Honestly, I was mostly surprised about their poor Perception proficiency because I had assumed that the Inventor was the guy you would expect to deal with (at least non-magical) traps, thanks to their knowledge of complicated mechanisms and the like. As of right now, they can still do it by investing in Thievery but actually spotting the traps requires a lot of help from other party members. It feels a bit strange to me because I would have thought that they would be the type of character with an eye for detail.
If nothing else, I think this has demonstrated that there is a good appetite for a Warlord/Tactician class. I do like the Marshal archetype but if a full class could allow character concepts with a bigger emphasis on those kinds of abilities, I would be very interested in playing as one.
Owning another human being is an evil act, period. Slavery is a cruel and unusual punishment and will do nothing to rehabilitate the "criminal" and there is no situation where its not just an evil act, you can try and argue that its evil your inflicting on evil people, but that kind of argument leads to only more evil stuff.
The character did not decide the punishment. Should she go to great lengths to set her would-be killer free? Or just refuse the Drow matriarch (an action that would put herself in great danger, while not ensuring the freedom of the criminal)?
And yes assassination attempts is indeed a crime.
Or maybe she should just have left the soul prison behind her, lying around in the darklands, and hope for the best.
She shouldn't leave it lying around, no. I suppose the question I would ask is how durable the amulet is. Assuming that apart from being a container for a person's soul, it's otherwise just a normal amulet, I would think that destroying it and freeing the soul inside so that it could find it's own way to the Boneyard would be pretty simple. The daughter of the Drow Matriarch has already been brought to an extremely low point. She was even willing to commit suicide. As far as punishments go, I think that's a pretty good one. Intentionally keeping her soul trapped (for potentially forever if Aleil dies while the amulet exists) is just excessive spite, in my opinion.
I'm inclined to agree. Especially given that said character is probably smart enough to realise that a functioning warning doesn't require the genuine article when it comes to the amulet. After all, if said daughter is already rumoured to be trapped within the amulet, all Aleil would need is another magical amulet with a similar appearance and the same school of magic as the original. It is very unlikely that anyone would be able to scrutinize the amulet and prove otherwise while it is still in her possession. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that the only reason to keep the amulet is out of spite for the person inside. So that they can't "get away" without living to see their punishment.
Definitely feeling impatient! I probably won't even get to play for quite a few months after it gets released but I am very excited to dig into the character creation in the meantime. Theorycrafting characters is half of the fun for me. :)
If nothing else, the trope doesn't seem to be entirely removed as there does seem to be a market for (presumably) used necrografts. At least we can have our human chop shops on Eox! :)
It does seem like multiclass characters function a lot better in Starfinder though. I'm sure a lot of casters will appreciate their caster levels from both classes stacking. Combine that with a Mystic Theurge-esque Prestige class and you have a functional multi-class caster!
I think the deception was only necessary in that the real Barry wouldn't have even asked about Iris. Barry has been having nightmares about the event and has been wracking his brain about it for a while so I would hope that he would be a lot more cautious.
...your vanaran friend activates his rod of wonder that uses multiple homebrew tables.
So far he has:
- Made a dragon suffocate by filling a room with marshmallows
- Created a floating wall of bards
- Given an entire bay of water sentience
- Opened two dimensional portals, one to hell, one to the abyss so that they can battle it out in the sky on the material plane
- Given our enemy colossal gold dragon the half fiend template (devil) immediately after opening the two portals mentioned above
I'm really liking the Blacksmith class you've put up since it's such a woefully unexplored design space. The iconic story of a blacksmith's son who was training as an apprentice, setting out to slay a dragon is a pretty big fantasy staple. I'm glad to finally see mechanics to support that concept. :)
I convinced a necromancer that the bathroom was haunted by an entity who is older than time itself. An entity known as "the toilet spectre". I made him give me everything he owned (including the clothes off his back) as an offering for initially doubting my power. His superiors were unpleasantly surprised to find him fleeing the scene wearing nothing but his underwear.
How I did it:
After seeing the necromancer enter the bathroom, I used my lockpicking skills to lock the door behind him and intentionally jammed the lock so that no one could come to his aid if he called for it. I then went downstairs to where the pipes of the toilets dumped their sewage and shouted up through the pipes, pretending to be this spectre. When he doubted my power as this entity, I exhaled fire up through the pipes (I was a kobold sorcerer) and burned him for his transgression and followed it up with a well rolled intimidate check. When he noted that I wasn't undead, I even managed to bluff him that I was "more of an abstract concept". With the intimidate check, I made him apologise for his offense and give me an offering of everything on his person (save for his underwear) in exchange for his life and freedom. Once he agreed, I stealthily made my way back upstairs, and since I had previously jammed the lock, "opened" the door with a Battering Blast spell to not only open the door, but give me time to hide before he came to his senses (he was right behind the door I blasted). After that, it was a simple matter of retrieving my prize!
A nonmagical doctor who doesn't take infeasible amounts of time to treat their patients and can actually deal with the condition removal needs of a party.
The most effed up item in our campaign is a Scroll of Transfer Pregnancy. Mostly because the only restriction is that the targets need to be Humanoid, Fey or Monstrous Humanoids. Minotaurs should not be giving birth to Gremlins!
A close second is the sentient Rod of Wonder "Willy the Wonder" that uses multiple result tables. We killed an Adult Black Dragon and his minions by filling the room with marshmallows...
I make a point of reminding people of this when they decide to play a character of a specific alignment; your actions determine your alignment, not the other way around.
Edit: That said, I agree that you need a very compelling reason to not kill this guy/turn him in to the proper authorities considering he burned down an orphanage. I would do it just for being so mustache-twirlingly cliche.
Legendary Rogues from Legendary Games did a good job of it in my opinion. It points out the flaws with the Rogue and it's Unchained variant (with mathematical evidence) and then outlines some solutions for them. The actual replacement class that's in there is very solid too and really gives you the tools to play whatever kind of rogue you want.
The biggest issues that the Unchained rogue has include;
1. Having nothing meaningful to do if they can't sneak attack.
2. Having trouble simply hitting an enemy at higher levels due to having zero accuracy boosts built into the class.
If those two issues can be fixed, you'll likely end up with a reliable (although not perfect) class.
I'm inclined to believe Scavion over you on what's possible. I've played and FPS with him before and he's pretty good. It falls in line with my own experience too, and what I've seen watching gameplay.
And I'm inclined to take your "experience" with a grain of salt considering you've never even played the game. And if your entire argument is that a team of uncoordinated players should require a hyper coordinated team to beat, well... I hope Blizzard doesn't feel the same...
While from their wording they didn't quite confirm it, it sounds like magic items that just give bonuses are being thrown out in favour of just having them built into characters. If that's the case I'll be very happy!
I also like the prospect of having lots of races to play. I hope they don't go the route of level adjustments for some of them though.
The starfinder page seems to indicate that Lashunta is a core race. Or playable at the very least.
Starfinder page wrote:
Take your favorite fantasy RPG to the stars! Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future, Starfinder is a stand-alone roleplaying game evolved from the Pathfinder rules and designed to bring you a whole new universe of science fantasy adventures. Play alien races both new and familiar as you explore the mysteries of a weird galaxy. Will you be an android assassin fulfilling corporate contracts, or a plucky ratfolk mechanic? A spellhacking lashunta technomancer, or a rakish human pilot? Uncountable worlds are waiting for you and your intrepid crew!
I'm liking the sound of these updates. I'm playing a Kobold Mystic working as our airships head engineer who is very much into technology and I was worried that he wouldn't be able to suit up in a Mech. Good to know that may still be in the cards!
I also HAVE to mention how bothered I am by the AC system at times. D&D 5E largely remedies the problems I have, but I'm not sure how one could homebrew that AC system into Pathfinder with existing AC items, spells, etc.
The problem I have is that at low levels AC makes sense. In most cases everything at least has the ability to hit you without rolling a Nat 20. Once you get into the upper levels however, you'll typically have such high AC that you can wade out into a mass of CR 1 enemies that mechanically would add up to an absurdly high CR... but none have a chance of hitting you (except on a Nat 20, but you might also have some DR by then that'd negate their damage anyways) and all would die from a single hit (which they rarely have a chance of avoiding). You'd rack up insane amounts of experience with minimal risk, all for killing a ton of CR 1 enemies without difficulty. Lets say it was 90 CR 1/3 skeletons (which add up CR 13 (maybe 14) if using the alternate CR method following the pattern past 16), yet all would die without much difficulty to a single 13th level fighter. But a single CR 13 monster (like an Adult Blue Dragon) could put up a serious fight.
The problem I have is twofold, 1 is that realistically a sea of mooks should never not be a threat. Even a max level fighter should feel threatened by 10,000 goblins. And 2 is that more than 3 enemies that add up to a CR (even with the alternate method) are often much less of a threat than 1 or 2 enemies that add up to a particular CR, yet both grant the same amount of experience. This (as a GM) sometimes makes me feel a bit restricted to higher CR enemies when setting up encounters with high level characters.
Regarding Rapid Shot and the simple blasts by book rules I have seen nothing that says it can't be combined. The blasts are like any range attack requiring a standard action. Rapid Shot is a full attack action. Nothing says in the rules you can't make a full attack with the blasts. It seems people are ignoring the fact at higher levels a Kineticist gets multiple blasts for higher BAB. Rapid Shot is designed for lower level ranged specialists to get a second attack. By the rules I see nothing in the feat or class that says a Kineticist cannot use the feat with his blasts.
Kinetic Blasts can't be used to full attack because a kinetic blast is an ability that requires a standard action to use, rather than a weapon that can be used to take the attack action which can be used as either a standard or full round action. Rapid shot can't be used with a kinetic blast for this reason. Certain abilities like Kinetic Blade or Kinetic Fist can be used to take the attack action however.
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If someone thinks that it's more likely that the author didn't understand the rules rather than the text actually serving a purpose, they need to reexamine their position....
The feat is more powerful compared to the baseline, yes. That baseline is flawed though and frankly, I hope we see more options for martials of a similar power level to this feat in future Player Companions. It's a good feat but I would never go as far as to say it would break the game. Certainly not something to be an alarmist over at any rate.
Also, fun fact- This guy won't get a Magus Arcana until level 6, can't buy one with a feat until then, and won't get another one until level 9.
He's also sacrificing spell recall, knowledge pool, 1 spell per level, and the ability to cast in armor, for perks of questionable worth.
It's not a bad build. It's a pretty good one. But I don't know if it's actually going to be as problematic as you think.
Definitely, losing spellstrike is probably the best thing that could be done to put his character on a leash to be honest. Critfishing magi with shocking grasp is a big part of what gives the class a reputation of being single target nukes.
Still if I recall correctly, the OP convinced their player to not take a bunch of archetypes on an assumption that having more than one archetype would be overpowered so that's probably why they missed it.
Those two and Hinjo should be showed to all would-be paladin players how to play a paladin and Miko how to not play a paladin...
This made me realize that while Durkon was a pretty good example of how to deal with Paladins (even the Miko-style ones), there is no example in oots of the classic trope of players who do their best to enrage / take advantage of / have the Paladin fall.
Didn't Belkar do exactly this? He was even willing to die just to get Miko to fall.
But I could sympathize with Belkar there :-)
I think of players that would do the same for O-chul and would not stop until he fell. Those are more common actually than those who would have Miko fall IMO.
Miko was definitely a live grenade. Still, given Belkar's disdain for Paladins in general, he probably would attempt to make other paladins fall if there wasn't always some other pressing matter at hand.
Those two and Hinjo should be showed to all would-be paladin players how to play a paladin and Miko how to not play a paladin...
This made me realize that while Durkon was a pretty good example of how to deal with Paladins (even the Miko-style ones), there is no example in oots of the classic trope of players who do their best to enrage / take advantage of / have the Paladin fall.
Didn't Belkar do exactly this? He was even willing to die just to get Miko to fall.
Writing a few bullet points about your character's goals and values can help a lot. You can refer back to it whenever you need to make an important decision.
Objective Morality is my biggest pet peeve. Mostly because I find the idea of doubting whether you did the right thing far more interesting than just double checking with the powers that be.
Do characters we actually did play count? If so, I played a Kobold Bard (Dragon Herald) named Shaddap (intentionally similar to "shut up"). He wore a jester's outfit and passed out pamphlets to everyone whether they wanted it or not. His ability to generate a Sanctuary effect came in real handy for when people would try to run him off for his excessive preaching about Apsu. He actually became a god at the end of the campaign and was one of the deities involved in recreating the world after an undead apocalypse. We're now running a heavily modified Eberron campaign in that aforementioned recreated world and it's not uncommon to get swarmed by his overly cheery followers with pamphlets while walking down the street. It's quite creepy actually.
I recently had a situation somewhat similar to that with my (late) fighter. The only difference was I was actually fine. The Oracle asked me if I was doing okay on health and I told her to keep buffing us. A stray crit from an Adult Blue Dragon killed me and I had no Hero Points to save myself. I'm sure it looked like a bad decision on my part from the outside however.
Edit: Hilariously after I died, it was the sentient Rod of Wonder that we stole from the Dragon Horde who saved the day by dispelling a force wall that the Blue Dragon was using to keep a Silver Dragon trapped. Willy the Wonder is the true MVP.
As a general rule, avoid playing characters that work against the party like this. A lot of people who play evil characters fall into this trap. Your character can have their own agenda but always make sure your character could conceivably play nice with others if they try to.
On a note more specific to your situation:
Greedy people aren't necessarily stupid. If they plan to stick around for long periods of time with a group of people who could easily overpower them, you can safely bet that they'll avoid pissing them off by stealing from them. You can still play a greedy character, just keep your embezzlement/larceny to targets outside of your immediate friends.
So wait a minute. Are some of you saying that if the DC is, say, 17, and your character ha a +4 on the roll, AND you decide those odds are not to your liking, you will invest in a character improvement that raises your modifier by +2, and when you have done that you fully expect that from that point on the DC should never increase, making the investment you made worth while?
Sort of. The DC for the same task should never increase just to match then new abilities of the character. Also, the DC for the average lock in the town should not suddenly become higher just to spite the character. Sure DCs should be higher if the character goes after bigger challenges, but the world should not randomly get harder just because the character got better.
Yeah I'm going to have to disagree with that. If a town is having routine break-ins, the towns people aren't going to be like 'oh well' and keep using the same mundane locks - they're going to invest in better and better locks, traps, security, and neighborhood watches and so on.
Sure, but they aren't going to wait for the intruder to level up either. The townspeople only deciding to forge better locks at the precise time the thief gets much better at disabling them is still blatant plot convenience. Apart from that issue, it's a good way to show that the thief had an impact on the world around them.
