Michael Carter-Wright's page

Damage bonuses, hit points and healing are all balanced differently in this edition. It may seem like something was "lost", but it's less a nerf than just being a different game.

For sure. Just my brain going "I swear I read this on my first read through".

Michael Carter-Wright wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Michael Carter-Wright wrote:

Okay, I'm feeling particularly blind. Is there a damage increase from welding a weapon in two hands compared to one hand in PF2 like there was in PF1 and 3.X? The 1.5x Strength bonus.

No. Generally, if you can't find something that was in PF1, it means it's gone. Ditto AoOs for everyone, concentration checks etc.

Darn. That makes me a little sad, but thank you for the answer.

There are specific weapons that are usable one-handed, but increase their damage when wielded with two hands.

Yes, I did see that. The question came to mind as I messed around with character creation and made a Champion of Shelyn welding her favoured glaive.

Michael Carter-Wright wrote:

Okay, I'm feeling particularly blind. Is there a damage increase from welding a weapon in two hands compared to one hand in PF2 like there was in PF1 and 3.X? The 1.5x Strength bonus.

No. Generally, if you can't find something that was in PF1, it means it's gone. Ditto AoOs for everyone, concentration checks etc.

Darn. That makes me a little sad, but thank you for the answer.

Okay, I'm feeling particularly blind. Is there a damage increase from welding a weapon in two hands compared to one hand in PF2 like there was in PF1 and 3.X? The 1.5x Strength bonus.

Hobgoblin is rather brilliant. Thank you for that Uri Meca.

Doing a general pallet swap of the crew solves a lot of issues for a straight run of the AP outright as well as tempering back the possibility of a bunch of goblins trying to murder the crew because 'human'.

Bumping this thread as it looks as though I may be running this exact scenario in the near future. Having read the S&S AP in its entirety, there is a significant amount of material that will have to be altered and thrown out wholesale for a crew of goblins.

That said, I'm looking for advice and suggestions for the following for book 1:
1)The opening. Nobody intelligent press gangs goblins, which eliminates Harrigan. I'd rather not eliminate him, but it seems far-fetched to have him plausibly interact with goblins off-hand.

2)Having any reason to interact with Bonewrack Isle. I have my own, incomplete, thoughts; but I'm curious what others may think of.

3)Thoughts in general that are a bit more objectively useful than the ones above.

I thank you all for your time.

Handy Haversack... Never leave home without it.

I'd have to throw my weight (what little there is) behind those not quite satisfied with the base class Fighter compared to every other core class in basic utility. While the Fighter class itself can be quite diverse, any specific fighter character lacks much of that versatility in specialization that I find the other classes don't.

For my next campaign I've been bouncing some ideas of how to make Fighter more, well, appealing and what I've come up with so far is simple this:

-Roll the Fighter into the Rogue (basic gestalt), call it 'Heroic Bad Ass' or some such thing.
-Shift the bonus feats down a level (with the exception of the 2nd level bonus feat, it stays right where it is), and on the odd levels, the player can choose to either increase Sneak attack dice or take a Combat feat.
-Take a choice of either Full BAB and one good save (player's choice), or 3/4 BAB and 2 good saves (player's choice).
-Allow any Rogue and Fighter archetype to stack as long as you can pay the requisite costs.
-Pondering the use of the Bonus Feats to be Daily Floating Feats(one of the few ideas I liked from Iron Heroes), though that would be a lot of bookkeeping and suffers much of the same problems that the free retraining can run into; Bonus Feats used as prerequisites for other feats and therefore not being able to retrain them at all being the one that jumps immediately to mind.

Name:Cedric Antonius Timmon Lebeda
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Sorcerer (Fey Bloodline)6

Name: Grom Slavish
Race: Half-Orc
Classes/levels: Invulnerable Barbarian 6

Name: Turnip
Race: Half-Elf
Classes/levels: Ranger 6

Name: Ghaelrin Lebeda
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Paladin 6
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: The Forgotten Keep
Catalyst: Multiple failed Will Saves
The Gory Details: After dodging the Insanity Mist, Turnip carefully made his way up the stairs to second level as quietly as possible while the rest of the part waited just outside the tower. The Dancing Lady, with the Grimstalker's help, heard Turnip sneaking up and anticipated what was to come and began her captivating dance. Turnip was hers the moment his head popped into the room, where she led him to her bed. By this point the rest of the party, who had made sure to have the entire party set up with the message spell, grew concerned about their companion's silence. Fearing the worst, they rushed up the stairs to help him. Grom and Cedric immediately fell prey to the captivating dance.
The Grimstalker slashes out at Ghaelrin with his claws from his hidden spot on the wall above and connects once. The paladin returned the blow twice fold with the addition of holy smite power, leaving the Grimstalker as a red stain. The Dancing Lady didn't like the look of that at all and suggested to Grom that he should keep the paladin away (not exact words used) from her. Grom attempts to start a grapple with Ghaelrin and gets the flat of a greatsword in his face for his trouble. Tandor, cleric of Sarenrae, casts a burning hands at The Dancing Lady, beats her spell resistance but does very little damage as she deftly moves out of the way of the worst part of the spell. This is followed by a charge and smite on the part of Ghaelrin, doing very decent damage. This is where things went bad.
The Dancing Lady jumped onto Ghaelrin, successfully grappling the paladin. Unable to escape, The Dancing Lady steadily drained the blood from Ghaelrin's body. Grom tried his best to keep the paladin and the Dancing Lady apart while Tandor desperately tried to keep Ghaelrin healed. However, Grom ended up just feeling up The Dancing Lady. Unable to kill her fast enough, Ghaelrin succumbed to Con damage. Seeing this Tandor ran for life, leaving the rest of the party to a grisly fate.

Extra note: On the ride home the player of Tandor realized he could have just covered the eyes of one of his companions in order to break line of effect and offer them a new Will save. It would have made all the difference.

Name: Turnip
Race: Half-elf
Classes/levels: Ranger 5
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: Exploring the Narlmarches
Catalyst: Inability to roll Fort saves on his part and Perception checks on part of the party
The Gory Details: The party had set up camp for the night and Turnip had volunteered to take the first watch alone. Near the end of his shift, he spotted a wyvern flying in for a meal at a mere 50 feet away. Acting quickly, he blew on his whistle and fired a shot that missed utterly. Only one of four sleeping characters were awakened.
The wyvern struck hard, stinging and poisoning the dangerously outmatched half-elf for 4 Con damage. While the barbarian woke up and fetched his blade, Turnip retreated a short distance and fired a critical hit into the wyvern, who responded by charging and hurting the ranger badly again, who then failed his Fortitude save and took another 4 points of Con damage. While the barbarian tried to close with the wyvern, Turnip fired his bow desperately; only to be bit and knocked unconscious; held tightly in the creature's mouth. Poison damage kicked in again and brought him close to permanent death. Grom the barbarian managed to land a crit on the wyvern, who immediately withdrew and began to fly away. The cleric, finally roused from sleep, fireballed the wyvern and knocked it unconscious, causing it crash into the forest below; killing both it and Turnip outright.

He was soon reincarnated as a full elf.

Name: Baron Cedric Antonius Timmon Lebeda
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Sorcerer(Fey Bloodline)/4
Adventure: Rivers Run Red
Location: Town of Tuskanny
Catalyst: Raging, Power Attacking Great axe Critical

The Gory Details: The party was the in the process of patrolling the streets of their newly founded town at the sight of the Stag Lord's Fort, renamed Tuskanny. Grom, Royal Assassin, heard the sounds of a scuffle around a corner and decided to investigate and came upon the sight of Kundal the werewolf beginning to savage a merchant. Blowing on his whistle, he alerted the rest of the party and stepped up to do battle. They traded fierce blows while the rest of the party showed up and attempted to take down the lycanthrope.

Cedric cast a spell that failed to affect Kundal, while the werewolf dropped savaged Grom to within an inch of his life. Before Cedric could move to a safer spot, the werewolf charged; leaping into the air and cut the young Baron in half (doing over 80 points of damage and knocking Cedric to -42 hp). Kundal was put down for good seconds later.

I say no to you good sir!

Just got home from starting this AP. We ended the session at the point that they cleared out the Monastery, but before reporting to Almah. What an afternoon/night!

The Party consists of:
Ormizd: Elven Wizard. Between the Pugwampis and his own inability to roll well, he likely is going to develop self-esteem issues.

Conan: Half-orc Barbarian. He was the only one to tempt fate in the rafters and never broke a single beam. King Mokknok flailed uselessly against him while the brawny half-orc cut him down in two solid hits. Threw his greataxe at the Giant Wolf Spider after it scuttled out of his reach up the wall and cleaved it in twain.

Havacius: Half-elf Paladin, More used to using his Greatsword, he ended up firing shots at enemies far out of his reach with his crossbow most of the time. This failed almost completely. In frustration, he threw his blade at a pugwampi in the rafters, connected, and staggered it in a single blow.

Decoy: Human Rogue; Once again, the pugwampis severely curtailed his effectiveness, but when he did hit, he hit hard.

Grom, Half-elf Ranger, Not even the unluck aura could hold back his ability to fell creatures at range.

Zanthrax, Gnome Oracle of Bone; An ADD and disturbing gnome suffering the curse of blindness. During the fire, he built a sand castle. During the battle in the chapel, he took to tying the entrails of the fallen pugwampis together and casting light upon them. When that failed to bring them closer to him, he began moving about the room and hissing at them in order to intimidate them. Fashioned the skulls into knee-pads and pauldrons afterward and then made the Conan a necklace out of the skull of Mokknok. Jumped up and down on the bed during the battle against the wolf spider. Animated the corpse of a baboon so that he could ride it for the short period of time it was around.

Zanthrax, by dice, became the Moldspeaker...

Cedric Antonius Timmon Lebeda, Human Sorcerer (Fey Bloodline). Nominally the party's leader and diplomat. His spells have been either the thing to turn an encounter in his favor or failed utterly.

Boran Thundershield, Dwarf Fighter/Cavalier. A wall of iron on horseback and nigh immune to the attacks of most creatures encountered. Can't roll a hit to save his life...

Grom Slavish, Half-Orc Invulnerable Barbarian. Whatever his greatsword connects with tends to die. Came close to death on two separate occasions. Once to the deadly axes of Kressle and then again to the deadly fury of an owlbear.

Tandor, Half-Elf Cleric of Saranrae, Slayer of Bugs and Scorcher of Tables. Has yet to cast a spell that didn't have Cure in the name.

Turnip..., Half-Elf Ranger. A recent addition. Has made himself useful.

Lora as Feiya

Zurai wrote:

seekerofshadowlight wrote:

In Darksun you must be a defiler or a perseverer. You could not play any other type of caster

False. There were other types, although they were exceptionally rare compared to defilers.

My box set disagrees with you.

They are in other releases that I don't have on hand. After Tithian became the Cerulean Storm some Wizards figured out how to draw power off of him becoming Cerulean mages. I wish I had more to back that up...

Is this really a problem? In order to get to -1 hit points (and then fall unconscious and die) the high level, raging barbarian has taken as many hit points as it would take to kill him if he wasnt raging. In other words - his fury has kept him going beyond normal human limits and he's stayed fighting instead of falling over unconscious.

It just means a raging barbarian on 4 hit points has to get healing urgently. Just the same as if he wasnt raging and was on -10 or something - at least during those last few rounds he has the advantage of being conscious.

My point of contention is that the barbarian isn't going to get to high level, at least not without a dedicated healer who tends to him for entire combats.

How did a 4th level barbarian get an AC of 21? The AC is one of the main reasons I am hesitant about playing one.

I suspect a breastplate, high Dexterity (16-18) with completely dumped mental stats, and a buff of some sort; likely Barkskin.

I would suggest finding a DM that doesn't try to kill players. Barbarians tend to have more HP than other party members, and thats before raging. If the DM is going to routinely drop a raging barbarian to -1 or worse, how the hell do any of the other classes survive?

Actually, that's my LG experience. I was tanking, therefore I'm taking hits; since around level 6, anything appropriate is guaranteed to hit you at least 3 out of 4 times. It doesn't take long to go through a lot of hit points. Even with the party cleric acting as a healbot.

Edit: If it wasn't for raging while below 0 hit points, he would have died in every module. *Not making an argument there, simply a statement of fact of my experience in Organized Play.

Post edited for edit above.

Okay, let me come at this from a different angle here.

Do you feel a character should be more prone to death, to the point of nearly guaranteeing it in any combat that provides at minimum equal EL, than any other character for using a class ability that s/he is strongly encouraged to use?

The cleric lost nothing, but their heavy armor proficiency. However, having never played a cleric above 5th level its hard for me to give an accurate assessment of possible rebalancing (which involves going through the spells).

I must say I enjoy the new Domain set-up. Definitely makes the cleric more interesting.

point but I would still rule it ended.

And it becomes DM fiat. A rules call yes, but its now in the realm of house rules and if that works for you, then by all means do so. In a Living Campaign, which Pathfinder Society is, cannot be propped up by house rules. Its RAW whether you like it or not. Its the only way to be fair when you have hundreds to thousands of players.

There was discussion about this in the WotC forums back in the day and it was debated whether you could rage while unconscious. If your GM let you do it then that's fine, many GMs felt raging while unconscious was impossible. I never had rage induced death (or it's potential) so never had to make that call under 3.5.

Actually, the place that it mattered was Living Greyhawk. GMs there were forced to use RAW. Having played the iconic half-orc fighter/barbarian character I can tell you that often the difference between surviving the mod and dying was the the fact that the ONLY thing in the RAW that stopped rage was the barbarian voluntarily ending it or a calm emotions spell.

However, my math still stands. Rage as currently written makes playing a barbarian a nonviable choice after 6th level. That's a bad thing from a design standpoint. Its a bad thing from a play standpoint.

Unless of course, you prefer the archery route for barbarians? Mounted Spirited Charge barbarian can also work and even makes use of Rage, as long as you can one shot enemies and be out of charge range of the ones you can't.

Michael Carter-Wright wrote:

"If a barbarian falls unconscious, her rage immediately ends, placing her in peril of death."

Maybe this line is new but the rage ending barbarian death thing is not new, it was there in 3.5 ("The increase in Constitution increases the barbarian’s hit points by 2 points per level, but these hit points go away at the end of the rage when his Constitution score drops back to normal.").

True, but you didn't get ganked by dropping below 0 hps nearly as bad. You could continue to let your rage go while unconscious and wait for someone to heal you.

Actually, there is another glaring change that gimps the barbarian hard. I guarantee that you won't think about it for the first few levels, but you'll do a 'what the heck?' as soon as you realize it....

Barbarians, with their notoriously low ACs, will not survive past 7th, maybe 8th level. Why is this? Because of the line added to rage right at the end.

"If a barbarian falls unconscious, her rage immediately ends, placing her in peril of death."

True to a fault since the time most characters, not just barbarians, fall unconscious is when they go below 0 hit points. Lets look at the math of a barbarian with a 16 Constitution that gets knocked to -1 hit point.

Level 1: loses 2 hit points and falls to -3. No biggie.
Level 2: loses 4 hit points and falls to -5. A bit of a concern, but again, no biggie.
Level 5: loses 10 hit points and falls to -11. Holy crap! Better hope the cleric is nearby...
Level 8: loses 16 hit points and falls to -17. Congratulations, your dead unless someone has an immediate action to remove damage as it falls.

And that's just the bare minimum for getting knocked unconscious. How often are characters lucky enough to get hit to exactly -1?

Its realistic that a barbarian can't rage while knocked out, but it kills the viability of the class past about 6th level.

Name of PC: Drake Moonbow
Class/Level: Ranger/4
Name of Adventure: Burnt Offerings.
Catalyst: Nualia

Low on resources, the party (Kaskutal[elven rogue1/wizard3], Corrin Lightbringer [human cleric4], and Drake Moonbow [elven ranger4]) retreated from Thistletop dungeon to one of the towers on the upper level, the bridge having been dropped out while they had initially fought their way through Thistletop. Nualia and her yeth hound appeared a few hours later, fully buffed and ready to dispose of th annoying interlopers. Three rounds in, after Drake's Elven Hound animal companion dropped the yeth hound, Nualia turned and put her blade through Drake's spine and tore off his head with her claw (Full Power Attack and maximum damage on each attack). She dropped the animal companion the next round.