapon specialization and weapon training. That's nearly double the amount a level 16 fighter would get (+7).

True, but it limits you to certain weapons (one-handed only), attacks, and is only valid against certain enemies. I guess I missed the idea of a duelist using power attack, though - you do have a point. It sounds very anti-iconic, though - I thought the entire point of precise attack was to use finesse.

I still think that the +10 is not very high. The fighter's extra bonus to attack from weapon training (in case of a fighter/duelist, the bonus from WT improvement), converted to power attack, is +4 for a single-handed weapon, +6 for a two-hander, on top of the +2 WT gives directly. Maybe doubling it is not the proper solution, but I still think Precise strike should have something else going for it. Paladins and rangers have other schticks on top of ye olde damage-dealing, though I'm not all that happy with their damage output anyway.

I am ok with the duelist AC. The fact that they add their intelligence in light armor already compensates them - unless you were using some expensive AC-granting robes, a mithral chain is a pretty much free +4 to AC. Sure, it's armor and not dodge, but it's AC. You don't have to wait 7 levels for it either.

What I find is still lacking is their attack. The damage was upped somewhat, but is still fairly low for someone who doesn't have any other abilities. 1 more HP per hit per level, not applicable against a significant part of the enemies and requiring you to not hold a shield and not use TWF, just does not cut it imo. Keep in mind that a pure fighter can get a comparable amount in pure damage bonuses, no questions asked - in 10 levels they will have 2 levels of weapon training, 1 degree of weapon specialization (which, with their bucketful of bonus feats, they can afford) and probably other tricks I am not aware of. Add in TWF, weapon critical and other fighter-only feats and... yeah.

I think the swashbuckler would have to have the bonus damage doubled, or similarly improved in some other way (i.e. sudden strike-ish damage on a feint or critical) in order to compete. Defense is nice, but without a good attack you are just postponing the inevitable.

What does Psionics mean to you?

How can I get you to buy a psionics book and use it in your campaign?

What is an absolute deal-breaker?

Thanks again for the give-and-take.

--Erik

1. A system that produces supernatural effects - but is fluffwise different from arcane or divine magic. To use the comparison other people here made, it is the "magic within" to the "magic without" that arcanists use and the "magic beyond" that divine casters employ. It may - depending on the setting - use the same "power grid" that all magic employs, just tapping into it in a different way. Or it may be conceptually be something different, and entirely unrelated to the other two - a sort of inner power, ki, whatever you want to call it. The point is, it produces obviously supernatural effects (some probably call it magic) by different "laws" than what divine and arcane magic use - most likely by the mental and/or physical effort of the user.

2. I'm generally quite thrifty with buying... but I would definitely consider it for a detailed, well-balanced book that includes a lot of good fluff and crunch: information on how psionic abilities work, how they interact with everything else in the setting (magic, racial abilities, etc), how they are perceived - basically the only book needed for all issues related to psionics. The thing is, I find the XPH a very good source already, and I would much rather prefer a comprehensive update that makes it compatible with Pathfinder rules rather than a full-blown book. Still... I guess Paizo does need to make money as well. Yet if there needs to be a separate book on psionics, it should be good value for its money and not just introduce a few cosmetic rules to what is imo a well-working system.

3. Eh... I am not sure, 3.5 already had many diverse systems, many of which (incarnum, binding, ToB) are worth playing. As long as the system is not unnecessarily complicated, mechanically inconsistent, or just plain unbalanced, it could be worthwhile. By and large, though, I liked 3.5 psionics and would rather not change it too much.

Hello everyone,

I'm planning a new D&D game, and I'd like to give Pathfinder a try. However, while I think that it's definitely a move in the right direction (and I liked 3.5 more than 4), I'm not sure if it's completely balanced yet. Are there any houserules that you use in your games and would recommend for mine?

Here are some preliminary ideas that I have:

- partial BAB and save progression for multiclassing
- when a character is proficient with a martial weapon form their race and from their class(i.e. dwarf fighter with battleaxe) they get a +1 to attack with such weapons. This does not stack - but if every dwarf knows how to use a hammer, dwarf warriors should be even more proficient with it, right?
- fighters can also specialize (in their weapon training feature) in combat maneuvers (adding to their rolls to trip/disarm/sunder etc) and grapple.
- I'm looking for a way to limit full casters - perhaps 1 less spell slot for each level or requiring a spellcraft roll for casting?
- power attack and deadly aim have improved versions, which allow you to reduce your attack by up to your BAB (like in 3.5 Power attack) and add it to your damage.
- natural spell is a metamagic feat, and spells prepared with it should be prepared one slot higher.

Any comments, please?

I like psionics, as per the XPH. It is akin to magic, but not quite - more of an alternative magic system (for those who miss those mana points) than anything else. The power names are the only thing that is sci-fi imo, the powers itself are not much different from arcane and divine spells.

I'd definitely like to see how Pathfinder adapts the XPH classes. Personally, I think three of them - psion, wilder and psychic warrior - are good enough to work with a minimal conversion. The soulknife... meh, this one might be a bit of a challenge to rework :)