This is the place to discuss levels, character options, or anything else related to metagame or real-life issues (a common use is telling the other players when you won't be "as available").

If you look at the top of this thread, you'll see some tabs. The "Gameplay" tab (when I open it) is where the actual gameplay will happen.

Since many of you are new to PbP, I would suggest reading This Post. It has lots of information about how to format and proper PbP etiquette.

I will try to judge the pacing here by the players. From what I see, it could be 1/day post or more... probably not less. Minimum of 1/day posting is typical common etiquette, or at the very least checking the thread once/day. Of course, we can be more relaxed about that if people are out or on weekends. Let me know (in this discussion thread) if you think my pacing is off. I won't be offended (especially since this is my first PbP game I've GMed) :)

You will (most likely) being using the actual PFS character alias to post. It's a good idea to have a "stat line." You can place this is many of the fields on your character profile (class, gender, etc.) I don't care where, as long as it appears underneath your character name when your character posts. This is important so that I know whether I have hit your character or not when I do attacks. You can even change it up as your AC changes (like mage armor, etc.) Here's an example of one of my stat lines for a character:

Half-Orc Spiritualist (Onmyoji) 1 | HP 10/10 | AC 12 | T 10 | FF 12 | CMD 10 | Fort +6 | Ref +2 | Will +9 | Init +2 | Perception +5 | Sense Motive +5 | Level 1 Spells: 3/3

It's also a good idea to have a copy of your character's stats etc. either in the profile of the character or a link to the sheet in the character's profile. Scanned works for me if you don't have it digitally and don't want to type it up. :)

If you have a companion, feel free to make an alternate alias for them with all their stats too! :)

The last thing to talk about is initiative. Initiative in PbP is... relative. Basically, I will be rolling all initiative at once when combat breaks out and ordering it myself, and then will bold the names that are allowed to post their actions in combat. You don't necessarily have to post in order if your name is bolded. Descriptive actions and flourishing are heavily encouraged, but if you don't have the time to make that type of post, that's OK as well.

Other than that, have fun! The best thing about PbP is the fact that you have time to think about your actions, have in-character dialog, and have character introductions that people can remember. (And the fact that you can always look back at the mission briefing should you forget it)

For people who are stumbling upon this thread...sorry, but players are already determined for this game.

So what do you if you have a roll against a known DC? Do you make one post for the roll, then another once you know result? Or do you do a preview and then write the text in the same post?

so...changed my mind. going with a dark tapestry oracle. going to be similar to the evil one experiment one from that one special.

are we missing anyone from chat room?

i have an EK that is around level 4...not sure if it is still legal. been a long time since i played it.

have we decided if we are going high or low?

i will look tonight to see if i have anything in the 3-5 range.

ah, saves me from buying that book then.

I am looking into starting a spiritualist. I was trying to decide on lust, fear, despair, or jealousy. Figured I would be mainly support, debuffing with spirit (most likely via intimidate). For spells I was looking at a mix (1 heal, 1 buff, 1 utility, 1 debuff/attack).

Anyone have thoughts on that?

Sorry, I was referring to the arcanist occultist archetype. I forgot about the new occult stuff.

How does the Conjurer's Focus ability work at level 3 and beyond?

Do you always have to summon at the max level or can you choose not to spend the extra points and summon a lower level?

Acrobatics used for jumping can send you further than your intended goal if you succeed by too much. It's the only skill where over-succeeding can lead to failure.

So a high level monk or rogue with a high acrobatics cannot pass a 10 foot jump? I would think high ranks in the skill would mean you know how to control how far you can jump, not that you automatically travel x ft on each jump.

maybe the gm can just hand players pre-made characters to play. seems the easiest way to solve the "my gaming style is the best and anything else isnt fun" problem.

to me it seems half the complaining against overpowered is actually against experienced players. in my area ive seen vanilla core classes rip through a scenario. heaven help the gm if the players actually work as a team. every class can shine, even the rogue, if the player is half way good.

as a player and a gm, i dont see half the OP problems that the forums complain about. maybe the gamers in my area are just better at character building than players else where. either way, what people complain about doesnt seem that bad to me. sure some games a character or two can own everything, but other games they might have trouble. rejoice in the good decisions your players make and laugh at their follies, you dont have to tpk to enjoy gming.

HowlingWolf wrote:

Can we expect these new races to be banned in the future? Should we warn new players to only use content from the core books, just to be safe?

Yes. If they are only buying the books to get access to content for PFS, and not to enjoy the book as a Pathfinder supplement, you should warn them to only play core rulebook options in order to avoid disappointment and useless books in their library.

most pfs people i know buy books to actually be able to use the content in pfs. the enjoyment comes from being with people, not the fluff of a made up world.

HowlingWolf wrote:

Glad to see my money was well spent on the Blood books.

Well, good news is I will save money in the future by not buying side books. I bought the blood books to be pfs legal. Now that content is being removed from pfs, I dont see the point in wasting money on non core books.

Can we expect these new races to be banned in the future? Should we warn new players to only use content from the core books, just to be safe?

Alternatively, you could compare the cost of those books to the amount of table time spent using those options, compare that ratio to, say, the cost/time ratio of going out to a movie, and realize that the sky has in fact NOT fallen.

I havent gotten to use my aasimar book yet. Had an idea for a channel cleric that pushed and pulled bad guys.

No the sky has not fallen. I am sure I will survive without giving paizo more money.

HowlingWolf wrote:

Glad to see my money was well spent on the Blood books.

Well, good news is I will save money in the future by not buying side books. I bought the blood books to be pfs legal. Now that content is being removed from pfs, I dont see the point in wasting money on non core books.

Can we expect these new races to be banned in the future? Should we warn new players to only use content from the core books, just to be safe?

Just play an aasimar and or tiefling in the next month and you're good to go.

Easy for you...i just had newborn twins.

Glad to see my money was well spent on the Blood books.

Well, good news is I will save money in the future by not buying side books. I bought the blood books to be pfs legal. Now that content is being removed from pfs, I dont see the point in wasting money on non core books.

Can we expect these new races to be banned in the future? Should we warn new players to only use content from the core books, just to be safe?

Huh. For some reason, I thought bard listed any saving throw as (10 + 1/2 bard level + Charisma modifier) for bardic performance (The way oracle does for revelations)

that would make things too easy, what with consistency and all...

Yes. I mentioned it in the title because this idea was for a pfs character. That way people know the context I am working within (no 3rd party, home game rulings, etc).

In the section on evolutions before it starts listing them "Unless otherwise noted, each evolution can only be selected once."

Thanks for pointing to why it doesnt work.

Well, that kills this build idea...on to the next.

reach

One of an eidolon’s attacks is capable of striking at foes at a distance. Pick one attack. The eidolon’s reach with that attack increases by 5 feet.

Why can i only take reach once? The other evolutions that can only be taken once say so. Reach just says it increases the reach by 5 feet each time.

So i was thinking about making a biped eidolon that focused on a single slam attack and reach. I would pick up the improved damage, push, pull, slam, and a lot of reaches for its evolutions. I would give it power attack, furious focus, and combat reflexes for feats.

How useful would this be? I was looking to get his reach into the 20ish feet range and either push enemies away from him or pull them into flank.

Has anyone tried something similar before?

it is for PFS...i figured the ruling would be the same as normal pathfinder. just wanted to try avoid the home rule answers.

i want it to work, but was not sure.

With the recent FAQ about spell like abilities counting as casting, does this also apply to supernatural abilities?

I am trying to figure out if shadow dancers or teleportation wizards (via shift) can take dimensional agility.

comfort armor enchantment from pfs field guide let's your armor count as light armor for sleeping. it also decreases armor penalty and gives you cold/hot weather gear.

there is also the keep watch spell that makes it so don't have to sleep. i think it is from the knights of the inner sea book. my inquisitor uses. since it lasts for eight hours and you cast it right before you sleep, you regain that slot the next day too.

those are two ways to avoid the issue.

Well it is for pfs.

I am now thinking it doesnt avoid hardness, but is untyped damage. If it was sonic damage, the damage would be halved on objects.

Thanks.

It would be strong ability if it did, possibly able to one shot most items. However, if it doesnt, the ability is almost too weak until higher levels to use reliably.

I would think it is sonic damage, but it doesnt actually say the damage type.

Does a sound striker bard's wordstrike ability bypass the hardness of objects?
sound striker

In pfs, can a cavalier huntmaster take a roc as an animal companion or is it limited to just THE bird animal companion?

Also, does the animal companion taken with huntmaster stack a rangers companion?

I was thinking about taking huntmaster and then possibly switching to ranger after the companion gains the Takedown ability.

Nikosandros wrote:

However, it just takes one skilled pirate and then the illegal version is out there in the wilds.

That is also true. For me personally, I expect Paizo, indeed every publisher, to do everything they can to dissuade as many people as possible from sharing their material illegally. It's impossible to shut down piracy 100% but that doesn't mean the fight against it shouldn't happen.

Unless that fight drives away paying customers. Just look at what other industries do to "fight piracy". sony got caught installing root kits on peoples machines when they played a cd. while i think paizo is honestly trying to stop sharing, many companies are just trying to stop reselling.

the best way to stop people from pirating stuff is to offer a better product/service than the pirates. if you price your stuff reasonably and make the process easy, most people won't pirate. the harder you make it on the paying customer, the more likely they will take their money else where.

HowlingWolf wrote:

Seems like the personaliser causes more issues than it solves, though. Other sites post their stuff without drm and seem to do fine...thinking of o'reilly books for one. While the personaliser isn't as bad as some drm systems, it does punish paying customers without harming the people who pirate. i often have to fight with it to get the downloads to start...something people using pirate sites don't have to deal with.

And since you pointed out they are a small company, wouldn't it be better to focus development/technical efforts on improving the site speed or offering more features (like linking downloads directly to dropbox)? why spend many man hours coming up with an anti-piracy system when it doesn't even slow down the pirates? its like game companies spend hundred of thousands of dollars and cripple the software for paying people, when a teenage ends up breaks the drm on the first day.

To be honest, I don't recognize the "causes more issues than it solves", "punish paying customers", or "cripple the software for paying people." I never have any issues downloading my material from paizo.com, except in instances where some maintenance is necessary. And that happens with every site from time to time.

Is HowlingWolf's experience common among those who purchase PDFs through paizo.com? I'm genuinely curious, as I may just have been extremely lucky.

Generally, though, I'd say have patience. Periods of maintenance happen for every website out there, and paizo.com is no different. Let the Paizonians get work and get settled a bit. I'm sure they'll get on it as soon as humanly possible.

Most of my problems come from it not starting the personalise process or it still not allowing a download after waiting 10 seconds. It has taken me over five minutes to get something to start downloading before. Maybe it isn't the personaliser. It could be request timing out due to the site being slow. Either way, it is extremely frustrating.

Adding redundancy to this system has been on the todo list for some time but it's easy to get complacent when a server has hundreds of days of uptime with no problems.

That is a common story. Management often does see the need for redundancy, until something bad happens and everything comes down. Same with scheduled backups.

Paizo is a small company, with about 30 staff, only two of which are directly on the technical bit of the website. The person on call is probably the person who put up the message saying that it's down.

Turning off the personaliser removes the security on the files that they rely on in order to track down pirates, so that simply isn't going to happen.

Seems like the personaliser causes more issues than it solves, though. Other sites post their stuff without drm and seem to do fine...thinking of o'reilly books for one. While the personaliser isn't as bad as some drm systems, it does punish paying customers without harming the people who pirate. i often have to fight with it to get the downloads to start...something people using pirate sites don't have to deal with.

And since you pointed out they are a small company, wouldn't it be better to focus development/technical efforts on improving the site speed or offering more features (like linking downloads directly to dropbox)? why spend many man hours coming up with an anti-piracy system when it doesn't even slow down the pirates? its like game companies spend hundred of thousands of dollars and cripple the software for paying people, when a teenage ends up breaks the drm on the first day.

but that is just my two cents....

jagermo wrote:

I agree. This is really frustrating. I wanted to dive into the Rulebook right away.

The rulebooks are all available online here.

But I'd love to peek at my Reign of Winter PDF, since my order has just shipped, and can't. KHAAAAAAAAAN!

Unfortunately for pfs you need to own the additional resources. some gm's don't like the websites.

Odd, every place I've ever worked has someone on call to handle outages.

If it is going to be down for a long time, they should just turn off the personalizing part and let us access our purchases.

It would have also been nice to see a warning that downloads were down during the check out process. It was a frustrating to just finish the check out process only to find I could not access my purchase.

Thanks. The hell knight vanity looks nice for my intimidating inquisitor. Right now he is level six with around 17 to the skill. Another 3 would be nice.

Thanks. I might also pay 5000 gold to get comfortable armor. It would remove any doubt about resting in heavy armor, act as cold weather gear, no hot weather rolls, and lessen armor penalty checks by one.

Do you have to have levels in hell knight to wear their armor?

I was looking at using pa to buy Armiger status from the pfs field guide. Would this be good enough, or would I also need to buy hell knight status too?

keep watch

Two questions:

Does this spell let me rest in heavy armor without issue?

If I cast it and then begin my eight hours rest, do I regain the spell slot when finished resting?

From my understanding, you do not regain slots used during the eight hours resting. However, it would be cast right before the eight hours start. To me it implies I would regain the slot.

If I understand the spell correctly, my character can be in heavy armor 24/7 and never have to sleep. That doesn't count times when there is an attack of course. All for using one of my limited spells known or wand.

I played a master summoner in pfs awhile back. I found my damage wasn't the biggest thing GMs had to watch for. It was me trying to divide up the enemies and soak up damage with my mini army.

I was surprised how quickly I burned through my summons per day. Many of the large number of attack summons were useless to me. Sure a cat got a ton of attacks, but none got through ac or damage reduction. That's while I mainly used earth elementals to give allies flanking and limit enemy movement. Most enemies did enough damage to one shot my summons or had ac so high the summons had trouble hitting.

Watch out when the player gets to summon hoards of lantern archons. Their attacks cut through all damage reduction. However, they dont make good blockers.

Summomers also get haste early, which is a massive buff for the party.

Make sure to enforce language rules and handle animal checks. Send smart enemies after the summoner and don't let them rest after each battle. If they get plenty of rest, a summoning druid or wizard will cause the same issues.

Having six players and a master summoner could cause time issues. Maybe enforce time limits to the summoners turn. You could have the enemies start using trained dogs or their own summons. That could tie up his resources.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog

Nano machines could be used for some magic. Wand of clw could have nano machines that repair the body, but it only has enough for 50 uses.

I was thinking about running a game where the gods were AIs that ran everything. Most of the world would have utility fog that certain people can control. I figured druid magic could bio engineering.

Are you asking for advice on a device to use or for an iOS app?

If you are asking about devices, the nexus 7 is great.

If your app is having trouble, have you tried the lite versions of the PDFs or file per chapter?

Clothes have weight in Pathfinder, even when they're free.

Another reason casters have to be careful dumping strength. It isn't good for adventuring if your clothes, spell book, and component pouch put you into medium load.

Not sure if it tops at level 12, but is close to that. There might be special scenarios to go up another level or two.

Multiclassing can work, but it can be trickier. Most people in pfs I have talked avoid it...same with prestige classes.

Don't know if anyone has mentioned the quickdraw shields yet. Only +1 ac, but could be useful if you as have the quickdraw feat and wanted to sword and board.

Does anyone know how much of an issue 20ft movement, due to breastplate, is compared to 30ft? I hate the idea of having lower base movement, but like the idea of extra ac.

Edit:
Crap...sorry for raising the dead on this thread. Forgot I got to it via Google and not the main board.

Since pfs stops around level 12, multiclassing is harder to pull off. You end up waiting until the end of your career for the build to come together. Multiclassing ends up delaying the goodies of each class while only giving you low level abilities of another class.

I think inquisitors get a lot of bonuses to intimidate.

what are some of more cost effective ways to increase ac? ring of protection, amulet of natural armor, heavy armor?

Water and boats make heavy armor melee types curl up in a ball and cry. Had a paladin die on his first mission thanks to an enemy flipping our boat.