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if it's in your pocket you arn't adjacent; you are occupying the same space. Tere is a difference.

If it had called out 'adjacent squares' I would agree, but while a lot of cases do, this doesn't.

With a normal melee weapon, you can strike any opponent within 5 feet. (Opponents within 5 feet are considered adjacent to you.) Some melee weapons have reach, as indicated in their descriptions. With a typical reach weapon, you can strike opponents 10 feet away, but you can't strike adjacent foes (those within 5 feet).

The familiar, by this definition, is adjacent. Additionally, tiny and smaller creatures have a no reach, meaning they need to be sharing the space of any ally or enemy they want to touch or attack. Would this mean that 4 tiny creatures sharing a space aren't adjacent to each other?

For the purposes of activating teamwork feats like Shake It Off and Allied Spellcaster, an Inquisitor with Solo Tactics needs to be adjacent to an ally. The ally doesn't need to have the feat, and as far as I can tell it doesn't even need to qualify. This means I could stand next to a Barbarian and still benefit from Allied Spellcaster, though I wouldn't get the +4 bonus from an ally having the same spell prepared.

How far does this extend?

If the party summoner has a herd of Aurochs on the the field and I stand in the middle of them do I stack up Shake It Off bonuses? Would I get the same benefit from his eidolon? By my logic the answer is still yes.

However, if I have a diminutive familiar (from whatever source) in my pocket do I get a +1 to my saves from Shake It Off, or the bonus from Allied Spellcaster? Would this not count as adjacent, since we share a square? Does the familiar count as an 'ally' for these purposes? For that matter, how would an intelligent item work in this scenario?

I'd go with Paladin, Monk, Grenadier Alchemist. Paladins and Alchemists can both heal, Alchemist and Monk cover a lot of skill and utility between them, Monk and Paladin can cover melee combat well, and Grenadier can cover them from range.

I played a chef character recently, and played it as a ninja who dual-wielded a chef's knife and a skillet. In retrospect it would have worked well to play as a vivisectionist. That way I could have my food be magic without the feat tax I had (master craftsman (profession:chef) and brew potion with the permission of the DM). A few of the vivisectionist abilities don't fit flavor too well, but since he had skill as a butcher, but no ability to make bombs, I figure sneak attack would be a good replacement.

real life relevant: Action economy. Check out the Commoner Rail Gun theory. (it involves the idea that passing an object is a free action and free actions are unlimited in combat)

I hate the commoner rail gun as an example. For the first 90% it has to use rules as written, ignoring common sense, so the commoners can all delay their actions and move the stone 1 mile in 6 seconds. Then, all of a sudden, it has to use common sense to say that a stone moving 600 mph should do a lot of damage, rather than consistently using the RAW to say it does about 1d2 damage with a 10 ft. range increment being thrown by a commoner, and using a penalty to hit for using an improvised weapon.

That being said, I have problems with action economy as well. In my understanding, the actions are all supposed to be happening more or less simultaneously, but the rules do not represent this well. In the games I've seen that do represent this better (GURPS mostly) combat drags insanely, though. I don't really know a better solution.

Could you load up all 5 spells onto one device, hit the button... and kaboom? Say you load up a gun that has three 1st level spells, (Burning Hands, Magic Missle, Ear piercing Scream) a single 2nd level spell, (Scorching Ray) and a single 3rd level spell, (Lightning bolt).

Would you really be able to do 2d6 + 1d4+1(x3) + 5d4 + 4d6 + 5d6 all in one click of the button... 4 times a day?

Yes, you can load them all up like that. I played with someone who used this class. This class is balanced terribly. Thankfully, the person I played with kept things from getting too absurd, but he did make the gun you described, minus burning hands. Also, the ability to take spells off any list lets him get things like Haste as lvl2 and Summon Monster 5 as lvl4 (both from the Summoner list) gets bad. If he wanted he could fully buff our whole party, summon backup, and kill an enemy in a single standard action. If his uses ran out he just needed a UMD check to bypass it. That whole weird science mechanic is poorly thought out and broken. I wouldn't touch it unless you can really trust your player to keep things reasonable.

My recently retired character was a master chef. With the two I am running now, one spent time as a crab fisherman and farmer, the other is a grifter with a habit of faking his death when he gets caught.

In the last game I played in we fought off some assassins just as we entered mid-levels and pulled a +1 and a +2 dagger off of each one. There were 6 assassins in that fight. Those daggers never stopped being useful.

If I'm playing a melee fighter type I will usually et a few javelins in my inventory just so I have something to do wen I'm out of melee range.

I have to agree that I dislike the Ronin's challenge ability. It actually prevented be from choosing that order when making the Samurai I will be playing in an upcoming campaign.
The flavor of it is definitely solid. It makes sense that Ronin's should specialize in fighting the order they have denied.
It's a pretty big stretch to say it will come up frequently in gameplay, however. There is a very specific style of campaign that will allow this to be an important class ability, and any campaign outside of that will likely see it used so few times I could count it on one hand. The flavor may be strong, but what good is a great RP element if you never see it come up?

We usually play at the home of the player with the best space for it. At the moment this means my apartment. Last year it was a meeting space in my friend's res. hall. I have never played in a FLGS, since the only one near here is typically full of very rude warhammer players, and the store tends to mostly support warhammer style games.

I have to agree with Will saves, ironically, being the most important on heavy hitters like Barbarians and Fighters. I know that if my party Barbarian was coming at me with his weapon drawn I would be invisible and running immediately. Admittedly, we allow some 3.5 material in our games and the Barbarian's player is an absurd power-gamer. I am the only party member who could break his DR on average, and even then I can only do so when sneak attacking. Even in a normal situation, however, a well built fighter could full-round a sorcerer or wizard straight into the grave.

IT is very similar to the rogue, but I'm really enjoying playing this ninja: http://www.dorkistan.com/PFRPG/classes/ninja.htm

I would say yours just seems a little on the high powered side when compared to classes that it should have similarities with (Monk or Rogue)

wraithstrike wrote:

PS:There are many threads that start like this. Feel free to read them for other ideas, and to prepare you for what will be said if you try to call the summoner overpowered.

I won't need to! From i can already smell it's pretty obvious that i'll be the only one around here thinking their might be a problem!

I'll suck it up and go somewhere else!

If that is the attitude you are going to have about trying to discuss an issue, I recommend you just boycott the class and move on.

Another way to increase your spell DC is to DECREASE the enemies' saves. There are a multitude of ways to achieve this.

This is why I really love the witch. You can shoot off Evil Eyes all day, and even when the enemy makes their save they have to deal with it for a round.

It really is quite sad this beautiful thread was jacked by a pointless argument over charisma. I really have to thank you for this, Ashiel. I think I may start trying to get my next game to be a 15 point buy. I really like the look of these character. Also, somehow my group's current "4d6 drop the lowest" turns out higher than the average 25 point buy quite often....

Half the reason I enjoy playing martial characters is that they surpass realism pretty quickly. Anything past level 6-ish is well beyond anything the real world has ever seen IMO. That holds true matter the class.

It is really just a matter of personal play style, but I love the thought of my fighter climbing out of his crater and dusting himself off for the rest of the fight.

This was at a time when we had gone through quite a few huge battles without leveling, and the DM tallied it up to realize we actually had earned two levels in this time. I had planned on putting my monk into one psychic warrior level, followed by Elocater, so I got to do both in one shot. I had some splitting headaches prior to leveling, and trouble sleeping. Once I leveled I started levitating without noticing, and would use powers "involuntarily" in combat.

My former roommate's sorcerer had this running joke where whenever we got attacked he would try to jump up and fly away to escape the fight, then begrudgingly participate when he couldn't. When he could finally cast fly he tried this and, in his "surprise", crashed into the ceiling of the cavern.

I miss that campaign...

Yeah... but... that's not strict PFRPG.

But, I agree. Int-based, skill-based, and can even get Bardic Music abilities, later on ( which is when we meet the Doctor, in the first place )

The OP's request never mentioned anything about it being strict PFRPG, so I went with the class I thought was most accurate.

Also, there were some crazy acquired templates slapped on some of the supporting characters during the show that should be accounted for. Just look at Jack Harkness.

My three favorite offbeat characters that I have actually played were the following:

An awakened potted plant psion. He was eventually re-planted into a psicrystal shaped like a planter so he could move.

A human chef (ninja). He was broke and his prospective future wife wouldn't marry him unless he had a job. In his case he was a ship's cook. He dual wielded cooking knives (kukris) and all his ninja abilities were simply gained during his "unusually intense" culinary school days.

A shifter druid (in-game he was a cursed human, shifters didn't exist in-setting) who was haunted by the spirit of a magical elk he had killed as a teenager. In stressful situations the elk would take over and allow him to shapshift (into elks from wildshape, elk hybrids from shifting), cast spells, etc. Effectively all of his druid abilities came from the magical elk that only he could see. It was unclear whether any of this was actually the case, or he was simply insane.

I personally would choose sorcerer over wizard, but only for my personal RP reasons. I prefer not to play bookish types, but I have seen some of my friends play very compelling wizards. I read X-Men a lot when I was younger, so I have a soft spot for the whole "confused youth develops powers and feels like an outcast" shtick, and that seems to come more from the sorcerer side.
Mechanically, I think wizards really do take the cake in higher level play. This is only my personal experience.

I personally think The Doctor is a Factotum from Dungeonscape in 3.5. It's a jack-of-all trades intelligence based class. All of its class abilities are thematically based on the factotum picking up skills here and there during his travels, which sounds just like The Doctor in my mind.

Timelord would have to be a whole new race that gave huge mental ability score bonuses, and had an ability similar to timeless body where your physical stats did not degrade as you aged (among other little tricks). If I were to make a character based on the doctor I would (reluctantly) play an elf. Maybe create some RP trick where he appears to be human.

As for the Sonic Screwdriver, the TARDIS, slightly psychic paper, etc. they would have to be made individually.

Not to de-rail a FANTASTIC interior design thread, but the problem I have with the ki mat also has to do with the required check. You have to make a straight wisdom check against a dc 10+your current ki pool. Unless your ki pool is nearly spent it's going to be tough to make that check.
Let's say you have a level 15 monk with a +5 wisdom modifier. You normally have 12 ki points, and you need to be down to half of your pool before you will have a 50% chance of not wasting your hour of meditation.
50% is odds I will often take on an attack roll or even some skill checks. I can't imagine wasting an hour, and 10k gold on it, though.

One that a buddy of mine loves is Binder(ToM)/Paladin. Con/Cha base on the binder, so there is no MAD problem with paladin. Binders have a ton of awesome passive abilities that compliment the paladin well. The passive abilities don't take away from action economy either. The flavor of it is tricky because pact magic could be considered a gray area for the paladin code.

Really?

So if I go to my local store and post a flyer saying "Starting a new campaign based on real earth history, taking place in ancient Greece. The only difference is that spells and magical items will exist but at first only as/with NPCs or monsters."

And then you show up on day 1 and want to roll up an elf sorcerer, you're telling me that I'm on a "pointless power trip" and "infringing on your fun." I set the premise and everyone else who shows up is interested in playing within that framework, but you want something totally different and I'm the bad guy here?

Really?

You really should have read my second post on the subject. If there is one person going against the entire group then yes, he's wrong in that case. One person against the fun of the group is incorrect. My problem is with DMs who are that one person, who view the game as their game rather than being something that belongs to everyone who is playing. It's like those snotty girls in elementary school who dictated who everyone was when playing house.

I understand where you are coming from but to an extent I think it's ok. If the entire group is wanting to run a human only campaign and you specifically want to throw an elf into it you could very well be ruining everyone's fun. Now maybe they could stand some slight alteration like you playing a half elf or a half orc but sometimes the point of the campaign is something that is tied into its setting. Perhaps part of the plot really does fall through if a certain social precedent or rule isn't in play like it would be in the particular setting.

Does this mean it should be the rule of the day? No. Does it mean that people shouldn't work together to find a way to get everyone something they want? No. But it does mean that if you want that person to DM you have to give him/her some space to set up how he feels he needs to run a game that will be fun for everyone.

That said the situation that Nikogami finds herself in seems a bit more than that to me.

If you are in a group of people who, DM and PC alike, would like to play a human-only setting that is very different than having a DM who just "doesn't like asian themed characters" and tells you to make your Monk into something else. If the player whose character is being changed is the one who is going against the fun of the group then it is reasonable to ask him to alter a character.

I think I really have a problem in general with DMs who restrict character choices for reasons having to do with theme, European-based nonsense or not. Restricting options for power reasons is fine, but not letting a PC play what they want just because it doesn't fit your ideal setting? That's just a pointless power trip. This is a cooperation based game and treating your DM status like some kind of license to infringe on other players' fun is just poor taste.

I don't mean to personally attack anyone who does DM this way, I just disagree with that DM style.

i don't mean non core races, he plays with the misconcieved idea of D&D=Medeival europe and doesn't allow most of the non european concepts. i have proposed mikos, ninjas, desert bandits, elemental mystics, and a lot of similar things. almost all of which were core classes with human as the standard race. i hate having to bleach my characters white before i can play them.

That really is odd, I've never seen a DM rule out characters purely for thematics. Non-core races would be understandable, as if I'm running a Forgotten Realms game I don't really want the world's only warforged in the party, but a desert bandit? That's fairly easy to fit in even with a medieval Europe kind of setting. You seem like the type to work out solid back-stories so I'm sure you'd be able to fit in exile fro your homeland or something to explain your presence.

Toughness scales because hitpoints don't. You need more of them to scale with level, so the feat needs to provide more to remain competitive at higher levels.

Extra X feats don't scale, because the abilities they increase already do. Rage gets better the more barbarian levels you have. A higher level rage (powers, increased str/con), or channel energy (1d6/2 levels), or bardic song (inspire courage +1-4), are all better than a lower level one.
This means, those same 2 extra uses are better at higher levels than at lower levels already. Two uses of 20th level Rage is worth more than two uses of 1st level Rage.

3 hitpoints is always just 3 hitpoints. That's why there's a difference.

Ki points don't quite scale in the same way though. The abilities of other classes increase per unit spent (such as rage/song uses rounds only, channels are always per use). Monks have to spend more points to get more uses. One ki point will always only get you a +4 to AC, or a +20 acrobatics. To use the later abilities you need to use more ki points, whereas other classes still use only one unit.

I would personally consider houseruling the feat to increase ki pool to 3/4 level+wisdom. At level 20 it would only give you 5 more ki points.

IIRC there's an old Dragon Magazine feat that allows for monks to replace wis with int for all monk-y things. It seems that would work well for a wiz/monk build.

There is the Keen Intellect feat from Oriental Adventures which replaces int for wis on all skill checks...so it's really the same feat. The only trcik to that feat is the 1st level only requirement.

I have a character right now with an interesting plan contingent on his death. He is a Shifter druid with all his racial substitution levels, and his Beast Spirit is an intelligent caribou he killed that is haunting him. He has verbal arguments with it, and those around him only hear him yelling at nobody in particular. When he dies I am just gonna let the caribou take over his body. He'll just be the same character, only his alignment is going to change from NG to CN, and I might have him use normal wildshape rather than wild shifting and have him spend a lot of time as a caribou.

You could go with something similar where your character has some kind of plan contingent upon his death where he can still basically be the same character.

The most broken aspect of VOP was the bonus exalted feat slots.

Remove the other exalted feats and VOP becomes playable as the abilities are mostly level restricted.

In low magic worlds a fighter might even take this to make up for no/few magical weapons.....

I always felt the Exalted Feats were the least impressive feature, especially if you were a Monk. The good feats get burned out VERY early, and many of the Monk-specific feats require high Cha...making the Monk even more MAD. The bulk of the stuff worth taking was more vows.

It doesn't offset the lowered spellcasting entirely, but it is worth noting that the sheer lack of MAD on a Ora/Sor means your DC's still won't be horrible. That being said, I still don't recommend it. I tried it in 3.5 with a Favored Soul/Sorcerer build and it was painful.

Speaking of 3.5, if you are allowed 3.5 material I would recommend looking at Arcane Hierophant. It has a medium BAB, wild shape, armored spellcasting, and other goodies along with being a double-caster. The only added restriction is that you have druid levels.

I just saw an alternate PF Fighter with some class abilities that would work for this build.

http://www.dorkistan.com/PFRPG/classes/fighter.htm

Check out all of the Finesse abilities.

edit: Also the critical strike feature.

SanguineRooster wrote:

Are you seriously just going to change the units to inches instead of feet and make them have this WHOLE argument again?

Mathematics is my weakest subject. I truly didn't understand why it wasn't converting at first.

It was not my intention to rehash anything. I was merely asking why it didn't seem to add up.

Luckily, I was able to figure out that it was simply a problem with my math (as it often is) and answered my own question.

No deviousness behind it at all.

It could be much worse. The biggest math nerd I play with is really heavily focused on powergaming his characters, while the writing major just focuses on making his really f***ing cool. I'd much rather fall in the latter category.

I was thinking of throwing all sense of balance out the window and rewarding all levels beyond 20th with 15 points to spend as from the Mutants and Masterminds system. I would have to convert a few things to deal with hit points rather than the Toughness save system. I should run this by my players...

I think the rules support being able to wear multiple mundane items of the same kind even. I mean, look at Hennet. He's wearing at least 20 belts. The new Oracle iconic has a few mundane "head slot" items it looks like as well.

Just thought of this, this morning:

It seems that most everyone can agree that 1 cubic foot gives us a cube with 1 foot on a side and that 12 cubic feet is NOT a 12x12x12 foot cube.

So answer me this: How come 12 cubic inches ISN'T a 12x12x12 inch cube?

Shouldn't 12 cubic inches give us the exact same cube as 1 cubic foot? Mathematically, doing it in inches gives us a much smaller cube. Why is that?

EDIT: Feel free to discuss it anyways, but I think I figured it out of my own.

Are you seriously just going to change the units to inches instead of feet and make them have this WHOLE argument again? You complain about Mynameisjake picking on you... but I'm having a damn hard time not getting nasty about this and I consider myself a fairly kind person.

This has actually been a problem in my games. Essentially magic item creation is now only 3 feats: Arms+Armor, Rings, Wondrous.

"What do you mean Immovable Rod? This is an Immovable Stick! There's nothing saying I can't make a slotless Wondrous Item that does that, right?"

The pricing gets funky, but we're in a setting where we can't purchase any items, it's all self made. So this is letting people get items that would have been impossible without extra feats.

We even had a few party members do that exact same "ring of shield" trick that the OP described.

I have 2 I particularly liked. Ghontix and Garath.

Ghontix was an exalted, Half-Actic Elf, Arcane Hierophant. He and his celestial baboon were summoned from death to serve a treant Demigod. In his past life he was an evil ranger, he had repented in death and was brought back in a very weak body. He teamed up with a CN Half-orc binder and a LN wyvern-riding mercenary whose antics often went against his exalted principles. They spent most of their time on diplomatic missions between countries that invariably fell into violence. This frustrated Ghontix who, in spite of 20+ Cha for the whole campaign, proved to be a horrible negotiator.

Garath was a Half-Elf Monk/Psychic Warrior. He was raised among evil worshipers of Wee Jas, but had so little magical aptitude that he was looked down on and made to do only physical work. He was taught the basics of painting and fighting arts by another one of the laborers at the commune. As an adult he struck out on his own, eventually falling into work as an inter-planar mercenary of sorts. His first exposure to the astral plane awakened his dormant psionic ability. In spite of his upbringing he was a worshiper of Wee Jas, and would often draw portraits of recently deceased PCs/NPCs. He was the only character that made it from beginning to end in that campaign. The others all switched out or died along the way.

If you're interested in the Japanese feudal combat arts I would suggest finding a copy of "Secrets of the Samurai" by Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook. An excellent survey of the Japanese combat arts. It will give you a better overview and more in depth information than about any other single source. Imho, of course.

I used to have a copy of that book, and it was great. I wish I knew what happened to it.

OP: If you could find a way to incorporate the Iaijutsu Focus skill that OA had it would probably help. See if your DM will allow it.

SanguineRooster wrote:

I don't believe it would in this case. The character in question has the Mind Over Body feat so he uses intelligence to calculate HP.

Nah, ya thinking of something else. I know the feat tho, i'm AFB so i can't look it up. but that would be great synergy, btw, it's Int bns to HP for 1st lvl.

Mind Over Body (XPH) allows you to naturally heal 1 + Con mod. in ability damage (& 'burn') per day.

Aha, I had to re-read the one from the Forgotten Realms setting. I had a player pull the wool over my eyes with that the other night. I'll have to have a chat with him.

Wouldn't the 8 points of Constitution burn take away 4 HP PER character level though? That could end up being much worse than just taking the damage to begin with!

I don't believe it would in this case. The character in question has the Mind Over Body feat so he uses intelligence to calculate HP.

Amulet of the fist is an enhancement bonus, as is Greater Magic Fang, and as the description says, so is the psychoactive skin.

So the bonuses will not stack for attack rolls.

However the deflection bonus will stay (unless you have a ring of protection, then again only the higher bonus stays) as does the resistance bonus to save throws (cloak of resistance applies the same bonus type so if you have one it's one or the other).

However if your amulet of the mighty fist is +2 you will get the bonus to damage still, since the pscyhoactive skin only affects attack rolls and not damage rolls.

That's kind of what I was figuring, I was hoping for some kind of subtle rule magic I was missing. Thank you for clarifying.

I'm working on a level 20 monk build with 3.5 material allowed and I am bad at keeping track of stacking effects.

Let's say he is wearing a Psychoactive Skin of the Hero:

This psychoactive skin continually grants the wearer a +3 deflection bonus to Armor Class, a +3 resistance bonus on all saving throws, and a +3 enhancement bonus on attack rolls.

Has permanent Greater Magic Fang, and is wearing an Amulet of Mighty Fists that is giving a straight enhancement bonus rather than any special weapon abilities. Would these effects stack?

The good news is that it goes both ways for the monk. How many thing are going to be overcoming your 10/chaotic?

@stringburka: I think what he's getting at is the old 3.5 prestige classes that don't account for the different types of monk progression in Pathfinder.

Maneuver training is technically a bonus feat that uses your total level, not your monk level, so that doesn't need to be changed.

The only thing that really needs to be added in my opinion to fix the 3.5 monk PrC's to Pathfinder is the flurry of blows BAB. I played a level 15 character that was using an old PrC so I had the DM add the FoB progression and it worked just fine.

I can see the argument that channel energy turned clerics into dedicated healers, but in play I've felt it was the opposite. When I played 3.5 clerics I would quite rarely even use turn undead, so I felt like I was wasting my class ability. I am glad they got rid of that. Furthermore, I like channel because now when the party is whining that they need a heal, I can pop off a channel and not have to waste valuable spell slots. I can afford to do other things BECAUSE of channel, because I still have spell slots left that weren't used for healing.
To all those who think a cleric heal every round is necessary: I almost wonder if the heal is necessary because the cleric doesn't contribute in any other way. Maybe if the cleric took action to debuff enemies, or just kill them, then their healing would not be needed so much. If you restrict the cleric to heals then you're just turning a party member into a wand, or a backpack filled with potions. If that party member were helping instead and healing between encounters the combat wouldn't be so tough with new fourth party member. I could be wrong, as I obviously haven't watched any of your games, it's just something I am curious about.

I think rage powers should be along the same power-level as evolutions on eidolons.

Sadly, they are not. High leveled eidolons are pulling in evolutions that make them huge, fire breathing, fast healing, 8 limbed beasts. A barbarian rage is powerful, but even with mighty rage buffing his strength and con by 10, that class-feature-beast is probably better. This could be fixed at least a bit by making better rage powers.