Izmo's page

I'm looking at converting my podcast to 2E. It's called World Walkers and it's been run using D&D 5E this whole time, but I'm excited to get back to Pathfinder again, which is where I spent a lot of time back in the day.

I'm heading to GenCon to buy the books and once we get acquainted with the rules we'll be able to start playing in the system. We'll keep playing in our current story and worlds though, so we won't be exploring APs.

If anyone's interested, you can find links to the podcast here: https://worldwalkerspodcast.com/about/

I'm glad this thread's around so I can peak in on other podcasts too :O

Hey there folks,

Just to be clear, we are all over the boards reading and talking about threads (even if we are allowing some of them to brew without our direct input), this is one that I felt was important to talk about.

Of course it is important for us to know that you don't find our game exciting enough to play.

There just isn't a lot of direction we can take from that other than "make it more exciting". Which is, of course, something we are always striving to do anyway. Later on in this process we are going to be releasing a swarm of surveys that are not directly tied to the playtest. While many of those will be about specific game systems and engines, there will be one about our layout and information design. This too is important to us, even though I do not suspect we will get too many answers on it, as survey about user design interface is probably not too interesting to most, but that wont stop us from trying.

Just thought I would toss that out there. I hate to see enthusiasts so distraught that they cannot even bring themselves to play. Rest assured that we will be looking into that once we have things rolling here.

This is super encouraging to hear!

My group's on the verge of walking away because while they love the ideas of the game, they find deciphering the rules to be tedious. Most of them have asked if we can switch back to our other game, but we're still going to give it a try tonight. Most of us were worried that the book's layout and wording are fairly finalized. The group went over to the surveys but when they didn't ask about character creation or readability they assumed that that part of the book was fairly complete and got discouraged.

I'll let them know!

Shroud wrote:

I don't get the problem people are having. I read the book cover to cover. Character creation takes maybe 30 minutes maximum for any class. Where is the confusion? I can understand it if you are coming at it from a min-max munchkin style but if you just want to build a decent character, it's extremely quick.

Its the cross referncing. For ewxample we're doing Session 0.1 now and the wife is looking at bards and druids. She has to go read cantrips and figure out what they do, then she wants to find out what a level 10 spell is, then she is trying to figure out why Bards don;t seem to get a level 10 spell (maybe they do she is still looking).

She has not tread the action economy section yet, she has to go and find out what expert, mater, legendary+ signature stuff is etc.

My printer is also out of ink the 270 odd pages I did print killed it and I am reading the PDF more.

Its also very dry to read (hard, boring etc) its like reading the 3.5 Spell Compendium or 4E PHB again. Sometimes I translate stuff into 5E terms for her like the level 20 stuff is capstone abilities like 5E but you can pick what you want such as level 10 spell or use your wild shape to shapechange (and then she has to go read wild shape and shapechange).

If you are used to it from late Pathfinder books in general or Starfinder it might be easier but we stopped playing Pathfinder in 2012 (as DM) last played 2014 (as player).We also did not go that deep down the warren of splat books mostly just using the core book+ advanced player guide and Ultimate Magic/Combat so maybe missed some evolution there in later PF books IDK.

Ultimate Campaign and Skull and Shackles/Kingmaker was the last time I paid much attention to Pathfinder. And I barely read Ultimate Campaign being honest.

Also complexity look at Calculate the Result pg 291), that is potentially 10 steps to resolve something.

For what it's worth I'm in the same situation. My players and I have been trying to get through the book and it's just so dry. This is the first Rulebook I've come across where I actually dislike pouring through it, and I've been a GM for over 20 years.

Just about all of my players have run out of fuel on this book. Most aren't bothering to read it anymore, hoping the other members in the group figure it out. We're still going to give it a go, hoping the actual game is so fun that it'll inspire us to keep going.

We all love the customization and options, but none of us like the actual book's wording. It reads like it's written by an engineer. And it bothers me that, as best I can tell, there are no Surveys for the book's wording, layout, or character creation. That's fine for people like me who will go to the forums, but there are plenty who will just move on, and it seems like a missed opportunity.

Or maybe they're happy with the way the book is written and laid out, and as some have suggested, the game isn't meant for people like our group. Which I can totally accept; I don't need every game to be changed just for me. But I hope that's not the case, because the underlying game seems to have some really fun material.

Wow. Whether the text says grossly or not I would've stripped the paladin's powers for that. Killing an innocent creature AND lying about it is downright evil, any way you look at it. From that description it sounds like the player's heart isn't really into playing the paladin and might be playing it for the powers more than for the character. I can't imagine the motivations that would make someone who would choose to be a palidin take those kinds of actions, and it's right that he (and the player) should be punished accordingly.

That's a horrible case of not playing your alignment and unfortunately in the case of the paladin happens to have some nasty in-game consequences.

Well, first off, I did strip his powers for the killing. We're in agreement there :) haha.

As for the rest, I do take issue with you coming down on our player like that. It was very much a heat-of-the-moment kinda thing, and it was pretty hilarious. We all laughed, and he wasn't surprised to discover his powers didn't work. He takes his characters, including this paladin, seriously, and he knew what he was getting into. This is the whole reason a spell like Atonement is in the game for, ya know :) So players can make a mistake or make up for something they shouldn't have done.

They're now going off on a quest to restore his paladin-hood, and it's going to be a pretty fun adventure I think. And we have a hilarious story to tell people now. So the idea of "he must be punished" comes off as very harsh. Or maybe I'm just taking you a bit too literal. It just sounds like you believe this is a much bigger issue, when it was really a very spontaneous moment at the table.

That's fairly vague given the language we use here on the boards. Was it an alignment trap by the DM? Did the character have REASON to kill the creature, even if it was just self-defense? What I have from you so far is not enough to comment on.

I was the GM in question, so I can answer your question. I hope this isn't off-topic too much. I think the conversation is about the strictness of the Paladin code and why the wording differs from 3.5 to Pathfinder, and whether Paizo did this consciously.

After leading out a group of monsters from an old lady's basement and then dispatching them, the group's paladin went downstairs to find out if there were any more of these creatures left. There was one left, nestled in a hole, sleeping.

The paladin raised his hammer, screamed the equivalent of "They're coming right for us!" and brought the hammer down, killing the sleeping creature. The creature wasn't evil, and the act wasn't in self defense. The player and the table laughed at the events, even after he was told he lost his powers for that. He had no problem with that.

The problem came when we re-read the rules and realized that the little bit of lying he did in the attack, and before when he and the group lied to an old lady, would have caused him to lose his powers, according to the book.

My friend Kevin, the OP, thought there was more leeway, but discovered that leeway only exists in the text from 3.5 and the cleric, not the paladin.

I have just started playing Pathfinder and picked the fighter as my first class. I wanted to make sure that the game mechanics came easily before I ventured into another class. I have done some research about the "builds" that people have come up with the fighter. I just wanted to know what "builds" you had fun playing and why. I can figure out which builds do damage and defend, but the game is still new to me.

I'm going to take a different approach to this question than some of the other posters. I just got my girlfriend into the game, and I found that some of the questions I'd normally ask a person to help them build a character fell flat, because she didn't know what she'd like. She was completely new to this whole thing.

So, with the emphasis on fun in mind, and assuming you don't necessarily know what you'd enjoy because you haven't played, I would give you these few hints, all with the idea that you are new and don't want the rules to come crashing too hard over you:

• One weapon > two weapons. Trying to balance all the numbers flying around when using two weapons gets kinda crazy when you're first starting. Using one weapon keeps the math much simpler. Plus, with two weapons you start missing more, and you need a small army of feats before it starts to come together. So I'd make a fighter that uses one weapon. I'd recommend a two-handed weapon myself, because if you're asking for fun, not much beats bringing a giant sword down on wide-eyed goblins.
  
• As someone mentioned above, Power Attack. Fighters, to me, are at their most fun when they are devastating anything in their path, plowing through monsters like a semi truck.
  
• If you ARE up for some trickier math, make a ranged fighter, going down the feats of Deadly Aim/Point Blank Shot/Rapid Shot. One of the most satisfying things you can do as a player is roll a bunch of dice at once, watching the damage pile up. It doesn't take long before you're doing that with a ranged fighter.
  
• If damage isn't your thing, the next fun thing to do is look at combat maneuver feats like Improved Trip or Improved Sunder. Playing the guy that just wrecks havoc on an opponent's capabilities can be really fun. There's something very enjoyable about watching the enemy's favorite weapon break, or watching the enemy waste all its good turns trying to get off the floor or break out of your grapple.
  
• If you're open to taking a level in other classes, I find taking a level in Barbarian to be awesome, as it gives you the ability to fly into a rage, making all of your attacks hit like Mike Tyson going all out in a room full of babies. Or, if you have someone else in the party that is a close up person, take a level in rogue so you can get sneak attack whenever you and your new best buddy flank someone.

I hope that helps :)

For what it's worth, Secret Training is a brilliant idea, and I'll be adding this to my game's house rules this week for my players.

Air Wolf wrote:

According to the list of possible bonus feats for sorcerers of the draconic and fey blood lines, Quicken Spell is listed as one of the choices. Anyone else think this is kind of strange? It wouldn't even work unless you multiclassed into another casting class, right? Is this a typo, or am I not seeing the bigger picture here?

In PFRPG, Quicken Spell works fine for sorcerers; it allows them to cast spells as free actions. The rule that ALL metamagic applications to spontaneously-cast spells increases the casting time has been removed for Quicken Spell.

I can't believe that I've missed this change for as long as I did O_o Maybe I should re-read the classes, so I don't miss something like this again.

Thank you guys for the responses=)

According to the list of possible bonus feats for sorcerers of the draconic and fey blood lines, Quicken Spell is listed as one of the choices. Anyone else think this is kind of strange? It wouldn't even work unless you multiclassed into another casting class, right? Is this a typo, or am I not seeing the bigger picture here?

I've been playing in a pathfinder game for about half a year now, and I played 3.5 for many years before switching. I've only used minis maybe 10 times tops, and it was never really needed. We almost never run into troubles with flanking or any sort of tactical situations. The only time it becomes a problem is when one of the players stops paying attention. A quick sketch of the map solves almost any problem that might come up.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone=)

A soul Jar...use it to capture just one of the souls.

I can't find Soul Jar in the SRD. Did you mean Magic Jar? If so, is there a more permanent solution? It looks like it would wear off in less then a day. I'm looking for something more in like like an exorcism or something like that.

Say, for example, that a character has two souls in her body (as part of her back story), is there a spell or something that would expel the tag along soul out of the body? The extra soul is not an extra dimensional spirit, but another human soul.

Double Weapons are unwieldy, and you'd probably hurt yourself with them, unless you were specially trained in these exotic weapons, correct? So...what's the problem with them? Taking the Exotic Weapon Prof. feat means you can use said weapon without killing yourself. Why all this discussion about how realistic it may or may not be?

We're playing a fantasy game where people can warp the fabric of reality, impossible creatures exist, and people can channel the power of their god through themselves. If anything is realistic in the game, it's the double weapons that people have to take special training to use.

About how much damage less are we looking at normally with TWF on average?