Desidero's page

Raphael: Dhampir Swashbuckler with Fangs and Blood Drinker.
Voldo: Slayer with Blind Fight, Prone Shooter, and Skill Focus: Swim. :P
Algol: Summoner with Eldritch Heritage: Abyssal. His Eidolon is his chair.

Tira = Pain Taster Ninja?

I personally would load up on racial SLAs. It wouldn't necessarily be optimised but it would give you lots of fun options.

I think that far enough into the future, our society will look downright evil as well

For starters I would treat them like adults. As a youth, there's nothing I hated more than adults who didn't give me the chance to earn their respect as an equal human being. I reckon that a lot of the time younger people act immature is simply them chafing under the oppressive expectation that they will act immature.

I mean, you'll eventually run into some unbearable little shits, but that's the same hazard you run into with adults.

One problem you might run into is that they might be hesitant to really engage with the game. I know when I first started it took me a while to shuffle off a lot of the negative connotations associated with the game. This is probably a problem with a lot of beginners but I think the younger you are the more seriously you fear showing preference for the wrong things. I think that if you are deft and sneaky you could do a bit of a bait and switch- to introduce the game emphasize the mechanics and similarities to hack n slash video games. Then as you get them in, you can stealthily hit them with the things that make the game so much more.

The Magus is hands down my favourite class in Pathfinder, no others even come close. IMO the class is super versatile and very fun to play with the insane action economy and all the options you have in combat.

While the forums often recommend the same Dervish Dance build over and over again, the Magus has so many options.

In addition to being big damage dealers and sky-high AC walls, Magi can
-apply many different kinds of debuffs through a wide variety of spells and feats
-be masters of combat maneuvers with support from stuff like True Strike, Maneuvery Mastery, Arcane Accuracy
-be surprisingly good skill monkeys with their focus on Int which gives them lots of skill points, bonuses to many good skills, and the option to apply Int to other skills (Bruising Intellect, Clever Wordplay, etc). They also have a lot of good spells/arcana to boost their skill use (ie Vanish and Arcane Cloak)
-be strong at range with the use of a whip
-be nearly as versatile of a caster as the wizard through the use of Spell Blending

The really fun thing is that you don't have to choose, and can do nearly all of these things at once.

You can also get really creative with dips like
-Monk: gives many nice skills, boosts AC, gives a prerequisite skipping feat, and adds a lot of other stuff depending on archetype such as easy access to style feats or even more action economy insanity (maneuver master)
-Winter Witch: gives you a familiar (take improved familiar to ginore the loss of progression), some nice spells (such as Mage Armour and Touch of Fatigue), spell element flexibility and extra damage (Frozen Caress). If you choose to really focus on cold spells you don't even lose CL.
-Sorcerer: HUGE damage (crossblooded), other useful bloodline powers, many good spells.

Re: Fun. This is another really sore spot for me... I think this preoccupation with fun is really restraining the growth of games as an art. What would movies be like if film makers limited themselves to making films "pleasant"? What would the state of cuisine be if chefs only tried to make their food sweet?

That's not to say I hate fun. I love fun, just like I like candy bars. But candy bars don't make a meal, and simply "having fun" doesn't make a real engaging and enriching experience. This is a bit tricky as "fun" is such a nebulous concept but I think that if you look closely you'll realize that the best parts of your games are not just the fun parts. Just as I said in the previous post what I love to see is not just my players shouting in triumph, but also in despair. On a basic level you need struggle to have real triumph, ie the sorrow only makes the success sweeter but I think that there is something delicious in pain as well. Though obviously having all sadness and no fun doesn't make for a successful game either. Just like a good chef you have to present an interesting and nuanced blend of flavours.

My players are not hardcore, in fact the farthest from it. Most of them have about the same amount of experience as me but without the hundreds of hours studying the games and contemplating its design. Generally they don't know what adds to their roll when they make an attack and they sometimes forget what class the are. But that's ok, because that's not what's important to them. When I tell them that they smell a funny smell as they enter the house, the remember exactly how I described it. When I tell them they find a scrap of cloth caught on a branch, they remember exactly what colour, pattern, and material it is. And when their back is up against the wall and they have 10 zombies and an alchemist in front of them and 6 angry guards behind, you can bet they're putting every ounce of mental energy they can muster into thinking of a way out.

The tricky thing is is that I don't presume to know what is fun for them but I provide an environment where they can make their own fun. Think of your favourite moments from playing video games. I don't know about you guys, but for me and everyone I've talked to the best and most memorable times weren't that big high-polycount boss or that amazing fancy sword with many bonuses that the game designer placed specifically to wow and excite me, but it was the creative things I did, that I came up with on my own.

Again it's kind of tricky to explain as I'm not very eloquent and these are tricky concepts but I think that the way I make games fun is by not trying to make them fun. So like, I give them a fishing rod and make sure the lake is full of fish, but I'm not serving it up to them on a plate.

And aaaalso my world is not fully fleshed out, in fact the style I'n really trying to nail down is to improvise everything on the spot. That's why I'm so concerned with making things logical, because if I have all the logic down I can just plant a few seeds like "this guy is a greedy mage" and "this lady is a clever rogue" and when you toss in the actions of the players the story writes itself. All I have to do is think "well so and so has this disposition and this set of tools, so logically they would take this action".

You forget a couple of basic truths.

1. PC classes are not the run of the mill threats... they are the exception.

Short answer: You're the GM. It's your privilege to pull stuff out of your wazoo

This may be well and fine in your games, but these ideas are antithetical to my style of play. My games operate under two basic principles.

1. The players are not special. Sure they might have some fancy class or a couple of levels over your run of the mill villager- but their enemies are typically even greater than that. The world does not revolve around them. It does not need them. It does not care about them. I do not fudge rolls or make special exemptions for them and they are free to die face down in a ditch like any other shmuck.

2. As a DM, I am not god. I am not the author, director, curator, or any of that shit. I am physics. I am not responsible for the players success. I am not even responsible for their fun. Sure I create a world and the evenings scenario, but once my friends sit down at my dining room table, cheap dice quivering in their dorito coated hands, my only job is to make sure the world acts in a logical manner. I write no special destiny for my players, I simply create a world and then try to figure out what happens when they f%+% with it. I never think about how they might "win" the game, all I do is lay out the canvas and stand back to let them paint.

I am extremely new to this hobby, I've probably played in fewer than 20 sessions and DMed in less than half of those. But I am already sick of these disgustingly linear games where the player's only role is to guess what the DM had in mind for the next part of their precious plot.

I am not great at this. Not yet. I stutter and stumble and forget important details. I screw up rules and make mistakes. But I can already tell I`m on the right track. The look of intense engagement on my players faces as they frantically plan their next move. Their victorious shouts. Their heartfelt cries of sorrow. The fact that there isn`t a single f!@%ing cell phone in sight. This is the game I want to play and see played. One where the path is not simply found by the players, but created by them. When I play like this I am genuinely on the edge of my seat, excited to see whether the players live or die, whether they can evade the patrolling guards, whether they can make sense of this clue, and ultimately whether they`ll die sad and forgotten or overcome all odds and save the day.

So please, don`t me that I should just `pull something out of my ass` or that its the players right to run roughshod over the world like some sort of juvenile power fantasy. Hell don`t even tell me that it`s the PC`s job to be heroes. They are free, free to be thugs, low-lifes or villains. They are free to become the stuff of legends, or just another bunch of prats who bit off more than they can chew. They are free to earn these successes or fail despite their best efforts. Because that`s what real agency is and that`s what games should be about.

Well my games anyways. I`m sorry for the hostility but this is something I feel really strongly about. Too many nights have I spent drowning in linear corridors and `puzzles` that will only accept the DM`s one ordained solution. Drowning for hours with the beautiful experience this game could be just beyond my fingertips, almost blinding me with its brilliance yet invisible to everyone else.

I don't think classes should necessarily be "balanced", that is to say that classes need not necessarily all do equally well in similar circumstances.

But I think that no class should be able to completely over shine another, as is the case now.

In your world, how are mundane locations like manors and banks protected against magic? Like, the other day I was running a pretty funny game where my players were attempting to sneak into a manor. The manor was really simple, just a big house with a couple of guards and servants milling about, yet the players still had to rack their brains to bluff, distract and knockout the guards while evading detection. And sometimes they failed, which lead to even more fun.

But halfway through a player (a 2nd level Bard) realized that he had spells. I allowed him to pick his spells right there and he chose two uses of Vanish, which easily allowed him and an ally to bypass a large part of the manor.

I have no problems with my players succeeding, but what I do strive for is the creation of a logical and coherent world, and it seems really inappropriate that a wealthy person's home is not outfitted with protection from a 1st level spell.

So how could people's homes be protected against thieves using stuff like vanish, disguise self, or wild shape? Hell, I can even see 0 level spells like Spark and Mage Hand causing loads of trouble.

Honestly, I think you'd have a lot more fun if you dispensed with the concept of plots altogether. Instead of strong arming the party into your noose, you should leave a piece of rope around and entice them to play with it. Then when they hang themselves it's that much funnier for you and they only have themselves to blame.

I would either go with Lucios idea and simply start the campaign as slaves or create a situation in which they might decide to jeopardize their own freedom. You could, for example, let them hear about a fabulous treasure accumulated by the crew of a pirate ship. Make available all the important bits of information like when and where it will be passing through town, what kind of fighters are on board, how it will be armed, and all of that.

If presented the right way, the party will be enticed to create their own adventure. They might decide to drug the pirates' beer as they stop to celebrate, they might try to bluff their way onto the boat as new recruits, or any number of things. If they fail, you get your slavery but if they succeed, they've pulled off an amazing heist, had a great time, and potentially made a life-long enemy you can use in future adventures.

When I stopped trying to plan games as a series of events, and instead created settings and characters that worked in a logical manner, I started having much, much more fun. Not only was I excited to see what happened next but my friends were actually seriously engaged as they made their own decisions and decided their own fate rather than simply having to guess what specific action I envisioned them taking next.

Could you clean the insides of someone's veins in order to remove all their blood?

I think it makes sense that Paladins must be good. Clerics get their powers from their conviction, but Paladins get their power from their righteousness.

Having to be lawful is pretty poopy, though.

Sense Motive for Snake Style characters.

I also have a character who's a Magus but is big on Disguise. He doesn't have it as a class skill nor will he have that much charisma, so Skill Focus is a necessity.

You could just draw a picture of a tuba on a shield and make tuba-like sounds with your mouth.

Just a guess but maybe because the kinds of people who want to disrupt games with minmaxed characters generally choose to do so using brute force and big numbers.

I don't see any problem here. The goal of this battle is to make the PCs feel like badasses, which it accomplishes. I think it's fine that the fighter is doing just as well as the wizard as the battlefield should really be the perfect environment for the fighter. In fact I think the fighter could even be doing a bit better. Sure the wizard can nuke a crowd of them but spells take time whereas every swish of the fighter's arm is a death sentence for a swath of foes.

I think you did a really good job here already.

I had a comical braggart of a Samurai that named each and every one of his many katanas. I took the names off of popular Beyblade models so they ended up being called stuff like GRAVITY PERSEUS and DARK FLAME DRAGO.

That’s it. I’m sick of all this “reflavoured club” bullshit that’s going on in the d20 system right now. Bokken deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.
I should know what I’m talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine Bokken in Japa-

I think it's kind of cool to think of familiars carefully choosing their last lucid thoughts, counting down the hours before they are again reduced to a mere beast.

So our Fighter was awoken by an assassin holding a crossbow to his face. Told to stand back and drop his weapon, he seriously contemplated doing so before the wizard shouted "don't worry! Crossbows only do like 1d8!"

I like the idea but I don't like adding a bunch of randomness and time-consuming rolling every time I want to fire my weapon.

Shaken - Bugs Bunny style big smooch.

Uh so is the key to the next big minmax build?

How do we optimize bees?

I would like to see a dedicated anti-magic class. One that not just has good protection vs spells (such as barbarian) but actively inhibits their ability to do any kind of magical operations, thus enabling mundane allies to succeed.

Another idea I had was some sort of "genius fighter" such as Joseph Joestar from JoJo's Bizarre adventure or like Conan the Barbarian (the book version. Basically, a physically powerful individual who primarily uses their intelligence to overcome obstacles. I'd like to see this class have a lot of mundane utility as well, so some McGyver influence wouldn't hurt either.

Wizard who swears he's a fighter and goes around beating people to death with his staff.

Have it put the lotion on its skin.