Gronka's page

Like other people said, it should be more focused; if you want it to focus on scaring things, do that and make it work for you.

This means the skill unlock feat for intimidate is a necessity; if you beat the DC by 20 (which you should), it should make the characters flee in panic or cower, with another dc 30 will save to negate this. Without this, it's really hard to make intimidate do more.

You also need a way to apply this to all characters in an area. Dazzling Display is a common way to do this. Another option is Blistering Invective. This would require UMD from a scroll, which at level 20 is no problem; that's what I would do, to save feat slots. I would go ahead and put enlarge on to the scroll, too, so you can catch everyone in a 60 foot radius, and put 6 castings like this on a couple of scrolls as a contingency. For this level of play, it's cheap.
Another option is Cornungon Smash, but it requires that you hit a character to use it, and does one at a time. I would much rather get the scroll off the first round, and then spend the other rounds beating down the fleeing characters. It's a great feat for a character that needs to take down one big bad guy; it's not so good for the big bad fighting a wave of characters.
Face of the devourer will give an extra +4. I would get a circlet of persuasion or maiden's helm, and possibly bump charisma up a bit, and make sure you have elixer of the thundering voice. (not all of these items will stack, so you may want to pick and choose what works for you)

I would get an amulet of mighty fists for cruel, which lets you put sickened on to anyone you hit who is already shaken or worse.

I would give at least one attack the reach evolution, so that you can hit people at a farther range with cruel. And have the summoner cast long arm on the eidolon. An extra 10 feet of reach can mean a lot. Combat reflexes would be nice, so that you can hit people as they flee.

your intimidate should be:
+23 (skill points)
+8 (skilled)
+6 (skill focus)
+16 (strength)
+6 (char)
+4 (face of the devourer)
+4 (size)
+10 (Elixer of thundering voice)

means +77 or there abouts, without *too* much feat investment cutting in to his general combat/damage.
The DC to intimidate a cleric at this level will be roughly 40. So you should *usually* beat this by 20.

I would drop all the critical feats; you probably don't really need to be crit fishing with this guy. Also, very few characters will have DR/magic or silver; you're taking an odd gamble with that feat.

So for my feats, I would have:
Intimidating Prowess
Skill Focus: intimidate
Skill Unlock: intimidate
Combat Reflexes

Then the last 4 are up to you, but I would focus on increasing survivability, with feats like Toughness and Iron Will, possibly improved initiative. I would lean towards just Iron Will, Improved Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Improved Lightning Reflexes. Since those are the spells that are most likely to just take your monster out of the fight immediately, so a once a day reroll for each can be important. You probably won't need to work too hard to get a lot of damage out, especially with the summoner providing buffs.
You should definitely have stone skin up before any fight. Use evolution surge to give it any abilities or resistances that become useful.

I would drop trample and instead go with grab to help you control things that you hit. Trample is great for taking out lots of little things, but it probably won't help you deal with the PCs, where grab can help to shut down a mage or paladin.

Anywho, this may be a bit over the top, but a group of similarly optimized characters will probably have ways to deal with it. A paladin in particular, or a cleric who isn't frightened to start with, will be able to cast spells to help their allies overcome the fear effect. The intimidate checks get progressively harder, so as the fight wears on, anyone who survives the first few rounds will start to get in on the action. A DC 30 will save is not too big a deal at this level, especially not for the characters that have ways to deal with something like this.

A paladin or any other character that is immune to fear will present problems, as will casters that like to stay far away. The actual summoner should focus on either isolating these characters from the fight, or getting the eidolon to them immediately.

Keep in mind, at this level every character going against your creation *should* have prot. from evil up before they engage (which can screw over eidolons), unless you force a fight on them. Have the thing attack the town they are in, forcing the characters to react to it, as the summoner watches from the sidelines and reacts to the valiant heroes trying to foil his plan.
So, if you really want to cause chaos, have the summoner teleport his creation in to the middle of the town on some important holiday where all the heroes are present in one place and then corner the ones it needs to. The summoner should be invisible somewhere with a vantage point over the battlefield; plenty of spells on its list that work for this will not break its invisibility.

Finally, your last question. I don't believe there is. Magic Jar is meant to be a pocket spell, not a go-to. Magic Jar is only safe when you're fighting enemies who are either 4HD below or above your party HD, so you can specifically target within those Hit Die ranges (how I interpret the spell to work). There is no way to target the range of HD that your teammates are included in without threatening to hit one of them, as far as I know.

Ah. Yeah, right now, my plan is to have a familiar (imp for the constant invisibility) hang out with the party with the magic jar gem around his neck, and then when I detect more life forces, have the imp tell the party to back up out of range.

This is really for like fights where we know there is going to be a lot of danger. In one of the PFS scenarios we had to fight a rune lord. We won, but 3 people out of 5 died and everything basically came down to one roll from a kineticist. I was looking for ways to make sure something like that didn't happen again. Being able to magic jar in to one of his minions would have at least kept my body safe

This probably gets in to a sort of grey area, rules wise. This is for a witch character, and I would like to sort some of this out before it becomes an issue.

So say I have the feats "eschew materials", "silent spell", and "still spell".

I cast magic jar, so now I am a soul floating in this little jar. Can I cast a spell that has no components like this? (I realize that probably in this case, the only valid target for the spell would be my familiar, or possibly myself but even that's iffy because I have no life force to detect at the moment).

Next question: if I cast "share senses" to see through my familiar's eyes while I am magic jarred, would this allow me to target specific creatures with the magic jar attack?

The last question is are there any other ways to make sure I don't target a team mate with my magic jar attack? (I don't care so much about being able to hit a specific enemy; I just want to mitigate the chances of hurting my allies by wasting their and my turns).

Everyone's just commenting on how the economy in Pathfinder doesn't make sense. It's not supposed to make sense, it's supposed to balanced for gameplay (ideally). The actual economic state of a setting, as well as percentage of PC classes, level distribution, commonality of spellcasters, etc, are pretty much up to the DM. Trying to figure out a realistic economy based on magic item pricing is and always will be futile. It's one of those aspects of the game that should not translate to world lore by necessity.

That was my point. The king's army can mass produce scrolls without if being a big deal even though the PCs can't get access to them. It wouldn't ruin the suspension of disbelief at all, and soldiers could all be issued scrolls before a battle or whatever. The rules about crafting and item cost have more to do with balancing the PCs than with creating a realistic world.

My point about equipment is that it would still be within the rules to say every single NPC soldier the PCs ran in to has a few scrolls ready to use; they just have access to replenishing their scrolls in a way the PCs might never have.

I handle weapon profs as basically being equal to skill points.

1/2 bab classes get prof in a number of simple weapons equal to their base skill points (generally 2).

3/4 classes get prof in all simples and a number of weapons from their class list equal to their starting base skill points.

Full BAB classes get access to all simples and any martial weapons equal to starting skill points + Int bonus.

Fighters and Paladins start with all simple and martial weapon profs, one from training with weapons, one as part of their divine gifts for being in their class.

Monk/rogue/Martial/Exotic, etc weapon proficiencies do NOT gain you proficiency in any weapons. They give you the right to purchase additional weapon profs with skill points.

Improved Unarmed Strike and Improved Grapple are considered martial weapon profs, and do not require a feat each to learn.

Shield Bashing is a martial weapon prof, not part of shield proficiency.

NO class gives out weapon or armor proficencies unless taken at character level 1. They are considered part of the founding training for the class. Multiclassing into them requires skill points to be spent to gain any weapon profs you want. Furthermore, they must be on the list of the class you are using the skill points from. You don't learn arcane spells for free when taking divine levels, you don't get weapon profs easy if you take just one level in Barbarian.

==Aelryinth

I am planning on players using these points to buy proficiencies in the weapons, but outside of that the point is to give abilities to martial characters that are thematic and maybe realistic and make them not so dependent.

I realize that at this point I am probably looking at a major re-working of the rules. The point here is to give fighters options in the same way that spells can give casters, not just increase their damage or survivability. One thing I don't like is the power creep; as a player, it is kind of annoying having many encounters end before I even take a turn. It makes the fight feel pointless, and there is no challenge. It's also not very exciting.
I also don't feel like fighters should be more crippled than other classes by the lack of a spellcaster. (As an example, a barbarian or a druid animal companion gets scent; dragon disciple gets blindsense, rogues can get really high perception, but a fighter has no way that I could find to notice an invisible foe reliably without magical help).

Anywho, as an example of the kinds of things I am looking at:
Not sure yet if these points will replace a fighter's or monk's bonus combat feats or be used along with them. Many of them will make certain feats redundant for that weapon, which is partially the idea. There are a few feat chains that thematically don't make sense and where people feel like they are wasting feats. It also doesn't make sense to me that many classes get to skip prerequisites while fighters never can.

Dagger:
1 point- gain a +1 shield bonus while wielding if you don't use it to attack
2- while grappling or pinning an opponent, you may make an attack with a dagger against that opponent's touch AC. This attack is made as if the dagger were in your off hand (half damage to strength, possibly -2 to attack? still working out details)
3- the shield bonus increases to +2

Flail: (this is more like the typical peasant's flail, not the mace on a chain that is popular in fantasy art, but the abilities could still work the same)
1- you can use this weapon as if it has reach, but at a -2 to armor class
2- when attacking, you can ignore your target's shield bonus to AC.
3- gain a +2 to trip attempts with this weapon

These could maybe be taken at 2nd, 4th and 8th level.

senses:
1 point will give you a +5 to notice if a creature is around that you can't see, or to pinpoint that creature (this includes being blinded, having too little light to see, an invisible creature)
2 will give you uncanny dodge.
3 points will give you blindsense within 5 feet.
4 will give you improved uncanny dodge

These can be taken at maybe levels 2, 4, 6, and 8 at minimum.

1 point allows you to keep your AC while climbing.
With a minimum of 8 points in climb
2 points will give you a climb speed equal to half your land speed. (this will not give the additional +8 of having a climb score; that's why you need +8 to begin with).

there would be a similar one for swim.

You can use these points to buy weapon focus and weapon specialization, and to basically buy a couple of feats (things like 2 weapon fighting and power attack, maybe limited to specific weapons or styles). I'm not sure yet about the costs.

I am thinking that fighters would start with 4 points and get 1 or 2 every level.

This is only a very rough draft of the idea. If anyone has any thoughts about it, please let me know.

151. Thick, luscious, green grass grows rapidly, but only either when the planter looks at it or only while he is looking away (random chance of either). Nothing else will stop this growth.

152. a quintessential hobbit hole grows in the spot, fully furnished.

153. A tree grows. The nearest druid is drawn to the location and feels a strong compulsion to protect this particular site (if no druid is immediately apparent, create a random one).

154. a tree grows, creating fruit with a hard outer shell. when the shell is peeled away, the fruit inside is exactly identical (including in size). This can be done an infinite number of times. (like those stacking dolls, but with an infinite number of layers, so each one inside is exactly the same size as the one you just removed).

155. A mushroom grows. When consumed, this mushroom casts either enlarge person or reduce person on the eater. This effect lasts until the next time they are struck in combat.

150. A tiny shoot grows within a matter of minutes. The plant has a single identical bean at the end of it. If plucked, the plant shrivels and dies almost instantly. If this bean is planted, a tiny shoot grows within a matter of minutes. the plant has a single identical bean...

149. right after the bean is planted, all the earth in a 5 foot cube around it vanishes (along with the bean).

This makes me miss the WebRPG top 20s forums. Are those archived anywhere?

142. The bean begins humming a musical tune (muffled, of course, by the earth above it)

143. Yggdrasil, the "world tree" of Norse myth grows from that spot. Basically destroying everything in a huge radius. The tree can be climbed to access various planes.

This doesn't make Fighters or Monks significantly more useful, but it makes them more interesting. To make your Fighters or Monks more useful, you'd need to address caster/martial disparity, Fighter skill points, the Monk AC/damage tradeoff problem, and the archery combat advantage.

However, abilities such as what you mentioned would make Fighters and Monks more interesting. I'd need to see how you would scale it (and at what levels they would get those abilities) to tell you if it is overpowered, reasonable, or not enough to be viable.

As far as the caster/martial disparity, I have been thinking about ways to allow access to certain abilities. For instance, at a certain point, monks and fighters can gain blind-sense with a very limited range (it doesn't make sense that barbarians can get scent and uncanny dodge, but a kung fu monk who has trained to hone his reflexes his whole life doesn't get something similar; that's like an iconic thing).

Ok, here is my idea (in addition to some other revamping of skills and feats) to make fighters and monks more interesting and useful.

We could have a separate system (let's call them martial skill points for now) that are used to gain proficiency in different weapons. The main idea is that these wouldn't just be to deal damage with the weapon- almost anyone can swing a club (or even a sword) and hit something with it on occasion. Instead, they would be to train in things like using a sai to disarm your opponent, parrying attacks with your offhand weapon, etc. Each weapon could have a few of these options. At higher levels, for instance, a dagger could hurt a grappled opponent at their touch AC, representing a higher level fighter being able to find a joint in the armor and the fact that many daggers are specifically designed for that purpose. Maybe it could be possible to disarm natural attacks with a sai or kama, representing going after tendons and pressure points to disable the creature. These would also be used to gain abilities with combat maneuvers and maybe some athletic feats above and beyond your normal character (the most iconic would be climbing on to the back of the giant or dragon you are fighting).

Fighters and monks would get a certain number of these each level, making them real weapon masters and giving them more versatility. Basically, my idea is that a fighter in someone's face should have an easier time getting a weapon away from them than a mage casting grease from a safe distance.

Other martial characters may get a couple of points, or can gain them through feats. Your average barbarian may still hit harder and be stronger than your average fighter, but the fighter can likely disarm him to put him at a disadvantage and even the fight.

This could also help to add a lot more flavor to weapon choices, instead of it just being a comparison of damage and crit numbers. If a dagger can target touch AC in the right circumstances, then certain fighters will prefer the dagger, while others will prefer the kukri. A fighter holding a handaxe will have options with his free-hand that a fighter holding a battleaxe will not, so sometimes the biggest, baddest sword you have won't be the best choice.

Anywho, any feedback or criticisms or ideas would be great. Let me know what you think.

I agree that the restriction of combat maneuvers is a contributing factor to many martials feeling like they lack tactical options.

But consider this perspective to that notion. If we focus on just buffing the fighter's damage, defenses, and giving them extra ways to bypass enemy defenses, that results in making damage always the best solution to different situations. Buffing a fighter's ability to run up and stab something does not give them incentives to do something other than running up and stabbing something.

Yeah. This is why I feel like combat in general suffers when 2-handed fighters or barbarians are dealing so much damage each round. The only option is "get close and smash the guy over and over". If you are fighting a really big guy it's just "I hope I kill him before he kills me". If you're fighting a bunch of little guys, there is basically no threat because you can squash 2 or 3 of them in a round.

I kind of think combat expertise needs reworked to be a +2 to cmd/cmb for combat maneuvers and no AoO, and the greater versions of the combat maneuver feats reduced to the improved option. Take the AC aspect of combat expertise and...

That would actually be pretty nice. I have combat expertise with my hunter. I have used it exactly one time over the course of 10 levels. When it did come up, I was really really glad I had it (we were fighting some kind of nasty ghost that was targeting touch AC and I had to be directly next to it), but that doesn't justify needing it as a feat.

It doesn't? I'm pretty sure I've seen that term being used in Pathfinder books... And a quick search tells me it means the same as "dress, wear, enrobe, put on".

Is there something I'm not seeing here?

You are saying "he swims while putting on armor" instead of "he swims while wearing armor". You don the armor to put it on. After it is on, you are no longer donning it; the verb specifically means putting it on.

On Cyrad's point about fighters being bland-

There are a couple of things I have seen: despite fighters usually being decked out in full plate mail, they rarely use combat maneuvers unless they are specifically built for it (and when they are, they just do that one thing over and over). Some of this seems to just be not wanting to get hit, even though they have the AC to deal with it. But a lot of this is because combat maneuvers are just so difficult to pull off against the opponents you really need it to work on.

As an example, I remember in one scenario we were getting beaten up by a cleric who was channeling, and I had a raging barbarian. I was like I'll steal his holy symbol. I'm a strong guy; I should be able to. I rolled pretty high and couldn't do it. It was way easier to just hit the guy. Your basic fighter would have never been able to, probably even with improved steal. It felt really anti climactic to have a cool way to solve a problem and then just not be able to. And I feel like a fighter should have been able to pull off that feat where a barbarian couldn't. And stealing the holy symbol would not have totally disabled the guy; he still hit really really hard with his sword.

The risk vs reward of combat maneuvers really needs to be examined. Your basic monk has the same problem; they should be the kings of wrestling and disarming and things, but in practice they rarely can. Maybe giving both something like martial flexibility from level 1 would be a good idea. And maybe adding dexterity to CMB, as well? But then I don't want to see every fighter using every other action to blind their opponent with dirty trick, you know? but there should be some way to encourage fighters to be looking for opportunities like this.

Gronka wrote:

Pretty much. Fighters only get 2 skill points a level; usually that means they can't even climb or swim as well as the rogue or bard. Or jump as well because they don't get acrobatics in class.or perception. The big dumb barbarian can afford to max all of those, while the skilled fighter who has trained for longer can't. I would change that.

Weapon Master's Handbook

By 9th level (once at lvl 5-8, once at 9+) acrifice 2 feats, for two instances of Advance Weapon Training: Versatile Training. You easily have the feats and then a human Fighter with a 7 Int suddenly has (effectively) 6 skill ranks per level. (1 normal, 1 from race, 4 skills at max rank)

But a fighter should not have to give up one or two feats for 2 or 4 more skill points. (which is what it comes down to for your average fighter) =/

Does nobody remember that there's a low level spell for this?

Haha. I do! I use it for my halfling mammoth rider's T Rex

MrSin wrote:

Malwing wrote:

I heard wind that there was an argument that there was little to no class power disparity from someone at Paizo. Is there a link to this argument?

Here's James Jacobs on it. Not a big fan of that statement myself. Mostly because it claims balance is the GM's job. Bleh.

I can sorta see where he's going regardless of whether or not I agree.

To many times I've seen parties with no casters fall apart when coming across an otherwise easily bypassed encounter, and just as often I've seen the same thing happen when the party is full of full casters that blow their good spells early and die to the first thing to touch them. An unbalanced party can kill you pretty fast.

I also try to GM in ways that make martials more useful by making creative terrain, favoring groups of monsters, having monsters use strategies that target casters. I am also not a fan of 5 minute work days and will totally roll random encounters when people sleep in dangerous places, and if my players don't stop big bad evil guy TONIGHT then he finished his big bad evil plan.

Where I disagree is when you bring in the amount of situations where non-magical classes cannot do ANYTHING. That number is pretty high and one of the worst feelings in the world is twiddling my thumbs for half an hour.

Pretty much. Fighters only get 2 skill points a level; usually that means they can't even climb or swim as well as the rogue or bard. Or jump as well because they don't get acrobatics in class.or perception. The big dumb barbarian can afford to max all of those, while the skilled fighter who has trained for longer can't. I would change that.

And then spells basically make most of those skill points useless anyways.
I really think once you have a high enough climb or swim, you should gain a climb or swim speed. And I don't think wizards should get fly in class, unless they come from a species that flies naturally anyways. I think acrobatics you could combine acrobatics with fly. With those changes, if you need someone to fly and need to make sure he won't plummet to the ground, it is better for the wizard to cast it on the fighter or rogue or other mundane character.

This sounds like the classic hostile/adversarial DM. They're all over the place. Check out the games running on these forums and you'll find a few of them.

Just walk away. Thank them for the game but part ways and don't look back. You can do better.

I really don't understand why they exist. Any GM with a decent grasp of the rules could wipe out almost any party at any time and still stay within the rules. Flexing imaginary muscles is not what the game is about. It's about providing challenges and telling stories.

Wow. I posted that before I had finished reading the other half of your original post.

This GM is not just a crappy GM; he's a pretty immature jerk. He takes your powers away for not killing people, then punishes you for being a villain. He set you up for disaster (and for no fun) every step of the way. He seems to have no concept of how characters actually act in the world (or in real life). Most reasonable characters (chaotic characters are still reasonable, just less conforming) would not just attack a temple randomly, especially just a single person. That's suicidal and stupid. If he wants you to eliminate the other temple, that is something that would reasonably take a lot of preparation, and would likely be it's own story line.

See if you can find another group.

At level one, that's really crappy of the GM to take the spells away and not tell you why.

Usually if you get class abilities taken from you, you have done something so bad that you should know what it is without thinking about it too much. If you don't know why, it should be some kind of important plot hook- maybe that king you helped out is razing whole forests in order to supply his war effort, or something similar. I have never heard of someone getting a class ability taken away just for entering an opposing temple. Possibly being unable to cast while on the temple grounds of a really important holy site would make sense, but that would probably be because of that temple's god intervening, not because you had done anything wrong against your god, and should be limited to that specific site.

This feels like the GM playing against the players instead of playing with them. The game is not a competition.

What I'm saying, though, is that the economics of pathfinder are really out of whack, anyways. A castle costs 500,000 or 1,000,000 gp to build, according to 3.5; in PF, I think it's still in the hundreds of thousands, which seems like it puts it outside the affordability of most kingdoms.

According to the rules, any commoner with a 12 int could be an adept, use scribe scroll, and use his 3 spells per day to scribe 3 scrolls, and get about 35 gp in profit every single day, which is, as you were saying, is over a months' wage. That's 7,000 gp a year only working 200 days (and 6 hours a day at that). You would expect any city to have a number of pretty mundane businessmen like this who in a couple of years have saved up more money than a 5th or 6th level character. A city like Absalom would certainly provide plenty of demand for their products. The local magic shop owner should be richer than most nobility.

So what I'm saying is, don't worry about the economics or ruining the suspension of disbelief; it's easy to say they invented a magical printing press for scrolls or something, but the product is out of the reach of adventurers because they don't want the technology falling in to the wrong hands. Which is, I guess, something that should be addressed: is this a class designed for an NPC army, or is this a class you are expecting PCs to take?

The other thing is, it seems like scrolls will provide a big advantage in versatility; you can have a number of scrolls ready for any eventuality, where most casters only get a couple of spells a day that must be prepared ahead of time.
According to the character advancement chart, normal npcs start with 260 gp, and heroic start with 390. You could easily outfit each level 1 npc with chainmail, 4 scrolls, a weapon, and a shield. (likely these warriors will be heroic and higher level, anyways, as you were describing a highly trained army instead of conscripts).

The combat spell effects seem like a neat way to give them the feel you are looking for.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

No. The dragon disciple line means a sorcerer, bard, or now i guesse the arcanist.

Don't forget Bloodragers.

Did they ever make a ruling about the robe of arcane heritage?

I see no reason not to extend a 4+int minimum to all classes. Witches and wizards have terrible class skill lists outside knowledges and will have poor controlling stats unless built very specifically for a skill role at the expense of combat stats, and knowledges devalued by their diversity.

The only int classes with the skills and stats to do anything but knowledge monkey as more than a last ditch backup are the alchemist and investigator, who are supposed to be skill classes.

I have a gnome wizard that I built to be more a diplomatic type who uses more utility spells, and in combat mostly buffs and helps out the martial characters. Basically I was tired of playing PFS games where every single person dumps charisma and we can't get basic information about what we are supposed to do.

I took a level of investigator for the class skills, and even with a decent intelligence, it is next to impossible to afford the skills I would like to have- diplomacy, linguistics, sense motive, bluff, spellcraft and a few ranks of disguise, stealth, perception, and various knowledge skills. My character really isn't an optimal wizard at all, and if I tried to that, the extra 2 skill points would just go in to more knowledge skills. I can't imagine many other people going through all the trouble to turn a mage in to a skill monkey; without dipping it would probably take both traits and the cosmopolitan feat just to get the basic diplomatic skills.

I kind of meant using both together; Almost all basic soldiers would have enough background in magic to at least be able to use wands to cure each other, scrolls like monkey fish or enlarge person decently effectively, etc, and a couple of cantrips. Soldiers are all equipped with at least a few of these scrolls that are provided to them.

Giving the fighters a caster level at level 1 and spell list would be awesome, because then you don't have to worry about the scrolls ever failing. And then if this fits the flavor of your world better, don't worry too much about keeping track of how much the country is spending on scrolls. The economics of pathfinder can't exactly be called realistic anyways, and it all is really only there to support the flavor; none of it is a hard and fast rule. If the military complex uses magic this often, they probably know how to mass produce scrolls or have deals worked out with spellcasters or whatever. It's a lot different from a small band of adventurers showing up at a store and saying "make this for us".

Then on top of that, you could make the ratio of spellcasters to fighters 1:1. If you are mostly dealing with low level guys, your basic magus really only needs a 12 in intelligence. Usually, the magus will only be 2 hp and 1 to hit behind the fighters. Toughness and weapon focus will mitigate both of those.

Here's a couple of ideas (not sure if they are quite what you are looking for)

Create a fighter archetype that gives UMD as a class skill and bonuses to it, one or two cantrips early on, and maybe 1 first level spell per day at level 2 and going up from there (maybe they don't have the training and personal magical ability of wizards, but they know enough to use scrolls and the like that other casters have already created).

Also,
most groups of men at arms will have several magical tacticians linked to their unit. These could be bards or maguses with some minor changes to their spell lists and altering some class abilities. You could create a magus or bard archetype that has more group spells and spells that are more tactical (things like bless, see invisibility, enlarge person, etc). Maybe look to cleric domains for powers that help allies. Maybe create some magus arcana that helps allies in some way (giving enhancement bonuses to others' certain skill checks instead of to his own weapons).

Assume that for every five basic fighter types in an army, there will be at least one of these tactical spellcasters.

Oh, I had an idea for a magical communication device that allows instant communication between any two points (in this case major cities). It's just 2 cans with a tight string tied to each, but the string goes ethereal or through some other plane. Every so often the line gets cut, meaning someone (likely the adventurers) has to go on a perilous journey in order to tie the string back together and restore communication.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

I think that it would be insane to give wizards more than two points per level. And it would be kind of odd to have fighters with more skills than wizards.

Actually, I don't find it that odd. Spellcasting is a skill unto itself, and fighters don't spend time learning spellcasting, so they can learn other things.

It's also a something that goes back a long way in the D&D lineage tree. Back when skills were called "proficiencies," fighters got more of them than wizards.

If I remember correctly that's because they were also spent on weapons as well. Now, fighters simply get every simple and martial weapon there is in the books, while wizards are still restricted to specific weapons.

There were separate optional rules for nonweapon proficiencies that today are represented as skills. They were pretty broad and were more for determining your character' background and what he may know how to do in the world if a situation came up (like, a pirate may know how to mend sails, a tanner may be able to figure it out, but a man-at-arms would probably need help, although he would have knowledge the others wouldn't). I'm pretty sure fighters got more of these proficiencies in 2nd ed.

haha. giving wizards 2 more points doesn't seem like such a huge deal, either; realistically they would usually just go to rounding out knowledge skills better, which is something Wizards thematically should be good at, anyways.

It would not. They probably need a lot of non-skill advantages as well to be really competent, honestly.

See here for my Fighter fix, just for example.

I like a lot of your fixes; I will definitely consider them. The monk one with adding wisdom to a bunch of skills is pretty cool. flavor-wise you can describe it as the guy having mystical "mind-over-matter" training or as him being a worldly, wily opponent who can take advantage of any situation.

Why not give every class an additional 2 skill points per level?

Examples...
Fighter: 4 + Int modifier
Sorcerer: 4 + Int modifier
Druid: 6 + Int modifier
Bard: 8 + Int modifier
Rogue: 10 + Int modifier

I feel like Barbarians and Druids and Rogues have enough skill points to do what they are expected to do but still be kind of careful about allocating resources.

Fighters, though, seem like they can't do much outside of combat. If you're mounted, you can swim and climb mediocrely and probably nothing else, despite being one of the more athletic characters. Clerics seem to have the same problem; if you want to keep heal and knowledge: religion up, you are probably sacrificing diplomacy and sense motive and spellcraft and the other knowledges you might want a face character to have. Not that I want the character to do everything, but having a couple of options is nice.

Also, back when worrying about running out of food was a real problem, "Troll in a can"; basically a still living piece of troll in a jar. Open the jar and it grows some, chop off the new meat and cook it (to keep it from regenerating) and seal the jar back up.

These are hilarious.

My favorite cursed item was a set of gloves in 2nd edition that look and act like "gloves of Reconnaissance" (still the same in Pathfinder). When you use them, you see anyone on the other side as sleeping or drunk or tied up or whatever. At the same time, the people on the other side can see you clearly.

And, on a similar note, why aren't acrobatics and perception class skills for them? I am considering changing this for my campaign, and was wondering if this would be a problem.

I feel like fighters, as typical men at arms or knights or mercenaries or whatever, should be capable of recognizing a threat, and should be able to jump and balance at least ok with all their physical training, and should be better at balancing while wearing armor than a rogue who happens to be wearing plate mail. And I'm kind of tired of seeing people have to hoist fighters across ledges or whatever. This is the guy who should be doing that on his own. It's very un-heroic and silly.

For that matter, would it be wrong to give most classes 4 skill points? I don't really understand, from a flavor perspective, why fighters and clerics get 2 and barbarians and oracles get 4; the former are generally presented as more formally trained or whatever. I kind of understand paladins only having 2, being a martial class with some spellcasting ability, so they may be stretching their resources thin. But then bloodragers are given 4 (and a more versatile spell list).

So long story short, can I give all characters 4 skill points per level (unless they would normally have more), or would this make things too unbalanced? and can I give fighters perception and acrobatics as class skills? Does anyone foresee any major problems with this?

Artificial 20 wrote:

Let's try to stop this discussion going in circles by making an utterly clear, absolute statement.

If you do something your players would not like if you told them, and only get away with it by not doing so, you are a bad GM.

Objectively, whether or not you agree.

Haven't kept up with the thread much since I posted, but I thought I'd respond to this as a fervent advocate of the "pro-fudge" movement. When I mark down the damage on the boss' attacks just a bit to let you keep standing for one more round at 3 health, securing the vital damage necessary to win the encounter? I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to spoil the intense scenario, wondering if you should call a retreat, whether you should run alone, whether I'll just knock you out with the next attack or focus my full attack to ensure you're dead. I'm going to let you breath a huge sigh of relief when the damage trends on the lower end of the spectrum, letting you feel like serendipity looked kindly upon you at the most clutch moments.

If I played the rules as they were, 100% of the time, a fairly significant number of my encounters would end in tpks. Period. I know the system at least better than most who play at my table, and if I used every ability the creatures had as smartly as I could, I'd wipe them the majority of the time. And I SHOULD. After all, they're a seperate series of motivations and power levels, and I'm a single hive-mind controlling an assortment of monsters all working towards the singular goal of ending them. Its not fair from the start if I play to the best of my ability.

Does that make me a bad GM? Maybe. Maybe I suck at estimating encounters, maybe you'd prefer me to open my games, including new players, with 'I'm going to subvert reality in your favor or against your favor if I think it necessary.' But I'm not. Because at the end of the day, whats important is that my players BELIEVE the fight was hard-fought and hard-won, with luck and tactics salvaging the day. Sure, in...

To me, the game should really be all about telling a story. That's why it kind of bugs me that 3rd ed has reduced so much to dice rolls. A lot of it, yeah, some rules were needed and it's great to have a way to rule on things like grabbing an enemy and tying them up, or whether you can hide from the enemy as you see them approach. But others, I'm supposed to ignore a plot point or a chance to figure out how a clever trap works because no one made the perception check? It reduces a lot of what makes the game great to random chance.

Ahem.

The highest level 2nd level spell was Aganazzar's Scorcher, which you are forgiven for not knowing because it was a Realms spell. 2-16 dmg/rd for 1 rd/level.
But! for your orog encounter...the wizard would simply cast sleep and take out the orcs and 1-2 orogs instantly. Or web them all and kill them easily. Or stinking cloud them all and wipe them out while they were helpless.
There was a Firecube spell from FR as well, but 5' radius and 4d4 probably wouldn't do the job. Flame Arrow would do 4d6, but would only hit one of them. You picked an inconvenient level for damage spells, because next level the wizard casts fireball and they all die to avg 17 dmg and needing a 16 or 19 to save.
=====
Actually, in 1e, melees did much more dmg/health of their opponents per swing. No Con bonus, big str bonuses, and the fact swords did extra dmg against size L creatures were a thing. It was also much easier to hit them reliably.

In 2e, the same applied...BUT, they added a whole slew of higher HD monsters (i.e. taking dragons up to 20 HD and stuff). That's skewing your perceptions. A 7hd monster in 2e was just as vulnerable to a fighter as it was in 1e. Now, they gave Giants +4 HD and AC to give them another round of staying power, and did much the same with dragons and age levels, and definitely to fiends and stuff. But there were still very few creatures that got to the 100 HP range, and a high level fighter in 2e could 1-2 round solo 95% of the creatures in the game with a decent set of gear.

Melee characters got WORSE in 3e because they gave con bonuses to monsters, which doubled and tripled hit points easily, raised armor classes to the stratosphere (AC -10 (30) for Lolth was superseded by -11 (31) in 2e for Great Wyrm dragons (From the original max of -2 (22) for Dragons)...before buffs!...and those AC's are now 40+!) and they took the multiple attacks of melees, gave them to everyone, and then made it so you needed to not move to actually do your best damage, which drastically lowers your over-time Damage/rd.

They did the exact opposite with spellcasters, allowing them to move and do full damage, and made more spells more effective with level, instead of less effective (saving throws meant save or suck spells, well, sucked at high levels, because the monsters saved).

On a pure ratio of every combat, melees were a much better damage output threat in 1 and 2E then in 3e and PF.

And then you add in how strong things like Giant Slayers and Dragon Slaying weapons were (the forerunners of Bane weapons) and yeah, melees got hosed good.

==Aelryinth

My point, though, is that that would be 1/5 of the wizard's total spells for the day. With about 4 or more encounters per day, plus wandering monster checks when you decide to rest, that's pretty significant. and as you pointed out, fighters and the like were still the best source of steady damage in 2nd ed. But when a wizard can afford to cast fireball every single encounter at level 5 or 6 (and a sorcerer easily can), that really changes.

Gronka wrote:

Harleequin wrote:

Point buys are the fairest method - I've seen some horrendous situations arise from rolling.

That being said I have less of an issue with rolling for HP at leveling time - although in my mind giving max HP is the fairest way to reflect the differences between classes and give some balance to caster/martial.

In fact some way to give a min HP per level for martial (D10+ hp) classes might be a good idea.

I believe 2nd edition had this; with a high constitution you rerolled a 1 (or even 2) on your hp die. I think they may have even brought it back for 5th edition?

In 2nd edition you couldn't gain more than 2 hp/level for bonus con unless you were a fighter/paladin/ranger iirc, it wasn't a reroll though.

Oh, I found the rule. It doesn't start until you have at least 20 con, so I guess it's mostly like really tough monsters that got that.

Chengar Qordath wrote:

The quote may be Jacobs, but between the design choices we've seen in Pathfinder and everything SKR revealed after leaving the company, the sentiment seems to apply to at least some of the people in the design team as well.

... that must be why rogues and monks were strengthened, summoners were weakened, theres is a whole chapter of a RPG-line hardcover about weakening mages, a system that you can give martials to make them abit more powerful for free, the weaker spellcasters in occult adventures, and they've started making more powerful feats for fighters like the bravery feats in Ultimate Intrigue...

The design team seems aware of the issue to me. Whether or not they have always agreed, I cannot say, but recent materials seem to indicate they are taking more action (YMMV on whether currently level of the action is enough of course).

this is my take on the whole balance of power (it will take a couple of points, so bear with me):

In pathfinder, fights are over many times in a couple of rounds.

In 2nd edition, bad guys had a LOT more hp compared to the amount of damage characters could deal, and there weren't that many ways of upping damage (this isn't saying that 2nd ed was balanced; it had issues).

Spellcasting resources were much more limited (1 or 2 spells at 1st level). The most reliable steady damage had to come from a fighter or similar beating the crap out of guys. The best way a wizard could use his one spell was to make the fighter hit things better, or help the fighter get to the bad guys or whatever else.

In pathfinder, all wizards will start out with at least 3 spells per day, plus usually some other source of magical damage. Sorcerers will start with 6. It's now possible to make a spellcaster that just blasts.

Let's take an encounter at level 4 for an example. In 2nd ed, this could mean 3 orogs (15 hp) and 3 orcs (5 hp). A level 4 2 handed fighter would do possibly 1d10+2 (and there was no cleave back then, so each guy would take at least one action to kill, and the orogs would take at least 2). The highest damage spell I could find was burning hands, with a maximum of 11 damage. At this level, the wizard only has 5 spells per day. this would probably be the best use for it. Lets say the wizard kills the orcs, that still leaves about 6 turns for the fighter to kill the orogs, assuming every attack hits. The fighter may have around 30 hp (basically half the enemy's total).

In PF, this level would mean 4 troglodytes (13 hp).
The fighter with a 2 handed weapon will be doing 1d12+10 damage, meaning he can easily kill one every turn (likely 2 with cleave). At this level the wizard has 9 spells to cast. Even if he uses 2 or 3, he is still ahead of the 2nd ed wizard who has not used any. The encounter is over with practically no expended resources, aside from maybe some HP damage (which is much more easily healed, and which characters get a lot more; our fighter probably has about 40, so almost as much as all the troglodytes combined).

This means that most fights are over in like a round or two; everything feels like a cake walk compared to 2nd edition. Because wizards can afford to just blast all day long, many of them do instead of trying to use their spells to actively help the rest of the party. If the HP of enemies were higher and fights more challenging, I think it would make martial characters feel more necessary and heroic. But in PF, when you pull in a bad guy with a lot more HP, it means they are also usually dealing a lot more damage, so trying to fix this really means re-working some other elements of the system.

Point buys are the fairest method - I've seen some horrendous situations arise from rolling.

That being said I have less of an issue with rolling for HP at leveling time - although in my mind giving max HP is the fairest way to reflect the differences between classes and give some balance to caster/martial.

In fact some way to give a min HP per level for martial (D10+ hp) classes might be a good idea.

I believe 2nd edition had this; with a high constitution you rerolled a 1 (or even 2) on your hp die. I think they may have even brought it back for 5th edition?

he dumped to a 7 wisdom, that be so scary to me if he was in my group as a player. his will save has to suck. he is unbalanced.

Yep. Take advantage of that. Invisible wizard casts dominate person, maybe uses a quickened vanish to get out of dodge. Now that giant barbarian poses more of a threat to his friends than the enemy does. A 9th level wizard should be able to do all that and is a reasonable CR for a 7th level party.

I guess allowing +4 to an ability feels like even more power creep to me. If someone boosts their str up to 22, at level 1 that means +6 or +9 damage; power attack means another 2 or 3, so +8 or +12. That seems like a lot.

With dex up to 20 or 22, a level 3 goblin unchained rogue could outdamage and likely out-ac the average fighter. You could bump up constitution to get a lot of hp and basically take on the role of fighter while having a whole lot more utility outside of combat.

I'm not saying I expect that to happen, just that +4 to one ability score seems like a pretty big deal compared to what most PCs get.

I would be making PCs objectively better than standard kolbolds and better rounded than the standard orc (+2 str and wis,-2 int instead of +4 str but -2 int,-2 wis,-2 char)

Oh, also. NPC and enemy monstrous races won't have their ability scores changed; just the PCs.

So I am putting together a campaign world where goblins, kolbolds, and orcs aren't necessarily evil (They were created as evil, but the gods left hundreds of years ago and don't control the morality of their minions any more)

I would like the players to have the chance to play them if they want, but I am going to alter the ability scores some because the +4 Str or Dex is too much, so I wanted to get an idea if this would be upsetting the balance too much or if people foresee any problems.

I was thinking for orcs +2 str, +2 wis, -2 int. I originally had though +2 str +2 con -2 int, but that seems like it would make them the uber choice for any fighter or barbarian. +2 wis -2 int seems good because orcs are usually presented as naturally cunning and perceptive but placing no value on education.

For goblins, definitely +2 dex, -2 cha, since goblins are generally unpleasant and quick. I was thinking maybe the other +2 could go in to con? since they seem to be natural survivors and are ok with eating all sorts of gross things. Or maybe +2 int?

For Kobolds, +2 dex; probably -2 str. For the other +2, either int or charisma, since they are presented as schemers who are at least distantly related to dragons.

Any input would be great.

Azata gets weapon proficiency for free, so I really only need limbs once, which I could do at level 2. I am probably not going to do that right from the get-go, though. I would rather have a small eidolon to sneak around for a few levels.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

You've left the rules and are into dm's call territory, which is a bad place for a central character concept to be in pfs

There is no RAW to use, so you will have table variance that will decimate your whole character concept.

No only will this suck, it will eat 10-15 minutes of every game where a GM says "how are you getting that damage?"

None of your other players will appreciate the delay, and you will not appreciate the task of explaining.

I will make it a point to ask before the game starts. If the GM says no, the eidolon can always carry a shield or have a bow out. I'm really not too worried about if it works or not, as far as game play goes. I was more wondering if there has been any clear interpretation of the rules that I can cite.

Two Handed Weapons needs a Main Hand to wield, a character only ever has One Main Hand.

If you were able to get a GM to let you do it, or do one Two Handed weapon and another weapon in an off hand, then the damage would be the same as TWF, 1.0 str mod for the "Main" hand, .5 for the off.

Yes, this is an oft argued point that is complete with gnashing of teeth and great gesturing all around.

In the rules for two handed weapons it doesn't say anything about needing a main hand to wield it. It just says two hands are needed.

From the Core Rulebook:
Two-Handed: Two hands are required to use a two-handed melee weapon effectively. Apply 1-1/2 times the character's Strength bonus to damage rolls for melee attacks with such a weapon

Maybe it is just that I play too much PFS, but who in the world chooses a size huge pet? Given how much time is spent in 5 foot corridors, that means either you never get to use it, or you have to dump a lot of resources into trying to fit a huge size creature into 5 feet. It also means that if it does engage the enemy, no one else can get to the fight

I took the Mammoth Rider prestige class with my halfling hunter/unchained rogue with a tyrannosaurus animal companion. although my guy is more of a stealthy skill monkey. I keep carry companion cast, and I have a belt of the weasel for it so he won't get stuck somewhere. I really only bring it out as a last resort against the big bad boss, or if we have some other real need for it. It's too much to manage and to unwieldy to use all the time, so the rest of the time I am flanking and making the fighters hit better and harder with distracting attack, debilitating injury, butterfly's sting, and a menacing weapon.

I kind of figured it would be a vague area. I'm not too worried about if it will work in each individual game, just if there has been any kind of ruling on this or a certain way the rules should be interpreted.