Sean H's page

I loved the Qinggong Monk when it first came out, but as more and more books are released it makes me sad that none of the new spells are ever added to the Qinggong's list.

Looking at the spells in ACG, we have Air Step, Blessed Fist, Blurred Movement, Heightened Awareness, Heightened Reflexed, Long Arm, Thunderstomp... all exceptionally Monk-esque abilities, moreso that many SLAs Qinggong actually has, but nothing is ever added to their list.

We need some monk love :(

I was really excited to see Paizo's take on psychic magic, but I'm disappointed with the current implementation. It just feels rather... stilted, like they tried to cram the 3.5 PP system into the Vancian Magic system, and the result is not pretty.

While I love the PP system, Dreamscarred Press has cornered that market, so I see why Paizo didn't go that route. However, psychic magic feels like it's fighting against itself in it's current state, and I think this is because it's trying to be too many different things at once. Instead of being tied down to the past, I want to focus on ways we could make Psychic Magic into something new, cool, and distinctly Pathfinder.

Undercasting feels like it's trying to fill the same role that Augmentation did for PP, but since you can't split a higher level spell slot into multiple lower ones there's no reason to undercast a spell when you have higher level slots available unless you KNOW you're fighting a weaker foe. Against true threats, there's no reason to even consider not using your highest tier spell, since the high-level ones are always straight upgrades.

Compare this to say, Burning Hands v.s. Scorching Ray v.s. Fireball, which not only have varying damage but also have varying utility; which one you want to use can be heavily influenced by how enemies are positioned. With undercast spells, this isn't the case; the next level is always just a better version.

One possibility I think it would work better is if instead of having spells that just get bigger numbers as they level, these new occult classes learned ways to 'twist' their spells to better suit their needs. You could never quite know what to expect when fighting an occult caster; this would help add to that eerie, strange feeling that the occult is supposed to give. I think the Alchemist Admixtures are a good example of this; the Alchemist is still throwing bombs, but the exact effect it has been shifted to produce strange results.

Another option would be to use a system like Monk Ki or the Magus Arcana Pool for enhancing these spells. If instead of having Ego Whip I, Ego Whip II, Ego Whip III, etc., the Psychic just had Ego Whip with the ability to boost their spells up to higher strength by spending Ki or some similar resource, you would get the benefits of having multiple power levels without the weird dissonance that undercasting produces in a Vancian magic system. Players are also already familar with this kind of system, which is another bonus. It also opens the door for more possibilities like this in the future... I don't know about you, but I would totally play a Ki-based full caster.

Since whips are traditionally made out of leather, are these any special materials you can use to make them? It seems like whipwood is the only one which seems like it could work, but even then that's almost a houserule since whipwood is in fact a type of wood, and whips aren't generally made from wood.

I have enough play opportunities left, I could get another 2 or 3 characters to level 12 just on what I can still play.

GM Credit is not all its cracked up to be, and asking for unlimited GM credit will just detract from your ability to actually play your characters.

At my lodge there is a shortage of GMs available. I would be willing to GM more, but I have a need to get a certain amount of credit in a limited timeframe, which actively disincentives me from GMing. In a system where GM availability is limited, is a system which further reduces this availability a good one?

The more GM credit we offer into the field of characters, the more we dilute the actual playability of those characters.

I had trouble adjusting to both my Alchemist/Cavalier I noted above. This was a very complicated build, and it took me a level or two to get the hang of the character. By 12th level, he was pretty impressive, but I had to learn how to play him when I should already have known. Because I did not organically grow with him and learn him as I gained the XP.

I also had a two or three scenario learning curve with Sssstryxsss, my Saurian Shaman Druid. He was 5th level before I played him.

The point being, the more GM credit you offer into the pool, the more likely you are going to be sitting at a table with someone who doesn't really understand their character, and thus the better chance of a character death (not necessarily theirs) or a TPK. This is actually worse than a newby with a level 7 pregen.

Wouldn't allowing credit for rerunning scenarios actually help fix this very problem?

Lets say that you're GMing 9 times. If you run 9 different scenarios, all 9 scenarios are likely to go on a single character, giving you a 4th-level character you have never played. However, if you run 3 different scenarios 3 times, you will end up with 3 2nd-level characters that you have never played.

Re-run credit would actually push players to play their characters more than GM them, because they can't apply the same chronicle to a character twice.

There may be other, hidden reasons, that none of us have thought of, that make unlimited GM credit a bad idea.

This is true. There may be reasons we are yet unaware of which make allowing re-run credit a bad idea, but is it really worth it to shy away from a making a change which has clear, concise benefits of which we are aware, all because of a potential unknown?

Additionally, if we want to be cautious we can always roll out changes like this slowly. We certainly do not need unlimited GM credit. It would not be difficult to start off by only allowing 2 GM credits per scenario, just to see what impact it has on the game. If one of those potential unknowns does rear it's head and has a negative impact on the game, we can always roll back the changes.

So he wants a special dispensation to get GM credit a second time so that he can play this specific character at Paizo Con in the scenarios he's signed up for.

He wants it to be a new rule, for his immediate convenience, without looking at the long term ramifications for both himself and others.

If he really wants those 4 scenario credits, why can't he find another GM to run the 4 scenarios for him, instead of needing them to be GM credits?

I apologize if my OP came off this way, but I did not intend to ask for special dispensation. I did not have my immediate convenience in mind when I made the OP, and I certainly didn't suggest this change without considering the long-term ramifications of Organized Play. I love Pathfinder Society, and would never suggest a change I felt would harm PFS as a whole, even if it benefited me personally.

Rather, I believe that allowing GM credit for re-running scenarios would have a positive impact on the society as a whole for all players, as the benefits we could gain would outweigh the of downsides of this change.

always wondered why folks have dwarves use axes so much--for people associated with earth and stone as often as they are, wouldn't the pick or hammer be more fitting (which they get as well, dont get me wrong)?

Because axes are the most effective weapon when fighting against the Dwarves' ancient ancestral enemy, a fearsome creature with a tough skin and hardy flesh. Those towering behemoths can reach heights of over 300 feet, and the largest have a girth of 100 feet! Picks barely make a dent against these creatures, and hammers simply bounce right off; you need the strong, chopping motion of an axe to fell these terrible beasts. I am talking, of course, about the dreaded tree.

There's a Staff in Ultimate Equipment known as the Staff of the Master. The book says there are 8 different staves, one for each school of magic, but an example is only given for one of them(Necromancy). That particular staff allows the wielder to cast three Necromancy spells: Ray of Enfeeblement(1st), Spectral Hand(2nd), and Vampiric Touch(3rd).

It seems like for most games, Staves for the other 7 schools can be created simply by picking a 1st, 2nd and 3rd level spell from the school of the staff, which the staff can then cast. For PFS however, this seems to tread dangerously close to the custom magic items line.

So, how would this work in PFS? The Additional Resources states that all staves on pages 192–203, except the unholy staff, are legal for play. That means the Staff of the Master should be legal, but what spells to we use? Can we chose what spells we want the staff to cast? Will someone create a list of spells specifically for this staff we can use? Or is only the Necromancy staff available, because it's the only example given?

An another interesting option, is the Forgemaster Cleric.

It trades Channel, for intelligence based abilities.

You will be able to craft the party an assortment magic items.

This is what I was going to recommend once I saw the stats:

• It's an interesting, versatile class.
• It doesn't get played often due to the odd stat requirements.
• Due to your odd stats, the class fits extraordinarily well.

For those reasons, I would suggest the Forgemaster over all the other suggestions in this thread. Any character with a half-decent DEX and WIS can be an Inquisitor or Gunslinger; any character with a good DEX and INT can be a Magus. Forgemaster stands out as something that is uniquely suited to the particular stats you've rolled.

First off, he has a revolver, so reloading isn't an issue. Ammunition cost is why he almost never uses the thing.

Second off, he has a full kit now, and he's still made worthless by any enemy with even the tiniest of DR that isn't /Piercing or /Bludgeoning.

It should only cost him 1.1gp/shot if he's making his own ammunition(as he should). Even if me makes all of his ammo Cold Iron, which isn't a bad idea, they would all be 1.2gp. That's hardly prohibitive; even Silver bullets would only cost 1.5gp and Adamantine ones 7gp. Compared to 180gp or 3,000gp for a silver or adamantine sword, respectively, that's nothing.

So why is DR a problem, again?

The pistol firearms do such pitiful damage[...]

Okay... so let's take a level 3 gunslinger with a revolver(1d8) and throw in point-blank shot(+1), and rapid shot(extra attack).

In total, that's 2d8+2 damage/round, or an average of 11 damage.

Now, let's take a level 3 fighter with a longsword(1d8) and throw in power attack(+2), Weapon Focus(+1 to-hit), and weapon specialization(+2 damage), as well as 16 strength(+3).

In total, that is 1d6+7 damage/round, or an average of 10.5 damage.

Both have the same to-hit, both deal roughly equal damage, but the gunslinger is still targeting Touch AC.

I am impressed. I knew there was a lot of heavy-duty voting going on, but I never imagined that kind of scale. Great job, everyone!

*Hands Thomas LeBlanc a golden trophy*

*slinks away with his Star Voter and a "I Participated!" sticker*

I have a really cool idea that I'm thinking about throwing away just because it doesn't fit in with the River Kingdoms. It fits a neighbor well enough, but there's no point in taking the chance if you don't have to.

Don't throw it away. Hand onto it, maybe develop it a little bit, and submit the archetype to Kobold Quarterly or something. Just because a concept doesn't fit into Superstar means it's worthless.

One thing I really liked about some items, is if they had a unique way of activating the item.

I agree with this 100%. Cool recharges are nice too, as opposed to a simple X/day thing.

Yep. Unfortunately, once it's assigned it's assigned. You could, however, choose not to take credit for running the 7-11, then take run the scenario again when you have a character high enough.

Anything that's a PITA for a GM is an immediate red flag for me.

You can have a really cool item, but if it requires me to have two post-it notes to use it and track it from the GM-side, that's a problem.

Agreed. Anything that requires excessive bookkeeping in general doesn't tend to be very good - with so much going on in a game of pathfinder, you need your item to be well streamlined.

The item has choices built-in that players really have to consider.

I really like choices as well, because it gives the player something to do with the item other than simply activate it each combat.

I've seen 3 solid items out of the 100+ pairs I've seen. There's been some other interesting ideas with poor execution, but mostly it's been a lot of SAK and SIAC items. I don't know how the judges sorted through all these items each year! I do have to say I'm really looking forward to the Top 32 to see what everyone picked, and if any of the 3 I chose are in there.

I've long held Haunting of Hinoji to be my favorite scenario of all time, but I recently ran another that may just take the crown - Jester's Fraud. It got off to a rocky start, but once my group started getting past the shock-and-awe of the first encounter and into some of the silly interactions between NPCs, everyone started having a blast. They actually managed to get two of the three artifacts by negotiating with the bandits/jester instead of fighting them, which was a lot of fun for everyone involved.

I never got a chance to run it, but I remember another scenario I loved playing was Red Harvest. The openness of the scenario gave the players a lot of freedom, but drew them back into the final encounter well.

I think my favorite thing out of these three is they're all somewhat open, with enough investigative elements to perk up the ol' noggin, yet not so much it becomes a mystery game. Are there others like these? I would love to see more in the future.

Very, very good advice. Well said. I honestly admit, I never realized how much of an impact active/passive voice had on an item's description until I saw some of items that didn't use active voice at all... dang, that changes things.

Looking at the published archetypes, there are quite a few that merely shift things around. This isn't really bad, but I certainly wouldn't call it superstar. Rather, I find the interesting archetypes to be ones that give new, cool abilities - that is, things players can do that they probably couldn't normally do as that class.

An example of one archetype I particularly like would be the Flowing Monk. That redirection ability is pretty sweet. It may be a little overpowered, but I would much rather see archetypes along those lines than ones like Monk of the Four Winds; all that one does is swap out a bonus feat.

I have tried to model my archetype in this vein of adding new verbs to a player's options, though I think it has resulted in a couple of overpowered abilities. I'm currently going through and pairing it down, but I don't want to strip so much away it becomes lackluster. Ah, balancing... just something you get better at through experience, I guess.

Next year I'll consider submitting a spray can that casts a spell on the subject...

Rainbow Sprayer

In addition, once per day the user can shake the can vigorously before spraying, creating a 60 ft. spray that instead duplicates the effects of prismatic spray. Once the can is used in this fashion, it's color spray ability also stops working for the rest of the day.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, color spray, prismatic spray; Cost 19,200 gp

Standback wrote:

You know you've made it if you're certain your item is sexy, and yet you're also sure it contains no mistakes. So if you've struck the balance, you'll pretty much know it!

For what it's worth, I never seem to know I've struck the balance until I playtest it. I'll pound the playtest drum until it caves in.

It's too easy to fall into research and calculations. They're necessary, but sometimes a sound idea falls flat or an exploit shows itself when you actually put it on the board.

Hey, that's not fair! You're talking like an actual game designer!

You can't 'split' weapons between wood and metal for rule purposes, so a gun MUST be made from either metal or wood - not both. Given that a gun with a wooden barrel would not last very long, all guns must be considered to be made of metal, with any wood on the item being purely decorative.

This means you can make a gun out of Adamantine, Cold Iron, Mithral, etc. However, note that a cold iron gun won't automatically shoot cold iron bullets, so unless you're using it as an improvised melee weapon constructing a gun out of these special materials won't help v.s. DR.

Aww. That's too bad.

One thing I really like about the Superstar competition is that the quality of items that get into the top 32 is so high that anyone can pick them up and introduce them into their games, just as if they were actually printed in a book.

Case in point! Who here who doesn't and has never had a deaf or mute player has a legal investment in sign language in PFS.

Nobody, because there isn't a legal sign language in PFS. It doesn't exist. The players would have to communicate through writing, which almost every pathfinder I know has the ability to do, or have the deaf/mute character take read lips, which is her own investment.

The point here is being Deaf already imposes it's own severe restrictions on characters. In order to even partially make up for these restrictions, players need to invest their character resources into other areas. Even then, 90% of the time players won't be able to overcome all of the penalties. This is okay. What is not okay is an arbitrary -10 GM penalty that isn't listed anywhere in the rules because you don't like the concept.

Deaf is a legal curse for Oracles. Vow is Silence is a legal option for Monks. Both are allowed within the Additional Resources, and thus allowed in PFS games. Period. You can't pseudo-outlaw characters by imposing penalties so stiff that any player who has to deal with them would be miserable. That's not in the spirit of PFS, which is inclusive by nature.

After failing to complete a mission in PFS with my low-level(3) wizard, I realized just how much the party's bacon could have been saved if I had a Dismissal scroll or two prepared. This got me thinking about other important scrolls(or wands) I should always have on hand, just in case. I played up my last two games, so I have some extra money, and this seems like a good investment.

Is there a list of spells that are good to have in scroll form? Right now I'm thinking about the following:

1st:
- Protection from Evil
- Alarm
- Obscuring Mist

2nd:

- Suppress Charms and Compulsions
- Protection from Arrows
- Resist Energy

3rd:
- Dispel Magic

4th:
- Dimension Door

5th:
- Dismissal (This will be expensive... but can really be worth it.)

Does anyone have any other considerations?

Given that a good deal of diplomacy rides on expressive speech, I have a real problem with you making those checks without an effective voice. Quite frankly I'd insist on a fairly heavy penalty, something at least on the order of -10 to -12 where verbal communication is a factor.

In the case of a deaf mute I'd double the penalties or simply rule it impossible.

That's a pretty severe penalty, especially given the following:

Fail- If you fail the check by 4 or less, the character’s attitude toward you is unchanged. If you fail by 5 or more, the character’s attitude toward you is decreased by one step.

Using the above adjustment, deaf and/or mute characters are twice as likely to be outright attacked when they attempt negotiations! So much for people having pity on the disabled.

Regardless, you are correct. I am thinking about making a deaf character in PFS, specifically an Oracle with the Deaf curse. I know that this will be challenging, but that is why I am looking for ways to help mitigate the penalties so as to not harm the party. I do realize that I will be suffering penalties, and I certainly don't expect to be able to ignore my curse if I bring paper and a pen to the table. Still, this is something I am interested in doing, and I feel I should be able to pull it off if I handle this correctly.

Wait, wait. Wait.

So we can use marker due to make Tengus different colors, right?

What if we mix in a little bit of Glowing Ink?

We end up with a rave tengu. Now get a party of 6 tengus of different colors, one of which is a bard, and have a rave party!

LazarX wrote:

PFS does not allow custom items.

The rules to make custom weapons aren't allowed by PFS? Kinda stupid since it's core rules :/

It's a GM-headache mitigation. There is already a lot of things that GMs need to keep track of, and custom items require a LOT of bookkeeping on both ends. Add in the whole he-said she-said thing from different GMs in different sesstions, and you end up with custom items being an absolute nightmare to keep track of in Organized Play.

I agree that Haunts, in general, tend to be implemented fairly poorly in PFS scenarios - the exception to this is Haunting of Hinojai, which I feel is actually quite excellent in this regard. The haunts in the Carrion Crown AP are also quite good. However, when your average haunt consists of 'you hear something strange' and then 'you take massive damage because you weren't paranoid enough', it raises a couple eyebrows.

My reasoning for this is that we're playing Pathfinder, not Call of Cthulhu. Both are great games in their own right, but in Pathfinder the PCs are supposed to be documenting strange sounds or appearances, not running away because they fear being blasted with Ice Storm, possessed to jump off a cliff, or even CDG themselves.

The best haunts are ones that players can puzzle through; they have a solution, one which puts the haunt to rest or at least makes it dormant so they can proceed. I have seen very little of this in PFS, and in my experience haunts tend to be more of a one-shot-wonder which hurts the PCs a LOT if they don't run or otherwise have a way to avoid the haunt. This is unfortunate, because the best part of a haunt is finding out why it exists, which can't be done when the game hugely incentivizes running or channeling positive before the haunt can go off, and thus never gives the players a chance to figure it out.

The ARG has the training harness under the human section for 10gp.

Ohh... sounds like something the Paracountess would be interested in!

I am curious, Could you not have "nerfed" these guys instead of just straight banning them?
just some examples that came to mind for me were. If one of the reasons for the master summoner was time. How about you limit the max amount of summons to 3-4 at a time? and/or making the summons last rounds instead of minutes like typical summmon spells?
and for the synthesis summoner, couldn't you make the eidolon only give half its stats/armor/resist as contribution instead of full. this would force a equilibrium of stats that might balance it out more.

1) There could have been many reasons for banning the classes other than other than power level. The Synthesist, for example, was a complex class with a lot of confusing abilities. Without the ability to houserule how these worked, it caused a lot of headaches for Society GMs.

2) Even assuming the reason for the ban was exclusively how powerful the classes were, M&M do not have the power to change the Pathfinder RPG as a game solely for the sake of PFS. They can't simply nerf a class in PFS and leave the rest of Pathfinder untouched; changing the Synthesist would requite a complete rewrite of the class, which takes a lot more development time.

3) It's much, much easier for GMs to run PFS when they can say:

"Oh, you're playing a Synthesist? I'm sorry, but that class isn't legal for play anymore. Here, have a pregen"

as opposed to:

"Oh you're playing a Synthesist? Let me audit your character so I can be certain that you have correctly applied the latest adjustments to all of the required abilities, and are up-to-date on the definitions of the class as defined in the errata as opposed to the ones printed in Ultimate Magic."

EDIT: Ninja'ed by Daniel on point 2.

Darn it ... double-ninja'd while I was editing.

Sean H ... I agree entirely. As you point out, it makes sense, but, it also makes sense to have to wait. I'd be happy with either answer.

1.)We can wait, but are free to use it since it was released. *or*
2.)We have to wait. We can use it to make changes or updates, but it's not [i/playable[/i] 'til the 16th.

Huh, that is a different reading than I got. I already rebuilt one of my characters because I wanted to put the past behind me and didn't want to spend any more time playing a character I knew was going away. I'm not even sure where my old character sheet is. Does this mean I can't even play my new character this weekend, even though he is both season 3 and 4 legal after the rebuild?

After re-reading my above post, I apologize for being antagonistic to Min-Maxers. Some people are competitive by nature and create the most competitive characters they can. That doesn't necessarily make them bad players. Sorry for the blanket assumption on my part. It was insensitive of me to be so harsh towards players who potentially lost their favorite characters due to this ban.

Oh, and thanks for the apology. While I won't deny there were issues with characters that completely dominated tables, this wasn't true for everyone. I know my Synthesist was specifically build to trip, reposition and flank with enemies so the other melee characters such as a barbarian or rogue could easily unload their full attacks and take them down. It was always fun helping my party, so I can't say it didn't sting when others were accusing all synthesist players of being twinks and ruining the game.

Is that so, Paracountess? That is unfortunate to hear! Why, I can't imagine any reason why anyone would wish to slander you...

Ah well, I suppose I can help pick up the pieces! It would be far too boring around here otherwise...

The Versatile Channeler Feat allows a Neutral cleric of a Neutral god to channel both kinds of energy, with the secondary one running as if your cleric level was 2 levels lower. Fairly straightforward.

What I'm wondering is how this interacts with Variant Channeling. According to UM, "A variant channeling either modifies positive energy when used to heal or negative energy when used to harm."

Does this mean a Cleric could have two different Variant Channels(one for positive and one for negative energy), assuming both variants were within her deity's portfolio? For example, could a Cleric of Adabar have the Cities variant for channeling positive, and the Contracts variant for channeling negative?

But think of all the Dwarfs! Who ever heard of a dwarf using a bow? Preposterous, I say!

You do have a point there with Crossbow Mastery. I didn't realize Rangers can skip the prerequisites, which saves a feat(though, in that case, which crossbow doesn't provoke an AoO?)