Most folks will just post the link to their Google Doc in the forum.
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The scene: 4th level Half-Orc Barbarian wanting to do his very best at intimidating a troll blocking our gang's passage across a narrow bridge dangling high in a gorge above a rushing river. [Half-Orc's player rolls d20 netting a natural 1] Mortified Half-Orc waves jazz hands and shouts: "Boogedy boogedy boo!" [Troll (really, DM) laughs so hard he tumbles from the rickety bridge] Half-Orc looking back at the rest of the crew: "Well, that didn't go as planned." Party Rogue with a reassuring pat on the Half-Orc's shoulder: "Looked good to me, man."
Thanks for sharing your .pdf with our community. Your Elementalists' spellcasting feature seems quite a bit like the WotC Warmage's. Spoiler:
(The two notable deviations being that your Elementalists are - a slightly stifled form of - 2/3rds-casters versus Warmages being full-casters, and the following sentence: "Spells prepared on previous days remain prepared until a new spell is prepared over that slot or until the spell is expended".) Pulling on the thread of your Elementalists' spellcasting a tad further, I'm curious why their number of cantrips prepared per day is less than a Bard's number of 0-level spells known. -- I recognize that your Air Elementalist currently only has five different cantrips available, but your other Elementalists have six or seven cantrips available (depending on Attunement). Perhaps adding Breeze (from https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/magic/rare-cantrips#TOC-Breeze) to the Air Elementalist's spell list could be considered in-theme. Additionally, one might argue that having another cantrip up your Elementalists' sleeves likely isn't unbalancing. (And having this extra cantrip prepared per day would raise all of your Elementalists up to a daily spellcasting allotment equal to Bards.) That said, even as-is, once taken in concert with their other class features, I don't think that their reduced spellcasting hampers your Elementalists in the least; rather to the contrary, reading through all four varieties of your Elementalist supports the notion that each should quite fun to play. I especially like the way you've tailored each Attunement to encourage a distinct interpretation of its take on the class.
I like your "Ascetic" take on the Monk quite a bit. : For my family's current Pathfinderized campaign through Castle Ravenloft, I've homebrewed a Friar/Nun class that does much the same to the standard Monk as you've done: exchanged certain Monk class features for the 2/3 spontaneous magic (though utilizing a tailored list based on the Cleric's suite).
Its very interesting to me that you and I seem to have independently selected so many of the same Monk features to cash in. When you have an opportunity to playtest your creation, I'd be interested in learning what you've concluded. (So far, the Friar in our game is proving to be nicely capable, but certainly not overshadowing of any other characters.)
I'm not aware of any spell, prayer, or invocation that lowers opponent's Spell Resistance protection, nor any magical affect that increases one's chance to beat an opponent's Spell Resistance protection, but I do know of two feats that should fill the bill: Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration; each adds to one's chance to break through opponent's Spell Resistance. And they are both core feats.
I am away from my Core Rule Book and Beastiaries right now, so I can't speak from the perspective of Rules as Written (RAW), but I can offer to you insight as to how our table handles this issue: we allow Animal Companions, Famaliars, and Special Mounts to learn both a limited suite of feats, and a limited suite of skills. The feats and skills available to a particular Animal Companion, Familiar, or Special Mount are always tailored to those feats and skills that the specific creature is physically and mentally capable of utilizing. With this in mind, our table would have no problem with your avian learning Fly-by Attack since its clearly both physically and mentally capable of moving (via flight) and attacking.
Mark, Like R_Chance, I'm glad the worst part of your recent trip to the hospital was the needles; and I too am very glad that you're already doing so much better. Take care of yourself and know that there are folks are out here patiently awaiting your future publications. Based on your previous offerings, more good things loom from Spes Magna.
Maxximilius, As a big fan of dandy Rogues, I really like this succinct archetype. I've just one question: Is "Deceiving Elegance" the same as "Tricky Elegance"?
Not to step on anyone's toes, but here is a list of potentially moon-related magical effects one could consider making bonus spells for a lunar-themed Sorcery bloodline: At 3rd level, Magic Stone (think of affected pebbles as moon rocks)
Nearly done with end-of-year efforts and finally have some time to relax visiting these messageboards again. *** I'd like to express my thanks to each person who posted a reply to this thread. As I suspected, everyone shared their distinct, creative and flavorful perspective addressing the issue raised at my son's birthday campaign-launch. Thank you, all. *** Laurefindel -- I respect your dedication to helping me after the post monster chewed up your initial effort. Your insight regarding phantasms (specifically, how such magic can use a victim's subconscious in a way that trumps his/her conscious mind) holds enough mystique to infuse these effects with the right amount of exoticness so as to keep the magic in prayers, spells and invocations (which was not an insignificant concern in our debates about saving throws vs. skill checks that night at the table). Also, your summation feels spot-on; I can totally groove on the notion that Sense Motive measures a (potential) deceiver's credibility rather than directly defeats a deception. CantFindthePath -- I appreciate you pointing me to the d20 Threshold Google website. In spending some time there earlier this morning, it certainly illuminated an interesting alternative to the current array of subsystems built into Pathfinder. (On the matter of your proposal to rename Suspicion to Insight, since I don't play 4e, might you know if WotC punted the insight bonus type when they renamed the Sense Motive skill to Insight? We seem to have an insight bonus apply to quite a wide variety of rolls in our game.) DrowVampyre -- I like your suggestion: renaming Suspicion to Doubt. You're right; it's already monosyllabic, what more could we want? (Plus... changing the name of our new mental saving throw from Suspicion to Doubt keeps the connotation the same: questioning stimuli.) What might you suggest we rename our Highly Suspicious feat? Apotheosis -- While I recognize that your "unsub" recommendation isn't -strictly speaking - a pun, it certainly made me smile like one; very clever. Ion Raven -- Neat idea. Renaming our new mental save to Judgment is flavorful on so many levels, especially in light of our compiled list of delineated magical effects. (Even though Judgment can be truncated to just Judge, we don't seem to have any problem calling for [disyllabic] Reflex saves [it’s just the three-syllable saving throws we tend to abridge: Fortitude to Fort, and Willpower to Will] so I think keeping both syllables of Judgment in play wouldn't cause the kind of heartburn that using the polysyllabic word Suspicion has so far.) What might you suggest we rename our Highly Suspicious feat? Mortuum -- I like the elegance of your lessons-based differentiation between skills and saving throws. (If you'll post your email, I'll send you our list of effects resisted the new mental save when I get back to the States.)
Quite some while ago, the folks I game with instituted a house-rule that had an ancillary effect of adjusting the mechanical value of characters/creatures having a higher Charisma score. From the “Adding mechanical benefits for Charisma” thread:
Last session, we began play-testing an evolution of our previous Willpower-flows-from-Charisma house-rule by incorporating an idea reinvigorated by Kirth Gersen's "Mechanical Tinkering Thread". From Kirth's April 2011 thread:
Willpower and Insight (for Charisma and Wisdom, respectively) could also work.
While we all liked the idea of having two mental saves to compliment characters’/creatures’ two physical saves, and we agreed to split up mental saves according to affects that result in deception vs. affects that result in coercion, we – like Kirth’s contributing posters – struggled with what to name the new mental saving throw. We discussed the merits of naming the new mental saving throw ‘Individuality’ like CalebTGordan suggested, but there was some strong opposition based on the fact that while a Fortitude saving throw can be quickly requested at the table by calling it a “Fort save”, and the terms “Reflex save” and Will save” are similarly concise phrases, no one could come up with a truncated form of “Individuality” that didn’t sound odd stumbling off the speaker’s tongue (calling for an “Indie save” just wasn’t very evocative). Evil Lincoln’s suggestion to call the mental saves “Suspicion and Defiance” seemed quite promising, especially since we’d agreed that one mental save should address deception and the other coercion. Then someone in our group brought up two good points:
(2) there is a definition of “Defiance” that is basically a synonym for “Willpower”: willfulness. Ultimately we smooshed together CalebTGordan’s and Evil Lincoln’s naming ideas, resulting in us keeping the term “Will save” (to denote the defensive effort one can attempt to mitigate the effects of a coercive magical effect) and gaining a new mental saving throw, named “Suspicion” (to denote the defensive effort one can attempt to mitigate the effects of a magical effect designed to deceive a victim’s senses). Unfortunately:
No one has yet come up with a good at-the-table truncation for a “Suspicion save”… Any help on this point (in addition to the main request of this post) would be appreciated. Having named our house-ruled mental saves, we went thru the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and the Advanced Player’s Guide agreeing, in congress, as to which distinct mental saving throw would be the most appropriate mechanism for defending oneself against each Rules-as-Written (RAW) Will save magical affect. It took nearly a whole evening of fire-side debate, but at the end of it all we’d eaten a ton of s’mores and everything seemed good. Then, last weekend, as part of the celebrations associated with my son’s 14th birthday, he wanted the whole crew to get together and began a new campaign; we decided it would be a good opportunity to begin testing this new house-rule. Just as the GM brought us to the night’s finale, we five adults - who’d all invested so much time and energy in working thru the planning of this house-rule - tripped on our collective faces when one of my son’s friends - a kid that’d never played a table-top RPG (with us or anyone else) – asked simply, “Can I use my Sense Motive ranks in place of my Suspicion save to shrug off the Wizard’s (that night’s Big Bad Evil Guy (BBEG’s) Phantasmal Killer spell?” Hmmmm. A quick review of the Core Rulebook by my son revealed to his friend that Phantasmal Killer does operate (in part) by deceiving its victim into being literally scared to death. Accordingly, my son – supporting his friend – opined that the BBEG’s magical deception was, therefore, essentially a lie. Lying in-game is normally a task of the Bluff skill. And Bluffs are opposed by Sense Motive. The mathematics of Saves vs. Skill checks:
We’d set up this evolution of our saving throw house-rule so that Suspicion follows either the good or bad saving throw progression; just like Fortitude, Reflex and Will do. But, after just 4th level, the bonus provided by the good saving throw progression begins to lag behind the bonus a character can have in Sense Motive, even if it’s a non-class skill, as long as he/she assigns maximum ranks at each promotion. (If Sense Motive is a class-skill, that initial +3 bump makes the good saving throw progression lag as early as 1st level…) And even though we’d already built a +2 to Suspicion saves feat (“Highly Suspicious”, mirroring the mechanics of Great Fortitude, Iron Will and Lightning Reflexes), the scalable bonus to Sense Motive that a character can get from taking the Alertness feat again outstrips the best possible saving throw progression. The long and the short of it is that my son’s friend intuitively recognized that skill check bonuses can be higher than saving throw bonuses pretty easily. And since making his save was so important, using the bigger number was better for his character. During the game, the best reason any of us could come up to explain the difference between needing to make a Suspicion check against the BBEG’s (admittedly deceptive) spell and a Sense Motive check to oppose someone’s Bluff was this: Illusions - being magical affects - are much more subtle and innately convincing than merely being confronted by an untruth (not matter how exceptional). Even though my son and his friend took that explanation and we successfully moved on with the climax of the episode, I don’t feel that that was an especially good answer – at least not flavorwise. Since the community here has so much experience and brings incredible diversity and creativity to this forums’ many posts, might someone help me out by providing a better (more flavorful) way to address this disparity? Skill checks =/= saving throws: Even though my son and his friend only argued along the thought cascade of illusions-are-deceptions-deceptions-are-lies-lies-are-challanged-via-Sense Motive, I could foresee someone using the same logic to argue that Perception checks should counter Illusions. (Essentially, if illusions aren’t lies, per se, they could be understood as something being magically disguised as something else; and Disguise checks are opposed by challengers’ Perception.) None of the adults in our game want to wander so far away from Pathfinder ruleset as to necessitate totally re-working all of the myriad RAW will save affects that exist in print just so our table can take into account the kinds of oppositional effort a character/creature could generate by using a maxed-out skill check to counter magic. So, we’re not going to. Still, I’d like a better way to explain the difference between what triggers a Suspicion saving throw vs. an opposing skill check.
I use the Kindle. Its E-ink renders the all my WotC and Piazo .pdf files (whether published or scanned) with perfect crispness. My only complaint about the using the Kindle is that I can't seem to get it to zoom in on the text of any .pdfs the way it can for my e-books; at my age, fitting an entire book page in a small window without the ability to zoom in on portions of any page makes the text quite tiny.
If I may, I'd like to second magnamuscle's (implied) request to see your Pathfinderized take on Monte Cook's alternate Bard from the Complete Book of Eldritch Might, SmiloDan. Your previous conversions have always played well in our group and I have full confidence that your take on Monte's product would prove another great addition to our world.
Instead of the asian-themed termed "Jutsu" or the (rather bland)
I am unfamiliar with Factotum... The Factotum was first published in WotC's 2007 Dungeonscape.
I can lend some perspective on Fractal's position. For years our gaming group merrily went along with the Player's Handbook (PHB) rule that prescribes Wisdom as the talent behind characters’/creatures’ Will saving throws. But the descriptions for both Wisdom and Charisma (as presented in Chapter 1 of the PHB) just seemed... well... a bit disjointed when read in light of the description of Will saves under Combat Basics (“[Will] saves reflect [one’s] resistance to mental influence as well as many magical effects”). If “Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one’s surroundings” and Charisma “represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting”, then Charisma seemed – at least to us – to be the better well-spring of willpower. On several occasions we sat around the gaming table debating the value and potential effects of moving Wisdom out of the way and instilling Charisma as the root of willpower, but it wasn't until one of us picked up WotC’s Complete Adventurer from a local hobby store, and we became aware to its Force of Personality feat, that our group voted to actually make the switch. Our implementation of this universal house-rule had nothing to do with Charisma being a “dump” stat for everyone except the Sorceress and Bard. Additionally, it wasn’t made with any consideration relative to Single- vs. Multiple-Ability-Dependency (SAD vs. MAD). Instead, we just wanted to correlate the strength of one’s personality with his/her/its willpower and until we saw that the game’s designers were open to the idea of Charisma as the driving force behind Will (or, put another way, that there wasn’t some sublime mechanical reason behind Wisdom contributing its modifier to Will), we weren’t willing to alter such a fundamental aspect of our game for fear of creating unexpected negative consequences. (Which is funny in and of itself, because now we play a heavily modified rule-set.) To Gauthok’s original point: After making the switch, our play revealed that Wisdom retained its high-value as a basic ability because it fueled characters’/creatures’ most-used skills: Listen and Spot (we were still playing v3.5)... this fact continued when we converted to Pathfinder because Perception runs off Wisdom, too.
However, as expected, Charisma became a universally attractive basic ability because it is now the talent that defeats detrimental mind-affecting effects.
Actually, I never have seen the Favored Soul class. Was it 3.5 or 4e? I stopped playing at 3E and only picked up D&D again at Pathfinder. I gained exposure to WotC's Favored Soul via the Complete Divine (a v3.5 book), though it was originally published in the Miniatures Handbook. *** I appreciate you posting the results your first play-test experience. Utilizing the Oracle's Spells Known progression is an elengant refinement. I look forward to seeing this class in play. Thanks for sharing it with the community.
Hello:
First off, let me say that I think it takes a lot of courage to put oneself out on a stage by posting the fruit of your hard work in a public forum like these messageboard and then invite folks (who are likely strangers – and some may even be jerks) to critique your “baby”. My hat’s off to you. As a spontaneous divine full-caster, your Mystic appears designed to replace WotC's Favored Soul. I like that; WotC’s spontaneous divine full-caster never appealed to me. (Sprouting feathery or bat-like wings always struck me as a horrible way for a Deity to show His/Her favor to a mortal.) That said, I'd like to ask you three questions about salient design features I've noticed in contrasting your Mystic vs. WotC’s Favored Soul: 1. Whereas your Mystic and WotC's Favored Soul share the same middle BAB progression, your class only enjoys the good saving throw progression for Fort and Will; WotC's Favored Soul has all three saves following the fastest option. Why the deviation from precedence? 2. Whereas WotC's spontaneous divine full-caster mirrored their spontaneous arcane full-caster's Spells Per Day progression, you've identified a non-standard Spells Per Day progression for your Mystic. Your Mystic's Spells Per Day table neither follows the (heretofore universal) spontaneous full-caster's progression, nor the Cleric's/Wizard's (prepared full-caster) progression, nor the Druid's (also prepared -- but somewhat retarded -- full-caster) progression. Why the deviation from precedence? 3. Whereas WotC's spontaneous divine full-caster gained Spells Known slightly faster than their spontaneous arcane full-caster, you've again identified a non-standard Spells Known progression for your Mystic. Your Mystic's Spells Known table is the slowest of any full-caster in the game (from either WotC or Paizo). What feature of your class necessitates limiting the number of spells a Mystic can know to less than even a Sorcerer's Spells Known chart? With your insights, I expect to be able to better analyze your Mystic class and make constructive suggestions for your consideration (or just tweaks to the class to use in my games, which I likely will do because I thrilled to the flavor-text you've written for introducing the Mystic).
(1) Most of my players prefer the banking Crits to offset Fumbles optional rule. As GM, I prefer the Weapon Focus optional rule since my NPC opponents normally don't last long enough to get any pay-off for delaying gratification. (2) We tried out a homebrew rule that allowed the use of a Crit card and use the full (Core Rulebook) critical multiplier. After a couple untimely (and especially grusome) deaths, we dropped the crictical multiplier component back in line with the deck's instructions. (3) No one in our group has made it above 9th level yet, so I lack experience with how the cards will work at higher levels. So far, though, the Crit cards have had effects far more entertaining than just whittling away at hit points. (4) Don't forget to shuffle your deck each session. A big part of the fun of these cards (at least when I'm GMing) is not knowing what's gonna happen with a 20 or a 1.
Not a very satisfying answer for logical types searching for an underlying formula... Quite right; especially because one of the aspects about 3e/3.5/Pathfinder that I enjoy very much is the linear, formulaic approach used by the designers to quantify many of the mechanical parts of the game. -- With predictable mathematic underpinnings in place for so much of what the folks on either side of the screen have to do to facilitate an enjoyable game session, I often feel that everyone at the table is free to focus on their part of the story-telling process instead of preparing justifications/arguments to support their estimation of the "right" value of any given expression.
So, for those interested (which is probably only me, but hey, I was always taught to share)... This is perfect! Thanks for all your help with the math.
... Those two items should never exist in any campaign... I appreciate the warning. I'll spend some time investigating the details of some of those loophole-abusing character builds you've mentioned for the Persistent meta-magic feat to see if they could/would pose a danger to the balance of our game.
The outlying meta-magic feats I'm looking to make available for rod crafting are both from WotC's Complete Arcane: Energy Admixture and Persistent Spell. And although chapter 5 of the Complete Arcane does price several rods able to store the essence of a few of the non-core meta-magic feats presented in chapter 3, none of them are 5- or 6-slot rods. Spoiler:
What's more, even the handful of 0-slot and 1-slot rods priced in Complete Arcane's Magic Item chapter don't follow WotC's v3.5 DMG meta-magic rods pricing formula... That said, I do appreciate the suggestion, Morgen. In pouring over a copy of WotC's Magic Item Compendium tonight, I found a sum of new 13 rods; unfortunately, all of them are spell-based, not feat-based. Spoiler part II:
Worse, on page 233 of the Magic Item Compendium, WotC printed a sidebar that seems to support Complete Arcane's unorthodox meta-magic rod pricing by refuting the DMG's position of formulaic pricing. So I'm still at a loss. The one ray of shining insight I've been able to glean from this evening's research is that Paizo appears to have abandoned WotC's Complete Arcane/Magic Item Compendium unpredictable magical item pricing convention in favor for continuing the DMG's formulaic pricing. This lone fact leaves me hopeful that there is a mathematical expression I could use to price meta-magic rods crafted with an infusion of Energy Admixture or Persistent Spell. Now, just to find it...
I'm trying to quantify the correct cost of making certain non-core meta-magic feats able to be infused into meta-magic rods. A quick comparison of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook reveals that meta-magic rods are priced with a certain discernable logic which appears closely tied to the perceived utility of the base feat whose essence they store. For instance, all meta-magic rods associated with a base feat that requires the spell-caster increase his/her magic by only 1 slot (e.g. Enlarge Spell, Extend Spell and Silent Spell) have a cost array of 1,500 (for their lesser version), 5,500 (for their normal version) and 12,250 (for their greater version). This same associative logic seems likely to hold true for 2-slot, 3-slot and 4-slot meta-magic rods because Empower Spell (a 2-slot feat), Maximize Spell (a 3-slot feat) and Quicken Spell (a 4-slot feat) all have different price arrays in the rules as written (RAW). (However, I must confess that without at least one other 2-slot, 3-slot and 4-slot meta-magic rod to compare pricing against, this second observation may have keyed in on something purely coincidental and therefore be accidentally false...) That said, I still feel comfortable assigning rod crafting costs to non-core 2-slot, 3-slot and 4-slot meta-magic feats mirroring what's present in the RAW for core 2-slot, 3-slot and 4-slot meta-magic rods. Where I've stumbled is trying to calculate the correct pricing for a 5-slot or 6-slot meta-magic feat being crafted into a rod. Since there are no 5-slot or 6-slot meta-magic feats (let alone 5-slot or 6-slot meta-magic rods) nor any rules that I’ve found in the Core Rulebook for pricing such outliers, I thought a good place to start could be interpolating the delta in cost along the continuum started by lesser 1-slot meta-magic rods thru lesser 4-slot meta-magic rods. Unfortunately, I didn’t find a linear progression via this analysis technique: Lesser gp_ delta from previous_ delta from origin
Next, I explored the possibility that each progressively more slot-heavy meta-magic rod might use a simple curve to quantify its pricing. But after crunching the numbers, that too proved patently wrong. Lesser gp_ factor from previous_ factor from origin
Might someone here know the right formula I should be applying? Alternatively (actually, better in my opinion), might you know where I could buy/find RAW from a reputable Pathfinder-friendly publisher for pricing 5-slot and 6-slot non-core meta-magic feats being infuse into rods? Using Tables in the Forum?: Is there some trick to using easy-to-read tables here? If so, I appreciate becoming educated on that, too.
In 2002, WotC published the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook for 3e. It brought all the old AD&D rules for building and maintaining all sorts of fortresses into the d20 era. Since Pathfinder is mostly compatible with 3.0/3.5, you might do well to search out a copy of this book on eBay, your local used bookstore, etc. and use its rules for your party. The ISBN is 0-7869-2655-4 and it retailed (new) for $21.95 US.
As our merry band of adventurers creeps ever so closer to obtaining Epic levels, I've been mulling over the notion of authoring custom creatures for future encounters. However, before I attempt such an undertaking, I'd like to tap the collective intelligence of this community: Do the Rules as Written (RAW) support that there is there a single statistic that elevates monsters (read: non-player creatures) into Epic status? If so, where is it addressed? - I understand the RAW about a Challenge Rating (CR) of 21+ representing an Epic-level encounter for a standard group of 4 heroes (Cleric, Fighter, Rogue and Wizard), but determining CR for non-published monsters seems much more akin to voodoo than math, in my opinion. Instead of trying to artfully plot the CR of homebrewed monsters, what I'm looking for is a reasonable, objective, mathematical threshold (i.e. number of Hit Dice, average damage per round, minimum Basic Ability score, etc.) that I could peg as universal evidence of any being's Epic nature. Acknowledgement: I recognize that the Beastiary currently has a pair of Epic monsters; and that even if I didn't want to necessarily play Solars or the Tarrasque as villains when our campaign unfurls into Epic levels, I can either use any of our WotC- or 3rd Party-published Epic monsters, or even group non-Epic monsters in such a fashion as to be assured that the ensuing encounter will represent an Epic effort. But none of those RAW options are at the heart of my inquiry.
Quite right! I should've clarified that only warrior-type classes (Barbarians, Fighters, Knights, Monks, Paladins and Rangers) can obtain 5th+ rank in Armor Proficiencies and Weapons Proficiencies at our table. -- Additionally, our Fighters are also fairly heavily modified from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook formula (to ensure that they retain their best-at-arms niche). My apologies; it’s tough to relate just a slice of our game-world since so many tweaks apply...
Disclaimer - Our group plays a fairly heavily modified version of Pathfinder, so what I have to offer on this subject may not be all that easily portable into anyone else's game. As part of our house-rules, we transitioned away from using feats for Armor, Shield and Weapons Proficiencies (instead utilizing the skill-points) when WotC was the basis of our table-play. We've retained this modification into our adoption of Pathfinder. Armor Proficiencies
* By investing skill points into Medium Armor Proficiency, a character reduces his/her armor check penalty (while wearing a breastplate, brigandine armor, chainmail armor, coin armor, feild plate armor, hide armor, laminated silk vest, ring mail, scale mail or shell armor) by one point per rank. * By investing skill points into Heavy Armor Proficiency, a character reduces his/her armor check penalty (while wearing banded mail, bronze plate, coral plate, Dwarven heavy plate, full plate, half plate [aka plate mail], splint mail or three-quarter plate) by one point per rank. The maximum benefit of each grouping's armor penalty reducing feature of is to zero out one's armor check penalty. No amount of proficiency in any armor group can turn wearing that kind of armor into a boon when one attempts an Attack on the Move, Backstabbing, Balanced Movement, Climbing, Escape Artistry, Hiding, Jumping, Moving Silently, Riding, Running, Sleight of Hand, Swimming or Tumbling. Also, at 5th rank, a trained character can sleep in any proficient armor without waking fatigued. (The Endurance feat retains all of its other benefits at our table, but appropriate armor proficiency is the only way to sleep armored without automatically suffering fatigue.) Shield Proficiency
* By investing skill points into Shield Proficiency, a character increases his/her likelihood of beating the DC associated with each defined task. Weapons Proficiencies
At 1st rank (called Familiarity), the character can utilize all special features of the proficient weapon (e.g. brace, disarm, trip and wrap-around). At 5th rank (called Specialization), the character gains the benefit of the Weapon Specialization (Designated Weapon) feat from PFCRB (which isn't available at our table as a feat). At 10th rank (called Expertise), the character gains the benefit of the Greater Weapon Specialization (Designated Weapon) feat from PFCRB (which isn't available at our table as a feat). At 15th rank (called Mastery), the character can inflict a designated non-standard type of damage when using the proficient weapon (i.e. arrows normally deal piercing damage, but a character with mastery of the longbow can learn to intentionally fire missiles in such a way as to slash at his/her target; alternatively, a claymore normally deals slashing damage, but a character with mastery of the two-handed sword can use its flat-edge to bludgeon his/her opponents) without incurring the usual -4 unfamiliarity penalty. At 20th rank (called Grandmastery), the character gains the benefits of the Weapon Supremacy (Designated Weapon) feat from PHB II (which isn't available at our table as a feat). Admittedly, our house-rules on these matters differ significantly in their details from your proposed solution, but their genesis sprang from what I'm interpreting as the same frustration: feats ought to be wondrous abilities; wearing armor, using a shield or wielding a weapon is too mundane of heroes’ activities to warrant the cost of a feat. With so many more skill points earned over a 20-level career than feats, skill points seem to be mechanically "cheap" enough to spend on armor proficiency, shield proficiency and weapons proficiency. At least for the kinds of adventures we tend to embark upon…
Disclaimer - Our group plays a fairly heavily modified version of Pathfinder, so what I have to offer on this subject may not be all that easily portable into anyone else's game. That said I feel the following changes to the Counterspell mechanic greatly increase the viability of Player Characters and Non-player Characters desiring to engage opponents in the kind of iconic Wizard's Duel that Charender described (above). Counterspell [Metamagic]
Greater Counterspell [Metamagic]
Harden Spell-casting [Metamagic]
Improved Counterspell [Metamagic]
Usurp Spells [Epic]
Salient House rules:
2. Each character is allowed to attempt one knowledge check per his/her/its player's turn as a free action. 3. Epic characters are those who have reached 18th level. Definitions. As used in these House feats -
2. "Level" as related to characters equates to Pathfinder's term "caster level". 3. "Power" as related to spells (or prayers) equates to Pathfinder's term "spell level". 4. "Spell-caster" refers only those classes with the potential of eventually gaining enough experience so as to cast 9th-powered spells (provided an individual has sufficient basic ability to manifest these powers). Examples - Sorcerers and Wizards Having made your way thru this grey-wall of text (I'm a new poster to these boards and can't seem to figure out how to make the "Show" button work), please feel welcome to share your insights as to this varient rule system for Counterspelling. |