Chengar Qordath's page

I think anyone who seriously argues that Paladins can't depose a Chaotic Evil Tyrant because that would be a major change, and is thus against their code to do so, has hit the point of demanding Paladins play as Lawful Stupid.

If Chaotic Evil Tyrant passes a law requiring all Paladins in his territory to immediately murder an innocent, does any Paladin who refuses to follow that law fall? After all, that's breaking the law. And trying to change that law would be a major change, which is apparently chaotic now.

Modules are easy because a killer module mostly kills sales.

They also have to take into account that there are as many customers who do not want every character to be murder specialists. This creates a problem in that it is hard for them to balance against players whose default is not attack.

Exactly this. Most modules are written assuming nothing more than basic competence, with a little extra padding tossed in so the PCs can survive a bit of bad luck. Generally it's much easier for a veteran GM with veteran players to tune up the encounters than it is for a new GM with new players to tone them down.

And really, a "normal" CR encounter is supposed to be pretty easy for most minimally competent parties, since the game system is designed for the PCs to win battles so there won't be campaign-ending TPKs every other battle.

That's why an evenly matched battle against an equal number of PC-classed opponents with PC-level wealth is a CR+4 encounter (AKA off the CR scale).

I have to disagree. A coup is an inherently unlawful act, both in terms of legality and in terms of alignment. Overthrowing a government or leadership structure is not an act of order.

Depends on the government that's getting couped. If you're replacing a Chaotic Evil ruler with a Lawful Good one, I'd be hard-pressed to call that a non-Lawful act. Likewise for tossing out the evil usurper to restore the rightful ruler.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

In my opinion, having the game require the Big Six in order to simply succeed is just bad design. That isn't to say that specific classes requiring specific items isn't in itself bad, but when you take specific requirements, make them universal, and then apply it as a universal requirement, regardless of player/character choice, it transforms the game into a "Numbers Game or Die" scenario, which I can assure you, not everybody finds to be fun.

This was, I believe, less of an initial intent as it was a byproduct of allowing magic items to be so easily constructed or bought. PCs were expected to pick up some of the Big 6 here and there, not necessarily advance all of them as soon as they could. Players often do that but that's an effect of the bonuses being so constantly effective coupled with the ability to buy virtually any magic item they want when they have the cash to do it. That, in turn, drives the perception that GMs need to keep pushing at the limits as well to keep PCs challenged.

Contrast with D&D games before 3e. We wanted to get magic weapons, armor, rings/cloaks of protection, girdles of giant strength, gauntlets of ogre power, gloves of dexterity, bracers of armor, and so on. But without a reliable way to make them (item construction before 3e was... a bit unstructured and quirky), we had to rely on treasure we gained. Eventually, we might eventually get much of that stuff, but we couldn't count on it and we certainly couldn't plan for it. It meant a lot more making do with what we got rather than deciding to sell just because it was a situational magic item and a more consistent one would be better.

And more importantly, pre 3e the "Big Six" wasn't a thing because those items and stats in general worked in a substantially different way from how they work in 3e.

To clarify, I don't actually like the big six.

They're just necessary to the system at this point, and unless you completely overhaul the bestiary and a lot of other things then you can't do without the big six (or a system that grants you those bonuses like Automatic Bonus Progression).

For me the biggest problem with the big six was that it basically locked down your headband, belt, 1 ring slot, and your neck slot, with absolutely only 1 choice. Tons of interesting items exist for those slots, and you basically had no choice for them.

Yeah, that's why whenever I GMed I let people shift the Big Six items into different slots. I don't mind doing a vest of resistance instead of a cloak if it means they'll take a fun and flavorful item for the shoulder slot.

Well even with standard treasure rules, I've had players carry around goofy items presuming it was crowbarred out of someone's cold dead hands or a dungeon (I personally stuffed a barrel that makes stuff pleasantly cold into a bag of holding for most of a campaign). Really I find it that people are more likely to carry around silly items that have virtually no real resale value while silly and expensive items tend to get hocked for useful things in short order.

I'd say this hits on one of the bigger issues with silly flavor items. People like keeping them around as long they don't feel like they're giving up something useful to get it. So, the best move is to make sure that there's no trade-off involved.

Also, generally speaking the way to make PCs feel like magic items are cool and unique is to make cool and unique items for them. It's hard to muster much of a sense for wonder for a generic +1 sword.

Mysterious Stranger wrote:

While shield brace does allow for spear and shield fighting I don’t think it should require you to be a fighter and spend two feats. As Firewarrior44 says this should be a basic tactic that any martial character can do, not a super specialized style that only a few can perform.

It is one of the standard answers in Pathfinder: "Why can't I do X?" "Here's the sub-par feat chain/archetype that lets you do X."

Yeah, it's rather sad that Shield Brace is one of lesser offenders in this category. After all, it's only two feats with fairly low pre-requisites, little in the way of arbitrary restrictions (1 level of fighter or +3 BAB), and the first feat (Shield Focus) is actually thematically linked to the second and mechanically useful once you have it. I mean, I'd probably just take Shield Brace without Shield Focus if I could, but an extra point of AC isn't the worst thing.

I think part of the problem with spears in Pathfinder is that other than the short spear they are two handed weapons. Everyone is talking about the Greek and Roman spearmen, but are ignoring they used shields and spears together. The only spear that you can use this way in the game is the sort spear. Look at any artwork from the classic times and most of the spears are considerably longer than 3 feet.

UnArcaneElection brought up the Doru spear. I think this would solve the problem of spear s being considered a poor weapon. Before he posted this I was about to suggest if you had proficiency on martial weapons you should be able to treat a spear as a one handed weapon. If the Doru spear is allowed it would solve a lot of problem with spears being considered poor weapons. It does the same damage as a long sword, but also can be thrown and has the brace quality. It is actually a better weapon than a long sword.

Pretty sure the Shield Brace feat also addresses that issue.

There's a big difference between the weapons Pathfinder classes as a spear and most of what's being discussed. Like I said earlier, there's a ton of arguing over what counts as a spear that's muddling the issue. If you want to call any polearm with a sharp tip a spear, the term's so general that it's hard to have a discussion.

The pikes of the pike-and-shot era were obviously not suited to the scale of Pathfinder. They're just too large and unwieldy.

If you want to talk about other polearms, Pathfinder has no shortage of options, many of which are doing just fine mechanically. The classic simple spear might not be quite as good as the halberd, glaive, or fauchard, but one could argue that there's a reason those weapons largely supplanted the shortspear and longspear as portrayed in Pathfinder.

Bringing a 15 foot pike to a dungeon is just as dumb as bringing a 5 ft long sword to dungeons with many a 5 foot wide hallway.

Nah, that's what half-swording is for.

Chengar Qordath wrote:

It's why Pathfinder doesn't have the option of equipping your PC with a 20 foot long pike: the weapon's not something a lone adventurer would get any good use out of.

They let you use a 15-foot one though.

Huh.

In any case, the rules for it do a pretty good of showing why it's a very niche weapon for a lone adventurer between the cumbersomeness and the large deadzone.

A lot of people ITT are putting down swords as "mere sidearms" when swords make a lot more sense for adventurers, much if not most of the time.

Spears were by far the more common weapon for use in armies, where you had men on either side and for four ranks behind you, or when sitting atop a horse made a longer weapon necessary to strike at a man in front of the horse. That's in addition to the ease of their use and their low cost.

As one person in an adventuring party, you fight alongside four-ish other people, some of which are not likely to be melee combatants. You're likely to fight multiple opponents at the same time, and to be fighting in close quarters. Pathfinder doesn't (and shouldn't) accurately model the difficulties of fighting with a spear in close quarters, beyond the "deadzone" of reach weapons, nor does it model the sheer pain-in-the-ass factor of carrying an 8' spear everywhere you go. Consider that the average door height (at least in modern North America) is 6 feet 8 inches. From antiquity to the early modern era the sword, not the spear, was what you took with you in everyday life (provided you could afford a sword when they were not easy to make, which adventurers certainly can). Swords also happened to be more versatile with the ability to cut as well as to pierce, provide more protection for the hand (especially with crossguards and later more complex hilts) and the longsword could be held and used just like a spear if need be (such as against a heavily armored opponent).

Just going to second this. Polearms were always far always far more effective in large and tightly packed formations than in single combat. It's why Pathfinder doesn't have the option of equipping your PC with a 20 foot long pike: the weapon's not something a lone adventurer would get any good use out of.

As an aside, there's clearly some "define your terms" issues going on with spears in this thread.

memorax wrote:

I see it as a differences in styles. One person msy think decoys are a waste of time. Some like myself dont think its a waste of time. Either position i think is valid.

I think this is something that could be objectively determined. Try it on a party of PCs and see how well it works.

If they spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get to the decoys, then it is an objectively good tactic. If the decoys routinely get ignored, then it is only a good tactic if you switch things up and put a real bard in, who also gets ignored because they think it's a decoy.

Seems to me the tactic only sucks if the players are always 'in the know', somehow, and act accordingly.

I think the viability of decoy tactics also depends a lot on stuff like party composition. If the group has a dedicated archer, a couple decoy CR 1/3 guys in the back row just means that his first couple arrows kill them instead of knocking some HP off one of the frontliners. Even worse if the group has someone like an evoker who'll just AoE damage everyone regardless of shenanigans.

By the same token, there are definitely times when the tradeoff for decoy tactics is pretty small. If someone's running a monk, having the guy wear robes and a wizard hat instead of monk robes isn't exactly a huge problem.

I think the bigger issue wasn't the GM's call so much as the fact that the players didn't think the rules worked that way and wanted to walk their action back once they found out about the house rule, with the GM not allowing it.

I know as a GM I've made bad rules calls in the past. Nobody's perfect. However, if the player picked their actions based on how they understood the rules, they shouldn't be held to those actions if they find out the rules don't work the way they thought. Pathfinder as a game tends to have lots of problems when people can't agree on how the rules work, which is why it's so important to make sure everyone's on the same page.

Being banned in PFS isn't really an indicator that it's too powerful. PFS dislikes certain playstyles, particularly Dex based one and defensive styles. Most things are banned for either flavor reasons (see: Vivisectionist) or in the interest of keeping build variety within manageable bounds.

Just going to second this. PFS tends to demand simple, straightforward builds that work in the new-group-every-game format of PFS. Basically, anything with iffy flavor, complicate, or likely to cause table variance is likely to get the banhammer. Plus, as mentioned, defensive boosts tend to get targeted because they can mess with encounter design: that's why Crane Style got multiple nerfs.

James Risner wrote:

+2: Item -> Ring of Force Shield (deactivate, attack, reactivate)

andreww wrote:

Quickdraw shield plus Quick Draw feat plus a two handed weapon which you can also one hand like a bastard sword also works I believe.

I was thinking both of these options were problematic per RAW. Whether, not, or how you have a Shield attached to your off-hand, when you attack with a 2 handed weapon, you are attacking with the hand that has the shield on it, and so in that round you you attack you won't get the AC Bonus due to Shield. But if you're sure it kosher, then go ahead.

Losing your shield bonus if you make an attack with that hand is only a rule for the buckler, not a general shield rule.

Granted, it might fall under the "Hands of Effort" FAQ, but that's a whole can of worms we don't want to open.

Have to agree with everyone else that it's not great idea. Honestly, before doing something like that I'd just tell my Paladin player that I'll be pretty lenient when it comes to handling alignment issues.

If the guy doesn't like how his character's working out, a rebuild is the best way to fix the problem. Making someone play a character they're not happy with is almost never a good idea.

nicholas storm wrote:

If you follow the rules in ultimate campaign, you could charge your allies full price for crafting, but the extra gold you get from crafting would not be added to your character - it would just poof disappear.

If you charged less than full price, your own WBL would decrease and whatever extra you would make from the item creation would poof disappear.

More accurately, your wealth would increase to a point ~25%-50%, after that the GM would decrease the loot found to compensate. Since loot is divided, this has the negative effect of lowering everyone's wealth, likely leaving the crafter above WBL and everyone else below.

Only if the GM is bad at balancing loot, and gives all of it as pure cash and/or trash items that exist to be sold for GP. Most GMs will toss out at least some keepable items along with the pure cash, and having those drops favor the non-crafter can easily balance WBL.

HWalsh wrote:

Killing a helpless foe is not acting with honor. Breaking the Paladin code. Which causes a fall just like committing an evil act does.

I feel like that comes down to creed and circumstance and could or could not be considered "honorable". I feel the statement (paraphrased) "Killing a helpless foe will cause a Paladin to fall" is a bit too absolutist.

Yeah, I'd see no issues with Paladin passing judgement and executing an evildoer if their crimes warranted such an action and putting said villain on public trial before a court of law would be impractical. After all, there's a Lawful Good Empyreal Lord of just executions.

I have heard stories about PCs "rolling too well" and having to deal with failure because of it, getting a crit and killing an enemy with a non lethal weapon or critting with a bow which made a spark that ignited fumes in a building and killed everyone in it. But all of those stories came down to really crazy house rules. The game as intended has no mechanism for penalizing players for beating the DC of a check no matter how well they do. It does come up in some other game systems but even then, beating the DC comes with advantages, i cant think of any that penalize you.

Killing with nonlethal damage isn't a house rule, though the rules make it pretty hard to accidentally kill with nonlethal damage. To wit:

If a creature’s nonlethal damage is equal to his total maximum hit points (not his current hit points), all further nonlethal damage is treated as lethal damage.

That exception aside, Pathfinder doesn't penalize you for exceeding DCs. The system's generally pretty binary when it comes to success and failure: you either meet or beat the target number and win, or don't meet it and fail.

The Sideromancer wrote:

Re: Batman, if he kills joker, he's now a murderer, somebody the GCPD can no longer leave alone. In a sense, batsy leaves him alive so he's not in prison when the next villain shows up, which may well have apocalyptic-scale abilities.

If the Joker turns up dead, no cop is going to investigate that death. They'll just have a drink in celebration and sleep a little easier that night.

Frankly, Joker's one of those supervillain's who's been escalated to the point where his continued survival is pretty ridiculous. Take all his various comic exploits in total and you've got one of the greatest mass murderers in world history, who's repeatedly gotten his hands on nuclear weapons and other WMDs.

I tend to revert to the Good = Selfless (do a degree) Evil = Selfish (to a degree)

There is not enough information given by the OP to know WHAT the motivation for killing them is. Every reason I come up with is self-serving and puts the wants/desires of the rebel over all other considerations, and upon a helpless opponent at that.

If the only real reason to kill unconscious guards is, "so I can remain anonymous/not be identified as the rebel," then yes, I would consider that self-serving and therefore basically evil.

If the reason is to prevent them from sounding the alarm, then yes, it is evil because you can do that through non-lethal means (bind/gag.)

That logic basically makes any form of self-preservation evil.

Attacked by baddie of the week? Well defending yourself is just selfish. Why aren't you letting those bandits rob and murder you? You just want to protect yourself and your selfish material possessions. How greedy and evil can you get?

Working to make a living? So it's all about yourself and your material desires again. Monster.

Quoting upthread slightly, it's always bothered me when GMs are like "Nope, your metal weapons/armor cannot be reforged, completely impossible, they're 100% set once they're made." I swear, some people seem to not understand how metallurgy and blacksmithing work. Barring finding a facility that can work mithral and adamantine (According to the Golarion setting, those two are particularly hard to work with because of how hard they are) it's completely possible to melt down sword and axe blades for example to make something else. Swords to ploughshares and all that.

Indeed, though I would point out that reforging can pretty quickly lead to complications when you're dealing with different types of weapons. Frex, since Game of Thrones has already come up, the Starks' Valyrian greatsword getting melted down and remade as two longswords.

Just saying, I could easily imagine my players getting an adamantine sword and asking how many adamantine spearheads they could make out of it.

How about we stop debating the merits of Tarik's houserules and get back to discussing special materials?

dwayne germaine wrote:

Benjamin Medrano wrote:

And 'party loot', as in all of it belongs to the group? I will leave the gaming group over it. Because people screw me over every single time I've experienced it. When one PC has 8,000 gp worth of gear and I have 500, I get pretty irritable.

So don't agree to a split that is so lopsided.

It sounds like your problem is the people you play with.

This has happened every time I've done group loot, though this one was the worst of the lot. And it doesn't help when the people deciding this were grognards who'd been playing since I was born, and 'knew better' than my somewhat more hesitant younger self. It sucked, and I finally got out of those situations, and have gotten the confidence to actually argue back. But only when I can get in a word edgewise.

I've definitely seen similar issues when it comes to divvying up the loot, though I think it's at least partially a group and interpersonal dynamics issue. When you've got one or two guys who are very assertive about getting what they want versus a couple players who don't have the confidence to speak up and/or don't want to be seen as causing issues, it's easy to end up with one guy grabbing all the loot.

I do kind of wonder how much this divide reflects larger differences in gaming style. I suspect the sandboxy, heroes for hire, episodic, main focus is on character goals like "found kingdom" or "start wizard school" types lean one way, while the more plot oriented, epic quest types lean the other, but I'm not sure.

Yeah, availability and value of downtime seems to be one of the big sticking points in the discussion. One of the main arguments in favor of charging above material cost is that the crafter's time is valuable and making stuff for the party means they can't do other things.

How valuable their time is depends rather heavily on what else they could do with their time and how much of it they have. If their downtime is limited to the point where crafting for a party member means not crafting for themselves, that's a big tradeoff. Same deal if crafting for the party means missing out on founding a magic academy or some other cool downtime activity.

However, if downtime is pretty much just the characters killing time until the next adventure hook shows up, and they've got nothing better to do with their time than craft ... well that's a different matter.

Always amuses me when someone says something that goes against a rules quote just a couple posts above theirs.

_Ozy_ wrote:

The only way you can keep it both rare and not worth much is if nobody wants it. And if nobody wants it despite the obvious advantages (except for the adventurers), you're deliberately screwing them.

There's plenty of ways to make something rare but not very hockable on the market. One idea I've been toying with is that Mithril and Adamantine are indeed vanishingly rare metals and all current examples of them are basically heirlooms from notable families (essentially making them Valyrian Steel weapons from A Song of Ice and Fire). They can be bestowed or pried from the cold dead hands of another person but selling them simply isn't doable due to either sentimental value (you wouldn't sell your family's relic blade would you?), bureaucratic issues (well I could buy the Stark's mithril fullplate from you, but that would probably lead to me getting eaten by dire wolves in retribution as they go to reclaim it), or more simply there isn't a price that can paid for these near unique items (The lost adamantine fork of house Cutlery? There's no price we could put on such an item, however you do have our eternal debt for returning it to us... [rp reward goes here].)

I will point out that Tywin Lannister rather famously offered outrageous sums of gold to several impoverished houses that had Valyrian Steel weapons.

If it has value, someone will be willing to pay for it.

Yeah, Mithral and Adamantine see such heavy use because they provide bonuses that will stay consistently useful and no drawbacks beyond added cost. Compare that to giving you a small bonus against one specific creature type, a small skill bonus, and something slightly useful but with a big downside.

Whether Racial Heritage can qualify let someone qualify for archetypes was FAQ'd and answered years ago. Link.

Honestly, the solution to mithral and adamantine being overused is to add in more types of special materials to fill other mechanical niches. Unfortunately, pretty much all we have for special materials other than those two are materials that are only good for beating material-based DRs, and a couple things Druids like since they can't wear metal.

Torbyne wrote:

Brain in a Jar,

That sounds pretty close to the previous argument of, "I am a Wizard and dont need anyone else in this party, pay me for being so brilliant as to choose this class."

Literally any class can take crafting feats.

If i take crafting feats and spend my downtime making myself stuff. No one else has any right to assume I'll spend my downtime making them stuff.

Everyone can get crafting feats.

While technically true, classes without casting have to pay two feats and a stack of skill points to get a single heavily limited crafting feat, so it's not exactly a great move. Though limiting it to classes with spellcasting still leaves plenty of options.

As for the main topic, it seems like the one of the biggest points of contention is the availability and value of downtime for crafting and other activities. If downtime is heavily limited and/or the crafter has other things they'd like to do, then crafting for the party comes with an associated cost. It's fair for the crafter to ask for something in return if crafting for the party means they're missing out on something valuable.

Then, of course, there's the out-of-game versus in-game argument. Out-of-game, crafting for party members isn't a big effort. In-universe, it's 8 hours of work per 1000 gp of the item. I don't mind spending a couple hours helping a friend at no cost (or at worst asking them to spring for pizza once the work is done), but 8 hours a day for several days in a row isn't a favor for a friend, it's a job. Even when I liked my boss and got along well with them, I still expected my paycheck at the end of the day.

Of course, then you get into metagame concerns like WBL-imbalance...

that's unfortunate that it not working is considered working well enough.

It is disappointing, but I suppose I can understand why they might not want to touch the issue. Historically, Pathfinder has several of those third rail rules that don't quite work right, but any attempt to fix them seems to just break things even worse. I guess they'd rather do nothing than risk a repeat of their effort to fix mounted combat, which wound up making it even more confusing.

Plus, more cynically, there's no money in fixing things everyone's already paid for.

Nothing in the rules says that Brawler's Flurry counts as the Flurry of Blows class feature, so as far as the rules are concerned they're completely different things.

What Ozy and lemeres said.

Also, there's a reason I put the extra emphasis on AC, since it's the most heavily gear-dependent stat. Attack rolls scale up naturally by level, while your AC comes from gear (Half of the Big Six are AC boosters).

Sans magic, you'll start to run into trouble getting your AC past the low twenties without making serious tradeoffs like being a tower-shield user with combat expertise.

Pretty sure every class in the game is eventually going to be hurting bad if they're severely under WBL. Non-casters need their Big Six items, unless they want to start having serious trouble with most of their numbers and extreme trouble with AC.

I do feel, though, that abandoning the character of or somehow otherwise inhibiting the fun of another human being playing a cooperative game with you is crossing a line out of "being nice."

Like, I've been in games where one new player's character was sufficiently ineffective as to be relegated to the "mascot" role, and we rallied around that character to make sure the player was having a good enough time that they would eventually get better at the mechanical part.

I think it really boils down to the one of the oft-repeated rules of RPGs: you can't solve out-of-character problems with in-character actions.

If someone's trying out a build that just doesn't work, the solution is to talk to the guy and work out a way where he can still have the character he wants while putting out the numbers the system needs.

Scott Wilhelm wrote:

Where is your concern for dignity? Where is your self-sacrifice? If you can't show those things for even your fellow PCs, who else in the world would make you their hero?

So, since the PCs actions are detrimental to the party's success, they should choose self-sacrifice and leave the party so that the party can hire someone useful, right?

Or is self-sacrifice for everyone except the character that is being detrimental to the party?

Yeah, I think it's quite good-aligned for the party to tell the guy he's not cut out for adventuring and leave him somewhere safe before he gets himself killed. I'd say keeping the guy from getting himself killed is more good than encouraging him to follow a path where he will inevitably get himself and/or others killed.

Granted, in the OP's case this is no longer an issue since the problem player did a rebuild.

I'd say the most egregious foul by the GM isn't giving the character some crazy OP abilities, but that he opened the encounter by saying that if the party beat the pirate boss they'd get a ton of good items, then denied any rewards when they actually managed to win. To me at least, that's what really shifts the whole thing to looking like a GM temper tantrum.

Not to mention that capstones are generally a pretty bad place to look at for game balance, considering a lot of capstones are really powerful and most campaigns either won't get that far or won't be at that level long enough for it to make a huge difference.

Throwing extra magic items at the guy with a weak character can be one of those solutions where it'll cause issues in the group. Some folks might resent how the guy who deliberately made a weak and disruptive character gets rewarded for bad behavior.

Chengar Qordath wrote:

BadBird wrote:

For what it's worth, Weapon Training will eventually make a huge difference, especially since you can toss him some Gloves of Dueling to stack up his Weapon Training bonus (+3 attack and damage by level 5 if you're feeling generous). Weapon feats also help a lot, and most Fighters pick 'em sooner or later unless they have some major plan for all those feats.

Considering how the problem player built his stats and refuses to buy armor or a ranged weapon, I'd be very surprised if he made smart magic item purchases.

That would be where GM fiat would come in though, unless it's PFS (or I guess one of those groups where loot is approached with calculators, wholesale-buyback schemes and 401k plans). "Oh look, some shiny awesome Figher-only gauntlets! What should we do with those?"

Might be personal experience biasing me, but when I was in a game with a guy who insisted on de-optimizing his character, he did stuff like sell good gear to buy things that were "cool and unique" like the necklace of fireballs.

For what it's worth, Weapon Training will eventually make a huge difference, especially since you can toss him some Gloves of Dueling to stack up his Weapon Training bonus (+3 attack and damage by level 5 if you're feeling generous). Weapon feats also help a lot, and most Fighters pick 'em sooner or later unless they have some major plan for all those feats.

Considering how the problem player built his stats and refuses to buy armor or a ranged weapon, I'd be very surprised if he made smart magic item purchases.

thejeff wrote:

I did suggest above a boosted Vital Strike approach to make guns viable as a heavy single attack weapon, but it absolutely requires something better than the current Vital Strike.

The Gunslinger actually already has that: The Dead Shot deed. If we'd remove the Grit cost, a Gunslinger could still make iterative attacks but couldn't get extra attacks form Haste, Rapid Shot, or TWF.

I'd dispute the idea that dead shot is a boosted form of Vital Strike. It's exactly the same as vital strike, except it's a full-round action instead of standard and you have to make attack rolls to for each extra die of damage instead of getting them automatically. The only thing it has over Vital Strike is that it can crit on the extra dice (with an extra penalty to confirmation rolls).

Freehold DM wrote:

Malignor wrote:

Your fighter doesn't even sound like a team player, and that's why your story kind of annoys me. That player seems very self-centered, to the detriment of everyone else. If I'm interpreting that correctly... (more text)

where do you get any Oh this latter part of the post from?

All we know is that the guy has bad stats. I've made worse than those work.

You are reading a lot into the situation and making some ugly judgements.

I got it from the following pieces...

** spoiler omitted **
... and realizing that most of this sounds very deliberate, despite how this affects the game for everyone else, both in-character and as an IRL gaming experience for the other players.

Note that you're saying "it's only bad stats" as a rebuttal to me, after I openly said that bad stats alone isn't a problem. We actually agree there, so this shouldn't even be a point of contention.

Halek's pointed out specific choices the player made and continues to make which make his character a liability (in-game) and a source of frustration for other players. That it's being done "religiously" suggests he's doing it out of some principle and on purpose, despite the other people at the gaming table.

Yeah, from what Halek's posted it seems like the guy is going out of his way to make his character as mechanically weak as possible, and doing so over the objections of everyone else at the table.

Honestly, the problem is that Ride By Attack wasn't written with the "When you charge your mount charges too" FAQ in mind, and quite possibly without considering the possibility that players would want their mount to attack. Whoever originally designed the feat in 3.0 was probably only thinking of people riding horses.

Caster Martial debates always happen because theory crafting (90% of the topics) benefits prepared casters to the point where they can kill anything that is stated up.

Of course, in a real game it's a bit harder to always have the answer with all the things up in your grill and the GM only gives you 30 seconds to deliberate.

"As an paizo board discussion grows longer, the probability of getting Bingo approaches 1"

B3, N1, G2, and O3 already filled in...

Chengar Qordath wrote:

And as I noted up-thread, just casting a touch spell takes three free actions.

And as I noted up-thread, that is not correct. VSM components are not free actions, they are part of the standard action of casting a spell. Only the touch attack is defined as a free action.

Might wanna check your rulebook again. "Prepare spell components to cast a spell" is listed as a free action.

Ventnor wrote:

I'd say that Brawlers are the best class at combat maneuvers because they can choose to have the combat maneuver feats in those combats where they'll be most helpful.

The big thing about lore warden is their ability to net a CMB of BAB + STR + weapon to hit mods + 12 on combat maneuver checks. Very few other classes get to have that kind of guarantee on success.

Yeah, there's only two ways I can think of to get numbers better than that, and both of them have limits/require spending resources.

A ranger against a maxed favored enemy who's their quarry can hit +14 (+10 for favored enemy, +4 for Improved Quarry). But that requires either going up against your one big FE or spending a spell slot, and Quarry has lots of restrictions.

Barbarians have Strength Surge, which tops out at +20 since it's barb level to CMB. However, that's a 1/rage ability so you get limited use out of it until you can rage cycle.