Rizzen the unkillable's page

i just finish using a mind flayer in my game and they barb of the group got it in a grapple and pinned it while the rest of the party pounded on it. thats all fine but he pointed out that CMB rolls add your attack roll bonuses to the roll like weapon focus and such, for all moves. Now overrun and grapple state they are std actions and dont use attack rolls while rest do, but if you add all your bonuses to attack roll and none to defence it becomes the fighters touch attack basically. am i reading this correct??

also with the mind flayer using the CMB rules he has to make an attack in order to have one of his tentacles attach using improved grapple he starts a free grapple if hit, but if he does a full attack with all 4 can he get free grapples with each tentacle?

having him take 4 rounds to grapple someone to eat their brain really downgrades their deadly nature.

I am going to add my vote for more of a immortal rules feel, recreate your PCs using new epic rules then off you go into the epic world.

i think a book for all three camps would sell very well, if they could fit it all the info into one book we kno we would all buy it, but they need to fix the high lvl play 1st before moving us on to epic.

ahh man no comments???

The Black Bard wrote:

If you raise the hardness but lower the HP of walls, magic gets a boost again. Lightning Bolt and various other "wall buster" spells become more powerful, as they ignore hardness.

Only Acid and Sonic do full damage, Fire and Electricity do 1/2 damage then apply hardness, and Cold does 1/4 damage then applies hardness.

Acid and sonic DONT do full dmg, this is one of the biggest errors most groups make, if you check the D&D FAQ it clears this up, not to go off topic but SOOO many groups think this its about time to start spreading the word.....

Wow, I understand that a darkness spell can be pretty close to an encounter ender, but what the heck is the point of the new darkness spell? A) it breaks literary conventions of the spell. Remember those old drizz't novels, where the drow were hitting the dwarven front lines by casting darkness and whomping them. Now that doesn't work at all because dwarves see right through it. Not to mention it's a second level spell that is beaten by a friggen candle. so we have a 2nd level spell that does nothing to two character races and mildly inconveniences the rest for one move action.

Seriously, I understand that needing to wait till 3rd level to get a spell that countered it sucked, but howsabout just creating a second level spell that counters it instead of nerfing the spell into nothingness.

PLEASE fix darkness, killing this spell kills the drows deadly sneak attacks from dark, i am just using the old spell until you sort it all out

Nothing?

i am using parts of this already, the feats a offer to fighter types and make sure that the BAB for the feats only count for those classes and only allow them to take the feats at char levels(so 1,3,6,9,12,15,18) limited the power creep. i looked at other parts but have not used anything more from it.

This is true.

Pathfinder has many more changes than I want. At some point they should keep what is working and revert everything else.

The power of all classes has been raised where it should have been just a few. I say this as a playtester (who will continue to playtest): we've crossed the line between bug fixes and feature creep.

I still cling to the hope that the last phase of Beta development will axe a lot of new material. Unless they pare it back some before the final release, I will be unable to convince my players that Pathfinder is "better" than 3.5, and it will just become another book of rules to augment a 3.5 game.

My list for the creme of the crop:

More HP

New skill system (but not the new skill list entirely)

The fighter, barbarian, paladin and rogue fixes

The feats

Polymorphs

Sorcerer bloodlines

I can go either way on CMB.

Wizards and Clerics have been woefully mishandled, IMO. I agree with the spirit of the changes, but the Beta solution is worse than the problem. The wizard especially has become even more of a management chore with more obscure rules that come in the form...

i agree with you on these points, i myself am looking at using Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, which DOES solve alot of the 3.5 problems nicely, i hoped with the bring on of Monte that he would throw some of this great work into PF but so far i have not seen anything that would say he had any input on PF.

I'm forced to agree with many of FatR's points that mean Pathfinder won't be played as-is at my table if I can convince the players to go along with substantial alterations...

this is my biggest problem i dont like alot of PF but some i do but trying to mesh 3.5 and PF using what i like and adding the others as house rules have my players up in arms, i guess it doesnt help i play with strangers online, i guess i played with friends i may have more luck but i dont have that option and so i am forced to use all or nothing of PF or 3.5, its a shame as meshing the 2 makes for such a good system....

i been toying with allowing casters to spend the money to research single spells at the higher level to learn a spell that is effected by a metamagic feat. sometimes you just want to know one or 2 spells that are max or silent, but dont want to waste a feat. so a fireball max would be learned as a lvl 6 spell and when casted BY THAT WIZARD it does max dmg. anyone see problems with this? i would limit the number of these spells to prime stat bonus(so wizard can learn 4 spells that have 18 INt each level or maybe total)

comments??

Jason why not keep normal armour as is but add an optional rule to have some of the heavier armours give DR for those that want to use it, that would keep both camps happy, but really the armours need to be fixed, there are only 3 kinds of armour that is worth taking, if going to look at armour please look at fixing all them so the light med and heavy ones are valid choices, am tired of seeing chain shirts and platemails on all my fighters!

To which my reply is, "Why not? The fighter can do it, and in less time too."

because you as a DM you control if they can by allowing them to buy the material that allows this, AND they dont get it at 1st lvl, how many quests use doors and walls to direct the flow of the quest, alot. with a simple 0st lvl power that is all thrown out the window. now i was under the impression that energy attacks bypass hardness when acid and sound was use, this is not the case it seems so now looking at the at will power i can see that they are not as bad as i thought.

everyone is not seeing the point here, the point is they SHOULD not be able to do this not that it will draw monsters or BBEG will hear or another reason, a cantrip should not have the power to go through walls and doors IN ANY amount of it.

I do like the idea that acid and sound dont bypass DR, that would fix my problem with the at will powers.

the point is the 1st lvl powers at will shouldnt give them option to bypass any barrier, as sometimes there are no monsters in area or they got lots of time. as for the fighter and his master key, its easier to remove that if it becomes a problem, its harder to remove the at will powers(that goes for any cantrip that does dmg) plus fighters dont get it at 1st lvl, while caster do. in spirt of the powers it does say FOE and even though my player TRIED to convict me that the doors and walls are foes cause they stop him i will apply the letter of the power anyways. those of you dont see a problem with it may not be thinking of a bigger picture, like well they throw a caster into a jail they melt out of it, or any castle now can be taken by 1 caster making a new door for the invading army, it charges warfare in a massive way, and to make every wall resistance is not the way to go, the way to go is to not allow a 0 lvl spell as a master key.

hey all i just wanted to ask you all how many DM allow the at will powers that do dmg to effect doors and walls, it says FOES which means doors and walls(unless they are attacking them) are not foes, and i already had the soc just sit and burn though any wall or door that gets in their way(before i read the power closely) what do u think should they be able to do this(as well as ray of frost that says target or any other cantrip that does dmg) please change any cantrip that does dmg to target of foe to stop them being using like a walk my way through walls and doors power.

1st edition strongest dragon.
Huge Ancient Red Dragon
11 HD, 88 hp, dmg 1d8/1d8/3d10, breath weapon 88 or 44 dmg, spells 1st through 4th level

Fighter does his 1d8+6 a hit or whatever, but gets... what was it? 6 attacks a round, no penalties to hit, and can still move? If it flies he pulls out his bow, maybe loses a damage point or two which sucks but not that big a deal. 10.5 * 6 is 63. Do the math. Meanwhile dragon attacks Fighter, it's doing 5-46 (25.5) which was a fair bit then, but not nearly enough to kill it. The party will need fire warding as 88 damage is a lot, but I think breath weapon damage was based on HP then so beating it up also weakened the breath weapon. Fighter's fine and can contribute.

2nd edition strongest dragon.
Great Wyrm Red Dragon
23 HD, 104 hp, dmg 1d10+12/1d10+12/3d10+12/1d10+12/1d10+12/1d10+12/2d10+12 (claw,claw,bite,wing buffets, kick,and a tail strike to everyone), breath 20d10+10 (avg 120 or 60), spells 1st through 3rd

This one's a bit tougher. Its HP aren't much higher, but look at that damage. Breath weapon is a bit stronger. Melee attacks are far stronger. Hell, he does 116 to whoever he's meleeing and another 23 to everyone. Spells are a bit weaker though at least. Still, this was a lot of damage back then.

3rd edition?
Great Wyrm Red Dragon
40 HD, 660 hp,...

the diff is that in 3rd the monsters are built to be fought by 4 PCs of same CR, in 2nd they where not, they were build then xp assigned for each power/effect they had(rememebr the +2 to HD if flys, +1 if uses posions ect) so u got a xp value based on mod HD, what 2nd didnt really do was tell you what lvl pcs could fight what creatures, most DMs had to learn with using the HD of creatures as a basis.

well since this topic been jacked so well thought i would post i just added LOS req for the power and it has stopped alot of the problems i was having.

so i cant be bothered to read through all the other crap in this topic

but CoL seems to have the need to have the last word, MAYBE people should just NOT response to his posts, am sure he will get tired of posting when he doesnt get a rise out of everyone(seems to me he enjoys the attention he gets so take that away and maybe he will be nicer)

so can we all just NOT reply to his posts that would clean up ALOT of the crap that seems to be filling up this board(i can see his point as in each topic the same ppl are attacking him and they are as much at fault as he is so stop it and move on)

EDIT: looks like mistwalker and i are on same wave :)

and high base DC (15 instead of 10), that's a more difficult proposition.

sorry what u mean by this? the base is 15 last time i checked.

Presumably, that NPC is having to use spells for other stuff. Your example is only valid if your NPCs are humanoid shaped packages of experience that exist for the sole purpose of getting stabbed in the face. Provided that ya know, they have their own motivations and desires and are more than just a video game sprite you are wrong.

3.5 creation is fast once you get the hang of it, and can be easily slipped into gaps so that once you know what way the PCs are going you can write ahead of them and they'll never notice. 4.0 creation? Constantly having to reference exact text so you don't get tripped up by minor changes that snuck in but change the entire meaning of the paragraph means it takes longer, especially since you are trying to shape raw Arbitriarium into something solid.

I encounter the same problem with Pathfinder by the way. Something reads like it does in 3.5, eyes glaze over, then I find out it's actually different and facepalm. 3.5 stuff has distinctness, and thus a lack of confusion going for it.

it really easy with a NPC generator, i got one for 3.5 now all we need is someone to code one for PF and we will be set. i agree i rather have a program to make up a NPC for me then use crap from 4.0.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=681572

there are some really good ideas for fighters and barb in here, some of them would be great in PF.

I would definitely reassess the required levels on item creation feats. Forge Ring is only ridiculously high (I assume) because of the Tolkien-esque flavour and Craft Staffs is really high too for some reason. Better still, since wands are staffs are essentially the same item of two different power categories, why not simply make it the same item creation feat?

More radically, why not get rename Forge Ring as Forge Jewellery, reduce its caster level and redefine the feat as imbuing all magical jewellery (removing that function from CWI, which is easily the most useful feat.)

i really like how Arcane evolved redid the item creation feats, instead of basing them on objects, they base it on effect, so they got a single item use feat, a spell completion feat ect, that makes more sense to me.

hogarth wrote:

Squirrelloid wrote:

Assuming he's using a spiked chain, every enemy he could AoO is within a 5' step of him. Oops.

Actually, the OP mentions he's enlarged ("his enlarged self"), so he's presumably got 20' reach.

Gotta work on that reading comprehension, man... :-)

Edit: Ok, I found the general reach description - it isn't clear what reach that cleric would have (15 or 20'?)

Regardless, that requires that the wizard cast enlarge before the cleric ported off, meaning chances are the monsters are already in the party's face. So sometimes the party gets lucky and the monsters all go last.

How is this much different than having to charge into the cleric's reach anyway? Or having the cleric just walk into range?

nope str domain gives him enlarge so 1st round enlarges himself and hops with fighter 15 reach with fighter having 10, port within 15 feet of foes u got them all in your sights.

Ok, regardless of other possible 'problems' the ability may have, the OPs complaint is not one of them. I'm serious.

The Cleric teleports himself amongst a bunch of enemies - the enemies know they'll provoke AoOs by moving away - so why move away? Maul the cleric for teleporting there. I mean, when you make yourself an easy target, expect to take hits. Assuming he's using a spiked chain, every enemy he could AoO is within a 5' step of him. Oops.

if he was alone fine but when he brings the fighter with him who also has a spike chain then it gets mess.

Magic items scale. There's really no denying that. As you level up you get more gold and your magic items get better. But Iron will isn't doing much, it's just sitting there collecting dust. But I'll get to that more in the next section.

I am glad sean is here to debate with us :)

anyways i would like to point out that yes SOME or ALOT of feats dont scale but more are now, the +2 to 2 skills feats get better at high lvl and i been thinking about doing the same for the save feats making them +4 when get +x in save. that would make me think about taking some of those +2 feats(u can pass that along sean if like :P)

Classes, feats and well everything, should be balanced at all levels, because a game may well end before 5th level or a game may well start at 15th level.

4e does a really good job of that you know ;)

I have temporarily banned this ability, as our cleric took the Travel domain and it was simply a plot-buster power. Locked doors, prison cells, it completely played havoc on the adventure I was running, which assumes that first through third level characters won't have access to at will teleportation.

When the cleric died, the player -- who is not a forum reader -- started to make a new cleric and immediately said he was taking the Travel domain again. That to me is a bad sign. He immediately recognized that the Travel domains ability is better than any other domain ability.

yea he been doing that as well, last game he used it but tried to hop into a sq with an object so he was shot off away. I think it needs to be changed to a move or std(the conjure gets it too but at 8th lvl and its a std so why swift) and to stop walking through walls make it LOS only.

well i got a cleric and a fighter in my group and the cleric got str and travel domains. now he decided to go for the tripping machine(the cleric) and with his enlarged self and hop he can port into a group of mooks and if any of them more he gets AOO all over the place. Why did u make the hop a swift action? why not a move or std? he ports in with the fighter sometimes and still has their full actions, taken out my encounters even before the get to do anything. any one else have this problem??

i can tailer my encounters to try to stop this but i shouldnt have to.

Okay, leveling to monk 7. One new feat, totally useless Wholeness of body, and BAB +1. One of the more useless levels in monk progression. Except that single-class monks now fulfill the requirements for Improved natural attack.

Arguably, that single feat is the best monk ability in the current rules (Pathfinder Beta + SRD). The only competition comes from the 4th level Ki pool ability, and it's quite easy to see INA being more powerful than that. INA is so powerful that all monks should take it at 7th level. This shows two problems with the feat. Most probably it's overpowered if all monks choose it. And if all monks choose the feat it's no longer an option but required instead.

In other words, Improved natural attack is seemingly an option but the effect is so overwhelming that it reduces the option to an automation: everyone chooses the feat. Along the best practices in game design such an "option" should either be removed or changes should be made that turn it into a real option. If the feature is not important enough removing is the route to take.

I would not allow a monk to take improved natural attack as he already has it from the class(his attacks are already improved) but reading this thread makes me think its not that bad after all.

Rizzen the unkillable wrote:

what the beta needs is a section at the back that states what they have changed

Rather than spend pages in the print edition of fixed length, this should be a free PDF Web Enhancement.

I suggest free because it will not contain rules but merely reference them, making it a good teaser and marketing tool for those who might not yet have bought into Pathfinder when they see specifically what has been changed/addressed/fixed/improved.

Granted, an actual rules-QRC would be helpful.

FWIW,

Rez

what i dont understand why they had to reprint stuff they didnt change, no wonder its 408 pages they try to cram in both PBH and DMG, why reprint stuff from SRD that they are not changing seems to me like a waste of space since we all have access to the 3.5 books and SRD. granted some will say now we got one book to access it but then all i ask is to be told what is changed from the SRD so i dont have to go looking for it, be it a web dl or a area in back of book either way it would be nice.

what the beta needs is a section at the back that states what they have changed, anything that is hard to find, like anuy rule or spell charges, just a small note so i dont have to look through whole book to find what has changed. when i got to end of arcane evolved there was a section on what was different, was great easy and now i know what was different. That is what beta needs.

if anyone wants to enlighten me of the changes then i would be greatful, i am slowing making my way through the book but i am running a beta game and still dont know all the chnages(some i didnt even notice when reading)

Hence my statement of good and bad. You'd be surprised how quickly those HPs disappear under 9d6 blasts every round though. I suppose the fighters helped with that too.

well that a prob with warlocks not Touch AC, never had one in my games and prob never will, but for all the wizards and soc that dont get unlimited 9d6 dmg leave Touch AC alone.

We thouroughly enjoyed the Pathfinder society games despite the total party wipe in our first one ; ) more on this in another thread later when ive un packed my goodies and eaten a pizza. Oh and washed.....

Now that you've unpacked and washed, keep that promise! Lead us to the thread or tell us here about the total party wipe. That's gotta' be a great story

Well ok since you asked nicely.I wont tell nuch about the plot incase there is people that are going to play it.

It was our groups first pathfinder outing, the majority of the group were from my local club anyway (including prosteve who posts here somewhere) We were me, a human fighter, there was a human priest, 2 human rangers, a rouge and a sorcererr i think! We were playing the frozen fingers of midnight and it started of fairly well. After a fair bit of faffing and random dice rolling we managed to find the mansion we were after.

the 2 big ulfen guards attacked us and despite not really being able to roll above 9 we manad to defeat them. We continued on with the adventure wondering why the dm was saying "mmm they didnt seem to be too tough perhaps ill use the higher tier ones" we were all level 1.

we continued on eventually finding the warehouse where we assumed we were supposed to go to. The priest managed to "distract" the big barbarian at the front door by pretending to know him and asking him lots of personal questions especially about his "health" in certain areas. This was highly entertaining and would have worked except for those pesky dice rolls which still refused to land in double figures. Th majority of the rest of the party had managed to climb and swim (very badly and slowly) and snuck in to the back of the warehouse and thats where it all went wrong.

suffice to say there were some pretty rubbish roles and a melee ensued.We started off badly and got progressively worse. My fighter was criticalled by a barbarian priests spiritual weapon upon entering the...

hey you forgot to say the ONLY peson to live was me!! I am Rizzen the unkillable, ran OR SWAM to fight another day :) There was a cleric, 2 fighters, ranger, soc, and wizard in our group. I think lack of planning also helped kill us, but the bad rolls(and i mean if we DID hit after 3 or 4 rounds of swinging then we would roll a 1 for dmg!) didnt help and there were at least 2 3rd lvl guys in there. To be fair we got everyone down but the cleric and had him at 17 hp, but i was only one left with a englarge spell and a crossbow and he had a 2 handed sword, we only needed a few more hits to win, but i think 2 of the PCs had died(the soc had his head cut off by the priest in one hit heh) i didnt get to play in any other games so this was my only one but i am trying to get some online play going for my mage, but looking like sesson 0 wont support it(cry).

So, I was one of those folks hanging on every word put out for 4E. Nothing said made me worried, and I was intensely excited for the system.

After having played it for the last several months, I've come to my final conclusions: While I find the game to be enjoyable to play and to DM, and I absolutely love the way monsters are designed and the way encounters are put together, I sorely dislike the new power system and the "cut backs" on the player's side.

I came here thinking Pathfinder could be my answer, but I'm immediately seeing that many of the problems that 4E actually fixed are not being addressed in Pathfinder. Here are some of the things which I feel could be addressed:

Unified Attack/AC/Save Progression: The flaw with 3E's BAB and Save progressions is that the difference between classes grows wider as the levels are added on. In the high level 3E games I ran, I ran into many situations where an AC that was meant to challenge the party's Warriors was too difficult for the party's Adventurers (rogues and other 3/4ths BAB classes) to actually hit. Saving Throws were even worse. 4E's unified progression allows the classes to have differences that remain applicable, but most importantly within the same range throughout the game. And AC simply needs to scale, it allows for far fewer magic items and allows magic to feel special rather than necessary (in high level 3E games, if a character doesn't properly distribute their AC enhancing items through armor, shields, rings, necklaces, and other bonuses, they're in trouble).

Condenced Skills: I'm shocked by the skills the Pathfinder designers chose to combine and the ones they didn't. Both Tumble and Jump were often taken when separate, but the designers chose to combine them (and jumping relies far more on strength than coordination), yet Swim and Climb weren't combined? Climb is nearly a worthless skill since flight entirely removes the need for it. The others are really fine, this one's just one that bugs me; Hulk is known for his jumping for a...

i would like to point out that the rules are NOT set in stone, they are changing even now when i talked to jason in UK he said as the rules are updated from OUR playtesting he will be posting updates so play the game and post your feedback, next year when the FINAL comes out THEN you can raise your hand and say this still needs to be fixed. your points have been bought out MANY times but this board system doesnt allow very easy seachs on same topic so we get LOTS AND LOTS of repeats.

LogicNinja wrote:

I like to use Arcana Evolved to make points about D&D balance, because I hear people say, for example, "it's impossible to make spellcasters balanced, they use MAGIC, magic can do anything!"

I played AE for a year and a half. Its a great system, and I liked it alot.

But its still not balanced at high levels. Mages still get to do everything, and they are even more flexible than in the core book. I think the gap is narrowed in AE, but its still pretty wide.

well i believe that if they DM does his job well then he can still keep the mages in check at high lvls, but it take a dm that is willing to punch out the rules lawyers in his group when they do dumb ass things with their 18th lvl mages :) i already had to kick out 2 players that just couldnt understand that i was the DM not them.

We loved AUand then AE when it hit the shelves

we liked both the classes and the races... and I DID force my players to play... but using humans, they liked the classes so far, then the party ended for different reasons...

i liked the setting, but i was very agresive against giagiant rule :P

and most importantly... after seeing 3.5 magic and having played 3.0 magic... i saw how AE magic got its soul back...

magic its both powerful, flexible and arcane... a spellcaster can modify his spells in alot of ways, make them more or elss pwoerful, True Names affect the game

i feel so MUCH in love with that magic system taht i converted enteriely.... from AE i jumped to PF because it was a retake in the classic races and clases

but i would want tohave AE style of magic implemented in PF

i know this is not going to happen ebcause of backward compatibility (and not all people like the "complicated" rules of magic...)

but... for my own game, given the time i will translate the AE Magic System to PF, linking the ebst of the 2 and sending to hell what doesn't works...

now... if i just could sit down and do it :P

mate if you get the time then please share :) my problem is finding people that will use best of both PF and AE, i am finding it hard to get players that want to use 2 3rd party books, PF has done alot of good with skills and feats and rules but i love the magic system and classes in AE(not so much the races or setting) i just need to find a few players willing to bear with me and combine both systems to make a truely interesting game(any takers heh)

Ah! the guttles mage who ran (swam) away ;) As the archer who valiantly died last trying to avenge his fallen comrades i have to say that allthough our dice were bad i suspect we were being pitted against a Tier 4-5 encounter at the time.

fantastic Convention and loved all 4 games :) even the 1st :)

live to fight another day thats my motto, in my 20 years of gaming i can say i only perm lost 20 PCs(not bad avg one a year)

i hope they support online play for the society, i mean if live FR can sort it out then so can PF :)

(my new posting name the mage that got away)

how did u do in the other 3 missions then?