Sir Belmont the Valiant's page

So does that mean Kineticist under performs or is it just bad?

As stated at length throughout the thread, you have to work at it to give a Kineticist top-tier DPS. But it can be done.

But many people consider the class to be more of a generalist/support class (like Bard/Cleric). In the end, whether the class is good or bad depends on what you want out of it.

Note that if you pick up Safe Elements at Level 4, your AoE attacks become much easier to use. And some of them are 30' cones, which covers a pretty large area.

I do this when I go to conventions. I live in the Chicago suburbs, but have played PFS in Minnesota, Wisconsin, non-Chicago area Illinois, Indiana (Gen Con), Michigan and Ohio (Origins).

One of the advantages of PFS is it allows you to experiment with different character builds. My second character is a Fighter with a Greatsword. There's nothing particularly deep about him, and he only has two character traits; he left his home in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords because it's too f*ing cold up there! And he's quite proud of his waxed mustachios.

But my bard is another matter. I saw a picture somewhere of a goblin jamming on an electric guitar, with multi-color sparks flying everywhere. I said to myself, "that's it! my next character is Sparky the Electric Bard!" He's a silly goblin that uses Electric Arc on his steel-string guitar and wears fluffy bunny slippers. Much more character driven.

Oh, and I started a gunslinger once and didn't enjoy it. So I bought a rebuild boon... Shizuru visited her in a dream and now she's a semi-reluctant Champion. And the XP the gunslinger acquired didn't go to waste.

PFS is an situation where it takes all kinds, and that makes it more fun!

Please remember that when the devs said that they were working for balance, they meant that optimal class builds wouldn't be very far above sub-optimal builds.

2e is a game where you really have to work at it to get a bad character.

An excerpt from FORCE BARRAGE
You fire a shard of solidified magic toward a creature that you
can see. It automatically hits and...

Concealed: Fog or similar obscuration makes you difficult to see and target.

Hidden: A creature you’re hidden from knows your location but can’t see
you.

Undetected: A creature you’re undetected by doesn’t know where you are.
.
.
All of the above have been copied from Player Core 1. You can see something Concealed, so it's auto hit. No flat check required.

You can't see someone Hidden or Undetected, so you can't even use Force Barrage.

Specific trumps general.

The description of Concealment is a general statement of how it works.

The Force Barrage statement 'hits automatically' Trumps Concealment.

Gakgung looks like a straight upgrade to the shortbow.

Still a tradeoff in thought on that vs longbow, but I feel like the volley trait on the longbow basically always convinces me not to use it.

I agree with you. I mostly play PFS, which means I seldom have to shoot past the shortbow's short range. And often fire as a creature is closing to melee.

It seems to me that the simple solution if the replay bug has really bit you, is to go buy a few replay boons for immediate replay. Then use the 'glyph' replays later on.

This is going to get a little long, but the phrase "expensive in resources" has been questioned.

A Sturdy Shield is described as follows: With a superior design and excellent craftsmanship, this steel shield has higher Hardness than its non-magical counterparts, making it harder to break and destroy.

So yes, magical. A Mending spell will fix one if it is Heightened to 3rd level. Were you planning on carrying this spell in one of your spell slots instead of Aqueous Orb, Fireball or Holy Light? That's one of the resource expenses I was talking about; it takes up the 'resource' of a spell slot. (Or perhaps, a Martial character is asking another party member to do this for him?)

Another way to expend resources on this effort is to get a Wand of Mending, heightened to level 3. Let's see, that's a 7th level item that costs 360 GP, and can be used once per day. And will only restore 15 hit points to the item. It might not get your item back to 'unbroken' status.

Hmm, I suppose you could get a couple of 3rd level spell scrolls at 30 GP each and see how often this problem actually comes up in play? Such scrolls are only 5th level items. This seems like the most sensible way to go about it.

A Sturdy Shield at level 4 (as low as it goes) costs 100 gp and has a bulk of 1. Pray let me remind you that 100 GP will turn a normal weapon into a +1 Striking weapon. And at level 5, you need 165 GP to enchant your armor to +1.

This entire discussion is about: do you want to do this? Do you want to spend these resources to fix shields damaged by Shield Block? Or do you want to spend this money/reaction when you could instead save your reaction for Reactive Strike and spend the money elsewhere?

Thank you Pixel Popper, you have been very helpfull.

Apparently I missed Merchant, of the travelling sort, as well. I guess you would call that 'Peddler' as a sub-set.

Dubious Knowledge kicks in when you fail a Recall Knowledge check, not on a critical failure. So, more common and not pre-scripted.

I mostly play PFS, so I haven't seen any GM bans except...

Sparky the Electric Bard took in the Dubious Knowledge feat as it seemed like it would be a lot of fun. After the third time I used it, the Judge (my local VC/5 star judge) asked me to change it out for something else. It was becoming a burden to him to come up with semi-believable false facts and slowing him down. I agreed to this with alacrity, as I always believe in making things easier for the Judge.

The 22 SP is for the _some_ of the raw material. You need a hilt, a pommel, a cross-guard, a sheath and you need to apply labor. Working with such an unusual metal requires greater care and precision.

Everything but the 22 SP for the Cold Iron is rolled into the other 22 SP, as you can trade labor for the more mundane material.

The best background magical item is a Wig of Holding. It let's you keep four different bulk L items in four separate one L 'pockets'. I tend to keep a light weapon, 10 arrows, a healing potion and a misc potion in mine.

What you need is:

A ballerina troop of Awakened Ostriches...

Who rouse the Awakened Hippopotamus Princess...

Who is then courted by the Awakened Alligator Acrobat.

I played this scenario at a convention 6/1/24. Only one player had met the thieves before and there was table talk about just handing them over to the Jann. But we went and repaired things, and collected all five diplomacy boons, 'cause none of us thought fighting the Jann to protect the thieves was the right thing to do.

I seem to recall Diplomacy being aided by other skills, and we had three characters with the skill at the Trained/Expert level, so we made peace with the Jann, gave him everything (all five diplo items) and that was that.

Sounds to me like your judge was overly restrictive.

One if my sons (he's 20 and should know better) wants us to turn up at a PFS table with a party of awakened penguins. (There's six of us, we can take a whole table.)

If only four of you are there, you could turn up as turtles:

This is far more likely to have been ordered by some Hasbro exec who has no idea what problems he's causing to WotC by ordering this, in a move to generate more revenue.

It's a loss for Paizo, in that it caused them to sink a bunch of time & effort into the remaster. It's a win for Paizo in that they created and are leading the charge into ORC, and WotC/Hasbro got a lot of bad press over it.

Once again, I would like to see Blunt Arrows!

Might I suggest a Champion/Paladin of Shelyn, whose favored weapon is the glaive? a reach weapon. With Retributive Strike and Ranged Reprisal you get a _lot_ of use out of your reactions.

Then, since a Champion ought to have a 14+ charisma, you take in the Sorcerer dedication. Take any bloodline you like, but start with Shield as one of your cantrips. Then you get two actions, and a Shield cantrip per turn.

If you want more of a magic feel, take the Spellcasting feat at fourth level and look for utility spells, or one action spells.

Just call them birdbears.

Then the judge can vary them.. hawk bears have sharper beaks, vulture bears have sharper claws... and pelican bears can swallow medium creatures!

In one PFS scenario in Taldor, you have to fight the nasty noble. He's high level & riding a large lion...

Being a Gunslinger of 8th level, I walked forward and used Targetting to his arm, and he dropped his magical sword. The judge was irate to read the module and find the noble was not carrying any other weapon... so he dismounted, picked up the weapon & remounted.

2nd round I do the same, and by this time all my party melee types have moved up and mobbed him.

In the third round I used Targeting on the lion & hit him in the head for the Confusion effect. The lion attacked the noble & finished him off.

My Gunslinger rolled no crits, and didn't do one hit point of damage; he just (figuratively) stun-locked the BBEG.

I mean, realistically an arrowhead that is blunted enough that it does not pierce (even the decidedly not-sharp points you use for practice shooting still pierce) should reduce the die size.

This is a ridiculous assertion. Just look at 'hollow point' bullets. There's a perfect example of what happens when you go from piercing to bludgeoning. Instead of expending energy penetrating (& making a deeper wound), much of the energy is expended on impact, shocking the target. There's no reason to change the die size.

Archery is allowed to have some weaknesses.

Archery already has weaknesses:

I, for one, am very disappointed that after all this time we still don't have blunt arrows.

Actually, I tend to get more mileage out of the fact that I take a chamois cloth and small tin of wax and buff my beak regularly. It glint's just like the teeth of a charming Bard.

I would never actually attack anything with my beak, that would scuff it up!

As a Tengu, I'd like to point out that I proudly strut my tailfeathers in non-combat situations. Alas! they have no combat value, and I must rely upon my katana and gauntleted fist (Flurry Ranger).

The problem I have with the "just use an attack cantrip" as an option for an investigator who rolled badly on their strategic strike is that there isn't an option to get those in the class. Sure, you can get cantrips from some ancestries, but not every ancestry gets cantrip access and the tools to make a class work should come with the class.

Like Rogues get "Minor Magic" as a level 2 feat, but Investigators don't and this might be an oversight.

All it takes is for an Investigator to get cantrips is the Archtype feat for Wizard, which is a 2nd level feat, as per the Rogue above.

Just as a note, you might want to get a silver hatchet, and a cold iron hatchet, then transfer the +1 striking runes to them. At level seven you have access to standard (middle) grade cold iron and silver, at about 250 GP per bulk... a hatchet is bulk 'L', so it costs you 25 GP for one.

As an added bonus, get an Adamantine gauntlet for one hand; 350 GP per bulk , so 35 for one hand. If you run into constructs, etc, you drop/sheath the hatchet and start punching. First available at level eight.

Bugbears might do the trick. Or you could do something completely different and go for a small enclave of Catfolk/Lizardfolk/Tengu.

Or dare I suggest... Minotaurs? It depends on your party levels.

Though it's not the cream of the crop for melee, an Inquisitor is still pretty fun.

Between spells and judgements you can buff you're damage output pretty well, pick up your preferred two hand weapon via various proficiency shenanigans and just have fun...

This where my opinion diverges. I played a Lizardman/Iruxi Inquisitor, who went the full bite/claw/claw route. Still passed out a lot of damage, as all three are primary attacks & get Str mods.

Shelyn, da Great Goblin Singer what sits in de Sky.

I'm joining the requests for Centaurs & Minotaurs. On the taller end of medium.

A good suggestion, but the last time I actually did this, I was also working on the Step Up chain of feats, so Fighter levels were a must.

Fighter. Fighters get so many feats they can go any which way.

I like to take in two levels of Rogue to boost Refl saves, grant Evasion, and give two dice of sneak attack on Flank (take the feat that gives an extra die of SA). Also take the feat that gives you Flank if the opponent is up against a wall.

Kineticists get 1d6 damage (base) at first level. They get another d6 at 3, 5, 7, etc. So you don't really want to dilute the Kineticist level progression with other classes. And there isn't really any reason to do so; there are so many options that you can take your blast-all-day fellow all over the place.

I played a Fire-based Kineticist all the way through the Emerald Spire, then went off to Osirion to help fight that dreadfull undead Pharaoh (Mummy's Mask). Ended up at 17th level. and enjoyed every minute of it.

Yes it's hard to wrap your head around the mechanics, but it's worth the effort.

I have only ever played a Kineticist, but it was a blast!

Actually, Trip is still a bad choice for _anyone_ to use with Assurance. Somebody (I don't recall the name) put out a Guide that recommended it and it was heavily discussed in the Guide commentary thread.

Allow me to quote: "...I have just randomly looked under 'G' (in the Bestiary), for all creatures from CR7 to CR11... and if your PC is level 10 & pushed Athletics to Master your Assurance - Athletics fixed total is 10 +10 (level) +6 (master) = 26. The results are that you auto-trip 8 of the 24 creatures. E_____, could you please describe how you came to the conclusion that As/Ath is auto-hit at higher levels? (I picked level 10 because PFS tops out at 11, did you sample at level 15?)"

Note that the 'auto-hit' commentators stopped posting in the thread at this point, rather than actually try to provide any proof.

I agree with the posters above that state Assurance is for basic tasks, and several of the examples. But not Trip!

For your relatively low-valued third attack, most of the time you will either move, or target a new victim with Hunt Prey.

Optional! it takes one action to command your Animal Companion. Your AC can either Attack twice & provide flanking for melee types, or Support (varies by animal type).

I'm glad you are enjoying your Archer Ranger. Please remember that on top of saving you an action to Hunt Prey, if you are tracking an enemy then you get to use your Tracking skill for Initiative, instead of your Perception, which is usually better.

BTW, Anne has an animal companion: Yogi Berra, a small brown bear!

It's easy to trim down the Centaur;
1) remove the three stat bump packages (RP 29 -> 17).
2) make the Centaur medium (like a pony) with a small humanoid section (RP 17 -> 15?).

"Why do people go on adventures? To get rich quick and find what is essentially above-level loot."

Just as an aside, I go on adventures to battle Evil and Injustice.

Loot? eh, that's how I pay the rent.

I know very little of about Monks but I will say this: there was a long argument in another thread about Mountain Stance. It requires you to stand on the ground...

Some people (including myself) said that the ground was dirt, stone, grass, etc. But not the deck of a ship, a tree branch, etc. Other people said that 'the ground' meant any surface you were standing on. I suggest you either talk to your judge, or search the forums/FAQs on this before you start to use it.

Back to the OP and his question: being an archer is not a trap. While there are multiple agruments in this thread about what is most effective in a fight, or in situation X... the differing playstyles of different groups & GMs make a lot of this moot.

I play both a Greatsword Fighter and an Archer Ranger in Pathfinder Society, and both are enjoyable. Which is most enjoyable? The Thief racket Rogue! :D

The best advice I can give you is to try out an Archer and see for yourself... as long as you are not in a situation where you will be locked into that choice if you end up not liking it. If you are going to get locked in, then choose something you _know_ you will enjoy long-term.

My favorite. Module for PFS is 4-19 the Night March of Kalkemedes.

NPC: "So you are an Inquisitor of Desna?"
Orto the Lizardman: "Yeth."
NPC frowns: "But isn't Desna of the Chaotic Good persuasion?"
Orto: "Thatth right."
NPC: "I'm not sure I understand. If Desna doesn't have any defined dogma or rituals... what is there to Inquire about? How would Heresy even come about?"
Orto: "I thaid I am an Inquithitor of Dethna; I never thaid I wath very good at it."

Anne sends Yogi Berra (brown bear animal companion) in to Support, which costs an action. She marks her quarry (action), then shoots twice with Hunted Shot (action) at 0 & -3 (thanks to Hunter's Edge/Flurry). This yields bow damage + 1d8 support damage per shot, which is respectable. While it's nice if Anne gets in a shot at -6, it's not a great loss if she doesn't as these are the shots that rarely hit.

Kineticists get Kinetic Blade & Kinetic Whip that full attack, and some get AoE.

Certainly Alchemists get extracts... Kineticists get 480' range if they want, and get a sack-load of hit points.

In short, the classes are different: direct comparison doesn't accomplish much.

Thank you, Ravingdork.

I recommend the Troll Augurers, they got guts!