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Long time lurking, but I felt I had to share this. It's a live action fan film for Dragon Ball Z and it's pretty sweet. It claims to be a pilot episode of a series telling the history of Trunks. I'm hoping for more.
Does Pummeling Style Work With All Weapons?]101 people marked this as FAQ candidate. 6 people marked this as a favorite. Pummeling Style 101. I would absolutely take this course in Monk College. :P
So this is a 13th level projection of the Inquisitor with your guys' help: Pilin lonAmor. Her name is kind of a reference to the 300 quote "Our arrows will blot out the sun!" I didn't choose spells with her (as that's up to my friend to do so) other than what was absolutely necessary for her number crunching. Obviously, this is an 'optimal gear' selection for her, so she's going to be more powerful than an organic version built up from level 1. Regardless, my, admittedly, amateur number crunching suggest her DPR will be just over 240 a round (241.3 to be exact), though I'm not 100% certain on this amount. Anyway, I'm going to send my build along to my friend and let him have final say on the matter. Thanks for all the help guys! Edit: Helps if I use the right link huh? :P
I knew what you meant! ;) I did consider Escape Route, but that would only really be useful for him until 8th level. He's got the Exploration Sub-Domain so he can use Dimensional Hop at 8th level to teleport 10 ft. per level per day as a move action. Once he gets Dimensional Hop, he won't really need Escape Route anymore as he can just teleport away.
Keep in mind the friend I'm building this for decided he'd rather have Snap Shot instead of Clustered Shot, so I figured I'd try and make the Snap Shot feats work with the archer. The best I could think of to do is via the teamwork feats to increase the bonus he gets for flanking. Currently, he'll get up to +6 to hit while flanking due to feats, and he could get another +2 for a total of +8 if he buys a +1 menacing gauntlet to further increase his bonus.Either way works, but by that level your friend might be frustrated by all the DR out there. Alchemical blanches are his friend if he has the cash and access. Yeah, weapon blanches are on my list of things I'm recommending for him. Plus, if he uses a wand of abundant ammunition before firing the weapon blanched arrows, he gets them back. I'm currently rolling out a 13th level version of the inquisitor just to see what he would be like. Looks very promising so far.
Keep in mind the friend I'm building this for decided he'd rather have Snap Shot instead of Clustered Shot, so I figured I'd try and make the Snap Shot feats work with the archer. The best I could think of to do is via the teamwork feats to increase the bonus he gets for flanking. Currently, he'll get up to +6 to hit while flanking due to feats, and he could get another +2 for a total of +8 if he buys a +1 menacing gauntlet to further increase his bonus.
Don't think of it like that. Think of it as "negate enemy crits several time per day", since the chance of re-rolling that nat 20 is 0.25 percent. The other applications may be situational, but when you need something to hit [i]right now{/i], that re-roll could be a life saver. That's... actually a really good point. However, one couldn't use it on a Natural 20 as the results of the natural 20 have already been revealed because a natural 20 always hits. One would have to call out a re-roll before the hit his made and hope the original is a crit and the re-roll makes it miss or something. It would still work for rolls coming up on 15-19 though, technically. I think, however, it's kind of a 'GM Headache' option and I'll leave it up to my friend to make the ultimate decision. I, personally, prefer the team work feats so as to not spark any possible arguments over whether or not something counts, but he may prefer to bring the re-rolls. Hmm... dropping the team work feats does kind seriously change the build however... Without the teamwork feats there's really no point to taking Snap Shot. I could probably talk him into taking Clustered Shots instead as he'd get very little benefit out of threatening with his bow if he has nothing triggering off those threat. Another thing to take into advisory for him!
Ha! That's actually a really amusing feat because my friend has a well-known (with us anyway) and long standing history of being able to roll a natural 20 1 in 5 times, nearly guaranteed. We've tried changing dice and even buying brand new ones and he just seems to have that special lucky touch. This feat would be hilarious on him if he makes it to 19th level! If he doesn't want Clustered Shot, then that's definitely going into the build.
Ooh, good point on Outflank, I forgot about that. As for Clustered Shot, I agree, I kind of just threw that in there as I'm not sure what feat to put in at 19th level (at that point, it's not like a single feat is going to change the game much at 19th). The guy I'm building this for, however, said he would rather have Snap Shot over Clustered Shot so he can flank with allies. Apparently, some people think if you're not flanking as a combat class, then you aren't contributing to the fights. Anyway, I thought about Allied Spellcaster, but that kind of forces you to be standing next to the party casters and not making use of the Snap Shot/Flanking bonus he gets. Though it wouldn't be bad to use it for some opening spells at the beginning of a fight... Definitely a consideration though.
Based off the advice from this thread, this is what I've changed it too so far: 25-point buy: Str 10, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 9 Domain: Exploration (sub-domain of the Travel Domain) Traits: Fate's Favored (must have); for your second trait Reactionary or any trait that gives a bonus to Perception is a good choice, but it's up to you. Recommended Feats:
Teamwork Feats:
Item suggestions:
@EsperMagic, a Goz Mask does the same thing and doesn't delay Inquisitor advancement. Plus, as a Fetchling, it's better for him to be shooting from Darkness, as he has Shadow Blending which increases the miss chance from 20% to 50% when he has concealment from being in dim light. It's a really strong tactic regardless, and I've actually seen someone build an entire NPC party of bounty hunters around this very tactic. If a party has no way to counter it, you can see equal or higher level parties be wiped out by the NPC bounty hunters with little effort. You can't attack what you can't see after all. @stuart haffenden, if the re-rolls allowed you to take the better of the two rolls, I'd be all for it, but you have to take the second roll (with Aggression or Warning) even if it's better/worse than the original. This can have some serious negative drawbacks on the group, like turning an enemy hit into a crit. This isn't so bad if it's only used for Aggression, as it can only make a miss into an even worse miss, or possible better, but I'm not sure it's worth it. As it stands, the current Team Work feats I have will make him obscenely powerful once Snap Shot comes online. With Outflank, Enfilading Fire, and Snap Shot, for example, he'll get a +6 bonus to attack rolls when he flanks. If he has something like a +1 menacing gauntlet or something, then he gets a +8 bonus while flanking. This is crazy good and turn even his worst attack into a nearly guaranteed hit. If I use the numbers above on the Pure Inquisitor (+20(x2)/+20/+20/+15) his attack routine would be +28(x2)/+28/+28/+23 and that's using a non-magical bow, and no magical items other than a +1 menacing gauntlet to boost his attack bonus. Do you think re-rolls outweigh the +6 or +8 bonus on attack rolls from the team work feats in conjunction with snap shot? If I recall, a re-roll is essentially the same as +4 bonus on the dice.
Thanks for the help. I got to talking with my friend and he decided on the pure Inquisitor. I hope this guy doesn't just totally dominate the game though. I doubt the other players have the same level of game mastery that I do (especially with the help of the forums to back me up).
Thanks for the tips. I actually did dump charisma down to an 8, (fetchlings get +2 Cha), though I guess dumping it down to 7 wouldn't hurt. I was going off that Inquisitor guide somewhat when building the stats, but seeing how little the strength really matters in the above numbers (by virtue of the fact I forgot to include it), I will definitely give some serious thought to dropping the strength down. So item-wise I'm looking at recommendations for (Greater) Bracers of Archery or Bracers of Falcon's Aim (which ever is possible), Bane Baldric, Jingasa of the Fortunate Soldier (it benefits from Fate's Favored trait) and a Holy Longbow? Any other items you can recommend? The Inquisitor has always been a class I've wanted to play, I've just never had the opportunity as games, GM permission and/or party composition has allowed. So this is kind of a learning experience for me.
On the Race, he's fully aware it's not the most optimal choice, but he really loves the Fetchling race, especially for the spell-like abilities that really tie in to his back story as a 'shadow warrior' he made. I pointed out the wisdomw penalty and everything, but he's pretty adamant on playing a fetchling. The Inquisitor is a follower of Desna, so the Fur domain isn't a choice for him. If it was, it'd be hard to fit Boon Companion in on this build as it's already so feat intensive as it is. With the feats, I told him he needed to choose which came first, Snap Shot or Clustered Shot and he chose Snap Shot. Clustered Shot is an option, but not until the high levels. With the Fighter Dip, it's possible at 11th (in place of Extended Bane) or 17th level. Without the dip, it's really only possible at 19th level unless he was willing to postpone his feats. I was going to add in some notes for him to keep in mind, like if he encounters a lot of DR he can't bypass, he could always postpone taking a feat in favor of Clustered Shot. The only reason I even considered the dip was so he didn't have to wait until 13th level to use Snap Shot. But with the 3 level dip, he will be getting a +3 bonus to hit and damage (assuming Gloves of Dueling) via Weapon Training. Hmm... I'm a little curious at the numbers now. So at 12th level the classes would compare as follows (without magic items except Gloves of Dueling). 12th level Pure Inquisitor w/Fate's Favored Trait: BAB 9, +3 Justice Judgement, +5 Dex, +1 Weapon Focus, +2 Bane, +5 Divine Power, -2 Rapid Shot, -3 Deadly Aim = +20(x2)/+20/+20/+15 attack routine. Damage: +5 Destruction Judgement, +6 Deadly Aim, +2 Bane, +4d6 (average 14) Greater Bane, +5 Divine Power = ~32 damage per arrow. 12th level Inquisitor 9/WM Fighter 3 w/Fate's Favored Trait: BAB 9, +2 Justice Judgement, +5 Dex, +1 Weapon Focus, +2 Bane, +4 Divine Favor, +3 Weapon Training, -2 Rapid Shot, -3 Deadly Aim = +21(x2)/+21/+16 attack routine*. Damage: +4 Destruction Judgement, +6 Deadly Aim, +2 Bane, +2d6 (average 7) Bane, +4 Divine Favor, +3 Weapon Training = ~26 damage per arrow. *The Weapon Master Dip allows the Inquisitor to flank, letting him gain the benefit of the teamwork feat Outflank, granting him an additional +4 to hit, bringing his attack routine up to +25(x2)/+25/+20. So, the pure Inquisitor can do more damage per shot and fire an extra shot via Divine Power (a 4th level spell the Fighter Inquisitor doesn't qualify for), but the Fighter Inquisitor is more accurate, and since Haste is such a common spell, he can probably expect to benefit from it fairly often, which puts him at the same number of attacks as the pure Inquisitor. I have to say, I think the pure Inquisitor is just a plain better option. That Greater Bane is a huge game changer, and it's worth noting the pure Inquisitor needed no magic items to generate those numbers, everything he's got comes from himself. I will, however, run this by my friend to see his opinion. Whenever I build for someone else, I always toss on a couple of variances to and let them choose the ultimate fate. Still, I'd like to see any other input people have, just to see what they think. All input is good input in my opinion.
Ok, so here's the deal, a friend of mine wants to play a Fetchling Archer Inqusitor (and he refuses to change the race). He asked me to come up with a build that focuses on a kind of stealthy, ninja-type assassin Inquisitor build. He wants to be good at infiltrating places and using a bow. I told him he should be wary of optimizing an archer as it tends to make GMs frustrated, but he told me it was OK because the GM encouraged everyone to optimize their characters as much as they wanted in this game as he intends to run a very difficult campaign. They are using 25 point buy for the game, and I have to admit I'm not super familiar with the Inquisitor class. I'm not supposed to include items or spells, as he'll choose the spells as needed and he has no guarantee on if any items will be available. I would, however, like to include item suggestions for him to seek out. He's also told me that he wants to include at least the first two Snap Shot feats, so I've come up with the following progression. 25 Point Buy: Str 14, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 12, Wis 14, Cha 9 (Includes racial adjustments) Domain: Exploration (for the infiltration and spying possibilities) 1) Point-Blank Shot
I've also thought up the possibility of taking either a 2 or 3 level dip into Weapon Master Fighter for more feats, and/or Weapon Training. Which would look like this: 1) Point-Blank Shot
Now, I know that Weapon Training at 3rd is debateable if it works with Gloves of Dueling, but I asked my friend about it and the come to find out a fighter in the current campaign he is in is a Weapon Fighter and the Gloves work for him (same GM) so I'm assuming it will work for him in the next campaign. My question is, is there more that I can do to help him optimize this archer? What items, beyond the Bane Baldric, Gloves of Dueling and Bracers of Archery, should I point him towards? Which build works better, the pure Inquisitor, or the one with the Dip? Is there a better dip he could take to help him get earlier access to the feats? Or a better dip just period? Any help here would be appreciated.
Somehow this thread turned into a superman thread Ugh, the above just reminded me of something this thread is missing. Hitler, Nazis, Holocaust. There we go, the law has been upheld
Well, first of all, that's the wrong metaphor, because watching a DVD is a passive activity. If you wanted to get somewhere with this, you'd want to compare PFS GMs to video game consoles. Glad to see you read the entirety of the my original post.
See, I already made the video game reference. But you'd still be wrong. I do both. I can speak to this. Your assessment is not correct. So what you're saying then, is you modify the PFS scenarios? Glad to see you aren't playing the scenarios correctly. My understanding is that PFS GMs are not supposed to change the encounters. They don't get to decide that, instead of a 10th level Bard, the BBEG is actually a 10th level Wizard. The job of the PFS GM is to run the encounter, as written. You are the narrator of the story, not the author. If an encounter calls for 5 goblin warriors, then the encounter is 5 goblin warriors. You can't decide to change one of the warriors to an adept and another warrior to an alchemist. That is not within the power of the PFS GM. It is, however, within the power of a non-PFS GM as those GMs can run whatever game they want. It is why, I think, non-PFS games should carry more weight when it comes to game balance, than a PFS game as the PFS game is Pathfinder on Novice difficulty.
The PFS GM is not a Game Master, he's a narrator, a living DVD player. Personally, if someone only GMs for PFS, his opinion is worth less than that of someone who GMs home games. A DVD is a story that is played the same way every time, no deviation. A PFS scenario is designed to give the same play experience for everybody world wide with no deviation. A DVD player allows you to play DVDs and bear witness to the story contained on the DVD. A PFS GM runs the story contained within a PFS scenario so everyone can have the same experience. Considering the PFS GM can't replace enemies, alter their feats, alter their skills, alter their classes, increase or decrease the enemies, change the spell selection etc. The comparison between a DVD player and a PFS GM is pretty apt in my book. The variation of the stories in PFS are based upon the actions of the player and the dice being rolled, not the PFS GM.
Deflect arrows is balanced in Core by being in Core. I dearly hope this is facetious.
I agree. I think PFS rules and limits placed on the GMs made this Crane Wing seems much more powerful than it really is. Is a cleric that has been optimized for killing undead extremely powerful* in an undead campaign? Yes. Is a cleric that has been optimized for killing undead extremely powerful* in a campaign with little-to-no undead? No. *By extremely powerful, I meant over and above the strength of a normal cleric. PFS happens to be a series of encounters that CW is strongest against. Enemies with iterative or single attacks. These encounters are also of the weakest from a design standpoint, as they don't pose very much threat against even a moderately well built party. I mean, I've seen Strength 24 (while raging) Human Barbarians with Power Attack and Cleave 2-handing a Falchion in PFS before. I've seen them go up against Level 1 Kobolds and Level 1 Goblins. You're talking 2d4+13 points of damage against creatures with 5 or 6 HP. With an average damage of 18 on each hit, these level 1 guys are able to kill level 2, 3 and sometimes 4 characters in a single hit. When you're doing over 3 times their HP in damage in a single hit, you are killing your foes so badly their father, and their father's father feel the blow. In these situations, the Barbarian is being put into a situation perfectly designed for him to completely smash face and there is little the GM can do about it (in PFS). Is Power Attack OP here? Is Cleave? Is it the Barbarian class? Is it the Falchion? Is it the Point Buy? Or is it simply bad encounter design? The point is, when you are analyzing something to see if it's really brokenly powerful or not, you can't be looking at the data where everything is in favor of the thing in question, you have to look normal scenarios, scenarios where it's stacked against the thing, and all the ones in between. PFS happens to be the 'most reliable' information Paizo has (despite being rife with house rules). However, it's also the situation that is most heavily stacked in favor of Crane Wing. I have a wizard named Cairen Weiss that is built around being the best Fireball caster she can be. She can do lots of things with Fireball and her Fireballs hurt a lot. She also packs a lot of other fire spells, like Burning Hands, Flaming Sphere, Wall of Fire etc. The GM went and watched Frozen and decided to put our party in a 'Frozen themed' mini-adventure. Everything had vulnerability to fire. I was cackling with mad glee at the absolute destruction I unleashed. One of the players mentioned that my character was too powerful, and I pointed out, "The GM put us in a situation where my character is at her very best. How is that OP? I mean, everything here takes 50% more damage from fire spells and effects!" Was my character OP? Or was the encounter in my favor? PFS is in Crane Wing's favor, and it's not the fault of Crane Wing that it appears so powerful when the deck is stacked in it's favor.
Oh yeah. It's definitely madness. But herein comes what being a good GM is all about. Ultimately, PFS is a constrictive set of rules, rules that if someone cares to, can easily become viewed as overpowered. In a home game, a good GM can... I agree. I think PFS rules and limits placed on the GMs made this Crane Wing seems much more powerful than it really is. Also, for some reason, this post made me think of Malcom Reynolds in Serenity when he said, "I aim to misbehave".
You know, it occurs to me that a higher level Bumi could use Gloves of Shaping (combined with Gloves of Dueling of course) to just pull handfuls of rock out of the ground to refill his ammo.
I am too but there needs to be swords.I'm picturing Dragon Ball Z.Someone with better internet skills find an anime to put this into action for me. I'm imagining those high speed sword clashes right now. It's nice. There actually doesn't. The point of Snake Style was to turn unarmed attacks into "light or one handed piercing weapons" for the purposes of the Swashbuckler class features. Between Crane Style, Snake Style and Parry/Riposte from the Swashbuckler, there would be tons of potential parrying, ripostes, and AoO from missing each others' high ACs.
I guess they listened to some guys only playing casters and calling foul every time a martial does something useful.This type of comment annoys me because it so completely misses the point. Casters didn't care about Crane Wing. Why should they. The counter to Crane Wing is spells, so it makes Casters even more valuable as it was. When the first ACG playtest came out, there was a part of me that wanted to build a MoMS 2/ Swashbuckler 18 using Crane and Snake Style and have them fight each other with the original Parry/Riposte mechanic. It'd be something like....
Repeat
Sometimes something as simple as giving the enemies a flask of alchemist fire to throw before entering melee can change the nature of fights. Having slings and bullets can help enemies seek desirable positions to hit the party with. There are a lot of easy methods to change up the 'I melee attack' problem with PFS, but it seems like they don't want to use it. Only using melee attacks was a problem even without Crane Wing. Casters of all sorts could drop Grease, Create Pit or other such terrain spells to interfere with movements allowing for ranged allies to get extra rounds of attacks on enemies. I recall observing one group playing PFS where everyone brought Tower Shields and would set up a horseshoe of Tower Shields around a doorway, then enlarge the Martial so he could use a reach weapon and attack the people stuck in the trap. Meanwhile, the party could drop things like Alchemist Fire or Acid Flasks over the edge of the tower shields, or flaming spheres, fireballs etc. Odd tactic, and kind of cheesy, but it worked. Crane Style had nothing to do with those tactics.
Role-playing Masochism of course.
Indeed. As a GM, I let my players know that if they're going to start searching slat books, then I won't be limiting my NPCs or monsters to just CRB either. Especially the earlier Besitaries; change out those SLA and add variety.
It is, but at the same time the PFS issue raises a major issue with the game as a whole: Does CR matter? I mean, yes, in a home game you can adjust encounters to challenge players by raising them above the theoretically appropriate CR. But is the game not essentially broken if you're having to do that? CR is theoretically a major game element, which if nothing else is supposed to save GMs a considerable amount of time calibrating challenges. If it no longer functions as a way to do this, what does that do to the game as a whole? That's the big question posed by PFS's existence. That's a very good analogy of the CR system and one of the reasons why I prefer home games to PFS.
I know all of this. I would go further than you have gone and say that CR is not only imperfect, it's become barely useful if not actively misleading. So the question is: how can you have a meaningful system of organized play when this is the case? The non-PFS community is going to continue to be affected by what happens within PFS, so I'd say this issue is pretty important. Unless of course you think that there can be no meaningful organized play, which is also an interesting conversation. If that's the case, then organized play should be abolished as it is meaningless in and of itself, yet impacts home style play. The problem is PFS isn't being kept separate from Pathfinder. PFS comes with a list of houserules long enough that it could probably be entirely published as it's on Player Companion. It's always struck me as odd that people want to bring up PFS in balance debates when PFS has a history of balancing itself. I think PFS should use it's power more often to ban or change problem feats, spells, classes etc, but only for PFS! During playtests and other such things on the boards, if someone uses a house rule in their examples, they are held up as less credible an example than those who didn't. PFS has a HUGE number of house rules, yet still gives valid feedback? I mean, in PFS, if you have a staff, it's assumed to be recharged between scenarios, even if the scenarios are linked together and/or take place on the same day. In this way, people can abuse things like the Staff of the Master to get free metamagic on their characters. Best part? If a character has cheese like this going on, the GM can't really say, "No, that feat/spell/class/item/ability isn't allowed at my table". If it's a legal PFS option, then it's a valid strategy and can't really be stopped. Sure, a GM could choose to evict the person from the table, but that just furthers the GM vs. Players mentality.
This pretty much covers it. You don't need to start upping monsters just to get around the defenses to begin with. That character is specialized in that particular area of the game and I'd imagine has paid for it in other areas. Following that line of thought, why penalize them even more for deciding to take that route? Simply have intelligent creatures learn from their mistakes and move on to other targets. You could also consider throwing in some creatures that aim at touch AC.If you are upping the stats of monsters to hit defense specialized players at rates similar to non-defensive specialized players you are doing it (GMing) wrong. Not only that, it makes the problem worse. If the Defense SPecialist is getting hit all the time, he will look for more ways to up his Defense to make it harder. The other party members simply won't be able to even attempt to keep up. There will come a point that the other party members stop trying to increase their defense, and increase their offense, hoping that they can kill everything before they get killed in return.
It is, but at the same time the PFS issue raises a major issue with the game as a whole: Does CR matter? I mean, yes, in a home game you can adjust encounters to challenge players by raising them above the theoretically appropriate CR. But is the game not essentially broken if you're having to do that? CR is theoretically a major game element, which if nothing else is supposed to save GMs a considerable amount of time calibrating challenges. If it no longer functions as a way to do this, what does that do to the game as a whole? That's the big question posed by PFS's existence. CR is only a theoretical approximation of power. Only experience can teach the true value of creatures. As an example, take a look at the Dark Stalker. It's a CR 4 threat all by his lonesome. For an APL 4 party, this is an average encounter and should be pretty easy right? Wrong. See, the Dark Stalker has Deeper Darkness at will and the ability to See in Darkness, including that of Deeper Darkness. So your party is in a dark warehouse using light, and then everything turns supernaturally dark. Even those with Darkvision (Half-orcs, Dwarves etc) can't see... but the Dark Stalker can. He can come in using use his superior vision to start dropping sneak attacks on the party. He can full attack, and then 5-foot step away, and the party will stumble around in the dark trying to find this guy. It takes a 3rd level spell (available at 5th) to counter Deeper Darkness, and this is something the party doesn't have. How about an APL 8 party? They have access to Daylight, sure, but how many times? Maybe once if they know to bring it ahead of time? In this situation, the Dark Stalker could bring two allies with him (3 Dark Stalkers = CR 8 threat) or another Dark Stalker and 4 Dark Creepers. You know have 6 enemies with See In Darkness and the Dark Stalkers can use their at will Deeper Darkness to dispel any Daylight spells the party may have. In the mean time, the full on Crane Style, Crane Wing, Crane Riposte character is crying somewhere as he's denied his dex, dodge and Crane Wing defense. The party is being ambushed by monsters in the night that, and the Dwarf and Half-Orc in the party are, for the first time in their career, scared of the shadows. There are other such things that exist in this game. The Ghaele Azata is a CR 13 creature that can fairly reliably kill CR 15 - CR 16 creatures with minimal effort or threat to herself. Any creature that can't fly or attack at range can be taken down by a weaker dragon. Templates added to creature only exacerbate the problem. You can take a Kobold and add 4 different templates before it even reaches CR 2. Then you can toss on 2 levels of warrior and you've got a pretty bad-assed Kobold Conquerer running around. Toss the Advanced and Fey Creature Template on a Kobold with 2 levels of warrior and give them a bow, a CR 1 creature, and watch them make parties cry with their ambushes. The CR system is imperfect. It only measures the DPR and defenses of a creature, and doesn't take into account spells, spell-like abilities, supernatural abilities, or other abilities the monster may have.
Well, it's been suggested before to errata MoMS so that they still have to meet BAB or Monk level requirements on Style feats. This stops the level dippers cold. It also stops the 'Crane Wing at level 1' shenanigans people have been using in PFS.
The attack roll smite modifier and the AC modifier don't match up. That said, I was mostly interested in ability score spread and feats, not the numbers. You have an extra feat in there. An 11th level Halfing only has 6 feats (plus the bonus from DD Bard). [Edit] Ah right, combat feat from rogue, forgot about that. Ninja'd
my friend's was a Bard 5/Paladin 5/Rogue 2/Fighter 1.My God. Why would he do that? So the 11th level character spent all of it's feats on a single style of combat? Crane Style is a 5 feat chaing, Imp. Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing, Crane Riposte. None of the above, as far as I am aware, grant either Dodge or Imp. Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. At 11th level, a character has 5 feats, and this character had to spend all of them to finish Crane Style, or 4 of them to get Crane Wing. What did this character fight with? Definitely not an archer... the only thing I can think of is Dervish Dancer Bard for free Dervish Dance. I'm guessing Dex/Cha prime so that she gets good use out of the 2 smite evils the Paladin has... I'm going to say something like... 26 Dex, 20 Cha, and a +2 Keen Scimitar. BAB 8 + 8 (Dex) + 2 (Enhancement) + 4 (Inspire Courage) - 1 (Crane Riposte) for a regular attack bonus of +22/+17 or +23/+23/+18 with Haste. Smite would bump this to +27/+22 or +28/+28/+23 wit Haste. Damage is going to be 1d6 + 14 or 1d6 + 18 smiting. with a 15-20x2 crit range. Am I close?
If you aren't doing enough damage to keep an enemy focused on you, such as what offensive martials do, then any enemy with an intelligence score should be going after other characters instead. What I keep seeing in the anecdotal evidence of people saying Crane Wing was too powerful in home games, is the GMs playing their characters like idiots. If an NPC has survived long enough to reach ~7th level, then he's learned a thing or two about tactics and strategy, high intelligence score or not. If that character keeps attacking a wall he can't hurt, then he's an idiot. Especially if he's letting hat frail looking guy in robes sit over there casting spells at him. In PFS, we see people dipping MoMS for early access to Crane Wing so they can use the feat against the mostly humanoid enemies that are being run by GMs who only have the option of "I attack" since that is how the characters are designed. I'm not a super experienced GM, the first time I ran a game was ~4 years ago. I quickly learned that only using melee characters is a very poor design as it makes combat easy and predictable. At first, I started throwing in things like archers on rooftops or in trees, this made the combat more dynamic. Then I started having a mix of casters, melee and archers. This greatly improved the fight as the combats were now being used on three separate levels. I never saw this much in PFS. The best scenario I ever saw involved an adept that had a couple of spells and some goblins as meat shields. The rest were simply a bunch of melee characters all charging the party, for the most part. Easy encounters that are easy to plan for and counter. PFS strongly reminds me of video games. Once you learned the counter to an enemy in a game, it becomes very easy to reliably beat them. Even non-RPG games have this issue. I recall the original Halo: Combat Evolved game and the hunters. At first, Hunters were a B*tch! to fight. Then I learned you could kill them with a single shot from a pistol. They became extremely easy to fight and almost a non-threat. In the Halo Game, the Hunters couldn't change their weakness, the game couldn't change the way pistols and Hunters functioned. It was all locked in. Just like PFS. In PFS, if the module calls for a Spring-Attacking Rogue as a BBEG (not that I ever saw one) then what you get is a Spring-Attacking Rogue as a BBEG. While it is, visually, a cool idea, the fact is neither Spring-Attack nor Rogues are very good combat options, and even worse together. But the PFS GM can't change this. If Crane Wing is allowing players to curb-stomp encounters, it's not the fault of the feat, it's the fault of the GM for not changing things. You are running the game like a video game, where everything is locked in afterward and doesn't change. Modern video games handle this through patches. Some games even have dynamic combat systems that adapt the combats based off the previous fights and encounters. As a GM, do you really want to be known for running games that are less adaptable than a computer program?
Tell her to bake the cookies instead. That'll probably help.
Having a title does not make one infallible. Look at the Flurry of Blows debacle. It was the Pathfinder DESIGNERS that created that mess, and it was the people without such titles who forced them to fix it. Pathfinder's Development team is very good at their. However, this does not make them perfect. There are many little mistakes that are made, through-out the years, that is up to the people to correct. As an example, a minor issue I've known for awhile is the Invisibility Purge FAQ made back in 2011. In the FAQ it mentions creatures with natural invisibility are susceptible to invisibility purge and specifically mentions Invisibile Stalkers, Will-o-wisps, and Pixies. However, this is in contrast with the actual rules for Natural Invsibility:
It's a minor mistake, and not one probably care too much about. In fact, it probably makes the game better, as this means creatures like Pixies, and Will-o-wisps are ungodly powerful at low-levels. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Also, what makes a PFS GM have more authority than a non-PFS GM? When you stop and think about it, PFS operates under more house-rules than, I would say, the majority of tables. The GM of a PFS game is less 'Game Master' and more of living computer to play a video game. The PFS GM can't manipulate the adventure on the fly. He can't change the encounters. He can't add more encounters or more HP or more AC to opponents. Hell, he can't even alter the tactics of an enemy if published. The PFS GM is not a Game Master, he's a narrator, a living DVD player. Personally, if someone only GMs for PFS, his opinion is worth less than that of someone who GMs home games.
I didn't understand or recognize where you were getting your figures from, but why would you need to deflect an attack that missed? He probably meant 'treat as a deflection' for the purposes of activating Crane Riposte.
Bumi (loved the name by the way) has a slight error with his Rage rounds. It's listed as 12/day under his special attacks, but 6/day in the description. Bumi looks so much fun to play, as an NPC or as a character. The idea of some guy just going around killing things with rocks is just too much fun. Glad Cao Phen made that post. As for Frozen, if you want to see a good display of Elsa's Ice Powers, watch the Let It Go! music video. There are a handful of other good displays of her ice powers in the movie, but one of the best ones is in that video.
The Purple Worm is also, apparently, utterly stupid to keep attacking something that isn't attacking him back while others are doing more damage. That's one of the problems people have with this feat. In order to Riposte, it requires for the enemy to be stupid and attack a non-attacking foe, instead of someone who is attacking. If you enter Total Defense, you are removing yourself as a threat for that round of Combat.
See, this is where we are going to have to agree to disagree. I am not going to be able to convince you that Crane Wing wasn't too powerful, and you're never going to convince me that it was too powerful and/or this nerf was a good thing. As it stands, at this point, I know of 5 different people who have either asked for a rebuild (in home games) or retired/torn up their charactersheets for PFS. Fortunately, myself and another have GMs that can see reason and are ignoring this errata in this game (as I will when it's my turn to run games again). Only one of the guys dipped MoMS for Crane Wing, the 6 others (including myself) took the long way and took all the pre-requisites. These guys (including myself) have sunk between 4-5 feats of their characters 10 standard feats into gaining the full Crane chain, and now they feel the changes to Crane Wing and Crane Riposte are so utterly worthless (myself included) that they've either abandoned their character, torn up their sheet, or asked for a rebuild. Out of these 7 players, I'm the closest that comes to an 'optimiser' in that I pick the most optimal choice for my character, if it makes sense. I won't muchkin the guy into supreme power, but I will build a guy who is good at what he does. So we have 7 players in 4 different groups that are now unwilling to use this errata. To me, that says something. It is of course an anecdote, and not an all inclusive statistic of every player world wide, but it still says something to me. There is no way I can support this decision. I feel it is wrong, and short-sighted. I've supported previous design decisions in the past that Paizo has made, even if I didn't like it (for instance, armor spikes) but I cannot support this. I've said it before, and I'll repeat it here. I feel strongly enough about opposing this design influence, that if I ever GM a PFS game again (unlikely) I will not hold players to this errata and encourage them to use the original version.
My original point is, outside of MoMS and Unarmed Fighter, characters aren't getting early access to Crane Wing. I want to know how many of these complaints that PFS had involved level dips into MoMS for early access to Crane Wing. Crane Wing is only really 'super strong' at low levels. Around 5th level is when you start seeing multiple attack monsters more reliably, and at 6th level, any full BAB class gets 2 attacks. Crane Wing becomes less effective as the number of attacks a creature is threatened with increases. Crane Wing was has BAB 5 or Monk level 5th for a reason, because that's what the feat was designed for. If it was designed to be accessed at level 1, it would probably resemble what it is now. I firmly believe it's the level dips into MoMS that is turning the molehill that is Crane Wing into a mountain of a problem for PFS.
For example, a Bard or Magus (people inclined to take the feat to go with Dervish Dance) have to spend 5 feats for Imp. Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing and Crane Riposte. Ooh, fun fact! I downloaded the document on the first day! /snark Ooh! Fun Fact! With the exception of MoMS and Unarmed Fighter, you can't take Crane Wing until 5th level by any of the above! Ooh! /snark As far as I am aware, only the MoMS and Unarmed Fighter can take a style feat and ignore prerequisites. A Pure Magus, a Pure Bard, a Pure Monk (not a MoMS), a Pure Inquititor etc. has to spend between 4 and 5 feats to gain the full Crane Style chain. So first level Imp. Unarmed Strike.
Monk's can finish the chain by 7th level, a Fighter can finish the chain at 8th level and everyone else has to wait until 9th level to finish the change. A PFS character spends the vast majority of his career just building up to Crane Riposte. While 20th level characters spend almost half their career finishing the chain. The exception, of course, is MoMS and Unarmed Fighter. A Human MoMS can finish the entire chain at level 2, while a Human Unarmed Fighter can get Crane Style and Crane Wing at level 1, but still has to wait until 8th level to get Crane Riposte. -Thought, actually, a non-Human Unarmed Fighter can take Crane Wing before taking Crane Style, and then pick up Crane Style at second level, allowing him to use Crane Style + Crane Wing at second level. Probably not intentional, but it is RAW. He could also take Crane Riposte, then pick up Crane Style and Crane Wing when he can. The fact remains that you are looking at a serious feat investment, with the exception of MoMS and UF. With the amount of investment involved, characters should be getting something good out of it.
Did not think of this. Consider it stolen. Great idea for a BBEG.
With the exception of those dipping MoMS for Crane Style, for many people it's going to be a 5 feat investment. For example, a Bard or Magus (people inclined to take the feat to go with Dervish Dance) have to spend 5 feats for Imp. Unarmed Strike, Dodge, Crane Style, Crane Wing and Crane Riposte. Out of the 10 feats a character gets over 20 levels, that is 50% of their available choices. Magi have to spend 2 more feats to get Dervish Dance. That's a 7 feat investment over the course of 13 levels to round out their 1 handed fighting technique. Now, of course there are bonus feats, such as from being a Human, or the bonus feats Magi get, but, for the most part, you're talking about sinkng half of the feats a character gets into one style of combat. This is a not something to do lightly. The real problem, is dipping MoMS to gain 1 or 2 bonus feats that don't really count against the characters feat selection. Now he can spend his 10 normal feats on things like Weapon Finesse/Dervish Dance, Arcane Strike, Instensify Spell etc. Even classes like Unarmed Fights still dip MoMS for the early access. Sure, they get Imp. Unarmed Strike for free, but the earliest they would be able to have Crane Wing is 5th level regardless because of the normal BAB requirement. If it weren't for the early access from MoMS, I think Crane Wing wouldn't be such a problem for people. Crane Wing was designed with ~5th level in mind, and it's MoMS that is throwing that design off.
<stuff about people overreacting>It would seem that basing your entire character on one trick is generally a good sign that that one trick should be re-examined. My condolences to him, but you could always, if you plan on implementing the rule, wait until after a campaign arc. Remember, you get 10 feats (bonus feats not withstanding) to build your character with. I'd hazard that, on average, any given character gains roughly 5 bonus feats over 20 levels. Out of the standard 10 feats, 5 of them are being used for Crane Style. 4 of them if the class grants Imp. Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. 50% of your characters' variable choice is sunk into one style of fighting. Given the serious investment involved, it's not out of line for a character to be built around it. Even worse if you're a Crane Style/Dervish Dancer. That's 70% of your feats sunk into one play style. DD Bard and MoMS are the exception.
I laughed waaay too hard at this.
My thoughts exactly. I'm glad we agree on something. :)While I disagree with a lot of other things Erick has said here, I would totally get behind a fix like this. It keeps the deflection aspect (which, to me, is vastly more meaningful to the feat chain than the AoOs later on) while stopping wing-ers from dominating melee entirely. Fighters would still be able to use it and be masters of the 1v1 sword duel, but monks would actually get a leg up on them later on (one that couldn't be so easily co-opted by a dip into MoMS). ONE DOES NOT JUST 'AGREE' ON THE INTERNET!!! DISHONOR ON YOU!
I would guess Ravingdork's player tore up his sheet before the group talked about it.
My passion is coming from all those NC-17 titles you guys are working on... :P |
