Laiho Vanallo's page

Laiho Vanallo wrote:

Sphere of annihilation? Maybe?

The body reforms after 3 rounds.

The Tarrasque is more plot device than monster. You can beat it down, imprison it, or send it somewhere else. It never truly goes away.

Yeah but if the sphere would stay in place, would the body just get destroyed over and over again and prevent the regeneration from kicking in?

Also the regeneration rules are as follow:

Regeneration (Ex) No form of attack can suppress the tarrasque's regeneration—it regenerates even if disintegrated or slain by a death effect. If the tarrasque fails a save against an effect that would kill it instantly, it rises from death 3 rounds later with 1 hit point if no further damage is inflicted upon its remains. It can be banished or otherwise transported as a means to save a region, but the method to truly kill it has yet to be discovered.

however the sphere of annihilation state:

"A sphere of annihilation is a globe of absolute blackness 2 feet in diameter. Any matter that comes in contact with a sphere is instantly sucked into the void and utterly destroyed. Only the direct intervention of a deity can restore an annihilated character."

We are not talking about a instant death effect or disintegration effect here. All the matter composing the Tarasque would be sucked into the void.

If my memory does not play any trick on me detect evil is a cone, simply stand behind the paladin at all time.

Also mess up the expectation of what evil look like.

If you walk around in dark robes wear mascara and overall look like somebody you would not let your kids approach, chances are the paladin will try to focus the detect evil on you.

Describe your character clothes being white and pure with highlights of gold, dont show off your deity symbol too often or better just buy a holy symbol of a good aligned religion and wear it proudly. Always be smiling and pious looking for the right opportunity to do the bad thing when no one is looking.

Your domain is trickery act like it.

569: Robes are not dresses!

A copper reinforced book, bound in chemically treated leather.
An intricate sculpted quartz eye is embedded on the front cover.

It contain a 350 page dissertation about how robes that certain arcane caster prefer are not dresses. The book contain a large collection of facts and historical anecdotes about robes and dresses. There is also about 20 pages of Various depiction of epic wizards fighting dragons and all sorts of monstrosities present in each chapter of the book.

If the book is held facing a garment that is either a robe or a dress the book will shout:

-THIS IS A ROBE
-THIS IS A DRESS

accordingly.

Well first I think that pure fighter is not the way to go.
Urban barbarian might be more like it.
Very often in the manga guts face many opponents and I think that thematically the crowd control ability would fit well.
But I would not just take urban barbarian levels, I would get at least one level of Titan Fighter too to get that large two handed weapon.

20 point buy:
STR: 20 (used the +2 from human here and +1 from level 4)
DEX: 14 (used the +1 from level 8)
CON: 14
INT: 13
WIS: 10
CHA: 7

level progression would look a bit like this until level 12:
Titan Fighter 1 - Combat Expertise + Dodge
Titan Fighter 2 - Mobility
Urban Barbarian 1 - Spring attack
Urban Barbarian 2 - Rage power beast totem lesser
Urban Barbarian 3 - Whirlwind attack
Urban Barbarian 4 - Rage power beast totem
Urban Barbarian 5 - Power attack
Urban Barbarian 6 - Rage power: Superstition (Ex)
Urban Barbarian 7 - Lunge
Urban Barbarian 8 - Rage power: Boasting Taunt (Ex)
Urban Barbarian 9 - furious focus
Urban Barbarian 10 - Rage power: greater beast totem pounce

Item buying strategy:
-Get a large 2 handed sword and enchant it the best you can (courageous would be nice)
-Get a nice armor like the agile breastplate and enchant it.
-Definitely need boots of haste or anything to increase movement speed to capitalize on spring attack.
-Definitely need items to boost STR and CON
-Cloak of resistance is a must
-Potions of lesser Restoration remove the fatigued condition
-Get an adaptive composite longbow +1

Overall strategy in combat:
Level 1 to 4 -> Charge in and tank while swinging a large great sword around.
Level 5 to 9 -> Charge in and try to get surrounded as much as possible, whirlwind attack.
level 10 to 11 -> Charge in lunge and whirlwind attack using lunge and power attack.
level 12 -> pounce in, whirlwind attack -> bathe in blood

By far this is not the best build but I think it fit with the theme of Guts, being surrounded by overwhelming odds and turning that 10 on one fight into a massacre, you get a lot of bonuses to intimidate and attack rolls from being surrounded. You have spring attack when facing a lone powerful adversary. The big problem is when fighting flying creatures but then again you should deal enough damage with your longbow to compensate for that.

Feel free to edit or contribute to that build, I love Guts he deserve an incredible build!

% miss chance.
It's the best way to deal with most OP ranged characters.
Spell or natural effect that break line of sight are wonderful too.
Also look into the weather rules for weather in the game mastery guide.

Here some ideas:
-Rain and snow can give -4 to ranged attacks.
-Severe wind can actually blow away your tiny player and give a -4 to ranged attacks.
-Fog can give concealment (20% miss chance)
-Have monsters use cover and arrowslits
-Have monsters chug potions of blur (20% miss chance)
-Have monsters get the feat "dodge"
-Have monsters learn spells like or spell like abilities like mirror image
-Have monsters use illusion magic to create fake barriers (total concealment thus 50% miss chance for at least one attack)

6000 years ago ancient and wise dwarves built a powerful graviton engine trying to create a machine to make the toughest of all metals. That Artefact mimic the certain planar proprieties to create powerful wave of gravity to forge some of the most wondrous weapons ever made. Their whole civilization go destroyed before they got a chance to turn it off.

The laws of physics are a bit wonky at the bottom of the pit the last 750 feet of the shaft, it effectively mimic certain planar propriety locally. Namely No gravity or maybe subjective directional gravity.

Have them hit pockets of floating water caused by the graviton engine, breaking their momentum but hurting like hell (2d6 non lethal damage per bubbles).

You now can work around that lore for a dungeon at the bottom of the pit they will have to go through before going up to the caverns that lead to the surface. Give them a few goodies made of experimental metal made by that engine for their trouble (masterwork metallic items). You can also make a few gravity based puzzles to solve before they can leave. I made a whole dungeon like that once and it worked kind of well!

Laiho,

I don't think focusing on combat alone is the way to go. Certainly the status effects in Unchained are fairly weak and could stand to be beefed up a bit -- but that said, it's the other stuff I worry about. The fact that skill unlocks still lack the breath, number, and power of spells that simply supersede skills altogether -- that's one aspect that, for me, screams for correction. If I play a rogue, I want to be BETTER at climbing walls and remaining hidden than the sorcerer, not trying to play catch-up with him/her. Aside from that, some unique abilities that reinforce his role in the game would be nice; I posted some (slightly) over-the-top suggestions HERE

I fully agree with your point.

Uber Rogue rant time

I am personally tired of warning new players to not go for the rogue and explain to them that a ranger is a sneaky if not more and also better in most situation. Only to have that new player pick the rogue/ninja/chained/unchained get to level 8-ish and then being like: How is it that I feel so useless? How come do I not get any kills?

I have the nightmare scenario going on right now, I have a Rogue AND a Ninja in a 6 man party. You would think a Ninja can rush in and pull some Naruto awesome assassin ninja moves right? No they cannot, not even with Ki. You would think a Rogue would be awesome and be able to kick butts once in a while in combat through guile and subterfuge? No they do not. I am not even optimized and my Wizard, the party Paladin, the party Barbarian and the party Druid of 90% of the job because Ninjas and Rogue are useless despite their best effort to do cool stuff. The last memorable kill from our so called Ninja was a noble that was sleeping, we are level 10.

We event gave up some of our resources to get them above average gear and they still have a hard time doing 1/10 of what the rest of the party do. The Rogue as a +1 Holy, Shock bow and still manage to maybe hit something once per 3 rounds and trust me by then they don't get a sneak attack. My fairy dragon familiar is a better scout than both of them. While smithing our tank paladin has more AC than both of their combined. He also has better reflex saves. The Barbarian while raging does more damage in one round average than if both the Rogue and the Ninja would to be critically hit. The Paladin beat any and all of their diplomacy and intimidate check, the has better perception check than both of them, the wizard as better knowledge check than both of them. I disarmed more traps with my wand of summon monster 2 than both of them combined, it's quicker and funnier.

They are a niche class made for people that play too much Assassin Creed, Deus Ex and Thief. Being good with skills is the niche one class: the expert. I will play a full campaign with an Adept before I ever play any rogue class or their variations ever again. They are a bad class and should be avoided, now there will be a bunch of people that will say: but I played a good rogue once upon a time in X/Y/Z situation! I say to them, you probably got help from your GM or the party had to carry you and your dream to be a sneaky awesome dude [insert fantasy trope roguish character] wannabe. Boosting their UMD and having them use a wand/scrolls/staffs is a better options then having them try their hand at combat and that is truly sad in a game where 80% of the published material is about fighting stuff. They are a class that depends on other classes to survive and strive, by all standards, they are a parasite in a party.

End of rant

Rogues are cool and fun in literature, not so much in pathfinder as they fail to emulate the awesomeness of their other media counter part to any degree. Efficient surpass the rule of cool as the system current configuration.

Profession: god of gods

(Game designer)

4 things I can never bring to that peculiar game table:

1. Synthesis summoner -> I optimized the living crap out of it and I was outright told that having pounce at level 2 broke the whole campaign.
To be fair rolling 3 20 in a row and confirming 2 crits in one fight might have discouraged the GM who was very me vs you type of attitude.

2. Using the arcane savant (pathfinder savant) prestige class.
Being a wizard with Bestow grace of the champion, Heal and Resurrection kind of messed up all the religions ever in a campaign world.

3. Buying oils of invisibility, or using invisibility spells in general.
having a high level barbarian drinking one of these and pouncing the one of the main villains mid speech was the last straw.

Addendum to last point: Any scrolls or potions or spell or ability that allow to bypass anything wall/door/dungeon related. Also cannot use UMD ever, faking to be a paladin with my ranger to use a holy avenger was also "metagaming"

4. I do not have the right to ever play any character with any starting stat more than 16. Supposedly making an mutant brawler/abyssal bloodrager walking around at level 4 with about 32 STR was "too powerful", in fact that peculiar GM need to see my full build and item I might intent of crafting/getting my hands off before any new campaign.

what are some non standard (mercenary company, shipping, tavern) business ideas for characters in game?

Some of the ideas I have already: A Loan office with steep interest rates, green house that specifically grows rare herbs and regents for Mage schools/alchemy, and a messenger pigeon between cities/towns.

Need some more outside the box ideas

Fake villains for hire.

I can mess up a game playing a commoner.
I can destroy a game playing an adept.
I can ANNIHILATE a game playing an expert and using the take 10 rule.

I have a high degree of system mastery, because as a player I take so much time reading material and coming up with character ideas.

OP, you are BLESSED to have such dedicated players wanting you to craft them an experience so they can enjoy their concepts. These people they are not out there to "beat" you, they just want to build memorable and tactically sound character. Plus they probably know the rules a lot and that can only be a good thing!

Character are not the sum of their levels, skill points, stats, feats, spell and gear, these are variables that can be tweaked in a lot of ways. Characters are defined by their action; by their players.

So take a step back, focus on memorable experiences and who care if they have a barbarian that can slice your goblins in two super quick? or a witch that can put asleep every thing that is not immune to sleep or that the synthesis summoner has pretty much 30 HP at level 1 and 2 natural attacks?

They still need to do climb checks, they still need to talk to people, they will still need to save people, they will still need to lock pick/bash in doors, they still need to sleep! Use these elements to your advantage!

Best sabotage tool ever.
-> With a few slice you can cut through most support beams in structures.
-> With a few stabs you can destroy most pieces of equipment you want to break (try to shoot that balista/trebuchet now!)
-> Cut through prison bars with ease
-> Cut the retention chains of a drawbridge
-> Cut the hinges of a door in a few attack rolls
-> Cut through the bottom of that clearly trapped treasure chest
-> Plant it into a wall and descend using your weight pushing down
-> Cut off the moat of a boat in a few chops
-> Great way to split gold bars for loot
-> Wonderful item to carve your initials in stuff made out of hard stuff.

-> Cut through bad GM plot walls and literal walls (if you cannot deal with a weapon that ignore less than 20 hardness and inflict 1d4 + whatever STR your player has in HP, you cannot deal with anything and should reconsider your GMing style)

Let me open my adventurer armory.
Point at the bear trap.
Point at the fact this thing cost 2 pieces of gold.

Description:
CR 1
Type mechanical; Perception DC 15; Disable Device DC 20
EFFECTS
Trigger location; Reset manual
Effect Atk +10 melee (2d6+3); sharp jaws spring shut around
the creature’s ankle and halve the creature’s base speed (or
hold the creature immobile if the trap is attached to a solid
object); the creature can escape with a DC 20 Disable Device
check, DC 22 Escape Artist check, or DC 26 Strength check.

You can secure most choke point with that darn thing.

A maxed out str barbarian at level 1 can get maybe +8 on it's attack roll with weapon focus or +9 if buffed with a spell like bless or whatever. That thing get +10 for 2 pieces of gold ... and can be reused.

...
* A party of high level (17th level) martials is taking on a high-level caster (18th level caster, plus enough minions to make it a CR 20 encounter).
* The encounter is taking place in the caster's stronghold. Think, if you like, of Conan encountering the evil wizard at the top of his tower. This gives the caster the home field advantage plus all the prep time in the world.
* The party consists of a fighter, a rogue, gunslinger or a skirmisher ranger, and a brawler. No spells among them. More importantly, no magical items duplicating spells either. This is about martials themselves being cool, not martials pretending to be casters.
* The caster is RAW legal; no nerfing him. Simulacra of wish-granting outsiders, bags of marbles with symbols on them, teleporting to private demiplanes, all legitimate.
* The party is not allowed to do anything "wuxia," "weeaboo," "anime," or similar derogatory words.

And, most importantly
* The party has to win, and win awesomely, so that everyone has a good time.

...

So the party has no right to use any spells.

That leave us with magical gear that will be very hard to use in direct combat with even a moderately optimized spell caster. No way to become ethereal and spy on the villain, no wait to meld with stone to go through the castle walls.

You could always buy rings of x-ray vision a bunch of adamantine shovels and dig under the castle, find where the villain his beds sheets and apply a generous amount of contact poison, each exposure (must be more than on all night) will increase the DC by 2, a rogue with proper gear and feats at level 17 can run around with +50 stealth easy, since stealth is not a magical effect that detection invisibility, true sight and other trick like that would not work, then there always the risk that there is a bunch of alarm spells, especially in the wizard bedroom.

He has however one vulnerability, there is not one magical item in pathfinder that can even remove it. The wizard in question must go #2 once a while. Generous amount of contact poison (Black lotus extract) on the rim of the latrines, the door handles and the toilet paper.

Also maybe digging a 500 feet pit underneath the wizard bed and placing enough exploding powder underneath it could be a great idea, the wizard could always feather fall.

But the one even bigger problem the wizard probably has a bunch of clones. I vote for non lethal damage until the wizard fall unconscious at what point the party will force the unconscious wizard the breath in 40 doses of Ungol dust (the DC will be too high at some point and the charisma drain should mess him for good.)

Contingency spell would be another problem, the wizard could have a lot of countermeasure at the note "fall unconscious", luckily the wizard can only have one such spell active at any given time. I have yet to find a proper counter for a wizard that will run away that way while not using any other spell to mess him up. No dimensional anchor, no scrying, no anti magic zone.

All that to say your challenge is badly designed, write a better one please. This one forces too many undefined factor and variables.

So the villain as incredible prep time?

The rogue will spend the week before the assault on the fortress of doom (tm) using "Rumormonger (Ex)" spreading the following rumor:
A powerful adventuring party consisting for a druid, a wizard, a sorcerer and an oracle are about the attack the fortress of doom in 7 days. He also spread the rumor about their names and their physical descriptions.

While this is happening the gunslinger with the help of the rest of the party will forge a fake plan of attack made by the 4 other spell casters, showing that they will attack from the air using spells to fly and make themselves invisible and that they will summon a lot of extra planar creatures and that they might use teleport to go and kill the main bad right away using their druid as tank.

On the 5th day before the assault the fighter, the gunslinger, the rogue party face and the brawler will go request and audience for the big bad. They have found a plot against lord of doom (tm), the party rogue managed to steal the plan and they want to trade it for gold, they also offer their services as body guards for more gold. They also have an ingenious plan for the big bad: Use an anti magic zone, it will be perfect against the adventuring party summoned creatures, the enemy will teleport and then be rendered powerless, the rest of the party will be able to take care of them with ease with their superior martial skills.

On day 7 at the hour of the attack big bad (tm) cast anti magic field around his throne room and acts as bait. At this point his body guard full attack him, steal all his goods and burn his castle down. Also the wizard corpse is sent to the local temple of good guys to be sealed in a crypt.

You have been ocean 11ed.

If the GM foils the player plan by using out of game knowledge have your most beefy friend squeeze his arm until he says uncle.

I am not winning, I am putting effort in a game I love and enjoy.
I retrospective I had the most fun when "power gaming" I felt like I could role-play better than when I was playing a weak character. I tried to make a plain character more than once. I am just tired of it, I have attained a level of system mastery where I have earned the RIGHT to make a goofy character concept that will not only nail and beat most obstacles thrown at him, but be very memorable. Yesterday I had to sit 30 minutes listening to some Uber RP master describing how she would hide in a crowd in a dress and attempt to steal important documents from a target. She then proceeded to roll a whooping 8 with modifiers.

Well I tried to showcase that yes, martial have nice thing.
Then I got told that I was wrong and I realize that I was.
Martial sucks in the short, medium and long run.
There is barely any cool factor to play one.

level 6 and level 9 spell levels caster are better all around at any task a martial can even try to do.

Martial are obsolete if you play a standard 20 point buy game.

Even a super optimized martial character past level 10 will struggle against any other plainly built character when facing a challenge.

Climb a 100 feet wall:
- Martial -> Minimum 4 round even with insane skills checks.
- Magic -> fly, spider climb, teleport, summon monster something big with wings to carry me on top.

Infiltrate(sneak into) a castle:
- Martial -> maybe 2 hours of planning and insane difficulty to go through any sort of plan involving a grappling hook and a trillion of skill check. Any skill check fail is failure.
- Magic -> fly + invisibility

Go retrieve a treasure at the bottom of a lake:
- Martial -> lots of checks every fail is potential death.
- Magic -> there is like a billion spells to grab the treasure or just allow you to go under water without any problem.

Fight a monster:
- Martial -> Fight them hope to not roll a 1
- Magic -> cast any spell with no chance of failure or whatever

Negotiate a peace treaty:
- Martial -> hope to all the gods you will not mess up your skill checks
- Magic -> dominate person, charm person, summon a freaking angel to negotiate for you.

I cannot imagine any situation pass level 5 where somebody with full BAB or 3/4 and no spell ability can even try to compete.

Rynjin wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Korlos wrote:

Did Hercules wait for a magic user to come along and help him with his labors? Did Beowulf wait for buff spells before he torn Grendel's arms off? Did Cuchulain need scrolls and potions to single-handedly defend a city?

Exactly. So just go out and bloody well do it rather than whinge about not having the tools for it.

Well, you know, unless you don't have the tools to do the thing you're trying to do.

Party with no casters: "Quick! The villain teleported 1000 miles away to his secret lair! We must stop him before he finishes his evil plot 2 days from now!"

Pwnc: "S++!."

That's not a problem for a party, it's a problem for the GM.

No it's a problem with the game system ...

And even then, three Teleports is three more than any martial class can manage.

I get it it's ok no need to be belligerent.

Yet I repeat my point martial and magic-user operate a their best when working together. Martial CAN and SHOULD use magic, they cannot economically do it as well and often as a wizard. But they can, magic is awesome and in a high fantasy game like pathfinder should be used to fix problems! But let's be honest here, martial have nice things, they have nice archetypes now, if you play core only well it's another story.

You can say mages win 100% in all situation and you know what you are probably right, a party of 4 wizards can probably clear every adventure path out there. On paper again it work super fine. In practice it does not, because in the span of that 4 to 8 hour game session you will get tired and will make the wrong decision every now and then. At this point you will be happy to have a tank to take that hit for you or a gunslinger taking care of that guy grappling you and pinning you down.

Martial do get nice things!

They are called bow and guns.

The problem is that martial rings melee in people heads.
The only remotely useful melee martial in the whole system is the barbarian with beast totem, because he can apply a full attacks and move.

New stuff is often labelled as cheese by one of my GMs.
The reason is kind of sad, the poor dude love to create his own little world. Anything that does not fit his world is awful, thus most of the time he ban any new books that does not fit his world. It's really sad because he label everything that does not fit his narrative as cheesy.

Mutation Warrior fighter archetype? Cheesy!
Bomb focused Alchemist build? Cheesy!
Using adamantine arrows heads to cut a steel wire? Cheesy!
Gunslingers? Cheesy!
Archer paladin build? Cheesy!
Summoner using summons? CHEESY!

Being a total shitty GM with 0 creativity and copying over and over stuff from final fantasy into his games: Not cheesy
Refusing to play any other game and to be a player every now and then to leave anyone else the chance to be a GM: Totally not cheesy
Creating about 60 pages worth of house-rules but refusing any other stuff besides from core at the table: Not cheesy

Usually people that call everything cheesy are close minded control freak that want to impose their vision on everything. If you want so much control on a interactive storytelling combat sim table top game. Maybe you should just write a book and let people that wanna play play.

Get yourself some ranks in profession: tattoo artist.
KO the rogue with non-lethal damage.
Shave his head and tattoo "thief" all over it.
Do the same for the top of both his hands.
Buy sovereign glue and get yourself a bag full of feathers and transform him into a chicken.

Once his character wake up, grab his character by the throat and say:
"Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me, try Fool me a third time and I will cut all your limbs out and sell you to a pleasure house as a plaything."

Your DM suffer from final fantasy syndrome.
Politely ask him or her to tone down the yu-gi-oh monsters with 5000 HP and 75 AC and DR 50 -/Epic Epic and immunity to magic.

I have built a campaign not log ago where the villain is an actual rebel cabal against the current government, they all wear a very distinct mask that change their voices and physical appearances to match each other. When killed the mask breaks as it cast the Spell "sculpt corpse" to make the body look the same every time. The second time the group actually traveled back where they buried the first villain only to find the tomb empty. The mast also cast death kneel upon the wearer if he us just knocked in the minus HPs.

The cabal love keeping the illusion that their leader is immortal and transcend time. They will actively try to recuperate the corpses of all their previous "leaders" and destroy any proofs of his demise. So at moment the cabal leader would be a high level fighter some other time he would be a powerful cleric, at high level they fought a synthesis summoner version of him! that was very confusing for them! They finally managed to capture one alive and uncovered the whole mystery Scooby-doo style!

Point buy all the way.
Dice rolling is not for me or any player I GM, I seen my share of lucky players with arrays like 18,18,16,17,14,15 and people ending up with 10,8,16,14,6,5. It's not fun for anyone to start up a new character and being handicapped when compared to the paragon rolls across the table.
The more tools I give my players to create their characters to their taste the more they will have fun usually.

Diversity = Win

A simple wizard or cleric in your ranks will make any adventurer group, well better at adventuring.

You could build a fighter with 18 INT and have him study days and days for the secret entrance of the next dungeon he's about to explore, or have the Cleric cast stone shape to create a way in.

You could spend 4 rounds trying to get into flanking position of a big bad guy with your rogue to deliver a sneak attack, or have the Sorcerer cast invisibility on you and go in and remove his heart in a very surgical manner.

You could try to shoot the shadows coming at you from the walls with your plain longbow or have the paladin cast bless weapon on you.

You could stay insane for the rest of your life after having been hit by a powerful curse or have the druid cast heal on you.

You could invest a ridiculous amount of skill point in use magic device and hope that this time you will be able to cast a level 3 spell from that scroll you found last game, or have the wizard take care for that for you while you spend your time doing your job.

Don't see spell caster has the competition, see them as something that complete your team of adventurers, even a high level a caster is always better off with his buddies, a level 20 fighter can take most challenges head on with a cleric that got his back. A level 10 Monk getting help from a level 3 wizard can pretty much fight anything. Spell-casters are meant to be power multiplier, by themselves they rock, working in a team they can change the world you are adventuring in. Pathfinder is a team game, take the time to discuss strategies before heading into your next adventure, if you play a martial or a caster type character be ready to be amazed.

I see a lot of posts implying that rogues aren't worth playing, why is that?

Their only noteworthy and unique class feature that the rogue offers is the sneak attack, meaning that most people really want to capitalize on what the rogue has to offer (sneak attacks). The main problem is that sneak attacks are not reliable, you still need to invest a lot of feats to be able to feint and use your sneak attack and that it's IF you hit your target after spending 2 round prepping your attacks.

The Rogue represent why action economy is so important in this game system, if it take you 2 rounds to do something I can do in one you lose, simple as that.

You can play a "very powerful" rogue if you wish too, using the chain of "sap adept" and "sap master feats to capitalize on non-lethal sneak attacks. Combine this with the "Bludgeoner" feat and a lucerne hammer + "mobility" and "spring attacks" and STR focused build and you will be able to run around the battlefield in circle and put a lot of people KO. The problem is that Sap master does double your sneak attack dices but only versus flat footed opponents, so you have to use something like the scout archetype for your rogue allowing you to consider people you charge flat footed, something that you should not want to do anyway because of your low AC and HP and your crappy saves.

All of that to maybe do almost as much damage has a plain fighter using power attack and weapon focus or a wizard casting lighting bolt. However that said I think pathfinder is a teamsport and having a wizard that can cast greater invisibility or having access to that spell via use magic devices will make you a real killing machine using this setup:

Use the knife master archetype and focus on two weapon fighting, this will transform your 1d6s into 1d8s when using knives to perform sneak attacks, at low-mid level (6-9) you will be the god of death of your party causing tons of damage in very little time, especially if you are affected my a haste spell. But you will be very reliant on your party/items to deal a bit more damage than your average combat focused class at this level a 2 handed fighter with greater invisibility will actually do more damage than you since he will get more iterative attacks because of his BAB.

Rogues are kind the hardest class to get the most millage out of in Pathfinder, they are like trying to squeeze lime juice out of a lemon. But if you are a very patient player and that you plan your character to play well with your party you should have a blast anyway.

A half-ling Rogue that took a lot of effort making to make look himself like a Dwarf Cleric. I did not understand why he had such a hard time casting any spells of why he was almost never channeling until we hit level 3.

I have been noticing a little on here some Summoner-bashing. Particularly from one of the Pathfinder designers. What I don't get is why? Can someone give me an in-depth list of reasons why? I have yet to see what the issue is on them?

So Imagine a class that like the druid, the ranger and the wizard/sorcerer get an animal companion. But unlike these classes the Summoner can customize his monster to completely blow out of the water most creatures of the same CR.

Let's also give that class the ability to summon monsters as a standard action, you know in case his demi-god beast fails a saving throw or something and ALSO let's make sure these summon can stay for 1 MINUTE per level.

On top of that let's make sure that the demi-elf a race that is immune to magic sleep get a specific level up option to get more evolution points thus making you immune to one way to shutdown your monster really quickly and giving you even more way to make it over the top. Let's make sure to create a feat that allow you to get more of these evolution point and that unlike most "extra" feat this one gives a permanent and constant bonus, we are not talking about 4 extra round of rage here.

Now let's give that class only 6 spells levels but unlike the magus he will be able to cast spells from the wizard/sorcerer list at lower spell level (destroying the previous magic item economy in the process) and allow a few classes such as the pathfinder savant to cast haste using wizard level 2 spells slots and incendiary cloud. Basically making level 8 spells into level 6 spells slots.

Now let us create a bunch of archetypes that EXPLODE any other archetypes in the system, one that make in sort that you will be walking with a veritable zoo of creatures around at all time and one that transform you into a power ranger on crack. That second option is the synthesis summoner, arguably one of the most monstrous and insane class in the system. A class that is better at feral combat than a shape shifter druid, can get abilities on the fly like.....well fly, by casting a single level 2 spell to get more temporary evolution points.

Basically this class is the "I win button" of pathfinder, dip 2 level in paladin to be able to smite evil and have ridiculous saving throws because you are a CHA based caster.

So the shortlist:
-This class summon better than a conjuration focused wizard
-Is one of the best skill monkey in the system via the eidolon
-Can adapt his strategy to almost any situation short of an antimagic field
-Can become arguably one of the best melee character in the system
-Has EXTREME survivability
-Is extremely non dependent on anyone in your team
-Can fill any role in a party better than almost every class in the system because of extremely powerful and macro specialized archetypes.

Why is it that this is what's in my head as I'm GMing, but this is what my players hear? I try to be descriptive but I realize I'm too wordy. I try editing myself on paper then narrating, but it comes across as hokey. Maybe its my players, maybe its me, or maybe some combination. I know my players are having fun but is there a way to make the epic in your head consistently translate out loud?

Being descriptive helps! But it's not the key to convey the full might of a powerful CR encounter, you need a bit of method acting. Make your voice boom as you describe what is going on.

This is me when I introduce a red dragon:
"You can barely keep your PITIFUL MORTAL EYES open as the POWERFUL and MIGHTY wings of the scaled beast start gaining momentum. BURNING air and the nauseous smell of SULFUR grips at your throats. Please dear players roll a Will save versus a fear effect, as the ancient beast STARE DOWN AT THE FUTURE PILES OF ASHES THAT STAND BEFORE HIM."

Notice how I did not use the word dragon, or red. I make their mind race around a bit, filling the blanks. This give them the opportunity to freak out a bit! :D

Learn to improvise and not read text descriptions, these are great for rooms that need a lot of detail, feel free to add a few touches on the spot!

When write a dungeon room:
"The floor of this antechamber is composed of badly damaged white marble tiles, through darkness you are deducing that the room is about 30 feet in height, 50 in width and about 35 in length. There are sculpted marble columns (trapped) to the northern wall of the room"

Now here is me describing the dungeon room live:
"This room is was clearly some sort of entrance, each footstep you take carry a distinct "crystalline" crackling echo. You notice that the floor is mainly composed of broken up white marble plates and that the sheer weight of the heavily armored half-elf barbarian is causing even more damage to what would have been once upon a time a pristine and luxurious antechamber. Finely sculpted marble columns decorate the wall straight ahead of you. In the distance, the flickering-light of your torches reveal what could be semi-precious stone are ornamenting the columns"

If I want my players to go to a trap I try to make them go for the shiny things, I try to avoid numbers and room measurement unless a player ask for it. Notice how I incorporate an element of design of the room in a way that the player interacted, that make them feel more connected with their surrounding, make them remember that yes I am a 250 pound buffed up half-elf in a fullplate and that every steps I take are loud and powerful

My personal trick is to write my material and then let it sit for a while in the back burner of my mind, then I sometime practice it in the shower, my girlfriend think I am crazy mimicking dragon noises while I wash my armpits hahaha!

As a frequent victim of such tactics, I adapted my play-style to counter or even abuse! of such delightful tactics.

To counter such would be smart NPC tactics, have the party skill monkey use disguise on your person to make yourself not look like a classical wizard, some low magic solutions include using mock armor (90GP and no spell failure), that "hat of disguise" can make you look like a full plated tank in the distance!

Now next level tactics, have a full plated tank type character, especially melee), wear big cloaks and disguise themselves as a wizard, spell caster type character. I love having my DR reduction barbarian with uncanny dodge and over 29 AC walk around dressed up like a wizards (with the big pointy hat) using the "glamoured" propriety of my mithral full-plate. I also invested quite a few skill points in bluff and perform:acting.

Now, please take a second picturing this scenario: Super Smart military commander MC Smarty pants (TM) see 4 suspicious individual charging the bridge of his keep, he sees one one more suspicious individual dancing and chanting what he believes to be spells staying further away from the 4 charging figures. The commander knows that magic can be devastating, orders his archers to focus fire on the one poor unfortunate magic user. Really fearing for their life the archers swallow their very expensive potions of haste and they take their best arrows (a bunch of +2 arrows) and shoot a phenomenal quantity of arrows at the unfortunate soul. The wizardly dressed barbarian then rolls a perform: acting check to fake being mortally wounded. In reality these +2 arrows where really tinkling him, he lays on the ground and wait for his friends to approach the iron bared gate. Once they are close enough he gets up and charge it. Enraged and furious he pounce the gate with his +2 adamantine great axe, cleverly concealed under his cloak. Where was once an impenetrable gate now lies bits and pieces of or iron on the ground. Congratulation you made most of the archers pre-emptively use more resource to do absolutely nothing while drawing fire for your friends.

Note that this trick works wonder while determining marching order, be the first in line and always appear like you are wearing the most lavish an luxurious clothing, these highroad bandits will have a hard time understanding that their crossbow bolt did not even wound that nobleman who is now cutting their friends head off one by one.

Favorite class: Alchemist because of the myriad of archetype that can totally transform the class into any role.

Favorite Prestige class: mystic theurge, nothing is better than being able to cast wishes and miracles at the same-time. That said I never had the chance to play one past level 3.

When creating a new character I always wait to be the last player to do so, I like to know what is missing in our mischievous band of murder hobos.

My current group is comprised of a jack of all trade diplomacy focused monk. My friend playing that character did little to no research before building him, his character can maybe throw one or 2 good diplomacy check per 6 hour sessions. His flurry of blow is to laugh at, his saving throw are not too bad but no great either. On top of that the player as the worse luck in the world and often roll "1". But he enjoys himself and compensate with stellar role-play. But both of these thing does not affect each other, you see, he was lazy when building his monk, did not research any archetype, traits and feat progression to make something that work or at least kind of work.

My girlfriend (kind of new to pathfinder but an avid role player nevertheless) wanted to make a very strong female character, she categorically refused to play the bikini chain mail babe and did not want to touch anything with magic. She spent about 10 hours doing research into her character, background story, classes choices and more overall information on what she would do. She came back to me with a barbarian armored hulk with some horizon walker level dip to be able to Rage cycle. She figured that on her own, by browsing forums asking for feedback on her build. Her character makes Krados from god of war look like a kitten, she tears down wall using strategically invested rage powers and basically instill fear in the heart of anything she face with incredible intimidate checks. When all else fails she goes hulk smash, charges and deal about 2d12 + 30 DMG with her adamantine great axe.

The third party member of our group is a gentle soul by nature, she spend most of her day typing on RP forums about imaginary friend and characters and every time we start a campaign she pulls one of her character out of these stories to slam them in the game, she often has no clues of how to make it work but always politely ask the DM for a hand. Now she plays "Edgar" a healer (cleric with the liberation and travel domain), she has about 25 pages of back-story but never really bother using them in-game, she has a hard time expressing herself. So basically if the DM feels down that day she get's a half ass character. She has no clue of what her character is able to do and does very little research into game mechanic, the only important thing for her is that "Edgar" is somewhere on the table. Needless to say, we often have to tell her what to do for the first 6-7 sessions.

So if we look at the 3 character up there we need a arcane magic user and a rogue. But I still want to play a very interesting character, so let's see what is useful and work well together. So I came up with a Bladebound Hexcrafter Magus with 2 dip level of rogue. With the magical knack trait I have still 100% of my HD in caster levels, I have excellent combat abilities and an astounding amount of skill points.
I have an incredible +16 to my perception check (17 VS traps), awesome lock picking abilities, spell casting abilities, a sneak attack bonus of 1d6, evasion and many other bonuses that make my character a very efficient character all round, but it's not because he's optimized, you see I made 26 build before ending up with the one I am using, I have spent about 15 hours making the best character to fit my Role playing needs. I have also spent a good 4 hour to develop a very short but well written character back story for my character that explains his classes and desires to be an adventurer.

It's because Pathfinder is a game and I invested a lot of time to master that game. Meaning that I can bend the system back and forth on a whim to make any character concept work. Throw anything at me, I bet I can make a halfling pig farmer into a force to be reckoned with, I bet I can make a 70 year old shoe maker into the most powerful wizard the kingdom has ever seen, I can build an elf fisherman into a master thief. All you need is to invest a bit of time and if you are not able to respect that, take some time to acknowledge that with effort, experience and intelligence comes great powers in pathfinder.

So you don't have to optimize your character.
You have to take some time to respect the heroes you are creating for what they are and crafting them well.
If you want to play a wizard with 9 intelligence and 18 STR, be my guest, if you want to build a rogue with 7 DEX, 8 INT and 18 WIS, be also my guest.
But at this point it's not the system that has a problem, it's your lack of common sense.

Fake Healer wrote:

Usually it is only said DMs limited personal experience on a subject that lends itself to his oft-times wrong ruling.

So, you know a lot of people who can swim encased in 100 lbs of dead weight, do you?

I could actually pull it off.

Rangers (the actual US military ones) have to swim around with close to 50 pound of gear on them in training.

It would be a pretty heroic and unique feat of strength and should not be called swimming, more like drowning slower than usual, hehehe.

That said, do you know many magician that can actually cast real spells? , or have you seen any real unicorn lately? It's a rule set system that has nothing to do with the current law of physics or thermodynamics or energy conservation laws! In this world there is nothing like buoyancy! A naked mage with 10 STR carrying 2 bag of holding type 4 and no ranks in swim as more chances to drown than your fighter with 18 STR and a full plate on his back!

You want to go insane? LOOK AT THE FLYING MECHANICS, especially the dragon and their insane flyspeeds! They go at almost 1/4 of the speed of sound and are gargantuan size creatures that weigh a few hundred tons!

I love playing plain fighter, it's like driving one of those bad ass muscle cars from the 70s.

We currently play a low-magic campaign and I just love being the guy that can take any/most threats to the face with my 25 AC.

I walk around in full-plate, with this big winter cloak hiding most of my armor and gear (no helmet). After this hard day of adventuring were the wizard is out of big spells, the cleric is out of juice too and the rogue is badly wounded, out of the blues this bandit stand menacingly in the middle of the road asking for our hard earned gold. He says: "hey I have friends up there (point up at the nearby hill) and they will shoot you if you do not comply!"

I decide to play along (actually took a few ranks in bluff): "Please good sir! Let us go through without harm! I have all the money you want right here! Let me bring it to you! (I dismount my mule and start walking toward the bandit).

Once I am about 10 feet away from the poor bastard I stop dead in my track, remove my cloak and charge at him with my falshion (Critical hit!), Slice the guy in two, get shoot by the archers uphill (everything bounce off my armor). Next round I walk uphill throw my falshion to the first archer I see (throw anything FTW), he drops on the ground bleeding. Then the other archer tries in vain to shoot me again. I charge at him once I reach the top of the hill and grapple him, then I pummel his face while he as no way to retaliate (Full plate armor come equipped with those "handy" gauntlets!)

4 Round later (24 second for our characters) all my poor battered companions see is my character, walking down the hill with two bodies on my shoulders while whistling.

You cannot get that feeling of satisfaction with a wizard.

The isn't anything wrong with what the GM is doing. If you thought it was fun, it would be fine. Unfortunately, he wants you to RP and not care about winning fights. You care about winning fights and increasing things on your character sheet.

Why don't you just forget about getting bigger numbers and more spells and just RP your character?

You are entitled to learn two new spells each time you level as a part of your class. It is a handicap, but not that bad. By the time you are level 3 you should have a minimum of 2 first and 2 second level spells, even without a spell book. Is he not letting you do that either?

Hey buddy do not get me wrong, I tried on MANY occasions of role playing, the thing is that I failed miserably so far, character tell a minor lie? Skill check (My charisma is not that bad I just have little to no points into social skills), character try to get is opinion out? The other guy rolled higher intimidate. I say ''My character will to X and Y'' the DM tell: ''I do not think you character would be able to tell/act that way'' It's pathfinder, if I wanted to play a purely role playing game were the only thing character do is talk and create social intrigue, I would simply enjoy my life hahaha!

It's not about winning fights, it's about being heroes, if I wanted to be a nobody I would have played a commoner or maybe an expert, now I am supposed to be a wizard with a spell-book going on adventures with my friends and right now I am really good at having no idea of what is going on and little resources to accomplish or do anything.