Corragh Bearson's page

This is part of why all my characters are Andoran/Liberty's edge - opposing the slave trade is a big enough good that questionable stuff I may need to do is almost always justifiable and I never have faction missions that ask me to compromise the character's core values because those valus are the same as the factions.

That said I HAVE had occasions where I wanted to kill someone involved in the slave trade, torture them for information, or skin them alive to use their skin as a regent for a spell that would have produced a highly useful map to our destination and I wasn't allowed to because the gm ruled such actions would be evil. F%#@ that IMO, my true neutral druid thinks skinning an animal is morally equivalent to skinning a human but he's not telling anyone they can't wear leather armor. And if the info would help him rescue people imprisoned by slavers than killing or torturing slavers to get the info is (from his frame of reference) completely justified. I see Liberty's Edge being less Indiana Jones and more like the Spanish CNT in '36 or John Brown or Spartacus's slave army that fought Rome. To people who value the status quo revolutionaries are villains. To a revolutionary, that's a compliment.

TLDR: Morality is largely relative and the pathfinder's being nuetral facilitates that. If you don't like the faction missions you're getting choose a different faction.

I'm sure someone must have asked this already but it's not coming up in search. Barbarian's get a rage power called "Brawler" that bumps unarmed damage while raging for a normal sized barb with improved unarmed strike from 1d3 to 1d6. It doesn't account for cases where the character is climbing the Monk/Brawler unarmed damage tree and are already doing d6 or higher since you can't multiclass monk and barbarian and the Brawler class didn't exist yet when the Brawler rage power was written.

Since the Brawler Rage power effect is to bump unarmed damage by one step when raging, it should have the same effect on a Brawler/Barbarian who happens to have started up higher up the chain. Right? So a 2 Brawler/2 Barbarian with the Brawler rage power who starts at 1d6 unarmed would go to 1d8 while raging.

Is this legit? Or does the Brawler Rage power simply have no impact on a pc with Brawler class levels?

An errata on this would be awesome.

Jeff is right, I was asking about the orc druid favored class bonus that gives a damage boost for animal companion, not beastmaster. Not the answer I was hoping for but if it's a blanket "nothing in orc section is legal" and not a "playing an orc isn't legal," than it is what it is.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, much appreciated.

I searched but didn't find it, apologies if this has already been answered previously.

I recently (monday) realized that I had not taken any favored class bonuses for my Druid and was entitled to do so. Looking in PCGen (a computer program for building characters, basically the free/open source equivalent of Hero Lab) one of the options listed there from the Advanced Race Guide for a half orc druid is to add 1/2 point of damage to all animal companion natural weapon attacks.

A friend who is much more experienced than I says that only Orcs, not Half Orcs, get this bonus. Except I thought half orcs counted as orcs for all racial traits and bonuses and PCGen at least thinks I do in fact qualify. He also says that none of the Orc stuff from the ARC is legal for PFS. I am not 100% sure that is the correct interpretation though.

Obviously playing an Orc isn't legal and so all the rules for playing one would not apply or be legal for PFS. Can't play a pure Orc, gotcha, check box. Makes sense. But I'm not playing an Orc I'm playing a Half Orc that takes after the Orc side of his heritage and the racial text in ARC says as a half Orc I can take Orc racial bonuses and the Paizo guide to what's legal in PFS says that all Half-Orc stuff from the ARC is legal for society play.

So can I take the damage bonus for my Lion?

Matrix Dragon wrote:

Very interested in this book! I think making the swashbuckler as a grit using fighter is a great idea. Also, Bloodrager might be usable as the base class version of a dragon disciple that I've been waiting for :D

You are so right. Bloodrager is bound to be great with Dragon Disciple.

RAAAWR

Very much looking forward to this one. I have a magus / DD build all specced out but this is much better. And it makes sense to have a barb-sorc hybrid who runs on passion to complement the fighter-wizard who runs on intellect

My only request that's not on this list is a druiid/cavalier, think beastmaster with spells aka a druid that can have a large bear companion and ride him into battle.

I guess the solution here is to either just not play a bear shaman / druid with a bear companion or commit a technical rules violation and re-skin a different animal.

Seeing as my bear shaman is already level 5 and I don't want to start him over I'm going to go with the latter. It just sucks I'll have to clear it with every dm I play with before I sit down at the table during PFS play. Thanks to Paizo for creating a totally unnecessary and stupid real life hassle.

Does your DM allow for player vs player? Unless you specifically did something to piss him off in character the dude needs to chill out.

But since home brew is allowed I would come up with a custom magic item to destroy him.
Magic Slide Whistle of F- That Guy
This bright orange plastic slide whistle is of an odd origin. Its power is vast but also extremely focused. Upon sounding this whistle the Player Characters of asshats playing undead races and who talk about killing other Player Characters are completely annihilated. There is no range limit to this effect. This effect permeates all forms of magic, supernatural, and extraordinary protections. If it is important to game mechanics, treat the targeted player as if they were subject to 87 maximized empowered disentigrate spells (CL 20, no save), 41 maximized enervation spells (CL 20, no attack roll required), a power word kill spell (CL 20, no HP limit), and as if they came into contact with a sphere of anilhilation. Also, again only if it matters for mechanical reasons, a stray dog pees on the scorch mark the subject leaves on the earth. After the death of the subject, all creatures in the multiverse automatically have all memory of the subject erased from their minds like the Haitian dude from Heroes removed them.

In addition to the previous effects, a non-damaging version of snapdragon fireworks comes out of the end of the slide whistle and looks pretty and makes you happy.

Price 22 gp

Awesome.

Serioisly though man, this is not something you can resolve in game. Sort it out in real life, where the problem actually is.

All they need to do is give druids the option to bump a medium companion to large the way beast riders can. The bear would still be objectively inferior to the big cat or most of the dinos, but at least it wouldn't be as bad.

You know it's bad when the animal companion version of a creature is weaker than the summoned version.

CRB 189 wrote:

Massive Damage (Optional Rule): If you ever sustain a single attack that deals an amount of damage equal to half your total hit points (minimum 50 points of damage) or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points.

Death by massive damage is not a death effect.

/cevah

Also, the FAQ clearly states that the massive damage rule does not apply to pfs.

Corragh Bearson wrote:

I like palladins. What I don't like is having to argue with gm's who have trope-laden hackneyed ideas about how my character can behave. Take the gm who wouldn't let me play a pally/rog because he thought sneak attacking was "dishonerable." Never mind that the character was actually built to be the fantasy equivilant of the bomb squad guy who walks up to a live bomb and purposefully puts himself in harms way to try and defuse an explosive that could kill civilians - which is about as palladin-y as it's possible to get imo.

And then there's the debate about what "lawful" means. If I'm playing a Palladin and have a chance to free slaves and kill the slavers I'm going to do it and don't give a damn if slavery is legal according to some corrupt government. Think John Brown. The palladin is sworn to uphold the laws of his/her god - not the laws of men. But it's tedious to have that argument with a gm, especially if they have ability to strip my powers because they have a different concept of morality.

John Brown was not a paladin, he was a murdering zealot. And if you think him fighting slavery gave him the right to murder people then some people could apply that same idea to killing abortion doctors, or anyone else they think is doing wrong. The slavery issue could have ended peacefully in the long run but guys like Brown wanted violence. Not to turn this into an argument but comparing John Brown to a paladin got my goat.

The slave owners John Brown killed (and the government that protected them whose soldiers he killed) used torture and murder to brutalize and enslave people. That's about as evil as it's possible to get. Brown saw that evil, faced it, recognized it, and killed and was killed trying to stop it. That's about as Palladin as you can get in my book.

Says the guy with the Andoran icon next to his name.

In any case, our difference of opinion is exactly what makes playing a Palladin so difficult. Morality may well be universal, but different people perceive it differently. To me, Brown is an icon and a hero who I've looked up to for most of my life. To you he's a monster.

And that's why playing a class where a disagreement between the player and gm on what "good" means can result in your charcter getting nerfed sucks.

Atarlost wrote:

A level 4 ape is large with three 1d6 primary natural attacks, 21 str, 15 dex, 14 con, 2 int, 12 wis, 7 cha, and 3 natural armor.

A level 4 bear is medium with one 1d6 and two 1d4 primary natural attacks, 19 str, 13 dex, 15 con, 2 int, 12 wis, 6 cha, and 2 natural armor.

I see that they both have the same bonus to attack, and the ape does +1 damage with its bite and +2 damage with its claws. The ape has +1 to its AC due to natural armour, and the bear has a slightly higher potential constitution.

However, the bear doesn't need to squeeze or move at half speed in a five foot corridor. When the ape and the bear are on such an even footing, why would anyone ever choose an ape?

Nerf bears, buff apes.

Except there are rules in place already that allow you to take different bonuses when your animal companion is set to go up a size category if you'd prefer to keep it smaller so by RAW you can have a medium ape. And it would still be superior in every respect to the bear. Sorry dude, you're just wrong here.

If they wanted to do a fix for more than just bears they could give druids the option at lvl 7 to apply the large template to any medium AC the way beast rider cavaliers can. That would solve the stat discrepency and give those of us who want large bears a good option in one fell swoop.

It depends how much research a person wants to do. Playing the base class means that a new player can rely on other people's knowledge of the rules to help them fill the gaps. On an archetype that may not be the case so the person will have to rely on their own knowledge. Especially if something in the archetype conflicts with what other players expect of the base class. For a new player this can be intimidating. If they misunderstand something during the design phase they can also make mistakes that will be demoralizing down the road. That's true of any character of course, but again it's easier to get advice about a base class.

That said, I always customize my characters very heavily. But then, I get a kick out of learning rulesets and that allows me to do it effectively.

I'm pretty sure the message is pretty obvious when SKR changes the title, but doesn't bother to chime in anything on the subject.

Yep, that's pretty much a "don't like it? Don't play a bear shaman in PFS!" Not unexpected, but dissapointing.

I like palladins. What I don't like is having to argue with gm's who have trope-laden hackneyed ideas about how my character can behave. Take the gm who wouldn't let me play a pally/rog because he thought sneak attacking was "dishonerable." Never mind that the character was actually built to be the fantasy equivilant of the bomb squad guy who walks up to a live bomb and purposefully puts himself in harms way to try and defuse an explosive that could kill civilians - which is about as palladin-y as it's possible to get imo.

And then there's the debate about what "lawful" means. If I'm playing a Palladin and have a chance to free slaves and kill the slavers I'm going to do it and don't give a damn if slavery is legal according to some corrupt government. Think John Brown. The palladin is sworn to uphold the laws of his/her god - not the laws of men. But it's tedious to have that argument with a gm, especially if they have ability to strip my powers because they have a different concept of morality.

Thread renamed to something not so confrontational.

The new title isn't quite what I had in mind. Maybe "Why do bear animal companions max out as Medium when the forests of golarian are full of Large bears."

Mergy wrote:

I really don't think the bear animal companion is weak by any degree. Actually, it's one of the strongest medium companions out there. It doesn't beat the small cat, but it's close.

I agree with you. I compared with with the boar and it was pretty close power-wise.

I am sorry, but I think the OP is asking for a little too much. The devs obviously wanted to include bears as an option for an animal companion, but they also had to balance them against others. I think the stats they decided for the bear are fine.

But Bears shouldn't be a medium companion in the first place. Or at least shouldn't be restricted to medium.

As currently written, the bear animal companion is not only one of the weaker animal companions (though not the weakest), it's objectively weaker than the bears I can summon using summon nature's ally. That's my big beef. It doesnt make sense for a druid to go out of his/her way to find the weakest possible member of a genus when choosing an animal companion.

Maybe there are people who want a little brown bear. But it seems silly that I can get a velociraptor as an animal companion but not a grizzly when I could walk into any forest in Golarian and make friends with a grizzly.

The horse is traditional, the elk certainly deserves a thumbs-up - it is a majestic, tough animal with a fair amount of positive associations (nobility, virility, hardiness), but there is one other animal I'd like to suggest: the elephant. It is not a typical paladin companion due to the association of paladins with more European stereotypes, but an elephant can probably suit an India-themed paladin quite well. It is very physically impressive, tends to be associated with nobles (as mount of royalty), and also usually with positive qualities like memory, nobility and perseverance. Unlike most large animals, it tends reasonably well to domestication and is often seen as a kind giant of sorts - and yet extremely dangerous if pushed too far.

As an animal companion, it sort of gives off the same vibe about its master: normally good-natured and noble, but also a force that is not to be trifled with.

Elephants are actually not domesticateable, though they can be pschologically broken and enslaved through the use of extreme cruelty and violence. Seriously, do a little reseach on what goes into "training" elephants. Very brutal nasty stuff. And not the sortnof thing any palladin worth playing would condone.

From a society perspective in defense of optimization of characters:

If I've invested 40+ hours of game play into a character, I am pretty invested into it. I don't want it to die or be ruined (due to having to spend all of the prestige or gold for a res) due to some party load causing a wipe or dead PC. Often a weak character doesn't actually die, its the guy being forced to cover for the weak character that dies. Similar to how a geriatric driver doesn't get into accidents, but they sure do cause a lot of them.

Being forced to carry a party just sucks, and I've had to do so in the past, even taking my witch into melee combat since it had the best AC and damage potential (in a party with a figher and oracle...)

PFS scenarios are very hit and miss when it comes to lethality. Some are cakewalks you can hop and skip through, others are brutal multiple PC deaths are the norm scenarios. Season 4 is particularly brutal at that. Some GMs are also more brutal and less forgiving. PCs that are played by people who complain the most about optimization are often party loads that do nothing other than waste spot in the party. This is not an exaggeration. The most annoying wastes of space are the "skill monkey" and the party white mage that only heals. The skill monkey is utterly worthless when life and death is on the line 90 percent of the time, and the healing make specializes in fixing failures instead of contributing to success. Instead of running to a downed PCs side to cast stabalize, perhaps you could help the combat actually end?

You should be able not just contribute, but contribute well and contribute in a way that is actually needed. Often people who complain the most about other people being "optimized" or "powergaming" can't even pass this low bar. I would say the majority of people who get butthurt over optimization I've met in person are in this camp.

THIS ^^^^

Saying that making a character that does his job well would make the game less fun for you really just tells me we belong at different tables. That's fine, there's plenty of tables. But if we get thrown together and my guy gets killed trying to cover for you I'm not going to be happy.

Get the owlbear boon and ride one of those. Great mount for a palladin!

Fair play to the person who pointed out sun bears. They are, in fact, mini. So I'll stand corrected and admit that the smallest bears in the world are smaller than the biggest wolves.

It still doesn't make sense from the game world perspective. Why would my half orc travel all the way to the tropics to get a tiny sun bear companion for which no stats exist when he can walk into any forest in the game setting and make friends with an (objectively better) grizly like the one listed in the monster manual.

I have heard the same about slings, crossbows, monks, and scads of others things. There are many choices. Some MUST be better than others. Just because one choice is not as good as others doesn't mean Paizo (or SKR or ....) "hates" them.

One early FRPG had every one handed melee weapon identical. You could skin it as whatever you wanted. It could be a club, battle-axe, weird asian martial arts weapon, anything.All identical. Wasn't popular.

Would you really like "Large Carnivorous mammal" "Medium Carnivorous mammal" etc with identical stats?

Terrible argument, and a classic example of the 'slippery slope' fallacy. The problem isn't too much variety, variety is fine. The problem is that bear animal companions are far weaker then any other bears in the game, weaker then the vast majority of animal companions, and basic things like their size scaling are clearly off.

There's no plausible explanation that leaves that as a conscious design choice, it's clearly a mistake. No biggie, mistakes happen. I'm just asking for a fix

I'll happily pass on pounce to have a bear for my bear shaman if I can just get decent stats for it. Going to talk to the dm's I game with about using the cr4 grizzly bear stats from the monster manual for my lvl 4 bear instead. With those stats he's still not as good as a lion, but good enough I don't feel gimped.

I'd still like a fix here though so I don't have to argue with dm's every time I sit down at a table. It's needlessly broken and easy to fix.

Or, to be more precise, why are the animal companion charts so laughably unbalanced and bears in particular so woefully sub-optimal?

Consider - the bear starts out as a small animal while the ape, wolf, and lion start out as medium. And while the wolf and big cat keep their special attacks, bears don't.

And then consider how these other animal companions progress. At lvl 4 the ape goes to large while the bear only goes to medium, giving the ape higher strength, reach, and d6's on its claw attacks while the poor bear is stuck with d4's. Here's the thing: APES DON'T HAVE CLAWS! They have finger nails, the same as humans. Bears, on the other hand actually DO have claws. Big sharp ones that merit at least a d6.

At 7, the wolf and big cat also go large while the bear stays medium, taking the absurdity a step further.

EDIT: removed off-topic rant about all bears being larger than wolves because, as pointed out, sun bears are small. They also don't exist in the monster manual and aren't what most people think of when they decide to take a bear companion.

So what happenned here? Did someone's granny get mauled and eaten by wild bears leading to a lifelong vendetta against urcine's both real and imaginary? Did the stats for Ape and Bear get switched at birth? Or, more likely, is this just one of those obvious oversights that never got fixed?

I'd just fix this stuff with a houserule, except most of my gaming these days is PFS.

This isn't hard to fix. All we need is a developer to post an errata with corrected stats for bears or at least a second pair of stats for larger bear companions. Otherwise I'm stuck with my bear shamans animal companion being consistantly less powerful than the bears I can summon using nature's ally from the monster manual. And that just doesn't make sense.

thaX wrote:

Myself, I would like to see a Cat Folk boon. I always like the cat person races, made some myself call the Gatius for 3.5. It would be Puuurrrfect.

Aside,

You know you can make a good catfolk-like with the raksasha tiefling? Same stat adjustments, and swap some traits to get claws or a bite.

Just sharing that thought.

A) the fact that this is possible for 98% of catfolk builds delegitimizes any argument about how making catfolk available would break things

B) Unfortunately, for the catfolk claw fighter that I've wanted to play since starting pfs, this is not an option because tieflings don't get access to the catfolk-only feats to improve their claws.

Again I ask that people remember that PFS needs to reach out to build more far-reaching communities. Part of that is allowing people in those communities who likely cannot get hte con experience that you are lucky enough to be able to attend to also participate fully in the experiences an rewards of PFS play.

+++ THIS

I really like the idea of being able to spend prestige points to unlock additional races. I play twice a week at local stores but will never be able to make a con because of my work schedule. Leave the boon system intact if you want, but give those of us who simply cannot attend conventions a chance.

I'm disappointed to learn that it doesn't become large. I was seriously considering a druid/musket master multiclass for owlbear cavalry. But apparently I'd have to be a halfling or gnome for that. Laaaaaame.

As a beast rider cavalier you can make your animal companion/mount large at level 7 so it's rideable. As a druid though you're out of luck. Which makes my bear shaman druid very sad.

I've got a weird proposal. Its what I force myself to do (I have 2 aasimar characters and refuse to play another one).

Open up some races but restrict the number of characters of that race that a player can EVER have

I actually really like this idea. Let people play any race they want but limit the number of active characters of any race that a person can have. As is, there's no reason to make a character anything but a tiefling or aasimar from an optimization standpoint. That's frustrating, especially since catfolk - a race I'd actually love to play - isn't available.

Also, requiring people to go to conventions to get boons to play specific races is lame. Some of us work 60 hours a week and can't take time off to go to conventions.

age 33 if that matters

Awesome that the levels stack.

Also awesome that the beast rider template lets cavaliers ride more druid-y animals.

Not so awesome that you can't make a bear large and ride it until level 7.

Unclear whether that's 7 levels of beast rider or leveln7 total for a characternwhose build imcludes at least one level of the beast rider class.

The rulebook says:

"In addition, a 7th-level or higher Medium beast rider can select any creature whose natural size is Large or Huge, provided that creature is normally available as a Medium-sized animal companion at 7th level (like a bear)."

It doesn't say that the ability happens at 7th level *of cavalier* and replaces something else, which is the way that sort of thing is usually worded. It seems reasonable that a level 7 character with at least 1 cavalier level and a lvl 7 animal companion/mount should be able to apply the "large" templare to their existing animal companion and make it rideable. That 1 level dip would be an acceptable hit to my casting ability. Anything more than that would be too heavy a cost to pay and make multiclassing nonviable. I have no interest in anything else about the cavalier class for this build, just want to ride my bear.

Thoughts?

I'm coming at this from the other side, I'm a beae shaman druid who wants to be able to ride my bear. Now, for whatever reason, Beast Rider cavaliers can apply the large templates to their companions at level 7 but druids can't, which seems terribly unfair. We know that the druid and cavalier levels stack for determining the level of the animal companion, do I have to actually take 7 levels of cavalier just to make my bear large so I can ride it?

The rule book says

"In addition, a 7th-level or higher Medium beast rider can select any creature whose natural size is Large or Huge, provided that creature is normally available as a Medium-sized animal companion at 7th level (like a bear)."

It doesn't say that the ability happens at 7th level *of cavalier* and replaces something else, which is the way that sort of thing is usually worded. It seems reasonable that a level 7 character with at least 1 cavalier level and a lvl 7 animal companion/mount should be able to apply the "large" templare to their existing animal companion and make it rideable. That 1 level dip would be an acceptable hit to my casting ability. Anything more than that would be too heavy a cost to pay and make multiclassing nonviable.

Thoughts?

I know this thread is ancient and your campaign is long-since over, but for anyone looking for resources to do something similar 'The Bastards of Erebus' put out by pathfinder included a whole bunch of alternative layouts for Tieflings that lets you choose different stat distributions based on the type of fiendish ancestor. You can find it online at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/fiendish-heritage

So for a melee Tiefling sorc:

Demon-Spawn: +2 Strength, +2 Charisma, –2 Intelligence
Savage and monstrous, the terrifying spawn of demons know the chaotic fury of their Abyssal ancestors.

There's also a huge list of variant tiefling abilities, many of which work for a combat build, that would replace your 1/day Darkness spell like ability. #9 on that list grants you an additional +2 racial Cha bonus. Combined with Demon Spawn above, you can have a starting cha of 22 and an effective cha of 24 for calculating dc's once you factor in Fiendish Sorcery. Not too shabby. And the bonuses to summoning from Abyssal mean that if you get in over your head trying to melee you can call friends to help you out.