Matt Seay's page

I don't know how long your sessions are, but it also sounds like you are just blitzing through the content. Gargoyle is in book one, then the next session you died to an enemy at the end of book two. But that session wasn't over! You finished book two, went through what should have been a moderately lengthy roleplay at the start of book three, and got to the swarm in that same session. You all have to be leveling up multiple times during a session. Simply slowing down, relaxing a bit, and having time to consider your characters between sessions can greatly reduce PC deaths.

Apologies for confusing the timeline.

I can't even remember if the gargoyle fight was this year or not.

The basilisk was a random encounter after finishing book 2 with a little extra time in the session. That was ~3 months ago. And then we the 3 deaths in the following session.

We get through 2-4 combats per session and play for ~5 hours every other Sunday. The other Sundays the dropped out player runs Ruins of Azlant.

Your description just doesn't match up with expectations.

If your GM is using pre-written adventures and not doing much adjustment I had a hard time understanding how you seem to be losing characters left and right and being completely overwhelmed by the enemy.

I mean maybe at low levels, but you're asking for a level 8 character. With what sounds like 4 characters with 25 point buy. I just can't understand what's happening at your table to give you so many problems.

First PC death was to this gargoyle thing and I think it hit sort of hard but we struggled from not having anything to bypass its dr/magic.

Then 4 characters were petrified by a basilisk's gaze in 1 turn but we used the blood to save 2 of them, the other 2 died on the fort save from stone to flesh, 1 of those players quit the campaign at that point bringing us down from 6 to 5 players which was helpful because we were all starved for loot and xp (I wish were doing milestone levels and had places to sell our loot).

The following session my pc got constricted to death in 2 turns and the breath of life scroll would only harm me further as a dhampir.

Later that session I wasn't paying attention bc I was building a new PC but the other 4 were getting wrecked by a nanite swarm and ran out the other side of the room to get away because I think it was large sized in a 10'x15' room, in doing so they ran through an electricity trap into a fight with some insane androids. The androids used grenades on them and to avoid a tpk the bloodrager stood in the electricity trap to close the door, died doing so. The gunslinger was trapped in the room with them and threw all of his grenades too so at least everyone in there would die. The arcanist and rogue/ninja survived.

And then yesterday 2 PCs died to a CR12 ghost with 10 wizard levels and a miasma that'd do like 2d6 negative energy damage per round no save to everyone and heal him an equal amount. The miasma obscured like obscuring mist so the archer warpriest and my psychic struggled to do much. The aeromancer was casting gust of wind but was killed after being irradiated and corrupting touched for 12d6, the war mind oracle died in the miasma after being knocked unconscious. The ghost casted almost no high level spells, just got a lot of mileage out of mage armor and shield and cover giving him an AC of 32. The 2 front liners were rolling terribly and couldn't bring him down even 30hp from full to trigger his retreat condition. My initiative sucked so the miasma was up before I got to haste or contagious zeal the party.

I was wrong about the 2 gunslingers, looking back there was only 1.

For clarity, you are pretty set on your current options then? Is there anything you are unsure of in general?

We could come up with other builds that are tanky while dealing ok damage, but that's just wasting everyone's time if you mostly just want to go with your build

I'm cool with other builds, currently toying with a guarded life barbarian build maybe with invulnerable rager and stalwart/improved stalwart.

Normally I prefer just winning the game of rocket tag (my -1 character in PFS1e was a beast totem CAGM barbarian bringing like 600dpr to the table) but in this campaign, we're getting critted and whatnot from every angle and fast healing won't help with that, I don't even care about how much regeneration it is, just the part about not dying when I'm negative. My first character in this campaign was a fighter with a mattock and a high AC, in the encounter she died the enemy's bonus to hit was more than 20 below her AC but the GM rolled a 20 on his first hit which had grab, made the grapple check and I died to constrict on round 2 after failing to break out of the grapple. This guy rolls out in the open sometimes even with our dice so I know he's not cheating but he still seems to average like 14 or 15 on a d20. Simply doing more damage hasn't cut it up to this point because we don't survive long enough to dish it out. We've had high damage builds in the party up to this point a primalist bloodrager, 2 gunslingers, an archer warpriest (sadly not MAC but still well built), I'm just trying to make a character that can still dish out good damage but also survive any die rolling on the GM's part. He doesn't rebuild the fights much if at all, just has insane rolling and sometimes uses his own tactics. I'm not planning on picking up the mask of giants until 13+ and I'd have wait until 14 to get giant form 2 as a goliath druid anyways.

I've already played a Molthuni Arsenal Chaplain before in PFS and nothing about that archetype really improves a Warpriest's defenses. I wanted Feral Champion just to unlock Wild Shape so that a Greater Mask of Giants could get me regeneration so that I won't die while using Diehard/Deathless Initiate/Deathless Master. If I dipped into Druid or Shifter or something for that then I totally would go MAC but I feel like I'd lose more than I'd gain by multiclassing.

I'm playing Iron Gods with a Psychic and that has gone about as well as you'd expect with all of the constructs and undead, I wanted to get into high-level construct possession spells but I guess it wasn't meant to be. After running away from a fight with 2 party members dead another 2 of us are also looking at rolling new characters. Our GM for this game tends to roll very high and that includes lots crits so I don't mind abusing the rules a little to survive so long as it's sound. We've got 25 point buys and have been asked to have no starting stats above an 18 after racial bonuses.

I'm looking at playing a half-orc warpriest wielding a chainsaw for high damage and relying on the Deathless Zealot chain, Feral Champion's wild shape, and eventually a greater Mask of Giants to cheese defense. We're near the end of book 3 so we're 8th level and have already had 8 character deaths since the start.

Other party members: Scout Rogue 3/Ninja 5 is now the only remaining original PC, possible Grippli Cleric of Pharasma with Healing Hands and Signature Skill Heal (and maybe use the tongue to deliver the heals with reach), possible Construct Caller Unchained Summoner with an eidolon built for reach as a second line melee combatant, and then finally some flavor of caster likely arcane.

starting stats would be:
STR 16+2
DEX 12
CON 16
INT 12
WIS 14
CHA 7
with more +1s to strength every 4 levels

feat progression is looking like this:
1: Endurance (Shaman's Apprentice), Weapon Focus Chainsaw (Warpriest), Ironhide
3: Combat Reflexes (Warpriest), Power Attack
5: Diehard
6: Deathless Initiate (Warpriest), Martial Focus Axes (Warpriest FCB)
7: Cut from the Air
<--PC joining campaign at level 8
9: Smash from the Air (Warpriest), Resilient Brute
11: Improved Critical Chainsaw
12: Deathless Master (Warpriest), Deathless Zealot (Warpriest FCB)
13: Critical Focus
15: Cleave (Warpriest), Cleaving Finish
17: Heroic Defiance

I'd also take all the usual stuff like Sacred Tattoo, Fate's Favored, and Divine Favor. I have the option of being evil and going with the damnation feats if I really wanted to and get Fiendskin maxed out for immunity to fire and acid to make myself near unkillable while Wild Shaped into a troll. I'm only looking at picking up Cleave to get Cleaving Finish for when there are multiple enemies, I probably wouldn't use Cleave unless I had to move. With a large-sized chainsaw, the Impact weapon enchantment and the Vital Strike chain could be an interesting alternative but I don't know how much so given the static damage I'd be losing. Finally, I could go Shield Focus into Unhindering Shield to further boost my AC by as much as 7. I also know pinning a lot of my defense on a 90k gp item is questionable and otherwise ignoring everything my archetype brings me is too but the 2 combined would allow me to shrug off having taken near-infinite damage.

I'm also totally welcome to other damage sponge builds, I've heard Green Knight Cavalier and many Samurai builds can soak lots of damage. I'm interested in using Flagellant in a build at some point but I figure that might require going Barbarian to convert lethal to nonlethal.

Although Cheliax does look down upon all non humans including half-elves and tieflings.

Ok, I'd tell my GM about it anyways because bringing out a 7th level character out of nowhere at a game store I visit every other week would catch attention.

I play a decent amount of pfs and have been forced to replay scenarios. I was wondering if I could replay scenarios with society legal rules and wealth per level rules (poor compared to society characters), but without having any boon sheets. My goal for this would be to test out builds, roleplay more, and enjoy my Friday nights more.

I'm playing an aasimar oracle of life in the Reign of Winter AP and I had a question about my favored class bonus. I've been using it on the channel positive energy revelation and I've been channeling as a clic of an effective level 1.5x that of my oracle level. My question was though, what happens when I reach 14th level and my effective level for that revelation is 21st level? Do I get to channel 11d6 as the pattern would suggest or would I cap out at 10d6 making my favored class bonus useless at higher levels? I know I can choose different revelations to be putting my bonus into but my goal is to heal my allies faster than the enemy can harm them and focusing on a single revelation would be the best route to go for that.

Captain Grashardon, Dragon Totem Barbarian of the Andoran Faction has just reached 12th level.

I just got back from playing this, it was tough, I have trouble seeing how a party of appropriate level standard pathfinder characters can survive this.

Low magic: no one to buy magic items from and no wizards to copy spells from. We still get to keep the items we loot, but they're aren't always what we want. For spells, we get whatever we normally would have gotten for our level plus a couple of captured scrolls. Our GM did give us 30 points, core races, some uncommon races, 2 traits, 1 extra upbringing feat, and any secondary casting class (Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Alchemist, etc.). As for non-magical creatures, we fought some at low levels but we're in a haunted castle so kinda hard to avoid magical monsters. So basically "Low Magic" only applies to us.

Thanks, I think I'll go with the flour as this is a very low magic (for us at least) campaign so no wands or scribes for hundreds of miles, other than what we loot. As for why we didn't get glitterdust, I have no idea how we all forgot about it. Our Rogue being an Investigator is going for diplomacy not perception, in fact the Barbarian has the highest perception of +12. Thanks everybody, I'll see if the GM is okay with this.

See Invisibility has a range of personal so it cannot be made into a potion. Flour works but Invisible Stalkers are composed of gases so the flour would quickly settle to the floor.

I've noticed that as I gain levels there's more and more invisible creatures and less and less wizards to see them. My GM especially likes throwing them at us because we've got no one in our party that can cast see invisibility. I was wondering if there is a good strategy or item that would help us fight them. For example, our group of Paladin (Holy Tactician) 8, Barbarian (Armored Hulk) 9, Rogue (Investigator) 9, & Magus (Black Blade) 8 has no spells that can reveal an Invisible Stalker or even a Will-o'-Wisp. What should we do? What we've been doing so far is buying lots of splash weapons and Potions of Resist Energy, but that won't last for much longer. No one wants to change characters as we all put a lot of work and thought/flavor into these characters and the GM can't really do much as we're going through a haunted castle full of ghosts and whatnot.

The heritages listed on the SRD are same as the ones in Bastards of Erebus, so if they're also the ones in Blood of Fiends then by extension the alternate heritages in Blood of Fiends and Bastards of Erebus are the same.

I played at the deadly 1-2!

Instead of scimitar, you could go with a falcata (exotic one handed 1d8 19-20/x3) by taking ancestral arms. But to get +2d6 sneak attack don't you need 3 levels in rogue?

I'm glad that Paizo did this, congratulations to the winners and I hope that everyone can start playing goblins in a couple years because we just got aasimars, tengus, and tieflings, if not I can try to see if my home game GM will allow them in his current or future campaigns.

Long live Mogmurch!

Good points!

Thank you, and those reasons are why I tried and failed miserably as playing a paladin. Then again though, it might have something to do with the fact that the other characters were going insane and I was playing a super lawful xenophobic dwarven stonelord paladin of the Shadow Lodge.

And as for the name of the thread; Why does everyone pick on paladins?
1. Paladins are cool and everyone wants to play one so we sometimes belittle them to make them seem like our equals.
2. Paladins are a pain in the butt because of being a protector of the innocent and the law.
3. Most paladins I've seen move at 20 or less and can't stay on top of a horse so they're kinda funny watch.
4. People have an instinct to not like the person who tells them what to do, aka the party leader, a niche the paladin fits so perfectly.
5. Some players simply can't role play lawful good well enough to be a paladin for very long.

I'm a 14 year old boy myself and I play pathfinder with my father's friends and their kids. My little brother plays a paladin of Iomedae and is the party leader. I like to pick on his paladin but that usually means my characters get executed by the aristocratic oracle of Sarenrae. If I were the father I would ask the GM what his intentions were and to give the paladin back her powers as soon as possible. But leave walking away from the table as a last resort (mostly because gaming is a lot of fun and can be done with a parent for large amounts of time and still be fun). As for the graveknight, it was probably evil but it's sword might have had the effect of making you one step more chaotic. If you do have to leave the game, pathfinder society can be a lot of fun if you can find any locations near you. As for tunnel vision I know it can be hard, I ran a season 0 pathfinder society scenario (dnd 3.5 rules) and had to convert it to pathfinder on the go for 7 teenagers in 3 and a half hours and I didn't realize that one of the players was getting bored/frustrated until he killed a npc that was trying to save the party. So what the GM did was human and congratulations on playing a paladin as a first timer.

Bard and rogue are the first that come to mind but a fighter-magic user like the magus is also classic (at least before arcane spell failure). A magus with a rapier would be pretty cool and with a crit range of 18-20 it's pretty good for crits with your spells. Although if your wife is going to be a monk then playing either a bard or an oracle would make sense for both diplomacy/bluffing and also healing.

Personalities #1 because of #2 would be fun but chaotic, a rhoka or a falcata, and play a tengu starting august 16 for intelligence bonus and proficiency with all sword-like bladed weapons. That's what I would recommend, I've already written up a tengu like that for a home game with personality #2 but I liked #1 also. I've seen 2 magi in society play, a half-orc whip magus that repositions everyone and a elf/half-elf (can't remember) that uses a spell-storing scimitar and can get 8d6 per round sometimes at 7th or 8th level. You could also have the soul of a trapped demon or devil that was an enemy of the family or world and was defeated but trapped in a sword for you to keep an eye on, but as the more energy you take or use from the trapped soul the more it's influence over you and the world grows. The problem with this last idea is that unfortunately there are paladins in most campaign worlds, so one of them might not approve of you walking around with an evil outsider trapped in your sword.

Glad to see the new races, and stat changes for now-forbidden archetypes, the synthesist looks cheesy but I've never played or played with one, yet gunpowder just doesn't belong in most campaigns settings like Golarion. I've got to write up that aasimar oracle that I've been waiting for, although tiefling sorcerer is tempting. Still though, ultimate melee cheese: barbarian 1, alchemist 1, druid 4 or higher.