Pkdragon's page

- Roleplaying and Combat are equally cool. Roleplaying is fun but can be tricky, there's something to be said for the stress relief of bashing some heads in.

- Ultimately, I prefer flavor over strict rules... but the rules exist for a reason. They're pretty good guidelines. They allow players a sense of consistency. So if I change a rule, it has to have a good reason.

-Powerful AND flavorful builds are the best! Though I don't consider powerful to be "anything that has spells", just "really good at his job". I like making characters that are good at what they do, it enhances the flavor for me. Though being good at what I do may mean "maxing out the potential of a Gnome Barbarian using a greatsword".

- I've always been drawn to slightly sketchy. Evil can be fun, provided you're silly evil and not icky evil, but obviously requires party and GM buy-in. Noble is nice in concept but having a moral quandary every time you fight anything not obviously evil gets a bit old, and I can't help but start thinking about the moral outcomes of my actions if I'm trying to be a good guy. So slightly sketchy is the best for me.

- Sandbox or freeway is fine, these days I'm gravitating more towards Sandbox as a GM, because my chief interest is what PCs do and sandbox situations maximize those choices. But freeways are excellent as well. As a player, I don't mind, either or works. Heck, I'm ok with railroading if the GM is up front about it.

-Both. I play D&D to relax with friends, so some silliness is always present, but I also like players to be invested in the world, and the best way to do that is to be serious as a GM. As a player, I try to be serious but usually fail horribly, lol.

-Genre: Fantasy, space opera, lovecraftian horror. I'm notably not a big fan of Cyberpunk, so Shadowrun never had much of an appeal to me, despite trying to like it.

Oh yeah, I'm well aware of that (whether potential players are is another story) but if used right, it's still a decent way to set up a camp in a dungeon, especially when combined with other spells (Alarm comes to mind). I mean, this is only if walking out of the dungeon isn't an option for some reason.

(Actually, the fact that it WAS safe in 3.5 is news to me. That must have been quite irritating to deal with!)

All good, I understand, I was trimming my post down when I had to leave, so it was either post the entire thing minus an edit for conciseness and clarity, or lose it. I chose to post the entire thing, I'm not sure that was the best option :X

But I can see what you mean now, you're specifically interpreting your character as always having good luck for certain things and bad luck with other things, and those things are the attributes. I don't really believe luck works that way with consistent biases towards certain types of actions, and I don't really think that makes for compelling character creation, but I'll admit it makes a lot more sense than what I thought you were saying, and I can see how you could play that way.

One last thing (since my last post wasn't long enough): now that I have access to my core book, I'd just like to quote that the CRB says at the beginning of the ability section:

"Each ability partially describes your character and affects some of his actions". "Partially describe" being the key wording here. I think there's a clear intent that attributes have meaning beyond their mechanical value. I'm posting this more for my own satisfaction than anything because all day I've been wondering if there was a specific line telling how to handle this question, and I think that's as close as we're going to get.

Ok, so same guy here, different account.

So before anyone else posts, I'm going to request that we drop this conversation. While it's relevant to a small degree (exploring why CHA is so commonly dropped), overall the discussion is pretty off-topic and I do feel bad about the derail. Out of respect to the rest of the topic, I'd rather we resume talking about overused builds instead of the application of CHA to social encounters and what CHA means.

I didn't expect this to be as controversial as it was, and don't get me wrong, I find the discussion points that you all raised to be fascinating food for thought, and I'd LIKE to continue the discussion to explore the subject in full, but this is not the topic for it and I don't quite think it's worth creating another topic. Of course if people still want to chime in I'm not going to stop you, but I personally am bowing out now. For real this time. Hopefully.

9mm wrote:

Link it again?

Link it again.

it also has specific tips about the magus.

What I love about the guide is in the "how to manage a Zen Archer Monk" section: it says that archery is powerful, then stops right there.

I know, right? I was actually hoping for some insight on the class in general, both in how to manage it and how it works, because I've never played one before. But alas, it'll never be finished now.

So, TC, a few things to be careful of:

- It's very likely that your player will pick the trait "Magical Lineage" to make metamagic easy to apply to Shocking Grasp. It'll feel exploitative, but it's one of the bread and butter ways to play the Magus. Expect Shocking Grasp to scale until level 10, at least, due to free Intensified Spell. This is kinda a silly exploit, but it's very much a bread and butter trick of the Magus- they practically need it to function. He may further boost it with Empowered Spell, but that at least will have a cost attached to it.

-If he's a Tiefling, he might very well go for a DEX build by using Slashing Grace. If he does, don't fight it, in fact breathe a heavy sigh of relief because it requires two feats before he becomes useful, so level 3 at the soonest. That also delays all the other feats he might be interested in, and his build wants all the feats he can get. So this REALLY isn't a big deal if he goes that route.

-Bladebound means he'll be a bit more versatile with items. This will likely be canceled out by his need to buy Bracers of Armor if he wants an armor bonus as a Kensai.

- Expect his build to come together at level 9. He's extremely likely to pick critical focus, at which point you can expect him to crit around 25% of the time. His Black Blade and standard Arcane Pool buff will also max out at +5 (with 1 point to spare for enchanting the weapon with extra damage). This will also be around the time where he'll finally be able to cast spells consistently. This is where the Spellstrike/spell combat mix goes from just being a novel way to inflict damage to being outright deadly, but...

-Despite that, the guy will have accuracy issues. 3/4 BAB class that is missing out on any form of accuracy increase (Fighter has Weapon Training, Ranger has Favored Enemy, etc) outside of his enhancement bonuses (which cap at level 9) and his only other reliable method of raising accuracy uses his limited Arcane Pool, and requires a Magus Arcana, which he'll have a max of two until level 12. Also, his spell combat will reduce his accuracy further, and he WILL want to make use of that.

I just want to make sure you're aware of the particular tricks this guy could pull. I'd give the Magus class a look over, just to make sure you're perfectly clear on how Spell Combat and Spellstrike work and how they interact. Outside of the occasional metamagic hijink and the level 9 power spike, I doubt this guy's character will be too hard to manage. And you have plenty of time to prepare for the worst part.