Perpdepog's page

Perpdepog wrote:

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:

Vanguard: Blast me! Blast me!

Kuthonite Mystic: ... okay we all need to set down and have a talk with that one.

The thing I find really concerning in this hypothetical?

The weaksauce conviction of your Kuthite mystics. It sounds like someone needs to spend a couple weeks in the company of a few Joyful Things to get their head on straight.

Actually on-topic, I also thought it was a bit funky that vanguards got 6 skills per level while both of the full BAB classes only got 4.

... I was making a joke aka "I'm a Kuthonite and even I think something is off here."

I was making a joke as well.

Clearly I failed.

Psychic is just more stuff for Technomancer.

You could extend this to the mystic and witchwarper as well, given that Starfinder doesn't make any assertions about where your your magic comes from.

On the whole the one thing I feel Starfinder has done pretty well is enabling folk to play their "fantasy in space" archetypes with the tools given.

Vanguard: Blast me! Blast me!

Kuthonite Mystic: ... okay we all need to set down and have a talk with that one.

The thing I find really concerning in this hypothetical?

The weaksauce conviction of your Kuthite mystics. It sounds like someone needs to spend a couple weeks in the company of a few Joyful Things to get their head on straight.

Actually on-topic, I also thought it was a bit funky that vanguards got 6 skills per level while both of the full BAB classes only got 4.

Likewise getting some tools to make poisons more effective, like raising the DC on them.

Elegos wrote:

I personally despise the "just call it quantum so it sounds future!" concept.

Unless the class gets an ability called Ultraviolet Catastrophe, it has no right to the word Quantum

oh man I hope the get an ability called that now.

It's the name of their capstone, and the Pact Worlds' most popular all-witchwarper band.

Perhaps there could be a sentence included about removing the undead's/construct's immunity to whatever effect the biohacker is trying to impose on them, replacing it with a +4 on the save. The biohacker is said to use specialized nanytes in their injections so it should make sense, at least as far as constructs are concerned.

Warpwitch fits a little better from a grammatical standpoint. Witchwarper sounds like someone who goes about warping witches.

Although warpwitch also makes me hungry to say.

Steven "Troll" O'Neal wrote:

The Drunken Dragon wrote:

Yeah I have an idea for a gladiator brakim that seeks to Continue the war his people abandoned long ago (or, really, any war: he’s an Alucard from the Hellsing anime levels of bloodthirsty) that I’d originally stated as a soldier that’d be perfect for a Vanguard. As to Biohackers, I know it doesn’t quite work stat-wise, but a drow biohacker sounds pretty menacing.

Also grays. Never forget grays

definitely grays.

Additionally, I really feel witchweird witchwarpers.

For completeness, they should come from the colony world of Witchstar (or some other planet/star name that begins with "Witch-").

And of course they need to have a witch-something theme and/or archetype as well.

"Greetings. We are the witchwyrd witchwarper, witchwarper witch-hunters of Witchworld, which orbits the far-off Witchstar."

I suppose it does at least allow you to grant injections to nonliving allies? Even then, though, the only races which come to mind off the bat are borais and SROs.

Oh, and a mechanic drone.

Right now the APs are my splatbooks. I'll skip to the back and read all the articles and new options ... and then remember there's an adventure in there, too.

What about Entropist for the Vanguard? It places it in line with the Solarian's naming convention, at least. Solarians manipulate solar energies, Entropists manipulate entropy.
The issues I have with Vanguard are that, firstly, I feel like it kind of misses the main thrust of the class. Yeah you are someone who likes getting in the opponent's face, but the fact that you do that by controlling the underlying interplay of chaos inherent in energy systems seems like it is way more central to the class' appeal. Reading the class' name I would never guess that was the direction it was going and that sort of bugged me.
Secondly, the name Vanguard sounds like an excellent name for a soldier's fighting style, and it would be a shame to miss that opportunity.

I really like the name Warpweaver for the Witchwarp class. I don't remember who said it but I agree with the poster who said the class doesn't feel very witch-y. It does warp reality, however, and it weaves magic together for spells, and the name is also just fun to say.

Also I totally didn't know biohacking was a thing until reading this thread. You really do learn something new every day.

Something else worth considering is that you can't give an uplifted bear a symbiend graft either, since they all affect the brain augment slot.

Not something that's going to come up often but if you're like me and like playing PCs who are two, or more, characters then it's a bit of a downside.

I think they should be able to fill any roll in a starship crew fairly easily. Engineers, captains, and science officers seem like they'd make the most sense but gunners and pilots are also feasible when you consider that flying a starship or shooting a shipboard weapon are not at all like flying a vehicle on a planet or shooting a firearm. Most of your job is coordinating all your various computing systems to line up your shot, given that it is entirely possible that you can't see your target, even with normal vision. Likewise the weapons you are dealing with in starship combat are either missiles, which you fool by baffling their targeting systems, or direct-fire weapons, which are moving either at the speed of light, or close enough not to make a notable difference in game terms.

I'd rule that you can't correct a natural state of being so easily as that.

It would be broken to have not one, but two forms of blindsight (not blindsense!) and a balancing drawback that could be easily overcome with a 100 credit prosthetic organ.

I think it's fair to let them repair their vision, but if they do so then they'd be treated like one of their race with sight and hearing. Brains work on the principle of use it or lose it, so if someone has normal vision then it seems reasonable that they wouldn't need to devote as much attention to their hearing-based blindsight.

Being blind myself, I've had multiple people trot out the old "80% of your brain's sensory processing goes to vision" chestnut on more than one occasion, and while I have no idea if it's true, it being so widely quoted sounds like a good enough reason to include it into a game about magic where people regularly break the laws of physics.

Perpdepog wrote:

That raises the question of why you get the types at all then outside of possible extra rules elements in the higher-level spells.

I think you have to select a subtype if you want to imitate a specific creature. If you don't want to imitate a specific creature (for disguise, gated "other ability" special abilities, and a bonus special ability) there's no reason to change your subtype unless you're trading away the ability to wield your weapons for the resistance boosts of the high level options.

That would also explain why the blue dragon doesn't get an additional special ability as well. I'm assuming we're counting the special abilities for the blue dragon posted in this thread correctly of course and these rules already feel a bit slippery with regards to what does and doesn't count but it does fall in line if you're only pretending to be a dragon instead of actually transforming into one.

That raises the question of why you get the types at all then outside of possible extra rules elements in the higher-level spells.

If we're talking about illegal forms, the blue dragon and dragonkin forms are also technically illegal since none of the levels of the polymorph spell list a dragon as a viable creature type you can change into. Dragon, ooze, and outsider are the three creature types which never get permitted by the spell.

A "Big Six" book would be pretty awesome. All six of the main villainous factions in the CRB written up and detailed. I'm also in agreement that something detailing a lot of what is going on in Near Space would be good.

And if a GM does allow the player to use templates for the various kinds of undead they should also remember the CR and level restrictions of those templates, though to be honest that's not much of a barrier since all but two currently available undead templates are CR 5 or below, with Mohrgs needing to be CR 6 and have the caster be level 12, and necrovites which are CR 7 and require the caster be 14. This is assuming templates for undead are free reign for animation.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how much it matters how abusive a template is, given the first sentence of Animate Dead.

This spell turns corpses into undead creatures that obey your spoken commands. The undead can be made to follow you, or they can be made to remain in place and attack any creature (or a specific kind of creature) entering the area.

Part of me wants to think that this sentence is encapsulating all the things you can have undead do. Another part of me is really hoping not because it turns necromancy into something which is almost ... boring.

Personally I think you could solve the issue by removing the -4 to strength in the race's ability score adjustments and changing the sentences which refer to "while within a hydrobody" to "while outside of a hydrobody."

Then you would have a sentence that reads something like, "While outside of its hydrobody a stellifera gets a -4 penalty to its strength score, loses 2 hit points, loses its land speed, and has its reach reduced to 0 feet." In essence, treat the creature's base write-up as if it were always in a hydrobody since, from a practical standpoint, it always will be barring extraordinary circumstances.

I'm totally in favor of having the "basic saving throw" progression spelled out beforehand rather than in a spell's table. I've looked through the spells and while I can't think of any spells that could fit an alternative structure that would be common enough to warrent a similar shorthand I'd be in favor of that coming up as well.

I can't remember who suggested it first but I'm also in favor of the powers becoming their own section. It feels like it would save more time to go to the powers section of the magic chapter and glance at its alphabetical list rather than having to look through all of the spells to do so.

I can't figure any reason for the datapad to be level 2 either apart from the added com unit functionality, so I think that's what was intended by making it that level. Either way it's a pretty solid deal, given you pay 100% of a mod's installation rather than 110% as you would do for a com unit to install any nifty doodads.

Nice lists of starting gear. Hunting and pecking through the book to find junk like toothbrushes is always super time-consuming.

I would also recommend perhaps adding a backpack to that list. It's level 1, costs 3 creds, and is a pretty handy bit of gear for anyone with a lower-than-average strength score, or even for newly minted soldiers coming up against their bulk limit. I think your melee soldier build can just barely afford one, too.

I like the idea of folding special attacks into the various kinds of styles. It makes them feel more unique and less like a few situational attack buffs.

Alchemist 23 wrote:

Hey why cant this book have some Wyrwood stuff in it? I mean the Legacy of Dragons had stuff for Wyvarans.

Because I made the decision to refocus the book on new constructs and not on player options.

Not trying to stuff player-focused things in the book also opens up the possibility for a construct-focused Player's Guide down the line. A "Blood of the Built," maybe.

Out of curiosity, would you even get any benefits if you could use the drone's weapons as your own? You'd still be limited to using your own attack bonuses and your own actions to fire them with rather than your drone.

You wouldn't even save any credits, since your drone's weapons need to be purchased by you in the first place.

I'd figure that that the bonuses and penalties would work like they do in Pathfinder, i.e, bonuses don't stack but penalties do. Like wearing an armored coat over padded armor or something similar.

Armor slots though I dunno. I personally like the idea of at least getting to wear second skin underneath some other light armors, like the various suits of armored clothes, because then you can walk around covertly wearing armor, with a single upgrade, and not have to worry about dumping your EAC and KAC down the toilet.

Really I sort of wish we'd gotten armor qualities like those we got for weapons.

Hopefully that is addressed in the Alien Archive. Ship-munching space-kraken able to command solar flares should be ship-scaled ... and they could even come in different 'degrees of maturation'.

I think it will be, actually. I can't remember where I heard the name now, but I know I heard of something called a "novaspawn" in the book, somewhere.

Something with "nova" in its name probably will be big enough to take a chunk out of a ship, me thinks. *crosses fingers*

Perpdepog wrote:

Which means, when you think about it, you are trading away A, your utility with any future bomb discoveries and B, mutagen discoveries for- strictly speaking- weaker versions. Note that the dragonblood chymist's mutagen also only gives an alchemical bonus to one stat while greater mutagen and grand mutagen, the two discoveries your stat increases come online at, give you the same benefit with boosts to additional stats. Oh, and also note that the feral mutagen-like ability gives you attacks that are both one die step lower than those granted to you by the discovery itself.

It seems like, at the end of the day, you're trading away mutagen power and utility, along with bomb utility for ... earlier access to persistent mutagen and swapping your immunity to poison for immunity to paralysis and sleep.

Yay?

You're going to need to add a few more question marks. Not only does the dragonblood mutagen grant a bonus to only one stat, it grants a weaker bonus than the base mutagen. Dragonblood gives +2 Str/Natural Armor, normal unmodified mutagen grants +4 Str/+2 Natural Armor. And then at the exact discovery levels that are traded out you can take Feral Mutagen (level 2), Greater Mutagen (level 12), and Grand Mutagen (level 16) to get almost identical bonuses.

So now we're looking at something much more like,

Yay?????

Five of any punctuation mark is almost never a good thing. If anyone wanted to take this archetype at a table I ran I'd tell them to just swap out the immunity to poison for paralysis and sleep and call it a day, otherwise they'd be shackling themselves with no real benefit. Besides, it's been my experience in the few games I've been in that poisons are more common than paralysis and sleep, though I fully admit milage may vary there.

N. Jolly wrote:

Also with the dragonblood chymist, does explosive breath still count as the only discovery one can add to their bombs? If so, that's really not super great.

The exact text is "He gains the breath weapon bomb alchemist discovery but must apply this discovery to every bomb he creates." So it's not an ability that functions like BWB, it is BWB. And since BWB is a starred discovery you can't apply other bomb-modifying discoveries as a result, such as any of the extra elemental bombs, any of the cloud bombs, Fast Bombs, but bizarrely Explosive Missile which I guess involves hocking a loogie onto an arrow and firing it.

Plus it replaces Throw Anything, so no Int to damage with splash weapons.

Which means, when you think about it, you are trading away A, your utility with any future bomb discoveries and B, mutagen discoveries for- strictly speaking- weaker versions. Note that the dragonblood chymist's mutagen also only gives an alchemical bonus to one stat while greater mutagen and grand mutagen, the two discoveries your stat increases come online at, give you the same benefit with boosts to additional stats. Oh, and also note that the feral mutagen-like ability gives you attacks that are both one die step lower than those granted to you by the discovery itself.

It seems like, at the end of the day, you're trading away mutagen power and utility, along with bomb utility for ... earlier access to persistent mutagen and swapping your immunity to poison for immunity to paralysis and sleep.

Yay?

Edit: Oh, nevermind, I goofed. Turns out that normal alchemists' mutagens also work for ten minutes per level while persistent mutagen is an hour. I have no idea why, but I had it in my head that mutagens lasted only a minute per level.

Please add two more question marks to the above 'yay?'.

The way I'm understanding it, the party doesn't even necessarily need to be evil. Just as a typical party is made of good and neutral characters, the party in this AP can be made of evil and neutral ones.

I'm fairly certain that's why Paizo released Agents of Evil not too long ago. They're trying to stress the, "You don't have to be evil to work here, but it helps" aspect of the adventure.

Also, thanks to whoever brought up Black Company. I'd totally forgotten I hadn't finished that series yet!

I'm tempted to suggest that the reclamation robot be considered a tear-1 choice for a new robotic form. Crafting gear is widely considered one of the more potent aspects of the game, and having universal access to it, with perhaps the exception of Craft Robot depending on how you interpret the wording, seems very powerful to me. Hell, you could even use a reclamation robot's body to craft other robots such as the annihilater or director and simply swap in and out as needed, using the destroyed body as components for building new ones.

Switching back to the main topic though, I have an interesting question. What would happen to a character's soul if they, say, upload their consciousness into a robot after storing their personality in a neurocam or psychic imprinter? Would that stored personality, once loaded into a blank clone, take on the aspects of the original's soul or would they be a new one all together?

Varisia, Mediogalti, Ustalav, Numeria, and the Darklands are my favorite regions. I never really thought "Wow, we are good at this" though... it's kinda easy for me to see the warts and blemishes and obsess over those, unfortunately.

The fact that so many of my own favorite nations are on that list tickles me more than it probably should. Numeria and Ustalav in particular have been some of my favorite places to read about.

Do you have any advice for someone who can't use a gaming grid that might help game play go more smoothly? For a blind player or GM, say.

James, what are some of your favorite nations on Golarion? They're all interesting, but what are a couple that, when you guys had the landmass all plotted out and the history established you thought, "Wow, we are good at this?"

On a one-for-one basis, which would you say is more potent in terms of CR, an archdevil or a demon lord? Hell Unleashed makes it fairly clear that infernal dukes are more powerful than a nascent demon lord, so I'd figure as above, then so below.

Have you ever tried a cookie butter and banana sandwich?

The only houserule I've ever employed to date, I swap when druids and rangers get their animal companions and the levels that those companions are.

Oh I tell a lie. I also up the critical multipliers on weapons if a character rolls two twenties in a row. So if a twenty comes up as the confirmation for a twenty on the die, that x3 longbow becomes an x4. Should a character roll three twenties in a row I generally let them auto-kill the creature they're fighting. A 1/8,000 chance is pretty difficult to roll.

Perpdepog wrote:

One thing I still don't quite get though, why does the alter ego template give a creature d8 hit dice instead of d10s like all other constructs get? I'm tempted to think it's some kind of typing error, seeing as Pathfinder likes wedding certain HD to certain creatures.

Sounds to me like they were gonna go with Outsiders, or any d8 type, but changed it to Construct at the last minute.

Maybe they were originally planning on having them be humanoids? Humanoids have d8 hit dice. Then they remembered that alter egos can apply to multiple types of creatures and they changed the typing.

I'd probably run them with d10s just so the alter ego, which I see as being more of a story encounter than a one-off fight, can survive an encounter with a party.

The only thing I can really see the homunculus getting over other traditional companions is the fact that you can upgrade it with gold.

True, I don't think that you can use the homunculus improving rules from Alchemy Manual, but that shouldn't stop you from being able to use the basic rules for modifying constructs from Ultimate Magic.

You can buff your homunculus' natural armor for half what it would cost to do the same with an amulet, and you can give it bonuses to its stats that will stack with any belts or headbands you choose to give it. True, it's not the absolute best use of your gold when you consider what animals are getting already and what you could be spending it on for yourself, but with your bombs and such already stripped from your character you may as well spend the money to turn your science experiment into a fifty strength terror on the battlefield ... which can become invisible.

Quorlox wrote:

If one were to house rule that the caster could control the ooze, would allowing up to 4 HD per caster level (similar to the Animate Dead spell) be reasonable?

In my opinion, HD per level is always a very bad control cap. Would you rather have two 5 HD wraiths or ten 2 HD zombies? Yeah, I'll also take wraiths, no contest. Same total HD, but a pair of wraiths is a CR 7 threat, whereas ten zombies are maybe CR 5 -- meaning that the wraiths are literally twice as dangerous.

That's why I advocate using CR for control caps -- and I'd retroactively apply that limit to animate dead, planar binding, simulacrum, etc.

I've also noticed the problem with the HD limit. Out of curiosity, how do you adjust for CR at different levels? I'm also assuming you're going off the CR of an overall encounter as well so, say, a 5th level wizard could control a CR2's worth of creatures while an 8th level one might control a CR4's worth?

Those are probably bad comparison markers but you get my point.

Something I'm sure someone else has already commented on, but still. There is something silly with the text of the spell Shadow Barbs from Inner Sea Magic.

Shadow Barbs

It's not apparent in the setting-free text, but the Inner Sea Magic book says,

This spell, developed originally by priests of Zon-Kuthon in

Nidal’s early years, has recently crossed the boundary between
divine and arcane magic. Although it still bears some of the
stigma of being associated with the Midnight Lord, it’s rapidly
becoming a favorite spell of magi and other martially minded
arcane spellcasters.

And yet, looking at the classes who can learn the spell, the magus is abscent ... for some reason.

There is always the Blackguard prestige class from 3.5, which kinda-sorta can give you alawful evil paliden.

The tough part is deciding whether to go Witch or Shaman to pick up the prehensile hair.

No, the question is whether you should use your luscious locks or magnificent moustache as your appendage of choice when swinging from building to building like some kind of piliar Spiderman.

In order of most to least concerned about alignment restrictions I would say I go paliden, monk, druid, and barbarian.

Alignment is just kind of built into the paliden class, least ways, that's how I see things. Granted, I tend to run palidens, and by extention antipalidens, as being devoted to a particular moral outlook rather than a deity, so CG, LE, and CE examples exist in my homegames, but that's a different story.

Monks, while they definitely do have the ability to become chaotic, and don't even really get penalized for it if they're high enough level, I can see needing to be lawful. It's kind of in line with that whole journey to self perfection thing and how ass-over-teakettle it can be defining it. The idea just seems to make a bit more sense when put in a lawful context. I'd be open to a player not sticking to that though and simply altering those aspects of the class that give them lawful doodads to chaotic ones, like the ki strike abilities.

Druids are supposed to be neutral because ... nature is? "This frog doesn't worry about good and evil, and so neither shall I!" That's kind of the feeling I get from this class' restriction. I really don't see why they have to demonstrate that through alignment, particularly when things like fey, which by and large seem to be accepted as part of the natural world thanks to The First World messing with it, don't have to follow the same restriction.

Barbarians tap into their rage for their strength, right? Well, why can't we have someone who just really, really, REALLY dislikes littering? I don't see why someone couldn't channel that power inside themselves toward a lawful end, and I'm also just tickled by the idea of, say, a barbarian lawyer beating up criminals and then hauling them in so they can prosecute them.

The one that really interests me is the Cursed Blade Samurai. Perhaps toss in the progression of the magus' black blade as their cursed weapon? While it's always fun to make your own stuff, samurai are already starved for skill points and the tax of needing them to be able to craft their own gear wouldn't help much, while a cursed blade's bonus progression could help alieviate both the skill point and a gp burden at the same time.

Besides that point, I'm trying to imagine someone purposefully crafting a cursed magic item, and I'm failing. Least ways, it's hard to imagine someone doing that to themselves. "I made my sword sharper, and it only costs me a pint of my own blood a day? What a steal!"

An oversimplification, but I stand by my point.

I'm also going to admit, I have a massive bias in favor of the black blades. I made a bladebound magus and roleplayed both him and his sword at the same time at our table. Anything that gives me that much excuse to talk to myself is a good thing.

Probably just exists to keep you from being a cleric with both the good and evil domains, undeath and sun, or some other stupid combination.

Black Hole Sun

After thinking that the idea of a sun/undead worshipping faith appeals to me a lot.

I confess that I read over three hundred posts in this thread before skipping to the end to avoid waking up the house with my constant chuckling.

Also, I have something else to confess.

I am not a psylon.

I thoroughly enjoyed it too. Sure some of the monsters are really similar, like the egophage and the intellect devourer, but I am a sucker for spooky fluff and the bestiary is full of it. We also got a new aeon, and they're one of my favorite outsider races theme-wise, so that was pretty neat.

One thing I still don't quite get though, why does the alter ego template give a creature d8 hit dice instead of d10s like all other constructs get? I'm tempted to think it's some kind of typing error, seeing as Pathfinder likes wedding certain HD to certain creatures.

Oh, and the psychic lich is hilarious. Become immortal basically by writing a note to the universe explaining how much of a bad-ass you are, fun!

What I'd like to know is, are you able to modify your homunculus companion with the rules for building and modifying constructs in Ultimate Magic?

Some I can't see being viable, like increasing hit dice when you can't calculate the base price of an animal companion, but some of the others, like increasing the natural armor, weapon damage, or the stats look like they would be viable choices.

At least, I'm not seeing any special crafting requirements that need you to meet any nonexistent DCs with them. Can anyone clarify whether or not this would work?

Hmm Psy Sense and Adept. Didn't think of that. Third Eye seems like it would fit the feel as well.

Oh, I hadn't even thought of that feat. For a cllass that's focused on the senses that'd be a great thematic choice.

It's too bad Lore Warden can't be stacked along with this archetype.

Ghost Rider/ Order of the Eastern Star: She was a knight of the realm, just and fair and noble, exactly as a knight should be. This, however, didn't signify with the terrifying entity that had been the source of madness in a nearby town and the deaths of several dozen villagers. After slaying her faithful steed and dragging the knight to its lair to consume her mind, the knight was saved by members of a secret order, people who, like her, had discovered that their skills weren't enough to cope with what lay behind the world. After being inducted into their ranks and giving up her old life, she rides across the countryside upon the energized spirit of her steed, seeking more psychic predators to defeat.

To me the sensate kind of looks and feels like a poor man's Jedi. Maybe a build that used Psychic Sensativity and Psychic Adept to pick up a knack or two along with their weapon?

I noticed something which I think might be an error in the Template Graft section of the Unchained Monster Builder. The quick template rules for graveknights gives them a +2 to AC, a +4 to touch, and a -6 to flat-footed AC

This seems kind of strange to me, seeing as graveknights get a +4 natural armor bonus with their usual template, and are heavily armored in any case.

I'm still familiarizing myself with the grafts, so if someone knows why this is right I'd love to know. Otherwise it might be worth looking into.