Mnemaxa's page

Not going to lie I'm a little salty that the thing I've wanted most in pf2e (being able to apply runes directly to your character to empower unarmed attacks or unarmored ac) is tied to a rare class that I don't really vibe with. The monkeys paw curls.

Animist is a really cool class and the class archetypes are great. Bloodrager is an awesome new take on the class. Again a little salty that seneschal witch is the only class archetype that's rare and maybe the one I was most looking forward to playing, but such is the rarity system.

Ask if you can use the Automatic Bonus Progression rules for your character, which can apply those benefits to your character without requiring items.

One thing that always comes up in questions about magic is "Why doesn't everyone learn magic if it's so easy to learn?"

People tend to forget three things.

Casters are not selfless. If anything, they tend to be the most self centered, arrogant, self righteous people in the games. Look at how many disasters they cause, for one! It's unlikely they're going to share their spells with anyone else, RAW aside.

Not everyone can learn magic. PC's have an easy time learning magic by RAW, but there is a caveat, stated in the books almost every time: PCs ARE NOT AVERAGE PEOPLE. Sure, a PC can learn magic by taking a level in the spell casting class....but that doesn't mean anyone else can. NPCs are invariably described as having put large amounts of time and effort into learning magic. There are no NPCs who simply 'leveled up' into magic by their descriptions. Pcs are beyond the norm.

Trust. In addition to money, there is another factor - trust. It takes time to do stuff; even a witch, who can literally heal every strange they meet once per day, can only travel so much through a town and take care of these people. She has to talk with them for one - and she has to be allowed to deal with them for another. Not every person is simply going to trust a spellcaster to do what the spellcaster says he's going to do. In fact, your average person is going to be very, very wary of letting a stranger use any magic at all on them. Because spellcasters do weird stuff, like blow up cities, summon demons, try and kill gods, and break continents. This is known fact in the universes where they exist; there's usually at least one disaster area caused specifically by a spellcaster doing something he shouldn't. and you're going to let this strange cast spells on you, or the village well, or enchant a wagon? Not bloody likely.

Of course, this also means that horses gallop cross-country at 11mph (actual horse average is 30mph), while humans sprint at 8.5mph (actual average is closer to 15mph), so giving horses with riders 3 actions of running (assuming 140', that's just under 16mph) would put them closer to the actual ratio of horse-speed to human speed, while simultaneously also meaning that your standard domesticated horse is capable of running at the same speed as a 'monster' horse (because they'd have the same number of actions).

It takes the well trained Horse and rider about 15 hours to travel 100 miles at hard pace over basic dirt roads, and that is assuming breaks and stops.

The well trained runner does the same distance in about 18 hours, assuming breaks but no stops.

These are real and accurate times from the Western States Run and the Tevis cup, the two endurance runs held in the foothills of Northern California. In both cases these are well trained, well practiced individuals who do this sort of thing constantly.

I realize this is the playtest, but there is one thing I have concerns with.

Many people say that no one ever reaches high level play. I have personally run games from first levels into the thirties - and not only for D&D/PF. I would like to know if there is life after 20th level planned for this iteration of the game or not, because the 'bounded accuracy' and 'set level caps' of the games that have them are very troubling to me. You can go this far, this high, and no further.

And that's offensive to me as a gamemaster.

I liked that there were rules for going beyond 20th level in PF that were not necessarily epic, and that the additional alternate rulesets could accommodate them (Mythic, words of Power to go beyond 9th level spells, and Style feats or Stamina system to give martials further ways to deal with issues they might not ordinarily have). And admittedly, you do have to scale up other feats to keep certain feats and abilities relevant, but they were minimal at best.

Casters feared the fighter in my games, because he could very easily one-shot them through most of their defenses without any trouble at all, and that did not require major homebrewing. But in a level capped 20 level or 30 level game, there would be an end to it; you could keep adventuring, but the challenges would remain the same after that point because increasing the abilities beyond that point broke integral systems. (I am sure people have heard that "+1 to hit is king in 4e", and it's not wrong.)

So my hope and question is - will there be places for those of us who want to move into 21st level and beyond?

Is it not because falling on someone is different than jumping on them?

I have seen this come up on another forum.

A lot of the problem with this type of 'math' and other 'white room theorycraft' is it ignores 3 major variables.

1: Player choices outside of the targeted math.
Certainly power attack compared to magic weapons seems to be lackluster. What about 'Assists' from another player? If they are aware you are a power attacker and you don't hit often as you might want to, you can receive assists from characters who don't do much else during their turns. There are even ranged assists from other fighters, rangers, and rogues that take only a single action. This is a critical kind of variable.

2: GM actions.
Monsters aren't static piles of hit points in tabletop games. Every times i see something like this I have to wonder, "what if the monster is X and does Y?" What if the enemy is another PC based class? that changes variables wildly. No damage done is wasted against a monster because you may be facing weaker or stronger versions of the monster, and not all monsters of a given level will ahve the same hit points in any case. Resistance is a very real issue in the playtest.

3: Dice.
No math like this ever stands up to the actual test of rolling dice, because it can't. You can say "the probability of rolling this is this" but that doesn't matter because until the die is actually rolled, it's just a possibility - one of twenty of them as a matter of fact, and no amount of math and statistics is really going to change that.

There are plenty of people who can do this kind of math everywhere, but no one can say with absolute certainty what the players, GM, or dice will actually DO.

This is great. But for the classes that don't have them, there is just not enough difference here. Most of them are "trained" in one saving throw and "expert" in two others, and this doesn't change. This means that by the end of the game, one class will have +20 to a save and the other will have... +21. And that's it. I wouldn't even notice this difference in gameplay.

The same applies to perception and weapons. Most classes are either fixed at +0 or fixed at +1 at level one, and this doesn't change and is barely discernible as different. The scale from +0 to +3 is small enough already, and now most classes are locked in a scale from +0 to +1.

In my groups experience, a +1 to a save, attack roll, or anything else could easily make the difference between success and failure. And that was in standard PF, where gaining a +3 bonus was an easy achievement.

It may be anecdotal, but I personally think that it's a matter of perception as well. The bonuses don't look big, but they do a lot more because of the tighter tiers of success and failure (Crit Success, Success, Failure, Crit Fail).

Oh good. I only run my own campaigns. However, this set up is very much in tune with plans I have made in the past....so I am looking forward to downloading the playtest stuff in a week, after Paizo has it's servers fixed.

For example: If you want a spellcasting paladin, you can swap out your 2nd and 4th level class feats for cleric spellcasting of up to 3rd level spells by level 8. Sure, you only get 1 slot of each level without further feats, but you get access to spells while they're still relevant - unlike in PF1 where you didn't see 3rd level spells until 13th level. A few more feats and a paladin can cast up to 8th level divine spells... while still being a smiting, armoured, martial juggernaut.

That is awesome

This means you CAN have your spell casting ranger - just not yet with primal (druid) spells yet.

On the other hand, you can literally make a certain archytypal Dunedain ranger, since you can take clerical healing abilities and spells to affect ghosts and spectres.

s.

What I'm asking about are the spells themselves. I heard about Bards getting Magic Missile potentially and that seems... well, it feels a little off, especially seeing Bardic spells are mental and spiritual in nature.

Sound Striker.

Xelaaredn wrote:

To be fair, with the example given, I'm pretty sure primal magic is nature stuff. Like, Druidic stuff.

Personally I'd love to see the kineticist make a move over once things get rolling.

I think that would be a cool thing. Kineticists are clearly inspired, at least in part, by benders (á la Avatar: The Last Airbender), and the benders' powers have a spiritual origin even though they mostly aren't linked to particular spirits. That'd fit well with primal magic, at least on paper.

Kineticists were inspired by movies such as The Fury and Scanners, where using your power caused you to suffer horrible injuries.

The natives of Bezodan, a jungle island chain, wear no armor and minimal jewelry. They carry spears and shields which they now threaten you with. Bracers would flavor wise be out of place for these islanders, though mechanically they provide exactly what I want for the chiefs bodyguards.

Wooden arm bracers and plates as well as grass or cloth wrappings and decorations about the wrists and ankles are seen in Aztec and Mayan depictions of warriors, and are used by several African tribes. So they could easily have bracers of armor and enchanted legwear as well.

The fact that gish, a word made in AD&D and has survived this long, says everything about how popular an idea a Magus-style class is.

I am also hopeful that the new magic class will be something more like the Phantom Blade Spiritualist, who is far better a gish than the Magus, and has a number of internalized options to boot.

I am very curious about human stat bonuses now.

My one big hope - which is only partly concerned with this thread - is that there isn't a "hard cap at 20 levels". I don't wants hard caps like that. It's why I don't play 4e, and it's why I don't play 5e.

With the rules for higher than 20 levels in the core PF book, I was perfectly fine adding a touch of homebrew to fix some numbers and continue into the thirties quite easily. My players enjoyed it.

It doesn't have to be "epic" or "mythic" - just not "stop here and go no further". Especially with so many options available to the characters - this means you could go past 20 into 30 and further customize your characters the way you want.

So, Starfinder has an interesting quirk in their ability score buying math that the +1 stat bonus from Themes ends up being functionally useless. This is the result of the fact that bonuses come in groups of +2 (except for going from 19->20 which only gets you a +1) and the fact that ability score pre-reqs are mostly gone (except for Dex 15 if I recall).

Will this be the case if we are now taking their ability score system and porting it to Pathfinder, or will changes be made to address this?

Remember, in Starfinder you gain only a +1 to any ability score higher than 17, so that +1 can be useful at 5th level.

I find their parallels to the Aeon Outsiders interesting....

The thing I have discovered about system mastery, is that system mastery also is quite dependent on having a GM that only uses rules as written and doesn't homebrew anything, and doesn't change the game to make things more workable for players, character classes, or for arcane and unknowable reasons.

As an example, the whole "wizards break the game" deal based on system mastery and an understanding of how wizards work falls apart more often than not in the face of an actual game with real players and an even slightly intelligent and somewhat experienced GM.

So, Bloodrager and Swashbuckler vs. an incorporeal undead dragon? I hope the Bloodrager is well equipped, because the Swashbuckler will do absolutely nothing against that type of monster. ^^

Female half-elf Swashbuckler is looking swell, though.

If it were just undead there wouldn't be a problem.

It's very simple.

Gozreh wanted to get rid of the community so he didn't bother frightening anyone off. They worshiped a god other than him, so they needed to be dealt with - the opportunity arose, so he dealt with them.

Then those pesky PC's and their little dog too came by....

Two-Handed: Two hands are required to use a two-handed melee weapon effectively. Apply 1-1/2 times the character's Strength bonus to damage rolls for melee attacks with such a weapon.

The commentary on Two-Handed weapons in the equipment section pretty much settles the argument that Mythic Weapon finesse does not grant the 1.5 damage bonus. Mythic Weapon Finesse states you can use your Dex Bonus instead of Strength bonus for attack and damage only, but the weapon description itself defeats the idea that you get the bonus damage from a two handed weapon since it relies only on strength.

Are you sure you downloaded the right file? Did you download the single file or the chapter by chapter file?

I downloaded both, but I generally only use the single file for general reading.

Phomandala

I just checked my new PDF (single file). The magus archetypes are still there, but they are hidden in the bookmarks for the inquisitor archetypes. Weird.

ah, thank you, I did find it. Weird, I agree.

I was wondering why the PDF dropped from 48 meg to a mere 31 meg.

It's because the entirety of the Magus Archetypes are missing from Ultimate magic.

I would really like them back please!

Sure.

At level 11, if you spend most of your evolutions on limbs and claws, it's entirely possible to build the multiattack eidolon.

That also means you do not get to spend those evolutions on size increases, damage increases, or defenses because you'll need almost all of them for limbs and pounce. It also means that with each attack you are at -2 for every natural attack and -2 for one weapon attack in addition -6 for every off hand weapon attack using the eidolon's 3/4 BAB attack bonus. Any non-weapon magic item you get for the eidolon is a magic item that most likely cannot be used by the summoner, so be careful with your allocations.

So basically what you are creating is the total-miss-monster.

I ran a 10 year long D&D game for Spelljammers that encompased 3 1/2 versions of D&D (2nd Ed, 3rd+3.5, PF) and has moved the characters from level 1 to level 25 in the first three systems, and is not at 31st level in PF.

I've been using the epic rule suggestions in the core book, with additional houserules adjustments largely based on increases/bonuses to attack-damage-DC improvement because that is where epic starts to break down (creatures increasing saves and attack bonuses and PC up with characters bonuses to attack-damage-spell DC not keeping pace).

The game is largely political, but when combat happens it is devastating and deadly, causing serious collateral damage as often as not as well as having huge political repercussions. The advent of PF made the fighter one of the most feared members of the party which consists of mostly casters because he can guarantee-kill them in a single attack and they are perfectly aware of that while chances are good their save-or-lose and save-or-dies aren't going to stop him from landing those killing blows.

Having actual rules for epic or mythic level stuff isn't a requirement, but it WOULD make my job as a GM easier.

And I don't want an eidolon to always be a big dumb brute going HULK SMASH! whenever I play a Summoner.

Trading physical stats for better mental ones doesn't seem like it would over power the class.

Considering the number of 'optimizers' who consider the eidolon totally broken anyways, making them smart and giving them total access to the specialties of the monks and manuver based fighters would very much over power them. A grappling eidolon is already a threat, but giving it improved and greater grapple as well would be unpleasant. And giving it more skills and more fighting capability than a melee character is essentially pulling the good old CoDzilla situation back into PF after they finally got rid of it, except it would be Summoner=Win Button.

Monks suffer from a unique affliction that is quite obvious when you observe all the threads about them.

Almost everyone sees the monk and tries to compare it to a fighter.

This weird sort of view is a result of everyone holding onto the ideal of the Advanced D&D monkl, which WAs a match for the fighter. After 3.0 they were seriously dropped in power, and no one ever bothered to correct this viewpoint. Pathfinder did, but they didn't make it obvious enough.

Monks are not a full melee class - the only class you should be comparing a monk to is a rogue, not a fighter.
-3/4 BAB.
-Skills centered on movement and dealing with people.
-A conditional attack that does atypical amounts of damage: the Flurry of Blows (this is the one that fools everyone into thinking they're some kind of fighter class, when it should be looked at like the rogues sneak attack and treated as such).
-A host of abilities designed to help deliver singular attacks backed by save-or-suck and save-or-lose abilities OR to help them get to where allies can be helped to do the most effective attacks possible (repositioning enemies for spells to take effect, flanking with rogues, getting the potion of healing to a badly injured ally, etc.).
-medium AC (similar to the bard, summoner, alchemist, and other 3/4 combatants who are not full casters).
-Abilities and saves that make them less likely to be affected by powers and abilities that would render other characters helpless or out of the fight.

This is touched upon by their role explanation in the Core book:
Monks excel at overcoming even the most daunting perils, striking where it's least expected, and taking advantage of enemy vulnerabilities. Fleet of foot and skilled in combat, monks can navigate any battlefield with ease, aiding allies wherever they are needed most.

Yet everyone tries to play monks like they are fighters, rather than what they are designed to be played as - a 3/4 BAB non-full-caster who has a set of abilities designed to hinder enemies and make it easier for other people to kill them, rather than directly killing enemies themselves. The problem with monks tends to be the player's mindsets, more than anything mechanical.

I dealt with hags in an entirely different manner.

Changelings who are not witches become hags and thus NPCs in the same way that I would do to a character killed by shadows and becoming a shadow, or drained by wights and becoming a wight. The change in their mentality and personality destroys whatever spark was the PC.

Witches are another matter entirely.

What happens when a witch betrays her patron, or loses her patron's favor? There are only two things a patron gives a witch - knowledge....and a familiar. If they lose the patron's favor, they lose their spellcasting, and have only what little magic has become inherent to them - in effect, they become hags.

Ever notice how hags are adapted to their environs? Even the Black Annis is adapted to the outer planes she lairs in. Interestingly, there is a bit of fluff about elves also adapting to their environment. It's a few sentences in their racial description.

Then I realized....hags are elven witches who have lost contact and the grace of their patrons, becoming more and more tied to their environment and more and more dependent on what little magical talent they have left to them. The expansions of witches' hexes have only made it more and more obvious....

I disagree on this point though. By Level 20 the Wizard should have so many scrolls in her Handy Haversack that she needn't ever worry about not having the right spell.

If you calculate the amount of money a caster would spend on scrolls and wands to cover all those contingencies, it doesn't really work until mid-level. There's also the matter of time - the easy scrolls are not a problem to put out one or two a day, but after 3rd level it gets prohibitively time consuming and costly. You can only scribe one scroll per day in any case - which is fine if you are traveling or otherwise not concerned with time, but if you have to be ready in 4 days, having a double dozen scrolls such as you describe as every wizard must have is a very difficult endeavor. By level twenty anything that is a 4th level spell or lower and is a common use items will be in a wand, and sorcerers use those just fine. A sorcerer may not be able to make them easily, but he can still make them - a minus 5 to the spellcraft check isn't crippling.

Please, no.

Swinging a +45 longsword against a Turbodragon's 89 AC has little appeal for me. It's just regular D&D with bigger numbers.

The players avoid combat when they can. Bad things happen in combat. They have literally ended entire ecologies, and had that blow up in their face later.

No, the real appeal of Epic play is gettign to the point where I can actually reveal that the players, through their own actions, are personally responsible for the existence of the entire illithid race. I actually closed the loop of the paradox using my player's political motivations as the reason for the illithids to do the things which eventually become responsible for their entire race's existence.

Not even the illithids saw that one coming. (The Elder Brains? Maybe....)

Did anyone else read the spells that level 9 wizards can cast?

They can cast Time Stop! This means they'll get at least two rounds to do whatever they want. They could summon in two Balors, or even 2d4+4 wooden golems! Or they could cast Wish to change reality to better suit them! And what happens if they get all 4 rounds?!

How is this not overpowered? Is the party just supposed to run away or stand there while being balor'd to death? Or being killed by some nasty splinters? They can't even do that! They can't act for those rounds!

Anyone who disagrees with me is clearly an inane, not to mention insane, rambler who hasn't read the rules and I will ignore them.

....summon two Balors. Really. I'd love to see them eat your wizard.

Don't put a level cap.

Please.

That's part of what made Epic stuff useful to me as a GM. You see, the idea behind my epic level game was to have mortals contend against deities - not directly, but indirectly. But to do that, they would have to influence not merely continents, but entire planets and eventually entire planes of existence with their exploits. Ever widening rings of influence spreading from their works,. deeds, and desires, good and evil, countering and being countered by the efforts of gods, outsiders, and ancient abominations neither mortal no deific.

"Level caps" are for games which must spew more and more splat books to make the game not merely better, but simply playable. Paizo, so far, has done exactly what it should - make splatbooks flavorful, interesting, useful, but neither game breaking nor required. I've demonstrated to my players and to many grognards online that the deadliest things they can do, they can do with the APG and the Core book and nothing more.

I want to see that trend continue even with Epic and Mythic levels of play. I've used the current Epic rules to good effect, merely adding more bonuses to the feats that require bonuses by creating 'superior' and 'epic' versions of such feats as Weapon Focus, Spell Focus, Spell Penetration, Disruptive, etc. to allow the characters to continue their growth without making them reliant solely on magic. But there IS room for expansion - epic class abilities for fighters would be an interesting idea, as would epic bloodline continuation for sorcerers. Spells actually was easy - Words of Power system made epic magic totally customizable without making them game-breaking.

That's my quarter's worth of input.

Um, yes, I would like to see this book too.

My only concern, and it is a valid concern as proven so many times by so many OGL products, is that there is incompatibility with the actual CR system of PF.

I'm sure everyone recalls the Sword and Sorcery failures such as the "CR 2 creature with the spells of a 7th level druid and 5 hit dice".

I only wish I were making that up.

How does it compare?

=

Yes, you can do impossible things in e6, but that's true for even low-level characters. The fact is that the higher level you get, the more ridiculous the power level gets, so instead of pigeonholing martial characters into being 'mundane', they should develop into what are essentially superheroes as they level up.

A fighter with no magical equipment or weapons can kill things that normally require magic to even harm just using feats. It may take him longer, and it may get him hurt, but he CAN slay demons, dragons, devils, and other impossible to harm monsters without magic.

Overcoming their regeneration is harder, but even that is something he can manage with feats.

At high levels, a fighter IS superhuman and capable of impossible acts of destruction and death.

I look at these threads and kind of wonder what happened to the ability of a GM and a player to work out between them how a character might do certain things without deciding to overburden the game with more rules.

If a player needs to have his perceived power level or capabilities changed, there isn't anythign wrong with working something out. One suggestion, of being able to tell a creature's basic combat ability as a skill is one point of reference. A fighter, who has been trained in combat so thoroughly that he can often carve golems apart without magical assistance, or slay demons armed with just a sword, should be able to determine a monster's basic abilities in combat. Why not use the same mechanic as other abilities granted by class abilities, 10+1/2 the melee character's level modified by one of his mental stats - wisdom is the obvious, but there isn't any reason not to substitute intelligence. Most people will put at least a few points in wisdom to keep their fighter's will saves up. Make the DC equal to the monster's HD or CR rating. Make the information appropriate to the monster.

"...the glistening slime along the thing's tentacles isn't wholesome - in fact, with no claws or teeth to attack with, it's probably poisonous instead..." That's useful information without telling him that it's actually a transformation-inducing fluid on the aboleth's tentacles.

With the ability to fight powerful opponents strictly though the use of feats and their class abilities, and the ability to forge magical items such as Arms and Armor and Wondrous Items, you can have fighters who do things like craft the Doom of the Darksword, or have the Master of Weapons from the Shanarra series. They didn't have special, mystical abilities - one completely lacked magic, and the other was just good at killing everything. Giving them 'special powahs' is just trying to rehash the edition wars. I read this thread and see arguments used by 4e players in threads in other forums all the times.

In the end, it's a matter of what the player and GM work out between themselves. A fighter in AD&D just had damage, and number of attacks. But the wizard didn't - COULDN'T survive without him. Fighter's special abilities were always things the gamemaster gave to him for roleplaying reward, or things he worked with the GM to gain for himself through adventure. I can see the reasoning behind the arguments, and wanting to 'refluff' or 'give special abilities', but as it stands, PF is putting that power back in the GM's and the player's hands - where it belongs. the tools are already there. It would be far better to remind people that they can use them and how to use them, rather than trying to rebuild the system.

Just an opinion.

Tom_Kalbfus wrote:

Spelljammer was fun. Now will Pathfinder adopt the whole nine yards, with 500,000 gp Helms, hammerships, and planar gravity fields for small objects?

Paizo can't touch ANY of it. WOTC IP again. Nothing of Spelljammer is open content. Dragonstar on the other hand.....

Ah, but they can't put a copyright on a genre, can they?

Oh, how lovely.

I'm already running Spelljammers for my friends using Pathfinder. This is just icing.

This one is HOT! lol Nymph

Very well done.

Yes. It's my single longest running campaign, being played on and off for well over 11 years, from levels 1-23 and then 10-31 through two generations of characters(Epic level PF, whoo boy....), and over what is now 3 iterations of the game system.

Ultimate Combat has made it more than perfectly viable - the instant I saw the gunslinger playtest I knew it would become part of the legacy of Spelljammers.

I have been using the Epic rules, with slight modification (and not nerfing but adding level limits and expanding on certain feat trees) that are in the core book.

It works well. As long as you scale up the feats that give +1 stacking bonuses and keep them at level limitations (Spell Focus, Weapon Focus, Spell Penetration, Weapon Specialization, penalty enhancers such as Disruptive, etc.) you can build up quite nicely. I even came up with Epic Spell creation using the Words of Power (increase the point total available to the wordsmith by +4 for each level of spell after 9th) to allow for epic spells, and bvecause they use he same mechanics for saves and such, they are not overpowered, only very pervasive in their scope.

And the fighter (just plain old simple no archetype fighter) doesn't care because he can kill any of those casters in 2 hits. He STILL is the most destructive force in the game. Doing 250+ points of damage a round with ease, melee or range, makes people very wary about annoying him. Monsters still manage to shrug off spells a third of the time, and it's all they need to start killing players quickly....if it weren't for that damned fighter carving chunks out of it.

Obviously, I would enjoy a book written by someone with a better grasp of how mechanics should work in actuality as opposed to by experienced but-still-largely guesswork.

Yeah, I would have to say that for the term "power creep" to have any solid meaning, it would have to mean that the "max" was increased a little in progressive amounts each time a book is released.

If you make something that used to be underpowered into somethign worthwhile, that really can't be called "power creep".

Maybe.. "fixing creep".

Although, in my opinion, the books paizo has released feel more like "fixing bursts". 3 major books and a lot of things feel "fixed". That's quite a lot different compared to 2 dozen books all slowly increasing power level across the board.

I agree here. There is too much "overpower/underpower/useless/must have" discussion to say the books are purely power creep. The experience in power creep that I have is solely "everything in this book tends to be better than the things before it".

Incidentally, the called shot against a bowstring is -20 to hit.

.....what, you didn't take into account they actually have rules for called shots now when trying to sunder a weapon? If you are attacking a specific point on a weapon that is a called shot. A called shot on a fine object that someone is wielding would be a nearly impossible shot, so -20 to hit. You also have to use a slashing weapon, as a general rule, because ropes - and string, being a kind of rope - has DR5/slashing, and magic weapons have higher numbers of hit points (and contrary to what people have been writing in this thread, a bowstring is part of a magic weapon, ergo making it magical as well - in fact, it must be a masterwork bowstring, and might conceivably be tougher than normal to begin with if it is made out od dragon sinew or purple worm gut).

leo1925 wrote:

Who in their right minds would think that anything good can come from using that? The no.2 option is about something that looks good but it isn't.

Touché.

Also Siege Mage is so hilariously bad that I can't even stand it.

That is true - right up until you are running Spelljammers, where a full 2/3 of all combat is ship to ship/really big monster, or if you are starting off playing a "evil empire slowly gobbling up territory" early on, when suddenly a young wizard's talent for manipulating complex devices becomes critical to the nations defense.

Likewise, if one is running a campaign where equipment of a magical nature is hard to get a hold of, a low magic campaign, or - frightening thought - a D4rk5un campaign, Vow of Poverty suddenly becomes a viable and useful choice, especially if one takes another vow or two along with it. Suddenly the self reliant monk is one of the best classes around.

It's like the Crane Style complaints I see - they apparently suck - unless you're playing a pacifist, someone who doesn't attack first, a monk who duels other warriors to learn their techniques (a staple in many wuxia films, I might add), or even a thoughtful warrior who tests his opponents by playing weak sister at first then hits them with things like Quivering Palm or a Vital Strike enabled Elemental Fist and half-kills his opposition in one blow.

Guess the designers are too busy with GenCon to answer my important question. It's funny, too, how all the gunslinger pics have two guns but no means of reloading without dropping one...

You mean aside from letting the cord catch it when she drops one?

If you look at a lot of real life old pistols and single shot black powder weapons they have lanyard strap catches in the butt of the gun for just that reason.

I am kind of curious why no one mentions the fact that rogues gain Skill Mastery Talent as a major benefit. Bards can take ten on any knowledge check, it is true....but Rogues can take 10 on as many skill as they have intelligence bonus - and that goes up as their bonus points go up. Further, those skills are not limited to knowledge - a rogue can take Skill Mastery multiple times and simply not need to roll on their skill checks. A skill-based rogue with Skill Mastery means that he automatically manages to do what he sets out to do in his area of expertise. With even three feats, he can increase anywhere from three to six skills by anywhere from 2-10 points of bonus depending on the feats, levels, and ranks spent.

While Shadow Strike is a feat tax, it removes the single biggest problem that rogues have, which is concealment=no sneak attacks. Another issue no one ever bothers to address is that Stealth can be used to defeat tremorsense and blindsight if one distracts the creature which has it (this trick will not work for people who are invisible; that's a sight based stealth modifier). If you are aware that a monster has tremorsense and it is aware of you, if you distract it with bluff (thunderstones or marbles work well for this), you CAN hide from them, just as you can use a distraction to hide from a creature looking at you. A rogue can get high enough scores to manage this, and with skill mastery, they can pretty much do it at will.

Just a couple of things I noticed.

I am hearing a lot of the optimizers and minmaxers complain heartily about this book.

This makes me quite happy, to be honest.

To all of you who say guns don't belong in a fantasy campaign, my Giff General, Gen. Franklin Victorio "Hazard" von Boom, smirks meaningfully in your direction from my Spelljammers campaign and offers his dueling credentials.

More to the point, I am looking forward to the gunslinger classes, and know that my players are looking forward to all of them.

I suspect that there is a sorcerer bloodline based on The Way of the Gun already in existence.

Base 10+Full Plate Armor+2 (+11) + Large Metal Shield +2 (+4) +Dex (13, very reasonable for a fighter)(+1)=AC 26 at 7th level after pending a mere 9800 (app.x) out of about 23,000 on magical armor and shield for a fighter.

This is not too unusual, no. Even if the fighter splurged and spent an 4000 on a Ring of Protection +1 and an Amulet of Natural Armor +1 for an AC of 28, that finally might hamper his magical weapons of other magical gear - and that's without the magical buff of a Mage Armor spell.

Also, remember that the Eidolon has the vulnerability of the Summoner. While it may not seem like a vulnerability, when you start hammering on the Eidolon's summoner, he starts draining its hit points....and unlike the fighter, only the Summoner can heal the eidolon, and only if he has the spells memorized. Eidolons never heal naturally.

Party used the un-errata'd version on a purple worm last night. It was the first time I'd ever seen it, so I interpreted it that you save every round to see whether you hurt yourself (as a free action) or do nothing.

We all thought it was hilarious that it was better to fail the save than succeed on it.

The purple worm with his +4 Will save failed most of the time, and we also loved the idea that a massive worm, filled with remorse, was self-harming at 1d8+12 per round whilst trying to pound the party to pieces.

Is there anything in the RAW to suggest purple worms are immune to [emotion] spells? In my opinion the only emotions they feel are "hungry" and "not-quite-so-hungry".

It actually has an intelligence of one, so, nothing RAW.

You could make it vermin instead....

It's still not as powerful as Bestow Curse, where you permanently suffer a 50% chance to do nothing at all every single round. Also, doing nothing doesn't mean you are helpless, so there isn't any coup de grace, and you o not lose your dex bonus, so no sneak attacks or precision damage bonuses that rely on it.