JahellTheBard's page

Wel, penality on charisma is historical, but a little strange now that favorite class is Cleric ( Baseded on wisdom and charisma) ...

Creating magical object is a bonus so big that MUST have prerequisites i would like to make these prerequisites even stonger, in order not to loose the 'rarity flavour' of magical objects ... not everyone can make everything ... expecially when you choose a specialist wizard, you gain a lot of advantages, but you must take in accont that you might loose something ...

I do not like the idea of a cleric without a god ... the point is, when you have a god, you have someone who has given you his gift, but also someone to which you must respond if your actions are wrong ... is a trade - off, you get a powerfull class ( but not too appealing ... is not easy to find someone who likes to play cleric), but you are not completly free in your actions .. if you breake your code of behavior, be sure that you will pay the conseguences ... without a god, you are no more linked to someone who will judge your actions ... you get all for free ... seems to easy playing a cleric in this way ... besides, no god sometimes became an excuse to pick the best domains with absolute freedom ... losing weapon proficency in too little compared to the advantages you get ... and besides, i feel is bad for Role-Playing too ...

KaeYoss wrote:

Rather than sending in the heavily armoured bandaids, give them a heal gun. In other words: Either make heal spells ranged spells, or give clerics a feat or class ability so they can use them at short range. That way, they can stay back - maybe a couple of steps ahead of the arcane artillery and on the same level as ranged units - and still heal.

Channel Energy.

Channel Energy does not work ... is depends completlty from the allignement of your divinity, so an evil cleric, and sone neutral cannot use it ....

I agree ... clerics needs heavy armour ... differently from wizards, they have to enter the battlefield, in the worst places of the fight, at least to cure dying allies ... they shoudn't have any chance if they were just weak and unprotected like wizards ... if you really want then weak and unprotected, then all the cure spell must become ranged spell ....

At low level an archery ranger can stand against other classes, and is fun to play, but when level increases, archery ranger became incredibly weak, compared to all meele fighters ... his damage remains more or less the same he did at first/second level, while meele fighters can easily go for enormous amount of damage ... TWF has feats decreasing penalities for the many attack he gets, and increasing damage, other fighters can do devastating blows, for hundreds of damage, archer can edventualy get a few precision feats more, but his damage remains the same, not even usable against any creature with damage reduction ( at highter level is a rule), and many archery feats became unusefull .. yes, he can gain a little more precision, but that is all ... mostly archery feats are incredibly low for middle or high level classes ...

I beleive a few better archery based feats are required...

I shoud say a few, not unbalancig, shoud be something like these ( forgive my very poor english) ..

[b]Improved Rapid Shot [\b}

Preq. Rapid Shot, Dex 15

Bonus: You can make an additional ranged attack.
Without improved rapid shot all of your attack rolls take a –2 penalty

[b]Weapon Specialization (Archery weapon)[\b]

A ranger who has taken the Archery path becames so skilled in his weapon, he can get Weapon Specialization in his favorite Archery weapon as one of his bonus feats after 6 level.

Preq.
Dex 15
Weapon Focus in the selected weapon
At least 3 more archery related feats

Bonus: You gain a +2 bonus on all damage rolls you
make using the selected weapon

I'm sort of not seeing any game-breaking abuse in allowing a ranger to wear, say, scale mail.

I agree for medium armor ...

I'm not too worried about over-powered crafting wizards, and surelly i will noe penalize them with less treasure just because they spend feature to get better magical object at lower cost ... if i will feel that things are going to far, anyhow, i might introduce, for a few magical items, the need of a rare component, that you cannot always find ready for shopping ... will edventualy be the hook for a new quest.

More magic items is actually BAD for the comparative power between Melee and Caster classes. Simply compare the impact of +6 stat increasing items on the classes and notice that the Fighter gets maybe 7-10% increase in relative power (depending on your starting stats and so on) while the Wizard gets a host of new bonus spells. This represents a MUCH bigger gain in power and really shows the structural differences between the classes. This difference in gained power is apparent from the low level Boots of Levitation which are more or less useless to melee classes, but which make wizards immune to melee in many situations - for free.

The wizard classes main aspect is the flexibility, but melee classes are more or less focused on their - more or less - one way of dealing damage.

There are two ways to "fix" these differences (at least that I came up with):
1. Change the class mechanics so the classes all get the same amount of powers at the same time. This is the 4e approach, but it also was apparent in Everquest 2.

2. Point out these structural differences to the DMs and the game/module designers so any encounters / monsters are designed to give every player his "15 minutes of fame" every gaming evening.

I do not agree ... magical items can give meele classes thal little plus they needed to became more fun to play .. just do not think that the only thing you can give to a figher is a bigger sword ...

After all, objects gives wizards more or less options they can get using spells, fighers can get exciting new opportunities they could not get in any other way ... it is just a matter of creativity ...

eh I am running 14th level pathfinder pc's though STAP with no modification and there seems to be no issue.

Maybe encounters will be too easy for you now ....

eh well if your that worried just add on the pluses...that's fast and every really.but I myself love the changes

I love the changes too ... i'm not againt them ... they where needed to balance fighing classes and magic users .. now it's just a problem of balance ... encounters levels of the old material should be modified for the new strenght of classes ... not only just by a fixed value ...

Well, while i like the changes to the fighter, i have to say that compatibily with 3.5 is very low ... i mean, at hight level a Pathfinder fighter can easily win against a 3.5 fighter with 2 or 3 level more ...

Let's get for example an human fighter with two weapons ... pathfinder fighter gets everything a 3.5 fighter has, and gets more, at level 20:

+4 AC for armor mastery
Up to +4 ac for dextery in complete armor for armor mastery
Up to + 4 attack for weapon mastery
May get a + 2 strenght as human ( giving +1 to hit and damage)
May get 20 h.p. more selecting favourite class

Summing all these bonus, he gets:

up to +8 AC ( at least + 4)
+ 5 to hit
+1 damage
20 H.P. more
Better saves from bravery

How many epic levels must a 3.5 fighter gain before he can stand against Pathfinder Fighter?

It is not that i do not like all this feats, i feel the problem is about balancng, both CR of mosters and fights, and all other fighting classes in Pathfinder ( paladin and rangers comes to mind), they should be weaker in combat than pure fighter, i agree, but now the difference is becaming too wide, maybe they need a little bost too ...

You may be right, but problem in 3.5 was that most power players just got 1 ( max 2) level in Barbarian, to get the benefit, even if it was not justified ... now benefit are more progressive ... every level they become better and better in all their abilities... most classes are the same .... is not bad, it avoids abuses of the game ...

Anyhow in pathfinder, with the new skill system, you have more flexibility in customising your class ... less penalities for 'not class skills' ... is easier than in 3 ed.

Well ... in pathfinder things are a little better ... now getting ranks in 'not class' skill is not penalized as in 3,5, meaning that you can get a good rank in any skill without too much skill point cost.

Fighter gets a lot of feats ... realy a lot ... it should be not a great sacrifice using one as "skill focus" ( which is better than in 3,5, giving 4 skill points after level 10), if you really want a good rank in one ability.

Problem is many players are just 'power players',they must dominate the group, the feel they cannot live without the more powerfull fighter in the word, they feel they cannot start with less than 20 in strenght at first level, so they do not put any char point in intelligence, wisdom, charisma ( someone often ask me (as their DM) if they can reduce intelligence and charisma under the minimum, just to put more even more points in strenght ).

And after this they complain about not getting enought skill points .. well, you cannot eat your cake and have it, too ... get 12 or 14 in intelligence ( also usefull for a few feats), and everything will be fine.

I agree completely with you ...

It should be better just to ask for giving fighter a double number of feats ... this is the only result of this rule ... he can use how many feats he wants when he wants and change them at will, just spending one round ..

An istant refocus allowing changing feats is just a nonsense ... fighter needs years of training to master their feats .. no way they can change reflex and style of fighting every 6 seconds ...

Swapping feats daily is not logical at all ... there is no relation with wizards spell .. wizard has to know the spell and they chose just because they cannot prepare infinite spell ... fighters can use all their feats anytime without memory limit ... so they would excange feats for whic ones ... feats they never had got?

Find a strange exotical weapon and suddenly learn how to master it and unlearn at the same moment how to use the weapon they used till few hours ago?

Permanently 'unlearning' a feat for a new one every five level .. like a sorcerer, is just a little more logical, even if strange.

Besides, as a DM, i fear the confusion given by players changing their weapon attack stats every day ...

Vampires always had few hit point, comparet to their CR, because they where so difficult to damage and kill.

If vampires now dies like flies against clerics ... this means that their CR should be lowered, lowered a lot ...

And now i can't download the file (: ....

i forgot to enable the extended features in acrobat before i saved it,

ive fixed that now
i tested it on another system here w/ reader 8.1.2 & it saved fine
sry about that

Anyhow this feat open a lot of possibilities in combos for breaking the game ... i would be glad if it was eliminated ...

OK, download works now.

I will try it as soon as possible.

In the meantime i noticed that my adobe 8.1 acrobat reader says that data in the pdf can't be saved ...

Andreas Skye wrote:

Not sure about that, Ranger spells seem to have some focus on non-combat (speak with animal) and some useful protection (Resist energy, Endure Elements), boosts and "secondary healer" options. I see them as "small tricks up the sleeve". Introducing too much combat kick-ass could be a bit of overpower.

The ranger spells WotC introduced toward the middle and end of the 3.5 run were all about combat enhancement, and were extremely popular; given the small amount of casting rangers get, it's difficult to make them too powerful with spells, because they just can't use very many very often. A useful spell like pounce or arrow mind can only be cast once or twice a day; they effectively become class abilities with 1/day or 2/day use limitations, and are pretty well balanced for it.

I think this is a good idea ....

I agree ... 1/2 level for animal companion makes it not usefull ... should be at least level - 3 or better ...

The problem with Ranger spells is that they are too weak, mostrly linked to plants and animals, maybe too much ( ranger is not a druid, after all).

I understand the flavour of nature, but ranger is a fighter as well and has very few combat spells ... and plants and animal related spells are too dependent fron the terrain ... most of them cannot be used outside forest ... compared to ranger's, Paladin's spell are quite stronger... besides, the idea of 'caster level half of ranger level) makes even the few decent spell quite weak ( example Barskin, cast at 12 level give +5 natural armor bonus to a druid, but only +3 to a ranger ...)

We should remember that casting spells for ranger is not without cost, after all ... to cast spell, a ranger has to use points for wisdom, points that he could have used for strenght or costitution instead, so is not fair to reduce ranger spells just to flavour .. they are few and low level, but they should be usefull everywhere,

I also belive that caster level should be better set at Ranger level - 3, instead of half of ranger level

Saddly, while you can work out problems in core 3 ed. with Pathfinder, ( and as long as now i like a lot what i see), there is no hope for all the broken feats coming from the many slatbooks ( even from WoTC ), many of them are completly insane and will ruin any balance in game ... i'am always very carefull before letting my players take feats from these sources ...

At most, i think that most feats not broken in 3.5 will remain ok even in Pathfinder ..... but if a feat was broken in 3,5 and not in the core-book, it will remain broken even in Pathfinder ..

Anyhow you have to consider that PathFinder Experience rules are different from 3 edition.
In 3 ed. you get exsperience mostly by killing monsters, in pathfinder you also get experience by completing missions assigned ( suggested is the xp of 2 encounters of the same leven of the group for compleeting a long mission ) You get also individual or group xp for actions, ideas, solutions to difficult problems and so on, not only for fight, so even with a middle or slow progression the difference in advance time is not so big ... besides, most players like to get experience for other things and not only fight, fight, fight, so i think Pathfinder xp rules are a n improvement :)|

I have always been a fan of elves with a +2 Wis (high perception and will save) instead of Int. This could be ok, if there is a wood elf down the pike and the current elf is a high elf.

high elf +2 dex, +2 int, -2 wood elf +2 dex, +2 wis, -2 con
dark elf +2 dex, +2 cha, -2 con

Seems fine, but is a dangerous .concept .. all this custom subraces would just trash all favorite class meaning ... it is a shortcut to give you all you like from every race ... if we start this way, we soon will have three or four subraces for every race ... ( say gold, artic, hill, mountain dwarves, just to make an example ) all different and with different stats ... if we take this path soon or later we would end with the same mess created by splat-books that Pathfinder is trying to avoid ...

If you want a bonus to charisma, just select a different race ...

An important thing that the Second chapter doesn't address is the effect of each of the different generation methods. Many players hunger for higher ability scores, and don't realize that all they've done by making above average characters is create the need for GM's to throw above-average monsters at them. This increases GM workload.

This is certainly a topic to be covered in the GMing section, but the player has responsibilities too. I'd like to see the issue addressed in a sidebar ("Which Method?" what to expect from each method), and also I'd like to see the later Encounter Building system take into account Ability Scores when determining appropriate challenges. That might mean asking PCs/GMs to add up their point buy value to be factored in, even if they used a random generation method.

My players are the same .. i gave them what they want, 28 Point Buy .. after all fun is important ... at first i spent time balancing monster, now with pathfinder i will only use the slow progress column, considering the players as une level highter than standard ( well, Pathfinder class power increse is part of the higther lever) ... no more work to do ... in the first try i found the rules works fine ... players can stand encounters a level highter than usual and have fun ..

Hope this is the correct place for this.

I was just surfing the web, and I stumbled upon this. At the bottom they say that PCGen 5.16 Stable will have Pathfinder Beta support, and will include PF Beta dataset in that release. I think this is great, as I almost exclusively use this program, and thought I should share my findings.

and my players

I love PcGen ... easy to use and very flexible ... will be a great help for me and my players!

I like the idea of different Xp progression sets, it frres me from the problem of scaling xp at any encounter ...

Different xp level for different classes ... this was the way 2 ed. handled xp ... it was fine, because balancing classes was easier, but gives very big problem if you consider multiclassing ...

I hope PcGen with support for PathFinder will be ready very soon!

Perhaps there could be a feat that allows a cleric to channel the opposite type of energy. Since that would be powerful and perhaps a rare gift, it could have another "Turn" feat as a prerequisite. "Selective Channeling" would be an excellent choice, but since there are several, it could simply be "Must have any one channeling-related feat already".

That way the tools are there to build a cleric that has more flexibility and options, but the vast majority will still have the flavor of good vs evil, and positive vs negative.

I think it should be a perfect solution ...

JahellTheBard wrote:

After all there are more degrees of evil, not everyone goes around killing orphans, like a mad chaotic demon lover, maybe someone just belives that law is most important than everything and is ready to support law and order agains chaos even if this means help a tyrranical king against poor hungry peasant rebels ... or just greedy for power or money, ... )

Many people have blinders on and can't see beyond this single sterotype of evil. I can't count the number of times that someone has argued that you can't have an evil character or party since they will always quickly betray or kill each other. That is simply ridiculous. You can't have these huge evil organizations like the Red Wizards of thay, The Zhents, the Scarlet Brotehrhood, or even Iuz's empire without some (I would say many) LE and NE archetypes that cooperate when it is in their best interest. To say otherwise is foolish, and contrary to decades of D&D fluff.

As to the turning problem, the lack of healing is bad, but can be worked around. the fact that an evil priest will kill his own minions and allies when he uses his channel power is a much, much bigger problem. Its a 30' burst - which means it goes in a circle around the caster. An evil priest cannot even use his channel power unless he has no living allies or is only using undead. That is a big problem from where I stand. Why even have the power, if you have so little ability to use it?

I think there must be a feat to prevent killing his own allies ... Selective Channeling i think is the name ... it is not, but i feel it should be given a free feat for evil clerics for they cannot use they cannelling powers without this ...

And yes ... The Dark Knight Order is an example of perfect working evil organization ... even with a strong sense of honour too

Well, i can say that the correlation between allignement and life ( or unlife) energy has not a real reason to exists in such terms ... it was introduced in 3 ed. when words like 'positive' for life or 'negative' for unlife where associated to clerics and confused with 'good' and 'evil' ...

But what i need is a way to let the game work .. or evil cleric class is banned from game ( is the only class with such allignement problem as far as i can see, is no use to say "is just a different cleric" , except if you are playing a vampire party i cannot see how a party without a healer can work and have fun, adventuring one day for no more than one or two fight, then spend one or two days just to heal, and so on .... i besider do not think any cleric player would like to spend ALL his spell as cure)

Othewise there should be a fix to let the game work ( at very evil cleric should be able to heal in other ways, sacrificing the life of a prisoner or an innocent peasant, but i do not like to take the game so far towards evil .. ( and surelly such a cleric cannot disguise easily) ...,

After all there are more degrees of evil, not everyone goes around killing orphans, like a mad chaotic demon lover, maybe someone just belives that law is most important than everything and is ready to support law and order agains chaos even if this means help a tyrranical king against poor hungry peasant rebels ... or just greedy for power or money, ... )

I hope we can get an official answer soon ... before we make our PC...

If your buddies are undead, channeling negative energy heals 'em right up quite nicely. Certainly this is less likely for PCs (but not unheard of), but certainly works for NPCs.

As for not being quite to good at healing the living? It's a trade-off for the ability to deal out mass damage to your living foes. Hey, and if you're evil, when your buddy whines for healing, tell him, "Hey, what have you done for me lately?"

:D

Not all evil are so stupid, anyhow ... that can be for a selfish chaotic evil, but a legal evil cleric in a mission for his good can understand very well the importance of working together with other components of the party ... as long as they are usefull to his mission, at least ... and how more usefull they can be if they are kept in good healt ..

O well, the party will probably have to rest one or two days after any fight, unless they find an endless stock of light cure ...

In old 2 ed. you could play a good or evil cleric, with no real difference in party role.
Yes, good clerics scared undead, evil rebuke them, but that was all .. with no undead, there was no real difference .. an evil cleric could even try to disguise his allignement with no real trouble ...

In 3 ed. thing changed, when "healing" and "good" concept where confused.

While good clerics can have fun, with spontaneus healing, non more forced to sacrifice all their spell to cure, evil clerics had just the most unusefull option of converting spell into "inflict spell", an option really useless in most game ( never seen a cleric using this spell, just swing your mace and do more harm taking less risk), and complettly useless out of combat.

In Pathfinder the difference is even greater ... good clerics can really speed up the game a lot using Channel Energy to heal the party, quite powerfull spell, but very goot to let the game flow smoothly ...

On the other side an evil cleric can't use Channel energy to heal players, leaving the game slow and unfun.

Surelly, he can use Channel energy to do more damage then a sorcerer, after all using Channel energy with negative energy is nearly the same than casting the 7 level spell "Inflict Serious Wounds, Mass:" ... and a 16 cha cleric can use it 6 times a day ... is a deadly spell at low or middle level.

But the 'slow game problem' remains, unless the party can find lots and lots of healing wands. A way to let the evil cleric get more and better healing is necessary to let the game be fun ...

Besides, the fact that healing is linked with allignement prevents any kind of plot with a cleric disguising his allignent ...

Hope you will excuse me for my poor english ...

Okay, I've trying a bunch of free trials, and I'm still looking for a good DM assisting program that works with Pathfinder. Either a program that has a Pathfinder patch available, or something that's easy to modify. Any suggestions?

I think that next version of PcGen should support PathFinder ( 5.16) .. i really need it !!!

I do not like favored class, the only result is to make the game less various, is not fun, really when everyone plays just the same combo ( dwarf = fighter, elf = wizards and so on).

And more than anything i do not like the hp reward for playing the class, ... is like the xp reward in 2 ed. for class stats ... something i always hated...

Now, i know that everyone will love the opportunity to have stronger p.c. ... but in the end what is really important is keeping the game balanced ... i'm just afraid that pathfinder p.c. will result too stong compared with 3.5 p.c. ... resulting in loss of compatibility with 3.5 material

What i mean is that all the good things about extended healing converting turning, spuntaneus healing, etc., with less need of time spent for healing, more fun for players not buond to use all his spell as cures, and the like is lost by the current rules, if your cleric has an evil god ... and i do not think this is fun for the game ... or for the player .. i know that in 3.5 ed. evil and negative plan are thought to be the same, but i think it make no sense ... this is the first rule i would change ... besides, evil pc. needs healing as much as good pc., that is all ...

Hey, all. I wanted to briefly touch on one of the problems I'd like to see fixed in the PFRPG: death at -10 hit points.

This is a reasonable number at low levels, but the "window" of unconsciousness gets very small very fast. As many others have pointed out, (i) this unconsciousness "window" is basically irrelevant at the mid levels when foes do a minimum of 10+ points of damage per hit, and (ii) there is currently a perverse incentive in the game: a higher-level fighter actually prefers to be at -2 hit points rather than 2 hit points. 4E "fixed" this problem in a way that I think goes too far: you have oodles of negative hit points, and generally you simply cannot die until at least three rounds after you go unconscious.

A gritty game appeals to many, and the possibility of sudden death should be real in a game that emphasizes backwards compatibility with 3.5. Some people prefer more heroics, so an option (but not obligation) to snatch life from the jaws of death is preferable.

The solution I propose--which I did not invent--is a two-stage rule as follows:

1) You do not die at -10 hit points. You die at a negative number that is 10 plus your constitution modifier plus your character level. This opens the "window" in a way that scales up with level in a reasonable way. You can still be killed by a single massive hit at any level, but unconsciousness is more common.

2) As a campaign option: characters that exceed their negative hit point limit do not die until 1 round after reaching that negative total. Healing that brings the character above his negative hit point limit prevents him from dying. This allows for a frantic save-him-quick mentality that allows a more heroic game; but it is not for everyone, so it should be called out as an optional rule.

I've played games with both of these rules in play separately and together, and found them to be very satisfying.

Thoughts?

Your second option is a little too far for me ... but i'm trying your first idea in my current new campaing .. I think is a good solution to the problem, while not unbalancing the game ..

I do not like the rules about positive and negative energy.
They are very unbalancing vs. evil gods clerics ... loosing spontaneus cure spell is really bad ... anyone needs cure after all .. inflict damage is nearly never used ...

Not only ... using this rule an evil cleric cannot disguise his allignement .. ruining most plot ... and relating positive ( life) energy to good, and negative (death) energy evil is not so immediate.

I think all living clerics should channel positive energy, regardless of allignement, and all undead clerics should channel negative energy, regardless of allignement ( yes, there are also good liches).

Rebuking undead, if needed, should be at most a feat, with the prerequisite : not good allignement.

I like very much the option of Turn healing ... save a lot of spell and make the clerics more playable ... i will surely adopt this rule in my current game ...i'm afraid that Turn damage could result too strong, and unbalance the class ..