Biggest hp pool boost you can conventionally get: Familiar plus Shield Other. The Protector familiar isn’t the only way to get this.
Shield Other/Shield Companion (the Animal Archive version differs from the Advanced Class Guide version ‘cause Paizo doesn’t spend your money on line editors) basically doubles your hit points. Eldritch Guardian gives Fighters a familiar if you’re caster-adverse, which you shouldn’t be, because casters can get access to mirror image and concealment, which are some of the best non-AC ways to boost defenses.
But for raw hit points, “double” is about as good as it gets.
You can also get high DR from being a werecreature, but I’d imagine that PFS doesn’t play nicely with those rules. The familiar shenanigans are kosher, though.
And if you’re a caster, you can be even more effective with Unwilling Shield, giving you an offensive way of increasing your hit point pool.
Also: because the tumor familiar was ruled to be separate from “normal” familiars (though still a familiar because it is a familiar), you can have a tumor familiar and a “normal” familiar. Such entities can give you aid another on your AC (which is likely to do nothing since you aren’t optimizing it) and, more importantly, use healing items on your character, and each other if you’re using Shield Other. Further, the non-Shielded-Other associate can be hit with Bleed For Your Master and/or Die For Your Master, if you’re a meaniehead.
Grab states that you conduct the grapple normally.
At which point you are grappling with the weapon and something else, which is how a grapple with a natural weapon works.
Ferious Thune wrote:
Grab says with the body part... which is not explicitly saying with the weapon.
Yes, it is, because that's what words mean. Your claim is a non-sequitor.
You are arguing that you can Grab with a natural attack without using a natural attack to Grab. You're literally -- literally -- saying something the text doesn't say.
Whether or not wearing sapients is wrong or not has nothing to do with the species in question. The only issue is that the alignment system blue screens when the conclusion is "evil," but that's not a problem with morals, that's just because alignment is trash. As a practical matter, just declare it not-evil and let enlightened people shrug off gnolls wearing skulls and knights wearing dragonskin.
The problem, of course, is that if body part apparel gives you superpowers, somebody is going to hunt people for their parts, so if you make this wear legal, it'll have serious social impact.
Which makes for good aventuring.
PCs could be hired to stop "poachers" -- a.k.a., vicious murderers.
Government might have to regulate all body-part apparel in order to make sure it didn't come from anyone it shouldn't have.
Sapients could use mid-level and high-end magic to grow body parts, sacrifice them, then grow them back as part of an actual industry.
Hard to find a more despicable villain than a merchant that starts a war just to get body parts to sell.
. . . or bardic music, a Skald, or both, and/or other buff effects dedicated to increasing to-hit, including aid another optimization with low-level scrubs.
A party of four level 12s is APL 12. So a CR16 enemy is already APL+4, past the "epic" fight (and in theory an even fight for the whole party). Six level 12s is APL 13, still APL+3 encounter.
In reality the fight isn't even because of action economy issues, but the enemy is individually supposed to be very dangerous.
And you're saying that that no, not only can that enemy not win (due to action economy), but he can't even present a threat to the party without giving him a bunch of people to buff him up in some manner.
I don’t know if I’ll be keeping up with the thread because of stuff and junk, but I wanted to point out that I have no idea what this person is talking about now. Like, I didn’t bring up action economy at all or suggest a specific CR range. I’ve only spoken about tactics and composition and every time save-or-dies are mentioned the OP rolls right past that. Don’t need a response, just saying that maybe there’s some talking past others goin’ on here.
And I’m not sure why anyone would, or in this thread has, defended the one-dude-versus-the-party setup. That encounter style has been problematic for decades.
With NPCs, you can go far further by simply flooding the field with high to-hit low-hp scrubs
Because the monk, for example, was at 44+ AC as an offensive build, which would require a high attack CR16 monster to hit on anything less than a natural 20.
. . . or bardic music, a Skald, or both, and/or other buff effects dedicated to increasing to-hit, including aid another optimization with low-level scrubs.
Matthew Downie wrote:
Balkoth wrote:
How exactly do you say "Don't break the system but make powerful characters because the combat is going to be hard?"
Why does the combat need to be so hard? It seems like you're scaling it up to balance the characters. You could equally scale it down to balance the characters.
Agreed. Again, I’d mine splatbooks for NPCs with save-or-sucks, save-or-dies (if the players are alright with this), and good to-hit, but ignore AC. If something melee gets class levels, give it Barbarian and have it rage away its useless AC and get bonuses to-hit.
With NPCs, you can go far further by simply flooding the field with high to-hit low-hp scrubs
Because the monk, for example, was at 44+ AC as an offensive build, which would require a high attack CR16 monster to hit on anything less than a natural 20.
. . . or bardic music, a Skald, or both, and/or other buff effects dedicated to increasing to-hit, including aid another optimization with low-level scrubs.
The easiest class to hand a complete newbie, in my experience, is the Druid.
There are different kinds of easy. A Druid is easy in the sense that it's likely to be effective, even in the hands of an novice. It's not easy in the sense of simple. Wild-shaping and running summoned monsters and animal companions means you're playing with all the usual rules for grabbing and AoOs, plus a whole bunch of other rules. You get to choose from hundreds of spells, but this means you have to choose from hundreds of spells...
Grant you the grapple/AoO complexity, but not the spells -- not as much. The bizarre thing about spells when you have someone who can also successfully live a life of punching for profit is that they operate as "extras." If your Animal Companion is useful and your spells are mediocre, you're golden. The only threat is choice paralysis, and, here's the thing: people that haven't read the books don't suffer from choice paralysis at all, because, obviously. They get told by the other players and the DM what they "should" do, then possibly get tired of that and read up on their options. If they don't do the latter, paralysis doesn’t even come up.
So, yeah, AoO/grapple's still an issue. But there's even a way around that. Hand a new player a Druid and recommend wild shapes and an animal companion that do nothing but pouncemurder and, with very mild luck, you can go the whole adventure, possibly a campaign, without that player ever engaging either of the complex combat subsystems.
Beats the hell out of handing someone a Ranger and then telling them why they shouldn’t two-weapon fight. . .
The best “martials” often have caster dips or use caster mechanics (Qingong Monk ki powers, for example). As such, you have to think about what you mean by martials.
As for starting characters:
Spoiler:
The easiest class to hand a complete newbie, in my experience, is the Druid.
The Druid has a high skill cap, as do all ninth-level casters.
It also has a shockingly low skill ceiling.
Memorize the wrong spells? Change them tomorrow. Take too much damage? Send the animal companion in. Still taking too much? Go for defensive spells. Need subtlety? Hey, this spell makes you quiet? And so on.
For a player that has literally barely read a d20 book, Druid is like easy-mode Cleric. The animal companion, even a shoddy one, offers a tremendous boost to raw stats on the table that makes it easy to contribute to the game.
Druids are supposed to be difficult because of Wild Shape. You know what you get when you don’t wildshape into the most optimal form? You get wildshape into something else that’s pretty strong. Failing at wildshape just means not winning as brutally hard as the game will let you. And if you find something better to wildshape into. . . just wildshape into that.
Handing a new player a noncaster is simple cruelty. When a noncaster fails, there is no tool in the noncaster toolbox to alleviate failure. When a caster fails, all failure can be remedied within their class features.
Even complexity isn’t a win for the noncaster. AoOs and grapples remain obnoxious to master even after decades of D&D 3x’s existence and easily match spell slots for system mastery burdens.
The Druid can be nearly every basic playstyle and can respec much of its core features as a matter of RAW rules. A suboptimal Druid is a more pleasant newbie play experience than a suboptimal Fighter, and the latter cannot be fixed as time goes on without houseruling or alternate rules.
Much of this applies to other full casters, but the Druid’s extra half-character sends it into the stratosphere when it comes to learning curves. If you’re learning d20 and you screw up, better for your character’s dog to die as a Druid than your whole character as a Fighter.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but one must wonder about the term “rationalize” here.
Let’s take a look at Hat of Disguise.
Hat of Disguise wrote:
This apparently normal hat allows its wearer to alter her appearance as with a disguise self spell.
“Disguise Self" wrote:
You cannot change your creature type (although you can appear as another subtype). Otherwise, the extent of the apparent change is up to you. You could add or obscure a minor feature or look like an entirely different person or gender.
Is this a normal item in your world? I mean, as normal as a toaster is in ours? Because in d20 games I’ve played, it has been, and I daresay it is at most tables. (That’s opinion, but a fairly solid one.) If it’s common, I assume you’d have one because, well, it would be incompetent in character not to have one.
The only reason not to have one would be DM intervention: either a) the item is bizarrely rare (direct DM intervention) or b) the item is easily thwarted (it’s aggressively disbelieved constantly). Would people regularly be challenging your illusion thus making you and it suspect? That didn’t happen at my tables, but your DM is your DM.
If the hat works as expected, as it almost always does, then the hat will be the basis of your disguise. Per its text: it has your nose covered. Rationalizing disguise is a solution in search of a problem.
If the hat isn’t available, either literally or due to interpreting it into inoperatability (which I’m not declaring to be bad, mind you, just saying it’s a thing) then your problem isn’t rationalization even then: it’s determining what illusion and shapeshifting effects due in your DM’s system, which is an ancient d20 problem. This is a problem since solid a disguise-r is obliged to take some of the spicier stuff from those systems. If any of that is on the table as useful and available, your character would use it and then, like with the hat, you don’t even get to reasonably assert that you can’t rationalize your disguise since if you can’t rationalize that, you can’t reify anything in D&D. You’ve effectively said “look, I just can’t imagine magic working and dragons existing,” so you’ve shrugged yourself out of the game. (Of course, sapient bird-people are also absurd; are those rationalized?)
Not trying to be hostile here; just saying that there’s no such thing as a nonmagical sophisticated disguise in D&Dland just like there’s no standard “mundane” light source option on real-world Earth that eschews electricity. Non-electric lights aren’t “mundane” lights, they’re bad lights. A torch isn’t a nonmagical desk lamp, it’s a fire hazard and it sucks at its job of lighting things in every way. Similarly, grease paint and spirit gum aren’t “mundane” disguise materials, they’re what the ancient aboriginal people of this land used for disguise a thousand years ago. Today, we use this spiffy hat.
Keep in mind, you’d have the same problem — that is, the same non-problem that is singled out as a problem — with 10 ranks of Disguise and the skill unlock which erases the race penalty. In Pathfinderland, at rank 10 disguise, a tengu masquerading like a hobgoblin is just something you can trivially do.
Has your DM taken a hostile policy to illusion, polymorph, or both? If not, the issue isn’t rationalization. The issue is how you feel about the “magic” tag. That’s a problem you’ll have with all of the technology of D&D.
And by the way, if you use string and spirit gum to address a problem that is solved with modern technology (what we on Earth would call “magic”), your character isn’t clever or using a mundane solution; your character is freakish and bizarre with the context he lives in. Other characters will look at him and ask why he isn’t wearing a Hat of Disguise or using similar effects (which a disguise kit implicitly covers). If you, right here on Earth, decided to hide yourself in modern society by covering yourself in leaves and loam instead of electronically changing your identity, you’re not using a “nonmagical” or “mundane” solution, you’re a crazy freak who is incidentally bad at hiding.
Similarly, if you put some string on the beak of your completely impossible talking bird man, people in your game world will not be convinced that you’re wearing a plague mask, they’ll declare you a talking bird man with some string on his face. The people in your fantasy world will know the difference: they’ve lived in that world all their lives. Disguise kits hiding your beak or nose is literally less impossible than your impossible bird man. If people in your game world can’t tell the difference between:
• bird man
• bird man with string on his face using a Disguise Kit (tm)
— then that is because the Disguise Kit is clearly magical. Your solution literally reinvents your problem.
There is no such thing as a “Earth mundane” disguise kit in D&Dland; there simply can’t be. (As the game is currently written, of course.)
I’m not trying to squelch your fun, just trying to say that the world you’re roleplaying in is meant to be consistent and needing one of its magical bits to be nonmagical creates an inconsistence.
It’s surprising that a high-to-hit PC thread hasn’t mentioned what I’d expect to be a more standard response: lower monster AC.
Let the PC hit at 100%.
That’s been the strategy I’ve seen employed for decades. That’s the strategy PCs employ when monster to-hit outstrips their AC. Go first and murder anything you can’t tank, then tank as needed.
Standard competent defenses skip AC: mirror image and concealment. With NPCs, you can go far further by simply flooding the field with high to-hit low-hp scrubs, encouraging either AoE or thinning tactics. Any NPC that gets initiative and has any kind of disabling effect — grappling, disarm, or spells — is a pretty overwhelming hard-counter, so much so that I find this entire conversation really weird. I mean, if the DM had ruled that Team Badguy was onto the party and always hit the most dangerous PC with heavy crowd control on turn one, would this thread be called “Save-or-Sucks Balanced at Level 12?” If I think about this long enough, it actually seems confusing. If the PC’s dpr is a threat, the NPCs will use strategies to take him out first, so. . . yeah?
Duelist-style characters are straightforward enough to counter. If the “miss” part of the d20 combat minigame is eliminated, there are still plenty of other parts. Ramping up monster AC doesn’t counter the high-to-hit PC; it justifies him.
Bizarrely enough, what counters him is actually a bigger problem since most of what counters him is answered with casters: swarms, mirror image, and concealment (though equipment allows for some of this to be matched) accentuate the value casters bring to the table.
I’m aware that the issue is effectively resolved for the players herein, but I wanted to make it clear to other new players reading the thread that in many combat roleplaying games, including D&D/d20, if someone just hits a lot, you can just let them do that.
The problem with magic in a magical world is that it isn’t magic. We treat as a joke, or with patronization, the notion that modern technology is magic to those who don’t have it, but, in point of fact, tech utilizes branches of physics that those without said tech don’t know how to exploit. Creating a physical effect outside the bounds of known physics is literal magic.
All that’s to say that if “nonmagical” alchemy like tanglefoot bags are a thing, disguise kits that allow for Mission Impossible-plus faceshifting could be considered mundane as well.
As for how they physically work: I’d straight-up claim that they distort the physical space around your body, much like how shapeshifters have tons of personal mass floating about in extradimensional space. The alchemical ingredients in a disguise kit are no more remarkable than meeting a Skinwalker. It’s a much smaller jump than the Edgar suit, so if the latter didn’t asthetically bother you when you watched that film (it might have), the former fluff should work for Tengu-boo.
Summoning seems more powerful than many d20 build strategies and seems to hog spotlight time because it is and does.
That sentence, however, applies to all wizards and 9th level caster strategies, yet people manage to play them in parties without their non-caster fellow players immediately rejecting the game. Your solution is the same one people have been using for 20* years: pretend you can’t do what you can do.
Is it a good solution? No. Your question deliberately rejects a good solution since a good solution would require changing the parameters of the game (rules in play, fellow PC class selections, etc.). But again, that’s okay, because others have similarly rejected a good solution and instead used a kludge for this problem for two dec— for a period of time relevant to this discussion. Sometimes you could eat a nutritious meal but time is short so you eat a bag of chips. The best answer isn’t always best.
So what you will do is research the summons you want to call before the game and concentrate on a narrow list so other players become familiar with them. Then you will make sure that the summons “work for” the other PCs: they act as dedicated and loyal meatshields, they aid another whenever it could be conceivably valuable, they drag injured characters out of harm’s way, they use their abilities to heal or restore debuffed PCs, and so on.
You style your character as a support. For example: s/he was previously a military officer operating as an aide to a high-ranking front-line officer, keeping his soldiers alive and carrying messages and goods between them.
Have the summons be the “same” entities again and again, giving them distinct personalities. . . with relationships with the other PCs. If your summons like some PCs and dislike others, or like a particular PC but really dislike you, that adds some hooks for the other PCs to engage with. Run with that and have some summons straight-up consider themselves the partners of specific PCs. You’re just the portal for the dire tiger’s manifestation: her real pal is the party barbarian, and she’s annoyed that you waited so long to summon her: her buddy’s in trouble. Have the party members take command of their more personally-associated summons. All of this is pure rp, but note that it addresses points (c) and (d) in the main post completely.
Note that the summons can be plenty powerful in this case. So long as the other players feel that the summons complement their characters and the summons don’t demand table time be centered on you more than other players, there’s no need to reduce summons power.
The only caveat: no summon can step on a PC’s role, if you have those, but that’s an issue you’d have with any fullcaster.
To make this work, it’s best to talk to the other players beforehand. Note that your approach is important here: you’re not offering them a compromise, you’re offering them game assets, literal free stuff. Let them have some input into their favorite summons, informing the personality of the critter or the critter’s species itself.
You haven’t solved all of the problems with how fullcasters fit into d20 world backgrounds (they really don’t), but those problems exist even if no one ever summons a single beastie.
Will your character be far more powerful and useful than most noncasters? Undoubtedly. It won’t feel that way, however, because your character finds its power in the power of others.
Because this is an explicit writing failure, as opposed to the more typical ambiguity seen in PF/3x materials, the most reasonable recourse is to assign investiture to work in a manner identical to ki, save that ki cannot be expended on investiture costs. This is obviously a houserule as even supposition of the designer's intent is impossible, but as the archetype is unplayable as written, an outcome that enhances player agency and minimizes DM review seems prudent.
