SilvercatMoonpaw's page

Combat is more deadly and realistic....

I'm sorry, you lost me right here. Incompatible tastes; this isn't intended as criticism.

I take it retconning a civilization into the Valashmai is part of the same push to de-pulp-ify we saw with Mwangi Expanse?

I like it, I'm just curious.

PF1e.

I am trying to get into PF2e via a PbP game, but between that and the many times I've tried reading rules written for it my efforts don't seem to make the game attractive. I don't think there's anything objectively wrong about PF2e, but it's possible the "nearly everything is written like a feat" format is hard for me to evaluate. Or maybe I'm getting old. Or I have other D&D3e-derived games to use when PF1e fails. In any case, I will likely be sticking with PF1e and simply using a mountain of 3rd party offerings to get it where I like it.

Fencing for Fatal Thrust; Gladiator for Demoralization. You don't need Duelist unless you want to Bleed and Disarm; Lancer if you want to stab really deep with Impale. Dual-Wielding is self-explanatory, if you need it.

Those are all the spheres that seem "swashbuckling".

I picked this up from Drive Thru RPG. Unlike a lot of Legendary Games supplements rather than being a straight upgrade to the class this allows your druid to specialise.

So instead of your PF1 Druid being a bit of everything, it becomes very good at a few things.

What do the various talents do?

Are there any interesting archetypes?

So...am I a boring roleplayer because most of my characters fall into the special-snowflake half-elf category?

Ir race is the only thing that people remember about your characters then it doesn't matter which one you pick: they will all be equally boring.

I should maybe be the last person to say race doesn't matter when making a character, but I know from experience that memorable characters are memorable characters regardless of race.

Greylurker wrote:

have you looked at the Incantation system from Kobold Press, in their Deep Magic book? It might be close to what you are looking for

This sounds pretty interesting to me too. I've been looking for a Ritual Magic system which would be tied to specific magics like Teleport for better use in a low magic setting. Thus the spells remain in the campaign but effectively means they are not castable within combat and are more of a plot hook mechanic at that point.

The incantation system from Spheres of Power can be used without the rest of the Spheres system:

Lazlo.Arcadia wrote:

I'm finding it interesting that there is not a lot more engagement with this one. It tells me that most of us didn't really find all that much that they really connected with from the other versions. Interesting.

Well, it mostly tells me that the PF1 hombrew forum is not super high traffic at the moment, and those that are here are self-selected for people who prefer PF1 to other editions/games.

Also PF1e has a lot of quality 3rd-party stuff you can use to tweak a lot of the problem areas like casting and monster design.

Just be aware that this effectively makes attack bonuses ~twice as powerful as they otherwise would be.

Heroism gives +2 to hit, which means there's a 10% chance your spell will affect the attack roll.

If you implement this +10/-10 rule then there's still a 10% chance that you'll take a roll from a miss to a hit, but there's also a 10% chance that you'll take a roll from a regular hit to a critical hit (or a critical miss to a regular miss). Now your +2 to hit has a 20% chance to affect the roll.

It's a little more complicated than that, so it's not exactly double the chance but it's near enough.

Personally I like the idea of more scaling effects with rolls, but adding it into a pre-existing system will change the balance fairly dramatically. That's not inherently a problem, as long as you know what you're changing and why.

Thanks. I may actually have been thinking of using the rule in a different game; Pf1e isn't that bad-off.

Have to be honest: out of all the non-offensive alternatives for "race", "kith" and "kin" are my least favorite. Maybe they sound too old-timey to me: I don't go in for "evoking the past" as much as a lot of fantasy does.

... and no, I don't have a fixation on big girls just because 2 of the 3 1/2 giants I made are female... do I?

As long as it doesn't get creepy, I don't think anyone cares.

Mineralites are Lawyer Friendly Gems from Steven Universe:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/205608/The-Crystal-Planet-Players-Guid e?term=mineralite

What book was the Archivist in?

Heroes of Horror.

173. Spongiam Petram

I'm getting flashbacks to sword & sandal movies/TV shows, with all their unusually light rocks.

...the Sphereshaper really looks like hea wants to take the Vizier's place.

That sounds like a plus from my end, given how I'm lukewarm on the Vizier.

(It may be a manifestation of what I call "the spell-list problem": the vizier is probably defined by their veil list being different from other classes, but because the text of that isn't in their class write-up it doesn't come across easily. By contrast, the majority of spehrecaster classes have access to all the spheres and all the talents -- with casting traditions picking up some slack in defining that area -- making their class features more meaningful.)

Have you looked at the Huay (link)?

156) Cave Dogs: Not canids at all, but a type of hyaenidae, who have evolved a habituation to and commensalist relationship with various "primitive" humanoid communities. (Essentially hyena-derived dingos.)

You can run a deliberately bad game of a system you hate in order to "prove" that you're right and everyone else is having badwrongfun BECAUSE YOU'RE THE (soon to be playerless) GM!!!

Behirs

Nothing less than lightning given mortal form. You can tell by their long body and multiple forks (legs). Even their blue color is like lightning.

As for why they hate dragons? Dragons can fly. Behirs wish they could return to the sky to become lightning again.

Next: Centaurs!

Fleshwarp

It is said the body is the plaything of the mind. Fleshwarps are proof of that....sometimes, horrifying proof.

Legend says it began with some masters of mental magic, turning their power inward in pursuit of the ultimate goal of freeing themselves from their fleshy prisons. They succeeded. But they took on students too eager for power: a few tried the ritual before they understood its subtleties. Not only did it twist their bodies, but their bumbling created a sort of psychic disease in the realm of dreams.

Now, periodically, a person awakes from a nightmare of body horror to find that the nightmare has become real...

Next: Leshy

Next: hobgoblins!

A mispronunciation of "hop-goblins", short for "hoplite-goblins". These are goblins who undergo intense training to turn them into military machines, along with special diets to dramatically increase their growth. These "super-goblins" become the heavy weapon of goblin-kind, often becoming de-facto heads of goblinkind. Tragically, their bodies are pushed to the limit, and they rarely live as long as their goblin kin, even discounting death in battle. This usually fosters an attitude of "don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today", resulting in relentless, stoic war machines.

Next: Shabti!

Next Prompt: Worgs!

Paw Patrol. Now with bigger paws!

Okay, I'll try again.

When humans domesticated dogs, goblins looked at the result and decided they could do better.

And they did: not only did they domesticate wolves again, but they also somehow taught those wolves to speak.

At least, that's what goblins tell people when those people ask where they got the talking dogs.

Other sages think that goblins heard about dogs, and used unholy magic to make some for themselves. The talking bit is because they didn't know dogs couldn't talk.

1) Use Spheres of Power.
2) Use Shifter class (the SoP one).

OBVIOUSLY opinions on using this method will vary. But it's an easier fix for me than trying to figure out what bits of the Synthesist are broken and how.

I haven't played many of them, but the Occultist and the Mesmerist have been pretty great in my experience.

But yes they could use a little more support, and some of the stuff in Occult Adventures clearly wasn't edited properly =P (I haven't looked in a while, but I remember a couple of discussions about abilities that just don't work as written).

I have a similar issue with the Occultist as I do with the Wizard: its class-defining feature is designed around D&D's conception of spell schools. The Wizard, at least, has some alternatives (e.g. elemental schools), while the Occultist has maybe a few archetypes for using a different conception.

When you say "aren't that great", do you mean "need more support and weren't edited/playtested well enough"? Because I can get behind that.

But if you mean "aren't strong classes" then I've got news for you buddy.

I mean "it seems the Occult classes are the ones most people are posting here about".

Does this sound more interesting to people?

At a certain point asking for new options for existing classes can turn into asking for whole new classes. Example that's just been mentioned: the Shifter. Not sure there's anything that can be given to that class that will fix its mediocre-ness without ending up almost being a complete rewrite (and Legendary Games already did one of those, anyway).

I think there's certainly some design space in making what are essentially new versions of existing full-caster classes with reduced spellcasting but increased class features: I find Inquisitor and Warpriest spark more ideas than the Cleric, the Magus and Summoner to Sorcerer and Wizard. (About the only full-caster I think works on its own is Druid, and that may speak more to its potential-OP status.)

Part of me is now thinking we should bite the bullet and just merge Gunslinger and Swashbuckler into a "Musketeer" class. But I'm guessing that's beyond the scope of this thread.

You say 'vs', in what way?

In the sense of "that was how the previous thread was titled, so I kept the title format".

I've read discussions about PF 1 vs 2. I'm not familiar with any talk about differences between PF 1 and Starfinder. Anyone have any insights they want to share?

If Paizo made more 1e products( yeah I know "and monkeys might fly out of my butt"), but if it actual happened, would you buy them?

No.

At this point all the good parts of PF1e were/are made by 3rd-party companies. In the end, the only thing I cared for from Paizo products was artwork.

202) Dubbing. The drinker's voice no longer matches their mouth movements. If the drinker is a creature that cannot naturally speak but has an Intelligence of at least 3, they gain a voice that seems to come out of nowhere capable of speaking all languages they understand.

203) Theme Music. The drinker gains a leitmotif appropriate to their personality/reputation. This grants a bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidate checks equal to 1/2 their level, but automatically ruins all Stealth checks relying on silence.

189) You immediately reincarnate into one of the anthropomorphic animal races. If you are already one, you reincarnate into another.

My distaste for Discord is more the wave after wave of texts, and coming back an hour later to find out that there’s been 15,000 posts on 20 different posts on just one channel. I’ve muted most channels, and even channels I still follow have sections muted. It’s just too much.

I've got to agree: too much information. I can briefly duck in and out, but there's stuff I'm not going to go back and read.

Taken literally ("fast fingering") it ought to give you a temporary speed increase in doing fine manipulation...

Or be in Pathfinder's erotic supplement: The Tome of Very Kinky Happenings.

Prestidigitation. Go ahead, try and say it aloud.

Prest-i-di-gi-tation.

Then again, I have no problem with svirfneblin.

All spells on all class lists. Make spellcasters different some other way.

Other than that: Cure and all other healing-type stuff should be on all class lists. Make it so you can fulfill this important function with any kind of caster.

Orcs

Happy farming pigfolk. Kind of like big halflings or stereotypes of Bavarians.

Next Prompt: Gnolls!

Speaking of crossbows, personally I think at least the heavy crossbow should be a touch attack at close range just like guns. Also make the lighter ones easier to use.

Or maybe make guns not touch attacks. You can trade out the Misfire chance for it.

176) That information is above your clearance level, citizen. Trust Friend Blue Golem that there is an explanation for The Gap and that you do not need to know about it. Why are you even asking? Are you asking because you are a [REDACTED]-[REDACTED]-traitor scum? If you are, please report to your nearest Disintegration Trap for disposal. Failure to do so will result in disintegration. Now go and have a Good Day. And remember: Fun Is Mandatory.

Also I think it allows Legendary to offer prints of the rules, which is a thing people want.

I mean maybe the OGL means they can just reprint the Pathfinder 1e rule-set, but if you're going to do that why not clean it up?

In which case my honest response is: I don't care, play what you want to play (as long as it's not a mechanical problem). But (to my players) I would have them bear in mind that no individual character gets that much screen time (relative to others) so you're probably not going to be exploring with the group what it means to be an animal or anything like that. It's just not what the gaming group is there for as an experience, unless you explicitly recruit for such a game.

To comment here (but not intended as a counter, Claxon):

Sometimes its okay if a character detail never gets explored. I've had that happen more than once.* Games don't always last that long, or go in an unexpected direction that doesn't lend itself to exploring the character, or some...third...thing. I feel not every detail that exists in a fictional universe needs to be explored, especially when it's done via "Amateur Improv Theater, Now With Math!"

But for the person playing the character there's always going to be a little more depth simply because they're doing the inhabiting. And sometimes that's all that matters.

.

* Actually, that's what usually happens, to the point of which I think the old "homeless wanderer orphan" actually seems like a respectable idea. Make the connections in-play.

But with all the said, it's definitely not my main reason for running my table the way I do. It's just a matter of what kind of story I want to tell, and how to support its tone and themes.

That's fair.

SilvercatMoonpaw wrote:

Thing is, not everyone plays something best because they are it.

Not sure I follow. My point was that being able to relate to a fantasy race will make it easier to understand, connect to and portray such, and the further you get from those "norms", the harder it becomes.

Except that's not always the case: I have an easier time relating to something the further it is, biology-wise, from human.

I am a human being. Playing a human being is easy for me, because I intimately understand what it is to be a human without effort.

Thing is, not everyone plays something best because they are it.

Maybe combat expertise could be removed in Corefinder which'd bring that to 3+1 prereq minimum?

I'm in the camp of removing certain "everyone's going/got to take" feats. Trade-off feats, for instance, strike me as something that could just be an inherent feature of the combat system, maybe with some limitations gated by something such as BAB.

Feat trees should never be more than three deep.

It is squishy (half the HP of a d6 HD class which lacks good defensive spells), but the main thing is it's more targetable than a book and more expensive to make backups of. You need a few thousand for a stone familiar.

Sounds like it should have been done the way DD4e did familiars: it's not a real animal, and when killed automatically reforms at some point in the near future.

IMHO, the problem lies in the fact that the mechanical benefits of being an uncommon race are offset by role playing consequences that many here seem willing to overlook. Being a hobgoblin to gain the mechanical benefits of the race but expecting to be treated in society the same as a human is like a human expecting to have the darkvision a hobgoblin enjoys at the price of being recognized as non-human without the associated cost. If a player wants to have the physical characteristics, skill bonus, racial trait, weapon proficiency or whatever the uncommon race offers that makes them mechanically more attractive than a common human then they should expect to pay the price of being regarded as something other than a common human.

That should be part of the rules, then. At least, it should be explicit in the text that such roleplaying penalties are part of the balance.

And does that still apply to races that are weaker than humans, such as goblins, kobolds, and orcs?

465) Someone called Trump a "shaved orangutan" within earshot of the Librarian.

Also all adventurers get over charged. Just look at the core rule book. Who pays those sorts of prices for food? No 2sp a day commoner could afford to live! Adventurer mark up! It is a conspiracy!

Anti-adventurer sentiment I'd be fine with. Those people are dangerous!