Sparksfanboy's page

Very disappointing book. The races are weak or uninteresting compared to PHB races. The new archetypes aren't very good. The feats are all weaker or too wordy.

Not a good purchase.

Party was made up of a Paladin, a Cleric of Abadar, a Fighter, a Rogue, and a Bard. Most of the party has some pretty decent system mastery for 1E, but I wouldn't say that any of them are particularly optimized. They just rolled well on saves and work pretty good together. The Paladin, Rogue, and Fighter particularly like setting up a deathbox around enemies when they can. You try to kill your way out? Paladin is going to start hitting hard, you stay still? Rogue is going to tear you apart. You move? Fighter is going to knock you around.

There is way too much healing in the game right now. The monsters don't do nearly enough to justify this.

Definitely feel ancestry feats are still very weak and not balanced at all five sessions in.
Yes racial imbalance has always been a thing in pathfinder, just not something I'm excited to see return in 2nd edition.

If it's any benefit, my stance on this has softened quite a bit and I feel like I overreacted a good amount when I made this topic. I've ran 5 sessions and have played in a couple of level 12 sessions.

Five sessions in and I still feel the encounter balance guidelines are so useless that I've stopped worrying about them entirely. My party (5 level 4 characters) took on 7 ghasts (which was supposed to be well over 200 xp worth of monsters, well above extreme!) at the end of a dungeon tonight and still plowed through them. Monsters don't do enough damage and are very grindy.

Anything below 100 xp is way too easy.

Everyone gets excited at crits, especially newer players. I don't understand why you'd hate them.

My party loves bulk. Lot's less to keep track of and I actually have them asking what bulk is this new item they picked up instead of groaning when I even mention encumbrance...

It would take substantive rewriting of the rules and how classes work, especially feats and skills, and juggling around balance to get me to spend money on this current product.

It's not very impressive at all and plays even worse than it reads.

That's been my plan tbh. A lot of the vanilla monsters are very boring to run.

They're supposed to eat up resources, but anything under the 100 xp budget doesn't seem to do much to a party. What's up with that?

Nah. I'd rather the game to still look something like D&D.

For one thing, it has a very negative impact on a sense of progression and player buy in. Nobody likes having to balance 5 different unexciting feats, races, and class features. It makes the game overly complicated and messy.

People should be excited to take an option. Flipping through page after page of boring options that give you +1 to save DCs while doing backflips next to a goblin isn't going to do that. In fact it's going to do the opposite.

Please, PLEASE make the base feats in the core more interesting, especially at low level. So many are so terribly boring that they should be thrown out.

They need to fix the imbalance and make the options for the non-human races both better and more interesting.

Ancestry doesn't do it for me. Should be changed back to Race.

I'm not talking about good or bad, I'm talking about interesting or fun choices.
Grand majority are overly wordy that give tiny bonuses in very narrow circumstances so when they do come up it won't be "oh hey, that's so cool!" it's "ah, a +1 bonus I forgot about."
Just do away with so many things that give a measly +1 bonus it makes everything feel grindy and hard to keep track of. If a player isn't going to be excited to take it, it shouldn't be an option.

I wouldn't mind ancestry feats so much if the power disparity between them was so obvious. You have one or two really good ones per race (usually) and the rest are garbo.

Same with skill feats.

So much book space wasted on things hardly anybody is going to be excited to take.

That was a big problem in 1E and it's already a big problem with 2E, even moreso because a lot of the spells are now boring/nerfed too.

Are there any dinosaurs coming in the playtest bestiary?

So I got my hands of Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale and Fangwood Keep. What are all of your opinions on the positives of one over the other?

Are there any modules that include mythic tiers? My players really want to try those out.

Thanks for the help.

Would like a basic fantasy campaign, you know? There are so many to choose from. What's good?

Thank you for your advice. It takes place tonight.

I don't really know what to expect. I'm playing a level 1 Druid. Anything I should know about, that you wish you had going in the first time?

Okay, thank you for your help.

I'm just wondering because the default druid companions are pretty boring.

I want a coastal wizard monster. A type of lich that just won't go away, with an affinity for stealing your money, and likes to chase after dogs with bigger bones.

When can we expect Paizo to put a beholder or mindflayer in one of the bestiarys?

What are some fun feats or feat chains for martials? That is, if I wanted to build a martial whose feats were more focused on gaining options rather than getting attack/damage bonuses, what are good feats to pursue?

Step Up/Following Step/Step Up and Strike?

Dodge/Mobility/Spring Attack?

Blind-Fight?

Nimble Moves/Acrobatic Steps?

Other ideas?

Nice try Paizo Errata team.

Zark wrote:

Forgive my ignorance, I haven’t read thru all 893 posts, but I wonder does this class suck if it is forced to use a range weapon?

As far as I can tell it can’t even use a shortbow and it gets no bonus to attack or damage if using a ranged weapon.

Define sucks. They're as good as any high bab class when using a crossbow, but no composite weapons so no bonus to damage. Although I'd think for a guy built entirely around punching people, ranged weapons are something of a last resort. Just saying.

They should at least get the option to be good at chucking chairs / mugs of ale.

Can you make the brawler a little tougher at low levels please? I'm running a group of the playtest classes through Soul's For Smugglers Shiv and the Brawler didn't even make it past the first session. He fell through some rotten planks on an abandoned ship and got eaten by sea scorpions =(

In my opinion this class is terribly boring. I had a player use this in yesterday's session and he was so bored by it that I just let him swap to a Paladin instead.

At least Paizo is keeping it around. WotC just deletes wholesale any topic that is negative in anyway towards D&DNext.

SoL?

So I'm just trying to establish a baseline - if I want to throw 5 average to challenging encounters at the party in a session, and they are 5 level 8 characters, how many CR 8 creatures should I be using per encounter?

What dinosaurs are in Bestiary 4 and what ones are you hoping to include in Bestiary 5?

Is there ever going to be a Dr. Grant alchemist archetype that lets you throw exploding dinosaurs at people?

So can someone explain to me how the XP budgets are supposed to work then? I've been using them completely wrong I guess.

What everyone else said, but I am especially wondering how in dense forest the wizard and witch got enough line of sight and effect to be that deadly with the lightning bolts.

Also it seems less than optimal to attack with slow moving creatures in difficult terrain.

And given how the casters abandoned everyone to die due to their own carelessness, they are evil aligned?

Wait I was under the assumption that a CR 8 creature was something you only threw one of at a party of level 8 adventurers...the battle was about 13 cr 2 creatures and one level 10 alchemist. They even had some encounters against some of the alchemists other creations beforehand. I thought if I used the forest canopy to prevent them from cutting apart the creatures from the air that it would give the melee guys a chance to shine...and the overlevelled enemy could have a fun cat and mouse game in the canopy with the casters.

Didn't turn out that way and now the barbarian and rogue want to kill the witch and sorcerer next session...

Sparksfanboy wrote:

I have a party at level 8 and the Witch and Sorcerer are already making the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue feel more like speed bumps than contributors.

Any suggestions?

Describe what is happening specifically and we can discuss it.

Otherwise this will just be a "Wizard's rule, fighter's drool" thread.

Well one of the fights was against an alchemist that the party had been tracking for several sessions. He'd developed a necromantic serum that allowed him to bring back the dead under his command. Well the battle took place in a dense forest while they were being swarmed by zombies.

The Barbarian and the Fighter were having major mobility issues, while the casters were just walloping everything with lightning bolts. The Rogue ended up getting a critical hit on the Alchemist with a sneak attack on top, but even that wasn't a lot of damage compared to the lightning bolts.

This lit the surrounding forest on fire, but the caster's didn't care, they just flew away while the other three slowly burnt to death unable to escape. (Well they escaped eventually, but that was just because of quick thinking on behalf of the Rogue)

That's sad to hear. There aren't any systems like that one 3.5 book (can't remember it's name) that work in pathfinder?

I have a party at level 8 and the Witch and Sorcerer are already making the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue feel more like speed bumps than contributors.

Any suggestions?

Just wondering. Just switched over my 4E campaign to Pathfinder and some of the players might want to keep their race as Dragonborn. Has anyone had any luck with the race builder from the ARG?

I'm playing a Wizard in a party of Fighters and Barbarians!