OzzyKP's page

The cleaning option is a nice way of handling/negating misfires, but that’s still an hour a day that other weapon users don’t have to spend. Or if they had to prepare spells too, or had more than one gun, that’d be a problem.

Either way it is still a downside that doesn’t seem warranted. In 1e misfires were there to try an balance the touch AC targeting, but firearms don’t seem to have any upside that I can see so far.

graystone wrote:

Yeah... a single bullet might break a single bone while a club could crush several because it hits a MUCH larger area. I'm with you on this.

That's actually why firearms have lower base damage dice but high damage dice criticals through fatal. I've got a fun bullet scar on my hip that was more annoying than anything else when I got it, my uncle has a bullet in his rump Forrest Gump Style and a scar on the bridge of his nose from a bullet deflecting off his rifle scope, etc. (I come from a military family where the majority of the last four generations have served). But if those bullets had been an inch to one side or the other, most of them would have been far more serious injuries (had a few of those in the family, as well).

Wouldn’t that be true of any weapon though? A glancing blow with a dagger might just leave a scratch vs a well placed stab would be far more serious. Why would a scratch from a bullet do less damage than a scratch from an arrow or sword?

Am I missing something with the firearms rules? They seem worse than bows or crossbows without any corresponding upside. A flintlock pistol is twice the price of a hand crossbow, does less damage and has a third of the range. Plus it misfires. Why would I ever want to use it? How is it a technological step forward?

Hey Ozzy! Do you mind if I add this to d20pfsrd.com? With credit of course!

Yea, absolutely! Just give me a bit to do more tweaking.

Very well put together. And I like the plethora of options built into the chassis.

You know what else I like? No Wisdom penalty... my martials need Will saves. It makes me smile every time I see something that isn't built to be a spellcaster.

Glad you like it! I figure a mongrel race where any individual can pop out different than their parents or brothers or sisters should have a huge number of options.

Taking hits to their CHA and INT make sense, but I figured they were kind of an 'old soul' type so a reasonable WIS made sense. For their favored class options I put in all the WIS based classes (druid, ranger, cleric, etc).

I'm playing in a Wraith of the Righteous campaign and we are adding new players just as we're about to meet the chief of the mongrelmen (with the hope that we can recruit the mongrelfolk to our cause). I figured it'd be a seamless transition to have some of the new PCs play mongrelfolk, but sadly Paizo never made a PC race for them. I found a monster entry and an overpowered 3rd party attempt.

So I set out to make one myself.

Inspired by the D&D version, and other bits and pieces I've seen elsewhere, I put together my Pathfinder Mongrelfolk race here.

The basic idea of Mongrelfolk is that they can breed with any humanoid and manifest strange combinations of the features of any of their component pieces. It seemed like a neat idea for a race so I went with it. I added a ton of alternate traits since there is such incredible diversity among members of the race. You can swap out claws for wings, or gills, or flippers, or whatever other strange body parts you want.

The cool thing though is that I ran with the idea that as a composite of various races they can count as different races for activating magical items, casting spells, and even picking and adding subtypes to gain access to racial feats/traits for that race.

Please let me know what you think!

CrystalSeas wrote:

thejeff wrote:

You can certainly always choose to be non-violent yourself. That does not always mean there's a non-violent solution. Being non-violent yourself does not always stop violence that others have started.

Of course not.

But seeing a way to resolve a situation non-violently and being able to offer a way to de-escalate violence greatly improve the chance of the situation resolving in a way that doesn't create more harm, or even diminishes the harm that occurs.

If all the solutions you can imagine for resolving a situation require you to use violence, then violence will obviously occur.

If people can see a choice, then it gives them independence and agency. Which is certainly healthier than being under a compulsion to act violently every time.

I absolutely agree with this, if there are meaningful options other than 'fight' and 'die' or 'fight' and 'let someone else be hurt or killed'. There aren't always such options. In a perfect world, there would be, but this isn't that world, and self defense is both a fundamental right, and sometimes the only option someone has to avoid death, while fighting to defend others is often laudable and correct if they are in real danger.

That's exactly as true for police as everyone else, and no more.

I agree with this, but I think Paizo could improve their APs to make more options possible in a given situation. Instead of making all the enemies fight to the death (what I’m seeing so far in Reign of Winter) they could have more nuanced behavior.

Thebazilly wrote:

The idea of swapping out the player characters' role to private investigators makes the AP a lot less distasteful to me.

Because its so much better as a society when we outsource our state sanctioned violence to outside parties. Then their racist and classist behavior is just the fault of individuals that society bears no responsibility for.

Exactly.

thejeff wrote:

keftiu wrote:

OzzyKP wrote:

I haven’t read through this whole thread, and only even heard of this AP when I saw the Paizo blog post, so I apologize if my comment has been said several times before, but if Paizo needs to apologize for having us play cops, what about Hells Vengeance where we play evil supporters of oppressive devil worshippers? Is that not problematic? Or probably most of the APs where the group are violent vigilantes killing their way through the countryside?

I’m not trying to be snarky or engage is whataboutism to make a point and I very much recognize the moment we are in right now and the systemic racism that infests policing (and many other institutions), but this is a sincere question.

That said, I am very much looking forward to more options and consideration for solving problems nonviolently or at least nonlethally. I’ve long felt that too much of the game revolves around killing. I’d love to see skills be more prominent and more varied plots that aren’t just connecting various battles.

But why is a cop so much worse than a pirate or an assassin or a necromancer or a vigilante or a soldier or any of the other roles and classes we are given to play?

Because there's a world of difference between saying "hey, you play bad people in this AP" and saying "hey, the violent cops you play in this AP are good guys."

Or even more subtly, playing hero cops doing hero things and never being unnecessarily violent, still paints a picture of what cops are like that's not real, but one that many white people still hold onto.

Both Officer Friendly and the darker version where cops break the rules to stop the bad guys work as propaganda.

In a thread full of great answers, this has been my favorite.

Playing the "Good Guy" who uses violence to solve problems doesn't quite square with a real life job that shouldn't be using violence to solve problems.

But isn’t that a more fundamental problem with this whole genre? All games involve playing a good guy who uses violence to solve problems. A huge portion of the feats, class features, etc involve combat.

I like the suggestion of doing Around the World in 80 days.

I haven’t read through this whole thread, and only even heard of this AP when I saw the Paizo blog post, so I apologize if my comment has been said several times before, but if Paizo needs to apologize for having us play cops, what about Hells Vengeance where we play evil supporters of oppressive devil worshippers? Is that not problematic? Or probably most of the APs where the group are violent vigilantes killing their way through the countryside?

I’m not trying to be snarky or engage is whataboutism to make a point and I very much recognize the moment we are in right now and the systemic racism that infests policing (and many other institutions), but this is a sincere question.

That said, I am very much looking forward to more options and consideration for solving problems nonviolently or at least nonlethally. I’ve long felt that too much of the game revolves around killing. I’d love to see skills be more prominent and more varied plots that aren’t just connecting various battles.

But why is a cop so much worse than a pirate or an assassin or a necromancer or a vigilante or a soldier or any of the other roles and classes we are given to play?

Ah, I like the max hp suggestion. I’ve got a barbarian, Rogue, paladin, ranger and wizard. Not the most balanced of parties, but they are all pretty experienced players (except the wizard, heh).

I’m also going to try running skill challenges from Everyman Gaming. Hopefully that’ll add some extra trouble for them to deal with. But I’ll definitely use your idea for max hp.

Too bad no one responded to this, I am in exactly the same boat. Running this as my first AP, have a five person party. I was planning to adjust the CR by 25% to account for the extra player, but I haven’t started to look things over in any detail yet.

There are plenty of teamwork feats that seem to be intended for Hunter use, but none of them explicitly say that an animal can take it on their own. That is completely new and an unusual addition if they didn't actually intend for the feat to be taken by animals.

I bet it was a teamwork feat at one point in development.

Oh, it is a teamwork feat. The AoN site doesn't list it as such, for some reason, but it is a teamwork feat. If the intention was for it to be taken by Hunters and then applied to their animal companions then there would be no need to specify that it could be taken by animals.

It opens up a style feat chain:
- Linnorm Hunter Retreat
- Linnorm Hunter Coordination

Oh, I've thought of another question, is there a Handle Animal trick to getting your animal companion to enter a style stance?

I've got a question about the Linnorm Hunter Style feat from the Martial Artist's Handbook.

You and your animal companion work together to make coordinated strikes against your enemies.

Prerequisites: Cha 13, must have or be an animal companion.

Benefit: Once per round while using this style, when an ally with this feat hits a target that you both threaten using a melee attack, you gain a +2 bonus on attacks of opportunity made against that target for 1 round. Enemies that provoke attacks of opportunity from your ally also provoke attacks of opportunity from you so long as you threaten them (even if the situation or an ability would normally deny you the attack of opportunity).

Special: Animal companions with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2 can take this feat.

It says that animal companions can take it, but it also has a CHA 13 prereq. Looking through a list of animal companions there are very, very few that meet that requirement.

Is this feat only intended for those handful of animals? Or does the Special text supersede that prerequisite?

Charlie Brooks wrote:

If the monsters in the Bestiary get common/uncommon/rare applied to them, I'm going to go back to using the 2-20 encounter tables I used to run with in AD&D and make my setting more sandbox-y.

Supposedly, monsters had this in PF1 for Knowledge checks, we just never told you what they were beyond like goblins being very common in the example.

I love this change. And I love how you guys have identified all the vague, contradictory or troublesome rules from PF1 and found a better solution for them. It is like having a new season of a favorite TV show come out that finally ties up all the loose threads and fills the plot holes that have been nagging you for years. Good work!

OzzyKP wrote:

Logan Bonner wrote:

tivadar27 wrote:

Though I do worry that rolling all(?) of the spontaneous casters into a single class is a bit of overgrouping and doesn't give them as much room to make their possible feats more niche.

It's not really all the spontaneous spellcasters. It's a broadening of the sorcerer, but doesn't preclude other spontaneous casters from coming along later and this isn't the only spontaneous caster in the book.

Heh, so as y'all obsess over the mechanics of spontaneous casting I'm over here wondering whether the other spontaneous caster is the Bard or the Druid. Or both?

Both, yet only one: Bard and Druid have been merged into the Hippie class, a spontaneous caster who grooves on flower power and music and, ah, "herbalism." :-P

Oooh, they never did make a Druid-Bard hybrid class.

tivadar27 wrote:

Though I do worry that rolling all(?) of the spontaneous casters into a single class is a bit of overgrouping and doesn't give them as much room to make their possible feats more niche.

It's not really all the spontaneous spellcasters. It's a broadening of the sorcerer, but doesn't preclude other spontaneous casters from coming along later and this isn't the only spontaneous caster in the book.

Heh, so as y'all obsess over the mechanics of spontaneous casting I'm over here wondering whether the other spontaneous caster is the Bard or the Druid. Or both?

FWIW, Jason and Stephen discuss PF2 Backgrounds in this presentation, starting at 43:00. It's a good overview. Some highlights.

Jason wrote:

Building your characters is following your ABCs: Pick your Ancestry, your Background, and your Class ... You pick your Ancestry, that's where you came from, that's how you were born; you pick your Background, which is how you grew up; and then you pick your Class, which is what you've trained to be.

Now we know the real reason race was replaced with ancestry. RBC just doesn't have the same ring to it.

If your attack hits with spellstrike, but your spell gets nullified from a failed defensive casting check, or spell resistance, does your attack still go through?

Can you use hold the charge to use the spell again next round?

And now it is 2016 and still no correction, or errata or confirmation.

Consider this your every two year bump to again ask for clarification on this rule and the contradiction here.