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This came up in a game today, so I want to double check if there is a FAQ against it. Right now, Temporary Ability Score Bonuses/Penalties are very specific in what they increase and decrease. This means that people with Weapon Finesse/Agile Maneuvers still need to buff STR to increase their to-hit/CMB. Oracles with CHA-to-AC only gets AC from DEX and not CHA buffs, and other oddities like that. Is this still how it works RAW, or is there an errata for this? Thanks,
Spheres are not as generally applicable as feats, since they mostly work with the standard attack-centric aspect of SoM. That means that it's not worth it as a trade unless if you have some specific build in mind that utilizes SoM in some way. There are spheres that work wonderfully with Path of War, though. Spheres like Alchemy, Gladiator, Scoundrel, and such do not really care about what action you use and thus can work well with maneuvers.
Aquan, Terran, Celestial, Abyssal, Infernal is enough for most summoners. So, 2 from INT and three ranks in linguistics. Not in any way a major investment. If we're talking about costs adding up, we should be bringing up the snowballing cost of things like fly and see invis potions for the fighter, not a one-time purchase that gets you every language you need.
Your very first argument in this entire thread suggests three things:
For the second point, I assume that you don't think that just having some grappled enemies or readied actions archers will solve the problem all the time, that there are powerful SR:NO conjurations that even affect golems, and that you understand that spells like contingency and EFS exists that forces you to have multiple counters in place in order to have a chance of checking anything. Don't put a strawman in our mouths. None of us ever said "there's nothing the GM can do will make it not broken". The GM is literally god. He can do anything with any of the player characters and invent a justification. Unless if a class can break rule 0, no one is more powerful than the GM. Instead, I - at least - am simply saying that most of what you are arguing actually are GM fiat. Tailoring all encounters specifically to counter wizard and especially
are, in fact, fiat. You even literally mentioned focusing the wizard in this very post.
There is an actual setting idea called "Tippyverse" tbat explores this idea. Basically, powerful wizards rule the world and build magic systems that drastically improve peoples' lives. Golarion, though, requires some base suspension of belief to maintain setting fidelity.
I assume that I'm the only person with these powers, so I don't have to defend myself against the other super-powered wizards that dominated powerful heads-of-states and is on the prowl to eliminate potential rivals to their iron fist. I also assume that I don't want flashy powers that draw too much attention, since the intelligence agencies if the world might not take too kindly to solar summonings in the middle of the US capital. 0: Prestidigitation
Am I really the only person who took dominate? ...I guess I'm a horrible person.
There's a lot of mention of "but the GM can fiat" as a counter-argument, it seems. Let's assume we have a super fighter as a class. She could literally think hard enough about someone and a sky laser would insta-gib the target, no save or immunities. This obviously breaks the game, but there are still many ways for the GM or player to make this class not disruptive. For instance, she might be a pacifist with the player only using this lowerin high RP situations. People can send assassins against her all the time or use special mind EMP fields or something like that. The fact that an all-powerful GM can mitigate the inherit power of a class does not in any way mean that balance is achieved. In fact, if you very obviously target the wizard player every session without working it out with her beforehand, you run into the issue of just pissing off the player and increasing the chance of her going full paranoia caster, or other high disruptive tactics just to fight back against the GM.
So, if you're backporting 3.5, does that mean that your player's sorcerer gets free pickings of the original Alter Self and Polymorph spells? After all, that rule specified that the sorcerer can freely pick his spell known from the PHB, not the CRB.
Tbere is nothing in the rules that says CRB stuff is any more common than non-CRB stuff. This isn't Diablo 2 or Magic. Spells don't have text colors or holographic foil or first edition seals to indicate their rarity. Thus, I can say that "common" only means spells that have the word "common" in it, and my silly interpretation would be no more or less valid than yours.
If you think like this, it will eventually lead you somewhere close to the tippyverse. It's best to suspend a bit of your disbelief for the setting. Otherwise you get stuff like your average level 5 adventurer with 9k of magic items constantly getting people trying to kill them in their sleep for the lifetime of wages they casually carry around.
what is the +1 Three Reasons to Live? Also, Dawnflower Dervish 9/Medium 1 with +7 DEX modifier, Haste, Spirit Focus, holding a Banner of Ancient Kings and a ring of spell storing with divine favor: To Hit: 6 BAB + 7 DEX + 12 Inspire Courage + 2 Flagbearer + 1 Enhance + 2 Champion Spirit + 1 Haste + 4 Divine Favor with Trait - 2 Piranha Strike = 33
Want to just delete enemies? Your to hit is higher than almost all enemies' AC at this level without rolling.
Full Support Bard, level 9: Inspire Courage: +7 Atk/Dmg +3 levels (with boost from banner of ancient kings)
Flagbearer: +2 Atk/Dmg Total: +9 Atk/Dmg to everyone. That's very powerful at level 9.
Many thanks for the replies. I think that given all the suggestions, the best (easiest) way would probably be to bluff+sleight of hand it off, since I have high bonuses in all of them. She could go around carrying a bunch of wooden boxes and "bump" into her targets by accident, or fake weakness and play it off. The other methods are a bit too conditional (or require 3.5e stuff that might not be approved). Many thanks!
Political systems are not good or evil. An individual government may be depending on who is at the top and what the general views of that culture is, but not the system as a whole. Rather - Totalitarianism is more lawful. Anarchy is more chaotic. Socialism is more lawful. Libertarianism is more chaotic. Conservative and progressive (liberal) have no innate alignment. Communism assumes lawful individuals in a chaotic society. Capitalism assumes chaotic individuals in a lawful society. Objectivism can lead to lots of things. Might makes right is a chaotic offshoot of anarchy and has no good/evil implications of its own. Democracy is neutral on the L-C axis, as it is a middle ground between totaljtarianism and anarchy.
There's only a few ways to become a hero. There are a few hundred thousands of ways to become a monster. I've found that even my good characters are made more interesting by their flaws than their altruism. Evil, on the other hand, leads to so many different concepts that I can spend my entire life playing tabletop games and still not be able to explore all of them. It all boils down to what you want. If you are a die-hard for traditional, hero-beats-all fantasy, then good might be more interesting to you. For me, though, the most interesting part about role-playing games is getting into the head of a character with a unique personality and unique views that are often different from my own. To try to imagine a facet of humanity that I don't typically come across in my relatively sheltered suburban life. For that, neutral and evil characters shine in ways that good does not.
One of my current characters is an assassin, who will occasionally be using injury poisons to weaken and dispatch targets. I want her to be able to use those poison needle rings that you sometimes see in cinema, to deliver low-damage attacks out-of-combat that won't be noticed by the target. It doesn't have to be a ring - an acupuncture needle or something else would be fine for this purpose. The damage doesn't matter, either, as long as it can deliver an injury poison to the victim without him/her noticing. I couldn't find any rules on attacking without catching the target's attention, however, so I want to ask the forum for assistance. Are there any optional rules that deal with this, or any way to accomplish such a thing by RAW? Thanks. NOTE: I know it's possible to use inhaled or ingested poisons, but the poison I want to use is a 3pp feature (from the Rajah class), so it has to be injury. I have access to DSP, Legendary Studios, and Spheres of Power/Might as well, if it helps.
One of my CN characters was an inventor/magic crafter, who wants to enfranchise people through a magitech revolution. She has a worldview that is a mix of Libertarian and Communism, and often happily disregards or bends local law to push her inventions to the people. This is a very Chaotic philosophy, born from the intersection of two chaotic worldviews. She's interested in the greater picture of advancing humanity. She doesn't actively seek to cause harm or chaos, but is willing to take sacrifices to see her ideals realized, if necessary. In fact, some of her projects involve her anonymously putting unique, custom-built artifacts in the middle of a town and taking notes from how the people in power react to it (and its impacts long-term), even though it generally leads to a lot of destructive chaos in the wake. This is a very neutral mindset. So, I ended up with a heavily dedicated CN character that work well with a party of literally any alignment, and probably one of my favorite characters. * Basically, there are plenty of philosophies, ideas, and concepts that are CN and work well with any party, as long as you come up with the character first rather than the alignment.
Being able able to control those summons is more like being able to control an undead that is created by animate dead. You would also not get control over any skeletons by that spell if you use this arcanist exploit. Not quite the same. Animate dead is instantaneous. I agree that this needs a FAQ, though from what I can see SM spells should fall under this qualification as duration spells.
Why is it being a poor tactician. I think some here confuse what they know as a player to what their character actually knows. If the group encoumters a Troll for the very first time should they all know thry have a weakness to fire. No they should not imo. Not unless the group either makes the right Knowledge check. Or the group has someone who is lucky enough to have someone whosr character background is either to be a dedicated Troll slayer or something along those lines. This is a false comparison. You should not automatically know that the troll is weak to fire, sure, but a player can see a muscular, primitive-looking creature wielding a club and make a reasonable assumption that it is a brutish smasher. You aren't going to accuse the party of meta-gaming if the fighter tries to cut off its charge route to the wizard on account that it might be actually be a caster despite its appearances, no? In a world where wizards and bards are reasonably common, and for a party of supposedly veteran fighters, something like "the guy in robes in the back is probably a threat, get him first" is a similarly reasonable, common sense assumption to make. Just like "let's not try to hit that heavy armor and shield guy in the front with sword attacks and go for his allies first" or "we're getting fog spells cast from seemingly nowhere, let's cast see invisibility." You are free to subvert expectations by using decoys, but you can't accuse the party of metagaming for using common sense like that just because of the possibility of a deciy, in the same way that you can't accuse the party of metagaming for just assuming that a deer is just a deer instead of a disguised demon or evil druid.
How did you port over the artificer class, out of curiosity? RotRL is infamously low wealth (like a lot of Paizo APs actually), so even with 3.5's craft discount feats he shouldn't be able to craft much of anything for most of book 1. You didn't turn the crafting pool that was supposed to be a 3.5e XP mitigator into free item crafting, did you? That would be a major issue in an AP balanced around super poor PCs for the most part. Aside from that, I would add a few simpler encounters to drain smites and magus spells a bit. Maybe up the boss HP just a bit (except on Nualia). Otherwise, RotRL is designed for pre-buff fighters and rogues (and paizo's vision of spellcasters), so it's easy for competently-built paladins and magi to run roughslod through it.
This applies to both Paizo and third-party from all publishers: as a DM, unless if you completely trust your player, you should not allow it into your game if you do not understand all of the rules about it yourself.
Thanks, and I've seen other posts that are similar, just wondering if there is something definative about how one spends the customization points? From reading between the lines with the scenario given, it suggests that there is one set of points that are used for customizations and that those only work when you are in an astral suit. What I'm trying to lock down is - is this just a case of poor wording and that it wasn't spelled out or is it based on something else so there was a base to interpret it from? My issue comes, I think, from there not being a paragraph talking about how one uses the pool of customization points and I'm looking to see if that is somewhere. Again, appreciate the help. The line that I've given above (written right in the Customization Points section) makes it pretty clear that you only have one set of customization points across all three suit types, I'd think. I'm not sure how you arrived at the interpretation that there as being three separate configurations for the three types of astral suits, to be honest. The text never mentions that you get three different astral suits or anything like that; it only says you get one astral suit, and can change the type of astral suit when you summon it.
You shouldn't worry that much about Driz'zt. Rather, just make a character that YOU want to play and don't worry about conventions. If it ends up sharing X and Y similarities with Driz'zt, it doesn't actually matter. You are not any less of a roleplayer just for playing an overly-popular concept.
The PDF states that the trait supercedes the feat, being changed to a trait after extensive feedback. In fact, if you redownload the Bloodforge pdf, you'll see that Mixed Blood has been re-errata'd into a trait there.
You choose one set of customizations that would apply regardless if the astral suit type. As for the 4x nimble scenario, the rules for Astral Suits actually explain what happens in tbis situation: If the aegis changes the type of his astral suit and the free customizations would take the suit over the maximum limit (such as switching from an Astral Armor with 3 Nimble customizations to Astral Skin, which grants an additional Nimble customization), the excess customizations go inert until the astral suit is changed to make the selections valid (by reconfiguring the customization points via 8 hours of concentration or Reconfigure ability or switching the astral suit type).
You can, however, take combat stamina to skip the round 3 part. Instead, after you Id the target, you get +INT to damage on all of your attacks against that target, which is a much better payoff.
I don't see anything that stops Elemental Annihilators from taking Extra Wild Talent from their normal feat slots, so there's that.
This is hilarious, not only does this feat turn your character into a suicide bomb, but it's an extraordinarily weak suicide bomb as well. A fellow player in one of my games has a Reincarnated Druid that uses this feat to good effect alongside a Blade of the Rising Sun. It's basically his limit breaker move: he declares a sacrificial strike, discharges sunburst+the troth's effect, and destroys his body so that it can't be messed with. 24 hours later, he comes back either via the sword's effect (50% chance) or via the reincarnated druid's reincarnation (in case if the sword didn't proc) as a different person. The feat also allows him to commit suicide risk-free when he's at a high risk of dying and there are potential casters with death spells in the enemy ranks. It's not super-powerful, of course, but it's decently useful for a character that weaponizes deaths - both to prevent Death Knell from ruining his day and as a bit of a bonus on a sacrificial strike. Even without the added fire damage, being able to kill yourself when your biggest concern is death effects (rather than dying itself) is a pretty big boon.
As for your question, I replaced the hat with my "preferred" item that I had to choose to skip because a "required" item was in that slot. For my current melee character who is diplomatic, that item is the Circlet of Persuasion. So, are there any plans on nerfing the big six? What about Power Attack and Quicken Spell? Haste? I don't think you can make the "required item" argument until some of the biggest offenders of item slot dominance is resolved.
@Felyndiira: While I can somewhat agree, using Deeds class feature, BAB +11 instead of Gunslinger 11 means that someone with 1 level in Gunslinger can fulfill the prerequisite. And a 3/4 BAB class at level 11 with the Deeds class feature can't (even if they use their levels as Gunslinger levels in regards to fulfilling prerequisits). To be honest, I consider a Gunslinger 1/Fighter 10 able to take the feat to be a good thing. The main reason why, say, Signature Deed has such a requirement is to mark it as an end-game feat, and a GS1/Ftr10 will generally appear at the same point of the game as a GS11. Feats are supposed to be modular rather than class features in disguise, so letting more different class combinations take it is a good thing. As for the latter, if you need to make a 3/4 class have the same progression, you can just add "this class counts as full BAB for the purpose of meeting prerequisites of grit feats" and be no worse off than before. Alternatively, use something else as the prerequisite. While I don't necessarily like it, even "11 levels of a deed-using class" is more future-proofed than "Gunslinger 11".
Rather than a rule, I'll instead list a trend that irks me: Constantly hard-coding classes (like Gunslinger 11) and casting stats (such as Wisdom) rather than class features and other things like BAB. This has already caused multiple problems and forced archetypes to constantly carry additional wording baggage ("the archetype also counts as a X level other class for meeting prerequisites"), but Paizo keeps on doing it with every new class released when even the homebrew D&D 3.5 community realized its problems five years prior to PF's release. It's much more future-proof'd to have prerequisites of "Deeds class feature, BAB +11" rather than "Gunslinger 11", and much more friendly to homebrew and 3rd party designers that want to take advantage of the OGL...not to mention future Paizo releases themselves.
Certainly. Are you looking for us to sell you on numbers, or on versatility? Base PoW only, or with the two Expanded PDFs that are out? I ask this because the Barbarian and Paladin are also mostly good at combat (with excellent defenses) and very limited versatility, so comparing against them will likely boil down to numbers rather than how versatile the classes are. Also, just out of curiosity, can you give us the maneuver selections and level of the Warlord in question?
It looks like I did miss the deadline in the end. Ah well - best of luck to everyone :).
I forgot to mention no mythic either, apologies.
So, this was recently offered as an option in one of my higher-power games. While I will likely not choose this as my reward, it made me curious on what other players would do with it. If your DM gave your character a free feat that you could ignore all prerequisites for (including race, BAB, class, and alignment), what would you choose and what interesting stuff could you do with it? You are allowed to choose stuff like Leadership or Sacred Geometry, though that might be a waste since you can get those fairly easily with normal feats. Also, while prereqs for a feat are removed, a feat can still be rendered invalid by its function. For example, a feat that adds spells to your spell known list still does nothing if you don't have a spells known. Also, you can't use this to take the same feat more times than the feat allowes you to, so no double leadership. For the purpose of having an interesting discussion, let's ban Spell Perfection from being taken with this reward as well, since that is a bit too obvious of a choice. EDIT: Mythic feats are also not allowed. (Also, feel free to list multiple feats for multiple characters or builds, as long as it's still one feat per character. Characters still have their normal feats and bonus feats in addition to the feat gained by this reward.)
I completely missed this thread :(. This is a really awesome premise, and I'm interested in joining. A quick question, though - Path of War was mentioned on page 1, and I see that no one else has used it (save a few feats from the Martial Training line). Did you decide that you're okay with PoW materials in the end, or are the PoW classes off the table? For my character concept, I'm looking to resurrect an old character idea that deals with the ideas of loss and regret. She'll be a middle-aged lady who made mistakes in her life, left her family and children in search of fame and adventure, and has, for a long time, regretted this choice. She'll take a more motherly role in the party, and her main purpose in guiding the princess will likely be to see that she does not make similar mistakes (on a grander level as the eventual head of a nation). Mechanically, I want her to be a martial artist-type character. I'm looking at Aegis/Soulknife [Deadly Fist] on one side, and something on the other. That something will probably be stalker or mystic [Aurora Soul] if PoW is okay, or Psychic Warrior [Meditant] or Monk if not.
So, can we find a way to quicken that magic missile, then stick a ring of telekinesis (advanced to CL15 if possible) on the paladin and pull off all the smite evils?
To be honest, having both Dual-Cursed and Diminished Spellcasting is already a pretty big restriction. While Oracles do get their free cure/inflict spells, they aren't really enough to make up for losing a spell/level. Cross-blooded sorcerers aren't very often played except in one specific case, and that's only due to getting the arcana from both bloodlines. As is, I would be very hesitant to pursue this archetype with an extra non-advancing curse AND cuts to my meager spells per level, especially when the archetype doesn't even grant any bonus revelations.
Paladin: I finally found you, pretender. How dare you use the sacred name 'paladin' to help people, save lives, and slay demons - when the orb of paladinness would not even glow in your presence? Well, no more! Today, I shall end your charity and kindness with my own blade! For desecrating my order's sacred name with your illegally represented good acts! Somehow, I can't imagine any paladin saying something like this. I know that if I was playing a pally, and saw a magus or something helping impoverished people while calling himself a paladin, I would be overjoyed at finding a fellow comrade rather than being peeved that he's claiming some undeserved privilidge. I mean, did you become a paladin to actually do good deeds and help fight evil, or did you do it so that you could parade your status around and sneer at people that do the same things you do, but just can't make the Sacred Avenger glow?
Aristocrat 1/Twilight Sage 1 | AC 12/12/10 | F+2 R+2 W+4 | HP 15/15 | Atk: +0 | Init: +4 | CMD: 10 | Perc: +5 | Darkvision 60' Abbrev. Backstory: Alice was a former noble who aspired to be a warrior of justice like her father, but never had the aptitude to become a paladin. After seeing how much ordinary believers of Asmodeus suffered under Talingarde's strict laws, she tried to help them, and ultimately was sentenced to execution as a heretic. Now, discovering that she did not want to die like this, she plunged herself deeper and deeper into darkness while doing everything to make excuses for herself, trying - and failing - to grasp the shattered fragments of light within her while her hands becomes more and more stained with her own sins.
No warder is fine. I am very heavily considering the fallen warrior idea (or even slowly discovering that Asmodeus is giving her anti-paladin powers and freaking out about it) vs. her being an oracle. EDIT: Please give me a bit of time to finalize the character sheet. I'll get back to you with the forum alias soon.
Um I'm afraid the character doesn't really fit then. It's hard to justify unleashing an army on your country as mere survival. Especially in a group fuelled by vengeance against the kingdom at the start. But you can try to convince me as I read over warder. Certainly :). Alice is meant to change as the campaign moves along. In the original WotW game she was submitted for, she starts identifying with her companions during the prison breakout and starts seeing them as friends. Therefore, if she was asked to do something horrendous and her friends justified it, she would very likely (by which I mean 100% of the time as I'm controlling the character) identify with them while trying to find some other excuse for it to appease whatever is left of her conscious (metaphorically represented by a mirror that she keeps on her). The moment when she couldn't find an excuse is probably going to be the breaking point for her character, when she's actually forced to confront her past deeds and make a choice rather than just running away while claiming that 'an authority forced me to' (which is true IIRC, since when her last WotW campaign ended we basically signed a binding contract). Whatever evil things Alice does for now, she's always trying to run away from it rather than confront it face-on. It might be an excuse of "I'm trying to survive", or perhaps "I can still make amends to these people when this is all over" or something else. I don't really know when the "leading an army against the princess herself" is supposed to be, but I don't think the major battles are going to be for a while. That should give Alice plenty of time to run away, develop as a character, and come to terms with having to fight against the kingdom itself - especially since her hesitation isn't due to Talingarde as much as the people and the shining ideal of her father that gets more and more cracked as time goes on. The main reason I don't think anti-paladin fits is because Alice won't be at that point now. Right now, she's still making excuses while she convinces herself that she has to do it. It may fit eventually when she confronts herself and chooses evil without any excuses to help her (and in fact, it might be interesting for me to retrain her class features to the more evil equivalent at that point), but right now she's just a little girl trying to cling on to her beliefs even as she does the entire opposite, and basically covering her eyes at the hypocrisy of it all. I'll definitely consider spending the money to retrain when we reach that point, though I'll admit that the idea of a warrior using the power of good for evil is still really appealing to me :D.
Anti-Paladin seems like the class that would stand atop a podium and scream "I am evil!" at everyone, while Alice is intended to fall very slowly throughout the campaign. Rather than just taking the plunge suddenly, she's always going to be reluctant, afraid of her own weakness, afraid of disappointing her father's legacy, and trying her best to hide it among her companions, all while trying to convince herself - whether it's true or not - that she has to do it to survive. I don't think Anti-Paladin would fit, thus. It would take a long time (if ever) before Alice could actually, confidently say "screw everything, I'm evil and I like it".
My apologies for the late post. I didn't realize that you guys opened recruitment again. * I would like to propose a character that I applied for a previous WotW game at GiantITP. The character's idea is a (gifted) girl who genuinely wants to be a paladin early in her life and continue her father's legacy, but was branded a heretic and sentenced to execution when she started helping the believers of Asmodeus escape out of a belief that they are being unfairly persecuted. While in prison, she realizes that she doesn't really want to die (especially when she doesn't believe she's at fault), and reluctantly starts helping the others due to her own desire to survive, even knowing that what she has done is wrong. I've only played through the first chapter (the prison escape), so I still don't know most of the AP. Though she is a noble, she probably doesn't have any influence left after being convicted and thrown in prison. The biggest theme I'm trying to explore with her is how a good person can be corrupted by circumstances. Alice was originally an oracle (her backstory mentioned her curse and gift), but I was actually hoping for DSP's Warder with the Silver Crane maneuver, giving her somewhat of a paladin feel without being a paladin to represent her "gifts". If this is not available, then I'm open to any 6-9 level casting class that the party needs (with a preference for Oracle) and will modify her backstory as needed. I'll submit a character sheet once I get an approval or disapproval for Warder. EDIT: Ah, yes, her NPC class will probably be Aristocrat.
What kind of player you are? I am a player for about 5 years now, starting from the more recent eras of 3.5e. Though I do like exploring the systems, I would generally consider myself a roleplayer above all in any RPG, and tend to spend considerable amounts of time thinking about my characters. My answer to this question is slightly different from the perspective of PbP and from my real-time games, mostly due to the first point above. I love writing. Back on the GitP forums where I started doing PbP roleplays, the one thing that I loved above all others is the chance to write over just smashing goblins and taking treasure. I would habitually make posts spanning over 2 pages during major events - internal or external - or experiment with different writing techniques to try to communicate my character beyond just her actions. In fact, writing is probably the main reason for me to play PbP games over real-time ones; I wouldn't necessarily call myself a good writer, per-se, but it's one of the things I really enjoy nonetheless. I'm also a bit weird in that I don't necessarily enjoy being awesome when playing tabletop games. Rather - I approach my characters from a perspective of weakness rather than strength. I enjoy exploring ideas such as prejudice, loneliness, fanaticism to an ideal, responsibility vs. freedom, naivete, being thrust on an unfamiliar way of life, and societal influences on people much more than just building cool, morally-upright heroes. This doesn't mean I'll purposely build weak characters - my focus is usually on emotional and philosophical conflicts. I'm a philosophy bum, as well; character perspectives, ideals, and how they perceive the world around them is probably my foremost consideration when I build characters. I would often enjoy having fictitious debates with other characters over these fictional world-views, and find ways to defend and discuss blue-and-orange moralities that I do not share in real life. I also very rarely build characters whose personalities are immediately present like loud drunkards or haughty elves - most of my characters are also softer, and usually appear to be more normal, revealing themselves slowly as the party gets to know them (and as they begin to trust the party more). What is your favourite campaign setting? I actually don't have one. The closest might be Tianxia, since it's one of the few 'Oriental' settings with a good focus on my home nation, China (rather than just being alternate Japan like most others are), but I tend to focus more on characters and society more than anything else, and an interesting society that can spawn neat character ideas can be found in practically every well-written setting out there. The only kinds of settings that I do not like are true utopias, which are - of course - rare enough to not warrant consideration. Have you ever played or read partially or completely the Shackled City before? I have not. Well - I did read the short description on the Paizo store, but not anything that's actually in the AP. Not even the player's guide (if there is one). What made you decide to apply? If I were to be honest, I wanted to start doing PbPs again after one of my real-world games slowed a bit due to player circumstances. I really miss writing as well, and I have a lot of character ideas that I really want to explore but haven't gotten a chance to.
If I were to be honest, I like Pathfinder where it stands. The thing about the disparity is - wizards are tier 1 primarily because of their day-to-day versatility, not just in the cases that allow them to be prepared for far more situations than a prepared caster should be able to muster. Even if you removed scrolls, removed narrative-changing spells (Find the Path, Magic Jar, Simulacrum, Contingency, Planar Binding/Ally) and the highly versatile ones (Image spells, Summon Monster), and take away stuff like Shift/Divination Initiative Bonus/Fast Study, as long as they still have a large portion of their breadth of spells, wizards will still be 3 tiers higher due to simply having more options than, say, a barbarian. I'm in support of options that bring the martials higher in the tier system. I enjoy building mystical fighters with awesome supernatural abilities (ala Dreamscarred Press), but we all know that even those do not fully bridge the tier gap between a full-caster and a martial. Sure, my three-level Aegis Dip Warlord can do awesome things like fly through walls, teleport short steps, and sword-beam things that can never escape from me, but she's never going to mind control anyone, see the future, or summon angels at my side. And when those are necessary, usually the only other substitute is UMD or the obligatory "GM-approved quest chain". The only way to achieve absolute balance, then, is to bring casters down a notch, but I've never really encountered a method to do so that also preserves the options that made me enjoy playing a full caster in the first place. I've seen options like making magic harder to cast to compensate (like multi-round casting times, which, in a more simulation-favoring GM, is just plainly not fun anymore) or supplements like Spheres of Power, which constrains casters to far narrower focuses. Even in the case of Spheres of Power, the limit is constricting enough (especially in some of my favorite schools, like Illusion) that it won't really replace the same feel that I had with a full-caster. tl;dr: I like tier 1 casters, and am resist to any change that would make them less versatile (or ridiculous to use) because it would be less fun for me.
This is how I would do it: Spontaneous Domain Casting (Ex):
The cleric loses the ability to spontaneously cast "cure" or "inflict" spells from his cleric class if he chooses this option. Instead, the cleric may prepare "cure" spells (if he's good) or "inflict" spells (if he's evil) in his domain slots. The cleric chooses whether he wants to prepare cure or inflict spells in this way if he's neutral, although once the choice is made, it cannot be changed. This ability counts as "Spontaneous Casting (Ex)" for all prerequisites. If an archetype modifies Spontaneous Casting, it modifies this ability instead.
Path of War is third party, so no - it's not Society legal. The PFSRD has a lot of third party material.
So, what happened to this thread? It was a rather enlightening read so far, but out of the participants only CWheezy seemed to be responding, and it has been stuck at the last encounter for a month now.
I have a simple Request, help me make it as broken as possible. I'm bit curious on why you want to do this. The GM seems like a pretty nice person, and it's much better to just play normally in a campaign like that. Also, one of the main advantages of the Synthesist (over vanilla summoner) is their ability to dump physical stats. With rolls like this, if you are just looking for "brokenness", you would easily be much stronger as a vanilla summoner instead with the improved action economy.
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