Pinky's Brain's page

No, it warrants an updated errata.

Persistent/bouncing/dazing spell are also broken ... and metamagic rods thereof even more so. I assume most DMs ban them on sight, or at least once their BBEG's start getting hit with them.

Do you really want to go back to high optimization 3e's "if it can hit you and you're not immune to it you're dead" style of play?

I agree with dazing assault just being plain better.

It would be better if it only applied to the attack action ... as it stands the feat is probably not too disruptive on a normal fighter, but a mobile fighter is going to stun lock opponents very often.

If you mean something else then please elaborate.

My point is that the gap between the walk and strike builds and the archer/pounce/mobile/spirited charge builds is so huge you can not really design the game for both ... and when the developers make walk and strike the default assumption even though it's massively inferior this creates problems.

RAW is not cut and dry (nothing expressed in a language other than math ever is). A very good argument can be made that invisibility is achieved when you meet all the criteria for the invisible condition. In 3E we had the luck of Skip Williams outright saying that in Wizard's articles making it pretty much RAW, but that disappeared and now we are back with silly buggers who say "you're not visible, but you're not invisible".

Unfortunately PFS seems to be full of silly buggers :(

It shouldn't have been a feat in 3e ... it definitely shouldn't have been a feat without the text about DM fiat in PF.

The developer went on to make 4e ... sometimes accident is the only way they get things right.

Dailies for martials is an abomination IMO.

I once heard on the internet that the only reason why any PC died in Tomb of Horror was because the player was too stupid not to take damage.

Tomb of Horror was only really winnable (without DM carebearing) for sociopaths like Robilar.

It's the other way around. In Golarion paladins must have a patron deity

Campaign setting book and James Jacobs disagree.

and this is true in the Forgotten Realms.

Not the default setting ...

In fact, in over 30 years of playing

I do remember specifically calling out 3e ... there's a reason Grogs don't generally like it :p

If that were an option, of course he'd do it, but that just complicates the scenario. If this were the only option (killing the child) then he would take it.

You never know the options ... the moment you put the knife to the childs throat Q might teleport in and say "you failed our test and condemned the human race to exterminatus, goodnight".

As I said it's my preference that Paladins are supposed to not commit evil acts period and that DM's don't punish them for it by seeing others get hurt when they chose good (making life hard on the Paladin itself is a different matter, a bit of heroic sacrifice everyone can usually appreciate).

My personal preference :

The end never justify the means, an evil act no matter the short term outcome will fundamentally shift the balance of the universe towards evil and make life just a little bit worse on average. For non Paladin characters some selfishness in this regard is of course justifiable by choosing things close to their heart over the common good, although a DM should be extremely careful not to introduce no-win situations where players are forced into decisions like this unless they like that kind of thing in their game.

For a Paladin there is no excuse, to act evil is to fall ... and rationalization of that evil act only leads to more evil. Furthermore good goes before God, at most God can take away spellcasting from a Paladin ... but only the universe can make him fall, also commandments from God are no justification for evil.

A true paladin could have 100% faith in the world being destroyed if he didn't kill an infant and STILL not kill that infant ... because he knows that in the final balance killing an innocent would resonate farther and worse than even the destruction of the world.

If you want to look at it from real world religion's point of view ... the mortal realm is fleeting, the soul is eternal.

This is basically the BoED black and white morality ... a lot of people loathe that but meh ... I'm childish and they're grim derp :)

Improved precise shot does this :

"Your ranged attacks ignore the AC bonus granted to targets by anything less than total cover, and the miss chance granted to targets by anything less than total concealment."

It does not remove the concealed status and makes no mention of sneak attacks, thus the following is as valid as ever.

"A rogue cannot sneak attack while striking a creature with concealment."

Shadow Strike can be taken with the Combat Trick rogue talent ... and is strictly better than Sniper's Eye.

What would the game play like?

Melee is screwed without convenient out of combat healing ... it's a high risk, no reward method of fighting to begin with in PF ... without healing, forget about it.

It's pretty clear that the animal companion rules are working as intended ... it's not just the bears, there are too many animals FUBAR to write it off as a mistake.

One 7th level druid can have a 21 strength large cat pouncing for 5 attacks and the other can have a 12 strength antelope with a single attack ... working as intended.

Just don't run your games with the PF animal companion rules, use the 3.5 rules. Also use the animal stats from 3.5 while you're at it, they really nerfed the hell out of most of them ... except the cats, they really really like cats.

Is there any chance you could put that functionality into errata? Or would it be too much of a change for anything sooner than a theoretical Pathfinder v2?

I've said it before, Pathfinder really needs an unearthed arcana type book ...

SKR was talking about Create Undead, Animate Dead works a little differently.

The template says :

Hit Dice: A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD. If the creature has more than 20 Hit Dice, it can't be made into a skeleton by the animate dead spell. A skeleton uses its Cha modifier (instead of its Con modifier) to determine bonus hit points.

Lesser Animate Dead says :

This spell functions as animate dead, except you can only create a single Small or Medium skeleton or zombie. You cannot create variant skeletons or zombies with this spell.

It is not iron clad because !A => B does not necessarily mean !B => A ... but the way it's worded it becomes incredibly silly to argue it doesn't in this case though.

Okay, one 1990 dollar is $1.75 today, so that $20 purchase should now cost $35.

Old people and inflation they never mix, they only look at the prices and never their income (which is not to say they will keep pace going forward, we live in different times now). Google turned up a nice blog post about the "high" prices of RPG books :

http://www.lloydwrites.com/2011/12/highpricesrpgs/

Superslayer ... basically the prices went nowhere, adjusted for inflation, it's your perception of them which has changed.

Ever think that detail was put in there for the simple fact that you lose it when you attack?

That as well ...

Then how many times per day/week/month/year/ever?

At will.

When do you get that time back, because by this same leap of logic it is a single use item that burns out after time is used.

This interpretation makes the item description invalid after the first use ... which makes it the wrong interpretation. It's just a bog standard (apart from the price) command word operated at will item.

Or we could simply assume that since a duration or times per day in not presented, that there is none intended.

You could ... but almost everyone else interprets command word operated spell items as casting the spell with a caster level dependent duration.

It's the consensus opinion, language is infinitely flexible and there is no capital T Truth to be found in anything expressed in it ... but your truth is not the truth of most others.

The problem with caster/martial disparity in Pathfinder is that it already fixed it in a way ... it gave a subset of martial builds (archers/mobile/pouncers/lancers) a large damage increase. Once iterative attacks and haste kick in full attacks can kill level appropriate monsters in one or two full attacks. Martial damage is actually the most reliable way to take opponents out at the moment (ignoring fundamentally broken stuff like persistent metamagic rods).

If you "fix" the game by allowing martial characters greater flexibility (swift action jumps for instance to take a ToB example) then an even larger amount of martial builds will be playing rocket launcher tag ... in a way this is more balanced, but it's not the kind of balance most DMs are looking for I imagine.

IMO there are two good ways to balance magic and martial :

- The animu/ToB way, everyone has magic ... but to avoid everything feeling samey like 4e you give the martials a different resource management scheme and flavour.

- The best way ... make martial damage synergize with spells, increase chance to save for most opponents but allow martials to reduce saves through damage (and let them do it more effectively than casters can do with direct damage spells). Balance through mutual dependence.

It'd be about this guy and how as he went through his thirty-odd year career adventuring, what feats he'd actually pick up, and how unlikely it would be that he'd even be thinking with the kind of premeditation that a build like this one requires. I just like things to make sense.

Any bow archer will have manyshot, rapid shot and high dex (ie. he trains his aim and speed). Any archer with snap shot will have combat reflexes (ie. after training to be able to find temporary gaps in opponents defences he trains his reflexes and speed to be able to make better use of it).

So in the end the only fundamental decision in this archer build is snapshot, everything else is there exactly because it makes sense. An adventurer needs a good reason to NOT learn techniques which work well together ...

Just going to run the numbers quick for level 7 ... assuming someone in the party was nice enough to cast haste, 14 strength 20 dex for the ranger, +1 bow/amulet of mighty fist, +2 favoured enemy against AC 20.

Manyshot+leopard :
Archer :
AB = 7 + 5 (dex) + 1 (WF) + 1 (enh) + 2 (FE) + 1 (haste) -2 (RS) -2 (DA) = 13
Damage = ((3*0.7 + 0.45)*1.1+0.7)*(4.5+2+1+2+4) = 47.3

Leopard, lets give it a full attack :
AB = 4 + 5 (dex) + 1 (enh) + 1 (haste) - 2 (power attack) = 9
Damage = 0.5*1.05*(3.5+3+1+4 + 2*(2+3+1+4)) = 16.5

Total damage = 63.8

No manyshot+tiger :
Archer :
AB = 7 + 5 (dex) + 1 (WF) + 1 (enh) + 2 (FE) + 1 (haste) -2 (RS) -2 (DA) = 13
Damage = ((3*0.7 + 0.45)*1.1)*(4.5+2+1+2+4) = 37.9

Tiger, lets give it a pounce :
AB = 4 + 5 (str) + 1 (enh) + 1 (haste) + 2 charge - 2 (power attack) = 11
Damage = 0.6*1.05*(4.5+5+1+4 + 4*(3.5+5+1+4)) = 43.16

Total damage = 81.6

As I said, the big cat is a fearsome animal ... once you do get manyshot with the beastmaster build the difference is going to be larger still.

The tiger can also use every last attack which hits each round as a grapple attempt ... and if it succeeds just release the grapple again as a free action next round. Gaining the normal benefits of grappling (restricting a foe) without the normal downsides (restricting your own attacks).

Anytime the weapon strikes a creature and the creature takes damage from it, the weapon can immediately cast the spell on that creature as a free action if the wielder desires.

So only weapons which are wielded at the moment they strike a creature can be used with spellstoring. This rules out ranged weapons and ammunition since they either don't strike the creature themselves or they aren't wielded at that point.

A loophole is using ammunition as a melee weapon (ie. spellstoring arrows used as daggers). That's high grade limburger though.

So, two of the three basic eidolon types are "trap options"? As are 15 of the 17 basic druid companion animal types?

Yes.

Cheese is finding combinations which aren't immediately obvious but stupidly powerful. For instance a rogue using sniper goggles, a two level dip in horizon walker (ethereal plane mastery), the feat or talent which allows him to sneak attack opponents with concealment and a homunculus with a horn of fog ... that's cheese. Picking one of out X basic class options where the one is vastly better than all the others is simply refusing to piss up wind.

If developers go out of their way to make it obvious which way they want a class to be played I go along with it, or just not play the class. I avoid cheese unless it's a game where it's expected ... but I don't play low int wizards, I don't play medium bear animal companion druids, I don't play serpentine eidolon summoners.

PS. even ignoring pounce the big cat is awesome, and almost all of the other animal companions are crap, it makes a far better bear than the bear.

The problem with the Eidolon is that there is only 1 basic template which makes sense (large quadraped pouncer with claws and rend). There are always a lot of people who refuse to go along with the flow and chose the gimp options instead, but balancing for the gimp options is a bit silly (and there should really be more than 1 good choice, which unfortunately isn't the case for the Eidolon).

Lets take level 10 :
Quadraped Eidolon. Bought evolutions, limbs, clawsx2, large, pounce, rend, Improved Natural Armor. Weapon Focus Claws, INA Claws.

No cheese to piss off the DM (like manufactured/multiweapon fighting) just basic smart choices which no DM could realistically object to without simply acknowledging that the Eidolon as written is overpowered and needs houseruling.

Lets see what that form can do with a single casting of GMF against an AC24 opponent.

STR: 32 (+11) (14 base, +4 class-level, +2 level, +8 large, +4 belt)

Attacks:
+1 Bite +20 1d8+12 (x2)
+1 Claws +21/+21/+21/+21 1d8+12 (x2)
Rend damage 1d8+17, about 1.5 hits (slightly underestimated, but I don't want to do the real math)

0.85*15.5*1.05 + 4*0.9*15.5*1.05 + 1.5*21.5 = 13.8 + 58.6 + 32.3 = 104.7 damage

That is damage against a realistic CR10 AC, just short of killing most of them outright but would put them at near single digit HP. Throw a greater evolution surge on top and he is going to gib them.

A fighter is not going to equal this without some major limburger.