PlasticKrack's page

I'm getting either PNW or Indigenous North Asian feel from things. But I feel like some kind of animist, if not by that exact name, is the likely class.

My payment’s showed up at my bank, hopefully that means my watch is ending shortly.

I love the variety, although after the hype now I sure feel empty having read the book hahah.

Unfortunately there are some typos or at least weird spellings that I have found...

Kinetic Expertise seems to have a somewhat duplicated flavor text:
"Your kinetic gate grows stronger, making your elements harder to resist. The power flowing from you is even harder to resist. Your proficiency rank for your kineticist class DC increases to expert."

And Gate Attenuators have a weird structure in the first sentence:
"... making literal the elemental gates kineticists possess within their bodies."
Probably meant "making the literal elemental gates that kineticists possess" / "making the elemental gates kineticists possess within their bodies literal"?

“Make Literal” is correct, if a bit antiquated. It fits in a fantasy book, IMO. Think “made manifest”. In this case it helps with readability by keeping “made” and “literal” from being split up by a large clause.

First time subscriber here. How long does it normally take for everything to ship? It's weird that some subscribers get the pdfs days before others.

witch =/= warlock (inso far as majority of history stuffs)

withc is wiccan magic stuff. warlock i don't really know what it referenced but it has to do more with demon stuff..

pop culture wise, witch is "earth magic" warlock is "dark magic" sorcerer is "natural power from within- magic"

Though shows like Charmed just combo packed them all together.

Its pretty hard to cute through pop culture, pathfinder terms, and historical lingustics so... no clue whats proper anymore .

As a general rule I've used witch as non gendered.

The term 'witch' and it's equivalents in other languages have been used for a wide range of practices. Sometimes it's been used to describe exclusively practitioners of harmful magic, sometimes it's been used for practitioners of benign magic as well.

Another male equivalent term for 'witch' is 'witcher', though the Witcher video games have applied some pretty heavy associations to the term in the public memory.

The reason is that they haven't played D&D 3rd edition.

List of fighter abilities in D&D3:

Weapon Specialization.

Bonus martial feats.

Pathfinder made martial characters MUCH more powerful than they once were.

The PF crew definitely did a good job giving the fighter more love, they were just too timid with it. Honestly his class abilities are good. Bravery is nice, though I think it would be both fitting and flavorful to scrap it and give the fighter a good Will save instead. Armor Training is nice, though the increase to max dex bonus tends to run into the limit of the fighter's own dex. Weapon Training is nice and fine as-is. Armor Mastery is very nice, but would be better split across more levels, so the fighter gets it earlier (maybe roll it into Armor Training). The capstone is acceptable. All in all his actual abilities need at most a slight adjustment.

The big things holding the fighter back are the general weakness of combat feats and maneuvers. The easiest way to fix maneuvers would be to remove the AOO for using them untrained, and probably condense the two feats for each maneuver into one. I would also buff feats considerably. Some feats could easily be rolled together (like cleave and the mostly useless cleaving finish), others could have their requirements reduced, like the critical feats.

It's too meta. Completely breaks immersion for me.

The caster can refresh spells at the end of scene? WTFBBQ?!?!? Are all the casters bards or something? It makes no G$$ d*~n sense.

Fair enough. I can see how it could be one level of abstraction too many. It was only ancillary to my point that there's nothing keeping magic and martial from being balanced in d20 aside from inertia from 3.0 giving the mundane classes weak options.

Well, sleep and color spray are still non-lethal spells. It's not as if you are slain outright. A 1st level fighter can kill several CR1/2-CR1 creatures in one round, with one good attack. A wizard can put them to sleep. I fail to see how this is problematic for balance issues.

As far as "you can't grapple a creature as long as they are flying/displaced/force bubbled...etc" (ignoring the invisible status because it simply isn't true as long as the location is guessed), you are talking about specific situations where a martial character could not grab the spell-caster. The spell-caster would almost have to have some precognitive ability in order to stop a martial character from grappling him/her. If the martial character won initiative, then the status effects you describe would already have to be in place for the grapple to fail. I counter with the fact that unless the caster has one of these spells already in effect, the chances of him/her shaking a grapple from a martial character of the same level is very, very low.

Everyone has to remember that Pathfinder and D&D are rpgs where each character is supposed to play a specific role. Fighters and barbarians are melee tanks. That doesn't mean they should also be immune to magical attacks or suped-up to video game levels of power. It would be the same thing if you suddenly made rules to where a spell-caster could buy feats that gave him/her more HPs or higher attack bonuses and extra attacks, so they could perform melee combat better.

I'm sorry but I completely disagree that martial characters are underpowered.

Right, but sleeping/blinded/stunned enemies can't fight back in any effective manner and can be slaughtered more or less at the party's leisure. If either of those spells work on the monster or a good chunk of a group, the encounter is basically over. Sleep can easily knock out a whole encounter of goblins or other low-level monsters, and color spray has a good chance of crippling single monsters or good chunks of a mob. Even at 1st level, a wizard can basically end an encounter on his first initiative.

RE: grappling, it isn't unreasonable for a mage to cast flight or a major defensive spell on turn one. And even if the fighter wins initiative, there's a good chance he'll have to close the intervening distance before he can grapple the wizard, unless the fight is starting in really close quarters.

MadGent wrote:

refresh at the end of narrative 'scenes', putting refresh more in the GM's hands.

Aaaaand you lost me.

Not super relevant to the discussion, but FC has normal time in rounds/minutes/hours etc. and 'narrative time' which follow's the story's needs, measured in Scenes and Adventures. I'll just make up a normal dungeon delve adventure as an example.

Scene 1: Roll into town, maybe have some sort of encounter in town, learn about the dungeon, maybe do a little research/rumor-hunting, find a treasure map, depart. A few hours to a couple days.

Scene 2: Travel to the dungeon, maybe with a random encounter/small sidequest. A few days/weeks.

Scene 3: Arrive, scout the dungeon entrance, fight a few guards, maybe solve a riddle or puzzle. A few hours.

Scene 4: Delve deeper into the dungeon, a few more encounters and a puzzle or two. A few hours.

Scene 5: Enter the deepest chamber of the dungeon, kill the boss monster, take its stuff.

It mostly means the party can't just camp out and regain full fighting strength after every few encounters.

There's nothing inherent to 3.XX/d20 that makes martials suck, it's just a total lack of love in 3.0-3.5 and insufficient steps were taken in PF to fix it. Fantasycraft doesn't hack the d20 system immensely and makes martial combatants among the best characters in a straight-up fight, without adding much in the way of 'weaboo fightan magic'. (I will try not to shill too hard. Mods can yell at me if this is too much shilling.)

The system does nerf mages pretty significantly; generalist mages start with cantrips at first level, and don't get 1st level spells until level 3, 2nd at level 5, etc. Specialists get full access to spells from their school at the Pathfinder levels, but no access to spells outside their school without taking feats. There are a few more nerfs; casters have less spells known, cast from spell points instead of per day, and refresh at the end of narrative 'scenes', putting refresh more in the GM's hands.

The Soldier (fighter-analogue) gets, IMO, only slightly better class abilities than the PF Fighter. He gets bonus feats every other level, 3 points of DR/- as he levels, an AC bonus up to +5 in armor, a choice of a few random abilities (the 'best' of these are +2 damage, 1 free attack per round, or free critical activations), up to 1/2 cover for him and all allies in 10 feet, and as a capstone (which hit at level 14 instead of 20) gets a free crit once per session. I think these abilities are only just above where the PF Fighter is.

What really makes FC martials shine are the feats. Most feats hover around strictly better than their 3.5/PF counterparts (Cleave is the only one I remember having the same power level), E.G. Power Attack gives +2 damage for each point of attack, up to -4/+8. Some of the best feats are the weapon chains, which come in sets of three. These feats tend to grant stances, which you enter as a half action and can only have one of at a time, and tricks, which enhance a standard attack, but only one can be applied to a given action.

For example, the Polearm chain is built for defence and battle control. The Polearm Basics feat makes you better at disarm with polearms and a gives a stance which grants DR vs ranged attack. Polearm Mastery grants a 1/round free attack at 1/2 damage against any opponent that moves adjacent to you, and a trick that lets you inflict weapon damage on a successful trip attack. Polearm Supremacy increases Wisdom by 1 and grants a trick which one-hits any mook NPC (doesn't work on bosses, PC's, etc.) with lower wisdom than you.

Skills are also slightly better, more general (climb and swim are just Athletics, jump balance and tumble are just Acrobatics) and fighters get 4+INT skills per level instead of 2. Also combat maneuvers are tied to skills and are easier to pull off (no AOOs and no feats required to make them useful).