KramlmarK's page

Oh really? Because everyone wants amazing hexes like swamp hag and child scent?

Amazing Hexes:

Great Hexes:
Cackle
Ill Omen
Prehensile Hair
Scar
Cook People
Witch's Charge

Solid/Utility Hexes:
Beast of Ill Omen (free action 1st level is still free action, and its always heightened)
Charm
Disguise
Flight
Fortune
Misfortune
Ward
Agony (admittedly superfluous with Ice Tomb)
Animal Skin
Retribution
Speak In Dreams
Weather Control

That's more than enough to fill the 9 non-major slots with something decent. Yes there are bad options, but this is Pathfinder. Bad options exist.

Stuff about how shaman should be a spont druid

Please no. We had this conversation on the last thread. It's a witch/oracle hybrid class with flavor that deals with spirits, not elements or plants or animals. Giving it an extremely limited selection of nature spells makes literally no sense for the class. I'm not opposed to filling that vacancy, but Shaman is not the place to do it.

-------------------------

Completely unrelated to avoid double posting, I'd like to reiterate that giving Bones shaman unholy weapons at 11th level severely punishes people who want to play good-aligned bones shamans (or even shamans who occasionally take bones as wandering), since it essentially says "you can't use weapons after 11th."

The way I see it, there are two problems right now:

1) Mechanically, the class is schizophrenic. It has 3/4 BAB, armor, and a battle spirit, so you're supposed to be decent martially, right? Some hexes/spirit abilities use charisma, so you're supposed to do that too, I assume. Spells use WIS, so obviously that as well, and there's a spirit that gives you INT bonuses and uses it for one of its hexes, so that too I guess? Oh, some of the hexes trigger when you cast certain kinds of spells, which may or may not actually be on your spell list in any usable number. There's a bunch of stuff that seems designed to get your familiar out of the Adamantine box and into the fight, including one which turns it into an animal companion, but there's also the "you turn into an an expert if it ever dies" clause. Then there's nature, which has a hex that adds spells to your list which were already there. The class feels like somebody took a bunch of druid, oracle and witch abilities (in that order) and threw them together without any concern as to whether or not it works as a cohesive unit. Granted, it's still powerful because it's a full caster, but it's also frustrating because a huge chunk of Shaman's abilities just don't do what they say on the box.

2) Flavorfully, druid list pigeonholes the class into a nature-priest. The bonus spells help, but aren't enough. I'm not sure why anyone thinks this is a good idea. Elementalist Shamans I can see as expectation from media like WoW and Diablo, but elemental spells are really more of a Wizard thing than Druid. (Yes, there are elemental druid spells, but there's no fireball, but they're far fewer and less iconic.) What druid does give you is a bunch of animal and plant-themed stuff, which is definitely appropriate for a Shaman with the nature spirit, but my Bones/Lore shaman is looking at them very funny. Even my Flame/Waves shaman would rather have Cleric + Evocation from Sor/Wiz list, and that was one of the flavors of shaman the change was supposed to help. Changing hats to a DM, my main interest in Shaman is as a Shinto-style priest dealing with Kami, and as things are I'm going to stat it up as a cleric. The feel just isn't right.

The first problem has a simple answer: Figure out what the Shaman is supposed to be doing mechanically, and make him do it. Don't just copy/paste text from other classes haphazardly. I honestly don't know why revelations were reskinned as hexes in the first place, but they're not working. Either scrap them entirely and write new material, or go through them one by one and axe the ones that don't fit the vision, whatever it ends up being. While you're at it, make sure the spirit abilities hit the right notes. Life Shamans' Greater ability being worse at healing than Battle's basic spirit ability needs to go.

The second problem is harder. Everybody seems to have their own idea of what a Shaman should be, and the limitation of "must use existing spell list" is not helping. Having spirit choice more directly effect available spells would be a big plus. That said, while, I'd like the Shaman to be broad enough to cover everybody's desires, if that's not in the cards it needs to double down on one theme. Better have a class that does something some people like than one which disappoints everyone.

Have to say I'm massively surprised that people are happy with the shaman. It feels weak mechanically, bears little resemblance to witch or oracle and has a real disadvantage in a super-shiny familiar that screams "IM MAGIC KILL ME NOW"

It also has the biggest imbalance between options - seriously, Life gets channel and earth gets DR/5 Adamantine for the familiar.

The thing that upsets me most is that fluff-wise the shaman has *the* most potential to be a cool and (most importantly) unique new class.

Sigh ... I guess if the survey says...

I think the problems the Shaman has are not really going to show up on the survey. The core mechanics are fine, but it really needs a bit more polish across the board. Like the "Do you think the theme and mechanics of the CLASSNAME compliment each other?" question. This is my second-biggest issue with the class, but my honest answer is "about a 4." It's just slightly off, but that slightly off is really, really loud. My biggest issue with the class, the intra-class imbalance (and occasional just-not-working-ness), doesn't show up anywhere on the survey.

It really is close to where it need, but there's some roughness that really needs to be ironed out that the survey isn't catching. Especially in comparison to some of the other classes, I'm not surprised it turned out on top.

In academia they call it an "abstract" ;)

I laughed. Then cried.

Most of these changes seem like very smart choices that balance fan concerns and paizo's vision. Although.... I think the warpriest's main issue is not optimization but theme. He could be the smoothest, most well balanced build in the book, but a player wanting to play a divine warrior already has the cleric, oracle, inquisitor and paladin: all better explained with a clearer niche and role. The warpriest needs a full conceptual enema. Other than that, awesome work!

Give Warpriest full BAB, 4/9 casting. Give it paladin/antipaladin spell list, throwing in law/chaos stuff as well. Make its casting stat wisdom instead of charisma, and a whole bunch of unique class features.

Suddenly it actually does what it says on the box, which is combine the cleric and the fighter. It also serves a unique niche -- people who want their "paladin"-type character to have deity-based alignment restrictions instead of Always Lawful Good.

See, problems like this are exactly why rules ought be written in the notation of first-order logic. Full expressiveness without ambiguity![/sarcasm]

It's a playtest document. There's gonna be some bugs. It's almost certainly not RAI. If your goal is pointing out a bug in RAW, there are better ways of doing it than trollish rhetorical questions.

Zark wrote:

mplindustries wrote:

Cheapy wrote:

Yes, it really comes down to whether you want a shaman that communes with spirits, like the one presented, or a shaman that's infused with nature.

What if you want both? I want both.

+1

Me too.
Both lists.
1/2 BAB
D6 HD
No armor or prevented from using anything light armor.
Finally we can get a Divine caster.

That...is actually kind of genius.

I'd play that. I'd play that a lot.

Cheapy wrote:

Yea, I think this is a case of us wanting different things then...

It is a matter of do you want to focus on the nature or the spirit aspect.

I smell an opportunity for an Archtype that has the cleric spell list :)

Given that the druid list is nature priest while the cleric list is generic priest, I'd think the other way around would make more sense. In AD&D, Druid was a "subclass" (term used loosely) of cleric for the same reason.

Though I suppose it depends on if you view nature shamans as THE shaman, or just one type. My mind immediately jumps to Wu when I think of Shamans, and they definitely cast as clerics when ported to d20.

Thanks for making my point :)

Condescending much? That -5 to diplomacy isn't working too well for you, is it? If you can't understand the difference between "my games are hard, and you're going to need to play mechanically well to survive, which you're not doing" and "you're a terrible person stop playing the game, you filthy casual" then I really don't know what to say.

Playstyles. They differ. The important part is mutual respect, something you've demonstrated yourself as being bad at.

I've said this in the Shaman thread, but I dislike switching to Druid. To me, Shamans are about spirits not nature, and while nature spirits are common in fantasy, so are ancestor spirits who may have lived in a large city. I'd much rather see a way for nature-themed shamans to pull in a small number of druid spells than for the whole class to get pigeonholed into one version of a currently very evocative and versatile class.

Yea. There are a lot of druid spells that fit well.

There are also a lot of cleric spells that fit well.

Of the two, I think the cleric spells missed will be greater than the druid spells missed.

Can't agree more. Though I do think a hex similar to Arcane Enlightenment for druid spells could be cool. (Maybe under the Nature spirit?)

Stephen Bond stuff

I hesitate to post this, since I'm worried about the iconics discussion getting too far removed, but that's definitely a radical decomposition you're quoting. Nothing wrong with that, but it's also a not really agreed upon even within feminism, so I think it's an unreasonable standard to hold Random Game Company Named Paizo to. But, then again, I'm a filthy academic liberal, so I'm probably wrong. ;)

(Aside for those not familiar with feminist jargon: radical here refers to a specific branch of feminism with specific beliefs, not just some abstract extreme)

Anyways, back to the topic at hand: I'm not familiar with Paizo's specific publication cycle (and there are too many variables for me to guess at it), but it's entirely possible that they're still writing art descriptions, or at least that they're sent out descriptions but are still awaiting/going over sketches. The turnover between approved sketch and final art can be quite quick (I've heard as fast as a month), so it's possible-if-unlikely that suggestions here make it into the final book.

Edit to add:

That is not boobplate. Plate armor is designed to be worn long-term, and so therefore needs to be something you can wear all day without getting sore.

...sorry, but no. Male armor is not form-fitting; it's designed to redirect blows away from the vitals. Further, there's more than enough room for breasts underneath it, as it needs to be able to dent without wounding the wearer. The differences between male and female armor account for shoulder-to-hip ratio, but not breasts. Boob-plate (or whatever you want to call what Seelah is wearing) redirects blows TO the vitals. Not only that, but there's no historical evidence of it (see this portrait of Joan of Arc and this takedown of the concept)

*real-world atheist talking*

If he wants to play a character who denies the existence of the PF gods who actively involve themselves in mortal affairs and occasionally visit, he's going to be playing a character who is in willed denial of observed phenomena and calling it an atheist. Now, I can't control what you do at your table, but I would find that incredibly offensive, since it echoes a real-world view held by some religious folk that atheists are just "too blind to see God around them" (whatever that means).

If there's anyone at the table who is an atheist in real life, at least check with them before allowing that character into my game. I wouldn't allow that character in any more than I would allow someone to play a black character with an int of 4 or a gay character with a str of 6 who whines when he gets hit. Offensive stereotypes are offensive, and nobody should be having real-world feelings hurt over this game.

That said, if he just wants to play an atheist but has no idea how to make that concept work, I'd suggest following: "Gods and us are wrought from the same stuff, they're just more powerful. I see no reason to worship a being that is every bit as fallible as I am. Fear, yes. Respect, maybe. But worship? Not unless they can prove to me that they're somehow different from the most powerful mortals."

You're basically taking away the divinity of "gods" with that ideology, which is as close to real-world atheism as you're going to get in Golarion.

stuff...

Well we are talking about the RAW pros and cons of blasting here.

...stuff

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this thread is about making blasting worthwhile. Not the best, but worthwhile. Can we leave the tired "blasters VS non-blasters" argument elsewhere? Please? It's been a dead horse since 3.0

Here, let me help:

I'm a big fan of taking a 2-level dip in arcane archer for imbue arrow. Getting longbow range on Stormbolts can be decent, and is a lot of fun.