I tend to do a few changes, based off a few PDF/threads I've seen:
Remove Power Attack, Combat Expertise, et all that basically are '-X for +Y'. Basically make it so that you convert either -2 dam/attack/dodge AC to +1 dam/attack/dodge AC, based on your BAB. The other rule is you can't convert unless you're attacking, be it melee or spells (since casters can 'attack' with their spells, fe rolling to hit).
This also frees up a bunch of feats so that there's more tactics (such as using Improve Trip/Sunder. Also means you don't have to be a brainy fighter to get useful feats.
Critical Hit/Fumble Decks rock.
Extra Actions:
I also tend to allow at 6th and 12th levels the ability to do more than one standard action. Essentially at 6th level, all characters can attack, use an ability, move again, et all. The only caveat is that if you want to full attack, it eats your 2 actions, though if you have TWF you can use one action to attack with both weapons, and have the other action open for whatever. If you cast a spell, you can't cast another spell (but you can use an ability, such as your domain/school/bloodline/et all abilities).
At 12th, its not so much an extra action, but more of using things that shouldn't be a standard action (such as reloading a weapon, drinking a potion, et all). So at 12th, you basically can use a 3rd action to use up mundane uses of standard actions.
I do this because I get tired of the 'dance' that goes back and forth, especially at higher levels. Most of the time melee is trying to get in close to use FA, caster have spells and abilities but can't use them at the same time, and when you start to need self-healing via pots/wands, you have to waste an action doing so.
But this goes both-ways: monsters and NPCs also have these as well. And I also made a 'Boss' template for NPCs in modules/scenarios you could consider 'the boss', which effectively gives them an extra action, sometimes double hit points, and better stats. Mainly I just got tired of seeing my well-made villains get tromped on because they were against a group of PCs, and I didn't want to play war by having minions around. Generally its fun.
Eh, I would rule, in my games, no because while it is as light as a 'light' shield, its still bulky. You can't just make a longsword out of mithril and it suddenly become a 'light' weapon either. Just my two copper.
Personally, I would rename is to something like Shoulder Throw or what not. When I read the post name, I was thinking 'oh, a few for throwing things' and not a feat for throwing someone down. Past that, awesome feat. I'm definitely adding it to my game as a feat. Great for grapplers.
My fiance and I play together, her the player, me the DM. I pretty much have her run 4 characters and I run an NPC myself. Its fairly easy and she enjoys it. My only problem is some minor lack of the normal rping you get between players and characters. At times I have to take control of her characters so they can interact.
Past that, if you want to do soloing adventures, definitely need to tweak the system a bit. CR and XP is honestly up to you. Its not a set in stone amount that you have to give out, nor is CR a true measurement of how well a party can handle an mob (some parties can handle higher and some can't). Essentially, if I were running a game with one player and they're running one character, I'd make sure they have extra abilities, no matter what class they have. The gestalt modification to classes work, but its not core PF. Honestly, I don't think you could go core unless one of you ran extra chracters.
As far as I've interpreted the rules, you can trip with ANY MELEE weapon, but doing so constitutes an AoO unless its specifically a Trip weapon or you have Improved Trip feat. You would also incur not being able to drop a weapon if you fail unless its a designed to do it.
Improved Trip Feat:
Improved Trip (Combat)
You are skilled at sending your opponents to the ground.
Prerequisite: Int 13, Combat Expertise.
Benefit: You do not provoke an attack of opportunity when performing a trip combat maneuver. In addition, you receive a +2 bonus on checks made to trip a foe. You also receive a +2 bonus to your Combat Maneuver Defense whenever an opponent tries to trip you.
Normal: You provoke an attack of opportunity when performing a trip combat maneuver.
Trip Weapon:
Trip: You can use a trip weapon to make trip attacks. If you are tripped during your own trip attempt, you can drop the weapon to avoid being tripped.
The way I see it, you can trip with a staff, a sword, a club. Within reason. I mean a rapier I can't really see, but yeah a falchion maybe. They aren't designed persay to be used that way, but its possible that you could have the strength (and luck) to hit someone in a knee cap or thigh or something to throw them off balance. Its just harder to do.
Currently I run a game with just my fiance (we just moved to her hometown with her parents and have yet to meet other gamers). Since its just us, we tend to have PG13-Rated games, with a lot of adult themes. For us, its just what we like. We enjoy watching the Tudors, we enjoy George RR Martin's Fire and Ice, etc. To us, we're both adults and enjoy adult themes.
As far as I'm concerned, all it really comes down to is the players and the GM. I've heard/been in games where it got adult between characters, usually as a result of real-life relationships between the players (past/present sorta of things). I've also been in some very adult situation in games, such as a Vampire game where someone was kidnapping kids and pretty much torturing them.
My fiance has always enjoyed the adult aspects. To her, its boring to be PG, hell even PG13. She makes lots of characters with interesting backgrounds. Her favorite female rogue pretty much got raped and tortured during a failed and botch Thieves' Guild test. She also has had a female cleric of a sun god pretty much walk out at sunrise stark naked to get do her meditation. Another cleric she created is male and comes from a warrior culture where homosexuality is encouraged, and that said cleric lost his lover to an ambush.
Again, it all comes down to players and GMs to what is comfortable. To me, once we get more players involved, I as the GM will have to figure out the comfort level of the players involved. My player, my fiance, handles a lot that is adult. Slavery, sexuality, rape, torture, etc.
Hmmm, that would turn them into stat blocks, which is kinda dull but I guess more practical. Begs the question, why not just do a huge table with their stats in, with maybe a special abilities info sheet.
I think a stats table plus special abilities info could be very useful. I, also, would love to have access to these pdf's (bobisyoung at hotmail dot com). Perhaps you'd be interested in "TreantMonking" them at some point!
Total: 52 AC, (not to mention DR5/- because of armor mastery).
I wouldnt bother shaking a stick at that, you'll miss ;)
Accept for rolling a nat 20. ;)
To Ujjjjjjjjj. I suggest looking at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/. Its basically the Player's Book + Bestiary for Paizo minus all the art and stuff. If you can't get your hands on a rulebook, this has all the rules you'll ever need. I'm fairly sure a majority of people on these boards use it for quick referencing and the like.
Managed to get this ring in an adventure as loot. Was curious as to how it functioned. According the book:
Ring of Force Shield:
An iron band, this simple ring generates a shield-sized (and shield-shaped) wall of force that stays with the ring and can be wielded by the wearer as if it were a heavy shield (+2 AC). This special creation has no armor check penalty or arcane spell failure chance since it is weightless and encumbrance-free. It can be activated and deactivated at will as a free action.
From what I'm gathering, its usable for Wizards and Sorcerer's without any problems to spell casting. Essentially getting a +2 AC 'Force-effect' shield that you can activate at will. I know that the MB can be enchanted and the like. Was just curious as how people use it. I figure you can have it off while your doing something, and then activated afterwards, getting the bonus.
If that were the case, could you give it to a character using a two-handed weapon and allow them to activate it after they attack, giving them some bonus AC that they're lacking by not having a shield?
I've only been playing RPGs for the past 15 or so years, both table top and Video Games. I just quit WoW after playing since Undead-beta because of the problems Blizz has created with their latest patches and design philosophy. As for Paizo, I think they've done a great job balancing the classes a bit, though many could use work.
I've been teaching my fiance to play table top since last year. She's pretty much only played WoW, some LotRo, and now is getting into Dragon Age: Origins. She understands the concept of roles as being Tank, DPS, and Healer. Those 3 concepts have helped her understand the basics I was taught about D&D: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue. Or basically you always have a Fighter type class as your main tank/damage dealer. You want a Rogue or someone with skills to basically scout, unlock doors, break traps, and figure out random dungeon crap (old books, weird writing on the wall, etc). You need a Wizard of sorts to either blast enemies, buff the party, provide some support of sorts (like Rope Trick or what not), along with being able to possibly figure out if this Longsword is a +1 whatever or a cursed -10 blade of doom. And finally you need a Cleric type to heal your wounds and hope to dear god they can resurrect you when you die.
I think many have posted their ideas of roles posted above. Many basically want classes to fit these roles. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think a majority of Pazio's classes are balanced, but some might disagree. To me, a fighter is generally going to be your tank or your DPS or both. Your rogue/ranger is going to be the scount/trapfinder/disabler, along with being major DPS. Your casters will be DPS or Support, might have the skills to help out with figuring out the weird signs around you. Your cleric might be a healbot or might just be DPS. To me, it just depends on their builds and everyone builds differently.
Take my fiance and her characters. Pretty much she and I just play together, me being the DM and controlling one party member and everything else, she controlling 4 other characters. Not one, not one and an NPC companion, no she's got 4 to control, design, and play. And she does a good job.
When we start campaigns, she knows that she atleast needs one person to try and soak the damage and keep people from moving past them. She knows that she needs someone with atleast a level in rogue so she can disarm traps. She always needs a cleric, whether they spend their rounds healing/buffing or attacking, it never matters to her. She tries to balance out her party to have both melee and ranged abilities. But mostly she builds her characters for ROLEPLAYING. She's just as happy having them sit in a bar playing games and drinking as she is having them slog through a dungeon. We even RP out camp scenes, with her various characters flirting and the like (which I tend to take over her characters for the interaction).
All in all, I think the main point the OP was getting at is yeah, there are party roles and many people forget about them when they make posts about this class or that class not being able to fulfill a role they want them to. To me, its all about how you build than it is about how the class is built. I've seen a Cleric act as a tank. I've seen a Wizard pop more creatures than the fighter and rogue (blame dice gods for that). I've seen Fighters acting as the Face of the party. Again, to me, its how the player creates the character more than how the rules work that determines party roles. Just my opinion.
I can agree with James about dwarves being a bit limited in scope for roleplaying. Most often all the dwarves I've seen played come across as brash, loud, quick-to-anger boors. Bioware's Dragon Age dwarves are a bit of the same, in my opinion.
And in my unfortunate game universe, the Dwarves don't change much. I havae about 3 types of dwarves, and they pretty much act like standard dwarves. The only known dwarf character in play is a Dwarf Paladin who is pretty much a virgin surrounded by beautiful women who all want a piece of him. He pretty much rushes into combat to protect them, drinks all the ale he can get his hands on, and talks with horrible scottish accent (which most of my dwarves do, I blame Blizzard/World of Warcraft).
As for Halflings....I kill them down to a few thousand scattered across the realm. My fiance is my main player (pretty much she and I just play games together), and she wanted to face Demigorgon after hearing about him. But I didn't want to just throw her into the fray with level 20+ characters. Nope, had to do a campaign (or two or three lol. She likes making characters). So pretty much I changed some of Golarion history, with the Worldwound having a huge mile wide meteor that contained Demigorgon. No one knew he was there or that he was even missing from hell. Seems some world in another galaxy defeated him, but instead of banishing him to Hell, they buried him in moon and hurled him off into the cosmos, letting it be some other planet's job to deal with him.
Long story short, about 500 years ago, Demi gets free, rampages throughout the land, and pretty much crushes the land of the Halflings. Apparently on the world that dealt with him last, he was toppled by a few halfling characters and also knew of another world where a major evil force was defeated by two annoying halflings throwing some bit of jewelry into a mountain of lava. Needless to say, the Halflings in my world paid for that price.
(As for Demi, he got defeated by a massive world war against him and is currently encased in major magical wards in the mountains of Cheliax, which is how that country in my world has massive demonic problems/influences.
If you must ask, I like halflings but I've never really known what to do with them. My fiance apparently wanted them dead. =)
I would too like the pdfs, so whenever you get a chance. acemikels at hotmail dot com.
I would think removing the artwork would allow the pdfs to be published on a fansite. Honestly though, I'm a little perturbed at Paizo for NOT posting these somewhere. Yes, I know they are in the Bestiary and all you're really doing is adding the Celestial or Fiendish templates to the stat block. But if you're like me and haven't got it and have to use the SRD occasionally, its annoying to try and figure it out. I could just be a dumb newbie GM but hey, we all start out that way.
I know that http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ had some but not all of the templates posted. Just wish I could get all.
Appreciate what the community as whole has done. PF is a great system and I'm glad Paizo isn't a money hungry machine like Wiz/Has is.
- At sixth level, with access to the large evolution, the survivability of the eidolon improves greatly, since it gets range.
Nope. Look again at the Large evolution. Reach is not a part of the package.
If I'm not mistaken, Large creatures have a natural reach of 10' instead of the normal 5'. Thus they'd get an increase in reach without having to spend for another Evo point.
I have a slight suggestion. Why not just take away the ability for the Eidolon to equip equipment (mundane and magical) and just give it equivalent Evolutions that mimic equipment. Like someone suggested above, who's to say what the claws look like (they could be weapons for all we know). My suggestion is much like the claws, have an Evo that basically has the Eidolon creating 'weapons' with its form. Essentially pay a point or two to have a d6 'weapon', then spend more points to upgrade the damage value (much like you have for natural attacks). You can easily define the 'weapon' as looking similar to a weapon (like a mace or a longsword). Or take it a step further and just allow for a Weapon Evo that gives the Eidolon the ability to create and use a weapon that is similar in all aspect to a functioning weapon (meaning you can take a 'Greatsword' Evo and your Eidolon creates and uses a Greatsword, dealing the usual 2d6 (for medium) with a 19-20 crit range.
Same thing with armor. The Eidolon has the Natural Armor evo that even suggests the armor can look like anything. So why not just have the Eidolon form whatever it needs for armor with this Evo?
As for magical rings/amulets/boots/etc that boost abilities/skills/etc, why not pay for Evos that emulate this, maybe have a level minimum? Perhaps spend a 2-3 points that allow you to have Ring of Protection +2 (giving Deflection bonus to AC) or a Cloak of Resistance +2 (which gives an Enhancement bonus to your saves).
I think these suggestions could probably be worked on a bit, but it would atleast solve the issue with players equipping their Eidolon with the best equipment they can to uber it out, and also prevent it from being abused a Cursed Item holder/detector/etc. Hell, I'd pretty much say magic items and Eidolons just don't work together very well. Sorta BS, but prevents abuse.
And 2cents for the SLA...I think it should be limited to only one summon creature per use, but should atleast be a Standard Action with the 1 min/lvl duration. Helps tremendously at 1-3rd level, but once you get past 4th, yeah it does start to be a bit abusive. The Standard Action atleast gives a low level Summoner some damage dealing, since they have NO damaging dealing spells other than Acid Splash at low levels. They produce damage (via spells) with Summon Monster. Just my opinion.
