Orfamay Quest's page

This thread is based off the earlier thread about boosting fighters by giving them two more skill points.

I would like to propose something more radical, because I think this doesn't really address the fundamental problem with fighters, which is that they're not actually very good at, well, fighting. Rangers get a bunch more skill points, utility spells and free fighting style feats to avoid the problem of multiple attribute dependencies. Paladins get to rock saving throws and self-heal, giving them the survival potential of cockroaches after a nuclear holocaust, and of course barbarians,.... are barbarians.

So here's my proposed "fighter that doesn't suck" new archetype.

Not a Klutz (Ex) Fighters that don't suck are automatically treated as having ranks equal to their level in all Strength and Constitution-based skills. Furthermore, at level one, a fighter that doesn't suck can select two Dexterity-based skills and is automatically treated as having maximum ranks in those skills.

Fight Good (Ex) Fighters that don't suck automatically receive all combat feats for which they have fulfilled the prerequisites. As illustrative examples, a fighter that doesn't suck will automatically have the Power Attack feat if he has a strength of 13 or better, and at sixth level will automatically gain Bloody Assault.

I don't think this would be unbalancing. Such a fighter would still be limited by action economy --- for example, he would still be restricted to a single attack if he moved more than 5' barring an ability like Pounce. He would still be limited by his attributes (Two Weapon Fighting still requires Dex 15, and Greater TWF still requires Dex 19 and 11th level), and would also be limited by basic physics (I don't care how good your Climb skill is, you can't fly like Superman) and basic anatomy (you still only have two hands, so you can't wield eight swords at once like a Harryhausen statue of Kali).

Furthermore, this still doesn't give him spellcasting, rage powers, laying on hands, favored enemy bonuses, and so forth -- the other martial types still have their niches intact. And, of course, CODzilla still owns him straight up, even in a physical battle.

What it does do is let a fighter fight. He can pick up any weapon in the game and use it to good effect, and to be proficient with any physical tactic (such as combat maneuvers) he qualifies for. I think this moves the fighter from a classic tier 5 "waste of space" to a high tier 4 or low tier 3.

This is a followup from another thread discussing the martial/caster disparity and how "unrealistic" it is to for fighters to,... well, to do anything like wizards can. A comment that has come up a lot in that thread is that allowing a fighter to do anything faintly "anime" risks "turning every martial class into into weird magus/jedi/ninja/wizards" or turning a fantasy game into a superhero game.

I'm literally wondering, then, what can possibly be done. So I wish to pose a thought experiment.

Rules for the experiment:

* A party of high level (17th level) martials is taking on a high-level caster (18th level caster, plus enough minions to make it a CR 20 encounter).
* The encounter is taking place in the caster's stronghold. Think, if you like, of Conan encountering the evil wizard at the top of his tower. This gives the caster the home field advantage plus all the prep time in the world.
* The party consists of a fighter, a rogue, gunslinger or a skirmisher ranger, and a brawler. No spells among them. More importantly, no magical items duplicating spells either. This is about martials themselves being cool, not martials pretending to be casters.
* The caster is RAW legal; no nerfing him. Simulacra of wish-granting outsiders, bags of marbles with symbols on them, teleporting to private demiplanes, all legitimate.
* The party is not allowed to do anything "wuxia," "weeaboo," "anime," or similar derogatory words.

.... but other than that, the party is not restricted in any way by the Pathfinder rules. The whole point of this experiment is to figure out what an awesome martial character looks like, feels like, and plays like. So if jumping 50' in the air is "wuxia,"or shooting bolts of lightning from your hands is "anime," you don't get to do that.

And, most importantly
* The party has to win, and win awesomely, so that everyone has a good time.

I'd like people to tell me how a truly exemplary but non-wuxia martial would win this fight, so I know what kind of mechanics would need to be supported.

I'm working on a new character for a new campaign, and one of the overarching goals of this roguelike character is, basically, making enough money to "go legit" and retire to the equivalent of a Park Avenue condominium or Kensington flat.

... just like hundreds of kleptocratic Eastern Bloc zillionaires in the real world, of course.

So my question to the Pathfinder Geographers.... where's the best spot for a former adventurer to give it up and live in luxury? Some spots that don't qualify (IMHO):

* Kalsgard. Too darn cold; might as well retire to a Helsinki beach resort
* Pangolais. Scary sinister government that's likely to get one killed on a whim. Might as well retire to North Korea.
* Kerse. Fanatical theocracy. Too many real-world examples to number, none of which sound nice.
* Mechitar. A country of Gothic necromancers? Too hard to find a date.

So what's the Golarion equivalent of retiring to the Cote d'Azur?

We've just hit the point in our adventures where flying opponents are a regular thing, but not everyone in the party has the ability to fly yet. So it looks like one tactic might end up being "knock down the flying critters so the barbarian can eat their faces."

Assume I'm using Orfamay's Statusifier, and can put any status effect I like onto opponents. Obviously, "dead" would handle the problem, and obviously "deafened" wouldn't. But, for example, can a "dazed" dragon still stay aloft? How about a "pinned" or "stunned" dragon? "Cowering"?

We've been fighting our way through the Dungeon of Never-Ending Incorporeal Undead Hell, and we're rather underequipped and undertacticked. In particular, we just found our first ghost touch weapon, which means we will finally be able to attack effectively. (No, our sorcerer doesn't know any force spells, but thanks for asking.)

I'm wondering how ghost touch interacts with spellstrike. In particular:

Incorporeal (Ex) An incorporeal creature has no physical body. It can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons or creatures that strike as magic weapons, and spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities. It is immune to all nonmagical attack forms. Even when hit by spells or magic weapons, it takes only half damage from a corporeal source (except for channel energy). Although it is not a magical attack, holy water can affect incorporeal undead. Corporeal spells and effects that do not cause damage only have a 50% chance of affecting an incorporeal creature. Force spells and effects, such as from a magic missile, affect an incorporeal creature normally.

Ghost Touch: A ghost touch weapon deals damage normally against incorporeal creatures, regardless of its bonus. An incorporeal creature's 50% reduction in damage from corporeal sources does not apply to attacks made against it with ghost touch weapons.

So what happens when our magus decides to use spellstrike to deliver his empowered maximized 36d6 middle-finger-of-overkill through a ghost strike sword? Does the spell damage get halved or not? Similarly, if he used a non-damaging touch spell, would it still have the 50% fizzle chance?

I've been thinking a bit about the Vorpal weapon enhancement. Basically, I think it's cool (and definitely cool-sounding) but overpriced. The rest of my group feels the same, I think, which is why we've not ever seen an actual vorpal weapon in a game since the Reagan administration.

But if I wave my magic wand of GM Rules Rectification, I can of course house-rule the price to be anything I want. What would be a fair price for "vorpal" if we were starting from scratch?

Alternatively, what am I missing that makes +5 an actual fair price for it?

This thread is inspired in part by the "Ignore me" thread that discusses the perils of high AC characters. The problem, of course, is that smart monsters will realize (eventually) that they can't hit Mr. Cockroach and simply move around him, or resort to other tactics that don't involve AC -- touch attacks, areas of effect, save vs. spells, et cetera.

But I'm wondering how long it would take the monsters -- and by extension, player characters -- to realize that "they can't hit Mr. Cockroach." For example, if I roll a 19 and still miss, then, metagaming, I know instantly that I'm in over my head and should change tactics, but if I roll a 4, a 2, a 3, and another 3 on successive rolls, I know (still metagaming) that my dice are simply trying to kill me, not that I'm overmatched.

How much of this knowledge should be available to the characters? Superficially, the answer could be "none," but this violates verisimilitude. In the real world, I know instantly if I miscue on a pool shot, mess up my footwork on a jump shot, or hit the ball with the edge of the racket instead of the strings, and this could be the case even if I (by luck) managed to succeed on the shot anyway. Similarly, I know if I got a good shot in.

I don't think I'm unusual at that; most of the good pool players I know will know they've missed a shot before I do (and you'll see them turn away from the table in disgust). [Yes, I know, most of the really good players don't miss shots at all.... <rimshot> Happy now?]

So does it make sense that I as a swordsman would know <ooc>rolling a 3</ooc> "well, it would probably work better if I could hold onto the damn sword" vs <ooc>rolling an 18</ooc>"ooh, nice one -- wait a minute, he blocked that?" Is there any support for the idea that rolling an 18 is detectably better than rolling a 3?

As the subject line says, how do I delete unwanted aliases? I hate cluttering up the namespace with characters that I created for PbP games that didn't get picked, and it seems only a courtesy to clean up after myself.

My line of reasoning is fairly straightforward:

A druid can wildshape into a small elemental
A magmin is explictly listed as a small creature of elemental subtype