Silver Eye's page

Psion (love the flavor and mechanics, strong and versatile. I liked him so much that was nicknamed psion in my closest friends table)
Swordsage (I really like having options and fun stuff to do as a martial character)
Dread Necromancer (The most dramatic char I played was a DN brother to a Paladin of another PC)
Wizard (There's something attractive about being able to create a dozen diferent characters concepts with the same class)

I've made to very funny and powerful characters
A wizard/psion/cerebremancer and a paladin/hexblade. Boyth excelent ideas for a gestalt.

Wizard/Psion - Versatility and readiness combined, tempered with power. This actually "wastes" the stats though.

Paladin/Hexblade - It was more of a concept. A man of church put in charge of hunting magic user and magic beasts that endanger the people of a region finds itself dabling in profane magic to better do his job.You got amazing saves, charisma on saves with divine grace and double charisma against spells and spell-like abilities and mettle! Healing, martial capabilities and some debuff. A very competent witch hunter.

I didn't know about this talent. Thank you guys!

But about Arcane Archer, maybe he doesn't wanna be an arcane archer, who knows?! hehe

And a amgiacal iten that gives you +2 competence bonus is diferent from +2 enhancement on the weapon. I actually would make the iten +1 because it aplies to both weapons. In this case it's not reinventing the wheel, it's following the examples presented to us in the core.

I do not think this is over. But my players are sensible. If we find that a character is hurting the others by being too strong, even if within the rules, we find a new role for him that does not harm others or the others increment. It happened in the most recent story. The player himself felt too strong and came asking me how to adjust the game.

I think I got lucky with my players!

Straight to the point:
  1st. I do not think abusive depending on the type of campaign that your group plays. In my games we do exactly that, removing the need of +1 before adding another spell. But power is limited to adding only ONE enchantment on ammunition. And it is for the same reason, variability for the archers. We do it 'cause when we realize that its contribution to the fight takes place in small chunks of damage, damage reduction hurts a lot and makes things unfunny.

... Typically you don't switch up monster types that often. If you're in a campaign going from dragons to golems to undead to demons and devils to... holy crap...

I think he was using an exaggerated example, not literal. The opponents change over several encounters and not every minute hehe. And on balance between meelee and ranged classes. In my experience it is easier to build a meelee stronger than an archer. Without heavy optimization of course. And damage reduction affects a lot more archers than meelees in general. Remembering always, this occurred in the games where I've attended. Your experience may be different but here isn't overpowered.

2nd. Don't make an enchantment. Make or ask for a magical iten like Bracers of Archery Lesser or Greater that aplies to dual wielding.

Fun for Everyone!

I'd say you must be willing the moment the spells hits you, afterwards it doesn't matter any more.

So waking up changes nothing.

I would do this.

And this goes in real life too.

If a creature have the power to jump that high hers members also have the power to withstand the landing. One of my player asked his Physics teacher about this :)

I was thinking of making it use 3 spell slots instead of two, but that makes me think it's to much.

Your suggestion seems to be a better option.

I'm starting DMming a new campaign next week and one player was thinking about making a specialised wizard.

Then we remembered the focused specialist option from Complete Mage (we use 3.5 material) and I thought of coming here and ask for advice.

Do you think it's balanced?

[A Focused Specialist wizard picks 3 Forbidden Schools and 1 less spell per day of every spell level he can cast but can cast 3 spells from his specialized school, instead of one a regular specialist get]

Thanks in advance.

As far as I know, Paizo doesn't do any translations themselves. There are French, German and Italian editions of PFRPG, but all translations are made by local companies. You would have to pitch the idea of translating PFRPG to some Portugese/Brazilian company.

Tnx for the answer!

There's not really a historical word that means "wizard guy with a sword." We agonized over naming this class. I personally favored the warlock, but we decided against that because of the existing warlock class from 3.5. While that is not open content and thus is forever closed to us, some folks here felt that the players would always associate it with the D&D class of the same name, so we went with something else to avoid that confusion.

Not that it would have mattered. A warlock is not, historically, a fighter/magic-user, either.

For that matter, a sorcerer in history and myth is no different from a wizard, but folks have come to associate the term with the mechanics over time.

We went through this months ago. There was a multiple-hundred-post thread of suggestions, the best of which by comment assent was something like "Stabracadabra."

It's not easy coming up with a great name for something that never existed in history, so we decided on magus as "close enough" and won't be changing it at this point.

Hi Eric.

I understand the reasons for using Magus, as I don't think any name would be more appropriate (there isn't a traditional and consensual name for a mage/fighter after all).

However, if you at Paizo ever make a Pathfinder translation to Portuguese I would recommend to call it for other name. Maybe adding something like Warmage or Warmagus.

The reason is that, while English speaking people would need to know what "magus" means in Latin (like mythusmage above) Portuguese is a language derived from Latin. A "Magus" is called "mago" in Portuguese, and this is the exact translation of Wizard. So the classes would look like Mago and Magus (not a great differentiation :) )

(Actually Warmagus would be a good name for the magus class, but this is way to late to offer another name.)

Anyway, this brings another question: Are you people at Paizo thinking about translation to Portuguese? Or others languages for that matter?

I'm from Brazil and there's an active community of RPG players here ( it's a big country, there are lots of people who play RPG), and it would be amazing to have THE BEST RPG ever in our native language. It could expand yet more the hobby.

You can say I'm dreamer, but I not the only one!

So, keep doing the good work we all love from Paizo!

I think 2 might be a little bit too low, at least in our games, because level 2 isn't seen as very prestigefull. In our games, regular people are up to level 3, and 4 is where the "higher levels" start.

Sure. We used it a level 2 because in our world 2 were already prestigious and spacial enough but in a more normal setting I would recommend 3 at least

Nice day for everyone!
(or night or morning, time zones are tricky :) )

Silver Eye wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

But how would the wizard prepare it? *evil smirk*

hahaha, good one!

But serious, at least he could have a scroll of this or ask another mage to cast it om him, with a cost of course.

But seriously, that reminds me of a feat in Open Design's recent witch supplement, where if the witch's familiar is killed, when she calls a new one, her new familiar will have all her old spells.

Hummm this look a fantastic!! (ok it's a fantasy game so I should expect that... :))

I'm pretty sure that even 3 may work.

I did it at level 2 but adapted things and added more options to core single class, so they where a little more powerful, even if only in versatility.

And if you're going to change bits of classes, talk to your player's about what they want to play, maybe one would like a more spellcaster focused Arcane Archer while other would go for a fighter with magic option. Once I tailored a version of a prestige class from Eberron to a player. To this day we still remember and talk about the great Saldin of Desert :)

There is a difference between exploit and abuse.

This +1

And

This is a special case to me. Taking away, especially through permanent destruction, of a wizard's Spellbook is tantamount to suddenly removing the BAB from a fighter or Rage from a barbarian. The only rule that comes close to it is a paladin or cleric losing their abilities- and that is only done when the PC specifically and intentionally go against the will of their deity.
(...)
Because of that, the permanent removal of a spellbook to me, is on the same order as the cleric or paladin totally screwing up. It shouldn't ever be "its raining, you lose your spellbook". It should be at least as hard for them to lose it as it is for a Paladin or Cleric to lose their abilities.. and even C's and P's can just get an atonement.
(...)

Totally agree with this (I cut some parts for easy of posting)

But abuse aside I think it's ok to explore a weakness, in a way that enhance the history/gameplay.

Add back in the 10 or 15 mins (can't remember exactly wich) per spell level for re-learning spells and it make s huge difference. Also, as I've said numerous times, put back in "if you are hit, you auto-lose the spell". This alone would help the melee classes feel less threatened by the casters.

Your average 18th level Mage ends up taking about a week or so to re-learn every spell they could cast!

S.

I don't think this is actually a good thing to do.

If I have to spend about a week to re-learn (prepare) my spells I wouldn't play as a wizard (or any caster for that matter) because I would be half of the time throwing magic missiles at people and would be a TOTAL BURDEN for the rest of the party.

This isn't funny IMO.

I did something like this for my homebrew world. I wanted a low level world for the setting, almost everione in the world is level one, the 7 most spectacular warriors (role not class) are level 5

The player evolution was altered so that characters may spend a good chunk of sessions in each level but have more options to do and advance in each level, like researching new spells for mages and creating new maneuvers for the fighters (again, the role not exactly the class), result of many houserules of my own. :)

So I wanted to have NPCs with prestige classes, just for rule of cool, and lowered the pre-requisites so you could enter almost any presige at level 2 (exception for dual progression ones like mystic theurge that require one level of each base class).

It seem over at first but it went nicely in the end.

I hope this helps to give ideas.

A little time ago, a friend and I and a friend put together a system to substitute the big 6 (magic item that only give pluses to areas of a character: attributes, attack, damage, AC, resistances and skills checks, like +2 Sword or +3 cape of resistance).

The solution we implemented was giving more points to buy attributes over the course of leveling so you could have a much greater wisdom for instance. The objective is compensate losing magic item plus by distributing points on the attributes that expand your attacks and defenses.

If a fighter were expected to have a +5 Sword to boost his attack and damage, now he will buy more strength, and in place of that cape of resistance now be sure to put points in the attribute related to your weak save. I call this a Heroic Bonus.

This method results in players feeling more powerful and less dependent of magic. And put more responsibility to allocate bonus in order to not be flawed or have a super dump stat. The final attribute value is greater than normal but it was wanted this way.

Great job dude!!!

I prize your dedication and organization to wrote and post this much!

Long live the magus!

An interesting event happened with my first psionic character.
At the first level had a fight against nine skeletons. My psion had only powers that affect the mind and was useless in the fight (I had to fight using a stick that I found in the forest!)

We were almost wiped out (I was the only one to stand up, part by luck and partly by being an Elan and use all the power points to avoid damage).

Then I reached the third level and chose Energy Missile as new power (I was a Kineticist) and feat Privileged Energy [fire], which increased my potential damage to 3d6+6 . The next time we encounter a horde of skeletons, I literally fried them before they reach our group.

The reaction of the warrior who was in the midst of an charge against them was: OMG! Who are you and what you did with our partner?

(The guy even more funny was the DM. He rolled the dice aside and said: Wait a minute .... HOW?)

I can't blieve no one posted THIS yet. ;)

Go, Team Cleric!

Thanks for the fast and precise answer!

Ok I'm starting a new adventure for my players next week and the setting (homebrew world) is centred at low level people. So most of population is of 1st level (as in any known world) and I'm missing some kind of dispel spell that a 1st level caster could use, so the casters of my world can cancel others effects.

Has anyone already made this?

Kierato wrote:

darth_borehd wrote:

* There are no "cause a flood" spells like Gandalf and Elrond used in The Fellowship of the Ring. I guess the horses could have just been an illusionary embellishment.

Similar to this effect is Control Water.

P.S. The horses and magic were added for the movie, in the book Elrond opened the gates up stream.

I would like to see Animate Objects for a wizard/sorcerer.

i still don't get why wizards don't get animate objects

+1

Dabbler wrote:

Yes, the main differences between psionics and magic are:

Magic: More casting power, more spells, all scaling is automatic.
Psionics: better management system, versatile powers, scaling has to be paid for.
I'm playing a wilder in a party alongside a conjurer, and they complement each other well - the conjurer sends in allies and uses illusions to confuse and misdirect, the wilder blows things up.

+1

Lol!

If you're using fire or cold it's +1 for every damage die!!!

Long Live Psionics!

new bloodlines;

new alternatives for arcane schools specialists, something like one set of school powers for every focus of the school. For instance, the conjuration school could have: teleportation set, acid set, walls set, summon set, Necromancy could have undead set, debuff set and fear set.

and +1 for how to build and research new spells.

In my campaigm world I made this: Heroic Attribute Bonus

that sounds fine but i would like an opinion on the Spell Resistance.

he only thing i would ask about is the spell resistance you have right there has a 1st level witch hunter with a spell resistance of 3, i would like to point out that the basic drow has a 6+level spell resistance as a fist level character.

Maybe you should re-think about spell resistance. You would have to lose a standard action to lower your spell resistance to receive a cure light wounds!!

I made a Witch Hunter once. Well, it's background made it a witch hunter, he started as paladin, member of a special order, created to hunt down magical beasts and spellcaster out of control. Later he become tainted with the powers he battled so many times and took levels of Hexblade. At 8th level he was perfect. Add charisma to saves 2 times against spells and had meetle to negate save for half spells. high AC and damage, healing and a few spells from Hexblade.

So I think you should think about adding more to saves instead of spell resistance.

1. The party is jumped while traveling through the dark woods by unknown assailants. They are surprised and have no time to prepare before being thrown instantly into combat.

2. The party is preparing to infiltrate the stronghold of the Great and Evil Magus Magoo, an arcane spellcaster of great renown and proficiency.

3. The party must defend a small village from assault by a horde of humanoids, including some tougher guys and minor spellcasters. They have some limited time to prepare.

4. The party is about to enter a huge and unexplored tomb complex, where unknown dangers await. The expedition will likely take several days at least and require sleeping inside the complex.

5. The party must penetrate an ancient sage's abandoned sanctum sanctorum. It is not only laden with traps, but contains a wide variety of puzzles and intellectual challenges that will test the parties ingenuity and knowledge.

My answers would be much like yours except in case 3. I do think it's a close call, but the way people play wizards at my table he would do a better job against a greater number of weaker enemies. A sorcerer can do this, however it's more rare. Just my 2 cents :)

Anyone out there????

Well I am going to use THIS house rules for reducing magic item frequency in a campaign. Help is appreciated in this THREAD.

But I do think monsters are created expecting the PCs to have two or more of the Big Six around.

I intend to use this system here for a campaign that begins later this month. With it I intend to eliminate the need for Big 6 and other items as well. And make the most heroic characters in relation to their peers in the race.

>>> Heroic Attributes Bonus and Mighty Defense.

Some adjustments will probably need to be made and are welcome.

Mighty Defense Bonus for example. Discourages the use of shields. Because now they just add 1, 2 or 4 in the AC. However. Like the weapons. You are more encouraged to have a shield with a legal ability instead of a simple and inexpensive +1.

I would like opinions on this scheme and what the chances of crashing the system at high levels.

Also, English is not my first language, so corrections are wanted and welcome.

I post it in this thread.

I intend to use this system here for a campaign that begins later this month. With it I intend to eliminate the need for Big 6 and other items as well. And make the most heroic characters in relation to their peers in the race.

>>> Heroic Attributes Bonus and Mighty Defense.

Some adjustments will probably need to be made and are welcome.

Mighty Defense Bonus for example. Discourages the use of shields. Because now they just add 1, 2 or 4 in the AC. However. Like the weapons. You are more encouraged to have a shield with a legal ability instead of a simple and inexpensive +1.

I would like opinions on this scheme and what the chances of crashing the system at high levels.

Also, English is not my first language, so corrections are wanted and welcome.

Once I played a Dread Necromancer in a funny campaign.

I was used to utilize a undead summoning spell that required bones from a living thing to
cast. And it was very delightful to roleplay how I obtained these. ( Cut off fallen enemies hands and feets)

Well let's say that my in game brother, a paladin no less, weren't pleased when he discovered this.

Sooo as others say, it can be fun when roleplayed but only when it thus matter.

Best.

KaeYoss wrote:

Dabbler wrote:

What is this, CoDzilla vs GODwizard?

Pfft. Losers. I'll just blast them with my mind powers.

Yeah, psionics are probably better at blasting than arcane magic, but they lose out in other areas badly.

[off topic]

Funny character...

I'm about to start playing a new Pathfinder campaign as a 7th level wizard and would like to have a Improved Familiar. Looking at the list I liked the most the Imp, but there's a problem. He's evil (Well it's a devil after all!).

I could have one because my own alignment is Lawful Neutral and then only one step away from his, but I'm foreseeing some problems in having a evil little thing following me.

So I'm thinking in the option of having the Imp turned good. At the moment this crossed my mind I started thinkink of the history behind this conversion and our encounter and liked the result. I know it's up to DM discretion but I would appreciate yours input and opinions.

Is it ok to have a Imp as familiar without the troble of him being evil?

So could a 7th level character 1 Red Dragon Sorc/6 Evoker(Wiz)
cast a Fireball for 6d6 + 6 + 3 damage ?

Thanks for opinions.

Good to know that we are not very far from normal.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Hi I play RPG for some time but I was introduced to D & D only 4 years ago. And believe it or not I took all this time to find that 1 level of rogue + 1 level of monk bba = 0. I've played using a house rule and did not know!

Maybe it's because my RPG group is formed only by students of computer science that make a lot of calculations every day, but when we saw the progression tables in classes immediately identified advancing into fractions and to make the characters multiclass or take a class prestige we add fractions and not the table values.
So I wanted to know how the tables of other players deal with this case. I saw that there is an alternative rule in Unearthed Arcana on fractional bonus.

You use this variation on their desks?

What is your opinion on the systems?

Does anyone have another way of calculating the bonus?

Thank you for your cooperation.

Do you want something like THIS CASTTLE?

Oh!
And another way to improve concentration checks
made to cast a spell. Combat Casting only helps
when casting on the defensive or while grappled.

What if I wanted to cast mounted?

Squidlipticus wrote:

Some more unique spellcaster feats might be cool. Am I the only one who thinks 90% of the feats revolve around melee combat?

Agreed, I made a wizard focusing on utility spells, and I've got just about nothing to spend feats on.

Boost chance to penetrate SR, boost DC, and the various metamagics are the only feats out there that are purely for casters.

Me too wanted some new intersting options for spellcasters.

Silver Eye wrote:

I would love to see a Fey'ri(elf+demon) race.

It's one of the best concepts I know.

Like a half fiendish elf?

Exactly!!!

I would love to see a Fey'ri(elf+demon) race.

It's one of the best concepts I know.

A while ago I and a friend were in a campaign where I was a duskblade / wizard and he was a wizard. We wanted to rebuild an academy of magic that was destroyed in the early aventura.Na fact it was conquered by a group of red dragons.

We wanted to make a flying tower to host the academy. Building the tower would be easy with our magic charm but combined it so that it would be expensive to fly if it were too big. Then we built a tower 10 meters high and inside was a decorated hall and a door in the wall opposite the door. This door was a magic item made based on the MMM. Over time we added more doors and increase the internal space.

That was a very fun adventure.

Silver Eye, although I don't think I'll be using the "invisible item" idea, I do admit that it is MUCH better than using actual items. First of all, I doubt that any of us are talking about using actual gold pieces to purchase these abilities. Every level, when you level, you get X amount of "karma points" to spend on new abilities. This has several advantages.

1. No more constant looting of everything. This works fine in video games where you can quickly click-to-own and click-to-sell, but the tedium of writing everything down, finding buyers and finding sellers can make the game unnecessarily tedious.

2. It "feels" more heroic. If you don't understand the importance of this, than I really can't help you.

3. It's more story-like. Seriously, read a fantasy novel or watch a fantasy movie. I gave a few examples in my original post. I challenge you to find a serious title where the main characters are awesome because they have nice things. Even the D&D movie, which spoofs this system, only showcased the plot relevant gear.

4. .... Okay, I could go on and on, actually. And while most of my points don't focus on "invisible items" specifically, it IS important to note that I'm in favor of any system that does away with "Ye Olde Magik Item Shoppes" that no GM seems to like and that all GMs have to include.

Oops! I think I should have been more specific.

I really like the idea of this threa of get rid of this whole +1, +3 , +5 thing.

Actually I'm sick of MUST HAVE itens because they're just boring. I have to use a +5 sword because without this I won't hit anything isn't very heroic as you say.

I was just speaking of 'invible itens' but in favor of others systems presented here.

Personally I like the idea of giving a +1 to two attributes every two levels and create a progression of AC (maybe a point every two levels or depending on the bab). This option seems the more heroic because the character will grow in personal power and learn to defend better with time. Becoming more powerful, wise or intelligent than an ordinary being of their race.

A friend and I are working on this option for balancing the development of these numbers. I hope it is useful.

HAHAHAHAHA

A really amazing thread!!!

Very good ideas for a good history.

The "invisible item" idea seems to work, but what's the diference between having a visible and a invisible one? You are still using money to buy attributes and nat armor, for example, they just don't present themselves as shinning magic itens. I don't know if this is what you're looking for.

And as MIB pointed balancing a chart may be hard.

I really like the idea of stats boosts on alternates levels and a bonus to AC in a progression to mitigate the abssence of magic itens.

I would suggest a +1 to two stats instead because some MAD classes will still suffer with only one attibutte covered.

And about SAD spellcasters being favored in this case I think it's not by to much, because the really OMG enemies aren't others fighters or wizard but monsters (IMO) and these guys have better saves than the players. And without itens to boost the caster main atribute the already not so good spells from lesser levels will be a no-no unless used for buff.

Silver Eye wrote:

Frerezar wrote:

Spontaneous sorcerer casting at wizard progression sounds GREAT. And not unbalanced at all whatsoever. Throw some class features on top of that an everyone will wanna play it. (literally anyone would have to be blind to play a wizard or a sorcerer with that thing around)

Yeah.

Of course the powers you could use should be balanced to not transform that thing in a really freaking omgwtf mighty class!

yep I would go sorc number of powers per day but the powers must be balances, some will need moved in level, some buffed some nerfed and some just gone

Exactly.

Ahh. And One think that would do a big job is making the discipline powers really exclusive, so you can't have Schism, Tornado Blast and Astral Construct on the same character.

There was a feat - Versatile Spellcaster - that allowed you use two spell slots of the same level to cast a spell you know that is one level higher.

Something like that as a class feature maybe...

Spontaneous sorcerer casting at wizard progression sounds GREAT. And not unbalanced at all whatsoever. Throw some class features on top of that an everyone will wanna play it. (literally anyone would have to be blind to play a wizard or a sorcerer with that thing around)

Yeah.

Of course the powers you could use should be balanced to not transform that thing in a really freaking omgwtf mighty class!