Dragonbane999's page

I hate incapacitation so much I just let my players know if an enemy is higher level than them when we play baseline rules.

Whoever thought it was a good idea giving EVERY even moderately difficult enemy +10 to their saving throws against any good debuff spell when they are already higher level than the players, and spells already have low odds of success, was smoking something.

Recently I've just been house ruling that incap rules only apply to big baddie bosses, and everything else higher level just gets +2 to their saves. My spellcasters no longer feel like they need to be limited to buffs and unavoidable damage for difficult fights anymore, its great.

Fights are more interesting since my players pay attention to the save weaknesses of difficult monsters because it actually matters when they have a real chance of landing a debilitating effect.

Wizards are in a weird spot where the considerations for them is an additive premeditated process, instead of a process that can be done with changes on the fly.

If you have an encounter with archers on a wall that is problematic for your fighters, you can not so subtly shove bows on some enemies in the encounter before, or add some melee fighters that come out, or put in a backdoor to the fort, or any number of changes that can be done literally in the same session.

For a wizard, you have to know what the party will be facing before they do, to an extent that the wizard is able to both find and learn the needed spells in time, and is given enough information to have them prepared on the correct day they need to be used.

I've often seen this done by heavily incentivizing divination spells, which a LOT of players underuse because GMs don't want to ruin their big surprise, or give away the entire plot of their campaign, which is the first thing players tend to want to use divination spells for. Players then get turned off of the spells when the GM immediately scrambles to be as vague as possible to the point the info feels worthless and a waste of play time to try and cajole out of the GM.

The biggest problem with attempting all of this preparation is, of course, that play is chaotic, your party doesn't do what you expect them to, and you have limited prep time and will often wing things or change them on the fly to compensate.

All of this tends to screw with the preparation needed by the wizard. When you make those on-the-fly changes, you would need to intentionally add/alter scenarios that get countered by the spells the wizard already has prepared.

The problem with this, is that if you do this, you are basically just designing your encounter around a preset and known list of spells that the wizard likes to prepare..... exactly like you would do for a sorcerer.

This discourages planning and preparation on the part of the wizard, since you will just compensate for whatever spells they prepare, and thus over time you get into a situation where the spellcaster might as well just play a sorcerer, because you are just going to design around the spell list they choose anyways. Any situations where you drop big hints like "Oh my, this thing coming up would sure be easier with a knock spell......." can just be covered by the sorcerer's one prepared spell feat.

Part of the issue with prepared casting, and wizard prepared casting in particular, is the already mentioned need to have foreknowledge of your encounters to actually gain the advantage preparation provides you.

Wizards feel this more keenly because their class toolkit does not have other options for them to use. Clerics use a limited spell list and focus more on party heals and buffs, which can stay consistent and Druids have shapeshifting for martial combat. Witches are pretty close with wizard for this issue.

I also agree that providing the opportunity to both acquire and have prepared the correct spells for the encounter is a consideration that GMs have to make for wizards to help them not just be worse sorcerers.

One of the things I think might work is retooling their drain bonded item to have an option to instead allow them to cast any spell in their spellbook. Maybe the universal wizard version lets them cast that one spell at each spell level, or a recast of a prepared spell, to prevent it from being too overpowered.

It's one of the things that's always bothered me about wizards, and why I liked arcanist so much. A wizard is centered around their spellbook, except the book is just a literal paperweight while adventuring. The quick study ability let arcanists actually use their spellbook actively throughout the day. Wizards need something similar.

I think of this as akin to the sorcerer's ability to take a feat to get a spellbook they can prepare one spell a day from. It lets the sorcerer dip their toe into the wizard realm so they aren't just out of luck if their base spells aren't up to the task.

Giving wizards the ability to, at least once per day, pull out the right spell for the job from their spellbook is like a supercharged preparation ability, which fits the wizard theme. After all, part of the preparation needed is having the foresight to bother learning the spell in the first place.

There are two major changes I would make to Wizard. Both are probably hot takes.

1. Preparing. Spells. Is. Horrible. At least as it is implemented. I have literally never, in my entire 25 years of playing tabletop RPGs, ever encountered someone who felt "Oh yeah. I LOVE doing the spreadsheet accounting to figure out if I need 2 of this, and 1 of that, and 3 of those prepared, and 1 of each of these three spells...". This actually sort of goes for every prepared caster, but we are talking about wizard here.

Honestly, Wizard needs something similar to the 1E Arcanist method of preparing spells. It is literally so good and simple that DnD stole it for it's implementation of wizard.

Paizo is sitting on a good mechanic for wizard spellcasting and what's better is no one can even accuse them of stealing the idea, because they are the one who came up with it.

2. Spellcasting accuracy is god awful. The last game I DMed, there were two fighters in the party. There were several times in the campaign where the fighters would regularly be making one action attacks that did more average damage than a two action cantrip, and had +7 better to hit on the attack than the wizard.

This was +4 from proficiency, +1 from weapon rune, and +2 from flatfooted at early levels, and later levels it was +2 proficiency, +3 rune, +2 flat footed.

That's a 35% better chance to hit and crit. The difference is so large the shock is like a slap to the face to see it in action. This wouldn't be so bad if the chance to hit for the wizard was still pretty good, but it is not. The wizard would often be rolling to hit with a 50% chance or less to land the spell attack. This doesn't even get into the abysmal odds of getting a monster to fail it's save, particularly a boss, and god forbid the spell has the incapacitate tag.

People like to succeed, they don't like to fail. I would rather Paizo nerf spell effects and increase the odds of the spells taking effect, if they consider increasing the odds of hitting to be too unbalanced, than leaving it as it is.

I want Samsaran as an ancestry.

I had a lot of fun playing one about 8 years ago that could remember a huge number of his past lives but got splitting headaches all the time and needed to find weird magical artifacts to settle his soul so he could think clearly and cast spells.

Then he'd go off on a tangent when meeting an ancient red dragon about how he got eaten by it 37 lifetimes ago.

Fun times.

For the life of me, I don't understand why the term "plane" was used in the first place. They are by every definition and measure better described as alternate or parallel dimensions.

The Fire, Earth, Death, Life, etc Dimension is much more evocative and stronger a term than "Plane of X" IMO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(esotericism)

The concept of planes of existence is very old and dates back thousands of years, before the mathematical concept of spatial dimensions was even around.

I do have to agree though that "Negative Energy Plane" is a mouthful. And calling them dimensions wouldn't be a bad idea.

Dragonbane999 wrote:

I think he is more saying that the current structure of the app and the way it generates revenue effectively sells access to something that is already available for free.

That's true for a lot of 3rd-party Pathfinder accessories. (See Beadle & Grimm, above).

What I don't understand is the animosity toward a company based on fear and on experience with an entirely different company.

With any product, some companies create inferior verisons and other create luxury versions. As long as there is also a free version available, why spew hate and hostile verbiage toward a company you've never had any dealings with? Why the instant vitriol? Why a pseudo product review of a product you've never used?

If you are just posting your own anxieties for all the world to see, perhaps a website that offers therapy or support for your issues is a better place to post them, not the product announcement page for a product you're not interested in.

Firstly, the first thing I did was test the tool before forming an opinion. Secondly, if the product announcement page for a product, which allows comments, is not the appropriate place to provide feedback about said new product, then I'm not sure where exactly one SHOULD put their feedback?

I have no personal qualms with Demiplane. I have issues with their pricing model for this product, which otherwise looks quite nice and would be something I might be interested in if it wasn't a god awful money pit.

The pricing model of having your users purchase source material is outdated. It presumes your primary revenue stream is going to be wealthy GMs that buy hundreds or thousands of dollars of content for their groups. A subscription model generates recurrent revenue per user, and is not only a smarter business move, but also more consumer friendly for the type of product they are trying to provide.

The current pricing model just doesn't make any sense. It's also incredibly ballsy to charge full price for content for a beta with missing features. It's not a good indicator as to how they perceive their customer base.

I think he is more saying that the current structure of the app and the way it generates revenue effectively sells access to something that is already available for free.

It's the same complaint people have when ISPs try to charge premiums for full speeds to websites. The core technology provides full speeds anyways, and you are already paying for the connection. It is an artificial barrier erected solely for the purposes of generating revenue.

I don't mind paying a subscription to a service that lets me make characters in a cool, pretty format that is easy to use, because that is the product I wish to pay for: access to a nice, pretty, convenient and easy to use character build tool.

What I am not looking for is a free tool that I have to remember to plop down another 30 bucks for every time a new book comes out despite the content being available for free online.

This pricing model is anti-consumer because it is trying to annoy you into spending all of the money up front to gain access to information that has no inherent cost or barrier to access.

When this is the strategy, there is little incentive to make the content you bought actually good or accurate. The content you buy could be riddled with small errors and bugs and there is not much reason to spend resources fixing the issues because they already have your money.

Compare that to a subscription model, where the investment is continual, and the consumer can stop the flow at any time if the product is not providing the quality expected.

Look at what happened with DNDBeyond in January. The majority of the user base does not buy content, they buy a sub. When that revenue stream was threatened, wizards PANICKED and did a 180. This is the power I want to wield with my dollars when I spend it on a service. I don't want to be left holding an empty wallet as Demiplane goes off doing whatever they want to squeeze money out of the next whale that buys all of the books, because I already did so like a sucker and they have no reason to listen to me anymore.

Bomber Alchemists need legendary prof. with alchemical bombs for the same reason gunslingers need legendary prof. in firearms.

Right now the most effective use of an alchemist's core class ability is to craft the bomb, and then to gain maximum hit chance, hand it to the fighter to throw.

Imagine the gunslinger only got master firearms proficiency. The core ability of the class to craft and use firearms would be best served by handing the gun to a fighter to shoot it.

An alchemist's ENTIRE IDENTITY is to make alchemical items. If they are not the best at using alchemical items (or at least tied for best), then the core class identity is broken (in a bad way).

You could get away with specific alchemical items being designed for certain classes that the alchemist itself doesn't have much use for, the same way haste is better to cast on the martial than yourself, but bombs are a core alchemical item type that the class has an entire subclass dedicated to, and which no other class has a specific focus on.

I just went to use the tool and made a basic level 2 half elf fighter multiclassed to wizard for a spellcasting flair.

My thoughts... are that the value proposition for this tool is absolute garbage. It is WAAAYYYY too expensive for what it provides. There is also no subscription option. The only way to access all options is to spend thousands of dollars.

You also can't even SEE what an option IS when you try to select it without buying the supplement first! That is ridiculous! The entire ruleset is online for free! I can look up any of these options for free in another tool like AoN to at least SEE what it DOES.

The tool as presented is pretty, and that's about the only feature it has that is superior to the competition. There are a number of features not implemented yet as well that I won't complain about because it IS a beta, so I will give them that.

They need to take a hard look at the available alternatives. AoN, Pathbuilder, Wanderer's Guide, Foundry VTT, ect. These tools are written in many cases by a tiny number of devs. All implement the same data and/or functionality (mostly) and at a vastly cheaper price. In many cases free.

I'm NOT saying the whole thing should be free. The presentation is nice and deserves compensation for that alone. It does not deserve more money than you pay for the actual document sold directly from the publisher.

This tool SCREAMS subscription model. It's deafening how badly it needs it. Most players in my experience are very cheap. they will not spend more than a few dollars a month on the hobby. They *might* spend some up front on the core book to feel better about supporting the hobby.

This thing needs something like a 5$ /mo subscription to make characters, or something like 25-30$ /mo to run a campaign and let your players make characters for free that a DM can pay for.

That would be the equivalent to selling a new rulebook every single month to a gaming group for as long as they play, sometimes a month or 2, sometimes YEARS. This is the path to making a decent profit from such a tool/service.

Massive up front costs to just use the tool in the same manner you can already use vastly cheaper alternatives is a quick route to a canceled product.

These discussions sometimes seem silly to me. The number one rule for basically any game (which includes pathfinder) is that specific overrides the general rule.

I have two character options that do not exclude each other specifically, and both grant a dedication.

The general rule is that a dedication can't be taken unless you have two other feats from previous dedications.

Clearly this is not possible in this scenario. Do we then say the specific rules for these options just.... don't work because of the general rule? No. Specific rules that override general rules often do so implicitly when there is a conflict.

The simplest and most straightforward method of resolving the conflict is that if the rules say you can take the option... IT WORKS.

Namely, you get two dedications. both require you to meet any prerequisites due to their wording, except for the limitation preventing you from taking the dedication as that would cause the general rule of dedications to override the specific rule of the option allowing you to take it.

Thus you need to meet the stat prereqs for each dedication (and not have the dedication be your base class) but otherwise you take two dedication feats.

Simple. Easy, and you can move on with your life.

Alternatively, the DM can invoke rule zero and just say you can't take both of them.

Your choice.

If you are having issues viewing the content on your browser I rendered it to pdf.

It's not the best render, but it's readable.

Arcanist PDF

Try looking at it in chrome. Apparently some browsers have trouble with GMBinder.

As for arcane weapon, those are good suggestions. I'm concerned allowing higher level property runes might be overpowered though.

I posted this on Reddit a while back. I figured I'd post it here too if anyone else also wants to use it in their games.

Feedback is appreciated.

Arcanist Homebrew

My issue with the +1/level mechanic is that it causes the auto-scaling issue seen in a lot of video games that has proven to not be fun.

Does anyone remember playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion? Does anyone remember how as you leveled the game was so tightly balanced around auto-scaling that you never felt badass? everything always seemed hard. This was an issue that was panned for a long time about the game, Skyrim loosened it up a bit, and made it so you could see weaker enemies occasionally, and also harder enemies that you could try beating for a very hard challenge.

The same is true here. With the current system you have no incentive to try easier challenges because you get no reward (xp) for doing them, and higher level challenges quickly become near impossible due to the ramping.

The biggest issue I find with this though, is that Paizo has balanced DCs around optimal characters. No one wants to pour everything into being awesome at one skill, only to find out the system expected this of you to start with, and made it so you have a 60% chance of succeeding instead of the 30% chance everyone else has.

If I become a legendary stealth ninja, I want to blow everyone else out of the water with my mad skills. Paizo has set up a decent opportunity for allowing this with the +10 = critical success, but I don't think they are utilizing it appropriately.

The numbers need to be balanced so that someone who never invested anything into a skill has a crap chance at success, someone who put a marginal amount into it, has an OK chance, and someone who is legendary shouldn't even be worrying about success, they should be concerned with how often they critically succeed instead.

These are the Heroes of the story. The people who specialize for a task should be amazing at it. Sure, a nat 1 fails, but that is just a good story hook at that point, on how the legendary stealth rogue just screwed up and now there's drama unfolding.

The best way to accomplish this I think is to make it so that the level of training and investment is the most important aspect of success. High levels just make harder tasks more accomplish-able, or allows you try try doing them at all.

My players an I were discussing a system where the t/e/m/l system worked a bit differently for skills. (combat rolls stay the same though, since no one likes missing their attacks, and we haven't discussed the combat system yet)

At untrained you get nothing but your stat bonus, and any other bonuses from items and spells, like normal.

At trained, you get 1/2 level rounded up, +1.

Expert is like trained but with a +2

Master brings you to full +level bonus +3

Legendary is full level with a +4.

We were considering doing 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full progression as well, but were concerned about too many tables of progression, plus the tables are barely different at low levels.

The idea behind this was to make it so that level still contributes, but not if you don't invest anything at all, and it makes the skill training significant to the bonus you receive.

Most people whose characters are bad at something are bad at it because it's either part of their character concept, they don't care about it, or they have other ways of solving the problem the skill solves (suck at something? pretty sure there's a spell for that, says every wizard ever)

The DCs also need to be set based on an average joe who is just trained in the skill, with maybe a 12 in the stat. Personally I like static DCs, since they are easy to remember. It also make it so that an easy task is always the same, as you level you aren't trying for easy tasks anymore, you are trying for success with medium, hard, or harder tasks.

Something like trivial 5, very easy 10, easy 15, medium 20, hard 25, very hard 30, extreme 35, impossible 40.

A level 20 legendary is going to have +20, +7 stat, +4 legendary skill, +4 item, for +35 if they are super optimized. this makes success on all but impossible tasks guaranteed almost, with a very high chance of critical success.

A level 7 master (someone at the pinnacle of mortal skill before becoming a true heroic personage) would have +7, +3 skill, +4 stat, +2 item, for +16... they can TRY an extreme challenge with a low success rate (10%), have a much better chance with very hard (35%) and thus could do it with a few tries and some time, and pretty much auto succeed at anything easy.

This is just an example of what Paizo could do, there is a lot of room to experiment with the numbers, but I think the key is to not just blindly add +level to everything for everyone, and make it so true legendary skill users are aiming for critical success on the top challenges, not just success.

You could make it so e/m/l in a weapon skill gives +50%/double/triple your str/dex bonus to damage.

Also if the weapon itself is e/m/l you could add a flat +1/2/3 damage to the weapon even if it isn't enchanted.

A master sword user wielding a master sword with 20 strength would do 1d8+12, if it's enchanted +3 it would instead do 4d8+12.

Expert user with an expert sword with 18 strength would do 1d8+7.
Legendary with a legendary sword and 24 strength would be 1d8+24.
Trained user with an expert sword and 16 strength would do 1d8+4.

The roles could be switched too if needed (the skill gives a flat bonus and the quality of the weapon adds stat bonuses). I figured giving an incentive to be highly skilled at the weapon would be better though.

This would resolve the issue of terrible rolls doing negligible damage at later levels as well.

This could be extended to the magic system as well. e/m/l quality casting implements give +1/2/3 damage/healing. e/m/l spellcasting gives +50%/double/triple spellcasting modifier to damage/healing.

granted, martial characters already are much more effective than casters right now, they really need to buff caster effectiveness, and probably add a few HP to monsters with the change.

Yes, we saw that part, the issue is that it takes the alchemist's RP to even make the items, and that prevents the alchemist from using his party's RP instead of his own for items that they will be using.

The stockpiling I was talking about was for poisoned arrows he makes with RP one day and immediately applies to the arrows for use later. We had a discussion about if the alchemy items potency matters until activation, or for the full duration of the effect, and we decided that mutagens and poisons just wouldn't work with quick alchemy at all if they stopped working at the beginning of the next round, so we went with activation since that makes the most sense.

The main issue is that the Alchemist at low levels has precious few RP, even with an 18 INT, you have 5 at level one, which is 10 potions/bombs/poisons per day. Considering poison does 3-5 dice of damage over several rounds (if they keep failing their saves), bombs are roughly the equivalent of cantrips in terms of damage potential, and healing elixirs are strictly worse than a heal spell, the alchemist needs some way of offloading the burden to his teammates and allowing him to continue to chuck bombs throughout the day.

At level 1 he made 4 bombs, 2 healing potions, and 2 centipede poisons with 1 RP left over for the whole day. He pulled out two bombs one turn, chucked 1, next turn he pulled out a third, chucked two, and chucked the last one on round three of the first combat of the day. He missed his first shot with his poisoned arrows, and the second just got saved immediately. The healing potions did their jobs, and he used the last RP to make another, so he healed 3d6 damage and lobbed 4d6 damage worth of bombs all day with his class abilities. He didn't actually do 4d6 though, he missed with one of his attacks.

The elf cleric played in the next session ended up being way more effective than he was with his alchemist (granted it was level 2 play, but still, it shouldn't have been that extreme a difference in effectiveness). Infinite produce flame cantrips, 5 heal spells for free each day (he used healing hands to heal 2d8 + 4 for each one), more spells, it was like night and day.

The house rules let him keep lobbing bombs, and helped tremendously with his ability to get the party healed. So I do think there still needs to be some attention paid to the RP costs of things. At later levels he is going to want to invest several magic items, so I don't anticipate him having more than 10 or so RP any day for most of the levels.

We test things out under the assumption most play occurs around level 7 or below, I forget the article that mentioned this, but it suggested the significant majority of play for most people never goes beyond this, and that has been my experience with other tables so I've kept that in mind over the years.

I suppose that's my fault for not double checking him. He kept saying they cost money to craft.

I'm sure he will be happy when I tell him he can stop spending all his money on bombs.

Anyways, that alleviates the issues with wasted money, but still doesn't address the issues with using the rest of the party's resonance pools to fuel the items he makes for them.

I do this that is still a valid concern of his. Making items that aren't imbued so the other members of the party can use their resonance pools is something I think should still be available.

I'll be talking to my group about this, though we will probably come up with something like "The items last 1 day, and you can choose to imbue them or not with a resonance point for up to INT mod batches per day." or something similar is my guess, at least I'm going to insist on a limit so he can't make infinite bombs at the start of the day. (quick alchemy isn't an issue though due to the very short duration)

I've been running this playtest with my group for several weekends now, and while I'll be posting my full thoughts and those of my group later as I compile them, the player trying the alchemist has a lot of concerns about the primary class abilities.

1. Advanced Alchemy states that you spend the normal crafting costs, and that the items are Infused. From what I see in the rules, RAW, this means the alchemy items stop working one day later.

He already has concerns about blowing too much money at low levels to try to stockpile enough items for use during the adventure, and it's come to the point he essentially refuses to use the ability unless I tell him before hand he will definitely be using them that day. This mainly came up with healing elixirs, since you never know how many you need, but bombs came up as well, see below.

We finally just house ruled that the items just lose the infused trait after one day but otherwise still work since he spent the money on them.

I suggest this becomes the standard rule for the class. No one likes throwing money down the drain on their class abilities that is supposed to be their entire concept.

Second, for both Quick Alchemy and Advanced Alchemy, they always require using a resonance point to use the ability, even for items that have no extra effect whatsoever for having infused them. (poisons and tools are a main example, but bombs when under level 2 also apply)

This was a big sticking point for him particularly at low levels. He had to decide: make a bunch of stuff up front at cost to myself, and potentially waste them? Make them on the fly, using extra actions but spend his limited 5-6 resonance in the process on an item that gets nothing for the expense?

This became somewhat less of an issue when we houseruled letting him keep his stuff after one day, but there is still the cost of either resonance for one item that potentially doesn't need it up front, or money for them AND still a resonance up front needing to anticipate their use but maybe getting two/four of them.

This also causes the issue of the alchemist essentially using all of his own resonance when he might want the rest of the party to take the hit to their own resonance pools. He is unable to use his primary class ability to help his team while utilizing their resonance for the things he makes for them.

We spent a session with the following house rule:

If the item doesn't use resonance, you don't have to spend it. For advanced alchemy, you still use the money, for quick, you still use the action and it's still a very short duration item before needing to use it.

If the item DOES use resonance, you can choose to infuse the item/s with a resonance point, and if you do, it's Infused. If it was made with Advanced alchemy, the first house rule still applies, and it becomes un-infused after one day without ruining it.

And finally: if you crafted the alchemy item yourself and it is not infused, you can spend a resonance point to make it infused for one day as an action. It spoils after that day if you don't use it like normal.

This ended up being a big relief for him, since he could make items to stockpile them, and if he knew he was about to use some, he could infuse them at the entrance and have them ready, without needing to worry about wasting resonance points.

I didn't find the changes to be breaking and I would suggest the changes or something similar be done to reduce the amount of potential wastage an alchemist can have, and to allow the alchemist to use the resonance of his party for the elixirs he makes for them.

This allows the alchemist to make as many bombs as he wants for free, at the cost of an action, and with the stipulation that they are regular level 1 bombs (since there aren't any higher level bombs).

The only potential issue we saw was making free higher level poisons on the fly, mainly for contact and inhaled poisons, since injury poisons doesn't have a maximum duration once applied (and can thus be applied before hand on a downtime day even with the current rules, which is what he did ALL THE TIME). I'm not sure if this will be a major issue though, since poisons tend to take a long time to set in for anything other than injury and inhaled (which can poison your own party), and thus aren't super useful in combat.