I get the impression that goblin ability scores, or at least the Cha penalty, comes from D&D.
The Cha penalty (and lack of Int and Wis penalties) fits the D&D goblin quite well. They're nasty, unfunny cowards with very little force of personality, but they're not stupid. It's always felt to me like the Pathfinder goblins got those goblins' stats, and are now stuck with them because it's too late to change things.
Pathfinder's goblins always struck me as the Wis penalty sorts. Maybe Int penalty as well, but actually quite charismatic. Very strong force of personality.
Just a note: You've said 'feign' instead of 'feint' in the guide in two different parts of the feats section (Under Improved/Greater Feint, and Moonlight Stalker/Feint/Master).
It's also got slam listed among its evolutions, which is another 1 EP (though come to think of it, slam isn't legal on an armless eidolon, so if that's taken out, it would be the 15 EP creature that it's stated to be).
Advancement is possible I suppose, though a bit of an awkward answer. There are other creatures with varients made using additional hd, but I can't think of any other instances where a bestiary entry gives us an extra-hd monster as the statted example without providing a 'basic' one.
Both I and another local GM have been scratching our heads at trying to figure out how to work the hd of Bestiary 3's Unfettered Eidolon, and we must be missing something, because I don't see any other rules questions or examples of people having trouble with it (so I can only assume that either everyone else understands how this works, or that the unfettered eidolon has been largely unused and most people haven't looked too closely into building one).
So far all we've determined from the example one in B3 and what's written under building an unfettered eidolon is that they're supposed to have 1hd, plus 1 more for each EP over 8. The example unfettered eidolon is stated to have 15 EP which is 7 over 8 and should give it 1+7 hd. 8. It actually has 16 EP in spite of being listed as having 15, which should give it 1+8 hd, or 9, instead. Its actual hd is 10, however, and we can't seem to figure out why.
Our best guess so far as to how it actually works is: The 'building an unfettered eidolon' section is mostly-wrong. An unfettered eidolon's actual hd is equal to its total EP -5. The minimum EP an unfettered eidolon can have is 8, 5 of which must be spent on the base form's default evolutions (which is in line with the lowest EP a normal summoner's eidolon could have). CR is calculated as normal based on hd using table 1-2 in Bestiary 1.
Does anyone understand this any better? Barring that, does anyone know any AP or module where another unfettered eidolon (one different from the one in B3) has been used? It'd likely help a lot to have a second stat block to compare to. (Our potential answer explains the errors in the example unfettered eidolon, but that's not particularly useful unless we know that it can work on multiple examples.)
Looks like the thread may have strayed a bit from the original question, but ah well, I just got in, so I'll put my answer anyways.
I don't like Pathfinder. I LOVE Pathfinder. This game is complex, time-consuming, and wouldn't be worth my time if I didn't love it. But the storytelling, the characters, the worlds, the creativity, the collaboration with other players, the FUN!
...I love it all!
GMing's hard work, and I'd spend my time on something else if I didn't love to do what I do with this game.
I'm looking forward to humanoids too. First book felt like it played up the "All humans are bastards with absolutely no redeeming qualities" angle a bit too much, which was one of my only qualms with it. I'm interested in seeing it attempted again, and hopefully improved upon, because I've otherwise loved everything Ponyfinder has offered so far.
Okay Elemental Annihilator. Which of these sounds more destructive to you?
The raw, primal intensity of elemental fire?
Or chucking a rock at a guy?
This archetype looked absolutely PERFECT for the awesome electrokineticist that I envisioned the second that I read through the kineticist class. No utility distractions, just good old fun, cool-looking blasting.
Except that the elemental annihilator doesn't work with energy blasts. Hope you weren't thinking of fire for your elemental annihilator either, because fire is CLEARLY not an element. Everybody knows that the four classical elements are water, earth, air, and random household objects after all.
Purge Spirit: Purge spirit rips away at the target's spiritual substance, scattering it over a wide area and hampering the target's ability to reform. The target takes 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d6) and is staggered for one round. On a successful saving throw, the target takes half damage and is not staggered. This spell affects astrally projected creatures, ethereal creatures, haunts, incorporeal creatures, mediums channeling a spirit, and phantoms, and at the GM's discretion can affect other spirits or creatures made of ectoplasm. Incorporeal creatures take full damage from purge spirit.
So that last part of the purge spirit spell (the part I bolded) has me a bit unsure of what it means. As far as I can tell, it likely means one of two options:
1: An incorporeal creature that saves against the effect of purge spirit negates the staggered effect as normal for a successful save, but takes full damage instead of half.
or
2: An incorporeal creature targeted by purge spirit takes full damage, as if every die rolled for maximum damage (and a successful save reduces this damage by half as normal.
It's a bit like that Madness Domain power: Vision of Madness. Which is also pretty darn good.
The Madness domain is balanced a fair bit by how limited it is. Almost every deity that gets it is evil except for Groetus, Sivhana, and I think some of the non-evil Great Old Ones. In other words it's not very available to most PCs.
This one's, similarly powerful, and looks like it's likewise limited, in this case to a monster race.
Took a couple readthroughs and some messing around with NPC builds to get how this class really works (Infusions being a subcategory of Wild Talents really threw me off for a bit), but it seems pretty clear now.
...Ultimately I don't think it tops the Arcanist as the most complicated class I've ever worked with.
One extra line of "All infusions are wild talents, but not all wild talents are infusions" would have been helpful.
I don't think any other class up until now has used that sort of relationship between class features before (except maybe Shaman, but "All wandering hexes are hexes, but not all hexes are wandering hexes" is a BIT more obvious), so it was easy to miss.
Lol it's called Infusion Wild Talents as per the first sentence of Infusions.
Ahh, there we go! I knew I was having a brain fart, I just didn't know where it was. I missed that infusions are called infusion wild talents on that one line there (probably should have been emphasized a bit more).
Those are wild talents. I asked about INFUSIONS. I know where wild talent level requirements are listed.
--Edit: @Hyamda: Can you point me to a page number where it says that wild talents and infusions are the same thing, or one is the other... etc. as you claim. That would be really helpful.
I must be misreading something. Skipping over something without realizing it.
I've been through this section on the Kineticist three times now and the only mention of Infusion Levels that I can find is on pg. 13 at the end of the Infusion section. They control what you can swap your infusions for at 5th, 11th, and 17th level.
...But surely they must also determine what level you're allowed to take that infusion at, right? Wild Talents specify minimum level prerequisites very clearly, but I can't find anything that says you can't take and use one of the powerful high level infusions as your very first one!
Somebody please point me to a page number, or an errata, or something.
Oh Kineticist, I didn't recognize you at first, but as I reread your class section today to make sure I understood your mechanics, I realized who you were.
You're Old Man Words of Power, back with a few tweaks, a new name, and better publicity than last time!
...Not that that's a bad thing. I thought you had potential last time that got wasted by the poor execution that's characteristic of a lot of the old optional rules systems like you.
I hope you do better this time Words of Power... I mean Kineticist. ;)
I guess after Rek'Sai was so easy to convert, I should have figured Riot would come right back with something complicated, but two in a row who are both this difficult is something I was unprepared for.
Well, for now I'm completely stuck. Anyone have any ideas on either of these two?
I'm probably just skipping over it unintentionally, but I can't seem to find mention of who gets these new skills as class skills and who doesn't. Anybody know the answer?
Fine, if we're going to be pedantic, yes, what I asked for and wanted was either a "Yes it's CR 7" or "No, it's CR [Something else]". In fact your answer that it's CR 9 is closer to what I asked for than random suggestions of changing things. It's not as helpful as an answer that assumes conditions are adjusting CR, but it's still actually answering the question that was asked.
Maybe Rules Questions was the better place for that. I chose Advice because the actual rules on reducing CR are lacking and (as you pointed out), conditions don't actually affect CR by RAW. I didn't think Rules Questions was an appropriate place to ask a question about how something that's not actually in the rules works. Maybe I was wrong and it should have been there.
Or just ignore Staggered and call it a CR 8. That's about right for a Sickened Young Blue Dragon that can't use its breath weapon.
8's a bit more than I'd like. 6 works. It's not meant to be some climatic battle, at any rate, it's meant to be a satisfying chance to beat up a weakened jerk who would otherwise be too powerful. There'll be time for climactic battles against dragons later, with other dragons.
You make a good point that the defenses are still high and might make the fight drag on. I'll have to take that into account and adjust a bit more.
Other than that, thank you for actually answering the question Deadmanwalking, instead of giving unsolicited suggestions while saying nothing actually relevant to what I asked (i.e. what everybody else wasted space with).
I swear, I've gotta start prefacing these posts with "Just answer the question."
What would you say the adjusted-CR would be of a young blue dragon that is sickened, staggered, and can't use her breath weapon? I'm thinking CR 7, but figured I'd get a second-opinion.
I think it would be really cool to start a high level module or a regular AP in this kind of universe.
A version of the "alternate reality episode" you see in sci-fi sometimes, where the PCs would be strangely aware that something was very wrong with the world they were in, and need to set it right.
That would be so cool -- but it violates so many of Paizo's (wise) practices around spoilers that alas, it could never be.
Unless they stick a "WARNING: This AP spoils the plots of the following previous APs..." notice clearly-visible at the beginning of it.
Indeed. Cheliax has already been one of the big uncertainties of the thread, with lots of people unsure of exactly who or what would take charge of that region, and multiple plots and alliances forming there simultaneously.
Hell's Rebels is going to throw the place into even greater chaos.
Well, this is late, but my goodness do I love the NPC Codex!
Just finished making a dungeon. Lots of humanoid baddies and only one monster. "It's going to be a pain to stat everyone up" I thought to myself.
...NPC Codex, stat block pulled from Skull & Shackles, Inner Sea NPC Codex, NPC Codex, NPC Codex, NPC Codex, Gamemastery Guide, Bestiary 3, haunt pulled from Jade Regent, NPC Codex, NPC Codex again, and only ONE weird multiclassed foe that I actually had to stat up myself.
It would be absolutely amazing to have a couple of hundred more options for when I happen to need alchemists-on-demand or instant-investigators not to mention things like psychics and mediums (when the time comes for them), and maybe even a set of blocks for the new unchained versions of the old classes.
He doesn't really assassinate people, so a lot of the sneak attack stuff to me at least seems not very Batman like unless he's doing non lethal, which cannot be done with anything but a sap.
You can deal nonlethal sneak attack damage with unarmed strikes
And you can do it with any normally-lethal bludgeoning weapon if you have the Bludgeoner feat.
Seems like Barbarian and Swashbuckler are the favourites at the moment.
kestral287 wrote:
rorek55 wrote:
honestly, IMO, the toughest/strongest pure melee character with 0 magic IMO is the swashbuckler, over half his damage comes from his level, class abilities, and feats, he can make 4+ parry attempts a turn and a pretty decent to hit, he actually imo has the best or equal damage of all them at 20, except maybe a damage focused fighter
Also the Daring Champion, who has hilariously better damage.
Are we including Mythic? There's a /ton/ of EX Mythic stuff.
Mythic Power is (Su) and not something mythic characters can avoid getting, so no, mythic would not an option.
Magda Luckbender wrote:
Since we're talking completely non-magical, Barbarians are also banned. Also all magical Rogue talents. Also the Ninja. This could arguably eliminate the Cavalier and/or the Gunslinger. We're left with:
* Fighter
* Samurai? Cavalier?
* Subset of Rogue
* Any others?
The only non-(Ex) Barbarian abilities are optional rage powers, so it's not Barbarians that are banned, just certain rage powers.
How would you make the toughest character you could manage without giving him/her even the slightest hint of magical ability? No spells, no supernatural abilities, no magic items, etc.
Obviously they aren't going to be as powerful as a character who has access to magic, but do the best you can without it.
This is just theoretical. I'm interested in seeing what people come up with.
I feel ya regarding not wanting to homebrew something, but I doubt that it'd be too tough to find a solution that does what you want without breaking things.
As a jumping-off point, just give the PCs a null blade whose adamantine-equivalent blade turns off if not active, and remove the +1 construct-bane and dispel magic effects if you don't want the weapon to have any magical flavor at all. Maybe make the consumption rate 1 charge/minute, and you could remove the discharge effect if you wanted the weapon to be cheaper.
From there, you could give them any number of energy weapons that disappear when not powered—daggers, flails, quarterstaves, you name it. You'd have better luck with balanced design in the homebrew forums, but an energy-based bastard sword is basically a lightsaber, IMO. If you want a null blade that turns off, turn it off!
Mmm. I'd wanted to avoid it, but looks like I will have to homebrew, yeah. I'll probably do something along the lines of your suggestion. Null Blade isn't exactly what I wanted, but it's a good base to start with.
Oh, there are ways to make large size equipment useful. The Iron Lord's Transforming Silvers (a magical item typically associated with Gorum) allow you to resize a weapon up to one category. Throwing that in the place somewhere as a way to make profit off large equipment could reward them for being thorough. Given that this is likely Numeria (since robots), it would not be unusual to find Gorum related magical items on a barbarian corpse.
It's a home setting. No Numeria, no Gorum.
Got a link or book source for those transforming silvers anyways, though? I can't seem to find anything on them.
Cool? Optimal? Both. Simply giving it a plain-old AC bonus with built-on construct armor isn't overly interesting, and the players can't do much with it. That's more the sort of thing I'd use if I wanted to bump CR without giving them access to any more wealth.
...I'm basically looking for a little bit of both, is what I'm saying. Something the golem can equip that'll be cool to use against the party, which PCs might gain access to and use or profit from themselves after it's all over.
The autograpnel tech-weapons example suggested above is kind-of along the lines of what I'm thinking of, but this is a slammy golem encounter, and I'd rather not change its combat style to be shooty.
(I assume Robot Golems are humanoid. This one will be, at any rate, but it is also Large-sized, so equipable items aren't as great for treasure for the average PC as slotless items would be.)
I'm working on a dungeon at the moment, and allotting treasure. I have roughly 14,000 gp more that I'd like to allot to this section of the adventure before the next level hits, and pretty much everything else before that point is already equipped.
I'm left with two options: Either distribute this stuff among one or more treasure hoards/caches, or equip this one Robot Golem with something awesome.
It hits things with slams. It's a golem. I've got 14,000-ish gp to work with. What's some cool stuff I can equip it with? Not all 14,000 has to be spent on it. I'll allot any unused wealth to the mundane caches that I've already established.
the beam sword is a Null Blade
the whip thingy is a Mono Whip
both in the tech guide page 26:)
A null blade is a solid blade that uses tech to make itself glowy and adamantine-ish. It's the closest thing we've got, but that doesn't make it a beam sword. It's glowing magitech at best.
By 'beam sword' I'm referring to something where the entire blade is light/plasma/energy/etc. basically the blade is not a solid thing. If you turn it off or run out of power you can still smack people with a null blade, but you can't smack people with the beam sword, because the beam sword's blade is only there when powered up and turned on.
Non-daemons can still participate in soul-usage, they're just not very likely to use soul gems to do it. They'd likely use some other method, such as soul bind (a necromancy spell) which is probably what your lich necromancer would be using.
After seeing the picture of the technic league agent wielding what looked like a green beam sword early on in Lords of Rust's gazetteer on the Technic League, I was hoping that Iron Gods would give us tech-based beam swords at some point. Robots are immune to Brilliant Energy after all, so magical beam swords are sucky in high-technology settings.
...But I've just picked up my final volume of Iron Gods and apparently the beam sword was not to be. I was hoping to not have to homebrew it, so this is basically my last-ditch effort to avoid that: Did I miss it? Are there rules for tech-based Beam/Laser/Plasma/Light/Etc. Swords anywhere?
Check out the section here on The Soul Trade for your answers regarding prices. I believe this stuff is all from Book of the Damned Volume 3 (Horsemen of the Apocalypse). The gems themselves aren't described in detail, admittedly. I think "Small jewel-like objects" is probably the most descriptive line you'll find on them.
They are not, however, as widespread as you imply, except in Abbadon. Daemons and Souleaters are the ones who most frequently use them, whereas others dealing in souls (like mortal wizards not associated with daemons) are more likely to use other methods. You'll note that the section on the soul trade says that Soul Bind and Trap the Soul are the most common methods of capturing souls. Soul gems are more of a daemonic niche than something widespread.
I can only assume I've failed to notice something significant, but why does area A17 (the battle against the overlord robot) assume that the PCs have 10 Victory points by the time they reach it. Considering A17 is close to the dungeon entrance, and all sources of victory points (unless I've missed a fair number of them) are deeper within the dungeon, wouldn't it make more sense to assume the PCs will have 0 victory points by the time they reach A17?
Because it's very difficult to get into that room without having delved deeper. The doors are locked down, and the area is flooded with radiation. Both the controls needed to vent the radiation and lift the lock are deeper in the dungeon. Of course, if your PCs tunnel their way through early, there's not much to stop them from fighting the Overlord on their first excursion...
Yeahhh... My players pretty consistently demonstrate a "Each level of the dungeon must be completely cleared before moving on to the next!" attitude. They're going to be in so much trouble...
I can only assume I've failed to notice something significant, but why does area A17 (the battle against the overlord robot) assume that the PCs have 10 Victory points by the time they reach it. Considering A17 is close to the dungeon entrance, and all sources of victory points (unless I've missed a fair number of them) are deeper within the dungeon, wouldn't it make more sense to assume the PCs will have 0 victory points by the time they reach A17?
Published adventures often have notes that outline how fast enemies react to the sound of combat. Usually it's formatted as something like 1d6+2 rounds, with the +2 part being the actual minimum time it would take if they responded immediately, and the 1d6 representing delay from the fact that it (generally) wouldn't be realistic that they respond as fast as possible.
- Duergar Inquisitor, based upon force spells, unarmed combat and some custom inquisitions - one for grappling and abduction; one for reverence of the deep earth; and the last one for enduring the endless toil of life.
- Halfling Gunslinger, using slings - the hook of this one is less flavor and more mechanics, since as he is unable to have full iteratives with a sling, he clusters all of his iterative attacks in one big hit -- or is able to ricochet them against several enemies simultaneously. Being able to use several types of bullets is also a hallmark of this archie.
BUT I won't be able to sit down and post these for a while.
To tide you over until then, here's the ULTRA MARINE, UNDINE FIGHTER.
I'm planning to make a Undine Swashbuckler as it was requested, but I had this idea of trying to make as many puns as I could fathom.
How many of them can you see?
The Ultra Marine's proficiencies really should say that they alter the fighter's normal weapon proficiencies, not that they replace them. As-written, this archetype has no proficiencies with anything other than nets.
...Or if that was the intention, then you missed a huge opportunity to call the ability 'Nothing But Net'.
Might be shoehorning you a bit too much into a strict concept here, but I don't recall any Ifrit suggestions yet, so how about:
Flame Keeper. Ifrit Ranger.
The Flame Keeper knows the threat of fire first-hand, and knows that to properly use it to your advantage you must be able to understand, control, and combat it.
Fight fire with fire, basically. Ranger seemed thematic due to forest fires and such, but maybe another class would work better. I dunno.
Awesome, and I feel like you may have captured the fighting style of Monkey D. Luffy in this one.
As soon as I can figure out a good way to add significant reach to unarmed strikes I think I'm gonna build Luffy as a human with Racial Heritage (Monkey Goblin) and this archetype.
Just a note though: you've mixed pronouns a bit in the writeup. Generally a class (or archetype) description picks either male or female pronouns based on their iconic (so in this case I guess it would be male pronouns, because of Sajan), and sticks to them all the way through.
Reposting my list from the previous thread of what's not yet been covered (adjusted to account for the races that have been used since the last time I posted this):
Mmm. I saw the multiclass, and while it can be done as a non-gestalt, it splits the abilities too thinly for my tastes. Focus too much on fire (i.e. sorcerer levels) and Tibbers is weak, and focus too much on Tibbers (i.e. summoner levels) and Annie herself can't muster enough firepower.
I'm not going for outright optimization, but I am attempting to keep each champ relatively competent. For casters, that generally means not multiclassing too much (unless it's into a PrC that meshes with and builds upon their spellcasting ability.
Yes, I saw it. Yours worked well using the gestalt route, but I'm avoiding gestalt for my champion builds. Likewise the Magma Spawned template is something I would have preferred to put on Tibbers than on Annie herself, but of the three main ways to build Tibbers (as an eidolon, as a summoned monster, or as a charmed monster) the template is only legal (barring GM fiat) on the charmed monster, which is the way I'd least like to represent Tibbers.
...And personally I made my Annie a young human, but since we've been using gnomes as yordles I'd lean towards using a halfling for her if I were going to use one of the small races.
Basically your build can work quite well, but there are a lot of things I'd do differently, so I opted for my own take on Annie.
I attempted to stat up Annie over the past weekend, and found that my original inclinations of making her a sorcerer may not work as well as I'd hoped.
Annie summons, and it's very hard to get your summoned creature to be fiery. Obviously the summoner class can handle Tibbers with ease, but with the exception of the Fire Shield spell it lacks the (literal) firepower to represent much of the rest of Annie's kit. Likewise the Evolved Summoned Monster feat couldn't provide powerful enough evolutions to classes that did have the requisite firepower, and left them incapable of properly representing Tibbers. I was stumped.
...Then I discovered Fire Music. It's not that strong, and it's restricted to a very odd Bard/Other-Arcane multiclass (i.e. a 1-level sorcerer dip, because pretty much all of the other arcane classes stink for 1-level dips), but boy is it thematic! Working around that feat, I've re-made a new and interesting Annie.
Annie
Spoiler:
Female human sorcerer 1/bard (flame dancer) 16 or 17. Flame dancer trades away a lot of the bard's more performance-themed abilities for fiery tricks, though Annie still retains some performances which are useful for bolstering Tibbers. Her bloodline should be something with an arcana that bolsters her fire magic.
Annie herself is young, but casts and fights like any adult champion. GMs should consider making her a special exception who ignores the rules for young characters (see Ultimate Campaign), or at least receives less hindrance from them.
Pyromania: This is the flaring spell metamagic feat.
Disintegrate: A single-target fireball? Flame Dancer grants the flaming sphere spell, which covers this.
Incinerate: BURNING HANDS! :D Flame Dancer grants it, and you can Metamagic it up to make up for its paltry 1st-level power.
Molten Shield: Unfortunately bards don't get the fire shield spell, but the Inner Sea World Guide provides access to shield of the dawnflower for them. Annie's an arcane caster, so she probably doesn't need to be a worshiper of Sarenrae to use it. Clarify that with your GM.
Summon: Tibbers: Summon Monster VI can call a dire bear, is on the bard spell list, and is the reason Annie needs so many levels. At minimum she needs to be level 16 to use it, but going up to 17 gives her an extra casting each day. Fire Music makes Tibbers' attacks fiery, and the Flame Dancer's Fire Break performance gives him (and Annie herself) significant fire resistance, allowing him to wade through Annie's blasting spells without worry. I also had Annie take the Evolved Summoned Monster feat so that she can grant Tibbers the pounce special attack, which makes him truly terrifying.
...If you want a lower-level Annie, limit her to 10 levels of bard, and use Summon Monster IV to summon Tibbers as a grizzly bear instead of Summon Monster VI to summon him as a dire bear. The rest of the build can work just fine at this lower level.
