I like buying books. The physical copies are great for flipping back and forth in, bookmarking, etc.
I do not like buying my books twice. I buy some serieses of book on my Kindle and some in physical form for that reason. I have almost no overlap for a reason, and the overlap that is there is accidental.
Thus, I do not buy PDF copies of my gaming books. I've spent well over $300 on Paizo hardcover books, and it is money well spent. I'd rather not re-buy the books I already own, though.
I'm also a very small person. Short, thin, not very strong. I simply cannot easily bring 50+ lbs. of books to a con with me and carry them around, especially a giant convention like GenCon. And since we've already established I don't buy things twice (see above), what options do I have?
1) Build characters from all the resources I already own and hope the GM won't ask to see sources. They usually don't.
2) Build much constrained characters only from the CRB, which is much less fun. I'd probably stop playing PFS altogether if I had to do that.
3) Find a friend who owns the PDFs and print out from that. Or torrent them. Both illegal and, clearly, stealing.
4) Only play home games.
Adding another option "5) Use the PRD resources" is a perfectly reasonable option. Many people using the PRD do buy books; that's why it's out there on the Internet. Furthermore, one of the purposes of cons is to bring in new people. If someone new wants to play an oracle and I don't have the APG on me, I'm not going to tell them nay. That's the opposite of being welcoming and encouraging to new players.
Also, leave off the insults, please. *Looks at Jiggy*. There are plenty of reasons to not allow the PRD. While I think the ones for allowing use of the PRD are stronger, and thus conclude the PRD should be allowed, I acknowledge the valid arguments on all sides. Adults use those arguments, not random insults about maturity that only derail threads and say nothing of any value. Haven't you ever heard the saying "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"?
I think the OP has a very valid point. Stolen Lands is very rape-y. You can be an evil person without have fuxxored sexuality or masochistic proclivities. It's not that sexual assault exists in Golarion that's the problem, because I agree a world without it would be unrealistic (sadly). It's the fact that every female NPC, major or minor, has a sexual abuse component to her story as either victim or perpetrator or both, which is not something done for the males. While that's actually mildly realistic too (1 in 4 is an awful lot of women), we do play RPGs to get away from reality, not have it smack us in the face. Rape is the ultimate expression of contempt for women, so in a gender-neutral universe there should actually be a lot less of it than there is in real life.
As for the artwork and allies- you do realize that men will still buy and play the games if the women wear real clothes in the artwork, right? Some of the most beautiful and sensual artwork I've ever seen in a gaming book comes from L5R, where the women wear full kimonos, real armor, and generally realistic clothing. Having a male ally along the lines of Shalelu might not play into a romance quite as well, depending on the gender and sexuality makeup of the group, but a 'band of brothers' vibe would play nicely with a lot of hetero men.
He's a high-level cleric in a prepared room, correct? Put him in an unhallow that has a silence tied into it. That way he can cast all the spells he wants, but non-worshippers of Tiamat are in a silence.
It won't cut down on pre-buffing, but it can definitely cut down on in-combat spellcasting
Eh, it's ok. If you can fit it in, it's worth picking up whenever, probably in the level 7 to 9 area. But I wouldn't pick it over other, more useful combat feats like Weapon Spec, Greater Weapon Focus, Clustered Shots, Improved Precise Shot, Improved Critical, or a good number of other archery feats.
@StreamOfTheSky: Weapon Focus is good because it's part of a cumulative addition of +5% chances to hit. The first plus is never that good, but the last one is superb! So you get all the +5% chances you can, and soon you're talking +35% chance to hit or more, and then that's really significant! Also remember that it's +5% chance to hit on each attack, so it's actually worth much more than just +5%. This doesn't invalidate PBM as a decent feat choice. It does say that Weapon Focus is a much more essential feat choice than PBM and given the choice, go with Weapon Focus every time.
I sympathize, but I think your GM is doing it right for the most part. Custom items all need a GM stamp of approval because it is so easy to accidentally create a totally broken item, not to mention doing so on purpose.
I do think GMs should let players mix and match magic items that already exist, using the existing crafting rules (1.5x the cheaper item). So if a player wants an amulet of mighty fists and natural armor, I see no problems with allowing that. But it sounds like that's not what you want to do.
The encounter was set up such that the PCs were flying on griffons a few thousand feet above the ground. They had griffon-riders (1st level experts) so that no one had to Handle Animal or Ride.
A white dragon swoops down out of the clouds and attacks! The druid attempts to cast call lightning, which does additional damage on cloudy days. The DM said no, it's not cloudy. Well then, said the druid and ranger, we have Perception scores of 20+, we saw it coming. Nope, said the DM, it's cloudy and the dragon had total concealment. It went around in circles for a bit before the GM basically said "DM fiat" and cut off discussion/argumentation.
We never sat down with that GM again. This wasn't the only ruling of that sort he had made, just the final straw.
Also noting, Imp. Crit is usually way down the list of necessary feats most archers take, since there are so many abilities that provide more consistent and steadier boosts to their damage potential. While the maximum damage potential in a round is correct, the odds are stacked pretty heavily in the melee characters favor for consistency of critical hits, since over the course of 5 rounds in a fight where both characters are making full attacks(we'll leave the likelihood of that happening aside for now) your archer will make 15 attacks, of which .75-1.5 will crit, as opposed to the 10 melee attacks which will statistically see 3 crits. So, your total average damage comes out to 323 for the archer, and a total average damage of 403 for the melee character.
Point is, I think Clustered Shot is fine since DR is a non-issue for most melee characters anyways, but archers are super good.
Every archer I've ever seen or played took Improved Crit at level 8 or 9, which is as early as you can get it since it requires BAB 8. There just weren't any better feats left by that point; they had every other one. Crits from archers are so devastating that the 5% increased chance is hugely beneficial.
Archers are not too powerful as they are, but they are very powerful. They do not need this help to overcome DR. DR is a huge issue for any character who is not a two-hand fighter. Two-weapon fighters are totally hosed by DR. Every rogue, every dual-wielder, every sword-and-board, the unarmed-strike monk: each of these characters is hurt very badly by DR and they are all melee.
You cannot take chance of a full round attack out of the equation for damage potential. In your 5-round combat, the first round was the barbarian moving up and swinging once. In round three, s/he had to move and swing once again when target #1 died. Take two hits out (not even crits, just hits), and the two do nearly identical damage. The barbarian took more risks and is less defensible for this occurrence.
Additionally, level 10 is a weak point to compare archers and non-full BAB classes for the archer. Level 11 or 12 makes the archer that much stronger in comparison (level 11 is three base attacks and Improved Precise Shot for fighter-archers which negates cover, level 12 is Improved Weapon Specialization for +2 damage per shot).
Clustered Shots allows archers to effectively ignore all forms of DR too early in the game. If it had BAB 11 or BAB 15 requirement, I'd be fine with it, as by that point most people have a +4 or +5 weapon and can overcome most types of DR anyways. Archers are unique in that they are (in the CRB) limited to piercing weapons only so this is the only way they could overcome DR/bludgeoning or slashing. However, overcoming all types of DR starting at level 6 or 7 is just too early for such a powerful ability.
I don't know of any spells that completely negate melee combat or spells and only those forms of combat. Could you please list a few spells that shut down any number of attackers using melee or spell combat? Bonus points if they're 3rd level or lower.
Combinations are trivial for a ranger. You're really only looking at epic and untyped. The versatile weapon spell and a +5 bow get you past everything except those two. Versatile weapon and a holy weapon get you past most combination DR until you get a +5 weapon.
An archer fighter on the other hand, can only do piercing damage with his arrows. He doesn't have abundant ammunition for unlimited arrows of any type. Now, he has three feats that can bypass damage reduction at range. He'll ignore almost all damage reduction with those 3 feats.
Also, everyone is forgetting the real disadvantage to ranged combat. You use Dex to hit, and Strength for damage at a much lower rate. Composite bows with deadly aim give you Strength to damage and a +2/-1 damage/hit ratio. A two handed fighter on the other hand, gets Strength to hit, 1.5xStrength to damage, and +3/-1 with power attack. That's huge.
Melee combat? Fly. Archer in a tree. Archer up a cliff. Archer/caster across a chasm. Grease. While these don't shut down melee quite as hard as wind wall or fickle winds shut down archers, they can render melee pretty useless.
Casters? SR. High saves all around. Evasion. Immunity to mind-affecting or elements or death effects or ... the list goes on. Again, while these don't shut down casters as hard as wind wall or fickle winds shut down archers, they can render casters much less helpful.
You assume only high level play. That's fine as far as it goes, but Clustered Shots is a 6th or 7th level feat. At the level at which most PCs take this feat, no one has a +5 weapon. Spells of 2nd or 3rd level are high-value resources, instead of random throw-away utility slots, and relying on a party member to fix your DR problem has its own issues. Heck, no one has a holy weapon yet! The problem of Clustered Shots isn't how it plays at 15th level, it's how it plays at 8th level.
It's interesting and simple, which are good. Mathematically, it messes with odds too much and makes the game very difficult to balance.
Gaining advantage means you probably will hit, save, or succeed at the skill check. Having disadvantage means you probably will not hit, save, or succeed at the skill check. I don't like things to be that swingy. I must regretfully say I think the mechanic is a bad one.
Pit trap that is 15 ft. by 15 ft., but doesn't break until someone steps in the middle (this negates your chance to Reflex save catch the side, which will be important later). At the bottom of the 100 ft. pit there is a pressure plate that triggers a reverse gravity. So the person lands, takes their 10d6 damage, and then falls up to the ceiling. They then take 12d6 (assume 10 foot ceiling) falling damage and hit another pressure plate, which turns off the reverse gravity. It doesn't take long before the unlucky person who is bouncing between the floor and ceiling is battered into a pulp.
I do quite a bit of theorycrafting in the games I play/watch. WoW, Diablo III beta, Starcraft 2, and League of Legends especially. I say this to try to establish a modicum of expertise even though I'm not a video game designer.
It is impossible to have a consequential ability that isn't required. You're trying to find a thin area between "you suck without it" and "it's purely cosmetic" but there isn't one. Not with 11 classes to start, plus prestige archetypes in the future. WoW's tried to do that with their talent system for seven years and failed miserably because that middle ground simply doesn't exist. An ability will either be good enough to need it, even situationally, or it'll never have any use which means why bother going for it?
3.5 melee/physical damage were always so underrated. People kept thinking you had to have all these spells-in-a-can to stay alive, but that actually made you weaker. What you had to do instead was figure out what your weaknesses were, how to avoid situations that screwed you, and how to make the most out of caster support (because you had a party, after all).
The strongest party I ever played with was rogue, ranger, bear druid, and wizard in 3.5. We played in the Bandit Kingdoms of Living Greyhawk, so I know there was no coddling of any sort but rather brutally unfair encounters where terrain and associated levels were abused. We lacked heroes feast and heal, two major staples of high-level 3.5 play. Oh, did I mention that the druid and I were both 50,000-100,000gp under WBL guidelines? The ranger was about right, and the wizard was high because he could craft.
As a halfling, I did run around with a ring of freedom of movement, a minor cloak of displacement, and +1 moderate fortification armor. My standing AC was 28, which went up to 35 when I had my tricks going. I couldn't do much about getting a high enough AC to be missed a lot, but grapples and crits kill, so I mitigated those as much as I could. Then I threw all my feats and all the rest of my money into becoming the blenderiest blender rogue possible, and you know what? If it was sneak-attackable, it died.
All that said- a 10,000 person army would have owned us. All of us. Together and at once. We could have killed a huge number of them, but in the end sheer numbers win. A 50% chance to hit the person I'm standing under (Underfoot Combat feat chain, if anyone cares), a 20% miss chance from cloak, a planned 50% miss chance from a ring of blinking if I ever got one, and only 5% chance to be hit at all because it takes a 20 ... 0.50*0.50*0.20*0.05=0.0025, or a 0.25% chance to be hit. That means I'll be hit 25 times every round on average, not counting the inevitable 1 in 400 chance of a crit that I don't want to figure for. At 3.5 damage per shot from a shortbow, that's 87-88 damage a round. I had 110 hp. And I was by far the hardest person to hit after figuring in miss chances.
I see it used to great effect a lot. Blasting, like any other thing wizards do, works best if that's what you focus on. Select metamagic feats do wonders for fireball (Intensify, Empower, even Maximize for damage, Dazing for ridiculous crowd-control), Spell Focus and Elemental Focus feats are useful, and rods are a must.
Fireball is good because it is only 3rd level. Lesser rods work on it. If you get up to 15th level, it's a good candidate for Spell Perfection. Using a lesser rod of Quicken on an Empowered (for free) Fireball, then backing it up with an Empowered Intensified Fireball as a 4th level spell, is a really nasty way of telling the bad guys you've arrived.
Control spell or save-or-suck spells are useful. They aren't the end-all be-all of wizards. The exact mix of blasting and control and utility each wizards preps will be different based on playstyle, but they're all important aspects of being a wizard. I know that having fought swarms with well over 200 HP at level 10, if I didn't have two fireballs and a lightning bolt prepped (and a handy lesser Empower rod) my party would've had to run. I was the only person with sufficient AoE to get the job done and the only person who could have the AoE to get the job done. A haste or dispel magic or stinking cloud or black tentacles or anything that doesn't do AoE damage would have been useless.
Any time an optimized, experienced level 16 party looks at at CR 14 and is pretty sure it could win, maybe, if it got lucky, that CR 14 is definitely under-CRed.
Clustered Shots would be nice for the archer, but my DM (rightly) thinks it's broken and OP and doesn't allow it. There are a very small number of level 14 or 15 parties I'd expect to be able to handle this thing at all. At level 12, it's only a +2 encounter. I don't see any way out of a TPK for that poor level 12 party unless someone teleports them all out before the demilich gets to go. Knowing when to run is a plus, of course, but it's not necessarily fun when it's win init to run or die when you didn't see anything like it coming.
I think it's an awesome monster. But: it's not a CR 14 when a monster has
1) a 9th level aoe kill spell at will
2) a supernatural save-or-die that is still damned painful if you save at will
3) magic immunity, and
4) DR 20/- (because really, who has a vorpal sword before level 19? It's so much more important to get +5 to overcome DR first)
It will get missed in the treasure pile because it hides, and it will get to go, and it will TPK just about any party it sees of "appropriate" level.
Rogue: Guys, I got this! I saw the treasure way up high!
Ranger: I saw it first.
Fighter: I climb better than you.
Wizard: I can fly up there.
Rogue: Oh, ok. Well, what if it's trapped?
Ranger: I'm better at finding and disabling traps than you.
Bard: I'm better at finding and disabling traps than you.
Rogue: Hmm. Well, I could sneak up there and kill whatever is guarding it.
Ranger: Me too. And after the first round, I'm just as effective as ever. If it doesn't die in the surprise/first round, what are you going to do?
Fighter: Who needs to sneak? Just walk up and punch it in the face.
Rogue: What if it's friendly? I could talk to it, charm it.
Bard: Me too. And I'm better at it. I still have to get up there, but I bet the fighter could carry me. Or I could fly.
This is by no means maximized, but off the top of my head:
Paladin. With a 34 point buy (holy crap!), you could get a super ridiculous charisma, strength, dex, and con. You're probably better off having a 13 Dex and buying +1 full plate though. Charisma to all saves makes you hard to kill that way, plus high AC and lots of healing on yourself.
Str 20+1=21
Dex 13
Con 14
Int 7
Wis 10
Cha 18+2=20
Feats: Power Attack, Toughness, Dodge, Greater Mercy
Saves: Fort +13, Ref +9, Will +11
Stuff
+1 Full Plate 2650
+1 Heavy Steel Shield 1170
+1 Longsword 1315
Cloak of Resistance +1 (free)
Amulet of natural armor +1 2000
Headband of Charisma +2 4000
Ring of Protection from Evil 2000 (custom, +2 deflection against evil and immunity to Enchantment (charm) and (compulsion) effects)
Total: 13,135g
You don't have a zillion hp, but you're very hard to hit. You can heal yourself for quite a lot as a swift action or, with a spell (which might be UM, in which case never mind) as an immediate action. Your saves are through the roof. You do decent damage, but your smites are ridiculous, and remember that you get to add your Cha bonus to your AC against your smite target. Your next purchase would be a Strength belt +2.
The argument for combat viability stems from WoW's influence, after all. We may as well try and emulate that level of concept balance as far as combat is concerned.
This a agree with and find to be another nail in the coffin of Pen & Paper roleplaying games. This preoccupation with DPR and calculating average damage based on hitting an average creature and average number of times, etc, what rubbish in the sense of an RPG. Contributing to a successful adventure has little if anything to do with abilities in combat, or with any rule for that matter. Contributing is the ability of the player to act as their character has been decided to act by the player. The class/race which the player chooses should/will reflect this. As a GM it is all I expect and I would eject from my game any player who singled out another player based on 'lack of DPR'.
Because of this I see no problem at all with a player wanting to be a Rogue OR wanting to be a caster who does Rogue things. Both can exist side by side in my games.
S.
I don't care about "lack of DPR". I do care about "useless in combat". If you contribute meaningfully, then that's great. We don't all have to be equal or even close necessarily. But if a character's in-combat contribution is 1d6+3 (or 3d6+9 on a full attack) and the monster has 250 hp, I'm ... not impressed. That character's ineffectiveness is likely to get someone else in the party killed, and that to me is unacceptable.
People seem to forget that almost all the things a rogue does can be done by someone else, or several someone elses. Split up the rogue's skills between the ranger, the bard, and the wizard. Trapfinding can be done by the ranger or bard or just go without it. You don't need one person to take over the rogue's role plus his/her own, just make sure the rogue's roles are present in the party. Take these two parties:
1) firstly thanks to Stephen for listening & agreeing to a change everyone has all agreed on - was amazing to see the unified agreeement.
Except everyone didn't post agreement with it.
I count 1 out of maybe 50 and you being the one, didn't chime in until after he had relented to the 50 or so.
That doesn't really matter does it though. I only originally posted when it seemed that people were incorrectly speaking for me by claiming that everyone supported their position. Something people continue to do and something that you are trying to defend right now.
I don't feel that I have to anymore to explain why core races normalized to 10 is a good idea. I think that Paizo has that end covered.
It's not that having them normalized to 10 wouldn't be good; it would. It's that artificially forcing a normalization that doesn't exist, power-wise, is a bad idea. We (being the majority of Paizo posters) feel that some races are mechanically superior to others and prefer to see this represented in the point costs of abilities. If that means halflings wind up significantly lower-point than dwarves or elves, that's OK because it means the building blocks are appropriately costed.
As it is, pluses to skills cost more than they should based on their power, in order to force halflings up to 10 points. Certain abilities that dwarves get are too cheap for their power, to shoehorn dwarves into a 10 RP buy. Neither of those situations is good for the system as a whole. That is why having core races normalized to 10 points is a bad idea.
What's the chance that we'll see a second playtest document that is built upon the altered premises, if you do take that road?
All we really need to do is alter some "offending" point costs, and not treat all the core races as 10 points, If the dwarf comes out as 11 (but is still considered a standard race) and the halfling comes out as 7, then the basics of the system will not necessarily change, only a few of the ability points.
If we do a second playtest, the major change you will see is some point tweaking.
Could you add to your list of change considerations unlinking racial abilities? I think it makes for a much more fun and varied toolbox if you don't have to be type-dwarf to pick up Hardy, for example.
If I've offended any mathematicians out there with my attempts to present my argument, then I apologize as I'm sure that any of you could do a far better job of explaining this than I could. And maybe I won't convince anyone with what I've said. That's fine, I can accept that. But what I want to know is this: where exactly does it say that the wizard can't scribe a metamagic-enhanced spell into his spellbook? I haven't seen anything that says what you're saying. With all of these arguments against it, that would imply that you've seen something somewhere that I haven't saying that this can't be done. Or are you using your own interpretation of the rules to come to this conclusion? If this is indeed the case, then I can accept that as well. See I'm open to the possibility that I may be wrong. Why then can't you be open to the possibility that I may be right?
We aren't open to the possibility that you're right because every scrap of evidence points the other way. You can, of course, interpret or make up rules for whatever you want in home games, and that's part of Pathfinder's fun is that you can alter it to suit how you want it to work. If wizards in your home game can scribe metamagic spells into their book for your PC wizards to find, that's great. It adds a lot of variation to the game and especially in a high-power game, could be really interesting.
The rules as they are written do not support your interpretation. Your homebrew rules are one thing, the rules of the 'standard' game are something else entirely. We look at it mechanically because that's what the rules are: mechanical, mathematical rules for modeling the game. By those rules, you cannot scribe a metamagic spell into a spellbook. Even if you look at Rules as Intended, remembering that wording can be somewhat vague and devs do make silly mistakes that are obviously not what they meant, there has never been a wizard with a metamagic spell in his/her book in any published adventure, adventure path, or book. That says a lot about what is intended to be available with spells and metamagic: you need the feat to do it, or have a consumable item that 'does it for you', but you can't make new spells of it for cheap.
Lionfolk
11 RP, Standard race
10 RP if you take out Sprinter, which I think would be valid if you want to hold things to a 10 RP buy.
Living in southern Gerund, the reclusive natives to that continents plains are a young race. Newly emerged from mysterious origins, the lionfolk's first encounter with humanity was a group of Chelish slavers who decided they would serve magnificently in chains. Capturing a leonin (as they call themselves) proved almost as difficult as keeping it alive afterward, making a lionfolk a rare but prized sight in the slave pens. Some few have escaped captivity and made their way out of Cheliax and to the plains of Varisia where the native nomadic peoples have shown them a different side of humanity. The greater majority of the race still resides in isolation on the plains of Gerund, but a few of the escapees have brought tales of Varisia back with them when they returned. The Leonin are currently embroiled in debate over whether to abandon their isolated ways or continue to distrust the humanity that has enslaved so many.
Medium humanoid: 0 RP
Standard ability modifiers: 0 RP (+2 Str, +2 Cha, -2 Int)
Xenophobic linguistic array: 0 RP (Base Leonin, extra Common, Gnoll, Mwangi)
Ancient foe (humanoid (human)): 3 RP
Fearless: 1 RP
Sprinter: 1 RP
Natural Armor: 2 RP
Bite x2: 2 RP
Stalker: 1 RP
Low-light vision: 1 RP
Matt Trent and I jointly made this one. The description is mostly his.
Also note that you can't make a scroll or magic item with metamagic.
PRD wrote:
Using metamagic feats, a caster can place spells in items at a higher level than normal.
Beyond that, I don't see why any of what you're asserting with respect to spellbooks would need to be true.
So, you're saying you can make a scroll of a Silenced Spell?
Coooool, I'll copy it into my spellbook. Who needs to learn that feat? Hey, you got Silenced versions of ALL your spells I could copy, maybe? I don't want to burn MY feats on lame metamagic if I don't have to.
==Aelryinth
I really don't see where you're getting that a metamagicked spell on a scroll is a spell a wizard can scribe.
A scroll of "Silent Magic Missile" is, to be technical, a scroll of "Magic Missile modified by the Silent metamagic feat". If a wizard wants to scribe it, the spell itself is still just Magic Missile, not Silent Magic Missile. You'd use the usual rules for casting scrolls (arcane/divine, must have appropriate stat, be on spell list, caster level check if own caster level is lower than scroll's caster level).
So, to answer your questions: yes, you can make a scroll of a Silenced spell. No, you cannot scribe it into your book as a Silenced version of the spell, because that would be an entirely new spell and not a metamagicked spell.
EDIT: It doesn't cost you anything to be polite. Your attempt at humor and/or sarcasm just derails an otherwise perfectly valid thread.
Oh, encumbrance. With spellbooks at 3 lbs each, most likely a lower than average STR score and the need for multiple spellbooks in order to have all of your spells on you at higher levels, spellbooks do a fair bit to encumbrance and carrying capacity. Yes, I know extraplanar storage (like the handy haversack or the bag of holding) can eliminate these problems, but you don't always have access to those at lower levels. And I don't know about the rest of you guys who play wizards, but I like to load up my spellbooks early on in my wizarding career with every spell I find useful or fun that I can cast. That adds up to a lot of spell books in the long run. Of course, that's just me. And that's not to mention all the other things you mentioned in relationship to spellbooks... Getting your spellbooks stolen? Nightmare!! O_O
Sorry if I'm interrupting an important debate going on in this forum right now; I haven't checked a lot of the more recent postings in a while, and there were so many I didn't think I could get caught up that easily.
I usually outfit my wizards with a packmule (use pony stats from Beastiary) at level 1. It's cheap and they carry your spellbooks, bedroll, rope, and various other adventuring goodies that you can't carry yourself. It's unlikely that anything at that level will kill them outright and collateral damage from AoE spells is unusual. For dungeon crawls, tether the mule outside and hand the books to a strong PC with dire admonitions not to lose them! By the time the packmule is just going to get insta-gibbed, you can afford a haversack to store spellbooks in.
