Kainite101's page

Yeah, Armour storm Soldiers and Prototype armour Mechanics can get the Proficiency without spending feats.

Armoury page 74 for improving Power armour

Ahhh. Didn't see they got it at 5th level, didn't do a deep class dive. And thank you for the page and book number. I will have to get that book. Only have the core book and aparantly my google foo on the paizo site wasn't enough...

Kainite101 wrote:

Where do you get +3 item bonus to damage? Potency runes are to hit only, striking runes only add extra dice... Or am I missing something. Also don't forget to add in your weapon specialization damage for unarmed attacks...

Also as pointed out Barbarian dragon form specifically calls out "You transform into a ferocious Large dragon, gaining the effects of 6th-level dragon form except that you use your own AC and attack modifier; you also apply your extra damage from Rage" in it's text. Specific over general in this case applies your normal attack mod (not unarmed per dragon form).

It's indirect. Plus 3 to hit results in a major difference in damage output. It's 50% +

I just assumed readers would understand.

The real problem with these battle form spells is it arguable as to what is in your attack bonus, or attack modifier. There are formulas in the rules but the terms are not tight. You have to make some common sense judgements about it, which means people will disagree.

You want specifics, without assumption, then assume everyone would understand... I don't assume anything nor do I assume what others assume, I specify.

From the book-
Melee attack modifier = Strength modifier (or optionally Dexterity for a finesse weapon) + proficiency bonus + other bonuses + penalties (p278)

Clearly states what an attack modifier is(in this case melee, which also is same as unarmed, since unarmed is a melee attack according to p278). Barbarian dragon form as quoted above, clearly states use your own attack modifier (and very specifically noting that this changes from the normal usage of the UNARMED attack modifier listed under dragon form) Not a lot of ambiguity there IMO. Clear rule change of specific vs general. So the +3 gets baked in as normal... IMO

If your not to use your normal melee attack mod, then why specifically would it call out the change to use attack mod instead of unarmed. There seems to be no other reason to add such a distinct change when dragon form (which you are referred too) specifically states unarmed attack mod...

In fact I would argue that unarmed attack itself is an example of specific (unarmed) vs melee (general) when factoring your attack mod as unarmed is called out as being special vs weapon when doing a normal melee attack...

Could we stick to the actual topic? Why bloat this forum post with what was never asked for or about. Take the argument to it's own proper posting so no one has to slog thru a page about what was never part of the actual posted topic to review answers for the actual topic. Thank you...

Hmmm well so much for using the "find" option on my copy PDF... searched "greater difficult" and the only thing it flagged was the mention of it in the terrain section dealing with movement cost... Thank you.

Just to chime in on the "True Strike" issue... 2 of the types of casting classes cannot cast true strike. Only Arcane and Occult have access, that includes Staff of Diviniation usage. While some Primal and Divine casters can possibly access via domain or bloodline, the majority cannot. They have essentially the old equivalent of a "feat" tax.

Right now, in my current campaign, at 1oth level. The caster's are 1 or 2 behind due to potency (one player has a +2 potency). And they are Divine and Primal casters, so the "True Strike" remedy is not available to them, nor do I think it should have to be the remedy (also it's not quiet the same to compare to Potency). Guidance would have been nice, but the recast per person makes it a non-starter fix also.

**EDIT** And Darksol beat me to it while I was trying to articulate my thoughts.. hehe

Any d20 roll is a check.

If it uses a skill then it's a skill check.

If it has the attack trait then it's an attack roll.

Trying to Trip someone uses the Athletics skill and has the attack trait, so it's both an attack roll and a skill check.

So in my example with the fascinate condition, a melee or ranged attack would not suffer a penalty, but a trip or shove attack would. Since it specifies skill check only and not all or attack rolls...

I started out my giant instinct Barb with the traditional heavy hitter 2H's. I tried Bastard sword (for athletic manuevers as needed) and later swapped to Maul (I liked the crit effect). However I soon swapped to gnome flickmace (spent the feat to learn weapon prof on half orc), and my off hand is a throwing hammer with returning rune. While yes that did also cost me yet another probably less than optimal feat, raging thrower, I am finding a lot of overall utility and fun with it. The loss of damage (to me at least), is negligible overall. But then I play my barb more like a drive by freight train... Rarely do I stand and just tank it out, I use throwing hammer as I close while out of effective melee range (and I don't stray so far ahead of party as to put myself in a bad position), and once I am close, use sudden charge to move larger distance and whack something (up to 80 feet in my case), then move away, laterally or thru the enemy forcing them to pursue me (using the flickmace range as needed if I am worried about AoO. Or just back to he party, depending on the tactics available on that particular battlefield. The AoO towards the first thing to pursue me is awesome with the flickmace, and a great surprise...

Now, all that being said, I do have shifting rune on my flickmace, so I can still resort to bastard sword if I feel like damage is lackluster (so far, have not though). On average with the flickmace, I believe you are losing 2 (avg) pts of damage per hit? At level 9, I am at +16 to damage, so the diff between 20 damage and 22 damage is pretty marginal(on average) to me.

On a side note, a spiked guantlet (in my case Cinderclaw from AP Age of Ashes) has become my new friend after being engulfed... yet another weapon I would never have thought about using until I got swallowed and only had large weapons on my person...

***Edit*** I have to make a correction, as I forgot about striking runes... so at current level double the disparity to avg to 24 vs 28 damage. And of course that will change with better striking runes. Once I aquire a better then base striking rue, I may re-evaluate my weapon choice... and you can always retrain...

We found we always forgot to use them, and to hand them out. And when we did remember them, we hoarded them to save us from kill shots on ourselves... We changed it to a shared pool using poker chips on table in a pile next to the map and started "remembering" to use them and also make it likely someone would use it to do something heroic, rather than hoard that only point for a bad save roll or getting crit hit... And sometimes RNG is just nasty to someone all night, and the blessed player never needs them, so sharing the pool helps out on that for us anyways...

rainzax wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I was just looking over the errata today for other reasons, and realized that they did errata the Battle Medicine feat, and chose not to add in any wording about requiring healer's tools.

This makes it pretty clear that the developers chose to exclude the healer's tools as a requirement and didn't just accidentally leave them off, because if the feat was supposed to require them and work as is, that would have been a very easy fix that would have happened at the same time.

To be fair, one could also just as easily reasonably surmise from this that they were not ready to take an official position on the matter.

Thus, this does not strike me as evidencing either "side" of the issue, leaving us back to the original debate at hand.

I offered this up though as a counter to people who think the exclusion of text stating it requires healer's tools was a mistake in the first place. If it was just a mistake, and the wording should have specified that it did require them, and nothing else about the ability was going to be subject to change, then certainly they would have already added that text to the feat, because they made one simple change to it already.

Clearly they were willing to make a change to establish clarity that the ability did not remove the wounded condition, that doesn't seem like any simpler change then, "oh yeah, this ability is supposed to require healer's tools and we forgot to mention that."

It is possible that they are waiting to make some other change to the ability, but it seems pretty clear that the wording of this feat is deliberately different from other uses of the medicine skill, and the absence of a line requiring healer's tools was not a simple error.

Also they could have simply said "Allows you to use Treat Wounds as a single action instead of 10 min...". Instead of the long paragraph they use to say it uses the DC of Treat wound and cures the same amount, and saved on word count, which is also usually a big deal in the printing world.

One issue I see is what others here have brought up. The old tactics do not work like they used to. A few examples to think about (and these are my opinions...) and these are really simplified, but hope I get my point across...

PF, 5th, ect... The melee combat specialists would rush the enemy and get their full attack in ASAP (the rule of hit first and put them on defensive if able). The problem is the new action economy seems to punish that tactic most of the time. You used 1, possibly 2 actions to close, and maybe get one attack in. Meanwhile the mob retaliate can either try for 3 attacks, 2 action specials + attack, and so on. That can instantly turn the tide if they get 2 good hits sometimes vs your 1. Especially at lower levels.

AoO are rare now. No longer can the front line hold the enemy at bay by fear of guaranteed AoO and dictate where the combat line is. People are free to do drive by's now. This can prolong combat, something the blitzkrieg used to prevent (and made DPS better then healing that round most of the time), and giving PC and NPC breathing space to heal, potion, scroll, that they normally would avoid because of the AoO fears.

Personally I have found it more advantageous to close within 30 feet of melee mobs, toss my thrown weapon (and draw main and shield raise, depending on fighting style if needed). This allows me my one attack, and forces most NPC to use 2 actions to close to me to get one attack. Then my turn rolls around with fresh 3 actions (advantage to me since i get more actions directly to the mob instead of the mob getting 3 first), which can now be used to do things like trip, attack and move, or 3 full attacks first (which was kinda how the old systems worked, run up and get full attacks BEFORE the NPC did if able for advantage) This combo when it works, then forces the mob to waste an action getting up (forcing AoO from low level fighters and possibly mid-level others, makes the rogue get free sneak attack with melee or ranged without having to flank, and everyone else bonus to hit). The game seems to favor action denial tactics at low level (Have not played above 5th yet as we just started). Even if you only limit their actions once, it puts the advantage back in your hands, where as the go first charger from the first example is disadvantaged now (vs first to go usually had massive advantage) if he got hit hard, or some other action denial on round 1. Point being the mob is dictating your players pace, instead of vice versa, and controlling the battle (which is a new tactic moving away from the simple bash it tactics of old that worked due to OP optimization that created weird multiple synergies that were way above what the NPC could achieve unless the GM hyper specialized them too..) Now the NPC and PC are almost equals in HP, DMG, AC, Saves, and the like... Th player no longer has the built in 20% (just tossing a number out) advantage due to good optimization vs standard NPC.

That's my take anyways...

I think what most people are saying is that this theoretical scenario, doesn't translate into the actual in this hypothetical. In a perfect world, where the barbarian materializes in a group of enemies who do nothing every round every time, then yes, he can "fireball" every round non stop. But to say this is how combats go this way at level 15, in my opinion, is ludicrous at best (open enough area, perfect grouping for rounds unending, starting in middle of the combatants, ect..).

But that aside, your also not allowing ANY tactics that a reasonable NPC would use. Let's say we meet all the requirements and the barbarian finds himself in the midst of his enemies, he swings and hits... And no one is dead at that level and damage. Now the enemies get to go. Why are they doing nothing? They are standing "in the fire" and doing nothing? The barb get's his A-HAH moment of surprise, wouldn't the enemy do something about that? Things that come to mind are trip, strike and stride away, grapple, ect... So I don't think it's reasonable that he can do that after his round of "shock and awe".

You also built a highly specialized, optimized PC (optimized to use whirlwind) using feats and magic items, but compare it to a no feat-non optimized caster with no magic items. Here is quick and dirty optimized elemental sorcerer - takes the 3 focus spell feats - gets Elemental Blast focus spell (and is heightened to level 8 automatically at level 15). Now slightly less area (but easily fixed with widen feat, and bringing it on par to 3 action vs 3 action move), but way more utility as it can be area, cone, or line. Does base 14d6+8 (avg 57 dmg). He can do this 3 times every combat (provided a 10-20 min rest depending on feats, not unreasonable while others search the room...), 4 times with a familiar. And not expend a single spell slot. And no magic items (although to be fair I am not sure what would help endlessly and am too lazy to look to be honest). And has an action left every round (so why not quickened heightened Fireball 6, for another 12d6+6 (avg 47)... and that's a poor use of a 6th level slot but simplest way to illustrate. can do that 4 times a day, and then when that runs out - lower to fireball 5, and so on...

There are more things to add that can further optimize this, but I don't see the need to demonstrate a counter example. I will also say the Sorcerer has greater utility in doing the damage via range, area, cone, or line. Especially after the NPC's should be doing SOMETHING to counter the tactic after round 1 (scatter, trip, mass damage to kill, grapple... ect). Also the sorcerer can sill try to cast while grappled, or tripped (and maybe not a good chance, but can at least get up from trip and blast or use 1 action to try escape). The whirlwind cannot as it is 3 actions to whirlwind...