Skapraun

Kcinlive's page

Goblin Squad Member. 226 posts (227 including aliases). 1 review. No lists. No wishlists. 2 aliases.




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Does it have an ioun stone?


Not sure if there's any other Earthdawn fans out there. I'll post there here just in case. FASA recently announced the 4th Edition of Earthdawn. The kickstarter for it is up, and it met it's goal amount in less then a day.

Earthdawn 4th Edition Kickstarter

-Kcinlive


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I approve.

-Kcinlive


Welcome Cassidy & Aslan!


And I thought the elementals looked good last week...

I love the distinctive style of each dragon and the feather like look of the wings.

-Kcinlive


So I'm about to start playing CC and I've been wondering how easy/difficult of a time our party is likely to have. I know the first adventure has a lot of ghosts, haunts, etc. Are we going to run into trouble without someone who can channel?

At present the group looks like this.
Barbarian
Rogue
Monk
Witch(Hedge Witch)
Magus - Who will only be there about half the time.

I know the other adventures feature less undead, but we have to live long enough to get there. Are we going to run into trouble, or even survive, an undead heavy adventure without anyone who specializes in killing undead?

Thanks in advance.

-Kcinlive


First let me start by saying that I am really excited about the Pathfinder RPG. I think it's a great idea. I love the 3.5 rules, and I'm very glad that Piazo is going to continue to support them. I am also excited about 4th Edition, but I don't see any reason why I can't play both.

So here are my thoughts and observations from reading through the Alpha release. Forgive me if any of this has been said before. And I know that it is just an Alpha release and everything is subject to change. These are just my immediate thoughts after reading through it.

And a warning. I tend to play arcane caster almost exclusively. So this will probably be very caster heavy.

Races
I don't really have any complaints here. Everything that I'm seeing seems to be a natural progression of 3.5.

Classes
I also really like what I'm seeing here. I will say that I play Arcane casters a great deal, so it's hard for me to properly judge some of the other classes. I love the idea of School Powers. This makes Specializing much more like a Clerics Domain abilities. Arcane Bond would be the only thing I'm not so sure about. Familiars tend to kind of be a liability more then an asset. They have the same flaw that all wizards have, low hit points, but to an even greater degree. As for bonding an item. This intrigues me, but it looks like it still needs a little work. It doesn't seem "good" enough, for lack of a better word. And it might have a similar flaw as the familiar. The other big problem about familiars is that they tend to get forgotten about and just put in the background. An animal companion for example is an key part of the class. It's right there fighting besides it's master. Please try to find a way to make familiars special. Make them a key part of being a wizard. Make me want to have one. Maybe have them right there next to the caster casting spells? Or maybe when the familiar helps with a casting the spell is more powerful in some way? Or make the bond between the master and familiar stronger. Maybe they can share life or spells in some way. Maybe this bond grows as the caster levels. I LOVE the idea of having a familiar, but I they are currently of dubious usefulness currently.

Skills
I think everyone can agree that combining certain skills is a good idea. My only thoughts are why keep Knowledge(Arcana)? I dislike the idea of having to have two skills that basically do the same thing. I understand the idea, Knowledge(Arcana) is the magical lore skill. It's the conceptual knowledge of spells, etc. not the practical, how to cast spells, skill, which is Spellcraft. I still think it's a bit redundant.

I like the idea of Appraise being used to identify magical items, and the change to the Identify spell. Paying 100g to identify items has always displeased me a great deal. Especially when the item ended up costing less then 100g.

Fly - This is my biggest complaint. This is a skill for a temporary condition. None of the core races can fly naturally. So the only use for this skill is when someone casts fly or a similar spell or ability. So how are you supposed to practice this skill without the effect? The fly spell isn't available for the first few levels so this skill wouldn't even matter. It reminds me a lot of the Skry skill in 3.0.

One possible fix is to keep the skill, but only have it trainable if the race has a natural flying ability. Then the fly spell just gives you the ability to fly and +10 skill points in the fly skill for the duration.

Feats
Arcane Strike, Conduit Spell, Arcane Buildup - I can see what you are trying to do with these. But I don't think it's going to work. Why would a caster with the lowest BAB, and some of the lowest hit points, EVER want to get into melee, or attack with a weapon period? I could see this being useful to a hybrid class, but still why would they want to waste a turn charging a weapon?

Combat
I haven't gotten a chance to take a good look at this, but here's what I've seen. I like the unification of the disparate combat maneuvers. With grapple though. Do we really need the different degrees of grapple? Wouldn't Grappled and Not Grappled work well enough?

Magic
I really like what you've done with Domains and Arcane Schools. Some of the specific abilities might need a little work, however. Hand of the Apprentice requiring concentration, for example. I am not sure how many Mages would use this ability, especially to attack, since it's so limiting.

Other Changes
One change that I really hope you implement is getting rid of Save or Die spells and abilities. I hate the fact that the fate of my entire character, and possibly the world, hinges on one die roll.

I also hope you implement a better negative hit point system. The -10 hit points doesn't quite seem to be enough at the higher levels.

Hit points
I have several comment about generating hit points. The roll one die method can be nice because it leads to some variation in hit points. But can lead to too much variation. I mean what happens when your Barbarian rolls a 1? The static method is nice, but is rather boring. The method we currently use in our 3.5 game is, roll your die, it it's less then half, take half. That leaves some variation, but you don't get any barbarians rolling 1s. Another thought is have a static number of hit points per level, lets say 4. Then add your die roll to it. Just some thoughts.

Like I said, these are just some thoughts and observations. I'm not trying to be critical, especially at this early of a point.

Thanks for reading.

-Kcinlive