So, I like the idea of having skill ranks; but I'm somewhat concerned about the implementation. I'll test it out at a few different levels as-is before I muck with it, but some things pop out at me as immediate concerns:
1. At low levels, training seems to make very little difference.
2. The number of 'good skills' you have is very limited, and generally seems to have little relation to the number of class skills you get. Particularly where you're relying on a combination of skill increases and skill feats to make the skills any good. So, 'Training' seems to be the new "I put 1 rank in each of my class skills", and the number of actually good skills you get goes down for nearly everyone except for fighters, and everybody *really* only gets like 2.33 skills they're actually good at (4.66 for rogues), and the rest are going to be nearly the same for everyone.
3. At high levels, except for gated task types on your two skills, there seems to be little difference between legendary and untrained. Even less difference for everything else you do except for your 2 legendary skills, since everything else will basically be stuck at 'trained' dabbler levels the whole game.
4. Locking skill uses behind feats drastically depowers skills, as now, if a skill use isn't specifically spelled out, the assumption is now that the skill doesn't cover that, rather than the inverse. Which, I mean, great, clarity on what exactly skills are capable of is a good thing, but I feel like we'll need more uses designed to cover what you're allowed to attempt with your skills to fill in gaps that will be unfilled, and then they need to decide what rank skill is allowed to attempt them, and if it's beyond trained, you need fancy skill feats for it, too.
Sure, if guns always target flat footed AC that would work fine.
The connotation with flat footed is weird though, because it's more of a debuff condition because you've been rendered immobile than a different defensive score for attacks too fast to dodge.
I don't really care what they call it, I just want the ability to target someone with attacks that can't be dodged but can be blocked by armor (because they're supersonic or faster).
CAC - Comprehensive Armor Class would work too.
Call it whatever you need to. It's the mechanic that I want.
I really wish "AC" would be renamed to "Defense Class" and for guns we could get "Armor Class", so that your armor can protect you from bullets but you can't dodge them, as opposed to PF1 where you can dodge bullets but you a shield and armor don't help at all. That never made any sense to me, like: How slow are these bullets moving? And are they made of quarks?
Most of this guide has been invalidated as far as I know by the errata of Feral Combat Training, as it no longer gives unarmed strike damage to natural attacks.
Ah. That's a shame. A lot of Errata Nerfs seem to kill what would otherwise be really fun characters. Okay. Good to know so I don't waste my time trying to make this work.
Deliberately giving up spell levels for some kind of supposedly beastly martial monk-druid multiclass.
I've seen the "dip monk for WIS to AC"; but this seems to be something else.
Has anybody seen an example build of this concept? I'd like to see what it looks like, and the guide isn't really clear on how many levels of each they're suggesting, but it seems pretty clearly more than 1 or 2 levels of monk being suggested.
If I'm wearing a suit of intelligent fullplate that flies (+10,500) can it still fly while I am wearing it? If no, why not?
If it's a matter of carrying capacity, can I buy up its str to 18 for an extra +4k so it can carry me? (Does it gain a STR Score once it has a means of movement?)
I've been using this for years without anyone batting an eye, and someone just mentioned they don't think this works by RAW, so I'm looking for feedback on it.
I like my flying armor. Anybody see anything I'm missing to confirm or deny its functionality?
The stats raid bosses are given in-game are just based on when it was released and what the level range was at the time, not any kind of accurate depiction of how powerful they are in the setting.
The numbers just keep going up because of the expectation that every expansion will increase the level range so people have to grind their way up to the new endgame content.
Actually, it would be good if they set up dungeons/raids to be based on whatever the current level range was rather than what it was at their initial release. Then people would then have reasons to actually access the older game content, which is otherwise completely irrelevant today.
It requires class levels to pick up your racial features, and they've been listed as class features instead
Why would you do this?
What if I want to play someone like Ciri, who has witcher training but not the mutations (perhaps someone who had to leave beforehand, or perhaps someone who somehow determined in advance that he is not one of the 3 in 10 that could survive the mutations)? What about someone with the mutations, but not all of the training?
That makes me wonder, what kind of class would Witcher be? I guess hybrid of alchemist and inquisitor.
I'd probably make it a Slayer Archetype with a bardic Knowledge equivalent that only works for IDing monsters, craft (Alchemy) as a class skill, Alchemist style Bombs, and Signs as minor supernatural abilities which can be used basically at will (possibly in place of an iterative attack) but only 1/round or so.
Here's the Witcher Race I built for fun last week:
Medium Size
Humanoid
Count as Human
Speed 30
Languages as per Human
Str,Dex,Con +2
Cha-2
Low-Light Vision
Immunity to Disease
+8 vs Poison & Drugs
1 Skill Rank/Lvl
WoW characters never really reach the potential that 20th level Pathfinder characters have, let along Level20+Mythic10.
WoW characters live in a game with very widely scaling numbers, sure, but those numbers don't really mean much in the setting, they're just an abstract out-of-character mechanic disconnected from anything in-setting.
Honestly, I would say that PC WoW characters never make it past level 11 or so. Someone like Medivh I'd put at around 15 or 16, and someone like Sargeras would be a CR 28-30 demon-lord equivalent. Deathwing I'd probably assign a CR around 25ish, like the Tarrasque.
I'm fine with whatever the actual ruling was. I just saw the line about offhand attacks in my book, and when I looked it up found people saying things didnt or did stack, with arguments, and so I came to get clarification.
It seems I got clarification on most of the bits I was unclear on, aside from the stacking of Bashing and Spikes.
Interesting to hear about the +1 enhancement bonus from stacking not counting when you go to price out your weapon enchants on the thing.
Shields are weapons. They are on the weapon table. It is very hard to justify treating them any differently from any other weapon. You can main hand a shield and attack two handed. See also shield bash here (it also mentions about enchanting it separately as a weapon).
My thought was that the rules for shield bashing called out "as an off-hand attack" and so I thought that was the only way you could use the shield as a weapon by default, which made me think: "Well, they could still grab it by the edges and smash someone with it like a barstool, but then they're basically using it as an improvised club, not as a shield."
I have a player talking about Two-Handing a spiked shield of bashing. I've looked for a faq and I've found some threads with people arguing various positions, but no official stances, so I thought I would ask what the RAW of the matter is.
1. Do shield spikes count as a separate weapon that can be enchanted, separate from the heavy shield they're placed on?
My guess is no.
1a. Are weapon enhancements on a shield priced separately from shield enhancements, or is a +1 shield that is also a +1 weapon counted as a +2 weapon?
2. Do shield spikes and bashing stack, giving you a shield that hits for 2d6?
Again, my guess is no.
3. Can you use a heavy shield as your main weapon attack in one hand, or as a two-handed weapon, without using it as an improvised weapon?
This line makes me think they can only be used as off-hand weapons.
Core Rules, P152: Shield Bashing wrote:
You can bash an opponent with a shield, using it as an off-hand weapon. Used this way, a shield is a martial bludgeoning weapon.
Path of War classes will likely be stronger than the Tome of Battle classes, just compare the recovery mechanics if you don't believe me *cough* swordsage *cough*. The ToB classes will still be able to hold their own, they're very solid, but Path of War is balanced against Pathfinder's more class feature heavy design, whereas Tome of Battle is compared to classes that loved giving you blank spaces on your class table.
Discipline wise: Again, Path of War stuff is going to be a little stronger and a little to a lot more versatile, but that's because of the benefit of having more material and actual editing. The disciplines from Tome of Battle will still be useful, but there's a definite power creep.
Hmm. Thanks. I think I will avoid the ToB classes, but I will probably assign the disciplines to the PoW classes before the campaign.
I'm sue this has been answered, but I can't find the rule.
Say we have a player, let's call him Jim.
Jim has a +1 Dragonbane Frost Shock Flaming Ghost-Touch Thundering Vicious Holy Greatsword (+10 total), and is then the recipient of CL20 Greater Magic Weapon.
I am arguing that nothing happens; he's at the +10 cap. If I'm feeling generous, maybe I let him turn off some special abilities to activate more enhancement bonus, but I'm pretty sure RAW he doesn't get that option.
Jim is arguing he now has a +5 (Lots of special abilities) Greatsword; and that the +10 limitation only applies to permanent enhancements.
Actually I think not assuming that any AP (or module or novels for that matter) have not happened yet and keeping the world at the base level is the reason why I am still getting and reading Golarion soucebooks. Being a veteran of the FR I know how doing so can make GMS and players feel marginalized. So at in my opinion this was probably the wisest decision Pazio has made regarding Golarion as it allows people to make it their own.
Oh; sure, no I agree with that wholeheartedly. I'm also a big fan of FR, and when I talk to people about it, one of the first things I say is "Pick a campaign starting date at least 5 years before whatever is the year being currently published if you care at all about canon, because otherwise you could go to such and such city; and canonically it was destroyed last week."
I'm not suggesting a constantly marching timeline with everyone playing in the current year is a good idea. It's a bad idea. However, after 5-10 years of modules, and a bunch of novels, and comics are out? Yeah; I'd like a timeline update/update supplement/updated setting book that includes the canonical outcomes of all those things.
John Kretzer wrote:
Also only the events and possible outcomes of the APs are not considered canon...what powers the NPCs display, the articles, the monsters, etc. are all considered canon.
So if "Currently undetailed Kyonin city" is detailed in an AP, including city districts, factions, major NPCs and their capabilities; all of those things are setting canon? I hope that is the case.
And then/therefore, back to my original question: Gods (such as Iomedae) ARE canonically able to snatch people up (no-save), and kill them with trumpets?
Is there any canonical reason for them not to do so? Or is it as LazarX suggests, that there is no explanation, and the only reason they don't do so is GM fiat?
That IS the baseline assumption, so that APs can't invalidate the main setting book, by, say, wiping out or significantly altering nations.
How would it invalidate anything? The main setting book is simply set in the baseline time, a date before the events of the APs have occurred; and the setting itself doesn't have an advancing timeline.
I feel its unfortunate that that is the case.
So as far as Golarion is concerned, Wrath of the Righteous never happened; never will happen; and the characters depicted in it (including Iomedae) canonically have neither the personality nor capabilities described therein?
What about creature types printed in APs, Factions, and detailed articles about gods and whatnot? Are those all also non-canon, and limited only to that AP? Like, if in the next AP (in the AP itself), the religion of the church of Keltheald is detailed, is that just fanfiction as far as the rest of the setting is concerned, or is that canon? What if it was in one of those 4-6 page "God" articles?
What happens to a familiar after its master dies? How about if the master gains a new familiar?
I know you can learn spells from a dead witch's familiar for 24 hours.
If the level 10 party wizard dies, does his old familiar still have:
HD 10
Wiz10 HP/2
BAB 5
Saves +3/+3/+7
Wizard's Skill Ranks
Alertness, Imp. Evasion, Speak with Animals of its Kind
Int 10
NA +5
Magical Beast
Or is it suddenly back to being a basic Int 2 Animal?
If the party wizard gets a new familiar, is he deliberately lobotomizing his old familiar, making it lose its identity, mind, and memories (this seems very evil to me).
Those are both story postulates not rules answers. The answers to your questions are in the category of stuff deliberately left for GM's to work with.
They're rules questions (AND) story postulates about the capabilities of the gods in Golarion.
LazarX wrote:
What actually happens in WOTR has absolutely no relation to Golarion's main canon.
Wait. What? Seriously? Adventure Paths are set in their own little universes and have 0 effect on the setting? There is no Golarion "After the events of Second Darkness, Council of Thieves, and Wrath of the Righteous"? Is there any kind of quote or statement to back that up? That sounds ridiculous to me.
LazarX wrote:
Sometimes the answer is simply "because it isn't."
That's a non-answer. If the official answer is just "Because, no reason"; that would be incredibly disappointingly lazy design.
Gods are the ultimate expressions of GM Fiat. So the answer to your questions depends ENTIRELY on the story the GM or author wants to run. There are no rules answers to be found here.
I thought I remembered reading somewhere the gods had limits to acting on Golarion. A non-direct intervention pact or somesuch.
LazarX wrote:
Keep in mind that what goes on in the example you're quoting is clearly presented as a special circumstance, not "buisness as usual" even for Iomedae.
Sure, it came across as a "I don't usually do this, but I *could* do it, whenever.
Which made me wonder why this isn't a regular occurance.
At least they put SPOILERS in their thread title. :)
Oh, crap. my bad. It hadn't occurred to me to put spoilers.
Also; it seems mods took my thread and moved it out of where it was relevant, general setting discussion. I'm not interested in talking about the events of the module themselves, here; I'm looking to hear why the gods in the setting aren't scooping up/messing with the mortals on a constant basis. If a module killed the ruler of Cheliax at the end, would discussing playing in a post-ruler Cheliax be considered a thread about the module? Because I think the answer is clearly no.
Is it seriously nothing more than fear of an arms race, preventing gods from doing this?
So gods *let* their worshippers be killed by the followers of other gods so that those other gods don't protect their own guys?
[Edit] And it seems to have been moved back. Thanks.
What are the implications of the encounter in wrath of the righteous book 5 with Iomedae?
Spoiler:
1. She gates in a a group of characters (no save).
2. She can either make them feel how she wants (no save), or the writer was suggesting how he expects PCs to feel about it. (not clear)
3. If they take any action against her, regardless of the reason, she shifts their alignment, maims them, slaps them down, and dumps them back on Golarion.
4. She makes it clear, with her Trumpets, that she *CAN* kill them on a whim and they have no real protection from her. (even if she does bring them back)
Can other gods do this, too?
Can Asmodeus pick up a group of adventurers (no save), change their alignments to LE, talk at them for a while, and then send them back out into the world, working for him?
Can he just scoop up L15 adventurers and execute them on the spot?
Can he scoop up his followers before they can be killed?
Can he scoop up troublesome adventurers and drop them off on another planet, far from whatever he has going on?
I get that the AP is old news now, but I'm just getting around to reading it now, as I was considering running it. I was really baffled by this scene too, as it seemed very out of character from her writeups in other supplements. Anyways;
I have read this thread, and I get that the scene really did not come across as intended. But it is what it is.
I just had an amusing thought for a followup to WotR. The WotR party are a bunch of Clerics & Warpriests & Priests of other gods. They're of mixed alignments, all non evil; but none of them worship Iomedae. They've redeemed several of the demons thus far, and have decided that's their official policy - no conflict needed.
They don't do well with the questions. They are blasted, but cooperate. At least one of them dies. Upon being released; they all tell their gods of what happened.
Suddenly the Paladin God (who just broke two parts of the paladin code, what with the kidnapping and assaulting of her allies' worshippers - both not respecting their rightful authority over their worshippers AND dishonorably betraying her allies), is on the outs with possibly 4-8 (probably 5) other gods.
After finishing the worldwound plot; the party turns their focus to deposing the Mad Tyrant Paladin Iomedae, and lead a holy war against her. Maybe some of the redeemed-demons (redeemons) join the cause. New campaign starts with old PCs as leading NPCs.
the only way to use it to detect evil is to see if your punch murders them or just maims them.
Smite also gives you an AC bonus against that target if they are evil.
The claim that started this discussion was someone saying their character would be immediately aware if they got an AC boost against the person.
And it would appear there's some precedent for that, based on a rule for spells; though there's no mention of it carrying over to class features, I can see how someone might generalize.
I dunno if he's ruining anyone in his group's fun. He's not in my group. Internet argument, as mentioned upthread. His murderhoboing was the premise he started the argument with; claiming that was the "Right" way to play a Paladin, etc etc.
Were it in my personal group this scenario would never even come up, as I only run games without quantifiable alignment.
Rynjin wrote:
And "butchering random passers-by" is an evil act. He falls.
The situation has sorted itself.
Is that still technically evil if they are evil creatures?
He's using detect evil on everyone before he goes all SAW on them.
The fact that he's now wanted for serial murder and his "feelings" that the guy is shifty are irrelevant to the court system in a LN country is besides the point.
I'd let the paladin figure it out AFTER they swung at him...
but whats the point? He's got detect evil at will
He's a smite-happy murder-hobo who wants a way to ensure he can continue to be a smite-happy murder-hobo without risking falling because he smites someone who detects as evil but isn't, such as by misdirection and nondetection and infernal healing etc - even though he's unwilling to take the time to investigate before butchering random passers-by on the street.
I would agree with the statement that some things, a character could simple FEEL such as gaining natural armor, and I also agree with the sentiment that a character would have a rough idea as to how strong, dextrous, intelligent, etc. they are but certainly would not be able to put numbers to it...
While they were arguing they knew what the numbers were; that was not the point.
They were just looking to immediately know, with absolute certainty if someone was actually evil, at a glance; because Detect Evil isn't 100% reliable (a response to someone pointing out that if they are spamming Detect Evil at everyone in a crowd, and butchering anyone who pings evil, not only are they likely to face legal consequences; but there is a non-0 chance of them killing someone who isn't actually evil, their Paladin would be aware of that; and thus could easily fall whilst crowd-smiting).
No, especially since the bonus only applies to the target of the Smite.
Characters do not "know" what their stats are. Though they may have an idea that they are strong or charismatic or hard to hit because they can dodge well. They don't know the numbers, and with something like deflection are unlikely to know it unless they see something glancing off of it.
Pretty much what I said. "You know you're good at archery because you an hit moving targets are far distances; not because you know how big your bonuses are."
I just got into an argument with someone who is making the claim that he can as a Paladin; just target people with Smite Evil; and immediately know if they are evil, getting around nondetection effects and the like, because he in-character "Knows His AC Went Up."
You're REALLY underestimating the value of using your own stats. Take any save or suck spell and it is generally almost useless coming from a wand while still viable from a staff. For example, a 3rd level spell from a wand has a save of 13, from a staff it could very easily be 20+.
The increased caster level is also often valuable but generally less so
I'm not underestimating my stats.
I agree my stats make a huge difference for those kinds of spells. However, generally I would avoid trying to stuff those kinds of spells into items, and use items for utility spells and buff spells, where the DCs and CLs don't really matter.
I remember someone pointing out that you could use the 1st level one three times to get an extra third level spell, but it took you longer to prep your spells for the day.
Ah. I missed that you can recharge staves without it costing you more gold. That would make a bit of a difference.
I knew about the CL and casting ability, but when I ran the numbers, it was still much cheaper to buy wands of anything that wands could do, except in the two cases I mentioned in my first post.
What feats apply to using a staff that are worth mentioning? Can you metamagic staff charges? Can I wield a metamagic rod in one hand and a staff in the other?
So far as I can tell, staves are only worth picking up if you want a consumable L1 spell at CL6+, or a L2 spell at CL17+, and that's using a staff like its a wand.
Is there a point in Pathfinder where Staves justify the cost?
I know that people used to really like staves back in 3.5, but back then they had 50 charges rather than 10, and they cost 15/16 the price (a bit cheaper).
I also know that wands only go up to 4th. Is it really worth putting the higher level spells in a staff?
I remember someone showing me an item that allows you to prepare additional spell-levels of spell-slots; but can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
Does anyone know which item I'm referring to? (Disclaimer: I think it was a pathfinder item, but it may have been a 3.5 item).
In the passage from the 3.5 to Pathfinder a large part of polymorph spells have been heavily changed, same thing for save or die spells.
Introducing a spell, item or feat from the 3.5 that was based on the older polymorph mechanics or the older save or die spells will change how the game work.
I forgot about those. You are correct; they made significant changes to both of those kinds of spells (in addition to changing XP requirements into gold requirements).
But if you take a 3.5 Blasting spell, or summoning spell, and put it in pathfinder they work largely the same (other than the fact that summon monster in 3.5 had an ever expanding list of potential summons, and pathfinder has fixed lists (and suggests introducing alternate versions of the spell if they have different options). But for instance, summon undead should work fine in Pathfinder.
Most feats *should* transfer over as well (obviously if there is a pathfinder version, just use that version).
And for magic items, yeah, pathfinder made all physical boosters into belts, and all mental boosters into headbands, but that's not a massive change, and for magic items that don't have a pathfinder equivalent it works alright without any real changes.
Aside from the polymorph and SoD changes though, the differences are small enough that they haven't ever made a big difference in games where I have allowed them, from games where I only allowed Paizo stuff.
That's about what I was expecting, and what I initially thought. I was just not sure when I saw a couple on DTRPG where they had changed the colors of the bottom bar, and people seemed to be okay with that (they were/are still up and unchanged)); and when I asked about it, I took your response to the linked color change to mean that you guys did not consider the bottom bar to be part of the logo. (Which I thought I would try to clarify, since the bottom bar was included in the package with the logo).
Which made me wonder if I had the potential for more options on incorporating the logo into a cover than I initially thought I did.
After hearing your most recent response, I will assume the people who are doing the neat looking things with the logo but that appear to be pushing/breaking the boundaries of the license, are bending/breaking the license, rather than thinking I must have just misunderstood it.