Having the ritual so that you can fit these options into the rules is all fine, I'm just saying it doesn't fit into my 3.5 Dragon I played at all, there's no place for such a thing in his story. That's the first character I plan on playing with these rules, then my AD&D character. Just not a fan of hard coded rules that leave little room for stories. That's why the summoner was so great, your story is what ever you want it to be. It's why I hate necromancy always being evil just because of the way souls work, when one of my favorite characters (that as usual I didn't get to play long) was a cleric/wizard who worshipped a goddess who had a portfolio of love and undeath.
If I had a steady group of friends to play with, it likely wouldn't be a problem, but presenting ideas that are just shut down by certain rules or lore to random groups you join tends to be a nonstarter.
Hopefully it's presented as the usual way Dragon progression is quickened, not the only way.
It is the widespread lore explanation for the "typical" adventuring dragon presented in this book, as it was important for the goal of examining the effect it would have on dragon society to have more details, but you can of course come up with any other reason if you like! And there's sidebars for if you want to adjust the amount of powers you get to fit the game and the story.
Age categories being largely irrelevant is something that is actually baked into the "adventuring dragon" variant we will be playing! To become an adventuring dragon, they perform a ritual that transforms their magic and the inherent "potential" that usually comes with a dragon's age. All of that goes straight into their veins (sort of) and allows them to powerlevel like normal adventurers. So you can absolutely have a 50 year old youngster that can easily dunk on adults or even ancients. That messes with some stuff that needs said magic, though, so you will be weaker initially and maybe not get everything a regular dragon gets, especially immunities.
The hoard mechanics we don't know a lot about, but on the kickstarter it says they will be guidelines for advancing your dragon's power by building a hoard, rather than buying equipment. So probably something like a combination of the monster part system's imbuing and refining tables, but purely based on how much exactly your bling is worth. Can't wait for that ^^
We'll see how it turns out in the final version, but my first impression of having a ritual that any Dragon can do to fast track their power, even with what ever negatives or side effects it might have, is very poor. It doesn't sound like something that fits into any of my ideas of dragons or how they function.
Would that I could find a group of like minded players, as my draconic fanaticism borders on pushing "I only play human" type players away. Council of Wyrms was the best setting.
You give up a fairly decent chunk of power in the immediate term right after the ritual (and quite a bit if you were already an old or powerful dragon) for the ability to grant your draconic magic the ability to adapt and grow quickly if you use it and push it to the limit. Plus some traditionalist dragons believe it might shorten your lifespan given how it works, though there isn't conclusive proof. Life expectancy does go down but mostly because you go out and adventure, which is dangerous.
There are some things that it is much harder to get back after the ritual than others, too, so depending on what a dragon cares about most, it can be more of a painful choice.
The social and psychological choices behind whether to perform the ritual are a major factor discussed at length in the book, and what it means to you and to other dragons.
We made it! After we got so close, I would have been almost disappointed if we didn't get those 44 pages of lore with a dragon on each page because it really gives me a chance to expand out the info on playing a PC dragon of every type and what it's like. Having a sentence or two per dragon in the intro would have worked OK, but this is much shinier than the version I first dreamed up. Thanks for all the support everyone!
Good news, it seems the book has recently graduated from "just" an ancestry book to also include a lot of lore on the specific heritages and the ancestry in general!
I hope that the lore will also be applicable to Golarion, as the books are for a different setting.
It's lore matching the dragon types in general, complementing what is true about them already in their Bestiary entries, so it should be applicable in whatever setting you are playing as long as your setting mostly follows the gist of the flavor of the dragons from the Bestiary and also includes the story point of the ritual to gain power faster (which is part of the fundamental conceit of the ancestry explaining your rapid rise to power so you probably will). The lore is very focused on the interplay involving the ritual and adventuring dragons, so it's there to help you enrich RP of your dragon PC (and to help choose which one to try out), rather than just being generic dragon info. There's not a huge amount of it per dragon, but when you have so many dragons, even a few paragraphs for each adds up to a lot of cool content.
For example, last night I wrote about white dragons, and as I was doing so and imagining from their perspective, I realized that adventuring white dragons are among the most likely of dragons to fall into that trope of "You defeated me, you're strong, let's team up."
Stephen told me he did research and contacted folks and that something is changing with EU shipping and media mail that would make it different than it had been, and he knew that you used to be OK with just books. Take that as you will, I don't really have a direct connection to the business side, I just write dragons and monster parts.
Here's what he said on Reddit:
"We are looking into it. The issue with the EU currently is that VAT, fees, taxes, and so many other fees are making shipping more expensive than the cost of the product itself. This is actually going to affect ALL Kickstarters in the next coming months/years to the EU, so hopefully either the EU adjusts their laws to be a bit more Kickstarter friendly, or we will be talking to EU-based partners and see if we can work something out.
Do stay tuned as this is a new development that was just implemented in the EU last month and we are watching it closely."
He also linked the following which he said had more information.
Also if you're a less violent party (like my group) you can befriend monsters and receive tokens as gifts from them and use those, with the same effects without killing them, based on the whole idea in fantasy lore that like "An angel's feather freely given" might have more magical power to it than a whole bunch of angel feathers you took by force.
I agree that you should be disappointed if you couldn't play an ancestry from level 1. You will be able to play the ancestry from level 1. Now, like it says on the tin, it's designed to be balanced so GMs can allow it with no worry (and my guarantee that if it causes issues for your game you can ask me on Arcane Mark and I will help troubleshoot), so it's not going to be the most powerful dragon around at level 1, but you'll be able to play it, and the ability to spend more resources to get stronger faster will let you outpace other ancestries on "ancestry-related stuff" if you want that a bigger part of your identity than normal.
Because with an elf, the design and replayability wouldn't be great if it was like "Oh, yeah elf barbarian and elf rogue and elf fighter all play fairly similarly because you mostly use all that elf stuff on a round to round basis and the classes only add a tiny amount" but with a dragon, you might want to opt into the situation of "Yeah, most of my selectable options are about being a dragon, not about my class...because I'm a dragon first." Plus works great with free archetype (and add ancestry paragon too for...even more dragon).
I wonder if this Ancestry/Archetype hybrid is what they will use for the undead ancestries in Paizo's Book of the Dead.
Nope. Good guess, but this will be unrelated to that and is using some rules I built on my own at home over a year ago, before Book of the Dead was a thing.
Thais is a feminine name in general (most common in Brazil now, if I recall right), but if it's a reference to anyone, I'm guessing it's slightly more likely St. Thais of Alexandria, a repentant courtesan saint, than Alexander the Great's consort, since Saint Thais is also a religious figure, or both of them at once. That said, that's all speculation.
Incidentally, building up those bigger chunks of AcP for playing Plaguestone and APs (which allow you to play as whatever ancestry you want by default) is a great way to start off for players who don't want to GM but want all of their characters to be a given uncommon ancestry. Once you have one character, you'll earn at least enough for the next one by the time the first character hits level 8, even if you always play at home games and never GM.
15 was chosen back when they believe that it was the average of 4d6 drop low. Mark Seifter (back when he was Rogue Eidolon) showed that 4d6 drop low is actually on average closer to 21 points than 15.
Seifter's calculation was predicated on the observation that "when actually rolling for stats, basically everybody rejects low rolls that would result in a hopeless character" (like a 6,7,10,12,9,11 array).
Sort of. I was analyzing the original math of 3.0/3.5 D&D 25 Point Buy (the equivalent to Pathfinder 15 Point Buy), where there actually were specific rules for a "hopeless character" that entitled you to a reroll. At the time, after someone was worried that throwing out the hopeless characters was the main cause of the finding, I also calculated without removing hopeless characters and it was a little lower, if I recall a little under 1 point, but still way higher than 25/15; there just weren't that many characters that were hopeless and they didn't affect the numbers that much on the low end as the characters with high stats did on the high end.
So the name Erasmus is shared with the iconic medium, which makes me think: You could have him be a medium (maybe storyteller archetype due to love for plays). It could give a group not as familiar with Occult Adventures a little taste of what the six medium legends can do before they become a big plot point in book 6.
Given that not even most people in the county were even aware of the fact that Caphridius Vort had set up the refugee New Towne, plus the exact area Vort controls doesn't match well, I am also assuming there's another more powerful Vort in play, like Blue Eyed Devil. Maybe the other Vort also loves the opera like Caphridius and Caphridius visits his relative to watch operas (not likely Meratt hosts many).
You could probably just ask the GM what terrain you're in (and to let you know if it changes), same as a ranger with several favored terrains who needs to know if she gets her bonus on initiative, Perception, Stealth, etc. Something like "Would you say the basement floor of this castle counts more as underground because of being a basement or urban for being in a castle in the middle of a city?"
You count all your uses of an ability during the day, even if you temporarily gain additional uses multiple times. Here's the relevant CRB FAQ:
FAQ wrote:
Temporarily gaining abilities: If I temporarily gain an ability that is limited in its uses per day, am I limited in my overall uses of that ability if I can temporarily gain it more than once?
Yes. You are limited by the ability in the same way as a character that has that ability permanently. For example, if you have an ability that allows you to gain the Stunning Fist feat for a limited period of time and you use it 3 times. Those uses count against your total number of uses should you temporarily gain Stunning Fist again later that day. This limit also applies to abilities that grant additional uses of another ability (such as Extra Channel). Once used, they are consumed for the day, even if you gain the ability again.
No. he is absolutely terrible. At his listed/obvious level of combat he is shooting at -8 for 1d10 damage every other round. He's out damaged by a core combat familiar.
Just because people mention power levels doesn't mean they expect an uber optimized whirl of death. There is a basic level of competency you need to meet to contribute effectively and Harsk is well below it.
Yoon doesn't meet the basic level of competency either. Taking Point Blank and Precise Shot isn't 'highly optimized', it's the first assumption of any ranged character.
It might be YOUR first assumption for any ranged character. But I've seen many player built characters, ray shooters and bombers (hey look both going against touch like yoon) that never get those feats. And I've seen archers not get precise shot feat until lv5.
If you run yoon through the DPR of the situations she's likely to be in you find out that she does okay, she meets the basic level of competency (now your basic level might not be the actual basic level by a higher benchmark and thus more things look bad but if so then your basic level is above that actual level needed to be worth helping and is too high). Because there are a number of times she'll have a clear shot on an enemy that's not in combat and have great accuracy, and then a number of times she has a clear shot and target is in melee where her accuracy is normal, and times when there's both and she's having difficulty but still better than a non-human archer that couldn't qualify for precise shot yet because of touch.
To add to this, Yoon's best-case scenario is actually to use fan of flames on several targets (particularly if you have to fight a swarm!), which won't benefit from either of those feats at all. At level 7, she adds eruption as a go-to, which also doesn't use those.
I get a page saying I can't access the guide because it is in violation of the Terms of Service for google docs/drive.
Is this just me, or is anyone else having the same problem?
It is a really nasty bug in Google Docs that has made this file and many others unavailable to anyone, including their owners. It is apparently known to many people that no real Terms of Service violations have occurred, as I saw no discussion of that point before I brought it up a while back.
I e-mailed Google about my guides but no response. Pretty bummed :(
Mark. I have a shifter guide almost done. When can i publish it?
I would say waiting at least for the public release of the book would be in good taste. However, as I've cautioned potential guide authors in the past, it might be better to wait just a bit longer anyway to get more data , trying out a few builds in play and finding synergies and the like.
You might consider having the kasatha carry one unwieldy weapon and one normal weapon for AoOs, full attacks, and the like. The great thing about four arms is the ability to diversify!
(Improved) Hurry, I would rate blue myself. In the action economy of Starfinder this ability can mean the difference between a full attack or not. Or a different critical ability for your friend to use - or not. (If it would still be the Pathfinder action economy, I'd agree on it being green.)
I thought (Improved) Hurry was going to be green when analyzing the math on my own early on, and green is a good rating, but in actual play, it was definitely blue for reasons similar to the examples you give. The envoy was consistently getting surprisingly amazing benefits by trading her own standard for an ally's move action in clever and targeted ways. It might vary if your envoy is less creative or good at quickly coming up with combos with the group (ours first asked everyone if they thought they had a big use for a move coming up and then spent the round looking for other possibilities as well).
Our group uses individual initiative to avoid giant novas of everything acting together, but when there's a truly enormous number of the same thing, like 10, we sometimes assign them to roll all even numbers on initiative, so there's another one acting every 2 initiative counts.
I put one "4" one "3" and one "2" for each day for events that I liked. Then I put a "1" for a whole host of others figuring I could trade them for something I like. I got a couple of the "1"s and the 8-99 Solstice Scar. So I'm trying to trade. (And since word on the Boards suggests that doesn't work so well, I'm resorting to bribery.)
Trading I think varies depending on what you're willing to put into it. The year my friend Cedric went to the con, he was incredibly active on trading and managed to rack up a schedule with more lottery events than Linda and I got from the lottery in a few years combined, even though I think he only started with one event from the lottery. But the amount of work he put into to do so was pretty extreme and somewhat reminiscent of one of those Legend of Zelda quests where you keep trading things to the various NPCs around the world.
Personal experience from Paizocons as a fan: No lottery events is pretty normal, depending on what you sign up for. Linda and I only got two lottery events over all our Paizocons as fans, other than events that weren't full after the lottery (meaning everyone who got no events listed must have ranked all of those as priority 0). How many events you get will thus depend greatly on how many less popular events you rated non-zero. It would, however, be very surprising to get no events if you rated every single lottery event at least 1, since there's almost always an event somewhere with a space open after the lottery.
If you can rebuild your deck for the task at hand, you lose out on the tough decisions of which cards to keep and whether or not to keep that powerful but niche card or the weaker general purpose card.
Unlike the Obsidian app, if really game it :)
You mean by creating a mule character to come grab some of your cards in a low level adventure and then don't bring them along except to grab them back when needed?
Errrrmagurrd sleeves of many garments why didn't I think of that xD
@Rogue Eidolon I think I've made somewhere in the range of 4 full stated Dex based melee characters already I'm kind of burnt out on them, I don't really see this character getting his hands dirty anyway xD and by neglecting Dex I can start off with a tone of mental focus. conjuration seems like a good shout.
@avr So conjuration, enchantment and illusion with, Mage armour, charm person and silent image seem like good picks so far. Completely lacking any meaningful offence unfortantly but no weapons does that I guess xD. Maybe he can carry a sling and some copper coins xD
Makes perfect sense, I've just noticed it's fairly common to miss that possibility when analyzing the archetype since it seems like it's pushing you to be casty, so figured I'd mention it.
In terms of offense, sleep is pretty handy at 1st level; if you're thinking of using DC-based enchantments as a main means of offense, there's a genial gnome racial ability or something like that to swap illusion DC boost for enchantments. You could also pile plenty of focus in conjuration and rely on servitors (the base focus power) to do your dirty work for you without getting your hands dirty.
You don't even have to give up on melee or ranged combat if you don't want. In theory, if you're Dex-based melee, you're looking at the same stat loadout as the popular inspired blade swashbuckler archetype (which you could even dip in if you feel like it, it's already a somewhat-popular occultist dip) and you wouldn't get as much use from the armor anyway compared to mage armor (if you don't dip, you can grab rapier as a gnome by taking proficiency or by being an elf or even just use a simple finessable weapon; you can use legacy weapon for agile until you can grab Fencing/Slashing Grace). Meanwhile, you're grabbing major spells known and spells per day benefits over the equivalent occultist without the archetype. Not that it's bad for full casting occultist builds either, but you don't need to limit yourself to those builds; it's a powerful archetype, and it's going to be a good deal stronger for you in most cases other than Strength-based melee builds.
The Warrior Panoply allows an Occultist to get full BAB with a quite small investment.
Making it the only 6th level caster full BAB option.
Oh, I agree that it's nice. I just think the downside of basically delaying learning an implement school (to learn the panoply) is a nice balance. That 5th level Warrior Panoply may have a +5 BAB put he also only knows 1 first level abjuration, 1 first level transmutation, 1 2nd level abjuration, and 1 2nd level transmutation. Not that those are bad schools for a battle caster. As I mentioned above, I do think the two banned Panoplies are the "more powerful" of the Panoplies. I just don't see them as overpowering compared to other class builds.
** spoiler omitted **
It is what it is. In any event, I didn't have plans to make an Occultist :)
In fact, a panoply doesn't cost you any spells known: you actually get an extra spell known of each level that can come from any of the associated schools (so it's actually more flexible than taking a third implement school in terms of where you can place the spells known).
The witch can grant a creature within 30 feet a bit of good luck for 1 round. The target can call upon this good luck once per round, allowing him to reroll any ability check, attack roll, saving throw, or skill check, taking the better result. He must decide to use this ability before the first roll is made. At 8th level and 16th level, the duration of this hex is extended by 1 round. Once a creature has benefited from the fortune hex, it cannot benefit from it again for 24 hours.
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?
Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.
Thanks.
Knowing some of the inspirational material for this I thought it might be a good resource for a Persona game.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better basic framework to use for P3 or P4 style social links in a Persona game.
And Persona 5 ;)
With that in mind, how to surprise my players. They are fans of the franchise, but I don't want to reveal its a Persona game until their shadows appear.
I don't have a PS4, but I have followed up on P5 enough to know that the system has changed but not enough to know how much it changed, so I didn't want to assert it worked for P5 without proof. If it does, even more awesome!
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?
Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.
Thanks.
Knowing some of the inspirational material for this I thought it might be a good resource for a Persona game.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find a better basic framework to use for P3 or P4 style social links in a Persona game.
Would this product work if divorced from the Pathfinder system? For instance could I use it in other game systems?
Yes, easily. You'd merely need to replace the skill checks and their DCs with appropriate things for the new system and keep the scaling relationship ranks in place.
I feel like people are looking at a logical implication in the reverse direction (in the sense of all squares are rectangles doesn't mean all rectangles are squares). Battle host says "At 1st level, a battle host forms a supernatural bond with a specific weapon, suit of armor, or shield. This selection is permanent and can never be changed. The bonded item is masterwork quality and the battle host begins play with it at no cost." But while adamantine items are masterwork, that doesn't mean that getting something masterwork means you can get something adamantine. If it did, a holy avenger or the axe of the dwarvish lords is also a masterwork weapon (all magic weapons must be masterwork), the same logic would allow you to start play with those weapons too (well, not the axe in PFS because as an artifact it isn't allowed in Additional Resources, but a +5 keen speed human bane falchion would be). The rules specify that "the bonded item is masterwork quality" so generally if it was going to allow for items beyond that (special materials, magic items, intelligent items, artifacts, etc) the archetype would tell you that in the text.
The way it happened for us was: Suddenly with no warning, a thick wall (Perception DC increases by 10 per foot of thickness) collapses to the party's side, resulting in a surprise round for the enemies, but also in the entire party being in the radius of all three auras.
I played in an AP that had this same fight (three seugathi and you're in all three auras the moment they appear) as a sort of almost random encounter on the way to a place. It was probably the hardest fight in the entire AP, including the ones the GM buffed a bunch (and the GM didn't buff the seugathi fight, naturally). We might have only avoided a TPK because the barbarian managed to save up to his first turn, and he moved where the seugathi were the nearest creatures, so the best they could do was make him hit himself and not make him full attack an ally). There was another seugathi fight where the party all rolled terribly on Will saves and became confused, but we managed to win only because the eccentric sorceress was taking a dip in a pool that casts a high caster-level dispel magic every round (and shredded her buffs) at the time the seugathi attacked, so the pool removed her confusion.
It's like how there are mythic spells on the spell lists of the occult classes. That doesn't mean they can cast them without being mythic; it just means that the classes came out after Mythic Adventures and so they needed to have the appropriate spells on their lists in case they were mythic. Similarly, the new classes have racial spells on their spell lists not because they ignore the racial restriction but instead because otherwise, if you played a character of that race, you would never be able to use your racial spells with new classes that came out after Advanced Race Guide since they wouldn't be on the new classes' lists. Does that make sense?
Guide to Korvosa has lots of detail on the city, like the OP mentioned. As a big fan of the lore in our books as what first drew me into Pathfinder (which ironically, I pretty much don't work on since I'm a designer) I feel that the new Qadira really has a ton of cool setting info as well, and it's the same length as Guide to Korvosa. True, it's a region with a much larger scope than Korvosa and it has more space for rules and bestiary than GtK did, but it still seemed packed with lore to me.
As a note, that weapon and spell FAQ has in some cases been superseded by the more complete and more recent FAQ that is more expansive in what it handles than rays and is more nuanced than the final line in that FAQ. Most notably "Abilities like Arcane Strike that specifically enhance a character’s weapon or weapons themselves never apply to special abilities (with the exception of special abilities like the warlock’s mystic bolts that specifically call out that Arcane Strike applies)."
It is interesting that he did not however weigh in on the subject of Armor of Bones and Magical Vestment...
We don't have a FAQ for that yet, so that's why. I'd need to weigh in on it as Rogue Eidolon because otherwise people sometimes mistake my posts for being official rulings.
I am very intrigued by the themes that sound like they're moving in to replace traits and to a small extent archtypes. With the new general archtypes on top, there sounds like there'll be a fair about of customization.
I'm sad to hear about the decrease in skills though, a lot of my favorite games are non-murdery and very skill savy. That said, what they were describing reminds me of the unchained skill variant which makes me think it'll just depend on the players creativity whether the smaller set is played well.
Having fewer skills doesn't necessarily mean you can't solve all the same situations with skills in the same ways. For instance PF Acrobatics being a combination of 3.5's Tumble, Jump, and Balance skills still kept the ability to do all three things, you just spent fewer ranks for it.
Apropos to nothing else in this discussion except the Bonekeep-money question, I happen to have had a case of running Bonekeep 1 where a rogue sneaked away and stole some of the other encounters' treasure after/while the rest of the party was dying, and after a thorough check of the scenario's wording, some of the rooms do say "if the party finds/acquires the XX, they gain XX gp" At the time, I felt bad for everybody else so I let that count, but it wasn't a sure thing to me; I can see the ambiguity there as well as both sides on it.
In some cases that is what the treasure line reads. Had that been this case for this particular section, I probably would have been more generous. This section, however, awarded treasure contingent on the defeat of the encounter. The encounter was ongoing at the time and was in the middle of making attacks when the time ran out.
Apropos to nothing else in this discussion except the Bonekeep-money question, I happen to have had a case of running Bonekeep 1 where a rogue sneaked away and stole some of the other encounters' treasure after/while the rest of the party was dying, and after a thorough check of the scenario's wording, some of the rooms do say "if the party finds/acquires the XX, they gain XX gp" At the time, I felt bad for everybody else so I let that count, but it wasn't a sure thing to me; I can see the ambiguity there as well as both sides on it.
My group tends to run it like Ravingdork does, but I do think it's a good question to get figured out one way or the other if someone wants to FAQ it.
Certainly a few Improved Familiar options that came out in B5 would need similar clarifying wording if the ruling is the opposite; the chuspiki is on that list too.
The language of Ghost Touch says that you can attack incorporeal creatures normally. Which would include precision damage of all kinds (criticals, sneak attacks, etc.).
PRD wrote:
An incorporeal creature is immune to critical hits and precision-based damage (such as sneak attack damage) unless the attacks are made using a weapon with the ghost touch special weapon quality.
So you definitely can with ghost touch. Weirdly this is found in the subtype instead of the much longer special quality.
Ghost Salt doesn't convey the ghost touch special property however:
Ghost-Salt wrote:
The blanching gives the weapon the ability to do full damage to incorporeal creatures, even if the weapon itself is nonmagical.
So full damage, but still no precision-damage or critting.
You would need to fire more than 400 bolts to equal getting a +1 Ghost Bolts package (which is 50 bolts) so the blanch is far more effective.
In addition, this should let you crit the ghost, which you cannot do with a mere magical weapon.*
*-This is still up for debate, but several GMs have allowed it. I would allow it. However, be warned that your mileage may vary.
While I agree there may still be some question on this, I really don't think there should be.
The language of Ghost Touch says that you can attack incorporeal creatures normally. Which would include precision damage of all kinds (criticals, sneak attacks, etc.).
PRD wrote:
An incorporeal creature is immune to critical hits and precision-based damage (such as sneak attack damage) unless the attacks are made using a weapon with the ghost touch special weapon quality.
So you definitely can with ghost touch. Weirdly this is found in the subtype instead of the much longer special quality.
