Amp You project pure heat that causes a target to combust. The initial damage changes to 1d10 fire damage (not adding your ability modifier) plus 1 fire splash damage. When using amped produce flame as a melee attack, increase the damage dice of the initial damage from d10s to d12s. You are not harmed by splash damage from amped produce flame.
Does this mean that (assuming int 18) that these are the possible damage numbers:
If so, it looks like the amped versions are worse then normal versions. Is that intended or am I miss-reading the parenthetical in "The initial damage changes to 1d10 fire damage (not adding your ability modifier)"?
I'm playing Dead Suns in Starfinder right now and I just hit level 10. The level 10 stat bump really bothers me. I am playing a divine Gish and my strength is 18. Normally, Id want to bump it to 19 because I am playing a strength-focused melee character, but I know that Dead suns ends at level 12 so there is no point to me boosting my strength. This feels really weird. I think it would be even worse if I was playing a home game, got a 19 and then the game ended at level 14. I'd feel really sad.
Odd stats should either do something cool or we should not have them. And carrying 1 more bulk is not cool...
Casting Somatic Casting, Verbal Casting
Range 120 feet; Area 20-foot burst
Choose an alignment your deity has (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful).
You can’t cast this spell if you don’t have a deity or your deity
your deity is true neutral. You deal 4d8 damage of that alignment.
Creatures that match the alignment are unaffected. Those that
neither match nor oppose it treat their result as one degree better.
Success The creature takes half damage.
Critical Success The creature takes no damage.
Failure The creature takes full damage and is sick 1.
Critical Failure Full damage, sick 2, and slowed 1 while sick.
Heightened (+1) The damage increases by 1d8
You will notice there is no save type but a four-degrees entrance.
When I ask you "what is a pathfinder paladin about?" The answer is really easy. Its a "holy warrior." This gives a designer a lot of room to create cool abilities because that identity is a deep well of ideas that can be diverse but fit together and feel like a paladin. What about the other classes?
Barbarian -> Gets so angry that he can transcend human limits
Ranger -> Nature Warrior
Rogue -> Sneaky/Cunning Warrior
Monk -> Ascetic Warrior
Fighter -> ??? Warrior?
All of the martial classes are fundamentally about fighting. This is because pathfinder has easily ten times the page count dedicated to fighting then to non-combat interactions. In various incarnations of the game we've tried to make the fighter about being a "warrior warrior" by making him slightly better at combat then the other classes. This is unsatisfying because you can't actually do that without breaking the game. Most games of pathfinder are all about fighting, you can't have one class just be better then others at the same job.
P2 tried to fix this by giving the fighter his own unique feats, but because the fighter is not about anything there is no answer to "Why can't my barbarian power attack?" The reverse is not true though; if you ask "Why can't my fighter rage" the answer is "He is not angry enough!"
So give the fighter something to call his own. A random suggestion:
Warrior Scholar: The fighter knows his enemy. He can seamlessly change up his style; switching weapons quickly and gaining unique benefits from different weapon groups. He can also direct his allies to best attack the enemies' weak-points.
I was locking at the Assist action when trying to find neat uses for my third action, and then I noticed this:
Assist wrote:
You help an ally attack the enemy or foil the enemy’s attacks against one of your allies. Choose one enemy you’re adjacent to and one ally adjacent to that enemy. Then, attempt a melee attack against the enemy’s AC.
Assist targets AC and has a critical failure case where it applies -2 to your ally. If you are expected to have a ~50% chance to hit, making an Assist attack with your 2nd or 3rd attack seems counterproductive. Yet to make giving up your primary attack worthwhile, your own damage output needs to be about 1 tenth of your ally.
I could maybe see a save-focused spell-caster using Assist, but they have no way to use Assist at range or any desire to be in melee. Assist is such an iconic action that it would be sad to see it relegated to being super niche.
My quick fix would be to give Assist attacks +10 to hit (or target AC-10). That way, giving up your primary attack may be something you want to do to give a stronger friend +4 to hit, but it makes using your 3rd attack something that's not counter productive.
Encounters are balanced around characters being at full HP entering combat, so just do that! Say resting for 15 minutes fully recovers your HP. To make combat threatening, every time you go unconscious, you take a wound. When you have 3 + Con modifier wounds, and take a wound you become crippled, applying penalties to most things. When you take a wound while crippled, you die.
Sleeping heals some number of wounds and there may be mid-level spells that will remove wounds. Done.
The multi-attack penalty is key to why I think the 3-action economy feels cool for martials. It means that you can feel good taking marginal actions like moving or raising a shield. Yet, when you play a wizard, you can cast a 2 action spell and attack with a bow at 0 MAP, so paradoxically you feel like you have less options, and you can't use neat cantrips like shield.
I would propose to make all spells cost only one action and have the MAP apply to the save DC.
I've been comparing P1 and P2 a bunch this last week and trying to put my finger on why I felt so dissatisfied with P2. Its especially vexing because playing P2 is actually pretty fun, and has much of the feel of playing first edition pathfinder.
I think my main dissatisfaction with P2 comes from the incredibly narrow range of possible bonuses that the 4 degrees of success system forces on it. You can't have a character with an attack bonus or defense bonus be too far out of the range that the system expects or there will be tons and tons of crits. This exacerbate the effect of a small accuracy bonus; transforming it into a large damage bonus.
I started comparing this to how 3.5 and P1 approached balance and I noticed this: P1 takes a limited-resource balance approach. It gives you a certain number of resources, like feats, gp, point-buy etc, and asks you to spread them around to different offenses and around 6 defenses. The idea is that you can be average across the board, or specialize in some number of those fields. And it mostly works, as long as you avoid the blatantly broken combos and as long as the challenges you encounter attack all of your defenses, at least sometimes. This shifts a lot of the balance burden on to encounter design.
Its this build sub-game that was one of my favorite parts of pathfinder 1 and it gave context to all of the combat that I would engage in later. I also feel that the P1 approach gives more design space to create new and distinct options later on.
My suggestion would be to significantly expand permissible bonuses by level. Such that a combat focused character can have a 30%+ chance to crit on their first attack. However, to prevent accuracy from being godly, you would remove bonus damage on crits and replace it with weapon specialization effects. This gives a sneaky crit confirmation mechanic for the more powerful crit effects that would require a save. Further, to prevent unhittable AC and worthless attacks, make it so that misses, but not critical misses, are instead a graze and do minimum damage or have some other minor effect.
So an Strike with a Greatsword would look like:
success: You deal normal weapon damage
critical success: The target is also made off-balance by your attack, becoming flat-footed for 1 round.
failure: you graze the target dealing damage as if you had rolled 0 on your on your weapon's first damage die and 1 on each additional damage die. (Minimum 0 damage)
critical failure: You miss completely, dealing no damage.
Fireball would look like this:
success: The target takes half damage.
critical success: The target takes no damage
failure: the target takes 6d6 fire damage
critical failure: The target also catches fire, taking 1d6 persistent fire damage
Heighten (+1): Increase the damage by +2d6 and the persistent damage from a critical failure by 1 point of damage.
FEAT 2
Requirements
You are wielding a two-handed melee weapon.
Make a Strike with the required weapon. It gains the following enhancement and failure effect.
Enhancement
You can push the target, either automatically Shoving the target 5 feet away from you or causing the target to become flat-footed until the start of your next turn. The target chooses whether to be moved or become flat-footed. [...]
Failure
The target becomes flat-footed until the start of your next turn.
One of the options in success that the enemy can choose is to become flatfooted. But that is exactly the failure effect of the attack. So: if the enemy would prefer to be shoved, and you want them to be flat footed, wouldn't it be better for you to intentionally miss? That's kind of bizarre. Is the Enhancement supposed to say "Flat footed until the end of your next turn?
First thing I want to get out of the way is that I am not talking about aggro management as has been introduced to us by MMOs and other such games. We've never really had aggro in Pathfinder, and if we did it would be a mind-effecting effect so would not be that reliable :p
However, Pathfinder 1 has always had the ability to play a tank in the sense of a martial controller. A spell-casting controller makes areas of the battlefield unpleasant for enemies to enter. For example: casting grease means that enemies need to move away from it or risk repeated reflex saves. A martial controller accomplishes this with by managing 2 factors:
1. Being able to take more punishment then the average PC
2. Making the area near them unpleasant to be in
A straightforward barbarian build is partway a tank already. Enemies don't want to stand near the barbarian because he will full attack them, they don't want to even pass near him to get to softer targets because he will AoO them. A more tank focused build might wield a reach weapon and have ways of preventing enemies from leaving their threatened area. E.g. they might take the Stand Still feat.
However it's accomplished, the existence of a tank role makes combat more interesting because positioning is more important for everyone involved.
Now let's get to some playtest experiences! (spoilers for Doomsday Dawn 1 ahead)
I wanted to build a tank for this adventure since I like playing martial characters and I like battlefield control. For the first few encounters I played a monk, but the last two encounters took place on a different day and my DM let me switch out for a fighter.
As a monk I was disappointed in my ability to control pretty much anything. The lack of an attack of opportunity was really striking and the lack of AC meant that I was more of a glass cannon.
So since I missed AoOs, I figured I'd switch to a fighter with a reach weapon! It felt pretty good to wade into the middle of a bushel of goblins and have them care that I was there. Walking up to a spell-caster meant that he couldn't avoid an attack from me and cast a spell (because he would need to Step twice). Unfortunately, I was still basically as squishy as anyone else. My AC was maybe a point or two higher then other people and I had a few more HP, but there was no way I could reliably survive a round of focused fire from 4 goblins and 1 commando. Since I was the only front-liner in the party and I won initiative I was almost guaranteed to be focused down. I only survived because the goblin caster got greedy and ignored me to cast burning hands at my allies.
In the final boss fight of the dungeon I tried to protect my comrades by going mano-a-mano with the vampire/hobgoblin thing. My AoOs again felt good for taking out the dire rats, but the boss's attack bonus and damage was so high that I went down in two rounds. He then proceeded to fight 1v4 against the rest of the party and kill them all.
Conclusions
I think that there is not enough of an ability to specialize in different areas of combat. Everyone has about the same AC, ability to hit and to a lesser extent damage. For long term interest in the game, I feel it is critical for there to be different ways to contribute to combat.
I kind of like that AoOs are rare because more creatures provoke them, though I think that's more to do with the 5ft-step not being free then anything about who gets to use them. I think that every class interested in being in the thick of things needs a way to control the area around them. This could be something unique to each class, or the attack of opportunity, but it has to come online at level 1 because it is critical to the tactics of pathfinder combat.
Finally, I think as it stands now a pathfinder 2 party needs 2 front-liners that can trade enemy focus between them with careful positioning. My friend also suggested that a cleric with the Healing Hands feat could sort of do the same thing by using his absurd amount of free healing to keep the party's primary tank up and kicking round after round. This isn't really good or bad. Just an observation.
This may change at higher levels but because progression is pretty linear my intuition says it should remain true. We will see :)
I played Raiders of Shrieking Peak yesterday and now it's time for some detailed thoughts.
I played a Dwarf Wizard with a fighter multi-class and the magical striker feat that I built to try out the true-strike + weapon combo.
The rest of the party were: Valeros the pregen, a dragon-style monk who could Leap 25 ft, and a bard with a horse.
The most obvious thing I noticed is that my wizard was better then Valeros in every way. Between my arcane focus, spells, and my two-hander I could attack with a bigger bonus and more damage then the fighter, while also throwing down powerful buffs and debuffs. The ability advancement meant that I could have 18 strength and intelligence along with 16 constitution while poor Valeros was limited to 19 strength giving him no benefit in combat. I also had the same AC as him, my shield cantrip did not take a hand and I had 65 hp with false life up.
To balance all this out, Valeros has... reactive shield?
PE2 gives you more options to move, but because there were no AoOs I never felt the need to. When the minotaurs attacked us on the bridge, I stepped once that combat and then proceeded to cast a 2 action spell, boost my weapon to +2 and then attack every round for the rest of the combat. As powerful as this was, it felt kind-of lame thematically.
The battle against the boss with the watchtowers felt strange. I don't think the adventure gave a height for the watchtowers so our DM declared them to be 10ft tall. That's when we discovered that it was impossible to jump that high for anyone not optimized for it and that climbing the ladder would take 2 actions. I spent all fight throwing my sword with Hand of the apprentice and Magical Striker at the BBEG and poor Valeros had to plink away with his non-magical bow. That felt pretty unfair too.
Fireball and Haste felt underwhelming compared to glitter-dust, and true-strike. Fireball did less damage then my (magical striker empowered) sword and it never had more then 2 targets. Since I was a gish I was hoping to haste myself but I found that the bonus action was not really useful. I couldn't use it to ready an action after I cast haste, the second or third attack it gives is not that exciting and moving was not that exciting because I would usually already be in fierce melee most of the time. On the other hand the bonus speed was not so absurd that I could use it to quickly climb the watchtowers as it would still take me my whole turn to go up the ladder and the lack of an AoO means that the BBEG would just fly away from me. I think Haste could be safely dropped to level 2 and fireball probably needs a bit more damage to be worth using your best spell-slot on.
Almost all my character building time was spent picking spells. The poor organization of the PDF and the lack of a hyper-linked SRD meant that it was incredibly tedious to figure out which spells fit my build. I gave up actually filling out my spellbook and just selected the spells that I would prepare; like some-sort of sorcerer.
We had no cleric, so I was worried about healing, but the adventure was pretty short so it was fine. I did discover that the feat Trick Magic Item lets me use the minor staff of healing and I converted all of my resonance into heals. That felt pretty neat. It was unclear which skill I was supposed to use to activate the staff or at what point resonance is spent: when I make the trick magic item roll or when I actually activate the staff.
On an editing note: Either Hand of the Apprentice needs to not have the attack trait or Flurry of blows needs it. Flurry has you make 2 Strikes and (by my reading) those suffer from the multiple attack penalty (so -0, -5) because Strike has the attack trait. On the other hand (of the apprentice) the wizard power has the attack trait and it has you make a Strike, so by the monk logic the power "eats" you first attack and the ranged attack you make would be at -5. But that's clearly not the intent.
TL;DR The adventure was fun, I felt powerful, Fighters need to be re-written, haste/fireball were meh, AoOs need to come back.
First, a food for thought question: Why would you choose to build a class-based system over a class-less system which just has a bunch of talents to choose from?
There can be many answers to this question, but I think the most useful is that a class-based design lets you introduce a sub-system that defines a given class in a way that you would struggle to make both balanced and deep if you were limited to only using talents. Spells are the flagship example of such a system, but we can see other uses in PF1. Consider the barbarian's rage. Every aspect of the class is built around manipulating rage with rage powers in various ways. When someone says "What is the barbarian class about? The answer is rage." Or consider the Magus. The Magus is defined by the existence of spell combat and spellstrike; from level 1 to level 20.
Heck, even the fighter had an identity. It was "I get to take feat chains real fast."
I contend that the classes that really captured people's imagination in PF1 were those with a strong defining feature or features that brought the class together from a mix of mechanics into a coherent concept.
I think that many non-spellcasters (and even some spellcasters) in PF2 are not about anything. Consider the fighter; he gets 4 abilities that are not static number boosters or part of the standard progression:
1. An attack of opportunity
2. A flexible feat
3. Critical specialization
4. Another flexible feat
Are any of those features so exiting that you would say "I want to play a fighter because I get a flexible feat!"?
"But Knight", you might say, "the classes define which list of talents you have access to." Well my hypothetical friend, this does create an identity, but I think it makes for a weak and negative identity. Since many classes don't have any meat to build on in the actual class table their class feats necessarily stand alone. That means that you can't say "a monk is defined by his combat styles" because half of all monks actually use swords or something like that. I also say that this identity is negative because the classes are defined by what they can't do almost as much as by what they can. And psychologically it feels bad to have to say "Well I want to play an archer so I guess I have to be a fighter because they are the only ones with archery feats..."
I am most excited about playing the monk of all the classes (but that's a story for another post). However, some of the ki powers struck me as underwhelming (especially the entry feat) so I figured I'd look at the other path into an wise-master monk build; namely multi-classing cleric.
So here is what we will do. We'll build a monk that take all available ki powers as soon as possible, and compare it to a monk that takes all Cleric multi-class feats. I'm going to ignore magic items, skill and general feats because I can only spelunk so much rulebook in one day :)
First both monks will be of no specific race, with stats focusing on Dex > Wis > Con. The monk/cleric will try to reproduce ki powers with spells This is because I don't want to be stuck comparing very different things, like teleportation vs finger of death... The assumption is that you are a player that thinks the ki powers are cool and wants to use them.
str 12
dex 18
con 12
int 10
wis 16
cha 10
Ki-mystic
Level: effect
1: open feat
2: Ki Strike (ki = 3)
4: Wholeness of body (ki = 5)
5: +2 wis (ki = 6)
6: Ki blast (ki = 8)
8: Wild wind stance (ki = 9)
10: Wind jump, +1 wis (ki = 11)
12: Abundant Step there is no level 12 ki power, so we are taking the 2nd level 6 one (ki = 13)
14: Wild winds gust (ki = 15)
15: +1 wis (ki = 16)
16: Quivering Palm (ki = 18)
18: Empty body (Ki 20)
20: open feat
For the monk/cleric spells I'll note which spell is usually prepared. Remember that the multi-class archetype gives you access to the whole common divine spell list.
Monk/Cleric
Level: effect
1: open feat
2: Cleric Dedication
4: Basic Cleric Spellcasting
5: +2 Wis
6: Domain (fire) (sp = 4)
8: Divine Breadth
10: +1 Wis, open feat
12: Expert Cleric Spellcasting
14: Advanced Dogma (Advanced Domain: fire)(sp = 5)
15: +1 wis
16: open feat (sp = 7)
18: Master Cleric Spellcasting
20: open feat
Spells prepared at various levels
Cantrips: Shield, Guidance
4: Heal
6: Heal, sound burst
8: Heal x2, sound burst, L3-Heal
10: Heal x2, sound burst, L3-Heal
12: Heal x2, sound burst x2, L3-Heal, air walk
14: Heal x2, sound burst x2, L3-Heal, air walk, flame strike
16: Heal x2, sound burst x2, L3-Heal x2, air walk, flame strike, Blade Barrier
18: Heal x2, sound burst x2, L3-Heal x2, air walk, L5-sound burst, flame strike, Blade Barrier, Finger of death
20: there is no level 20 ki feat, so I'll stop here.
Comparison
Now let's compare the ki powers to the spells.
Level 2
It's hard to say how strong ki-strike is, but +1 to hit is valuable. There is no equivalent cantrip, but shield is similar in that it swings the RNG in your favor by one point. Call this a slight edge to ki-mystic since the cleric has to deal with an anathema.
Level 4
Now, both the cleric and ki-mystic get to cast heal 1/day for 1d8+wis hp. The cleric can target allies but the monk does not provoke. However the cleric spell does not eat into his ability to use shield and the monk only gets 1 ki strike in a day when he heals himself. The monk can use his healing to remove poisons. We'll call that a wash
Level 6
Now we're talking. The ki-mystic gets ki-blast which deals 4d4 (10) force damage in a 30 ft cone. and his heal heals him for 3d8+Wis. He can use these two powers in any combination 4 times. The cleric gets sound burst which deals 2d8 (9) damage in a smaller area but its not a cone so it more precise. Still, significant advantage to the ki-mystic.
Level 8
Wild wind stance seems pretty lame... It also only increases your ki pool by 1 instead of 2 like every other ki power. It seems to me that wild wind stance is just worse then using shuriken. It has 30ft range instead of 20, but no range increments and only adds half your strength. Ignoring screening is nice, but doesn't fire the imagination. The ki mystic can use his heal and ki-blast 4 times in total, and wild wind stance once. His heal heals for 5d8+wis and the ki blast deals 6d4 (15) force damage.
The cleric at this point learns the fire domain, and can shoot a ray for 4d6+wis (18) damage 4 times per day. Considering that the most a wind stance attack can do (with a +5 etching) is 5d4+strength that's kinda sad.
The cleric can also heal for once per day for 5d8+wis, but has to spend 2 actions and provoke to do so. Overall, this level still goes to the ki-mystic.
Level 10
Not much to say here. Numbers go up a bit, but there is no new spell level. The cleric is sad. He can give people fire resistance now...
The ki-mystic gets wind jump, which is kind-of a budget fly, but that's cool. Also +2 ki.
Level 12
The Ki mystic picks up abundant step, because there is no level 12 ki-power. Abundant step is kinda lame, its a line-of-sight teleport with 10-20 ft range. It is doubtless useful for crossing hazards and makes for a cool visual, but is not that exciting. The cleric gets air walk and can target his friends with it. That's strictly better then wind step. Plus another sound burst.
Level 14
Ki mystic gets wild winds gust. Which lets him attack everyone in a 30ft cone while in wild winds style. That means you need to spent 1 ki to enter the stance, and 2 ki to use the ability. Except wild wind stance sucks... Even with a +5 weapon, you are only hitting for 5d4+1/2 strength. Ki blast costs less ki and deals 8d4 (20) force damage. We only really take it for 2 more ki points. The ki mystic has 15 ki points which is 7 casting of ki-blast or wholeness of body.
The cleric gets flame strike which hits for 8d6 (28) but can be more easily targeted, letting him hit creatures that are more then 30 ft away.
Level 16+
The monk gains quivering palm, which strikes me as a very awkward ability. You have to be in touch range, spend two actions -- potentially provoking -- and hit your target. Then you have to spend another action to trigger the palm. If they pass their save, your whole 3 actions are wasted. Otherwise they are stunned for 1 round... (or die on a crit fail). That seems like a lot of effort when you can just use stunning fist.
Empty body is pretty cool, but not level 18 power cool. I don't know what you can use eternalness for other then scouting things. Can you punch people with a ghost-touch gauntlet or something?
The cleric gets neat spells (including ethereal jaunt) but arguing that "Its better at level 16+" is sort of silly...
Conclusions
When I started writing this post, I thought the cleric would win hands-down... But I guess I was wrong :) Now, this says nothing about what the cleric could do differently from the ki-monk or if damage is useful. Just that the monk's ki powers keep up with his thing: providing superior healing and damage to the cleric.
I do think that the ki powers from level 8 onward are unexciting. I don't see myself using them for much because they seem outclassed by ki-blast, wholeness of body and the spells that you gain at those levels. Unfortunately there is no way to focus on lower-level ki powers or to expand your ki-pool except by taking powers you don't really want. This means that it is hard to diversify your ki-based build. Maybe there could be a feat to reduce the ki cost of a lower level power? The higher level powers also need to be more different and there needs to be an extra ki feat that, gives you +4 ki or doubles your pool or something like that.
Getting nothing at level 10 from your spell-casting multiclass feels bad. Maybe divine breadth should give you another cantrip or something at that level?
An interesting consequence of multi-class archetypes is that all class feats must be balanced against spells since everyone has access to 8th level spell casting if they want.
P.S. Ki strike is still lame.
Discuss
I may do a wizard multi-class build to see if that can keep up with blasting...
The Ki-strike monk feat is required by all the other ki-powers. It seems like this breaks the idea that feat trees should only exist for feats that build on the previous feat. I think it would be better if those down-stream powers only required a ki-pool. That way we could add alternative entry points for ki users.
That being said, all the ki powers already increase your ki pool, why not just ditch the requirement all together? That way Ki-strike will be an option if you want a slightly larger ki pool (Adding Wis instead of a flat +2.)
I really love the looks of bulette style But until now I've not had a good concept for it. I want to take a bit of a flavor driven approach but I need some help putting it all together.
The backstory is that Ulrich is conceived when his mother gets lost in a thunderstorm. So he is a loud and huge guy that has some storm powers. Here is what I have so far:
So the highlights are that he will have a 60ft base speed in a breastplate with longstrider up. He will be able to run on water for 8 rounds a day and will be able to gain blur from the desert domain, which I will flavor as a mini-thunderstorm.
with [url]http://www.archivesofnethys.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Boots%2 0of%20Vaulting]Boots of Vaulting[/url] he will have a hefty +33 bonus to jump; which means he can leap ~11 feet from a stand-still.
I am not that happy about having to house-rule the desert-domain to work on a cleric and taking the BaB hit sucks. I've looked in a bunch of places for elemental themed powers on a martial chassis but its hard to find. I am thinking of going into Hellknight instead of the cleric level for being able to move full speed in full-plate and gain the travel domain, but then I have no elemental powers :(
I am not married to anything except the 3 fighter levels, since I need armor training and 5 feats
TL;DR I need help finding:
• Something that gives lightning or sonic damage or is storm themed
• At least 2 uses per day, preferably more
• Can't sacrifice speed
• full BaB
• 3rd party stuff is ok, but ideally no new subsystems (aka no Spheres of Power :( )
• Online by level 6
I've been thinking about the proficiency system a bit and it feels weird that Spell DCs and Save bonuses both seem to scale with level + bonuses, but why armor class does not get your level added to it? And if it is added, then what does armor do?
Here is the case for armor-as-DR.
- Your high-dex characters and high-strength characters would both be able to "tank" but would do so in distinct ways.
- The proficiency system does not have an exception for AC.
- The main problem of Armor-as-DR: that you can't balance it against the kraken's 8 tentacles and the T-rex's bite goes away with there no longer being a full attack. Now you can just balance it against everyone having 1-3 attacks.
- Since PF2 is replacing old-style DR/weakness with Resistance-to-X mechanics, you can now have armor that resists bludgeoning/piercing/slashing damage to different degrees. So you can have at least 3 armors of each weight that are not strictly better then one another!
Some of the stuff I've heard about weapon/shield properties is really exciting. So here are some weapon properties/rules that I think some iconic weapons will have.
short bow
The red-headed stepchild of bows. Give it agile, and it gains a niche of "fast bow." Attacking with -0/-4/-8.
rapid shot
One of the main sources of bow power. My guess is that it will now reduce iterative penalties by 2. e.x. -0/-3/-6
crossbows
Bows are all about volleys, crossbows will be about single shots. Since crits now come from accuracy, give crossbows a hit bonus and a large die.
Light crossbow: 1 action reload, 1d8 damage, +1 to hit.
heavy crossbow: 2 actions reload, 1d10 damage, +2 to hit.
Rapid reload dies in a fire. That feat that adds int or maybe wis to damage is the crossbow damage booster.
thrown weapons
These are about switch hitting, so give them a property that lets you use melee special abilities with thrown weapons. So you can fight with a spear, and then power attack with it at range in a pinch.
slings
Slings will be the midpoint of thrown and bows. They can use melee abilities and have longer range then thrown weapons. But you have to deal with a poor damage die. (Maybe a reload? Reload just for staff slings?)
axes
unweildly: they get -1 to iteratives, but get a bigger die then a sword. Like 2d8 for a great axe!
two-handed hammers
heavy: hammers must be readied as an action before you can swing them, otherwise your attacks are at -5. However, they get a much bigger damage die: maybe 3d6!
firearms
Firearms are all American-Civil-War tech-level. They would be the anti-crossbow. Instead of an accuracy bonus, they get an accuracy penalty from the recoil but get a very large damage die to compensate. D12 for pistols? They would use the crossbow wis or int to damage feat option.
I think a new edition is a great place to revamp ability score scaling. We've always had a problem with MAD vs SAD builds, and Starfinder went in a good direction by making it easier to raise low stats. However, what if we replaced the standard 10 +/- 2 bonus scaling, and used the P1E score's point-buy as the ability score itself? You would just use a table to get your bonus.
Ex; you might have a sheet that looks like this:
score == modifier
Str 17 = +4
Dex 02 = +1
Con 05 = +2
Int -1 = -1
Wis 02 = +1
Cha -4 = -2
This is the P2E equivalent of 18 12, 14, 9, 12, 7 for a total point-buy of 21. Then races could give you +X to stats, but it would be of equivalent benefit to you, regardless of how much you care about that stat. You could also grant a +1 ability point every level to let players get a smoother growth curve.
I belive they wanted to do something similar for SF but did not find a way to make it clean. I really hope Paizo considers a system like this for P2E
Everyone knows that animal companions are very powerful. However, many people don't like managing the extra complexity of a companion. Unfortunately, getting +1 to your weapon for 5 minutes hardly seems to compare. So without further ado, have some alternative paladin bonds.
Weapon Bond
This type of bond allows the paladin to bond with a minor celestial spirit that acts as a guide and can augment the paladin's weapon. At level 5, the spirit grants the paladin a +2 sacred bonus to a skill of his choice. At level 8 and every 3 levels beyond, the bonus increase by 1 and the paladin may choose another skill to apply the spirit's sacred bonus to.
As a standard action the paladin may command the spirit to empower his weapon. The spirit causes the weapon to shed light as a torch. At 5th level, this spirit grants the weapon a +1 enhancement bonus. For every three levels beyond 5th, the weapon gains another +1 enhancement bonus, to a maximum of +6 at 20th level. These bonuses can be added to the weapon, stacking with existing weapon bonuses to a maximum of +5, or they can be used to add any of the following weapon properties: axiomatic, brilliant energy, defending, disruption, flaming, flaming burst, holy, keen, merciful, and speed. Adding these properties consumes an amount of bonus equal to the property's cost (see Table: Melee Weapon Special Abilities). These bonuses are added to any properties the weapon already has, but duplicate abilities do not stack. If the weapon is not magical, at least a +1 enhancement bonus must be added before any other properties can be added. The bonus and properties granted by the spirit are determined when the spirit is commanded to empower the weapon and can be changed as a standard action. The celestial spirit imparts no bonuses if the weapon is held by anyone other than the paladin but resumes giving bonuses if returned to the paladin. These bonuses apply to only one end of a double weapon.
reasoning:
The paladin's normal 5+ minute weapon buff lasts about long enough to cover the entire part of a dungeon that matters. The action economy cost mostly means it's not available in ambushes or when you have numerous scattered encounters in a day. My version partially preserves that since in an ambush the pally likely has a perception bonus up or something.
Archon Bond
This type of bond allows the paladin to gain the service of a lantern archon. The lantern archon functions as a wizard's familiar using the paladin's level as his wizard level with the following differences:
- The archon does not gain alertness, speak with master, or speak with animals of their kind.
- The archon can cast continual flame, but the paladin must provide the material component.
- The archon can only cast Aid once per day plus once for every 3 paladin levels after 5th. The paladin may expend a use of lay on hands to recharge the archon's spell like abilities.
- At level 9 when the archon uses the full attack action it may make another ray attack. (For a total of 3.)
- The Paladin may replace the Improved Initiative feat a regular archon has with a feat it qualifies for.
- For every 3 paladin levels beyond 5th the archon gains a bonus feat it qualifies for.
- This ability does not qualify the paladin for the Improved Familiar feat
- Remember, saving throw DC of the archon's aura of menace scales with the paladin's level, as all familiar abilities do.
The archon may use the Paladin's level in place of the caster level of its spell like abilities.
- The archon gains Point-Blank Shot as a bonus feat
reasoning:
The Lantern Archon does reasonably piddly damage and has a short range, which makes full attacks difficult. Still the archon gives the paladin access to true speech and a teleporting minion. Also the ability to exchange lay-on-hands for temporary hit points is strong. This is supposed to be a sort of middle ground between utility and damage, since there are not a lot of ways to boost the archon's damage.
Celestial Transcendence
This type of bond allows the paladin slowly take on aspects of a celestial. Eventually becoming a true archon.
At level 5, the paladin becomes an outsider with the native subtype and is treated as an aasimar as well as his previous subtype. The paladin gains Angelic Blood as a bonus feat. Further, he can choose to either gain resistance 5 to a single energy type, or to gain Angelic Flesh. In either case, he counts as having Angelic Flesh for the purposes of meeting feat prerequisites.
At level 8, the paladin gains the Aura of Menace special ability. He also gains the Archon subtype.
At level 11, he gains Angel Wings. Except the fly speed it grants is equal to double his land speed. This is reduced normally by medium and heavier armor.
At level 14, the paladin gains Metallic Wings. If he already has this feat, he may select another feat he qualifies for.
At level 17, the paladin gains the ability to use greater teleport at will, but it can only target himself and 50 lbs of objects. (Keep in mind, this may limit the paladin from teleporting while wearing all of his equipment.)
At level 20, the paladin loses the native subtype and ceases to age. He also gains the truespeech ability. If the paladin is slain on a plane other than Heaven, he will reform in Heaven within 24 hours and gain a negative level.
While in Heaven, the paladin can use Plane Shift once per day, but only to travel to the material plane or the plane he died on last. If he desires, the paladin and any creatures that travel with him can arrive unerringly at the location of the paladin's latest corpse. If his corpse was completely destroyed (such as by Disintegrate) he arrives in the location where he last died.
reasoning:
The transcendence abilities are almost completely defensive in nature. I think it is lame that there is no good way in pathfinder to become a celestial, but tons of ways of becoming a fiend. So have some balance!
In pathfinder and 3.5 before it, poisons have traditionally been terrible for three reasons:
1. They are expensive
2. They are too slow to meaningfully affect NPCs that are going to die in 3 rounds anyway.
3. There is very little build support for poisons in the system, because poisons are evulz.
I was looking through the Archive of Nethys recently, and discovered that there are now a bunch of cheap poisons that apply status effects! So I made a neat little build that should be PFS legal. One thing to keep in mind is that poison is still poorly supported with feats and items. So you can't really build a poisoner the same way you can build, say, a fire sorcerer. So the build will be a fighting-person who also poisons, and will have some gaps that you can season to taste.
So now onto the exciting part, how this would play.
At level 1, You are basically just an UnRogue. Take your rapier and attack for 1d6+1 damage!
At level 2, we get our first poison efficiency. Now Agatha can make 4 attacks with one dose of poison. She will use Red Tears To add a DC 14 fortitude check on each attack she makes. And because of Poisonous Slayer, this gives her +1 to hit, all at the cost of 50 gp.
At level 3, we get the ability we've taken rogue levels for. Agatha can now convert poisons delivery mechanisms with a trivial Craft(Alchemy) check. In important fights, she will use Confabulation Powder, Either by throwing it to control the battlefield, or pre-applying it to her rapier. She will be making enemies staggered with a DC 17 fort save and she will get 4 attacks from this for only 80gp.
Oh and Agatha just got Dex to damage. Level 3 is a good level.
Levels 5 through 7 get us the alchemist's arcano toxin. Which does not accomplish much. But it counts as a poison for all of our abilities. We also get Concentrate poison which lets Agatha spend double a poison's price for +2 to the DC. Around this level, Agatha should be able to afford a +1 spell-storing weapon. The spell she will store is almost always going to be Pernicious Poison. Bonk some fool with your weapon and suddenly you get +4 DC to your poison. You can buy castings of pernicious poison in most settlements for only 60gp and a day's wait. Or buy a wand of it.
At level 8, (or level 9 if you don't want to spend 10 prestige retraining) you get your build capstone. And what a capstone it is. First we take some Chellish Deathapple; it's a poison that makes a creature unconscious for one minute with a base DC of 23! Unfortunately, the poison is ingested and has a 1 minute onset. That's ok though. Master poisoner lets us convert this little fiend into an injury poison, and Deep Toxin lets us bypass the onset time when we use vital strike.
At this point, Agatha has likely bought a dexterity belt, so with only 200 gp, She is forcing a save or die on 6 attacks with a DC of 22. But that's not all. When it's time finish off an important foe, Agatha can drink an extract of invisibility, activate her spell-stored pernicious poison, and trade off 4 dice of sneak attack for +8 total to the save DC. She can further spend an extra 200 gp for another +2 to the save DC.
Hows that DC 32 save or die effect looking. Oh and I guess she deals 2d6 + dex damage or something too…
I'm not sure what you do after level 9+. You could take more rogue levels to keep your sneak attack up. 4 more levels of alchemist will get you celestial poison which will let you put undead and demons to sleep and the ability to add extra strikes to your poison equal to your intelligence modifier. Another 6 levels of rogue will get you Deadly Cocktail, which will let you put two doses of your concentrated applesauce on your sword for another +2 DC.
Brewmaster would arguably increase the DC of your Chellish Deathapple even after you convert it into an injury poison.
You can take Power Attack and Powerful Poisoning to boost your DCs still further.
Anyway, so now that's how you poison things. This is also how you cry when you discover that you are going to be fighting robots for the next 8 levels :'(
So the description of the butchering axe says that it was invented by orcs, but it does not have "orc" in the name. Is it a martial weapon for half-orcs? It would be nice if weapon familiarity was finally worth something.
So quillbreaker defense is an amusing feat, and it has a lot of potential. +20 hp for a single feat is pretty awesome! (As long as you don't care about swift actions.) However, we need an efficient way to restore these hit-points between encounters, or there is not much point.
I am looking at this through the lens of PFS, so the goal is to minimize table variation.
For comparison, keep in mind that healing 1 hp with a wand is worth ~2.7gp
Option 1: Hotswap
The simplest option is to just replace your armor spikes after every battle. You can buy bone or obsidian armor spikes for 25 gp, and masterwork bone spikes for 325. This gives us a cost per hp of 1.25 and 16.25 respectively.
Table variation: its unclear what kind of action it is to swap your armor spikes. I can see an argument for anywhere from a full round action to days. There is some evidence that armor spikes can be separate from armor. Take a look at the Demonspike Pauldrons.
Option 2: Hotswap Harder
If your GM rules that armor spikes must be forged into your armor, you can always invest in armored coats. The coat costs 50gp and weighs only 20lbs. Staple your armor spikes to it and swap them between encounters.
Option 3: We can fix it
Obsidian armor spikes only weigh 7.5 pounds, so a CL 8 oil of mending can repair them, for an efficiency of 10gp per hit point (200gp per use). Its not clear how much hp armor spikes have, but if they count as light blades the answer is 2. That means mending will almost always restore them to full health. It has to be an oil because no one is waiting 10 minutes while you wave your wand around and then roll a 2 on your UMD.
If you want to be cheeky, you can pay 5.75gp per hit point (115gp per use) by first applying a wand of lighten object to your armor spikes before using a CL 4 mending oil...
Between adventures, you can hire a level 8 adept or something to hit your spikes with mending for 40 gp. (Again, 30 if you are cheeky.)
Option 4: We can fix it, without those stinky casters
You can also use mending paste to repair your spikes. At 25 gp a flask, this gives you one of the best hp to gp ratios. The down-side is that it takes 1d6+4 minutes to dry. I'm not sure if you have to work on it for this time or not, but mending paste is probably only good for repairs on long adventures. Likely in conjunction with method 1 or 2.
The main downside is that it only works on metal.
Option 5: This is too much work. I am a spell caster, what can I do?
A caster level 1 wand of Gorum's armor gives you armor spikes for 10 minutes. This is a cost of 1.5 gp per hit point! Needs an investment in UMD and can never get more then 10 hp from this though.
If you can actually cast this spell and are level 5, There is a sold argument that the armor spikes are masterwork though since they get an enhancement bonus. Since in PFS you will have 3 adventures per level, and you will have 21 adventures after level 5. That means that each pearl of power is worth 420 hp, for a ratio of ~2.4 gp per hp.
TL;DR
Buy 4 or so armored coats and attach masterwork obsidian armor spikes to them. After combats in which you used quillbreaker defense, swap coats. At the end of the adventure, go home and pay a wizard to mend all your armor spikes. On long adventures, pull out your wand of lighten object and CL 4 mending oils and repair your spikes yourself.
On page 67, there is a suggested build of envoy that take the clever feint line of improvisations and also improved and greater feint. However, the clever feint improvisation specifically calls out that it does not work with improved and greater feint.
In theory, this would let you feint twice per turn, but that has no benefit...
So full attacks eat your swift action now. I can see why they did this, but it annoys me that you can't quick-draw a weapon and then full attack with it in the same round.
This makes quick-draw pretty useless because you can always draw your other weapon while moving anyway.
I was planning to have my solider carry a grenade launcher for utility situations and use the called fusion to swap when needed, but now I am sad.
My goal is to build a bad-ass android space warrior who focuses on two-handed ranged weapons. I also care about starship battles a moderate amount.
I am running these comparisons at levels 1-3 since I play PFS and I don't want to wait three months for my character to be able to do his thing.
Because I am modelling my character on HK-47 of Starwars fame I am limited to the solider or the exocortex mechanic because of android stat bonuses.
At level 1, the solider does a bit more damage, and has a little worse skills, so that balances out. However at level 2, the mechanic gets the overcharge trick that lets him add +1d6 to his own damage and +1d6 to an energy weapon using ally's damage.
To compare, the solider deals 1d10 damage with the laser cannon, has +1 more BaB, an extra feat and +2 to hit enemies in cover. The solider will also have 2 points more resolve since his key attribute is dex instead of int. +1 stamina and health per level
The exocortex mechanic does not need to full attack to get most of his damage. By using overcharge he get to attack with no penalties for 1d8+1d6 all the time. He can even boost an ally's damage every turn. Since he also does not need to full attack, he can use his move action to freely activate combat tracking or get into better positions. And this comparison is ignoring that the mechanic has a better skill list then the solider.
The combat benefits that the sharpshooter solider has over the mechanic are:
1. You can use kinetic weapons, which let you bypass dr more easily by stocking special ammo
2. The kinetic weapon gear-boost gives +2 damage at level 4, which is nice.
3. If you use laser weapons, between the +2 to hit vs cover +1 laser gear boost you basically get to full attack at full BaB
4. Heavy weapons scale better; though this only comes online at level 6 or 7 and you only get 1 point more over the long arms.
5. More feats, though there are not really any combat feats that excite me honestly. Most of them seem to be better for melee characters.
6. grenade launcher?
All of these benefits seem like they just put the solider on par with the mechanic and don't make him a better damage dealer as the class description would imply. Plus they only really come online later in the game.
Is there something else I am missing? It feels like the mechanic is more useful out of combat, hits more accurately and just as hard as the solider and can buff your teammates.
My theoretical builds for hardish numbers:
Android Solider 4
sharpshooter
Str 14, Dex 18, Con 10, Int 12, Cha 8
HP/SP: 32/28, resolve 6
feats: Skill Focus(pilot), Weapon focus, Deadly aim, Quick draw?
gearboost: laser accuracy
To hit: +10 -- 1d10 + 4 Fire
deadly aim: +8 -- 1d10 + 6 Fire
full attack: +6/+6 -- 1d10 + 4 Fire
both: +4/+4 -- 1d10 + 6 Fire
So themes are cool. They also all grant you +1 to an ability score. As far as I can tell, odd ability scores are basically useless in Starfinder. Consider the following:
1. Only themes and level bumps to scores above 17 give you odd bonuses.
2. You only get better bonuses from even scores.
3. You can't start with more then an 18 in an ability score.
4. If you have a 17 in a stat and you put your level 5 bonus into it, it becomes 18. But if you had 16 in a stat, that same level 5 bump would have also brought you to 18.
The only ability score that cares about odd numbers is strength when calculating your maximum encumbrance. And I suppose ability damage.
You could argue that the theme ability point are flavor because your character is better then a similarly skilled person in that ability score, but that feels pretty narrow.
You can't even really claim that these points are for a future time where there will be effects that grant odd bonuses. I can't really see a situation where you care about an ability score enough to invest resources in it but not enough to put your level bumps into it...
Heck, since we did away with point buy, why not just remove base 10 ability scores all-together? just have the score be the modifier and give us 5 point buy.
So I didn't see a thread for this, so here we go! I played the first two quests of Into the Unknown which involved one regular combat and one starship battle.
Building the character
I built a Sharpshooter Solider, and I felt that there were not many build options. Many abilities like weapon finesse and precise shot have been folded into the base rules and it felt like all of the feats available to me were really meh. Weapon focus and Toughness were serious contenders for best feat...
Also, I am sad that the solider has 4 combat styles for melee or hybrid combat and only 2 for shooting.
Also, also. The arcane assailant specialization is the most lame. Its level 1 power does nothing in most cases. Its level 5 power is +3.5 damage and level 9 is too far away for me to care about.
Gunfights
Our party had 2 soldiers with Reaction cannons
1 engineer with a combat drone wielding a Reaction cannon
1 engineer riding a stealth drone
1 solarian
1 space wizard
quest1:
In the first encounter, you get shot at by 4 guys with concealment and laser pistols. This is super brutal because they were able to almost KO our solarian and did destroy the stealth bot before we even got to act.
Enemies with guns mean that they can all shoot at you. I was afraid that melee would be just strictly better because you get to add strength, but it feels like the volume of fire means that charging in is a good way to get focused. Unless more of your team is going to charge with you.
Magic missile is really strong at level 1 when you can afford to nova. 3d4+3 is much better then even a heavy weapon's 1d10. And it can't miss.
Starfinder has larger hp pools then pathfinder. They feel pretty good to play with since people generally don't get one-shot and you don't have the barbarian just clean up every encounter before you get a turn. I know this used to be a problem in low-level PFS with 6 PC tables.
Ship fight
I was surprised by how dynamic this turned out to be. Everyone gets to do something. I look forward to seeing how multi-ship combat plays out.
I was disappointed with critical damage. It feels like it is trivial for the enemy engineer to repair glitching damage (he was succeeding on a 6.) Since you only get to deal critical damage to a ship four times, its basically impossible to actually destroy a system.
The captain is kind of lame. He is limited to using aid another all combat, and using taunt and demand once; at least pre-6. Since starships have so many hit points, this means that for about half the battle he is stuck using aid another. This means that he does not get to make any huge game changing rolls. Consider: pilots control positioning and initiative, which are hugely important; Engineers get to repair systems and recharge shields, which keeps you alive; science officers get to shift shields around which directly protects hp; and gunners get to roll the attacks, which is the most fun part of the game :).
I guess the captain wears the cool hat.
TL;DR
System is fun at level 1! Starship combat is exceeds expectations and is at least as good as regular d20 combat.
Specifically staffs. Say you are a level 8 wizard with magical lineage:fireball (because of course).
You could craft a staff of fireballs for 9600. The same wizard could craft a staff of intensified lightning bolt for 12800. The question is, how much does a staff of intensified fireball cost?
For our wizard, an intensified fireball is a 3rd level spell, so it seems like 9600 is the correct answer, much like a paladin could craft a lesser restoration wand for 750 gp.
I could see the argument for 12800, but metamagic reductions are not well defined in the PF rules.
So I just discovered the Mind Buttressing armor property.
for reference:
Mind buttressing:
Mind buttressing armor grants the wearer a +2 resistance bonus on Will saves and renders her immune to possession and mental control (including charm and compulsion effects like command and charm person). If it’s donned by a creature already under the influence of such an effect, the creature immediately receives another saving throw (if one was allowed to begin with) against the spell or effect. If the check is successful, the effects are suppressed until the creature removes the armor, after which they resume. This ability can be applied only to medium or heavy armor.
For a +2 bonus it makes you flat out immune to possession, charm and compulsion effects.
Compare the recently nerfed Cap of the Free Thinker, which costs as much as a +1 Mind Buttressing armor and only give a reroll and does not protect against possession?
I know that there is an ioun stone resonance that give a similar bonus, but I feel that that is obviously too strong, as you are not paying anything for the extra ioun stone effect.
What other items help shore up a weak will save in the 4k to 12k range?
For context: In my home game, we play with Automatic Bonus Progression except you can apply armor/weapon special abilities without regard for the enhancement bonus of the given armor. So a Mind Buttressing armor would cost 4k.
The recent Ultimate equipment errata made me sad. A bunch of (admittedly strong) items were basically erased. It feels like this is a trend in Paizo erratas and FAQs. Now you might say: "just change it in your home game!" But I play using the PFSRD, and it's impossible to find old printings of items. If I did not already know about the Jingasa (for example) before today, I would never be able to un-patch it.
I don't think Paizo devs are bad at their job, so this made me think about why erratas always feel like this. I believe this is because Paizo is limited to only releasing errata when they reprint the book, and that is an expensive proposition. If an item is broken, they only have one chance to fix it, and its no secret that it is better to have an item that no one uses rather than something that is seen as abusive.
Pathfinder is after all not a video game where the devs can afford to patch every weekend.
My solution is this: Why not playtest the changes? Paizo already has a large number of players in PFS that are used to checking the available resources page when building characters. I am thinking that paizo could release a sort of Paizo Patch Notes, say every 6 months, where they would subtly tweak items and class abilities that are not working as intended. Over those 6 months, players and GMs that play with the patched features could write feedback on how the change feels in actual play. Paizo could even encourage feedback with PFS reroll-boons :)
Once a change has been play-tested for a few patch cycles, it could be locked in for errata for the next printing of the book. This way, no one would be surprised and the community would be more involved in how the game we love is growing and changing.
I think that this sort of iterative updating is expected by people today who are used to continuous balance changes from games like League of Legends or Diablo.
Balancing feats is hard, since they are all supposed to be equal. What if we changed to a point-buy system for feats? My write-up of point-based feats is at my blog.
I've priced every feat from the CRB to Ultimate Magic. I'm still working on it, and would value input.
A disclaimer: I originally found this idea on Giant In The Playground and it is eventually sourced to SKR. I've not seen a complete pathfinder feat pricing, so this is my attempt.
TL;DR: Every time you gain a feat, you gain 8 points instead. Then you can spend points on feats as listed in this spreadsheet.
The systems and use section of the pfsrd that "Also, if are pinned or grappled, most of your maneuvers simply will not work until you are able to move freely."
Does this mean that no maneuvers work in grapples at all? This seems kind of unclear and a huge drawback. A natural weapon fighter can full attack while wrestling a kraken but a Warlord can't use his full effectiveness?
second question; Path of War: Expanded says that you can't benifit from the lance doubling effect when using a manuver or boost:
Path of War: Expanded wrote:
When a character initiates a martial strike or boost
during a mounted charge attack, the initiation of the
maneuver overrides any damage bonuses that are
would be gained while performing this action (such as
by the Spirited Charge feat or while wielding a lance),
and the initiator deals damage as if they were not
charging[/url]
does this apply to boosts that don't increase damage, like Pride Movement?
The principles of the Scarlet Throne teach its disciples that every swing must be made with precision and excellence; no movement is wasted and no attack should be fruitless. The disciple may make a single attack against two adjacent enemies using the same attack roll and applying it to each target.
Does this work like cleave, where both targets must be adjacent to each other and in your reach, or does it mean that both targets must be adjacent to you?
I've seen the Aid-Another build posted in a number of places. This is my take on it.
The goal of the build is to be a tank by making it futile to attack your allies. The core of the build is based around using the bodyguard feat in conjunction with the helpful trait to give your allies +4 or more AC when they are beside you. The best part of the build is that it is extraordinary flexible and can be stacked on top of many different chassis.
For my sample, I will use the Eldritch Guardian fighter archetype to cover this build's main weakness: its own AC.
With Scale mail and a heavy shield Thomas has a 20 AC, which is respectable. With his familiar protecting him, he has 22 ac. Three times per round, Thomas can attempt to deflect an attack against an ally by aiding another and granting them +4AC (+6 AC for people who are "like family"). Most importantly, this does not take any of Thomas's actions for the round, so he can happily attack with his longsword for 1d8+3, or use aid another to give a beefier ally +4 to hit.
At the beginning of his adventure with new comrades he probably does not get a benefit from his kin guardian trait, but after he saves the lives of his party members a few times they will become like family.
A quick note: if you read bodyguard strictly according to the written text, you need to be able to reach the attacker and be adjacent to your ally. However, the creator of the feat has said that you should not need to threaten the attacker. If your GM agrees with this interpretation, take a mauler familiar instead, as at level 2, you will share your combat reflexes and bodyguard feat and your familiar will be able to guard you just like a protector, but will have the ability to mix it up in combat eventually.
Level three is where the trickery happens. We take a level of Beast-Bonded witch and use the Transfer Feats ability to teach our familiar the Helpful and Kin-Guardian traits. This means that our little armadillo can add +6 AC to Thomas or a close ally while aiding another. The circle is now closed and everyone in your party has +6 AC. But wait! There is more! You get a hex too! You can take Fortune, so that you can buff allies when attacking is inconvenient. The best part, is that if you took a mauler familiar or a small familiar, you can now have it aid allies on attacks and grant them a +4 to hit.
At this point, enemy attack rolls are getting high, and they are making many attacks, maybe your attacks of opportunity cant keep up? Enter Harrying Partners! Now you can spend one attack of opportunity to grant allies AC for a whole turn. But how much AC are we granting? At this point, Thomas can afford to buy +2 Benevolent Armor. Ideally, his familiar would also wear the same type of armor. This makes Thomas' aid-another add +8 AC.
Two more levels of honor-guard cavalier will net you another +1 to your aid another bonus and let you retrain your level 1 bodyguard feat into something else. For your next feat, you could take Swift Aid if you don't mind figuring out how it interacts with your huge aid-another bonus. A strict reading would give you the full bonus, as helpful specifically sets your bonus. If I were GMing i would just say that swift aid lets you apply half your bonus.
This is the core of my aid build. To build on it, you should also look into some of the cheaper aid-another magic items. The true-love locket will give you another +1 to the AC and attack bonus you grant. At higher levels, a ring of tactical precision will let an ally buy harrying partner or intercept charge for 11,000gp. An alternative interpretation of the build might use Covering Fire to aid another with a bow. That way, you could stand safely behind your allies and aid from there.
In the campaign I'm playing in, my DM complained that my AC was too high and I was rendering mooks worthless. I looked up some alternative attack modes he could drop into modules easily.
I notice that this is a topic that DMs complain about a bit on the forums so I figured I'd put up a blog post with what I found.
the Mage Hunter's dispelling strike says it does 1d6 damage for each effect dispelled, but in pathfinder Dispel Magic affects only one spell, even with a targeted dispel. What was the intended interaction here?
So My problem with the eidolon and its unchained brother is that it forces you into a cookie cutter build where you max the natural attacks you can bring to bear and then take pounce. I don't this it is necessarily broken but i think it is boring. Also, I feel that a lot of the option of the eidolon have sort of forced flavor. (And why does gore cost 2 points when bite costs 1?)
The goals of these changes is to make eidolons that use different combat styles viable and interesting without re-inventing the wheel. For example, I should be able to build an lillend azata, a unicorn, a marilith or a spider or a dragon and have them all be viable. Not laughed into the ground by the claw-ball.
The tl;dr is:
- Most abilities key of the summoner's hit dice.
- There is a specific pool of attack evolution points that can be used to gain more attacks or strengthen other natural attacks.
- Weapon attacks come from the same pool of attack evolution points
- did away with base types or spending evolutions on limbs. If you want to build a snake that moves at 60ft per round, more power to you. If you want to have your angel have wings at level 1, that's cool too.
Please let me know if you think that something is broken, or if there is an obvious best build that is hiding in there. I like the sub-types Paizo added, but maybe I should make them optional and increase the evolution pool?
Our group has decided to try out the Path of War. I am playing a warlord with Silver Crane. Am I right in that Enduring Crane Strike basically gives unlimited out-of-combat healing?
Enduring Crane Strike wrote:
Making his soul a wellspring of holy power, the disciple strikes out at a foe to unleashed his holy power to restore health to himself or an ally. The initiator makes an attack against a target creature, inflicting damage as normal, and the strike restores 1d6 hit points plus his initiation modifier to the initiator or to an ally within 30-ft.
I know that out-of-combat healing is not broken per-se, but it is weird to me that after a fight, everyone stops and watches the initiator whack a tree for a bit to get healed...
What's a sensible in-world reason that this strike would only work in real combat.
I've been looking at the various bears in the bestiary, and it looks like they are uniformly inferior to equal CR cats. compare the Grizzly bear (A cr 5 bear) to a Tiger a CR 4 cat. The cat has better ability scores, more attacks, pounce, and more strength. To add insult to injury, the cat has more hit dice, so the bear does not even really win out with his higher Con.
I smell a cat-spiracy. Paizo, isn't it time to throw off your cuddly overlords?
My group is playing through kingmaker, and we just had a couple of slightly anti-climactic fight against regenerating monsters. I've written up some new rules to make regeneration a little more scary.
My problem with regeneration:
Regeneration is meant to represent a creature that just won’t die: the troll that keeps getting back up, or the hydra that grows heads faster than you can hack them off. In these stories, regenerators frequently keep getting back up until they are totally burned, melted, frozen, etc...
In 3.5, this was represented by needing to kill the regenerator entirely with whatever bypassed their regeneration. I never found this satisfying because then martials have nothing to do.
Pathfinder's solution is worse, since now hitting a troll with a single point of splash damage negates the whole ability.
New Rules
We increase the damage needed to break regeneration. Our goal is that a CR appropriate encounter should require the party to make some extra effort to overcome regeneration.
Breaking Damage: Any damage source that deals any amount of damage that bypasses regeneration counts as breaking damage.
Regeneration Threshold: A creature's regeneration threshold is equal to
HD + Con mod + 4xSize mod + regeneration amount
When a creature takes an amount of breaking damage in excess of its regeneration threshold its regeneration turns off for one round.
Get back up: if a creature with regeneration is reduced below 0 hp, it stops gaining hit points for one round (this is not regeneration turning off). At the start of its next round, it heals enough hp to put it at positive hp equal to 4 times its regeneration value.
On diehard and ferocity: run.
On energy resistance and DR: Even if a creature has enough resistance/DR to totally negate the portion of the attack that it is vulnerable to, the attack still counts as breaking damage. Otherwise a troll with resist energy is basically unkillable by a martial with a flaming weapon.
What I need help with
My goal is that if a party only has a single source of breaking damage, they should have about a 50% chance to stop the regeneration of a creature non boss creature.
Trolls have a threshold of 21. A level 7 unoptimized caster does 21 damage, and 10 on a save. From experience, our martials put out 20+ damage a round on a good round.
How will this rule work at higher levels? Is there something i'm not seeing?
I'm playing a Gorum worshipping wizard and I want to design some metal themed spells. I'd appreciate some balance feedback.
Shrapnel Bolt school: Conjuration (creation) [pain, metal]
Level: sorcerer/wizard 3, cleric(Gorum) 3
Casting time: 1 Standard action
Components: V S
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Effect: 1 Metal shard
Duration: instantaneous, then 1 round / level
Saving throw: Reflex half (see text)
Spell Resistance: no
Description
You launch a jagged metal shard at a foe which then shatters into hundreds of metal fragments.
Choose a target square in range of this spell. This spell effects targets in a 20 ft cone that originates in the target square (The target square is part of the cone). If there is a creature in the targeted square, you may make a touch attack against it. If you hit, that creature does not get a save against this spell. If you crit, it takes double damage and is stunned for one round.
In either case, targets of this spell take 1d8 slashing/piercing damage per 2 caster levels and are treated as entangled for 1 round per level as the crippling pain from the fragments slows their movement.
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What do you think. Too weak? Too stong? I want to add some ability to use a weapon as a focus to increase the chance to hit. Would that be too much?
