I think the first thing you need to do is ask what the witch's flavor is and who they are as a person; what the influence of their patron is doing to them. For example, a plague witch might loudly, meanacingly cough and hack, a sign of disease.
Search Posts
Looking at it as a punishment/reward system, by ruling that you can't perform X actions while pregnant, you are punishing players who want to RP a pregnant character and thus restricting players options in the service of realism. The correct answer for the player, as someone playing a game, is to not get pregnant. And that's just... less fun. In my experience disallowing "fun" stuff at the table, especially something that doesn't alter intended game balance, is a cardinal DMing sin. We can quibble on whether or not is "should" work in-universe, but out of universe my stance is to let them do it.
I'd say the reason Power Attack is considered a feat tax is that a huge chunk of builds need it. Needing a feat to make a certain use of one subtype of one class work is one thing, needing a feat to make any melee martial class work is another.
If their int is above an 8 I'd bet that some of them are writing, which is definitely a fun treat- what do they think about? What's their view of the world? What do they think about the tall pale skinned creatures that occasionally invade their homes and kill their families? How about death? What's their perspective on Hell/Abbadon/The Abyss, considering most of them go there when they die? It's a great opportunity to make your players feel horrified by their actions, or confident in them, or just particularly amused.
I'm inclined to agree with 6, but I feel like there should be an additional cost- 30 minute casting time, maybe costly components?
I was like "shoot what does VMC mean? I feel like I should know that..."
Oracle has been added!
In summary by the way;
After puzzling for a while on the choices available to my Eldritch Knight for his 1-level martial dip, I thought to myself "golly I wish someone had written an incredibly specific guide for this". So I did! It's specifically measuring the benefits (or lack thereof) for all the classes you can take that grant you proficiency with all martial weapons.
Im gonna keep going on this. Asmodeus helped create the universe. Asmodeus helped lock up Gozreh. Asmodeus will grant you powers if you worship him and definitely, concretely exists. So why wouldn’t you worship him? Well, maybe you don’t like or trust him, maybe you don’t think his list of achievements entitles him to your time and worship. Its the same principal, just on a larger scale.
Oh, and your fix still doesn’t stop my Leadership companion from taking Leadership herself. I mean, your earlier thesis seemed to be “lets not rule ‘Character Level’ to be the same as ‘Hit Die’ for the purposes of feat prerequisites because that stops an infinite minion loop” and I though “hey, thats restrictive and complicated plus it doesnt even prevent minion chains from happening”. I dont think your needlessly complicating fix is worth stopping 75% of options for this janky thing that can also easily be 100% stopped by an easier rule that doesnt give a term two different definitions within one system. I appreciate that leadership-looping is less infinite than some other exploits but it doesn’t really help your point that much.
While I prefer the ideas laid out above, the explanation I always went with was that they spoke a pidgin of Abyssal and Infernal that you could only understand if you knew both or spent a lot of time with daemons. What I wanna talk about is how the word “demon” and “daemon” should, logically, be pronounced the same.
IDK, I think a general “minions cant have minions” rule is enough of a patch, rather than cutting off racial HD characters from a handful of feats and having a term that means different things in different contexts. Oh, and your fix still doesn’t stop my Leadership companion from taking Leadership herself.
Gandalf is an Outsider with “cast as a sorcerer” who happens to look human. Cant remember the Tolkien name, though.
I will never understand why in settings where the Gods are real, verifiable, active beings in the world, some people or societies become fanatically anti-religious or anti-theistic. I can understand certain individuals not being involved with religion, disliking a specific deity, or even a country with a history of religious conflict banning organized religion, but telling the Gods "shove off and take your blessings with you" screams bad idea. Why antagonize the beings who literally keep the multiverse running? Rahadoum seems like a perfect example of why that is a terrible idea. Sure, you helped create the world and keep the celestial bodies moving, but why does that mean you have to micromanage my personal life? You stay up in the heavens doing heavenly stuff and I'll keep to myself here on Earth. I mean Golarion.
I'm amazed no one has mentioned the Eldritch Guardian. A fighter! With a familiar! And you share combat feats! There's a handful of combat Improved Familiars and I feel like the Eldritch Guardian is the best way to make use of them. Best thing is it only costs two bonus feats.
I mean, you don't have to use a template. Just change Mogaru's type and do the rules checking. Maybe change his breath weapon type or something, IDK.
It's still annoying to me that we have to do logical equations to figure out something like that instead of someone saying "yes, it affects native abilities that scale based on HD, like breath weapons"
Yeah I've been thinking about that too. I figure most outsiders are going to be hostile and dangerous to keep around and I really don't know what a green RP would look like. I don't think I want to include "how classic a monster" to the RP. I'm trying to provide readers with new information and a succint summary of the statblock- if you know elementals or bearded devils are classic minion you don't need me to tell you.
Keep in mind that expanding the list of available summons makes what's already one of the most powerful spells that much stronger- don't expect your DM to just let you access expanded summons.
I'm gonna stay at PF1. There's more than enough content to keep me occupied mechanically, I have plenty of character ideas to make, and I haven't scratched the surface on modules and adventure paths.
I’ve seen it referenced that Breath Weapon DCs go up for familiars, so why not SR?
I figure “because magic” is answer enough.
Elves are actually aliens to Golarion. Really? I thought they were natives that just hid on the moon for a couple hundred years while things went south on Golarion.
1) According to RAW, they get their own initiative. 2) Generally, no. Animal companions with intelligences of 2 or less must be ordered around with the Animal Handling system, cohorts are DM controlled by generally loyal and take orders. Both are RAW, but my playgroup generally ignores 1) and lets the player control Animal Companions. Planar Allies/Bindings and Cohorts are generally going to be more powerful so the DM may want to control them in combat- at the very least they have the ability to override your commands. A player can't order their cohort to an obvious death without the DM going "well would Jimbo the Bard Friend really be okay with that?" If you're in an argument with someone, I'd say that it's my opinion that cohorts/companions/etc acting on their player's initiative is generally just better, even if it's not in the rules. DM decides everything after all.
I added a section on Native outsiders and gave a little boost to the Lyrakian and Catrina. Thanks to everyone who's been helping so far! I plan to keep the guide focused on picking out Outsiders rather than boosting your skills, but I'll keep Augmented Calling in mind. I've also got back on going through outsiders, of course.
Thanks, AA and BENSLAYER! I’ll add the addendum when I get back home and have my laptop. avr, I’m starting with Bestiaries 1-5, but B6 is next on the list and then I’ll sift the splatbooks (Cayden help me). I’ll probably organize by HD after I get everything done. Thanks for the advice and support so far, I’m pretty excited about this project!
You know that Pharasma's anger at undead is simply the attitudes of Paizo's founders put into a character in the game, right? There are no deep reasons. I mean yeah, that's the out-of-story explanation, but it has to have some reason within the world, even if it is post-hoc.
I'm gonna necro this thread to bring up Petitioners [HD2, CHA 10, +0 Will] They're mechanically pretty mundane, but flavorwise I think they're the only outsider you could call that will probably prefer being in your service to being back home, if you're pulling one from a lower plane. I personally like The Hunted- they look like normal people (keep those pesky paladins out of your hair) and get DR and fast healing for some added durability. Basically if you want servants for out-of-combat roles like housekeeping and whatnot, Petitioners are the way to go.
DMDM's guide was helpful and probably a more convenient resource for quick and easy stuff. What's important for me is that I haven't been really checking for mechanical issues with calling- I plan to add that to the guide. Dasrak I plan to make it comprehensive, but at the moment I'm going through the (now legacy) paizo bestiary index first, because it's convenient and will give me a good measuring stick for everything else. I feel I may have been underestimating spell DCs though...
Dalucaray's Guide to the Outsiders of Planar Binding So after some searching I couldn't find a comprehensive guide to what creatures you actually want to summon, which is pretty surprising. I figured hey, if I'm going to sort through every outsider available to me (and I will) I might as well write it down and save it for posterity! So here it is, my first guide. As I write this I've finished everything accessable with Lesser Planar Ally from bestiaries 1-5- I figured I'd finish that before sharing. I'm not super confident about my ratings, so feel free to contest anything. I'm especially unsure on how to value natural multiattack vs. a weapon with a full-round attack. Anyway, enjoy!
I'm actually trying to make obediances for my homebrew gods and finding it pretty difficult, any advice?
Even if your stat-juggling were legal by rules, consider that you’ve created what is objectively the best combat race available. +2 to Strength and Dex with no penalties, plus speed, plus natural armor. Why would I play anything else? What situation are you making this in? Are you a DM homebrewing a world, or has your friend let you build a race for you to play as?
Depending on how much work you want to do, you could add the half-fiend template, buff her racial hit die until she's high enough level, and let her cast spells as an Nth level Druid (maybe 10? keep it a few levels below her target CR). Pathfinder adventure paths do this kind of thing for boss monsters with regularity. You're DM, you don't have to tiptoe around class levels and templates if you don't want to. Generally speaking, adding caster levels to monsters who already have a huge number of hit die is gonna delegate those spells to support casting, since they're not going to have high enough spell levels to be that useful offensively. I haven't seen whatever video she's from, but if you want her to just supplement natural attacks and natural abilities with some minor spells, give her a few levels in Druid. If you want her to be doing a lot of different nature stuff that her pre-built Dryad abilities won't cover, let her Cast-As.
I didn't realize it, but Contagion is from the CRB, while Greater Contagion is from Ultimate Magic. I assume someone in the UM team made the same mistake I did and assumed Witches got Contagion as a spell. BENSLAYER's list is helpful, but it still seems wonky to me that Witches, when they were first printed, didn't get a spell or hex that cleanly inflected a mundane disease without a specific patron. I stand by my house rule.
Depending on level he could use a small Agile rapier.
I’m just gonna jump on the “Asmodeus is a Villain Sue” train. I just wanna point out that he explicitly may or may not have killed a character who parallels the Abrahamic god and was on equal footing with that character before that.
Honestly, I really don't see a problem with Necromancy. They have the best debuffs, the second best raw damage after evocation (possibly better, considering Necro is usually untyped or harder to resist), and the second best minionmaking, after conjuration (and they get permanant minions sooner). I consider it the third best school after Conjuration and Transmutation. They're really only missing buffs (which I assume "beneficial biological manipulation" is) and battlefield control, which zombies can kinda do. Keep in mind that Abjuration and Divination just straight up lack offensive capabilities, Enchantment has pretty much nothing but buffs and save-or-suck spells, and Illusion pretty much just has Shadow Evocation and Shadow Conjuration. Of course my proposed moving of Curse magic would be a pretty big blow...
I would rule yes, and that the spell does not just have the”evil” tag because its an evil thing to do, but because you’re specifically calling energy from Hell, the same way summoning an evil creature with Summon Monster N is evil. Also, I would rule that learning an evil spell just so you can add metamagic to it (making it much more inefficient) and say “oh its okay, its not evil!” is, in fact, an evil action.
If you ask me Necro shpuldn’t get buff spells (except for buffing undead)- that’s the realm of Transmutation and Enchantment, and Necromancy already has enough in its toolbelt, especially with your other proposed additions. Maybe buff spells with a downside, both because straight buff gives necromancy too much, and to capture the idea that you’re physically moving the flesh instead of whatever more magical thing is happening with Transmutation. I do like healing spells being Necromancy, however. Conjuration has more than enough stuff, and necro is more flavorful. (Also if we’re talking about moving stuff around between schools, I think Curses should be in enchantments. The only reason they’re in Necromancy is cuz they both have a very “evil” flavor to them. Of course that has some balance issues itself, but thats really a whole nother post by now.)
Generally the fact that Good involves trying to help others while Evil involves trying to hurt others and help yourself means that Evil vs Evil is much more likely than Good vs Good, as GvG is much harder to find a conflict of interest. Even then, you say, Good can have disagreements within itself about how best to fight evil and to help people. While that's definitely true, it's also hard to make work on a large enough scale for a good story. And on Golarion specifically, there's more than enough evil to keep The Good Guys too busy to turn on each other. Do you really want to waste resources and effort punishing those Caydenites for being irresponsible alcoholics when there's baby eating worshippers of Lammashtu just a few miles south of them?
I was homebrewing a disease based casting class, specifically based around the spell Contagion, and realized that Witches, possibly the most flavorful disease-based casters, don't have Contagion on their spell list! I assumed that they had a disease hex, like how Druids don't get Beast Shape, so they don't need to use spells for disease, but no, they don't have that easier. To make matters weirder, they DO have Greater Contagion! So the end result here is that Witches, the grodiest, nastiest full caster base class, can't inflict diseases any better than a Commoner until level 9, while clerics and wizards are getting Contagion at level 7 and Druids at level 5. So, does anyone know what's up with that? Was Contagion just too good with Evil Eye? Did witches have a disease hex at some point in design but it was removed and Contagion never put back on the spell list? Or did someone just decide not to give witches contagion just because? (Either way, I'm probably going to houserule witches as getting Contagion as a level 3 spell- earlier than most other full casters, but at the same time as Druids.) Edit: So they can get it from the Plague Patron (in retrospect I really should have checked that earlier), but I dont see why that should exclude it from the base list- there’s plenty of overlap between patron spells and the witch’s spell list.
Do monsters that cast spells as spontaneous casters or as spells-known casters (I don't know if there are any of those, actually) vary their spell lists from individual to individual? Or does every Aranea know Invisibility and Mirror Image as their level 2 spells? I would assume no, but I scoured my Bestiary and have not found any indication one way or the other. In fairness this is more a curiosity question, as I plan to ave monsters knowing whatever is useful to them, but it seems odd to me that I can't find any indication that that's how it should be played. |