Gronka's page

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.