Emperor Point's page

Emperor Point wrote:

The PDF describes one of the archetypes being inspired by the runelord of greed, which archetype is that?

Eldritch scoundrel (which keeps trapfinding, for the record).

Oh. I was hoping it would be something a bit more wizardly and in line with the runelord himself. Thank you for the quick answer.

The PDF describes one of the archetypes being inspired by the runelord of greed, which archetype is that?

FiddlersGreen wrote:

As long as this is not an official errata of FAQ, I take it that this is still being discussed?

The entire question of how and if any official faq system is going to be used for Player companions is still being discussed.

This exact question is not being discussed, and there is no opposing opinion how how the ability reads or works by anyone I am aware of within the office.

Specifying an specific option doesn't give you the most broken thing someone might want to claim it gives is not any reason to think it gives you the second-most-broken thing.

No, but it is reason to think that you would get the abilities it doesn't call out as you not getting. If something says you get the powers of a gelatinous cube except for transparency, of course you will assume you get engulf and acid.

Lots of rules elements are broken and to assume a player will go "ah, but that would be strong, so obviously it doesn't work like that" seems very silly to me considering all of the very strong options throughout pathfinder that ARE intended to work in a way that makes them look "broken" to some people.

Talented third party developers and a regular stream of new content from paizo keep me playing.
I genuinely only like maybe one in every twenty pieces of content, but there is so much of it im able to pick and choose something fun anyway. To me Pathfinder is the core of quantity over quality.

To take this in a slightly different direction, I have some questions for you guys from purely a site structure/community team standpoint:

- Does having more accessible and visible introductions to our new design/development staff sound like something you want? (Either through our blog via tags or maybe our contact page?) Is there something we can do to the forums themselves to make employees more visible?

- How would you prefer to see new FAQs communicated to the community? Is that in the form of a blog series, or is it a series of threads?

- Knowing how we've handled errata up until now, what would you change? If it's a blog, what general information would you like to see us include?

- Let's assume the PRD is a blank slate and we can have any unicorn we want, how would you invision errata being notated here?

- Are versioned PDFs a thing you'd use and want?

- Polls have been mentioned here, and in the past we've done a *couple* playtest surveys. If we did have polls, what do you invision them being used for? What kind of content justifies a poll versus a feedback thread in your mind?

I don't think Paizo employees fail to make themselves visible at all, they fail to see everyone else. It often feels like Paizo staff don't listen when there are frequent threads on rules questions that go unanswered for years or when classes and abilities are pointed out as too weak then recieve errata that makes them even worse. The Occult Adventures book feels like a great example of playtesters being ignored with the Kineticist still falling behind the infamous expert with a bow.

Paizo staff obviously shouldn't ruin their creative visions and just bow to everyone on these forums but it feels like they don't listen or maybe actively spite people who point out major design flaws in certain aspects of pathfinder material. If you want to make yourselves look better you should address this kind of thing and focus on listening, not talking.

Emperor Point wrote:

Is any reasoning given to the removal of the will save bonus from the Unchained monk? That seems like a terrible choice to make relating to a class that famously only has good saves as a defense.

Well back when Crane Style worked it also had high AC.

It simply wasn't good design sense to have a class with full BAB, d10 HD, and good saves across the board no matter how notoriously weak the first iteration of the class was.

As for why low Will instead of, say, low Fort? Given that Pathfinder's interpretation of the Monk is focused on physical perfection, it's not unreasonable to drop will instead of the more physically-disciplined Fort and Reflex. Not all Martial Artists have a still mind, but by and large most of them are really quick and really tough.

Ah, i wasn't really aware of the D10 HD change. I would have much preferred the D8 HD and the saves, but at least it somewhat makes sense now.

Is any reasoning given to the removal of the will save bonus from the Unchained monk? That seems like a terrible choice to make relating to a class that famously only has good saves as a defense.

Well back when Crane Style worked it also had high AC.

I hope the monk doesn't lose his saves.

Inspired by this guide i actually decided to create a Nagaji Druid Fist of Fury!
However my character is joining the campaign at level 4 and so doesn't have all of its stuff. At first i thought i would take straight druid to have wild shape straight away but that doesn't actually seem to make me very tough, would it be smarter to go 2 in Druid, 2 in Tetori Monk then return to druid after that? Also what feats should i take at low level?

Sounds neat. I was thinking of going towards the Nagaji archetype for the constrict. Is it better to pair Maneuver Master or Tetori with the naga aspirant?

This seems like an interesting character concept but doesn't sound like it would be great at low levels. Is there any advice for what you might do at low level?

Well I'm not sure about passing for human but Dwarves tend to be difficult to kill.
+2 to saves against spells, SLAs and poison will do you good. An extra +1 from a race trait called glory of old will make it better but its not from a major splatbook. Then add the feat Steel Soul and you have +4 (or 5 if you can get glory of old) to saving throws against Spells, SLAs and Poison. Rappan Athuk has a lot of those. Between that and your paladin having great saves from being a paladin you will at the very least survive everything that ISNT damage.
As for how to survive damage, you have swift action lay on hands to heal yourself with as a paladin so you shouldn't die too easy.

Though being a dwarf will lower your charisma so you may wish to consider the "Stonelord" archetype which will remove most of your charisma using abilities.

You might want to spread your stats out slightly more. With 7 strength you are barely going to be able to carry your robes and spellbook, 7 CHA will mean all of your Arcanist Exploits are useless and 7 Wis... well you can live with that.

I think for those who want "good undead" Paizo should either cave in or provide an alternative. Create a new subtype of Undead that can be good and spells to create it. Spirits that return to protect the innocent or right wrongs aren't an uncommon fantasy trope and it could lead to some interesting new spells and bestiary entries. Characters like The Green Knight or the ghosts of A Christmas Carol could be argued to be good characters with a deathly twist.

Of my players only one took the player's guide seriously and took a campaign trait or listened to the guide's advice on technology.
Bumbling through and pressing glowing buttons has gotten them through the first stage of the adventure quite effectively.

Well i would want to be an undercover Eagle Knight and so far there are no archetypes for those as far as i know.
Infiltrator for the Inquisitor and Dune Drifter for the Cavalier come to mind as interesting choices though. Ultimately whilst i can think of several awesome things for Lawful characters mechanically i find Chaotic characters less impressive so i only play them when the concept demands it for roleplay reasons. I wish i could play a Lawful character and take down the rebels!

Will this have new playable Eagle Knight stuff? Traits, feats, archetypes or a new prestige class for the Twilight Somethings?
Also will example Eagle Knights be statted out as monsters for lawful aligned adventurers to slay?

That's almost disturbing, but don't worry, the collector robot(s) will do the trick! They can fly, they have high hardness, they can shoot at range, they are deadly...

So far only the Brawler can consistently get through Hardness 10, I'm really not sure WHY the hardness is that high at such a low level when hardness piercing options are scarce.

It means Bad Something Maternal Parent Something.

Every session my players continue to survive. They are about to finish the science section of the Habitat Module. Collector Robot almost got one and i was so excited. A few sessions ago the Paladin nearly died to Hetuath! Then i remembered just as we were doing damage smite gave him enough AC to dodge most of it.
Its so frustrating to have your players survive, any chance the Vegepygmy Chieftan will wipe them out?
Is it so much to ask for maybe just a handful of party deaths to make me feel better?

You could try using a weakened form of the Siabrae.

The Wizard is relatively new and made poor spell choices in my opinion, he is improving at least. You'd be surprised how well he does with his sticks though and he may not be effective in combat but he provides moral support! The paladin did it because of circumstances and honestly he isn't a chump in melee, he may not have power attack or whatever melee feats most people would have but he's still a martial with a good AC and some strength so he can use composite bows.

Last session the wizard moved on from Inertial Armor (the psionic version of mage armor) to casting magic missile! The only one who wants to retrain is the brawler who wants to be some gadget guy class from thunderscape, i told him he could roll up a new character if he wanted and retire this one but I'm not okay with him redoing his entire stat block and class for his established character several sessions in.

In any case they aren't dead yet so I'm anything but worried. Once i put one in the grave I'll begin to think about how to teach them about their classes, they seem to be helping each other become better players for the moment.

I assumed they were in fact steel, if you are worried about how he got them then perhaps he took them from one of the previous expeditions or the skulks? I believe some of the skulks entered the habitat zone before they decided "NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NOPE".

My pathetic fleshbags are an Aztec inspired Druid, a priest of Kurgess (god of strength) who has the lowest strength in the party, a psychic wizard who doesn't use spells and instead hits stuff with a stick, a ranged ifrit paladin that only fights in melee and a Brawler who does all the work.

Its fun to watch them blunder their way through everything and even more fun to hope they die in the encounters.

Would it be reasonable to double the number of slams on all undead with four arms? It seems as though one slam per two arms is the rule. Or did he have four slams but chose his swords over them?

This is pretty simple. Where does Hetuath get his second slam attack from? Was that simply a unique thing added to him because he has twice as many arms?
The number of arms you have doesn't seem to change the number of slams the Juju Zombie template would give.

If the class is meant to damage itself to power its abilities why isn't it d10 or even d12 hit die?
Most of your cool abilities are just "can't use these until i can reduce the burn to 0" because you have nowhere near enough health to afford the huge danger burn provides and levelling up doesn't increase the amount of burn you can take at all. I honestly think Burn could be kept completely as is and remove the "per level" part so its literally 1 or 2 damage per burn and it could be balanced that way, making it into a reasonable risk to spend burn points on your abilities rather than burn feeling like a punishment for daring to step outside the bounds of your basic blast.
Another alternative is to let burn fade away in a one minute meditation or something, making it a per-battle risk rather than having to ruin yourself for the whole day.

Also undead cant be decent Kineticists because they can't take burn. I feel that's taking away some great opportunities for vampires and the like.

I suspect if you try to off the DM's plot NPC on your own your next case will be the mystery of your own death.

I was just making a joke about how much i love Authoritarianism. I've never quite been that harsh though, sometimes i join a game with one chaotic character in it so i can show them the error of their ways and how freedom is worse than evil.

Really? In Iron Gods i found Hetuath to be pretty darn damaging and i imagine its quite something to top a full attack from that dude at level 4. Can you provide more specific damage numbers? Sounds like an exciting example of Kineticists in play.

Authoritarian settings are absolutely fantastic.
As a GMing style its unorthodox at best and a straitjacket at worst.

All three of your options are tempting so lets go through those before stating a fourth.

To quit means you don't have the game any more which sucks but it doesn't mean you have no game, many online game finders exist and gaming stores often have boards where people will request players for their games, there are ways to find other games.

If you kill the NPC make sure you talk with the other party members first and then after you all kill him together talk to your GM together about your feelings. The other party members may feel like you!

The third option sounds absolutely wonderful in theory but in practice will lead you following around a rebel NPC telling you to do rebel things and threatening to kill you if you refuse because that means you are a traitor to the rebellion. Your chaotic revolution will have the same authoritarian structure because that is how your DM sees things.

The fourth option is host your own game! Offer to take over as DM and show them all what real adventure is like, show them your vision of a freedom filled society where bald eagles fly around red, white and blue elves who always seem to be breaking chains and manacles at dramatic moments. That and letting players do what they want rather than the rails.

Unlike your campaign the real world has no rails, you can choose anything. Personally though i hate all freedom and i refuse to play anything except on the rails pre-written adventures set in Cheliax supporting Chelish authority with only Lawful PCs allowed.

A real shame, a 2.0 version might not have had CON Burn in order to be effective.
Oh I'm sorry "1 nonlethal damage per hit die that cannot be healed by any means". Truly the difference between that and losing 2 CON is staggering.

I'm honestly not that opposed to the idea but rather than the complicated nonlethal damage thing i would have had it be just CON loss as that is far simpler to understand and i would have had it as an option to fuel abilities that make you far more powerful than your peers rather than for minor benefits you often feel like you have to use to do well.
Doing unhealable damage to yourself should be the kind of thing you do to use abilities like planar binding or wail of the banshee lite, not "metablasts".

Nobody would ask whether or not he tripped, how is it so difficult to get the rules for falling right but most of the other ones seem so easy?

Detect Evil is absolutely useless against anything short of divine casters, outsiders, undead or very powerful beings. Even the mightiest bugbears would barely trip on the scale. Leaving the bugbear assassin alone is dangerous and irresponsible and in the heat of the moment subduing is not only an unlikely priority but downright dangerous as you may need to assist other party members if bugbears have snuck into their rooms as well, you wont have time to tie up the bugbear.
If he called for help his buddies would have killed it anyway. Nobody is paranoid enough to check every enemy for transmutation or illusion spells.

Umbral Reaver wrote:

I found a miniature to use for the character and it's much more modestly dressed than the image.

Oni Miniature

(Of course, I'd paint mine blue.)

Sounds like this thread is happily resolved, then?

For one person it is over but for the world it is merely beginning! The streets will run red with dye! Society will be torn apart at the seams! Fashion as we know it will come to an end!

That article made two points Lazar, one was that it slides blows inwards which as i already discussed is certainly much better than hitting the parts they are sliding away FROM. You have to hit the inside of the boob to make it slide inwards which means either the heart or a lung, not a good thing to lose compared to a flesh wound and a shattered ribcage. Certainly the point about the indentation could be a risk for poorly designed armor, but with even a small amount of width the indentation becomes a negligible threat and the force is still going to be pushed to multiple parts of the plate and the force would spread throughout your torso. The only armor that would be at real risk of causing this are poorly fitted breastplates with very large breast plates.

Even if this were an issue though raising the divet slightly totally negates it.

Edit: Another thought, as the padding means one's breasts are basically tied down and probably not actually in those stupid giant metal spheres, aren't they good protection against maces and other blunt weapons? I think the men need to start wearing boob plate. With ten boobs!

Lazar the discussion you quoted was about whether it was suitable for work not whether it was suitable for adventuring. Honestly for a mid to high level adventurer armor isn't quite as big an issue because they are unstoppable paragons of strength and skill. Choosing not to wear armor is often because they don't need it.

Its ridiculous to compare the boobplate to the chainmail bikini as well, the boobplate provides a minor flaw in that a small number of hits that were capable of piercing your armor already will be pushed towards the center of your chest away from your heart and lungs instead of going where it was intended whilst the chainmail bikini just doesn't protect 95% of your body.
Honestly i will never understand the argument against boobplate, angled armor is a good thing and directing blows to where a thick bone and a distinct lack of vital organs that are so common in that region of the body is also a good thing, it might mean you only get taken out of the fight and bleed to death rather than instantly die.

I did once use the cover of a romance novel for women as my character portrait and my group was made uncomfortable by it. I considered it a test of double standards and it proved to me my friends aren't sexist, just prudes. Some people are like that and its totally okay to be that way, sex and sexuality is an important thing associated with some of the most powerful forces in the world, the creation of life and the spreading of disease. Sex in itself is a powerful force too as it influences the behavior and views of most of the human race, its definitely something to think about how much exposure you want to it and its okay to decide you don't want to see provocative images.
Edit: To be clear the covers of romance novels targeted at women usually have men on the cover, this wasn't one of a woman in her half-ripped dress about to be ravished by a pirate prince, it was a picture of the half-naked pirate prince.

Personally though i roll my eyes every time i look at Paizo art because of how hypocritical they are, filling the books with half-naked people that are in just the right pose to cover their bits, its hypocrisy to try and sell your books with sex and then cover up the body like its shameful! Be a "prude" or be "liberated", don't try and market to horny young men with soft porn in your murder simulator and then cover up all the nipples to try and sell it to children.

That woman is HUGE! That means she has huge freedom! Break and enslave, break and enslave her freedom!

Seriously though is a small part of the population of Andoran just really tall or is she a half-giant?

Aranna wrote:

Sexism is as much about the pose as it is about the outfit.

Quick disagreement here... I don't think images of sexualized characters are necessarily sexist. Sometimes it's just the author giving what his target audience wants to see.

Red Sonja and her chain mail bikini is no more sexist than, say, the dude from Twilight who can't keep his shirt on for more than half a second. It seems pretty natural that media targeted primarily to male audiences will include stuff that men like to see (including but not limited to... sexy women in skimpy outfits), while media media targeted primarily to female audiences will include stuff that women like to see (including but not limited to... sexy men in skimpy outfits).

There is nothing wrong with creating, drawing and/or enjoying sexy characters, even if they reach over-the-top levels of sexiness.

I've never understood why people complain when we objectify objects. Fictional characters are not people, art doesn't have a mind or a personality or a life story. Treating real people like slabs of meat may be wrong but there is hardly anything wrong with treating a drawing or a character played by an actor that way. I like to think i respect people and treat them well but i certainly don't extend the same privileges to drawings.

Pendagast maybe the demons find sand, dirt, grass etc very uncomfortable the way we do. I wouldn't want to invade golarion on a windy day without clothes, insects and dust might not hurt me but i wouldn't want it on my privates.

Giants are big and strong, they have a habit of throwing boulders too. Perhaps there is a blockage like rubble or something and the players need the giants to clear it or maybe the giants could use a rockslide and cause a blockage.

Showing skin and being sexual aren't the same thing. The lady might not be wearing much but she isn't flaunting her assets either, I'd argue the PF magus Iconic Seltyiel is more sexual than the Oni picture, he's thrusting his chest out and his outfit is obviously to draw attention to his muscles. Your picture is of someone in little clothing yes but its not designed to be skimpy its just lighter clothing, the character seems relaxed rather than provocative.

Does anyone know any of the Twilight Sage's features?
People have said its necromancy focused but beyond that there is no information.

Sometimes i picture myself and a monk and a rogue getting drunk and remembering when their classes di actually filled a niche

Do you mean them getting drunk and remembering a dream they had?

There is a prestige class called "Fist of Irori" that combines Paladin and Monk into Palamonk. There is a guide to building them. It would not work with stonelord sadly.

Misroi wrote:

Because heroes. It's hard to be heroic when you're siding with an empire that has literally sold its soul to the Devil.

Pfff. You just need a villain that's even worse than the Devil you know.

Qlippoth, anyone? :D

Whilst on a philosophical level selling your soul to the devil is evil, on a practical level it has a great deal of benefits for the living. You can still be the good guys and make deals with bad guys, that is what is known as a "Peace Treaty" and is traditionally seen as a sign of good.

Also a bigger villain would be the perfect stage for the adventure, with the city under threat by INSERT BESTIARY CREATURES HERE lead by INSERT CHAOTIC EVIL CASTER HERE threatening to destroy the city, both the loyalists and the rebels are looking to rally the people to beat back the villain and gain the support of the people. So the side you help/get help from is seen as heroic by the people and gets more support, leading to their victory.

Eugh, wasn't Council of Thieves anti-Cheliax? Why can't we have a pro-cheliax adventure path or one that lets you CHOOSE who to side with?

Ah, thank you. I was wondering which book it was from.

The Drakker makes reference to the Mounted Heroism feat... but i cant actually find such a feat. What is it?