Mudfoot's page

Having played a sorcerer, I can certainly agree that they suck at 3rd level and generally feel very one-dimensional for a while because of always doing the same thing. Lack of skills is a problem, so 4 points is certainly right.

It's all very well claiming that a sorcerer gets UMD, but in practice he doesn't because his 2 skill points are sunk into KA, Spellcraft, Perception and Intimidate. And there's no point in touching UMD unless a) it's reliable, b) you have some items and c) you have nothing better to do. At low levels you have neither item nor skill, and at high level...you're a full caster. You don't need no items.

Whilst they are claimed to have more spells per day than a wizard, it's actually about equal if the wizard specialises. But more to the point, a wizard can scribe scrolls. Given a bit of time (and it's not much time - scrolls are quick, easy and fairly cheap, especially if you don't need to pump the CL) a wizard can loads of spells, plus enough for contingency uses. And the wizard gets enough skill points and feats to make other toys.

As for the spell levels, I'd just give the bloodline spell (and ONLY the bloodline spell) at 3rd/5th/etc. It's always seemed off that it should come in after the others. This makes odd levels meaningful but not overpowered, while emphasising the bloodline flavour.

I'd take a bard because a) it can cover the skill monkey slot, b) there's no obvious Face character above (paladin and sorcerer are skill-starved) and c) it's a big party with pets so the bard makes a good force multiplier. A bard can also make a competent archer or reach fighter without having to worry about modest hp and AC.

First post 2012, but I must have lurked for a while.

Some types of character (a typical paladin or stock wizard) need very few feats. Others (switch-hitter archer, TWF) need many more. So increasing feats makes a lot of new builds practical, though you may find some weird exploits coming online as well.

Are bees sacred to Calistria? IRL, they're just fat vegetarian wasps (both Apocrita), so could legitimately fall in her portfolio. But it's never mentioned anywhere that I can find, so maybe not. Then again, bees should be sacred to somebody.

I started with Blue Book D&D in 1981 and played 1e for years with side quests in a couple of dozen other RPGs. I got sick of AD&D 1e by about 1986 because its rules are so arbitrary, unrealistic, badly laid out, unbalanced and incomplete. It's really easy to DM and fun for dungeon-bashing as a kid, but you can't tell a story that makes sense because so much is broken and mortality is too high for decent character development. My house rules folder was thicker than the PHB by the end.

When 2e came out I had hoped that it might fix things, but no. Balance was a bit better but it still had 80% of the faults. I ignored it and played GURPS and RQ2 and Toon and WFRP and CoC instead.

3e was a lot better in dozens of ways and brought me back to D&D. It was simpler through its consistency, but more work because monsters had stat blocks. The OGL was a magnificent feature. IMHO feats were a good idea but too rare and underpowered. 3.5 improved balance a bit but felt as much like a reason to pay more for new books.

4e is a boardgame dressed up as an RPG. Not for me. If I want a boardgame I'll play SFB.

PF1 is 3.5 with many improvements, albeit with layers of added splatbook cruft. Which is only manageable because of the SRD. But it is fairly fascinating and adequately balanced, and it comes with a very detailed world and does allow for some real storytelling potential and genuine character arcs.

I studied PF2 in the playtest and saw too many things I didn't like. I can see why it exists (easier to GM, most notably), but it's not for me. Same for 5e.

Agreed that Perform is a necessary class skill for Bards & Skalds and a non-event background skill for everyone else, so making it a class feature akin to Wild Empathy is sensible. But do dock those classes a skill point if you do. The Bard has too many anyway.

I've found that background skills come up quite a bit, but I can see that stopping at higher levels where magic >> skills.

Get a few clerics, even level 1. Channels can heal a vast amount of damage if your army is packed into the AoE. And depending on domain, they can add a lot of other useful 1st level spells.

Which is basically why I don't see how it can be Torag. It's just too inconsequential. If even the dwarves aren't that bothered, who else is going to care? Blacksmiths and engineers (who aren't a major constituency) can go to Brigh, for example.

I'll pick Gorum or Gozreh.

1) sounds like it, in that undead seem to turn up from many cases where the creature died in 'improper' circumstances. Though there are a lot of criminals that become undead, with no obvious indication of whether the burial rites affect it.

2) Yes and no, in that it seems to be a matter of what the creature thinks is important at the time. For example, ghosts want what they want, religion notwithstanding.

3) Maybe. I imagine it makes some corporeal types much harder to manifest.

4) Depends on the CR you want. I think you'll need to roll your own, and it will depend on how much of a story you want to make out of it. I might take the vulture and buried aspects and have a vulture/human shadow/ghost that arises from a Gravebound or Immured. The ghost haunts the PCs until they return to the burial to dig her up, whereupon the Gravebound tries to bury them to see how they like it. Both will keep reappearing until the body is exhumed and left out for the vultures with proper ceremony.

Judge Dredd would be an absolutely stereotypical Hellknight. I'd be surprised if he wasn't one of the inspirations for them.

Homunculus. Cheap, disposable, make as many as you want, no control or alignment problems. They're barely any use in a fight but that's not the point. They're more like movie Minions in that they're small and stupid-intelligent. You can even make them look distinctive and the GM can endow them with individual personalities.

The only downside is that you're short 2 feats (Craft Construct and Craft Magic Arms & Armour).

I want to run a campaign based on the other bits of the Starstone that must have been produced when Acavna and Amaznen "shattered the world-killing projectile into thousands of pieces" (wiki). I figure that there must be loads of little pebbles scattered all over Golarion, and these things have magical properties, which make them useful for making magic items.

The plot would be that the PCs find such an item, and Bad Guys (tm) try to steal it off them. The PCs uncover a plot by said Bad Guys to collect enough Starstone pieces to attain divinity, which would be a Bad Thing. Cue a race to find lots of magic items which are, naturally enough, in the possession of assorted monsters, nobles, temples, libraries and extra-planar weirdos of all CRs.

It would probably make a passable AP.

Is there an in-universe justification (plot aside) why Karzoug et al had to create their own pocket demiplanes to hide from Earthfall rather than simply teleporting or plane shifting or gating to somewhere safe and relatively comfortable like Castrovel or the Elemental Plane of Air?

I'm still betting on Asmodeus for the chop. Too much D&D.

The Commoner Railgun isn't magic but breaks physics.

For those who missed the lesson, the railgun works by lining a lot of commoners up in a row and getting the first to drop (free action) an object in the neighbour's square and him to pick it up (readied move action). Rinse and repeat. Potentially infinite movement speed for that object.

The first link "Index of articles (1E)" on this page links to that list.

If you know what subject you're looking for, the PF Wiki will have a reference to any sources it has for that, which should include the APs. Might be quicker than trawling through the 200 AP pages.

IMC, the PCs rescued a (now-orphaned) girl. They took her to the local temple of Erastil and left her in the care of the priest with a suitably fat donation to ensure she was looked after. It's not as though it's sensible to go adventuring with an 8-year-old kid.

I would say no, because it doesn't do fire damage unless it's spitting out fireballs. Your GM might allow you to craft some extra gimmick like this as an added function of the wand, but given that it's just a short and flimsy stick, it's hardly going to do any damage anyway. Like 1d2 or something. And unless you make it out of metal, it's going to be very fragile so it's very risky.

You're a wizard. Stick to spells.

Regarding that wand, you might consider whether it's value for money. Assuming 13 encounters per level, it will last 4 whole levels [i]if you use it once in every single encounter.[/] In practice you'll barely manage half that unless you like blowing your party up (hope they're fire-resistant too) meaning that it's likely to last until you're 15th level, and long since obsolete.

Worth doing. As you say, FCBs badly need some balance.

What does 1/3 confirm on SA mean? An increase to the chance of confirming a crit on a sneak attack? If so, that's almost worthless. Or is it a chance in 20 that any SA is a crit?

For the spontaneous casters, 1 spell known is far better than half a 1st level power. They tend to be junk by 4th level, and if your casting stat is significant you have all the uses you need anyway.

Paladin: is that 1/2hp every time? That adds up quite fast. At 8th level, 2 FCBs give +1 hp some 7 times per day (at 16 Cha) against just 2 hp as normal FCB usage for hp.

Ranger dodge: Is this against all FE? One FE? Weaker than the usual 1/6 of a feat anyway as Dodge is a mediocre feat and this is situational. I would go for +1/2 or +1/3 of a normal FE bonus against one type (so 2 or 3 points gives +1 against undead, for example) with some limit.

Nitpick: the original name for J* in the 1e Monster Manual and 1e DMG was Juiblex, not Jubliex or Jubilex. Which is odd, because I distinctly remember people calling him Jubilex in the early 80s. Maybe it's phonetically more familiar.

Otherwise, Yahoo tells me that Jubilex is "an up and coming dubstep artist", whatever that means.

The Greek pantheon spawned dozens of mortal or demigod offspring. I imagine many other RL religions have been similar. So what about on Golarion?

Aroden and Cayden probably had kids before apotheosis and quite plausibly afterwards. Norgorber? We'll never know. Irori and Nethys? I doubt it. Iomedae? Sounds very unlikely. And then there are people like Kurgess and Milani and so on. And that's just the ones who started on Golarion. Lamashtu must have bred with humans at some point. Ditto Calistria, but she probably wouldn't have had kids.

All I can find on PF Wiki is Godling which says they exist but gives no examples.

So if these gods did leave descendants, where are they?

I've never been in a situation that was not improved by the addition of more "hot, dark and tragic goth" goddesses.

There's also Naderi and (a bit less gothic) Arshea. Somehow I can't imagine that's all.

The RL price of books in the past varied enormously based on the technology available. Imperial Rome had ample supplies of papyrus, so cheap books were common (even to the extent of what amounted to trashy paperback fiction). But after the fall of Rome and the loss of Egypt to the Muslims, Europeans used parchment (= vellum, ie sheepskin) which was vastly more expensive so literacy plummeted until paper turned up from China.

So arguably the cost of a journal should vary greatly depending on where you are: countries adjoining the Inner Sea or the Sellen can probably get papyrus from Osirion, but others around there use parchment. The far east uses paper. Other technologies may exist, such as writing on leaves (as in South Asia).

But quite honestly, in this case it's just flavour so it need not cost anything significant.

I think Gozreh is pretty safe for the same reason. He/she has to exist because nature and whatnot, but makes no effort to be memorable.

Alkenstar City - gunslinger. Obviously.

Fighters could be anywhere, but maybe Tymon because of the gladiators.

I'm expecting Asmodeus to go, just because he's a D&D refugee with only minor mythological fame beyond RPGs.

I imagine that Cayden's ritual involves beer.

RAW, the rituals can't get too complicated or involve too much equipment, as the casting time for Raise Dead or Resurrection is only 1 minute. So while you might like Torag to need a forge, or Norgorber to need a murder to substitute for the death, or Gozreh to need the body to be exposed to the weather, it's not happening.

But that aside:
* Calistria will expect a) sex afterwards and/or b) revenge on whatever killed the victim. Not sure about the trickery.
* Zon-Kuthon expects a lot of pain. The poor sod getting raised might not appreciate it.
* Asmodeus. Paperwork as above will probably involve a contract for something unwelcome.

Mirror Image is broken in oh-so-many ways. For example, if a Gargantuan dragon casts it, are the images in his square? He covers many squares, so if you're shooting said dragon with an arrow, the presence of the images isn't going to make you miss. And if they're not in his square (which is pretty much required if the spell is going to mean anything) they might not fit into the same room.

It was fine in old D&D and 1e AD&D when people didn't look at verisimilitude very closely, and all wizards were human-sized. But in 3e or PF it makes a lot less sense.

Sounds reasonable to me. I'll go with that, in the unlikely event that it ever comes up.

As a related question, does a swashbuckler regain panache if her critical hit is negated by Fortification armour? I'd assume not.

The same crossbow will always do the same damage regardless of who shoots it (feats like Deadly Aim, etc aside). But a crossbow with a stiffer bow or a longer draw will do more damage, and (all else being equal) require a stronger user to draw the thing with the same ROF. Why is that so hard to understand?

I suspect that the average peasant and his wife have no ranks in Profession: Cook, but somehow they seem to survive. It's a mystery.

You can certainly make a stronger crossbow; it just needs more strength to cock it. It's probably heavier and maybe larger, but otherwise the same as the equivalent type with the same mechanism.

PF doesn't describe crossbows very usefully. Something with the rate of fire in PF would be something like a stirrup bow or gastrophetes (for a light crossbow) or a goats-foot bow (for a heavy). A windlass bow is much slower and couldn't possibly be used in melee, AoO or not.

The presumption here is that Prestidigitation takes no skill in itself other than casting it. Sure, you can give the guy a haircut, but is it a good haircut? Is he clean, or have you missed a bit, or tried to remove a tattoo and scraped him raw? Is the 'dirt' that you removed from his clothes actually a wax-print Batik pattern that's supposed to be there?

And likewise, if you want to flavour food, how appropriately did you flavour it? Basil and garlic ice cream is flavoured, but I suspect it's not nice. And so it goes.

As it's just a 0th level all-purpose spell, I'd think that it's a case of Jack of all trades, master of none. It's just providing the tools to do a job, but none of the skill.

Not bad, but I don't like the clunky +10 at levels 10, 15 and 20. I'd just allow you to take the feat twice to get extra metamagics and extra Sacred Insight pool. And I'd also give you your Int bonus in SI points (not doubled for two feats).

Squared is rather harsh; you might change it to an additional 1d6 per effective spell level; if you don't have enough, the pool is exhausted and the spell fails and is lost. It means you can do it a couple of times with your better spells if you invest in a rather useless skill.

For example, at 9th level and 24 Int, 9 ranks gives about 28+7=35 SI points. Empowered Fireball (5th) is 5+5d6 is about 22. You can probably still do a Toppling Magic Missile (2 = about 9) or maybe a Persistent Charm Person (3 = about 13) with what's left.

I suspect it escaped negative comments because TLDR. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Most people are less than 2.25 cubic feet in volume.

Er...no. A typical adult human* weighs about 75kg and is slightly less dense than water (we float). So that's about 80 litres, or 0.08 cubic metres, which is 2.825 cu ft. So once you've included the big 250lb half-orc, his armour and pack you probably want to allow at least 5 cuft.

Though in any case, that's still well within the 10 cuft capacity of the spell. A horse is a different matter.

It's a bit odd that it's dependent on volume. You'd think surface area was the important factor.

* I admit that Ravingdork said 'most people' not 'a typical adult human' so arguably he's right if you include children and halflings.

Glamered armour, so you look like a soft target?

Chant as though you're casting a spell; with a decent Bluff roll you might make it look convincing enough, especially with a few ranks of Spellcraft thrown in. It depends on the opponent, of course (such as if they have Spellcraft too). You'd need some other M/V/F/DF components to make it look really good, and that would imply an action.

More broadly, Bluff should let you look vulnerable, but there's nothing RAW for that. IMHO there should be a way for Bluff to draw an AoO which you can defend against, but again there's nothing in RAW.

If you can research a spell to do what you want to do, and make a wand of that, go ahead. But it's a GM decision what the spell level would be, or if there are any other requirements.

Fighters can already fight. They don't need much, or maybe even any, help in fighting. They need help with things that aren't fighting. Start with skill points, some way to bolster will saves and something to help them move about at high levels where full attacks become properly important.

PBS is just attack bonus and damage. You can surely elect to do less damage by not pulling the bowstring back so far, and you can elect to be less accurate by rushing the shot or jumping up and down or otherwise doing it badly. This is independent of PBS, and applies to anyone, feats or not. Likewise you could ignore Precise Shot or Weapon Focus or Spell Focus or Skill Focus or Improved Bull Rush or Combat Casting in the same way.

I started my campaign there, but it's really based around the Lumber Corporation, Chelish espionage, interplanar conspiracies and Treerazer. It starts with a theft, goblins and a fire in a lumber yard and probably won't help you very much.

The only published scenario in Bellis is The Fellnight Queen, but that's 7th level and wasn't much use to me.

I had to flesh out the area quite a bit. From a strategic POV, Bellis is important but very vulnerable, being on a wide and indefensible river with a vaguely hostile neighbour and surrounded by Fey of no reliable alleigence. So it needs fortification, a series of watchtowers on the river, a land route west to the rest of Andoran and a bunch of local villages for farming, mining, logging, fishing and so on.

So there's a small castle on a bluff overlooking the town, a fort protecting the harbour and the usual walls. There are two sawmills (copy that from Sandpoint or Magnimar); logs either by the Bellis Brook (a smallish creek) or floated down the Sellen, roped together in rafts and are processed here.

Fields and farms surround the town (aside - have you noticed how fantasy films forget this? LOTR stands out here; what do the people of Edoras or Minas Tirith eat?).

Main road (starts as a half-maintained muddy track, gets much worse) goes W to Carpenden through a series of villages:
8 miles: Witlow. Small, boring
12 miles: Essenby. Big lumber yard, top end of Bellis Brook.
16 miles: Purford: Small, boring
20 miles: Tacken’s Bridge. Bridge over a river, toll. The inn is a fleabitten hovel - avoid. West of here it's not very safe, especially at night.
27 miles: Hazelford. Copper mines, ford, charcoal, hazelnuts
32 miles: Ridgefoot. Copper mines, ford, bottom of big hill. Dwarves maintain the road and have a toll booth.
35 miles: Barten: Fort and small town controlling ferry over Dragonfly River. Suspiciously excellent inn.
(the road continues, but I've not written anything)

Details aside, the point is that it's not simply an isolated town in the middle of nowhere. So you can set any adventure here if it fits with a river or forest, and even that's not 100% necessary.

Two other ways to make a tripping paladin:

1) Dump Dex and put no skill points into Acrobatics

2) this

Paragon Surge.

Not that any of these have ever come up, but these are the ones that would be pre-banned automatically, off the top of my head.

Chained summoner. Sacred Geometry. Leadership. Finding Haleen, Magical Lineage, Wayang Spellhunter. Dazing Spell. Come And Get Me. Fate's Favored.

More to the point, multiple small attacks relies on multiple attacks which relies on a Full Attack action, and that's often not happening.

I (and other people) scale Aid Another by the DC you beat, so DC10 = +2, DC20 = +3, DC30 = +4, etc. Which gives something like the same effect you have, but less on/off, and also allows more people to give meaningful help.

Advantage is a very non-linear thing, and averages out to +3.35. But it's effectively +5 if you need a 10 and +1 if you need a 20.

The other way to use multiple skill rolls is to have multiple effects; the wizard in the above example could have come up with a useful fact the bard didn't get. In a Diplomacy situation the bard might persuade the duchess but the paladin impresses her general.