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I've seen some sources suggest that Black Dragons like using traps. Litter the battlefield with them. The battle gets much more tense if a the ground collapses under a heavily armored character and they get entangled in a mess of aquatic vegetation. Now your party is split between saving a character from drowning and fending off a dragon's assault.
It really depends on the setting and tone you're going for in your campaign. In most games I try to ensure players have access to a priest capable of raise dead or resurrection. It keeps the players happy, they just pay the cost or even owe the church a favor if they can't pay. In a more serious campaign raise dead might be hard to get and truly miraculous. A horror game raise dead may well come with its own risks like insanity, demon possession, or a curse. I've also played in less serious games where the world is littered with vending machine resurrection shrines. Place body on shrine, insert 1000 GP into slot, recieve True Ressurection. They're all fun, and part of the tone of the game.
I always found that trying to twist the group's goals to suit your own ends makes playing an evil character in a good/neutral party quite easy. Even if I can't twist around current goals I tend to justify continued involvement by having my character tell himself that these characters have served him well in his rise to power and throwing away useful tools is bad practice. If people start doubting your evilness, you just need to remind them. Evil spells and demon summoning to win fights helps, but occasionally a juicy opportunity will pop up and you should take it. One that worked well for me, the party was fighting a Draco-Lich and it had just dropped the Dwarf Fighter below 0 HP. I followed that by somehow opening up a bottomless pit under my LE Enchanter. Being unwilling to die, I responded by casting a spell to swap places with the unconscious Dwarf saving my own skin and condemning him to death. The party objected but eventually accepted because odds were that dwarf wasn't going to survive anyway, and I kept a powerful spell-caster on the battlefield. Resurrection was an option anyway. Nobody doubted I was playing an evil character after that.
Was Delta Green, a modern game of Call of Cthulhu, so not sure how well it applies. However, for reasons Nyarlothotep was disguised as a human and entertaining himself by trying to manipulate the players. The players were having none of it and attacked him. Long story short, TPK during the first conversation, which was only really supposed to be an information dump to get things moving.
You'll need to be a little more specific than, military mage. Any half decent military would specialize their mages for different roles. The two most obvious roles are that of artillery, focused on aoe eliminating masses of weak troops, and what might be best called assassins, focused on the elimination of dangerous single targets like high level combatants and other mages. The needs of both are very different and there are many other roles as well. Siege Mages, and buffers come to mind.
Well that is good to hear. The Ultimate series is my favorite series of supplements and I'm glad to see more work going into. I'm still hoping for that nobility stuff though.
Kind of bringing this in from another older thread, but is this still happening? I also got distracted with some suggestions people had made for a follow-up to Ultimate Rulership, focusing on either strongholds and castle building or on nobility and noble characters (or perhaps both), so there's been some idea-work there as well.
True Resurrection, otherwise get used to your life as a pile of ash. It's part of the cost you pay for being a Vampire. Should have been a Lich.
I generally write at least 5-6 pages of backstory before I write anything on a character sheet. Doing it the other way around feels wrong to me (I want to have a good idea who this person is before I start playing them.) I couldn't do that, I need the character sheet info to give me ideas to seed my backstory with. Much easier to explain how a character became the one on the character sheet than to build a character story from nothing. Without the sheet a character's backstory looks like, "Uhh, he's a guy and he is here today because, uhh, reasons." A well developed character sheet can actually suggest ways to add nuances to a character's story when you explain why the character has an obscure feat or other character feature.
Well I didn't say most people are level 5, I said they can expect to reach it in their life time. In the real world that would generally be people at the peak of their career and approaching retirement. As for people and being able to fight and getting tougher, I'm not so sure you give people enough credit, people are tough, and people fight poorly because they panic. I also said people don't have optimal builds, as far as I'm concerned your typical level 5 common NPC probably has a level 5 different classes to cover the broad range of skills and experiences a person develops in a lifetime. Which leaves then with maybe +1 BaB. People that dedicate their life to a single focus are rare. That said, no matter how you look at it there is a very high level of abstraction involved and any level based and HP based system does a poor job of simulating reality.
Probably a legacy of starting with AD&D where the bulk of the population was 0 level. Started with AD&D myself. I just ran with what life experience the rules were telling me about the setting. Mainly, people learn and get better at things, which can't be replicated by a work of level 1 characters. It's also why I strongly encourage the use of the re-training rules, because people get worse at things they don't practice and better at thing they do.
I recognize the realities level one play. Weak, generally incompetent characters for whom everything is quite dangerous. I adjust the way I run my games around this. So, in my games level 1 really is the kid fresh out of high school who knows nothing about the real world. Everyone else has a few levels. I generally assume that everyone can reasonably reach level 5 during their lifetime and exceptional people can go higher. Most characters in the world have far from optimal builds since all they really need is to be 'good enough' at what they do rather than the pinnacle of human achievement, so it works out pretty well.
So you're saying that realistic application of cover is actually an effective tactic in this game?
We're talking full-on exposure in which you need to hold your breath and start experiencing explosive decompression (bludgeoning damage). Starfinder doesn't seem to have rules in regards to this scene. Explosive decompression in space is a complete myth. Though trying to hold your breath is a good way to pop your lungs, so there is that. Exposure to hard vacuum would cause massive swelling and bruising along with a severe case of the Bends. The most dangerous part is that you have to immediately expell all of the air from your lungs to avoid damaging them. After that you're going to have to worry about asphyxiation which will come fast thanks to no air. Self-recovery is also almost impossible as you'll be rendered unconscious in a matter of seconds. Space is dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as some people believe. If you want real dangerous try the crushing depths of the oceans.
Well Power Armor kinda has me concerned, reach is the only real advantage from what I can tell, otherwise Heavy or Light armor is probably going to be better for a character in most situations. The ACs aren't that great, for their level the STR boost isn't that to special and they generally have fewer upgrade slots than other armors.
Made it to 23 once in 3.5. Life makes long-term games very difficult. In fact it was life that finally killed that game too.
Invest the money in businesses and turn it into a hell of a lot more money down the road. 900 gold isn't that great 100,000 gold on the other hand goes a long way.
How does this actually keep coming up? It's actually really easy now in Pathfinder. Chaotic Good believes in personal freedom for everyone and supports and helps others. Chaotic Neutral believes in personal freedom, maybe for everyone, but the only person's freedom that actually matters is their own, they are looking out for themselves. Chaotic Evil is only interested in their own personal freedom and are going to go about getting is at the expense of others. They have no problem hurting others to get what they want. I think everyone gets Lawful vs Chaotic, it's and ordered vs freeform lifestyle. Everyone seems to be tripped up by the Good Neutral Evil perspective. Good is concerned for others and goes out of their way to help them. Neutral is more selfish, they are looking out for themselves, it doesn't make them malevolent, they might even think of other people, but they aren't going to stick their neck out for them. Evil does what they do at the expense of other, they have no problem hurting others to suit their needs. I find that most people in life tend the be Neutral or Chaotic Neutral, and it seems that Paizo agrees regularly stating NPC's as Neutral or Chaotic Neutral.
Well gonna have to check it out. I gotta support any effort to bring the game out of the "Hit it and kill it" mentality, and broaden it's horizons to encompass the stories of the world outside of dungeons and violence. Now I hope to see some third party stuff embrace even higher concept stuff like rulership as a viable character class/concept.
Executing a helpless prisoner no matter the danger level is slippery slope territory. That said as long as you don't make a habit of it I wouldn't be concerned. I always tell people CN is all about personal freedom, and does generally care about others one way or the other. Given your willingness to help ensure the freedom of others a solid argument can be made for your character being CG. CN seems to be a happy place for you if you're okay with occasionally doing some morally objectionable things.
Why not add strength to AC? The point was to illustrate that it would be overpowered to due so. Realism aside it is a game balance issue.
Why not add strength to AC?
RAW, I'd say nothing special happens. It also helps with everybody's sanity. That said, mythology usually goes with the weird stuff happening. Loki transformed into a mare and gave birth to Odin's horse. Pretty sure the Minotaur was the result of Poseidon turning into a bull and raping/murdering a whole wedding reception. Stuff like that. It really goes down to the kind of story you want to tell and you and your players are comfortable telling. Maybe your Druid is cool with being the mother to a couple of Bear cubs and decides to spend most of her time in Bear form to raise them.
So evil enchanter uses mind control to get what he wants isn't a fair method?
Hobgoblins would excel in a modern military. High dex helps with shooting, not getting shot, and general agility based tasks. The toughest physical challenges are all endurance based, so the High Con is a huge benefit. They also aren't stupid and in fact have no penalties holding them back. Their stats provide then with the ability to excel at complex tactics, which wI'll makes then scary when organized. Initiate combat with stealth archers, follow up with tough hand to hand fighter to fix the enemy's position while the archers continue to pick off their targets from a safe distance.
I found that White Mage Arcanist archetype with 1 level of Swashbuckler and picking up the Eldritch Knight prestige class made for a superb Red Mage.
Given the setting why wouldn't he just masquerade as a psionic character?
If I was to just experiment I would probably no go straight to min-max and instead roll with something riskier on the chance it might work and be fun. The idea that comes to mind would be to build an Omni-Competent Battle Hydra. Title stolen from Exalted. Concept is a warrior that quickly changes weapons and fighting style to perfectly match and dominate in any situation. To translate that to Pathfinder I'd try to see how far Mythic could push things like a Brawler's ability to change combat feats on the fly.
One idea we had was the damage was 1/2 fire and 1/2 concussive force (sound) and added a bull rush effect moving outward from the center of the blast. If you want the equivalent of a real explosion splitting the damage between fire and sound would be the way to go. A knock back effect is much less fitting unless you're going for a Hollywood type explosion, or an insane overkill explosion. Quantifying how deadly an explosive is can be very difficult. If your standard is a fragmentation grenade exploding on the ground in the open the heat and pressure waves have negligible immediate effect, it's the shrapnel created by the grenade fragmenting that is dangerous in this can. You might want to get your hearing checked and checked for a concussion, but if you have a way to avoid the shrapnel the grenade isn't all that dangerous in this scenario. In contrast, you can safely say that all grenades are very deadly in confined spaces. There are as many reasons for this as there are kinds of grenades, but in the case of a fragmentation grenade the concussive pressure has no place to escape so it is reflected back into confined space producing far greater and much more deadly pressures. Long story short, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish as to how to do this. I will say it sounds like you're interested in something beyond to scope of a level 3 spell.
That sounds like a good way to adapt the Pathfinder rule set for a low-magic setting. It is, but I did it for a high magic setting going through an industrial revolution. I needed a way to make medical advances in technology really matter. I may also hate the idea of dedicated healer role in a party. This makes it far less required and still leaves it open for those players that actually like playing healers.
I feel that non-magical healing should be a big deal, so I bashed together a bunch of house rules to set the right tone for my game. I started with the Strain-Injury HP Variant. Which basically says most hp lose in combat is just the stress of avoiding getting hit, and healed in its entirety if you just stop to catch your breath for 5 minutes. Real injuries are reserved for things like Critical Hits, failed Saving Throws, and dropping to 0 HP. I went ahead an said Injuries must be healed through natural means or very powerful magic like Regenerate. I've added/changed a whole bunch of other rules to fine tune health and healing to my tastes, but that should be should be enough to get the idea that I've adjusted the rules to make natural healing, medicine, and medical knowledge a big deal in my games without forcing my players to take weeks or months of downtime to recover after every fight.
Honestly, there are much better things a Cleric can do than healing. Though unless they are built for it and filling out that role attacking isn't usually one of them. You might just want to see how things shake out once you get that Mythic tier. Mythic changes up things a lot, and your damage dealing potential should skyrocket if done right.
Seems you're party is seriously lacking in support characters, which is likely the root of your problem. Also 32 AC. You're doing your job and it sounds like you're doing it well. Nobody else is performing critical party roles. You should be asking your party casters to lead with crowd control, and buffs before getting involved in the killing. It also sounds like most of the other party members aren't performing that well in these intense situations so convincing them to shift to take on more support roles should get more performance out of the group as a whole.
Sounds like you need a damage dealer of some variety. Your front line is full, so archer, like a Ranger or a Zen Archer Monk, or some kind of blaster mage or kineticist.
I don't know about that my group has seem a lot of use from Arcanists with the White Mage Archetype. There are probably plenty of other ways out there to mix and match the spell lists too. On topic, I wouldn't allow someone to simply identify a character's class based on spell list. For one, class isn't an actual thing it's just a tool we as gamers use to describe a particular collection of skills and abilities. Two, magic in general tends to be quite diverse with a lot of exceptions to it's own rules. The whole exchange given in the example wreaks of meta-gaming. What I would allow is the possibility that under proper scrutiny the source of a Witch's magic can be identified. This would require far more than a simple skill check. At a minimum I'd require the witch and familiar be analyzed by Detect Magic while casting a spell.
The Aroden mystery is the least fun part of the entire setting for me. To the point that I actively try to forget that the mystery and even Aroden are even a thing to avoid rage quitting Golarion, which I actually did for a few years. Not that there is anything wrong with Aroden, he is the reason I first became interested in Golarion as a setting. I just somehow managed to not learn about the death of Aroden until after learning a LOT about the setting. The decision to make the coolest diety in modern fantasy rpgs and then kill him off before anybody gets to play with him in their setting is just all around bad judgement. Keeping the details of his death a secret because 'woo mystery' is just rubbing salt in the wound.
This is kinda important when examining the appropriateness of Cthulhu Mythos in Pathfinder. Conan is indirectly part of the greater Cthulhu Mythos. Howard wrote quite a bit set in the same universe as Lovecraft's Mythos. Of particular note is Kull the Conqueror, who was specifically in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos. Now everybody's favorite Conan the Barbarian was not ever formally part of the Cthulhu mythos, he does explicitly exist in same universe as Kull the Conqueror. Also worth noting is the Conan very much fought Mythos style monsters regularly. In the 1920's the Mythos is really scary because people believe they live in a safe and secure world that people understand. Conan's world everything was dangerous and magic was an accepted part of people's world view and accept that they can't understand it. Setting affects how you're story is going to be told.
However, when you land on someone, are you a "soft" object? With the cat boots, probably. When wearing your dwarven ironshod boots of hippy stomping? Probably not. Looks like a job for Stoneskin or something similar. Ensure that you're undoubtedly hard and heavy on impact.
I will support players attempting Super Mario builds. The real question is what happens when players decide that running an enemy through with a weapon while executing this maneuver. Just a thought, if the player misses you might want to use the rules for spash damage to determine where the player actually lands.
Personally, I think the biggest problem Pathfinder specifically has with Cthulhu is that they gave it a stat block. No, I've read everything Lovecraft wrote. The most appropriate thing you can do is Stat Cthulhu and other Lovecraftian horrors. One of the things that made those monsters scary was they were real tangible creatures. They were utterly alien and frequently followed very different rules, but they were real enough that protagonists very often killed or maimed the horror that they were facing. Getting hit by a boat had a rather dramatic impact on Cthulhu himself, he just got better. Now, while stating Cthulhu may be very appropriate, revealing those stats to your players is probably the least appropriate thing you can do. The unknown alien nature of these beings is just as important as they be real tangible things.
I have but one question the answer to which is critically important to me. Will this allow me to finally build a Final Fantasy Dragoon for Pathfinder?
Depending on the needs the players should seriously consider this.
My understanding is that Firearms are super rare outside of Alkenstar. That said if there is any place else that Gunslingers might gravitate toward it would be Numeria. I'd recommend you do what makes it work best for your game. If you have a player that wants to be a gunslinger throw a retired Gunslinger in Torch who now sells and makes guns and teaches shooting to those interested. Toss another in Starfall who gets harassed by the Technic League, but they never really go hard after him because his guns aren't 'real' tech.
1 Aroden alive
Bonus points stop assuming npcs are incompetent nobodies that never get better in life. Get rid of sucky npc classes and give people a few levels because people learn and get better at stuff.
I haven't had any Pathfinder parties that I would consider strange. I was in a rather hilarious party in AD&D2e some years ago though. The setting was we were students in an Adventuring Academy. Basically, Adventurer High School. The party at first glance wasn't that terrible. A human Fighter, with INT as his dump stat and a high charisma. The player was something of a tactical genius, so every time he had a good idea we made him roll an INT check to see if his character actually had that idea. A halfling thief, emphasis on thief, he was really into breaking and entering. Was also stubborn and kind of a dick. A dwarf fighter/thief, he generally helped out where he could, frequently that was running backup. He was a new player and didn't really know what he was doing. The character had his own hilarious traits, but those are kind of R rated so won't be discussed. A human Alchemist that did stuff, and may have gotten more power than deserved by virtue of being DM's girlfriend, but Alchemy does lend itself to some crazy stuff. And finally, my character, a bard named Brad with nothing going for him except for an 18 Charisma, which didn't help because back then Bard cast spell with INT. I had 1 Color Spray/Day. At the time I also had zero social skills as a person. My roleplay for Brad involved me declaring that I would use "The Winning Smile," at which point I would stand up at the table strike an impressive pose and throw on the biggest smile I could. NPC's crumple before my super power. Anyway, this entire group was characterized by an incredible degree of incompetence as traditional adventurers. All problems were solved via some combination of shenanigans. The thieves did a lot of breaking and entering to solve our problems. The alchemist had tricks up her sleeve. And myself and the Fighter were something of an unstoppable social team. At one point the fighter almost got the whole group into a lot of trouble by very publicly promising that an enemy with some degree of power and influence would die. I quickly turned it around and convinced everyone present that that "The Great Prophet had spoken," and suddenly word of our fighter's gift of prophesy spread like wildfire across the land. We accomplished a lot as a party, but to put it all into perspective 4 goblins proved to be a serious threat to that party, Brad was so incompetent that he proved to be a liability in combat.
I feel like there should be a way for you to summon Azathoth, and he'll just eat the world.
Damage output on firearms is quite small when compared to melee plus strength modifier unless you're playing a Gunslinger. That's okay, guns rarely kill by simple damage unless it is a large caliber round. Instead guns kill by bleeding, which is almost always easily treatable. What RPGS represent poorly is the bleeding caused by injuries. The advantage of a gun over a sword is its long range and easy to use not the damage it does.
I do strongly encourage players to view retraining as a very normal process that happens all the time. Characters don't stop learning and growing they just get out of practice with old skills as they learn new ones. It's not unreasonable to assume a character is out of practice with the abilities that made them successful adventurers as they picked up skills better suited to a more normal life. Adventurers that stay in top shape even in 'retirement' probably live a life more like Vegeta and Goku, in they constantly train hard to maintain their skills and struggle to relate to normal people as training comes first.
A satisfying single class alternative to a great many Gestalt builds.
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