Squirrel_Dude's page

Linkified it for ya.

Although your guide might be better served with putting it in the 3rd party section of First edition, as long as people are fine with it being in advice, who am I to gainsay that? ;p

Thanks for linking it. Forgot to preview before I posted.

I just figured I'd post it here because that's where Jackiscool's guide was initially posted as well. Also I do want feedback and to help more folks so I want more eyes on it.

I think it's pretty solid and pretty complete. Feel free to tell me where I'm wrong. I still tinker with it every so often.

Anyway, I was about to pick up playing Pathfinder again and wanted to play a Psychic Warrior. I decided to look up some of the handbook and was disappointed to see that they were incredibly incomplete and old enough that they were unlikely to ever be updated. The lack of a focus on feats was particularly problematic for a martial character class. So, seeing as I was going to take the time to be reading every option of the class anyway, I decided that I would make my own.

As proof of my bonifides,I have collaborated with other posters to make a proper Psion handbook for Pathfinder. I'd love to get some criticism about my ratings and prose and really anything else. Contributions are also appreciated and will be credited.

[url]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wsCSnQJh_tg9fV9PYXd4QAEmQq_g92onanBa9fS LF9c/edit?usp=sharing]Memory Muscle, a Psychic Warrior Handbook[/url]

What's been done so far.
Class Overview (General Advice, Ability Scores, Chassis and Class Feature review)
Paths breakdown
Racial Choice
Class Skills
Traits
Feats
Powers

What's left to do
Archetypes
Prestige Classes
Gear and Equipment

I'm making reviews based off of what is printed in my copy of Ultimate Psionics. I do not have 7th Path, and haven't yet looked through it's material that's online.

unless they're planning to bundle in all the weirder weapons from APs (lookin' at you jade regent and that-one-with-baba-yaga) into the core book, and every piece of magical equipment they plan to add to the game fr it's lifespan, i dont see how they could manage it--such a task would likely need to be it's own book, and BOY people would get mad having to buy the core book and the equipment book to even play the game

people have been pointing out the problematic layout pretty much constantly so far, and iirc the devs did say they mostly slapped in preexisting art to make the playtest book seem more professional.

hopefully once they get back they can see the piles of complaints and suggested fixes and get to fixing it--they've got a year to do so, they'd better make use of it.

(i for one totally support consolidating things and paring unneded repitition down in the various charts, as well as organizing them in a coherent manner)

When I said "complete", I did not mean that every single item ever created for Pathfinder should be included in the Core Rulebook. That would be an unreasonable ask. I am suggesting that the Magic item section should be combined with the standard equipment section.

Obviously there is a section of every Pathfinder and D&D core Rulebook that calls itself the "Equipment" section. It would be more approriately titled "Mundane Equipment." Basically your standard weapons, armor, tents, rope, food, etc. It's a traditional section, and the rulebook wouldn't look the same without it. It's also a dinosaur and I thinkt he game would be better off finally merging magical and mundane equipment lists into a single section.

Having a mundane equipment section is at its most useful during character creation. It's when players are likely be distracted or encumbered by having to flip past magic rings to find out how much rations cost. However, it is detrimental every other moment of the game, and that is only true for generating a character at low enough power that magical item(s) won't be an expected purchase.

I am so incredibly tired of having to flip hundreds of pages so that I can look at special materials and magic armor effects and then towards the main armor stats to try and do the math to figure out what a Mithral +1 X actually has for stats. In this edition I'll also need to flip through to class pages to make sure that I'm applying all of my character's bonuses correctly. Just dropping those hundreds of pages to 5 or 10 would be wonderful.

It's tradition that goes back to when all magical items were in the DM's handbook (for some reason). PF 1e and now this rulebook are trying to maintain that same outdated Player Handbook and GM Handbook split in its format. As a GM, I need to look at both sections so that I can plan out loot, and players are going to be looking at magic items away. Alchemists have to look at this section to actually their class. Snares are a class feature but are in this second item section.

It may already be too late in the process to make such a drastic layout change, but I think it's the kind of change I'd like to see more often.

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Haven't played 'em enough to form an opinion. I didn't like 4e at first, but I'm starting to think it got an unfair shake when it came out.

4. I'm looking for a game system where the saving throw and armor class math isn't broken on a fundamental level. I'm looking for a system that doesn't require me to track 25 +1/+2 bonuses

5. If you don't want your game to be accessible, then you're probably in the wrong business

6. This is a dumb question and poses things as if it's a one or the other choice, and it never is in reality.

7. It's a playtest. I need to be willing to play an alternative ruleset.

8. Weapons and armor tables that aren't simultaneously pointlessly detailed and unrealistic for the first time in D&D/Pathfinder history.

A video relevant to the topic that I've posted elsewhere.

Wearing armor would have some impact on the person's top speed and their ability to do cartwheels or other acrobatics. I suspect anyone who can do acrobatics in full plate armor would do them better outside of plate armor. However it's not as absurd as a 40% reduction in speed -5 check penalty and a in a game where bounded accuracy makes that an even larger penalty than it would be in previous games.

Squirrel_Dude wrote:

What even is Half Plate by the way?

It's the historical forerunner to full plate. Basically, it's a breastplate and then some.

You say that, but every result of half-plate I can pull up in a search only redirects me to D&D or Pathfinder discussions about what it is. The majority of images that come up for it are from fantasy games. I don't think there's been a proper description of it in a Pathfinder book. I don't think there's one in a 3.5 book for that matter.

Maybe it's a coat of plates. No, not this. I'm talking about something like this

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Candlestick wrote:

It's the same for plate armor once again having the ridiculously high check penalty and slowing players to a crawl, really. I mean we've all seen the people in super heavy armour lumbering around with an axe the size of the player in RPGs, but that's not 'just' plate armour. That's like, stoneplate or something. Both of these things contribute nothing. It's not fun, it's not realistic, it's not adhering to tropes. Who is the nerf to longbows pleasing?

Plate Armor sort of needs to have penalties so everyone who can afford it doesn't wind up wearing it (which would have thematic problems). It's not good for realism but is good for game balance.

I have yet to be convinced that the longbow's problems present a similar advantage, Or not to the extent necessary to justify their harshness, anyway.

First off, the balance is that it costs a lot. "Wait, but that's not a lot of money!" Well yeah, it ain't, but then if it wasn't the best then why would it be the most expensive? Fact of the matter is that sometimes "nope it's just better" makes sense.

What thematic problems? In the first place, you're straight up worse off wearing full plate than half-plate if you have any sort of Dexterity to speak of - and considering the way that ability scores are off the wall, you most likely do. That's assuming you can wear heavy armor to begin with. It makes perfect sense that frontliners what the best protection available. When was the last time you saw a champion of the realm in scalemail during a duel (except when he was doing it to show off, or when plate armor didn't exist)?

It's also not just plate armor. The top armor of every armor category has a negative trait. Breastplate makes you clumsy. Chainmail and chainshirts make you noisy. And I can't find a way to get rid of those negative traits, either. Who was asking that the better armors be worse?

I didn't mind breastplate or chain shirts just being good, but I can understand people wanted more variety in their armor selection. I just don't think giving the most expensive armors negative traits makes sense.

Seriously though, why is Half Plate just better than Full Plate? What even is Half Plate by the way?

I admit I've grown used to getting clickable hyperlinks in the table of contents after playing Shadowrun 5e for a bit. Catalyst's rulebooks usually need it more because they're horribly laid out, but I'd still appreciate them here.

I'd especially appreciate them when pg 176 in the table of contents actually lines up with 175 of the .pdf. I thought I had somehow skipped the armor section about 4 times before I finally realized all the table of content's numbers needed to be reduced by 1.

So let's get a couple disclaimers out of the way.

• I was always going to be biased against a weapons table that has "longsword" and "bastard sword" as two separate weapons or an armor table that make biker gear the preferred armor compared to gambeson. It's not fair, but those are also annoying cliches.
  
• This is one of the first places I turned to in the book. I hate gear porn in games as a design philosophy, but it's something I generally enjoy looking at. There may be context that I am missing here.
  

The weapons table

Before I nitpick, I'd like to propose a larger change. Instead of separating weapons by Common/Simple-Martial , Uncommon/Simple-Martial-Exotic, I'd separate them first by category. Something that that looked much more like this in form but obviously not in style

That isn't an ideal solution, but that's partly because there are categories that seem to serve one weapon. Brawling is just variation of fist, hammers are just variants of the warhammer, picks are just variants of the pick. At least for myself, I find it an easier way to find the weapon I'm looking for than having to divine which proficiency a weapon is in.

That larger formatting suggestion out of the way, let's get to the petty nitpicks.

• Why are Bastard Swords only piercing damage? Are they a giant rapier? What?
  
• What is this? I'll let it slide that Katana are listed as a 1 handed weapon even though they aren't. However, Versatile P is absurd. They're a single edged sword. Oh also they're just a longsword that costs twice a much.
  
• There are too many polearms and too many knives. There are 6 different knives that deal 1d4 P damage. I understand that weapon traits make them different, but I don't care.
  
• In an edition where you want to simplify the game, having 31 weapon traits and 13 critical effects to consider for your weapon choice in addition to damage and cost and bulk maybe isn't they way to go. Many are repeats or do useful things, but it still feels overly complicated
  
• On cost: Don't have things priced 2, or 7, or 12, or 18 or 23. Just make it 1, 5, 10, 20, 25, etc. Some stuff needs to cost Copper. Fine. The math doesn't need to be this granular because weapons shouldn't be balanced by their base item silver piece cost. And this doesn't just make the initial purchasing of gear easier, it makes the bulk sales of weapons or bulk purchases that can occur after scavenging and bunch of thieves easier later on as well.
  
• Can we finally just call the Longspear a Pike?
  

I like a lot of flavorful weapons being moved out of the exotic category, though. That's nice.

The armor table
Why is it that the most expensive armors in each category are also the ones that have the negative traits? It's not for th sake of "realism" because otherwise all the heavy armor would also be noisy, and so would scale mail. Instead Chain shirts and Chainmail just have a detriment on them for some reason. I honestly don't understand how breastplate makes someone "clumsy" when chain mail and half plate don't. I'm not going to quibble over outdated the trope of armor being horribly clumsy or severely limiting, and I won't deny it should have some impact on the person's ability to swim and run or sneak around. However, that I can't seem to get rid of the trait my making the armor made of magical mithril or specifically tailored to my character's body is dumb.

[sarcasm]One thing I'm glad to see hasn't changed is Full Plate continuing to be overpriced garbage for the experienced adventurer. In previous versions of the game it was because the maximum dexterity bonus was so low that many character would accidentally eclipse it and gain the same overall armor rating and more valuable touch AC by switching to cheaper armor. Now we don't even have to wait to get a significant dexterity. We can just use Half plate from the word go! What wonderful efficiency[/sarcasm]

More seriously, though. Half plate has the same maximum armor value of 7, costs less, has the same TAC bonus, has a lower check penalty, weighs less, and doesn't have a negative trait like very other armor in its range. The lack of clumsy could be an editing error. In that case, just use splint mail which even cheaper and thus better than half-plate.

Can't the best stuff in each class off armor just be the best stuff in each class of armor?

I'll repeat the disclaimers again. I might be missing something here that will become apparent when I play it. I do plan to properly playtest the game with some experienced PF 1e/3.5 players once we've wrapped up our Divinity 2 Co Op campaign in a weekend or two.

Sounds like you will play a bunch of people hiding.

Because fighting other people at any point before the final standoff is a bad strategy when it can be avoided and you don't need equipment.

Druid. Become a hawk and hide in a tree during the day, and become an owl and hide in a tree during the night. Wait until everyone kills each other.

Eh, sneak attack has it's place compared to deadly strike. Sneak Attack is a bit easier to activate than deadly strike with your mobility and maneuvers, and it frees you from needing to crit-fish.

Yeah, most dice rolling char gen systems have some kind of minimum barrier to entry for a character, so that players aren't totally screwed over by dice.

I don't believe that there is one.

alexd1976 wrote:

Carishia wrote:

You all cringe at a 9, when I rolled my first character no re-rolls with 4d6 drop the lowest my stats were

Str:3 (yes all 1's)
Con:9
Dex:11
Int:9
Wis:12
Cha:10
And I still played her as a Druid.
I look at your rolls and am like "damn I wish I was that lucky".

If a GM forced you to play this character, he would be forcing you to play something with worse stats than the town drunk.

;) These are abysmal.

. Yup, to prove that he had me fight that drunk and I ended up with bottle shards in my brain before I got a lucky crit and knocked him unconscious. Then I got dropped by an angry cat

Cats are g#&$+& terrifying at level 1

strength: 3d6 ⇒ (3, 5, 3) = 11
dexterity: 3d6 ⇒ (4, 6, 4) = 14
constitution: 3d6 ⇒ (1, 6, 2) = 9
intelligence: 3d6 ⇒ (1, 5, 1) = 7
wisdom: 3d6 ⇒ (2, 5, 2) = 9
charisma: 3d6 ⇒ (5, 1, 5) = 11
A dumb, foolish, and not that charming Dervish of Dawn Bard?

So after he dies, what do we get next?

strength: 3d6 ⇒ (4, 1, 4) = 9
dexterity: 3d6 ⇒ (3, 1, 1) = 5
constitution: 3d6 ⇒ (4, 1, 2) = 7
intelligence: 3d6 ⇒ (1, 5, 4) = 10
wisdom: 3d6 ⇒ (1, 1, 6) = 8
charisma: 3d6 ⇒ (4, 2, 6) = 12

Hm... I'm going to go with court jester on this one.

Turn unthread.

I'd recommend using blue in place of "golden" and add green to the color pallet in place of where green used to be. If that isn't to your liking.

Most archetype abilities are either

A) balanced by you giving up other powerful options
B) made functional by other class abilities.

I'm sure there are still some game breaking combination just because there would be so many possible combinations.

The gauntlet won't be useful for two-weapon fighting, as others have said. It's a hell of a golf-bag weapon, though. A +1 adamantium gauntlet will bypass both DR/magic and DR/adamanitum, will bypass the hardness of almost any object in the game, and you can always have it equipped because it's just part of your armor.

That's a really good item that your GM gave you before you take into account the slotless strength bonus.

I'd actually argue that clerics and paladins are religious zealots, or at least they would probably be considered as such when you consider some of the religions holidays that their more devoted clergy is going to carry out. Clerics following Urgathoa running around and murdering random people a certain day of the year comes to mind.

However, all of that is less of a problem when a religion is certifiably good

Doing a kickstarter for a new or reorganized core book would possibly be a good idea, to test the waters.

I would be a bit annoyed by a successful company doing a kickstarter for a project that they have the ability to back regardless of its success. If you want to do something to gauge public interest, do a poll of customers have purchased your product.

Context is what matters. Low level magic tricks like prestidigitation are probably fairly common, but people will still be wary when the hand waving and chanting starts. I don't buy into spells intrinsically having lightshows associated with them, but the chanting and hand movements are visible enough.

In how many Paizo adventures where characters meet powerful people does it say, "He will only meet you inside a permanent anti-magic field" or similar?

For those who played Kingmaker, did your leader characters take that level of precautions?

Anyway, the point I was originally making was that it's OK for the GM to shut down players who try to do that sort of thing to wreck adventures, by using means such as those you suggest. So please don't take my arguments too seriously.

No offense taken or harm done.

I think it's important for these discussions to take place to lay out how GMs should deal with the threat of spells like dominate person, or even charm person, and other problems spells. While I do agree that the focus of most optimization and class handbooks on offensive spells is the right one, I think it's had the affect that far too many people don't know how to protect their characters against magic.

See: Everyone who thinks detect evil is completely overpowered because so few people know about undetectable alignment or misdirection.

You'll notice I specified 'Duke' rather than King. And it's a big assumption that the king in my world has a cadre of high-level spell casters. If they exist, what's to stop them controlling him?

And why would you assume nobles are cautious? Ever seen Henry V? The king walks around on a battlefield, where any commoner with a grudge could kill him with a well-placed arrow. He knows there's no such thing as perfect security, and relies upon trust and luck.

Clerics and Paladins and Inquisitors. All are perfectly reasonable spellcasters that would loyally serve a kingdom and who would be able to deal with the Wizard. Okay the Paladin might be stretching it a bit, but the Inquisitor and Cleric could more than put up a fight.

I also find it a tad questionable that a true neutral caster would just dominate a king to get his reward immediately. Sounds more like a chaotic thing, but alignment has table variation IMO, so I won't quibble beyond saying that's not how I would do it.

Those would be very brave servants to challenge the 9th level wizard who is currently controlling his boss.

If your rulers of a kingdom aren't prepared to deal with a single 9th level wizard and his palls, they wouldn't be rulers of a kingdom. Protection from X is a first level spell, and it shuts down dominate when used properly.

Dominate person is the most overrated spell in Pathfinder/3.5x, even without the massively frustrating "against it's nature," line. I just do not see the appeal of the spell in the slightest in terms of combat or out of combat situations.

In combat, it's a single target [mind-affecting] save-or-die affect. I hate these. They have the potential to win a combat, but they also have potential to do nothing, and it scales atrociously. When you first get access to the spell, you'll only have a few precious level 5 spells to go around, and I don't see why I would be using those when they have the potential to do nothing. When you get more level 5 spells to go around, the game has advanced to the point where [mind-affecting] spells are borderline useless in most encounters, without opponents preparing protection from X before the fight. Even if they aren't, the spell's DC doesn't scale, which alone makes it less useful.

Not only are there all of those problems, but it's a Will save. You know what has low will saves? Fighters and Rogues. You know what isn't a priority in a fight? Fighters and Rogues. The spell has a single use :target the fighter is warded by protection from X so that you gain a way to deal damage and distract the enemy. You know what does that exact same effect more efficiently? Summon Monster V used to emulate Summon Monster IV so that you get multiple monsters to directly distract the spellcasters.

And that's just the problems with using the spell during combat. Out of combat it's at least defensible, if no one else in the vicinity can identify the spell that you're casting. The spell has both vocal and somatic components, so you're a big chanting idiot waving his arms around. Even if the target passes the saving throw, everyone gets multiple detection chances to figure out what you did.

1. Anyone who is trained in the skill gets a DC 20 spellcraft check to identify the spell check.
2. Everyone gets a DC 15 sense motive check to notice that the target is being compelled to act against his will.

The first one is slightly difficult to make at level 9 for characters without high Int, and you shouldn't anticipate most characters being trained in the skill. That sense motive is going to be hit by just about anyone. It does not take even a remotely intelligent person to put together - spell is obviously being cast + guy is being compelled = spell cast compelled the target.

Do you know what happens when spellcasters are identified for casting dominate person, especially in public? The spellcaster who used dominate person gets dogpiled.

And that's all before getting into the problem actually adjudicating and running the spell during a session.

There are a couple things missing from that analysis

1. When a Razmiran priest activates a scroll or wand of a divine spell, the charge on that item isn't lost. Razmiran priests aren't gaining the power to pay money for mediocre one-shot effects, they're basically adding spells to an infinite spellbook.

2. You don't have to pull from the Cleric/Oracle spell list. You can also pull from the Inquisitor or Paladin or any other divine spell lists, letting you get items at spell level discounts. For example, holy sword is a 4th level Paladin spell and a 7th level Cleric spell.

Squirrel_Dude wrote:

In the second case, unless the gem lands right at the feet of another spellcaster who has teleport or dimension door prepared (who would probably be an ECL challenge for the party if there are mooks), it would take two move actions to walk over to and pick up the gem. Standard action to end the spell. You shouldn't use the spell if there is a spellcaster in the other room in the first place, though.

Both Teleport and Dimension Door have a range of touch, which can be done as part of casting the spell. Move action to get to the gem, standard action to cast. Delivering the touch does not require a separate action and the gem is unattended.

I make the assumption that most arcane casters are intelligent and will act in accordance with that intelligence. Both are spells that a caster would typically already have prepared, and the usage should be obvious for any caster with APL appropriate skill levels in Spellcraft and knowledge Arcana.

Identifying the spell might be more challenging for a roomful of martials, but even without spellcraft, having a gem tossed in the room by an unknown agency just before all hell breaks loose is going to raise concerns in an intelligent opponent. He may not be able to identify the cause as "Magic Jar", but he's more than likely to figure out, "That gem started the problems."

If you are fighting low intelligence mooks, the tactic will most likely work. Smarter foes, much less likely.

There's some strategy you can use if you want to deal with the wizard or sorcerer (which it basically has to be because divine transport spells suck), but I wouldn't recommend using the strategy against them. I wouldn't recommend using magic jar against anything that can teleport for that matter.

The two things to try are
1. Grab the wizard/sorcerer on the first go. Because most casters focus on casting stat/Con/Dex, their will saves are usually pretty mediocre in my play experience. Obviously you shouldn't try this with a cleric or druid who will probably only have a 20-30% chance of failing the saving throw. The wizard will have a 50/50 shot, probably.

2. Grab the fighter next to the spellcaster. Basically you try to force the guy to eat AOOs and distract him and such. I honestly don't like this plan because most characters will just eat the AOOs to deal with a party killing threat. It is an option, though.

Keep in mind that if you're dealing with a spellcaster who can cast dimension door or teleport +mooks, you're dealing with an APL encounter of at least 9th level or higher. You shouldn't expect to be able to outright win an APL encounter with a single spell. Honestly, a APL Arcane caster + his buddies sounds more like a miniboss than a generic encounter.

There's a guy I used to play with who would be very excited about this. I remember there being rules for playing Trolls and Bugbears and other crazy creatures back in 3.5, but I forget which splat book that was in. I'm glad to see that stuff return, if only so that I can customize monsters for my party.

Squirrel_Dude wrote:

It's not a spell you cast during combat. It's a spell you cast to start combat. You hide yourself and your stupid meat body somewhere in the dungeon outside of a room you want to clear out. You then put yourself into a gem, and have the rogue take the gem and throw you under a door into a room with all the bad guys like a grenade.

Possess an enemy and start attacking his allies. When you first target dies, you just possess the next guy and repeat. Go until you run out of targets who can fail the save or everyone is dead. Then you end the spell and storm the room full of weakened or eliminated targets.

And nobody ever gets the bright idea to crush the gem that was tossed through the door just before the havoc started?

Worst case scenario; it's another caster in the room. He makes the trivial spellcraft check, picks up the gem, and teleports. Your party wizard dies when the spell terminates, no saving throw.

In the first case: It's possible, but chaos is chaos, and if you're worried about that you can always do the really crazy thing of throwing in more than one gem. Or the gem could be hard to see in a dimly lit room, or tossed out of easy reach, or you could wait for something to happen that would spark a fight, etc. Depending on the range and size of the room, he could also just put it under the door so that the wizard has vision into the room, but the gem wouldn't be visible. You could also just leave it as a horde of gems as a trap.

In the second case, unless the gem lands right at the feet of another spellcaster who has teleport or dimension door prepared (who would probably be an ECL challenge for the party if there are mooks), it would take two move actions to walk over to and pick up the gem. Standard action to end the spell. You shouldn't use the spell if there is a spellcaster in the other room in the first place, though.

We've done it once. Did it to mook guards. We didn't do it again. GM was pretty open about it, and basically had the mooks dogpile the guy who was possessed. Ran out of people who could successfully pass the save before the wizard cleared out the room. It was still a massive time sink and spotlight hog, so I didn't do it again.

Create Mr. Pitt wrote:

I would rather spend one turn on dominate person and double the action economy. Give all the hassle it is to deal with the spell and the fact that my body is just sitting vulnerable elsewhere I don't using it much.

This is my feeling also. Never really figured out how to use this in combat and keep my scrawny, caster's body safe.

This spell has totally awesome flavour, I'd love to try it in game but it just seems too risky except in certain carefully pre-arranged circumstances, which lessen its shock and awe value.

If anybody has any tips on how to use in combat, I'm all ears.

It's not a spell you cast during combat. It's a spell you cast to start combat. You hide yourself and your stupid meat body somewhere in the dungeon outside of a room you want to clear out. You then put yourself into a gem, and have the rogue take the gem and throw you under a door into a room with all the bad guys like a grenade.

Possess an enemy and start attacking his allies. When you first target dies, you just possess the next guy and repeat. Go until you run out of targets who can fail the save or everyone is dead. Then you end the spell and storm the room full of weakened or eliminated targets.

Is your cavalier LE, N, CE, or NE?

To answer your original question, we have just used Leadership instead of Monstrous Mount... Keeps things simple IMO.

We use monster CR to equate to level, subject to GM opinion of course. A Worg is hardly overpowered as far as mounts go, and at CR 2, by the time you get Leadership, could conceivably have five class levels added to it...

As an animal companion/mount it would automatically receive the animal companion progression and altered base stats that other animal companions get. You wouldn't need to add any class levels, and honestly you should probably be adding magical beast hit dice, anyway.

Pixie, the Leng Queen wrote:

So i guess a totally utilitarian society would be evil lol

Like the society in 1984? A totally utilitarian society looks at people as functional units, not as persons. So yeah.

1984 is a satire of a totalitarian communism written by a British socialist. It has nothing to do with utilitarianism.

Squirrel_Dude wrote:

I've used magic jar a couple of times. It's really effective when it works, but requires some teamwork and coordination in terms of targeting and protecting your body.

It requires a lot of trust because the trapped man needs to know that the next person he'll be right next to will be the target.

That's a pretty cool use. Were you worried at all about if you physically ended up more than the 100' +10/lvl away from your body when the duration ended? IE - like if the GM really wanted to make you sweat having the inquisitor called to meet the king personally out in the garden or something and delaying to the point where you could be at risk? I probably would have at least chucked a little bit of something like that out there to add a little intensity.

Simultaneously terrified and calm. Certainly there were risks, but I had 9 hours and 190 ft. to work with, could end things as a standard action, and was a wizard with full access to my prepared spells. I could just teleport out of the place if the time started to run down.

But it's not a single instance. It's multiple stat blocks over multiple books. How is that not a trend?

Are the stat blocks created by the same authors?

A single instance of errors does not equal a trend. A single instance of anything does not equal a trend.

I've used magic jar a couple of times. It's really effective when it works, but requires some teamwork and coordination in terms of targeting and protecting your body. It's best used as an infiltration tool in my experience.

The time I've used it was to infiltrate a kings castle, more for recon than anything else. The party cased the place, and saw that inquisitors had free reign of the place. The party's human sorcerer/face, half-orc fighter, and my elf wizard snuck into a nearby basement. I put myself in the gem, with the explicit instructions that the sorcerer hand the gem to an inquisitor (the bluff skill is good). The fighter stood watch over the body until the sorcerer got back.

It requires a lot of trust because the trapped man needs to know that the next person he'll be right next to will be the target. Well, everything went off without a hitch and the wizard was able to enter the castle and scout the place.

The biggest advantages of magic jar over dominate person for espionage is that you have complete control of the character scouting out or infiltrating, and it's much more subtle. You're not getting second hand information from the GM about what the witness is reporting to you, it what your character saw with their own eyes. You're not a crazy person in a robe obviously casting a spell at someone, you're a harmless gem.

That's always been the funny thing about how spells and spellcasters (especially clerics and druids) work.

If there were 2000 first level spells, and 50 of them were situational and only 10 of them were amazing, that would still be more than the spellcaster could use per day anyway. Spellcasters just need to make sure they have access to those 10 that are amazing, and pick and choose among the 50 that are situational. That choice can then change every day-ish, depending on equipment and scrolls etc. They can then repeat this at every level of spell casting, ad nauseum.

Every time I've looked at the Armor as DR rules in Ultimate Combat, I always get hung up on how easy it is to bypass armor. Your character just needs a magic weapon (Magic Weapon spell) or to be large sized (enlarge person) to completely bypass all mundane armor. I'm not sure it works even on a fundamental level.

Squirrel_Dude wrote:

Eh, 9 levels worth of gear (or whatever the npc math would end up equating it to) would probably result in it being pretty lopsided victory for the fighter.

Total WBL for an 18th level NPC is only 75,000 gp. Each 9th level PC has 46,000 gp worth of gear, so a party of 4 has something like 2 1/2 times as much stuff.

It's really not much different than if the NPC were an 18th level Warrior with some random circumstance bonuses to attacks and AC. That's how bad the fighter "PC" class is.

While the total gear would be less, NPCs dont' necessarily need to have the glut of random crap that player's do that eats away at their WBL. It also increases the cap on what the NPC character can have in a single item. And again, they wouldn't be needing to spend as much of their money on the defensive items they might normally need because they're so much higher level than the player characters. The fighter would be fighting a 9th level party, not an ECL 18 encounter like the party would.

At this point we're more talking about how gear can influence an encounter, and I would agree that most other classes would offer a much larger challenge than the fighter, who is only throwing around more numbers and not new abilities.

18th level NPC fighter yeah, that's probably fair

Eh, 9 levels worth of gear (or whatever the npc math would end up equating it to) would probably result in it being pretty lopsided victory for the fighter. He'd be able to pay for ways to overcome his class's weaknesses and wouldn't need to spend much money on his offense and defense because it would already be so far above the party's limits.

glass wrote:

Nathanael Love wrote:

New World of Darkness was released in 2004.

In 2006 White Wolf was purchased by CCP-- an MMO manufacturer (known for Eve online).

In 2012 it was announced that they would cease publishing all tabletop games.

Let's pretend that WoD really did die in 2012 (rather than going from in-house to licensed). Your thesis is that NWoD is what killed it...eight years later? Seems like a rather slow acting poison, if that's what it was!

_
glass.

You are skipping the part where the company was sold and the people responsible and who stood to benefit financially were changed in 2006.

Two years from the release of the product line to having to be sold is pretty quick I'd say?

You're argument is like saying that TSR was successful in the late 1990s because Wizards of the Coast released 3rd edition in 2000.

You are conflating the "survival" of the IP with the survival of the company which are two different things.

Since 2006 White Wolf was sold as a company twice, and now Onyx Path is licensing the rights to print material for their setting. Those things are not the mark of a successful company, even if the IP still has fans and continues to be revived.

A company being sold doesn't inherently mean that a company isn't profitable. In many cases it means that a product is profitable or marketable enough that it is worth investing in or owning.

Actually it is a combination of both. New players will just follow the GM, but most players I have met have tried several systems, and they tend to migrate toward the one they like the best over time.

It's healthy to play different games. It gives you a better perspective on the design elements that you like and dislike. It helped put into focus how much Paizo's editing and layout work should be appreciated. Go read Shadowrun 5e's Core Rulebook, and tell me when you find the rules for what type of Matrix access your Lifestyle grants.

Really crazy solution to character wealth by level abuse: Party wealth by level. If character WBL at level 3 is 3,000, then Party WBL would be 3,000*#ofCharacters. So if a character dies, and the party keeps 1,500 GP of that character's wealth, then the incoming character would only receive 1,500 GP to keep the party's wealth in the appropriate area.

Also, I recommend you use a scroll of raise dead instead of the scroll of resurrection next time.

Fighters do have a nontrivial advantage over the martials like Ranger/Paladin/Slayer... going full speed with heavy armor once they hit 7th.

That sounds more impressive than it actually is once characters are able to afford mithral armors, or get movement types that aren't hampered by armor, or get large enough bonuses to their speed than an extra 10 feet isn't really relevant.

Pathfinder didn't grab part of the market by saying "buy the exact same game," they did it by saying "It's the game, with changes to make it better, and some backwards compatibility."

I would also appreciate the market research you did that shows Pathfinder 2e is more likely to fail than succeed.

wraithstrike wrote:

Scythia wrote:

For everyone who insists that NPC stat blocks should be ignored when they don't seem to match the rules, and that there's no chance the published rule could be changed, Flurry of Blows says hi. :P

That is a different situation. This rule just like the missing spell component pouch will not result in the rule being changed.

Flurry of Blows (simplified) timeline

1) The rule says "this"

2) Players: But, all these stat blocks (as well as other supporting details)

3) After consideration, rule changes

Seems similar to the first two steps, so far.

You know what the difference is? The monk rule change looked at ambiguity of Flurry of Blows and how it interacted with two-weapon-fighting. Whether it was actual two-weapon fighting, simulated it in terms of bonuses, and how that worked. Did the monk need two weapons besides his unarmed strike? Could he take TWF feats? How does it work if he only has one arm/limb/head to attack with? Those are interesting questions that could be answered differently depending on a rules interpretation.

There is zero ambiguity in "Spells with a range of personal cannot be made into potions." None. There is nothing there to indicate that personal spells can be made into potions in any way shape or form. This isn't a question of implementation due to vague, incomplete, or implicative wording. There is no ambiguity here whatsoever. This is asking for errata not a rules clarification.

NPC statblocks have long, in every tabletop RPG, contained rules inconsistencies and suboptimal builds.

They have never been a basis for overwriting rules.