Isn't the easy way to fix the monk is to make them full BAB and replace flurry with the two-weapon fighting chain at the right levels that only work with monk weapons and unarmed strikes. At 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, 20th their unarmed strikes get a +1 enhancment bonus and like weapons bypass DR of equivlent weapon.
Thank you everyone. I am really glad for the warm response to this. I'll be honest in that I was sweating it a bit (not knowing if I'd customers afterwards). But it was the right thing to do. I stand by my conviction and my gay friends. More power to you, it must be tough being a 3rd party publisher, but were you really worried about loosing customers? I am as conservative as it gets on this issue in real life, but could care less about some npc's in a supplement book. I think I might buy your book because it seems like a good product not because of some stance for/against gay rights. So yeah just wanted to say as someone who doesn't share your beliefs go ahead and put in whatever content you want like that and know that if it is a good quality product it should stand on it's own. You didn't lose me as a potential customer and from the rest of the thread might have gained some.
Make them do a d4 (I just dislike d3's) and let them add primary casting stat to the damage. So wizard with 18 int does d4+4. Puts it in the same category as weapons. No I am saying a wizard should be on par with his at-will attacks, so a d4+4 vs touch AC is about the same as a ranger with a bow point blank shot and precise shot. I haven't had my players count ammo, encumbrance, or silver pieces in over a decade. I don't care how much a room or meal costs and ammo counting is not fun.
Your idea works fine, whatever let's your group have fun. Make things more difficult for them without disable device but not impossible. If they find the trap and can skirt around it maybe that causes some problems for them. They could also just put ranks into disable device just won't get the class skill bonus. In fact there might be a trait or two that makes it a class skill for one of them and gives a small bonus to the roll. But 100% agree that sometimes other skills like survival should be able to sub for disable device.
Very interesting question, undead don't suffer morale effects, take ability score damage to physical stats, or ever have to make a fortitude save, so I don't think you could torture one with 'pain'. "Good implies altruism, respect for life, and a concern for the dignity of sentient beings." --core rule book p. 166 The important part being the 'dignity of sentient beings'. Intelligent undead are most certainly sentient beings and being tortured is not very good for your dignity. So yeah according to the rules it looks like it is not a good action. For whats it's worth this comes from someone who wants more real world Jack Bauer types running around.
It is just another weapon in his arsenal if his character feels that way stop trying to make him conform to your desired play style. The summon natures's ally spell summons real world animals to your side in combat with a damn good chance they will die in battle, it is something the gods or powers that be give them and it is expected. His character can see animals as disposable tools to get a job done or as food, not every druid is a tree hugging vegan who thinks animals are just as important as people, some are militant revolutionaries who see any means to an ends as a good justification for their actions. Druids can be C.N or N.E and do all kinds of crazy/evil things. Plus he should really have a tiger maybe he wouldn't want to BBQ an animal that could hold his own in a fight.
Ring of sustenance
That is a very close to the the christmas tree of magic items all my players and my characters want in every campaign. Of course when you are at very high levels some things get swapped out for 100,000+gp things like rings of spell reflection. One of those items needs to be intelligent to get free action buff spells cast on you, and give you blindsight.
Yeah adamanitine katana in my games would slice through a wall I might make it do a little less damage than an adamantine pick or earthbreaker but I have read enough wolverine comics to know walls and adamantine blades combine to equal a wall in pieces. Now saying that I do also make certain places in my games indestructible. Also imagine a wall thicker than the blade is long without a lot of work removing chunks of wall might take awhile. I once played a character who had an adamantine greatsword I stabbed a guy through a one foot thick wall it was damn fun. I had to make a listen check (3.5), overcome full cover and total concealment, the damage to the wall was reduced from my attack, but I still hit and sent the guy negative. Loved it.
Purchase or make an intelligent bow that can cast gravity bow 3/day as it's own action. They don't cost that much money. Telepathy, 10 int, 10 wis, 10 cha, senses 30', and cast level 1 spell 3/day = +2,700 g.p to base price so only 1,350 to creation cost of bow. Now you can give it mental orders to activate as a free action when you want 3/day as long as you are holding it. Might as well put some other buff spells in there as well remembering haste is only second level for summoners. So adding haste 3/day is only 7,200 to base price. People always forget about intelligent items when optimizing characters I mean who doesn't want no action buff spells on the cheap.
How about not screwing them over, I mean the goal of running the game is to tell a good story not to be a dick to your friends. I would set the limit to the normal material component cost of wish, so 25,000 g.p. But that should be creation cost, so a 50,000 g.p item. So the game doesn't get to broken by deviating from wealth by level, and so that you can have some fun with them, mess with them by using most of that gold to make the items intelligent. If you want mess with them make it so the sentience in the items are npc's they know and hopefully like. Now they have people's souls in the items they won't sell the items and hopefully when they can afford to revive the npc's they will, make it a quest to get the souls out of the items.
Just let her use weapon finesse with the staff she will still be behind dual wielding short swords by only having a threat range of 20.
Every addition to the game adds more and more options to power game with whether they are 3rd party or core. So why open the flood gates, the other option is going through book by book and see badly it interacts with everything else. Also some 3pp do dumb things like give races odd number bonuses to ability scores or use different saving throw bonuses then the core two good/bad. Plus most of the stuff is just the ideas of one guy with little play testing done to it, I am one guy and can do my own play testing with my group so why not just come up with my own custom under play tested unbalanced stuff.
Been running the game for a long while now over a few editions, never once told someone they couldn't use a weapon in certain area, stolen or destroyed a spellbook, or used a low charisma score to hinder a player more than what the rules say in pathfinder that is to modify skill checks for the most part so if you have a 6 charisma (-2) modifier put one rank in diplomacy that is a class skill you end up with +2, so he is just as good at talking to people as the guy with the 12 charisma and no skill. But different people have different fun what works for your group is not the same that works for mine. But the real issue I have is DM's that don't convey the facts they will punish people by making weapons useless in certain situations, target spell books, or make NPC's react to them based on Charisma instead of skill checks. If I know these things before hand I make a knife fighter, sorcerer, and someone with not a negative charisma. If the players have the knowledge at character creation that these house rules are in play all is good, if not it is punitive for making one character over another.
Who says the other five members of the group are not much better 'role' players then him. Optimizing a character does not mean you don't role play that character. Plus we are not even talking optimization here, we are talking just being effective. I have kicked a player out of my group for this kind of BS we got into a big argument after his halfling rogue would just hide behind his pony for the whole fight. He refused to be even helpful to the group and when in character the players tried to talk to him and get him to do his job and contribute he refused so they asked him to leave the group again in character. After all this 'role' playing the player got pissed. So in real life we explained that his characters needed to do something in combat, he then threw a hissy fit sat down and started making a dumb uncharismatic fighter who he said would just say "smash" and hit things with his sword. I asked him to leave at this point, if you can't understand the difference between making a character that contributes and has personality and making either type of character on the spectrum then no need for you. Yes we are playing a role-playing game and combat is not everything but it is expected and your character should be expected to handle himself in that situation, just as when we spend a night at a dinner party thrown by the town mayor you should be expected to handle yourself in that situation. Again why do people assume this guy role plays better because he has a crap character.
Just remember that a paladin sees the world in black/white terms there are no shades of grey. They detect evil evil must be overcome good will triumph in the end, the problem comes down to if the DM wants that kind of story. Think of it this way a paladin is Superman, sure he can team up with the JLA and get things done but he is always Superman first. In the end of the comic he wins and he wins because he stayed to his code of conduct and that is the story the writer wanted to tell. If the DM wants to tell a story about grey moral areas and there is no good choice just a selection of varying bad choices then he is telling a Batman story and you shouldn't be playing Superman in that game. It takes two people to make good paladin stories the player and the DM. So yeah ask him what he wants out of a story with a paladin in it.
Maybe you can have fun role playing and tell an engaging story with balanced mechanics behind the system. Maybe an optimized build for a character is just that a build and the role playing aspect can not be represented by numbers on paper but by the words and actions the character does in the setting. Maybe a sword cane could just be a short sword hidden in a special scabbard. Maybe we can agree that the game is not perfect and it is up to DM's to fix problems at the table.....like making a sword cane a valid choice. Maybe I want the system to give me a ton of equally valid mechanical choices for characters and let me then let the story come out of that. But mostly maybe we can all stop telling each other we are playing our game of pretend wrong and not doing it correctly. I mean come on if your table is having fun and my table is having fun that's all that really matters in the end.
Almost every character in my group and all I have played. Spiked gauntlet (alchemical silver)-25gp
Can't be disarmed, can cast/use other weapons/climb/grapple/fire a bow ect while having them on. You always have some form of overcoming two forms of DR. You always threaten the squares next to you even if you are using a bow so that enemies can't run past without provoking attacks of opportunity. You provide a flanking bonus. If you are swallowed whole you already have a light piercing weapon in hand to get yourself out. Note in my kingmaker game I rolled up a werewolf as a wondering monster when the party was first level. It started as a social encounter between the trapper (werewolf in human form) and the party once he realized the whole group had silvered gauntlets on he quickly made an excuse and left them alone. They never realized he was a werewolf but without those gauntlets he would have asked to travel with them for safety and killed them that night once they set camp.
Anyone done any groundwork to convert Dragon Age to d20/Pathfinder? I own the Green Ronin game and well it doesn't do it for me. I can't think for the life of me why a company that has a great d20 base with 3 core classes and a default level range of 1-20 (I'm talking about True 20 here) didn't just use that instead of trying to come up with a bunch of new rules from the ground up. So yeah any good homebrew stuff for DA out on the interweb?
My players really want to do a spell point system and I am inclined to agree with them but both of the traditional options I think don't work well. First the option out of Unearthed Arcana (available on d20 srd) doesn't take into account that spells that don't use caster level for damage can be abused. Example casting a magic missle that does 5d4+5 uses 9 spell points the same as casting a 5th level spell, but casting color spray costs 1 all the time. Plus nothing stopping casters from going nova all the time. Second a popular house rule I've seen is convert spells able to cast on a level to point ratio total points and that is your mana pool to cast spells. Spells cost only their level in mana so a fireball cost 3 mana. The problem with this is not that a mage can spam magic missle every round but that he can nova his highest level spells round after round. My players want to just use the second system, but I find it to broken and said no. But now that I have some time to sit down and think about things I came up with this idea....sorry it took so long to get here. Cool Down Die Use the second option as far as determining total mana and cost of spells but to keep casters from just using high level spells round after round limit how much mana they can use. Take the highest level spell the caster can cast and double it this is your cool down die. Those able to cast only 1st level spells won't need one you will see in a bit and casters able to cast higher than 6th level can just use a d20 and set it to the right number. The die starts at double the highest level you can cast, and when you spend mana lower the die by that amount you can only spend an amount of mana equal to or lower then the die. At the end of your turn raise the amount of the die by one if you cast a spell that turn and by two if you did not. Example.
Round 1: Tim casts Wall of Force (5 mana) he subtracts 5 from his mana point total and lowers his cool down die by 5. But takes it back up by one at end of round so it's now at 6. Round 2:Tim casts Fireball (3 mana) he subtracts 3 from total mana pool and lowers the cooldown die to 3. At end of turn he takes it up to 4. Round 3:Tim with his cool down die at 4 can't spend the 5 mana he needs to cast another Wall of Force but does cast Black Tentacles for some much needed crowd control. This reduces his total mana now down to 77 for the day but his cool down die goes to 0 at the end of the round going back up to 1. Round 4:Tim could only cast 1st level spells this round but chooses to instead use his wand of lighting bolt. He doesn't cast a spell himself this round so at the end of the round he increases his cool down die by 2 points going up to 3. Round 5:Tim ....you get the idea by now. So if you stayed with me and read all that what do you think? Ohh and I know about the beta test for words of power that just got released and emailed my players so they could take a look maybe that will make them happy, but since I had this idea I wanted to share it with the world and put it down somewhere. |
