Davic The Grey's page

Well, now that it's out in the open, I wrote the Weather and Rare Events sections. Hope you like them when you see them!

Ohhh, negative energy plan! Exciting.

Yup, that was me! Had a lot of fun on this one, some neat and creepy stuff in that article.

I am incredibly heartened by the truth and force of this statement. Thank you Maggie, I'm glad to see we are on the same page.

Put quite simply: Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.

Really appreciate this blog.

Has there been any autism representation in Pathfinder?

Hey, Keftiu! Yes, there has been. Erikanesh, the owner of the Historia Reliquary and Chun Hye-Seung, the commander militant of Absalom's First Guard are both autistic. I try to add another autistic character or piece of representation with each assignment I do for Paizo.

The lore on the Changelings in the Lost Omens: Ancestry Guide is also autistic representation, as confirmed by their author, as well. Probably more representation I'm unaware of or forgetting, but if you find any more, let me know!

Some thoughts that may not be popular:

I am thinking through a lot of things, and I am troubled by the concept of calling other forumites bigots. I can see calling out their actions or posts as bigoted, but... There has to be a better way. I can understand your stance of not wanting to let a bigoted post go unchallenged, though my personal mode is to flag and move on. I realize though that others feel differently, especially with so much hatred being posted. And hey, you're correct that I may be coming from a privileged enough background where I can see something nasty and just flag it and move on. I'll try to be better about being the advocate I want to be.

But in my mind, shouting back at someone and telling them they are a bigot just makes them shout back and then it's another flame war that makes everyone feel crappy and makes a lot of work for the mods.

So here is what I would suggest, and will try to get better at implementing. "Hey, I'm flagging this post. Paizo forums are for everyone, and this one makes some of our community feel unsafe." And then I would link to Heather's post, and stop.

Once this is posted, the conversation moves on and the troll is deprived of your outrage and passion. Nothing's feeding it, so less work for the mods.

I understand how you reached this conclusion. As someone who once held it myself, I can tell you it is the wrong one. Challenging bigoted and ugly assertations is the only way to stop them. Anything less is silent complicity. We need to be clear that such things are absolutely not acceptable. The reticence to confront prejudice is what has allowed it flourish in recent years, on forums and in the world at large.

When coming from a point of privilege and being taught that being nice is synonymous with being understanding, it can be difficult to realize this. I did not understand it personally until fairly recently in my life, because someone took the time to lay it out the way I am here. Which is why I wanted to take the time to try and do the same. I encourage you to do some further thinking. To quote Into the Woods: "Nice is different than good"

Still no clear actionable steps that matter. An investigation just for the Leadership Team that we are expected to trust, when broken trust is the problem in the first place? I hope you all can understand why that is not a reasonable response.

If the executive team can live and work in another state, why can't the employees?

A very good question I would also like the answer to.

I admit, in light of recent events it is a bit concerning that the exec suite is being expanded just in time to effect negotiations with United Paizo Workers. Especially since their titles imply they are responsible for very corporate things. I certainly hope these folks will also negotiate in good faith and support all the staff of the company that makes such great games.

A fantastic day for Paizo. My thanks to all the freelancers who stood with me during our action, the developers for their work and understanding, and management for doing the right thing. More work ahead, but this is a big win for everyone.

Feros wrote:

Kelseus wrote:

How are troops done?

** spoiler omitted **

Thanks for the summary. May have some use for that zombie shambler troop soon!

The zombies were one of my sections. Enjoy your new horde of undead!

There is so much stuff in this book. You're all gonna love it.

An incredibly muddy kobold strides up next to the group. They wipe greenish-brown muck away from their face to reveal Izkazk. "Well, Ahksiva is a ghost who doesn't make tracks in the mud. I've looked. Best to go listen to the crazies."

"We're mighty heroes!" Izkazk pipes up. Reigning their enthusiasm back a bit, they squint at the table in thought before continuing. "Something bad is trying to keep the Fen from being happy. I want to see this King's Closet. Maybe I can pick up some tracks."

Izkazk wiggles their clawed toes in the muddy slop of the street. The muck reminds them of the sewers in Absalom and they think of home.

"Dirt can hide things people have forgotten about. Could there be treasure or something important still in the Fen?"

I see they added the freelancer names to the product page. Hope you all enjoy my first Paizo contributions!

Welcome to Legendary Magus Playtest

We have been working hard to bring you more Legendary designs for classes. This time it's the Magus that gets some attention. As you'll notice, daily arcane pool points have been replaced with the more dynamic arcane potential, and all basic combat styles are accounted for in the base class through tomes, unique spell books that enhance a certain method of fighting.

The playtest will be open for two weeks, so please let us know what you think!

I would definitely like to be a part of this. Seems like a fantastic idea.

Sent my acceptance on Monday. This will be my first published work and it's still sinking in. Congrats to everyone who got in and a tip of the hat to whoever gets to illustrate my twisted creation!

HO. LY. CRAP. I'm floored.

One of the best archetypes that I haven't seen people talk about is the Saurian Rider. For when your cavalier mount absolutely must be a T-Rex.

It's balanced. Stalwart has been in the game for a while without wrecking havoc and the other abilities it gets don't push it past paladin in terms of difficulty to kill. Isa did a great job with the flavor and mechanics, as always. It's my favorite archetype of the book.

I love it when they do write-ups like these. Great work as always, Crystal.

If your character doesn't have a bunch of magic rocks by the end of this campaign, something has gone wrong. :)

So this campaign takes place in the MCU?

I'm backer number 7. Should be a good book.

I don't usually decide on a character's sexuality at creation, but it often becomes apparent as I play them. Often other character traits lend themselves to a certain sexual identity. I've had gay, bi, and straight characters.

I'd say my baseline is mostly asexual until it comes up, though.

Occasionally I have a concept that will only work with a certain sexual preference, but for the most part this is more or less how I and my players make their PCs. As was said above, when I GM i write all the NPCs as bi unless I have a reason not to. My CotCT game basically became one big dating sim with some adventuring speckled in between as a result.

*sigh*

...still not ginger.

This is the real issue. Instead, I've been hearing people whining that "women are being shoehorned into everything" and "you're ruining my childhood". For real, people, the actual crime is that it took this long for a female Doctor and, most importantly, STILL NOT GINGER.

This is one of the more anticipated books on my list. How about the rest of you guys?

Much as I like kinetecists, it seems like they're getting a ton of love in this companion, which makes me concerned about how much content is left for other classes. Especially since they're putting in a whole prestige class too.

Was hoping for more spells/feats to make a single element build for spellcasters more viable. Guess we'll see.

Has anyone brought up Inflict Pain, Mass yet? Sure, it allows a save, but that's one full round of the party taking a -4 to very important rolls. Time that with all the great save or suck spells previously mentioned by others and it raises the probability of them landing by quite a bit.

Also Terrible Remorse on the low Will Save melee so they keep hitting themselves, not the enemy. Bonus points for making it Persistent (metamagic).

I know we're looking for spells, but if we're open to making liches with specialties, consider an Overwhelming Soul Void kineticist. Can heal the other liches with it's negative energy, great battlefield control, including reverse gravity AT WILL and lots of hp, as the key stat is also what a lich uses for hp. If you want to make it melee to really mess with the backline, Overwhelming Soul and Kintetic Knight only overlap in the changing of class skills, which as a GM you could handwave in the name of awesomeness. You'd give up a decent portion of the AoE control that Void brings, but could be worth it.

Going to put poppets forward as the best thing. They're super-affordable to craft (you can create and fully trick out a tiny poppet with all eleven upgrades taken as many times as possible for under 3k), easy to buy/sell, and make a good carrier for aura type spells, explosives, and other things like that. The feat also lets you qualify for Craft Construct without investing in a bunch of irrelevant crafting feats.

I kinda need this for my Reign of Winter witch.

These last couple of posts have dramatically reduced my enthusiasm for Starfinder. I was really looking forward to a universally compatible game that would allow me to introduce more Sci-Fi elements to my Pathfinder games (and vice versa). Making changes to things as fundamental as armor class, hit points, and iterative attacks means that I can't just hand my players books from both systems and say "go to town".

Very disappointing.

I suggest the Aethera Campaign Setting by Robert Brookes. It's third party, but incredibly well done and from what he was telling me at PaizoCon, they borrowed from the setting for some Starfinder things, like star ship rules.

At PaizoCon and someone just asked Sutter this. He said the web team would be rolling it out soon. Would expect news by GenCon.

Mark, I noticed the foxfire utility talent lists void healer or kinetic healer as a prerequisite. Being that the talent is fire based, is this a typo or is it meant to only be available to kineticists who have multiple elements?

Thanks in advance!

Note that the "weapon", in this case, is the kinetic blade infusion. They don't wield manufactured weapons. (Unless they're telekineticists, I suppose. And then only technically so.)

Also, regarding undead kineticists... maybe when I get up, I'll tell the story of the burning skeleton pyrokineticists I used in Carrion Crown. ^_^

Good point, although that's not the real problem - as an undead creature, they're going to use their Charisma in place of their Constitution anyway. The bigger issue is their inability to accept burn.

Personally? I'd just find some way to handwave it (unique armor with its own pool of burn, special features of the location to draw power from, etc.) Not much good for PCs... but if you're playing an undead PC (especially something as fancy as a graveknight), you're clearly in the kind of campaign where the GM feels comfortable going outside the norm. ^_^

I had been thinking this was for a villain. If you were to be a graveknight PC it's very clear your GM is willing to work with you. Linking the graveknight's ruinous revivification to their secondary element is very thematic too. It's too good of an idea not to handwave some stuff, especially to make a compelling villain/encounter.

Davic The Grey wrote:

David knott 242 wrote:

Davic The Grey wrote:

I assume the panoply that provides full BAB to the occultist is transmutation based. Are there panoplies for each school? If so, could I get a hint of what the necromancy one is?

Each panoply involves implements from 2-3 schools, so in order to gain the benefits of a panoply you must have been able to select 3 or 4 implements since the panoply itself counts as an additional implement.

For the warrior based panoply, the BAB bonus equals the mental focus devoted to implements in the panoply, to a maximum BAB of your occultist level. You don't simply select a panoply and get full BAB to your attacks for free.

Huh. Thanks for the info. I'll have to weigh my options when it comes out next week.

I think that the panoplies are unfortunately not accessible for a Necroccultist since you need to have the other schools (Divination and Evocation) in order to gain the panoply.

At the risk of derailing the thread, Necroccultist only loses their second level 1 implement and their level 14 implement. They can select schools other than necromancy apart from level 1 and 14 just fine.

Mummy's Mask: It's just a mask. No harm ever came from wearing a mask.

Curse of the Crimson Throne: Gold digger finds something shiny in her husband's basement, turns it into jewelry and makes her meaner.

I believe what Jiggy is trying to say, tongue in cheek, is examine the two parts of the sentence, "The wizard casts fireball" and "how does the rogue evade is realistically?". He is pointing out no one can realistically cast fireball so it's not really reasonable to try to figure out how one avoids that fireball.

Probably, yes. However, I disagree completely with this methodology. When playing you have to assume things like casting a fireball is realistic within the world it occurs. OP is asking if he wanted to describe how a rogue were to dodge it, what would he say? For a wizard it's as simple as "he casts out his hand a bead of red shoots forward, suddenly exploding in a massive ball of fire." What does he say when the rogue evades? I'd say something to the effect of "using your preternatural danger sense you feel the change of heat in the air and weave under the blast, dodging it completely." Why are we being snarky over this?

Lord Monty wrote:

With this and effortless lace you warrior clerics might have fun.

Effortless Lace says "the weapon is treated as a light melee weapon when determining whether it can be used with Weapon Finesse, as well as with any feat, spell, or special weapon ability that can be used in conjunction with light weapons." Two Weapon Fighting feat doesn't have any weapon requirements to use it, it just lowers the penalties when using the two weapon fighting rules. And because it's the two weapon fighting rules that tell you what penalties you take, effortless lace doesn't come into play, so it does very little for the build, except for allowing weapon finesse on both weapons, and allowing piranha strike for both weapons. Considering you should be using a light weapon in both hands, that's practically nothing.

That is an incredibly subjective distinction. It seems you're arguing that weapons are not "used in conjunction" with TWF? TWF's entire purpose and language tells you what happens when you use such and such a type of weapon in an off hand. Any feat, spell or special weapon ability that mentions needing or having its effect altered by the fact that the weapon is light is affected by effortless lace.

Curse of the Crimson Throne is my absolute favorite. I am currently running it for my group and took the opportunity to spice up certain NPCs and enemies with newer classes or archetypes. I see a lot of people saying part 4 is troublesome, but for my group I think it will great as our sorcerer is a Shoanti-Varasian half blood who is very proud of her Shoanti side. The immense culture shock of actually being considered an outsider by the tribes will likely propel the story forward more than it would for other groups.

True. I am just well mannered and am 100% aware everyone else is going through the same emotions. It's a struggle to maintain dignity and not claw over others for my own benefit. :)

Staff of Perfect Harmony

Aura: Moderate Abjuration; CL13th
Slot None; Price 53,000 gp; Weight8 lbs.
Description
This +3 quarterstaff is made from entwined darkwood and ivory, capped on each end with a warding palm made of electrum. The wielder of the Staff of Perfect Harmony can sunder a spell that targets her or a spell that includes her in it's area of effect as an immediate action, as the barbarian rage power spell sunder. Instead of surpressing the effect upon exceeding the CMD of the spell, the wielder instead gains a +2 circumstance bonus on the save to resist the spell, or +3 if she exceeded the CMD by 5 to 9. If the effect would be completely dispelled it still affects other targets and creatures as normal. This ability is useable three times per day. If the wielder is a monk of at least 9th level, she can expend 3 points from her ki pool to use this ability instead.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Improved Sunder, Dispel Magic, creator must be a monk of at least 9th level; Cost 26,500 gp

Thanks in advance, feel free to rip me apart.

Slightly shameful bump. I know I got up to the fourth cull, so people definitely had opinions on it. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Staff of Perfect Harmony
Aura: Moderate Abjuration; CL13th
Slot None; Price 53,000 gp; Weight8 lbs.
Description
This +3 quarterstaff is made from entwined darkwood and ivory, capped on each end with a warding palm made of electrum. The wielder of the Staff of Perfect Harmony can sunder a spell that targets her or a spell that includes her in it's area of effect as an immediate action, as the barbarian rage power spell sunder. Instead of surpressing the effect upon exceeding the CMD of the spell, the wielder instead gains a +2 circumstance bonus on the save to resist the spell, or +3 if she exceeded the CMD by 5 to 9. If the effect would be completely dispelled it still affects other targets and creatures as normal. This ability is useable three times per day. If the wielder if a monk of at least 9th level, she can expend 3 points from her ki pool to use this ability instead.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Improved Sunder, Dispel Magic, creator must be a monk of at least 9th level; Cost 26,500 gp

Thanks in advance, feel free to rip me apart.

How, how, how am I still in this? My item is good, but it commits one of the cardinal sins. i guess it's forgivable if done well... Fingers crossed for this weekend.

"Negative energy is purely for undead juicing."

That's exactly why Pharasma can pass it out to her clerics.

The negative energy channeling is not what makes this character clash with paladins. Negative energy is used to harm the living, but its a tool, just like a sword (obviously not an evil cursed one), it depends on it's wielder and target to determine its moral action. If you're not making and buffing undead, killing babies, or harming the populace for kicks with it, it's not "inherently evil". That's why neutral deities can grant it. Nethys, Gozreh, Pharasma, Abadar, Iori, they're not evil, they don't actively pursue evil intentions (okay, maybe crazy half Nethys does). Hell, Abadar and Iori HAVE PALADINS.

Bumping this. The archetype doesn't make sense at all.

No Improved Unarmed Strike, no Improved Grapple, which means strangle is incredibly difficult to use.

Without Improved Grapple(which, to even take at 1st level with this archetype, would require you to be playing a Human), you're looking at a CMB of +4(MAYBE +6), and the opponent would have to be flat footed(without combat reflexes) in order for it not to provoke.

Yeah, they get stealth. Whoop-de-doo. They're missing a pretty big aspect of the build at the outset.

Oh, no! You have to spend feats to make your character concept work? What blasphemy is this!?

Very, very few builds, archetypes and character concepts come online at level 1. But you get a bonus feat as brawler at level 2, in addition to having martial manuevers, giving you temporary Improved Grapple at level 1 if you must have it.

Speaking from experience as a strangler/snake bite striker brawler in RoW, this archetype is great. Grappling shuts down full attack actions, spells, dodgy enemies with high touch AC, etc. Well worth your opening round. Strangler with Snakebite Striker gives you easy solo sneak attack dps just for grabbing them, which you can get extra mileage out of with Greater Grapple and Grabbing Style. Stealth is for Bushwack, which makes breaking their CMD hilariously easy. For extra fun, dip a level of Shadow Dancer for HIPS, have allies cast darkness on you and pull enemies into shadows and leave behind broken necked corpses.

I had a thought last night on burn and an alternative way to show that you're pushing yourself without going into non lethal damage, which people seem apprehensive about for an understandable reason.

My thought was this: Burn is a pool, like with magus, 3+con mod, but at certain thresholds of taking points from that pool you have to shoulder certain debuffs. At 3/4 of a full pool you're sickened, 1/2 is fatigued, 1/4 is exhausted and at 0 you take nonlethal damage equal to twice your character level. Whether or not the sickened/fatigued/exhausted is curable I leave to better designing minds than myself, but even still it gets incrementally worse the more you use your points without completely hamstringing the character, but still keeps the design and flavor intent that Mark seemed to be going for.

Cayden for sure. I'll be playing Captain Andoran, with the Andoran falcon on the shield and everything. He's not naturally subtle.

Ross Byers wrote:

There is this thing labelled "Add New Thread" that you can use to create a more appropriate thread. It's like magic!

And yet, adding a new thread about a topic which has not been 100% confirmed, as pointed out by many, seems more wasteful than containing this discussion in the thread which already has most of it. Magic!

And yet the question has been agreed to be unanswerable and dropped three times on this thread only to be reignited using no new info. There is more than just this to talk about, so let's please not take up over 50% of the thread over something only a few of us seem to be panicing over.