Morgen's page

Well there's a lot that a new edition of Starfinder could have to make it more appealing to me personally! I couldn't see a new edition coming out any time soon but if there's a thread it could be a fun exercise.

-A complete overhaul of the Starship minigame rules. Decoupling them from the APL level and instead using standard in game currencies and make it a system where players are mostly individual fighters that both lessen the burden on the GM and don't leave players sitting at the table bored for long periods of time not playing. A player's ship being part of their equipment effectively ala something like Cowboy Bebop or Star Wars versus the current rules. Luke's X-Wing or The Swordfish II vs the Firefly or Eagle 5. Trade crew roles for class specific abilities, etc.

-Rules for starships interacting with non-starships. Weapon damages for shooting at buildings/people/etc. Rules for hovering and tossing down climbing lines or balancing/fighting on top of them, etc. Likely treating other vehicles (like a truck) as starships that can't fly to keep them all mechanically in the same sphere.

-A complete overhaul of the magic rules to make magic actually a powerful and interesting. Much more interaction between technology and magic in rules. I'd be happier with some kind of conflict between them rather than just both doing the same thing but one takes batteries and the other takes mana.

-A drastic reduction in the legacy third edition SRD numbers in a similar manner to more recent editions of d20 pen and paper RPGs.

-Retain the modular class systems of the legacy third SRD editions which I prefer over the dedicated path system of D&D4/PF2. I find it much more fun to make your own character piece by piece than to be completely tied down in one lane. I'll decide what my character is and how it acts as one of that thank you. :)

-Complete overhaul of equipment. Removal of levels and drastic reduction of weapons/armor for players and starships and a drastic increase in more traditional gear/gadgets/magic. With a numbers reduction these changes would be mostly painless but the system should focus on the players being more skilled with the weapons than just using more powerful weapons. Bigger/badder weapons should come with drawbacks or be the realm of story devices. Also throw out the hand waving fix everything rice stuff component too. It throws out a lot of very classic space fantasy problems.

-Drastic overhaul of the setting to make it a bit more interesting and less the random nation states of Golarian but now it's a whole planet. Places to go in the setting could feel more science fiction interesting versus the trope worlds that currently exist or like are in Star Wars. The scope shouldn't center around one solar system but a modest galaxy with habitable planets being rare.

-The drift could be more interesting as a kind of system to explore rather than how things travel around. I don't hate it but I don't think I like it either. Perhaps if there were alternatives for FTL travel along with it and the drift areas made space combat more into a navel affair like a fight from Banner of the Stars or the climactic fight at the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

-The classes would of course need an overhaul from these changes. Certain older classes should still exist by the settings rules. Clerics/wizards/etc shouldn't be relegated to an optional appendix and instead explored fully in scope. What is a wizard like in the age of space? What does a cleric's god need with a starship? New classes are still good too of course but the idea seems to sell on the Pathfinder in Space idea so it'd be a cleaner fit to mix the classics and new together.

Yeah, these spells were way more useful and appealing back in 3rd edition like that. Honestly it's been very appealing to go back that far and try those rules again. :)

Glad my venting caused some discussion. Hmmm... Spells having a lesser effect on a successful save or perhaps spell slots not being used if no one is affected. Interesting thoughts.

I know no one cares about what I think about anything but this annoyed me 10 minutes ago when I cast Howling Agony and everything made their saving throws and my whole turn ended up being pointless.

It really pushes you towards damage spells. Cast a fireball spell and you at least get to do half damage. I'm talking about spells mind you, not picking good or bad targets. All these save or nothing spells just feel bad.

Spells should be like save or be affected for a round almost always past 1st level.

We should invent a time machine and add this to the list of things to fix after doing all the important stuff you'd have to do with a time machine.

This is hands down the most tedious adventure I've ever had the displeasure of playing in the past 20 years of various living campaigns. If that's what encounter mode is supposed to play like I'm totally out for 2nd edition Pathfinder. It was so bad I felt compelled to come here and complain about it.

Now that I've done that I feel better and can try to put this out of my memory.

Well alright, in no particular order:

Promethean Alchemist for Alchemist
I really like the idea behind this archetype. Building something to fight along side of you is a bit more appealing to me then something like a Summoner. I don't think the homunculus was too useful in a combat heavy game but I still liked the ideas.

False Priest for Sorcerer
The way I see a character in Pathfinder or really any D20 system game is a role-playing concept that you build first and then get the rules to fit. Someone isn't a Wizard because they take levels of the wizard class but rather because they wish to call themselves a Wizard in character. People in my game worlds don't have magic vision to see the PC's character sheets. The feats/classes/etc are all just modules you slot in to help represent what you want your character to do. So something like this really helps fill in a lot of gaps.

Cloistered Cleric for Cleric
Cleric always seems to help build towards a more martially aligned type of character so having something that's more suitably a priest is helpful. In execution I'm not completely about. Not looking for more spell casting but certainly not less. Obviously it's NPC fodder as it sits but to counter that there's already Adept as well. I just enjoy the idea of more of a wandering monk rather than warrior of the faith as an option. The name probably implies more than I think, but names can change.

Tactician for Fighter
I really like the idea of team work feats, but they seem to rarely get used because few people I know seem willing to invest in them. Thus abilities that allow for the sharing of those feats are nice. The brave warrior leading from the front is pretty iconic as well. It runs afoul of the action economy though. :(

Paladin for Cavalier
Turning the charismatic chivalric leader style of mechanics that the Cavalier has and focusing it along into the path of Law and Good really appeal to me. Ever since Gary Gygax in the first Unearthed Arcana put it together it just makes sense. A touch of spell casting and a few abilities towards routing out evil and it just works. Plus I like how it frees up Cleric to take the stage for martial divine characters.

A majority of the issues I want to see, other than like making Paladin an Archetype of Cavalier, fall around the names of things.

Two-handed weapons could be called Heavy Weapons, Prestige Classes (if they're even kept around) could just be Secondary/Advanced/Expansion Classes. Things like that.

But not modes...

I've already burned all my old books and am now waiting for the play test book to come out to start playing it. It's dead to me.

5E is already the game of 'toned down.'

Therefore I would hate to see PF2 take the same path.

Well that's the best part. Things were so ridiculously out of hand usually that there is a ton of room to tone down and still feel different.

It sounded interesting. Are all those terms finalized? The useage of Mode seems like it isn't the best. Things like explorer (exploration?) mode doesn't feel right in a fantasy pen and paper RPG. At least my personal opinion.

Feels more like something an SUV would have.

I don't think it's that unpopular of an opinion. I'm all for it in fact. However I'd want them to be an archetype of Cavalier and see that as a charisma based martial class.

The thing I like most about D&D 5th edition is just the toning down of the huge numbers that rolled around in the 3rd edition era and lived on for over a decade. Running games where people and monsters were roaming about with over +20 to hits or saves or AC's in the 40's got to be just way too much.

Now someone in full plate armor is reasonably well protected even at higher levels. Plus when you do get a bonus it feels much more rewarding.

It's something I hope Pathfinder persues as well. Tone things freaking down a couple dozen notches. Just +1 per level is too much.

Also lower the freaking skill check DC's while you're at it. It felt like everything was 15+ at the lowest in the first edition.

#6 a hundred times over. Cavalier should be a base class. A knightly charisma based martial class that has a Lawful Good archetype of paladin available to it.

Haven't they already done that a few times?

"Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another ... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!"

Emissary Cavalier is nice for a dip to get the ability to move full speed in medium armor.

It's hard as a melee character not to take a level or two of Brawler as well. Mmmm, martial versatility.

Ahh, the wonderful days of charts and ability checks. Honestly I wish I could visit there a lot more often. I enjoy the limitations that were set up. It wasn't 100% bullet proof or anything just like any other game of course but still a lot of fun.

Really we could stand to go for more charts and things. Useful ones though. Wouldn't mind drawing back in ability score prerequisites too..

Yay, more ruling against fun. :(

What do you expect people to do, roll dice to randomly select everything?

It's a game. You're always are supposed to come up with some kind of plan or strategy for the future if you want to do well at a game. That's true for every game from the playground to professional leagues. Even games that seem to be entirely random have large amounts of strategy to them.

Even more specifically Role-playing games in general are games where the reward for playing it (beyond obvious social rewards) is that your character gets more powerful in some manner. The plan for the character starts at first level just by picking a class in Pathfinder.

So there are going to be very few players in this game who aren't going to know what to do after they take their first level of wizard or fighter. They've already made up their minds by making that first choice about a lot of things that need to be thought about for the future.

If you want people to keep gear it needs to be useful to them, not just cool or interesting.

Alignment is a useful tool in helping to understand how another character wants to act. Not how they always do but how they'd like to or how they see themselves. Useful to add that little bit of nudge outside of your own head if you like to get a bit more into role-playing or so forth.

We've never had a Pathfinder or AD&D game without it that I can remember. It has lead to interesting situations of ethical conflict between certain groups.

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to make sure everyone had a heads up on this as I often miss out on cool stuff myself.

Tomorrow is Turkey Day! Starting at 11am US Central Time on November 27th the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day marathon will be starting on Youtube found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p56igk63es

It should be good for hours of football alternative entertainment this year! If you haven't watched MST3k before you are missing out. It even includes some new stuff so it should be quite a lot of fun.

As an added bonus they're streaming Manos: The Hands of Fat on a loop until the new marathon starts up! Torgo-ahoy!

Personally I lie alternatives to standard treasure when the situation warrents it. Titles, land, etc.

Not really no. What I want is to have an enjoyable time with my friends and have interesting adventures. That tends not to happen when everyone is just as powerful or weak as everyone else. I don't expect people brandishing two feet of steel to be as powerful as people who've trained all their lives to injure the laws of physics a few times a day though to be fair.

A lot of these "how do we fix X" threads around here always seem like they'd be "how do we make X less fun."

What I do care about is people using stupid incorporeal alpha strikes in adventure paths. It's lazy!

There are a number of skirmishes going on all over but few countries have the internal stability to wage a large scale wars.

Everything is kind of horrible all over which is kind of making for a rough peace.

No need for an FAQ. It's clearly stated in the rules how it functions.

Create Pit is a conjuration(creations) effect. That fall under the rules for conjuration spells. I'll quote it for you all.

A creature or object brought into being or transported to your location by a conjuration spell cannot appear inside another creature or object, nor can it appear floating in an empty space. It must arrive in an open location on a surface capable of supporting it.

You can cast a pit under something, but not inside of something. Under a table? Sure table falls in. Under a pillar actually attached to the ground (which should be anything structural in most situations) the spell will fail as it cannot appear inside of the support. You can't use it to cut anything in two, trees or otherwise.

If you've got a 10' wide door you certainly could cast it under there and climb down one side and up the other.

I think there is an issue as you're looking at more of an interaction with Disguise and Perception/Knowledge(Planes). If you want to know that they are a tiefling that's handled by a knowledge check roll with a reasonably static DC. If they want to pretend to be an elf the GM rolls a secret disguise check and compares that to a perception check to see through it.

You might be able to be bluffed into thinking that they think themselves to be an elf in your example but without actually disguising themselves it'll be just words.

Also saying that your character is very well aware that they are a known liar there is a special part under the Try Again section.

If you fail to deceive someone, further attempts to deceive them are at a –10 penalty and may be impossible (GM Discression).

Also, profession (gambler) could well be the skill required to run a gambling establishment without being stabbed, in which case making money is kind of easy.

I believe that is usually how simply rolling the profession check would work. Seeing up a table at a local watering hole where the house gets a cut of your winnings in return for giving you the space to work.

At least I remember seeing that in at least one western. Tombstone maybe? Probably others.

Why would they have infinite durations?

Items have caster levels that determine things like "range or other level-dependent aspects of the powers of the item." That is very clearly stated in the magic items chapter.

So Ring of Invisibility last for 3 minutes. Hat of Disguise for 10 minutes. Boots of Levitation for 3 minutes too.

Nothing in their descriptions says anything about them lasting forever. Nothing even suggest that.

Unless you're rolling a large amount of dice static damage is often much more favourable to have over-all.

Even if you're "punching with greatswords" you aren't doing the same effective greatsword damage. A character actually wielding a greatsword will have higher damage from strength bonuses, a better critical range and more bonus damage from feats like power attack than someone unarmed striking. Add to that it is very likely that character invested more into their strength score on average then a monk character and it makes one or two extra attacks from the monk is more to help them keep up than something to worry about.

If we're bringing logic into the question a better question might be why do people feel the need to makes characters that want to punch people in full suits of steel armor or creatures with inches of thick hide like dragons. Though that can be taken further too.

No you're just getting exposed to the vocal part of this message board's community. It exists for pretty much all games in history and will exist for all games in the future, you can even look at old issues of say Dragon magazine and see articles on the same or similar topics. Occasionally they will raise a valid issue but even that is lost in the noise some times.

It's a sliver of players who want to play the game with which the system doesn't exactly emulate some thing in their head and instead of doing what most people do in changing/fixing/ignoring/etc themselves, they demand developers solve their issues and start threads on various message boards about "fixing" monks/rogues/fighters/whatever. The internet is the place where people get a voice after all.

Best advice is to ignore them for the most part and hope that the developers of the games you like don't listen to them just for being loud.

Jeez it's like listening to folks who don't do 3d6 straight down the line for generating a characters ability scores when not using point buy. Coddling your players, tisk tisk. You aren't really adhering to the spirit of rolling for hit points if you're just giving them average+1d4 every level. Seriously some of you may as well speed up play by giving characters max hit points for some of these systems as it sounds like they aren't that far off anyway. Also aren't you lessening the importance of a good constitution score by having every level be such a huge pile of free points?

Alright, as for the proposed house rule: do the people you game with actually do a good job of keeping track of information in your games?

Story elements, coins, NPC names, encumbrance, character sheets, notes, game start times, and that sort of thing? If not then perhaps giving them one more thing to keep track of might not be the best idea. That would be my initial worry with something like what you're proposing. At least beyond just not actually having the risk/reward of properly rolling for hit points.

What in the world is ambiguous about the line, "can use this ability against creatures his own size or smaller by spending 1 point from his ki pool"?

Permanent Bonuses: Ability bonuses with a duration greater than 1 day actually increase the relevant ability score after 24 hours. Modify all skills and statistics related to that ability. This might cause you to gain skill points, hit points, and other bonuses. These bonuses should be noted separately in case they are removed.

You lose the permanent bonus you need to remove those bonus skill points specifically. You need to keep track.

It is important to note that items like the Headband of Vast Intellect grant ranks in specific skills with those bonus skill points, you don't get to pick them other then when crafting the item yourself. Not all items do this so read their descriptions to know which is which.

As for retroactive skill points you can look Here:

All bonuses are retroactive when an ability score increases, be they bonuses to damage, to skill ranks, to hit points, to saves, to skill checks... all of them.

I'm stating my opinion on the subject of Full BAB tier classes hand. I consider the arbitrary ranking of particular classes is a meaningless and wasteful excise. It's a system for GM's who exist in a narrow sliver of people who care enough about the game to try to design encounters properly, but who don't take it a centimeter further into building for the other people they are playing with. It has a use somewhere certainly but I was agreeing with Cheapy that that it is out dated.

Anzyr: "Wizard" and "Fighter" can't do any of those things actually. They are exist only series of abilities on several sheets of paper. A character could do those things, based upon the arbitration of their GM and the situation that they and the entirety of the party are in. A combination of a lot of factors. To say one has an easier or harder time doing something based upon only part of those factors doesn't mean anything.

Athaleon: No sarcasm at all. Perhaps some disappointment in the apparent deterioration in quality of discussion on these boards in the past year or so but no sarcasm.

N. Jolly: While a valid argument I am more inclined to believe that a GM put some amount of thought into building encounters is going to look a lot more closely at what the specific characters themselves are inclined to do.
Tier based encounters might be good for say a living campaign or something you're trying to publish but for most GM's planning around a tier concept is going to lead to frustration when specific solutions aren't available even though tier X says it should be. Plus it doesn't address other major factor of party imbalance that is far more common to come up such as a imbalance of wealth distribution or having players with different levels of interest or rules knowledge. I don't believe when looking at all the factors it is a very useful tool in most GM toolboxes.

Rynjin: You even quoted me saying "in a game" and still went somewhere really uncalled for. I would honestly like an apology from you.

If this comic doesn't contain a 40 page fist fight in an alley I'll be extremely upset.

Well there is a proper race for it yet...

But some kind of Awakened Pony iconic would be great! ;3

There are several i's in Pinkie Pie though! Or are we talking about a different kind of party?

Well the mod can just say that happens and it's just fine. It certainly isn't unreasonable to have that effect from water pressure and the PC's will likely have enough to worry about even with Freedom of Movement.

What exactly are you trying to do?

Well streamlining for the purpose of making mechanics function more in lines with how you would want them to work or for improving efficiency is likely quite acceptable.

I'm talking specifically about when it's done because the "rules is hard" crowd shouts loud enough about something that actually is completely functional if they'd just stop complaining and read a damn paragraph of text.

I can certainly see where your coming from with making sure that all AP stuff remains relevant and as easy to use as is present and I certainly agree in that regard. I hadn't considered those points when writing my list up so my desires are operating in something of a vacuum.

All base classes in core.... Yeah I could go that way.

Maybe Monk more of an archetype of a more generic Martial Artist base class or even under the Fighter class... Meh, more work then it's worth probably.

At some point they'll fight a evil looking ship that's bigger then the enterprise. I'm just going to call that one now.

Oh, and Spock will get angry.

I'd suggest reminding your players that it is both a game and one that your playing and wanting to have fun with and that all the anti-teamwork behavior is hindering that.

Hero Lab is a crutch for the weak! Use paper next time and your fine. ;)

The sin of doing nothing is the deadliest of all the seven sins. It has been said that for evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing.

Allowing evil to go unchecked certainly is not something a good person would do.

Wow, yeah that pretty much means our group can't do much for this adventure path. We seem to die constantly in them. So brutal.

Do what all good Sorcerers do when faced with demons, devils and other annoyingly resistant creatures. Haste the Paladin.

Wow, I don't think people could whine harder that they've got both the time, money and privilege to travel and go to conventions and are somehow annoyed that they have to justify their willing choice to use like 10 different sources to make a single character.

Bring all the material your trying to use is in no way unreasonable an requirement.

I am totally against any revision to the rules. If you want to use something from a book you must own it and bring it.

That system is flawless and there is no argument that will sway my opinion way from it.

Ugh you guys some times with these FAQ's...

You don't get your Clever Explorer ability until 2nd level. You can't actually do anything about magical traps (the actual trap finding equivalent) until 6th level which by that point hey guess what your Clever Explorer ability gives you a +3 bonus. An it gets better from there.

Clever Explorer (Ex): At 2nd level, an archaeologist gains a bonus equal to half his class level on Disable Device and Perception checks. He can disable intricate and complex devices in half the normal amount of time (minimum 1 round) and open a lock as a standard action. At 6th level, an archaeologist can take 10 on Disable Device checks, even if distracted or endangered, and can disarm magical traps. This ability replaces the versatile performance ability.

@Xaratherus - Those classes (I'm not checking them all, Urban Ranger did. You do the rest of the work if that's your counter-point) just get trap finding. By 8th level an Archeologist is better then them without a class skill bonus. +4. By 16th they're +8. They don't need another +3.

Actually PC's don't need the Leadership feat to have those kinds of things. That's probably where your player is having issues.

They get a bonus to the skill that quickly surpasses the class skill trained bonus of +3 so it is likely not an oversight.

I'm just happy to see the thing. Been waiting on something official like that for a while. Finally I can PFS again! :D