General Spoon's page

While this document is primarily for softcover books, there is a houserule that is strongly encouraged by the APG that could be brought into the campaign at the same time if PFS leadership thought it makes sense to (and it would make players of Oracles [and now Fractured Mind Spiritualists too] quite happy!). Specifically, cleric spells that reference only using WIS instead of casting modifier on CHA based spellcasting classes.

It would be a happy present to see this brought into PFS :)

You might think that you need to pour through various obscure sourcebooks to build a broken character that causes nobody else at your table to have fun, but that isn't true! You can do this just with the Pathfinder RPG line of products (and not even that many books in it really). You're probably going to want to make a wizard, because they consistently have spells that are allowed in PFS that can immediatly shut down a combat in the first round. If you combine spells like these with a really high initiative modifier, then you are very likely to go first and end combat before any other player can act.

The example level 1 build I have below has an initiative modifier of +17 at level 1. It reaches this with: 18 DEX (+4), Improved Initiative (+4), Greensting scorpion familiar (+4), Reactionary trait (+2), forewarned class feature (+1), Fleet-Footed alternate racial trait (+2). Even if you roll a 1 when rolling initiative, you are still pretty likely to go before every other character in combat. You do not even need to be worried about surprise rounds, because the Diviner School's Forewarned class feature also ensures you always act in surprise rounds.

The spells you will be using will be ones that can disable, incapacitate or seriously hamper multiple enemies at once. Some examples of good spells to be using for this purpose at some of the spell levels in your PFS career are:
1st: Color Spray, Grease
2nd: Glitterdust, Web
3rd: Slow, Stinking Cloud
4th: Black Tentacles, Confusion
5th: Icy Prison (Ultimate Magic; while this spell doesn't disable multiple enemies, it deserves mention for how it wins bossfights even when saved against)

While using a build like this, with spells that are mostly from the Core Rulebook, you can make combat unfun for everybody else (including the GM). However, there is also another part of Pathfinder Society you can perform reasonably well in at no expense to your combat ability; social encounters. While it is not a book in the RPG line, Pathfinder Society Primer is related enough to this campaign to be included here I feel. The trait "Clever Wordplay" allows you to use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Charisma modifier for a Charisma based skill; in our case we will take Diplomacy.

So how does this relate to power creep in new sourcebooks? While new options in new sourcebooks might be more powerful than some other existing options, they are generally not anywhere close to being broken like already legal options in the Core Rulebook (and the RPG line). Unless more Master Summoners are printed, new character options that may or may not be legalized for play are not going to be as powerful as what is already legal from the core line of products.

Example Build:
Elfy “I Go First” Elfington
Male Elf Diviner 1
N Medium humanoid (elf)
Init +17; Senses low-light vision; Perception -1

DEFENSE

AC 14, touch 14, flat-footed 10 (+4 Dex)
hp 7 (1d6+1)
Fort +1, Ref +4, Will +0; +2 vs. enchantments
Immune sleep

OFFENSE

Spd 30 ft.
Melee Quarterstaff -2 (1d6-2)
Space 5 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Spell-Like Abilities (CL 1st; concentration +6)
8/day—diviner’s fortune (+1)
Diviner Spells Prepared (CL 1st; concentration +6)
1st—true strike, x2 color spray (DC 16), grease (DC 17)
0 (at will)—dancing lights, ghost sound (DC 15), detect magic, read magic
Opposition Schools abjuration, necromancy

STATISTICS

Str 7, Dex 18, Con 12, Int 20, Wis 7, Cha 7
Base Atk +0; CMB -2; CMD 12
Feats Run (Bonus), Spell Focus (conjuration) (Bonus), Improved Initiative
Traits Reactionary (Advanced Player’s Guide), Clever Wordplay (Diplomacy; Pathfinder Society Primer)
Skills Diplomacy +5, Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Local, Nature, Planes, Religion) +9, Spellcraft +9
Languages Common, Elven, Celestial, Sylvan, Draconic, Goblin, Orc
SQ: Fleet-Footed (Advanced Race Guide), arcane bond (greensting scorpion (Ultimate Magic)), forewarned +1
Combat Gear quarterstaff; Gear spellbook (cantrips, grease, color spray, true strike, 5 other 1st level spells go here; they honestly don't matter), spell components pouch, 145gp

On page 19 of the Hell's Vengeance player's guide, Urgraz (the duergar antipaladin) is mentioned as poisoning members of his family. However, duergar are, as a race, immune to poison.

Oceanshieldwolf wrote:

I agree with General Spoon - she doesn't seem personally evil to me. Just another righteous zealot.

And yet she detects as evil when divinatory magic is used to determine the truth of her alignment. Weird.

Well then your writer really dropped the ball when writing her motivation as protecting innocents.

Fitz and Nighteyes! I am now 100% sold on Hunter fitting into a niche fluff-wise.

So how do I get it working offline? (Please assume that I know absolutely nothing and may well need to be walked through it.)

You will need Python on your machine, which I am assuming is Windows. If it isn't, then download for your OS as appropriate. I suggest version 2.7.8, if only because I use a version of 2.7 when I wrote this. I believe that it should have a setup that handles setup for you when run.

You will also need to save the script as a python file; you can just copy paste the script into a notepad and save it with the ".py" extension. If notepad chops up the indentation, you may need to get a more powerful text editor like Notepad++ to paste into. I am getting a syntactical error when I simply paste it into notepad that would be a pain in the butt to fix manually, but if you paste it into Notepad++ and select all, edit, indent, decrease line indent. This should fix the syntax up right quick.

Again, I am making an assumption that you are using a Windows OS. Open the command prompt, and navigate to the folder containing the python file you just saved. To change directory, the command is "cd X" where X the directory you are moving to. To move up a directory, you can use "cd ..". To see the contents of your current directory, you can use "dir".

I believe that this should be what you need, but if it doesn't work feel free to use Googlefu to muscle past a problem instead of waiting on me.

For someone who doesn't know a damn thing about python script...how do I even begin to use it?

There's no buttons or form fields to fill or anything. Just a foreign code.

If you don't want to get python on your machine for this one task, an option is to use an online Python interpreter like this one I just found and executed the script in. Code goes in the left box, hit the arrow, then enter input when prompted.

Here's a python script I put together today for determining if the results of a dice roll can be used to make any of the prime constants for an effective spell level: Sacred Geometry Python Script

It has been tested a bit, but not extensively. I am confident enough in it to drop it here though for people to have fun with. It has consistently had a runtime of only a few moments during testing, though I haven't done any complexity analysis of it.

Note, however, that it doesn't remove unnecessary parenthesis. If it doesn't find a solution, the script simply doesn't return anything.

Have fun!

I am no longer allowed to waste brave Riddlywipple's sacrifice by completing the tpk a few rounds later.

I'm going to plug the Periscope from UE. Use its size modifier to stealth (+12) when looking around corners instead of your own. It is only 20gp, and there are countless situations where you want to take a look around a corner.