Librain's page

are you really going to waste one on Cure Serious Wounds?

I mean, if the cleric goes down it's nice to have a "get the hell back up and keep healing us!" option? If I was a prepared caster it would be worthless because I would never actually declare at the start of the day that it was worth the spell slot, but as a spontaneous caster I can just ignore it until something comes up and suddenly I need it. Lesser restoration is super late, sure, but if it comes up I will be incredibly grateful that I have it. A level 2 spell that essentially works as a combat cantrip? Less so. As you say, spells are the least important part of a bloodline, so it's OK if some of them are ones I only need in emergencies.

And if confusion comes up then apparently the casters can make themselves invisible. Or more specifically, one of the casters has a spiritual outsider kind of familiar thing that can turn people invisible at will. I don't quite understand how he gets this at first level, but the GM's signed off on it so...

Wonderstell wrote:

Librain wrote:

I was looking at this, but I think I'm going to take cross-blooded instead.

I would strongly advise against that. It's effectively a -4 will save penalty on a class with a weak will save progression.

This.

Crossblooded not only gives you a permanent -2 to will saves, but also loses the +2 morale bonus when raging. Yes you can make yourself super powerful using the best of 2 bloodlines, but when you get dominated by the enemy that just means you kill your own party faster (or more usually it just means you get Dazed/Slowed/etc more often in combat).

I do agree that those spells are underwhelming, but I'd be much more inclined to find a bloodline who's spells and abilities are "ok" than try to get the best of both worlds for a -4 to will saves. The other thing to remember here is that although Staggering Strike has literally never come up for me I have played my Bloodrager from level 1 to level 17, and I've been very happy with him. Having 1 irrelevant class feature isn't the end of the world as long as you can make the others worthwhile. Looking at the Phoenix and Black Blood bloodlines I'd be inclined to just go with Phoneix and carry a reach weapon.

It'll be fiiiiiiine, I'll just take Iron Will and it will essentially balance out, right? I mean that's even one of the options for bonus feats! I just need to not encounter any mind-affecting abilities for the first six levels of adventuring and it won't even be a problem!

Yeah Raging Vitality is important once you get to mid-levels. Without it, when you drop to 0 HP you stop raging, which means you also lose 2 X level HP, which usually means instant death past level 5 or so. So not only does it give you extra HP and Fort-saves, it also stops you dying if those extra HP aren't enough.

Also not that Raging Vitality is actually a prerequisite, but it also helps out later when you get RAGING BRUTALITY, which is a phenomenal feat.

Hrmm, I'm pretty squeezed for feats early on (I'll need iron will before too long) so maybe in the long term it can be something to consider if I make it to level 9?

Now I know you're planning on playing a Gnome

First session is tomorrow, it's far too late to be changing my mind about things :P

Yeah if I'm honest Staggering Strike has never come up.

Maybe the crit gods will smile on me where the damage gods forsake me? I have crit for 1 non-lethal before, but I'm not playing a 7 Str wizard this time so that's not really going to be coming up again. Given I'm looking at a 20x3 crit weapon, I totally agree that tacking a fort save on the top is like 95% either redundant or pointless. Bloodrage powers are theoretically worth two Barbarian rage powers, but something that's got less than 0.5% chance to come up and is only a 1 round inconvenience when it does?? Pass!

Also regarding Combat Reflexes, if your GM allows the PRIMALIST archetype you could take the Quick Reflexes Rage Power instead of spending a feat...

I was looking at this, but I think I'm going to take cross-blooded instead. Black Blood is nifty for the frost damage and the reach, but the spells are... shall we say underwhelming? Black Tentacles is nice other than not being party friendly, but 1d6 *non-lethal* cold damage every ten minutes is weak for a first level spell. As a second level it's pathetic. Made worse by granting them a new save before every single instance of damage. So I'll take the first two powers from Black Blood and the spells from Phoenix (Lesser Restoration on a bloodrager! although waiting until level 10 to get it...). The later stuff from Phoenix is pretty nice, even if I'm probably never going to get there. Which kinda means I'm spending most of my time just taking the Will penalty for no real benefit since the first thing to kick in happens at 7th level... Hrmm. If we're not going past 8 that's absolutely not worth the trade, is it.

Honestly those stats are fine and you'll make a fine Bloodrager. The only thing I would think about is getting 15 CON for RAGING VITALITY. You don't necessarily need it at level 1, but you'll want it by level 8 or so, so either level-up into it or get yourself a belt. It only costs you 1 extra point to get 15 CON at level 1, so you could take it from CHA or WIS, and dispite what people say you could even take it from STR and start with 15 and be fine (giving you 4 extra points to play with, 1 in CON and 3 somewhere else). If you did take from STR you'd be pumping that at ever level for sure though. Oh and yeah you don't need more than 14 CHA. I took it to 18 eventually (because the +4 headband was cheaper than a 2nd level Runestone of Power would have been) but you really don't need to go past 14.

I recommend the Aberrant Bloodline because it gives you reach, as opposed to the Abyssal bloodline which just negates the STR penalty. Reach is better, even without Combat Reflexes you'll generate AoOs.

One thing I discovered playing a Bloodrager is that they're actually fairly fragile at low levels, so I ended up not using rage much until about level 5 when I had the HP to handle the reduced AC.

Firstly, I recognise you from the thread on N Jolly's Investigator guide! HI AGAIN!! :D

I had forgotten about raging vitality, but the research I've been doing in the last few days did mention it several times, so I think you're onto something there. I'm looking like dropping my STR to 17 and INT to 8, using the points to bump CON and DEX. Level 4 takes my strength back where it was, so the lasting difference becomes the increased AC, reflex, and initiative. Not forgetting of course that Ride is a dex based skill.

And Aberrant was absolutely one of the bloodlines I have been looking strongly at. Black Blood seems comparable, the level 1 gives frost damage instead of staggering with a save, but both give reach at level 4 and some minor resistances at level 8. Gnome with 10-15ft reach? I probably won't have combat reflexes to take advantage of it at all. I don't get many free feats, so adding Boon Companion and Mounted Combat mean I'm pretty squeezed.

I'm also looking at Phoenix and Sphinx. They don't give me reach, but my weapon still does (not quite the same but still).

If you had a dex bonus I'd have proposed a quality build, but might as well go with STR as a gnome.

Something like 15, 14, 16, 10, 10, 14 after racials is good enough.
Take the Master Tinker ART and ask your GM if you can have crafted a Fauchard before the first session, which takes less than a week of downtime. Better to go for crit range than dmg dice in your case.

Are you gonna be the (sole) frontliner? Gnomes can become very good heal-tanks.

I don't know what the starting gold is, but I'm wanting to grab the Gnome ripsaw glaive - reach, and +2 to damage. Sure it's a move action to activate, but reach means I can get attacks of opportunity. And it's a cool Gnomen weapon. The crit isn't great, but I'll take the static damage boost tbh.

I won't be the sole frontliner, but probably the primary one. Animal companions don't tend to scale very well as tanks.

Enlarge person also grants a +2 size bonus to STR. That means the gnomes racial penalty is effectively canceled while ranging. Since it is a size bonus it stacks with the moral bonus of bloodrage as well as enchantment bonuses from belts or spells.

Boodrider gets share spell, which means you can cast enlarge person on your wolf. Having a wolf the size of an elephant would be even better. If you take boon companion your wolf will be able to become huge at 7th level.

Not gonna lie, an itty bitty Gnome riding around on a Huge wolf sounds like exactly my kinda jam.

I don't get share spells ("Blood Bond") until level 9, and the Gnome FCB (Add ¼ to the bloodrager’s effective class level when determining the power of her bloodrager bloodline powers.) won't advance that at all, but... am I right in saying that it would advance my effective level for the purposes of determining my animal companion wolf, Pheighdeaux? (wait, no, only affects bloodline stuff and that's not bloodline... damn)

I'm honestly looking at Bloodrider as a cool archetype. Gnome bloodrager riding around on a wolf? Tell me that isn't badass!

This does mean size increases are not going to be viable, but going up to medium is not as big a difference as going from medium to large.

The cost for the 18 STR is not worth it. I would go for a 16(14 after racial) STR, 14 DEX, 14(16 after racial) CON, 10 INT, 10 WIS, 14(16 after racial) CHA 16(16 after racial). Take the Abyssal bloodline to gain enlarge person while raging to offset the small size. Take the Steelblood archetype to get heavy armor proficiency. Once you reach 4th level you will be a medium when bloodraging. At 12th level your STR bonus while raging increases due to strength of the abyss.

You could raise the STR to 17(15 after racial) by dropping the CHA to 12(14 after racial). At 4th level put your stat bonus to STR to get a 16. The first 3 level will be a challenge, but after that you should be fine. Out of combat you gain all the benefits of being small, but not when you are fighting.

Do I really need 16 CHA though? I'm not going to be relying on my saves at all, I mean for starters I don't get nearly enough spells per day to be using them for blasting! Doesn't the extra Charisma basically give me an extra 3rd level spell per day at 10th level and not much else?

Could always go Urban Bloodrager... Slashing Grace... dex-Rage nonsense. Makes the penalty to Strength a little less annoying.

That does sound like a good way to offset the strength, true. However it takes 3 feats to come online, which means I wouldn't be getting dex to damage until level 5... I don't know how far the adventure path goes, but that sounds like I'll be spending half my career doing d4+1 damage.

Soooo, I kinda declared that I would play a Bloodrager and then put it out to the group to give me a race? Certainly it be worse, Consitution and Charisma are excellent stats to have bonii in, but the small size and penalty to Strength is really going to hurt.

We're starting at first level, playing the Serpent's Skull AP (no spoilers). We have 25 point buy, which is... ominous?

I'm thinking for stats maybe 18 12 12 10 12 12 ==> 16 12 14 10 12 14 after racials?

Anyone got any tips for Bloodlines or anything?

How screwed am I, exactly?

Ya know, if people wanna go about maintaining my guides with newer content, just let me know and I can give edit permission.

I absolutely would not feel comfortable with that responsibility. Especially since I apparently forgot that tenacious inspiration was a thing.

its actually 2d8 pick the highest by the time you're done. You want to buff that on a pure investigator because it translates to saving throws, and attack/damage rolls.

Yeah, but I'm not counting the capstone because so few people ever get there, and when they do it's really not even that powerful for a capstone. Compared to some of the crazy things other classes pull, this isn't even overpowered. Outside of this Empiricist doesn't do much to increase the height of your skill checks, so much as the breadth. Even an extra +6 to all those skills is not going to take you past the realm of reasonable - other players can easily get close to your scores on any one or two skills if they put even a small amount of investment in, and spending it on attacks and saves costs inspiration, which can very rapidly deplete when you start to go spending them on every attack.

furthermore, a half-elf with 1d8+2 is sacrificing a bunch of hitpoints to get that extra +2, and on a d8 class with only light armour that is not necessarily something that is going to sit well with many players. It doesn't matter how good your sense motive is if you die every second combat.

I played a Swashtigator all the way through Curse of the Crimson Throne, and didn't use Studied Strike even once, and I was usually in the thick of combat (I didn't want to take the risk of missing, or not doing enough damage to drop an enemy, and ending Studied Combat).

The issue with this archetype is that it's not compatible with Empiricist.

OK, on further thought, I must admit that I rarely use Studied Strike either. You want to use it on your last hit, but you don't know that it will be your last hit until after your iterative misses. Maybe that isn't such a problem after all for the combat Investigator? That would make it less of a penalty, but it's still not a fantastic ability. The manoeuvrability is nice, don't get me wrong, but needing to take a move action to do it will prevent full round attacks. It doesn't stop you from using extracts, so getting into a good position (or out of a bad one!) can be combined with your round of buffing, or even handing a party member a vital potion that they need. But it's certainly not something that breaks combat or anything. Probably raises the archetype half a star, but not more.

At the end of the day, I really love the investigator, but i think the empiricist has real issues with giving gms the problem of either trivializing almost all skillchecks to the point its not even really worth having them, or the DC's getting so high that the investigator is the only one who can make them.

I must admit that the Empiricist I played had this problem to an extent that no other character I've seen has had. At level 7 my perception was such that I could reliably expect to make a DC of 30, and would regularly roll above 40 or even sometimes 50. Most characters at that level would have maybe a +10 to perception, meaning that their checks ended where mine began. The GM didn't really know how to handle that.

I agree with avr that this is not exclusively Empiricist though. You have, what, a high stat in the relevant ability score? Does that extra D6 really make so much difference? The only thing the Empiricist does is allow you to do this in 12 different skills at once.

So it's been a while, but curiosity brought me back here and then onwards to discovering that there are actually now a BUNCH of new archetypes for the investigator.

... did someone say review time?

Again, all things come with the pre-existing acknowledgements that Talents are hugely front loaded, and that I don't value trapfinding or poison stuffs very highly.

Antiquarian: Your alchemy becomes spell casting, with no spell failure. You don't change your spell list though. The main benefit of spells is being able to target multiple people at once, but the Alchemist spell list is incredibly short on spells which would actually benefit from this (Haste is one, I can't find a second), while losing infusions cuts you off from the best aspect of alchemy - handing out powerful self-only buffs to the martials who most benefit from them. Detect magic and curse resist/immunity are nice, but not enough to save this archetype (Lantern of Auras costs 2k). Casting Alchemist formulae as spells is the worst of both worlds, nothing else here changes that at all.
1/5 (1.5/5 if you give your party Haste regularly)

Bonded Investigator: Get a familiar at level 2! An amazingly utilitarian replacement for all your poison stuff. Does this mean you can take Improved Familiar at 7th level? IT DOESN'T MATTER YOU GET IT FOR FREE!!! OK technically you lose your Talent in exchange for it, but I'd probably be buying it anyway, so it works out the same. Great Archetype. Up there with the best. I'm not sure how useful granting your familiar access to your inspiration will be (maybe it will help out with UMD checks?), and your Studied Strike is nerfed, but you probably shouldn't be relying on that for damage anyway. Familiars are better.
4/5

Cartographer: You get to spend 10 minutes drawing a map of your area to gain some minor skill bonuses. In towns and wilderness this could be useful, but in a dungeon you are restricted to areas you've already explored, which is usually pretty redundant. Losing Keen Recollection isn't really a big deal since you probably have all the skills anyway, but know direction is a cantrip, and not even a good one - a compass costs 10gp. Swapping Swift Alchemy for faster travel off road is OK I guess, if that's the sort of thing you're going to be doing a lot. Overall it's got a bit of flavour, and you don't lose anything important, but it also doesn't really do much for you. Unless this really fits your niche, I wouldn't bother.
2/5

Demolitionist: Get improved sunder for free at level 2, and later ignore the first 5 points of hardness. You also pick up a cone attack - short range but decent damage, great for dealing with swarms but not much else. Finally, you get some useful battlefield control tactics: creating difficult terrain, providing concealment/cover to allies, and sundering an entry point through a solid stone wall. These give you lots of options to help you and your party manipulate conditions in your favour. In terms of cost, losing Studied Strike progression hurts, but not much; the biggest problem is losing your 3rd and 9th level Talents. I don't see this being a threat to a sunder-based fighter at all, but the utility is certainly something I would seriously consider.
3.5/5

Engineer: Trade out trap and poison stuff for a meh bonus on identifying constructs, and the ability to hand out your inspiration to other members of your party. You need to assign it beforehand, and it only lasts a few minutes (until level 11 when it suddenly lasts for hours) but this is still quite an interesting ability that will help you support your party better. Giving your fighters a boost on their crucial will saves might change what side they're fighting on when the succubus says hi. Given you don't lose anything of significance, even if the construct thing never comes up handing out inspiration is valuable support.
3/5

Guardian of Immortality: Swap Poison Lore for a scaling bonus on sense motive. Swap Poison Resistance for Endurance at level 2, fire resistance at 5, and double visibility in sandstorms and fog at 8. Free fire resistance is very nice, and many fog spells can be crippling - an extra 5 feet of visibility could make a huge difference. At 7th level, lose your Talent to gain free inspiration on a bunch of things, but unless you make heavy use of the disguise skill, the only one likely to come up is saves against Illusions. Weak for a talent. Swapping immunity to poison for a flat +1 to all saves is really nice, and the teleportation blocking ability at level 13 might have some situational use, but costing a Talent is steep. Overall you get a few nice things, but some builds will struggle with losing two talents for them. It's probably a fairly even trade all up, and it mostly won't play out much different from a vanilla investigator, but if you want the anti-teleport stuff then go for it.
2.5/5

Jinyiwei: Again we swap out alchemy, this time for Wisdom casting as an Inquisitor. Because we are Divine, there is no spell failure and we can wear armour as normal. The rest of it is pretty sweet: swap some of your less useful class abilities (trap finding, trap sense, quick alchemy) for cool stuff you will regularly make use of: scaling bonuses to Sense Motive and the most common uses of Perception! Saves against enchantments and illusions - some of the worst saves to fail! A slightly weaker version of the Judgement class feature! Fundamentally this all comes down to the Investigator spell list - there's some good stuff on that your party will love you for, but you lose handing out the powerful "self only" infusions. If you like it enough, the rest of this archetype is great value. If you can't get past losing infusions, then Judgements won't be enough to save this archetype. Note that while Inspiration is keyed to Wisdom now, Studied Combat/Strike are not, so it is best stacked with Cryptid Scholar, which not only gives you Wisdom to Monster ID, but also swaps out the Studied Strike/Combat that you weren't planning to use anyway for a handy party-wide buff!
1 if you don't like the swap, 4 if you do, higher if combined with Cryptid Scholar

Malice Binder: DO NOT TAKE THIS ARCHETYPE! Replace Alchemy with "fetters" - like hexes, but less powerful, less versatile, and more restrictive. Losing alchemy for these is an insult. Seriously this archetype competes with the Majordomo for the worst archetype! Full rant on how bad fetters are in spoiler below.
-2/5

Natural Philosopher: The weapon proficiencies aren't great but that's not exactly a change, lose free inspiration on Spellcraft, some other miner changes to skills, and you were probably going to take Infusion as your third level Talent anyway. You're not losing a lot, but you're probably gaining even less. It's so marginally different from a vanilla investigator as to barely be worth being an archetype.
2/5

Portal Seeker: This one's SUPER niche. The ability to teleport around the battlefield is nice for the combat types, but it costs Studied Strike, so I'm not sure who this is actually meant for. A Detect Magic for extra-dimensional portals... do dimensional portals tend to hide themselves? In the very rare case that an enemy has a bag of holding, it should be obvious immediately on looting the corpse. And resisting teleportation effects? There's some nice flavour here, but not much that I would really consider useful.
1.5/5

Reckless Epicurean: The main draw here is Experimental Potable - need an extract but don't have the formula in your book? Just bluff your way through and hope! There is a Spellcraft check to prevent a Wild Magic Surge, but it's only 15+extract level. With free inspiration and a cheap +2 item (800gp ioun stone works) you should never fail this. For the price of your level 5 Talent, the added flexibility is pretty nice. The 13th level one is a niche boost to saves, but it will rarely be the school that you want, so not worth the price of the Talent imo - though it's also late enough that many people will never see it. Swapping Trapfinding for identifying potions is nice flavour, but you should have better means to identify magic items. Mostly it just stops you from stacking this with other archetypes. Does still stack with Bonded Investigator, Cryptic Scholar, Demolitionist, Empiricist, Lamplighter and a few others, including possibly some that replace Alchemy... I'm actually guessing that won't work since the text requires that you fill an empty extract slot, but without Alchemy you will not have any to fill.
3/5

Ruthless Agent: To play out the role of interrogator, you get a scaling bonus on Intimidate, the ability to apply a penalty to your victim's bluff, (early!) access to Discern Lies with one free use every day, and eventually the ability to literally compel obedience. This seems nice, but Geas is rather situational, and 6th level scrolls exist if you don't know someone who can cast it. Paying two talents, even late ones, for that ability seems like a very poor trade. In light of this, even a rather nice boost to Intimidate seems insufficient. Take a trait to get the skill keyed off your Int, get a few items to boost it, and max ranks will soon have you passing any intimidate check the DM cares to throw at you. Not exactly bad, but it's not strong enough for how niche it is.
2/5

Star Watcher: Once again, we swap alchemy for "spellcasting" (from scrolls, so still no spell failure). Only this time you need to decide *at the time of preparation* which spells will be cast on whom. This does seem to make infusions unnecessary, which is really useful (and getting it at level 1 is even better), but the lack of flexibility isn't, and losing Mutagen will hurt the combat oriented. Scribe Scroll is nice and adds back some of the lost flexibility, as does Precognition (fill a single empty extract slot as a swift action - self target only), but you still need to spend a Talent to get this. As for Talents that work off using the star knife as a ranged weapon... at a quick glance this might actually be the second best way to make a ranged Investigator. Behind NOT making a ranged investigator. Frankly, I can see someone making this work, but I'm personally not a fan.
2/5

Tekritanin Arbiter: The ability to communicate with literally all of the common human languages requires you to be in a setting where there are humans who don't speak common. While this archetypes gives up nothing I'd lose any sleep over, a minor bonus to appearing a native speaker of a language is possibly the most niche ability I've ever seen! If you're in a campaign where this sort of thing is more likely to come up than trap sense, then... well I'd still recommend you go for one of the stronger archetypes first, but at least this one has some interesting and unique abilities that will never be a burden (coughmalicebindercough). Probably more for the NPC diplomat that most campaigns tend to end up with at some point, but it's certainly not bad. Just niche.
2/5

Toxin Codexer: If you want poisons, take this. You don't give up much beyond your 3rd level Talent(!), but it takes a while for the poisons to even be worth using. You are not going to have the best save DC, and all the really important enemies will probably have a Fort save through the roof. At higher levels the poisons are really quite scary - 1d6 con damage and 2 consecutive saves is basically a death sentence for a lot of people if you can use it out of combat, but in combat it's not worth a 6th level slot over handing your barbarian Giant Form I. The modified toxins are utter meh. Also the beneficial options are weird - why would I cure bleed damage with a poison, when cure light wounds will do it better and without the Int damage?? Not a single one of them seems worthwhile. Frankly I'd pass on this entire archetype, but if you want poisons this is how you get them without the crazy price tag.
1/5

So there you have it. Given the release of 2e, this will be all the archetypes we will ever see for this class. Honestly I think we've got a pretty good selection, including a solid way to make a Wisdom or Charisma based Investigator, and a bunch of possible combinations, most of which I did not go into. Enjoy.

PREHENSILE HAIR wrote:

The witch can instantly cause her hair (or even her eyebrows) to grow up to 10 feet long or to shrink to its normal length, AND can manipulate her hair as if it were a limb with a Strength score equal to her Intelligence score.

That's the first sentence of the hex. There is a case to argue that it says: "You instantly do X AND Y" which could mean you could activate it and attack as part of the same standard action.

For everyone who wants to instantly jump in and prove me wrong, take a minute to actually think about it. A few seconds ago I agreed with you, but now I'm not so sure. It may still be wrong, but there's no point blindly trying to prove a point without considering the other side of the argument.

How...

In the same round that you cast the spell, you may also touch (or attempt to touch) as a free action.

If there was text that said it was treated as a touch spell, this exception would also apply here. If there was text that said casting the hex was a free/swift/immediate/move action, you could attack afterwards freely using the actions remaining. None of these have been said. The hex takes a standard action to cast. The hex does not state that it grants you an attack as a free action. Conclusion: the hex does not give you an attack on the round you cast it.

Some would be very hard to perceive, such as charmed. But even then, while not automatic, theres rules systems in place to suss it out. Sense motive and heal skills will tell you a lot, and for some like Panic, its not a hard DC

It gets harder with barbarians. Are they drooling because they're charmed? Or are they just drooling because the succubus has her t!+@ out?

Are they panicked because the wizard cast cone of fear? Or did they take Superstitious and are scared that the bad man will take their soul away?

In this situation, person A has to complete their attack in order to crit - you can't crit an attack you haven't made after all.

If you really want to break the laws of causality, try doing this same thing in a few levels when you have Broken Wing Gambit. Person A crits, activates broken wing gambit. Person B takes AOO, crits. Person A gets AOO, uses a combat maneuver, say grapple, without the required feat, provoking an AOO from the enemy, who takes it, giving person B an AOO on them first. Do this on a prepared action for when the enemy attacks you, and his attack is interrupted by a chain of events that include him attacking you.

The way I read it, it is a standard action to use the hex, and using the hex means 'instantly causing hair to grow *AND* manipulating the hair as if it were a limb'. It does not state that the manipulation has to occur on a subsequent round.

That's not the way I read it. It says that activating the hair is a standard action. It does not say that this comes with a free attack. The "instant" is flavour text, not rules. While it doesn't say that manipulation has to happen on a subsequent round, you do not have a standard action left in this round with which to attack. My reading is no.

Fair enough, I think it's from Tomb of Horrors, my favourite source for specialty undead stuff. Good find on the shadow rat swarm. I'm familiar with them, have used them before, and even had them in mind when I came up with the bat swarm, but at no point did I think to actually go and look at them to see if they set a precedent. Thanks for that.

RAW, creatures killed by shadows turn into shadows, so they'd just have the same stats as a regular shadow. No echolocation, no flying, etc. It's a creature, not a template.

It wasn't a shadow though, it was a shadow dire bear.

Their create spawn ability ("Any animal reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow dire bear becomes a shadow animal within 1d4 rounds.") specifically calls out that they become a shadow animal, not a standard shadow.

In an undead setting, some shadow dire bears with create spawn (specifically for animals) got loose in the forest. One result of this unfortunate outbreak is the purely hypothetical scenario that I threw a shadow bat swarm at my players. If they were to, hypothetically speaking, simply invisible themselves and "stealth" away, as only a fighter in full plate can, would the bat swarm be able to follow them?

The original bat swarm that I was vaguely using as a template/inspiration for this creature (too low CR to be worth giving actual stats to) has blindsense, presumably as a result of echolocation. Would that still work?

We ended up going with "if echolocation works then so do non-magical sonic attacks", and while I'm not sure if any of them even exist, I think the incorporeal ability is pretty clear that they wouldn't work if they did.

So, echolocation was out, you can't hear shadows and they can't hear you. But you can see them, so lasers are fine. Are there any rules to support any of this?

As a general rule the same effect doesn't stack with itself, so I'd assume that you stay switched.

This is of course assuming that the two items use what is essentially the same effect - given that changing gender isn't a spell at all it's probably up to GM interpretation whether this is the case or not.

The paladin fell for enjoying the feel of it just a little too much. Ew.

The paladin released a second edition of a beloved rules system.

2018 and still no answer as far as I'm aware. An extra spell slot per day would make a significant difference, especially when some of the 'bonus' spells granted are already on the paladin's spell list. On the other hand, some of them grant fourth level cleric spells as third level paladin spells, so I can see how granting an extra spell per level might be a significant and unintended powerup.

Still, given the wording is clearly ambiguous, I'd love to see a response from the team on this.

Wait, everything works out in my favour and I can do all the things I was hoping to be able to do? Sweet!

Thanks a lot for such a comprehensive response :)

Greeting fellow Humans, I am making a wildshape druid with a dip into Maneuver Master to get the flurry of maneuvers, with wisdom to AC, feats (IUS and Imp. Dirty Trick without prereqs), and good saves all gravy. I have some questions about how it all works though.

1) At level 6 when I get Grab, I assume this grants its +4 bonus on any grapple I perform while in an appropriate form, not just those on the grab attacks?

2) Can I perform the bonus maneuver (a dirty trick to blind someone), and then make the rest of my full attack against their flat-footed AC -2?

3) If I successfully grab someone using my natural attacks, can I then use the bonus maneuver to pin them? 3a) Can I do this immediately after I grab them, and then continue on with the rest of my attacks against their lowered AC?

4) If I begin my turn grappling someone, can I use the bonus maneuver to maintain the grapple or do I need to take a standard action to do so (depriving me of my full attack and bonus maneuver)? 4a) If I can use the bonus maneuver do I need to do this at the start or can I do it at the end? 4b) If I can do it at the end is the enemy still grappled during this time or do I need to make the grapple check immediately on my turn?

I might find a few more things as I explore this further, but that should do for now. Thanks in advance!

On a melee build, every point of AC is important. Especially at low level.

Important? Nice, sure. But not critical. As mentioned I've done perfectly well as a Barbarian with 17AC - 15 while raging. Often 15 is more than enough at low levels, and sometimes it is not even close to what I need. An extra 10% miss chance that 16 dex would give me... honestly it's not as important as an extra 5% to hit and 1-2 extra damage, personally. I hope to be dishing out attacks more than I'm taking them, so dodging an opponent's blows is less important than not only landing my own, but also making sure they count.

I'd love to be able to do that and also run around with enough dex to make full use of Celestial Armour, but everything has it's price. For me, AC is not worth sacrificing damage for. It's good to still have enough to survive a fight, and I always like to not be *too* easy to hit (I know someone who played a Barbarian with Reckless Abandon who's AC got down to about 7, declaring that at that point armour was not worth investing in because it would take too much to get up to the point where anyone would miss him on a 2), but if tanking is not your primary role, then don't sacrifice your primary role to improve your tanking.

Everything comes at a cost, and for many characters pushing their dex up to 16 just because they only get medium armour is quite simply not worth it.

Bloodragers aren't that bad - with medium armour you only need 12 or 14 dex (I have a barbarian doing fine with 12). In fact, with access to defensive spells designed to keep a wizard alive (mirror image and blur on a barbarian is utterly frightening), you could drop your dex even lower and put the points into Con instead.

Oh, and charisma? 12 or 13 starting charisma is fine. You are not a blaster. You are a full BAB martial character. Use spells like Shocking Grasp and Scorching Ray - even a ranged touch attack will be child's play with your full BAB. Even if you pumped your Charisma to 18, at level 10 you get 2 fireballs per day, with a DC17 save. Compared to a Sorcerer at the same level throwing out twice as many *dazing* fireballs with a save around DC22, before falling back to a solid half-dozen basic fireballs, and having alternate damage, buffs and utility to spare.

Sure you can make a Bloodrager into a blaster if you really want to, but you don't get enough spells per day to do it well, and you are always well behind the full casters in spell progression. You know how the first few levels as a caster kind of suck? As a Blastrager that will be half your career (90% in PFS). Forget any spell that relies on a save and just have enough charisma to be able to cast them.

Try these 20 pointbuy stat lines (before racials):
16 14 14 8 9 13 (fairly balanced strength focus line)
17 12 14 8 9 13 (slightly less balanced, attack/damage bump comes at level 4 rather than 8)
14 14 14 10 10 14 (for the dump averse - less damage but better saves and skills)
16 12 16 7 10 14 (more HP - 2 skills/level is all fighters gets anyway, right?)
18 10 14 7 10 12 (MOAR attack/damage, mirror image is far better than an extra point of AC anyway, buy a Cha headband at level 7)

All of these will serve quite admirably for any suitable race. Tweak as needed based on your exact racial adjustments.

Saecien: feats with a limited number of uses per day (such as stunning fist) are limited by their use per day even if you get them multiple times (such as a Brawler's martial flexibility), so I'd say the same applies here. You get a single smite per day, no matter how many times you can assume the shape of the creature that gets it.

So, you get SR equal to your HD+6 (base CR=HD, template increases CR by 1, SR is 5 higher than this).
You get a single smite per day no matter how many times you wildshape.
You get starting DR of 5

You can also get a druid's vestment to increase your number of wildshapes per day by 1, which allows you to use planar wildshape at level 6 (6 hours planar, 6 hours normal as a backup). 6 hours should be enough for most adventuring days. Note though, you can't take it until you have the wildshape class feature, just like natural spell, which should be a higher priority for you.

For anyone coming to this thread and wondering the same thing, you can't take Planar Wild Shape until you have the Wild Shape class ability - in Furthermore's case, since his wildshape is delayed until level 6 (this is made clear in the APG errata) he cannot take that feat at level 5.

Bit of a Necro here, but it's probably worth noting for anyone new coming along and reading this thread in confusion as to what the rules actually mean, this has been answered in the FAQ now.

"The DC is still 10 to jump over a 10-foot pit. You do move a total of 15 feet when you make that jump, but some of that is not required to be part of the jump. One way to visualize it is to think of it as walking/running the 2–1/2 feet from the center of your original square to the edge of the pit, jumping the pit right to the other edge, and then walking the 2–1/2 feet to the center of the new square."

posted June 2015

FAQ

One snag I just noticed, technically it doesn't count, because it only mentions counting as weapon finesse for the purpose of qualifying for FEATS, not prestige classes. I'm sure it was an oversight, they might want to get onto clarifying that.

Swashbuckler finesse states that it counts as Weapon Finesse for the purpose of feat pre-requisites. You still need to take two of your first three feats as Combat Expertise and Improved Feint, which means that non-humans will have to choose between entering this class 2 levels late, or Piercing/Slashing Grace.

An addendum to the review, the following archetypes stack with Empiricist: Conspirator, Forensic Physician... that is all. Neither are great archetypes, but neither are so terrible that we can't expect to see the occasional character combining the two.

Lamplighter works with: Majordomo. Eww. Also Sleuth if you count the older archetypes. Still not even interested.

Mastermind stacks with: Cryptid Scholar. This one is actually really interesting, as both are decent archetypes that work well for a support investigator.

There is very little stackability amongst the archetypes, as most trade out poison use, with trapsense and trapfinding not far behind. Maybe some of the new ones will stack with each other? I don't have time to look into it fully.

One final note, I was recently made aware of the new prestige class Brewkeeper, which specifically says that it progresses alchemy instead of spellcasting if you have it. It gives a bunch of metamagics and debuffs on touch spells and splash weapons, and you get free infusion on your extracts if they would be eligible for potions. Not as great as actual infusion, because the ones that are too OP for potions are the ones that you most want to be handing out to your party in liquid form, but still nice for all you Caileanites out there.

Probably better for full Alchemists (who have more splash weapon options) or Magii (who make more use of splash weapons), but could still combo nicely for you.

Re: Scavenger, I knew what book it was from, but I've learned to be wary of trusting too blindly in PFSRD (I've seen too many people bringing the trait "second chance" to the table) so the inability to find any mention of the archetype anywhere else on the web had me a bit worried. Good to know the update will be coming soon.

Good catch on the Questioner's ASF, it didn't even occur to me when I was looking through them. I can only assume that it was an oversight, as I feel they would mention such a significant change. Not to mention the archetype is tuned pretty nicely in terms of power, and losing all armour would completely throw that out and turn an interesting archetype into a trap. People will love the idea of a bard/investigator hybrid, and they'll start playing one, and then suddenly they'll need to lose their armour and will be too squishy for words and they'll hate it and wish they'd known about this before they chose the archetype.

There's a BUNCH of new archetypes now, according to PFSRD. Cipher, Conspirator, Criptid Scholar, Cult Hunter, Forensic Physician, Gravedigger, Hallucinist, Majordomo, Profiler, Questioner, Scavenger, Skeptic... I think that's all?

My assessments of them are as follows. Note that the Investigator is quite front-loaded on his Investigator talents, so trading away your early talents hurts more than trading away later ones - especially since you can't take the feat Extra Investigator Talent until you have received your first Talent through your class.

Cipher: the changes to class skills and inspiration are indicative of the direction of the archetype as a whole: if you look at them and go "that's fine, it actually fits my character well", read on. If you looked at that list and went "well it hurts, but I can just buy them back with a Talent", then this archetype is not for you. Inattention Blindness makes people need a perception check (scaling DC) to notice that you are right in front of them. It is cool and flavourful, and has a whole bunch of uses for someone who wants to take advantage of it, and it replaces all the things you don't really care about in your class. That's great! Unfortunately to get the rest of the archetype we now need to trade out things we do want. While we get to keep Alchemy, and we get a bunch of really nifty abilities (Hide in Plain Sight? Yes please!) we trade out *every single one of our first 5 investigator talents*. You get a lot with this archetype, but you also trade out a lot. I think it's really quite good at what it does, and I want to like it, but it will really need the appropriate campaign to shine. If it even gave you a single talent at a reasonable level, I would rate this much higher. Delaying the class feature until level 13 is a very big price to pay.

Conspirator: assuming you will buy back your normal use of Inspiration, this costs you two Talents and your trap stuff, and gives you the equivalent of the Underworld Inspiration Talent, a nice bonus on Bluff, a bonus on perception to act in the surprise round, and a really strong boost to spotting invisible scrying sensors. It starts off a poor trade, makes Talents even more front loaded, and reduces your early game knowledge checks. It evens out after a few levels, and the anti-scrying thing is unique but it depends on how much scrying is likely to come up in your game.

Cryptid Scholar: adds wisdom to Monster ID and lets you take 10 - it's nice, but you're not likely to have more than +1 Wis if you're lucky. Trades your normal studied combat for a party defensive buff to all creatures of the same type or subtype as the studied creature. Trades your normal studied strike for an offensive boost to everyone's next attack against that monster (half what studied strike would give). If you're planning to be a support character in combat, this is actually really nice for you and gives you a lot more party buffing ability, without taking anything much away from you. If you are a combat investigator, avoid.

Cult Hunter: trade out all your poison and trap class abilities for a sense motive boost, better saves against poison and compulsion, a few flavour-related uses of knowledge or spellcraft, and reflex and AC in the surprise round. Lost fast alchemy, study up on a religion to gain a bonus on a bunch of skills against it's followers. Unless you're really into your trap-monkeying, I'd call this a win so far. Increase your studied combat/strike against those you studied up on. Decrease it against everyone else. Unless you're going to be going up against this sort of cultist at least 50% of the time, this will end up working out worse for you. Then you trade out your 7th level talent for improved uncanny dodge... but only against summoned creatures... because specialising needs to hurt or your're not doing it right? It's not terrible, you're not giving up anything you need, but unless fighting cultists is basically your job description you're probably better off going somewhere else.

Forensic Physician: free inspiration to heal instead of linguistics, heal bonus instead of trap finding. Heal doesn't come up much past low levels, but it's not a bad skill to have, and you're not giving up much. Boosting your heal checks and saves against disease is pretty meh though, and definitely not worth your 3rd level Talent. If you want this ability, get Infusion instead and use Remove Disease to do it better. Blood Lore is an interesting ability, but there is a spell Blood Biography that does the same thing (UMD and a few scrolls should cover you for the occasional use). There are so many cool things I want to spend my early talents on, and on the right character Blood Lore might be worth one, but never two. Nice flavour, but mechanically weak.

Gravedigger: this archetype actually changes a lot of things, so I'll just give the highlights. You keep your extracts, but lose all other alchemy stuff. This means no mutagens or infusions, which hurts both combat and support types, but isn't fatal. You lose two levels of Studied Combat and Studied Strike against any non-undead creatures - again, painful but not fatal (note: this *does not* delay when you can take Talents that affect it). Gain object reading, necromancy implement, and at fourth level conjuration implement (all limited, but can take extra focus powers in place of Talents) as an Occultist. This might be worth the hit. Your Talents will be in less demand since you can't take the alchemy ones, and the resonant powers actually look really cool. Object reading is what the Forensic Physician wishes it had. I'm not familiar enough with the Occultist to say whether I'd prefer this to infusions/mutagens and full Studied Combat, but it's definitely worth looking into.

Hallucinist: trade out your first five Talents and then some for a couple of SLAs and a s&@+ty mutagen-wannabe that *penalises* your dex for +2 perception and low light vision. Why. Darkvision and See Invisibility at 7 are nice, but you have other ways of getting them when you need to, and Aura Sight is not actually that great. It does at least scale to +10 with Blindsense at 15th level, which is really freaking nice and very difficult to get any other way, but way too little way too late. Pre-7 this thing is barely worth drinking - let alone losing Investigator Talents for. You do get the nifty ability to spend duration of your mutagen-wannabe to cast SLAs: Minor Image, Oneiric Horror (nice looking single target disable, but ongoing saves), and Synesthesia (single target debuff). These are a nice addition to your extracts, but you are paying way too much for them. If you want repeatable single target debuffing play a witch. Grab yourself a potion of See Invisibility and ignore this trash. Your Talents are worth far more that what this gives you in exchange.

Majordomo: getting teamwork feats is nice, and being able to share them with your allies is really nice, but you know what is nicer? Alchemy. If you want to buff your teammates use infusions. If you want teamwork feats, play an Inquisitor/Hunter and keep your casting. Even the replacements for trapfinding and trapsense, two abilities I do not rate very highly, are basically worthless in 99% of campaigns. Trash archetype is trash.

Profiler: a boost to Sense Motive is nice, also necessary for what comes next. Track someone with sense motive rather than survival. This overrides Pass Without Trace, flying etc. but the minimum DC is 40, and made in secret by the GM. Don't expect to have any confidence in your results any time soon (Level 10: +6 Skill Focus, +5 archetype boost, +10 ranks, +3 class skill, +1 Wis +5 item = 1d20+1d6+29, for 67.5% chance of success). Some minor divination stuff is cool, though two inspiration is a lot to pay for Blood Biography, and the flanking immunity is a bit situational but not a bad return for your level 7 Talent. A nifty little archetype, nothing flashy, but some nice stuff in there.

Questioner: you swap all your alchemy for Bard spellcasting and a scaling boost to knowledge checks, plus a free Talent to let you take 10 on knowledge checks like a Bard. Straightforward. Painful. Not necessarily a write-off. You were already good at knowledge checks, this makes you better. Nice but nothing game breaking. The real thing here is whether you think the bard spell list (and spontaneous casting based of Int) is worth giving up Alchemy. Going Bardic certainly has advantages (AoE buff/debuff effects like Haste, Glitterdust and Silence are all tempting, plus: Detect Magic!) but I'm still weighing alchemy and the ability to have a formula book higher, due to the massive flexibility it gives you from day to day. While spells let you use your actions to buff your allies instead of theirs, extracts let you give them buffs they would otherwise need to cast themselves. I could be convinced though.

Scavenger: use clockwork instead of potions, but achieve essentially the same effect, but swap potion ID for Wondrous Item ID. Lose free inspiration to all knowledges except (Engineering), and swap linguistics and spellcraft for appraise and disable device. Jury-Rig is pretty circumstancial - repairing devices is pretty rare, and sacrificing extracts to do so hurts, but it's still better than poison lore I guess. A bonus to repair or damage constructs is kind of nice, if rare, but getting Craft Construct for free at 11th level is really quite nice. Overall probably a bit weaker early on (though the inspiration is the only thing you're likely to miss), but definitely picks up once you start making constructs. Note, I cannot find any mention of this archetype at all outside of PFSRD, so I have no idea if it is PFS legal.

Skeptic: swap finding traps for finding haunts, saves against poison for saves against haunts, and faster item creation for the ability to smite haunts (which are otherwise rather difficult to harm). Lose nothing you will cry over, gain some flavourful, if rather circumstantial abilities. Then you swap your level 7 Talent for the ability to damage possessing creatures with a touch attack against the creature they have possessed (yelling "The Power of Nethys compels you!" while doing so is completely optional). While possessed creatures may not be that common, without someone to cast Break Enchantment (caster level check means scrolls are of limited use) you can be extremely short on options. This is a unique and flavourful ability and I like it. Totally something I would consider for the level 7 talent it costs, which is exactly where archetypes should sit in terms of power.

I think that's all. Several are utterly terrible and should never be taken. None are so powerful that they will replace Empiricist as the go-to archetype, although Cryptid Scholar is probably superior for a support Investigator. Cipher is cool but hard to recommend, Conspirator is not bad, Cryptid Scholar is great for some builds and terrible for the rest, Gravedigger certainly has promise, and Skeptic is solid and full of flavour. Most of them though are just kind of situational, or give up too much for what they give you.

Feel free to dispute anything I've said here, these are just my first reactions so I'd be interested to hear other people's perspectives, and thanks for reading what turned out to be more of a wall of text than was originally planned.

There's also ru-shi dhampirs from Inner Sea Races.

Ah, so there are. That makes 1.5 Str/Int races, but still no Con/Int that I'm aware of.

I'd like to see a playable race with a bonus to both Intelligence and Strength. Or Intelligence and Constitution. I think every single possible other combination exists, sometimes in great abundance (I count about 8 Dex/Int races, and something like 13 Dex/Cha races) but the only choice for either of these two is the Male Lashunta (Str/Int) - a weird psychic race that many GM's would likely ban, from a weird splat book that most people won't have, and then only the males. Not all Int characters want to be a strength-dumping wizard, and it seems rather disingenuous to have strong characters necessarily be dumb.

If there are 10 races that give a bonus to Int, and 8 of them have their second stat as Dex, then I can't help feeling that someone is pushing us towards a type.

I agree that the specific for the Earth Glide ability would override the general entry for elemental immunities, I'm not sold on it overriding Move Earth, as that also seems to have a very specific line about "earth creatures". Unless Earth Elementals are not included in this, they still appear to be in direct contradiction.

Just throwing this out there in case it means anything. There is a spell called Move Earth, svirfneblin racial spell, came out in ACG (so well after all the others). It uses the same language, but says "casting Move Earth on an area containing the target" flings the yada yada, rather than referring specifically to Earth Elementals.

Move Earth

A good point: if the target is "area", not "creature", then that should be enough to say it can't be cast on an earth elemental. If they felt it were not, then the line at the end should be "cannot be cast on" or "cannot target", rather than "has no effect on", which kind of implies that neither the spell nor the immediate effects of the spell have any direct effect on an earth elemental.

This is an issue from the CRB and B1. Surely I'm not the first one to notice this discrepancy?

not seeing a conflict with the spell as it requires move earth to be cast on the area, not the creature.

Ah, so it's referencing people in combat trying to cast Move Earth on the actual Earth Elementals. That makes more sense. So even though you can't cast it on the elemental itself, if you cast it on the area an elemental is burrowing through then the elemental is affected by the results of the spell, not the spell itself.

OK, then yes the spell would cause the elemental to be stunned.

Thank you Gisher. I should probably learn how to do that myself.

Akkurscid - the *ability* specifically says that elementals using it are stunned by the spell, the *spell* specifically says that it has no effect on earth creatures and does not have any mention of stunning anywhere in the text. Unless Earth Elementals are not "earth creatures", then we have two cases of the specific directly contradicting each other, one of which is supported by the general.

All elementals, as part of their Elemental Traits, are immune to stunning.

Earth elementals get the Earth Glide ability, which specifically calls out that if a Move Earth spell is cast on an area of earth that contains an elemental, said elemental is thrown back 30 feet (it doesn't specify which direction, but the countless problems with the wording of Earth Glide are not the point here) and stunned for 1 round unless they make a fort save.

This was just going to be a case of the specific (Earth Glide specifically calling it out) overriding the general (Elemental Traits giving all elementals a general immunity to stunning) until it was pointed out that the text for Move Earth specifically calls out that it "has no effect on earth creatures".

So, can Earth Elementals be stunned by casting Move Earth on a patch of dirt they are earth gliding through?

linkies:
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/coreRulebook/spells/moveEarth.html
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/elemental/eleme ntal-earth/small-earth-elemental
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/creature-types#subtype- elemental

Slight necro here, but I wanted to ask a question. The Defensive Stance ability states that "If the stalward defender moves under his own power as a result of an enemy's successful use of the Bluff skill...his stance ends." I'm not familar with this use of Bluff. I know it can be used with Feint, but that doesn't cause movement. What is this referring to?

So, to answer your question within the 5 year timespan allowed for such things (what's that? five *second* rule? hey look a distraction!) there is no part of the bluff skill that allows you to force another character to move. What it can do, however, is tell a lie convincingly. One that might encourage the defender to break stance of their own accord. I can only assume this is what they were talking about, since the only other option is using "suggest a course of action" to encourage the stalwart defender move, believing it to be their own decision rather than one you spent a minute talking them around to. However, not that last part again about this taking a minute, possibly more. That's a minimum of 10 rounds of combat.

Librain wrote:

I challenge people to find 3 armour enchantments that are superior to the equivalent +x in over 10% of cases

Spell Storing finds its way onto many of my characters, especially casters with Haramaki's. Typically with a Force Punch or a Frigid Touch on it.

Wizards with Haramaki's can do it, Magi, Hunters, Bloodragers, Warpriests, Bards... that's probably not even half of the list of people who can use it. And at only a +1 equivalent for up to third level, I'll totally pay that as being worth a +1 in more than just corner cases. Certainly not all, even for casters, as it's a single use per fight and then requires a new spell put in there, but it certainly fits my criteria as presented.

So we're at 1/3 :P

Librain wrote:

(I challenge people to find 3 armour enchantments that are superior to the equivalent +x in over 10% of cases)

Folding, balanced, and Withstanding though the Withstanding is something that I would use primarily with an Occultist.

EDIT:
Folding would get rid of the penalties for constantly walking around with a tower shield. Balanced exchanges Enhancement Bonus for a bonus to a particular save.

Do you have links to any of these? Because I cannot find Withstanding anywhere (and, by "I would use primarily with an Occultist", are you suggesting that Occultists make up 10% of cases?)

I wonder - did the responsible team believe it reasonable to cripple items that were too popular, rather than simply balancing them? Did they not realise that these items were being crippled when they made the changes, thinking the end results to be reasonable value? Or did they let items that were in need of crippling exist for four years before doing anything about them?

None of the options speak well about their understanding of game balance.

People have created entire builds around these items (we've had several examples just from this thread, which represents what proportion of the community?), and unless you're going to claim that this is actually a bad thing that shouldn't happen (wrongbadfun?) then I ask you what items have been brought up that people will design characters around?

The Jaunt boots maybe? I don't see how, but someone else might. The weapon enchantment that was buffed (can't remember the name) looks cool and some people (the magus... investigators... inquisitors maybe) might create a build around it even if it's not quite as strong as a +1. But that's about it.

There's a few strong items, and a bunch of them got burnt to the ground, and then some of them had the ashes pissed on for good measure (would you get a small boost on saves vs. fear instead of a +1 enhance?). There's so, so many weak ones that are just wasting away never even being looked at. The Jaunt boots weren't even buffed because they were weak, so much as because they were unusable. Why so little love for the weak items that populate the books (I challenge people to find 3 armour enchantments that are superior to the equivalent +x in over 10% of cases)? Do we need to wait for a new book to come out and then sift through all the stale bloat to find the odd gem? Is that really the direction Paizo wants to head?

Lirain, the issues here are far more complicated than that. We have 9 pages of post so I will not reiterate all the details.

I am well aware of the details of the last 9 pages. I have read them. Have you?

If you had you might have realised that I am not in fact jumping in on the tail of this discussion - I think my first post here was on about page 3 or 4?

The short answer is simply this. There are several possible benefits to this change. There are several possible detriments to this change. The possible benefits probably outweigh the possible deficits. But by how much? The kicker here is that the current system of generosity has been working for PFS FOR THE LAST 8 YEARS! So something needs to be more than a probable hard to quantify benefit to change it. As the old adage goes, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Now I know some of you think the current system is broke, but what is broke about it now that wasn't broke 8 years ago?

"If it ain't broke don't fix it" is a terrible philosophy to live by. Sure it has uses, but it denies the opportunity for improvement out of fear of consequences, resulting in stagnation. If humanity as a whole lived by that rule we'd still be living in caves. Regardless, I do not consider it a valid counterargument to the proposed rule (or any other proposal, for that matter).

Furthermore, I was not even asking for a summary of the thread so far, I was actually asking a rather specific question. You have not only failed to address this anywhere in your reply, but seem to have completely missed the fact that I was asking a question at all. I was addressing one specific aspect of the possible deficits - that of personal preference of playstyle. Do you actually have anything to say on this topic?

As interesting as this diversion is, could we get back to the topic of the thread? More specifically, there's a number of people who prefer to be generous with their consumables, without having any assumption of other players paying them back. Are these people opposed to the proposed rule on any grounds other than their personal preference for play style?

Feel free to disagree with me, but saying "I prefer to be generous and not have the expectation of players to pay me back, therefore this rule shouldn't be introduced" is basically the same as saying "I prefer to play in purely martial parties, therefore all casters should be banned".

I have no problem if you prefer to be generous, but if people are allowed to pay you back you are still capable of declining their generous offer with a friendly "The offer is appreciated, but there is no need to repay me, your thanks and your continued survival is all the payment I need". As it currently stands there is no option for those who prefer a different play style.

Take for example, the loner Half-Elf Ertha. As a young proto-adventurer she was tricked into indentured servitude by accepting the generosity of one who would take advantage of her, and since then is resolved to never be in anyone's debt. As part of an adventure that didn't go as planned, Ertha intercepted a wizard's fireball that would have wiped out half the party, causing it to explode prematurely (no jokes please). This turned the tide of the fight but unfortunately left the poor half-elf little more than a charred husk. Ertha does not have enough money to fund her own Raising, even if she sold all of her equipment. The Bard, whom Ertha adventures with frequently, would be happy to help out with the costs, with Ertha able to pay him back when she had the funds, no strings attached. Ertha trusts the Bard enough that she reluctantly agrees, but is informed that this is not allowed - any donation made towards the cost of returning her to life must be one way, and may not be repaid. The party Cleric then pulls out a scroll of Breath of Life, and points out that Ertha has been dead for less than a turn. The cost of the scroll is well within what Ertha could afford, but is once again informed by the GM that she may not pay the Cleric back for the scroll - the only time players can give money to another player is when they are covering the costs of a Raise Dead. Without any way of not incurring a debt that she cannot pay back, Ertha is left with no acceptable options for returning to life, and so feels herself forced to remain dead. The player goes home and vows never to create a character with interesting backstory again, lest that too force the character to accept a death that, but for arbitrary society restrictions, could have been easily avoided.

Generosity is all well and good, but do we want to enforce/require generosity as the only option, because we banned co-operation and teamwork?