Raistlin

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Organized Play Member. 103 posts (112 including aliases). No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 1 Organized Play character. 2 aliases.


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Browsing my new Core Rulebook now that I'm back from Gen Con, and upon reading the entry for Adamantine Armor it seems to not have any explicit effects other than increased hardness and HP. It just says, "Adamantine armor has a shiny, black appearance and is amazingly durable". Now, those increases to hardness, HP, and BT aren't nothing, but the rules specifically call out the fact that your armor will rarely be damaged. Is that really the only thing you're paying for if you buy adamantine armor, or am I missing something?


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Thanks a ton you guys, especially nice to hear from one of the designers! You guys made an awesome product. It's looking like I'll have to wait and use a buckler, but that's fine by me. Now I'm picturing somebody surfing down a hill in the palm of a giant gauntlet, which I gotta say is pretty hilarious.


I recently created a character for Tyrant's Grasp, and my GM is using Spheres of Might. I really like some of the Shield sphere abilities, but my build revolves around a greatsword. Is there any way, in base Pathfinder or in Spheres, for a greatsword to be considered a shield for the Shield sphere's Active Defense ability? The only workaround I'm seeing is using a buckler and the Unhindering Shield feat. That puts it off until level 8 for me, so I was curious if there was a way to do it sooner.


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1. Qinggong Monk! I don't think there's any other archetype that fascinates me as much. That said, I would like it if it weren't quite so restrictive. Give them access to more spells, and let them cast just a little more. As it stands, they can burn through their ki pretty fast.

2. Goliath Druid! Become the giant rampaging monster you always wanted to be!

3. Pact Wizard! It doesn't really do anything, but it just oozes flavor. When I read the archetype, I immediately wanted to play an evil wizard slowly being redeemed by a celestial patron.

4. Empyreal Knight! If I'm going to play a paladin, I'm going all out. Bronzed angelic skin, a holy steed, and a celestial ally by my side!

5. Armiger! I think the Hellknights are one of the most interesting setting bits in Golarion, and anything that helps set you up to join them is a winner in my book. If you start the game under the conceit that you're an already an armiger in training, it helps circumvent that weird situation where this random guy just walks in and joins the order with no prior association. I just wish the archetype itself did a little bit more.


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There was definitely a lot of bad luck contributing to my frustration towards the adventure, I'll admit that. We recruited the goblins, and they were routinely doing more damage than us in combat due to bad rolls. I guess I'm just not up on what is expected from pathfinder-type characters. To me a DC 20 check means even if you have a +10, which is crazy to me at 2nd level, you're only making the check 50% of the time. And none of us had more than +6 or +7 to any skills, except for the envoy who had a higher diplomacy and the mystic who had a higher mysticism. Maybe I'm just having selective memory of the adventure, but I'm pretty sure we failed about half of all the skill checks, and most of the ones we did make were due to taking 20. It didn't help that we have nobody who can really deal with computers, and that ended up being one of the most common skills we were asked for. Deadmanwalking, I agree we probably were a bit careless toward the end, as we were completely frustrated by just failing over and over again.


I just finished playing through 'Incident at Absalom Station', and all I can think is that the Paizo guys are so jaded by years of powergamers that they have no idea what a level 1-2 party should be capable of. Since I'm actually the one who owns the book, I flipped through it a bit to confirm my suspicions. We were regularly asked to make DC 20+ skill checks (which we knew because rolls of 19 were failing), were hit by enemies that had +10 or more to hit, ect. It didn't help that we only had 3 players, but it should have been explained somewhere that it's essential to hyper-specialize your characters if you want to have any hope of succeeding. I was at one point asked to make two back-to-back Computers checks, one with a DC of 21 and one with a DC of 23. There was also a DC 25 Engineering check, a DC 30 Culture check, and a trap with a DC 24 Perception check that did 6d6 damage and dropped my fully healthy Vesk soldier to 0 hp instantly. Am I crazy in thinking that's all way too much to ask of a level 2 character? Is this how Starfinder is just going to be, a litany of failed skill checks and bewildered players? Because if so, I may not come back to the APs at all and stick to making our own stuff.


Thanks, I knew I couldn't have been the first person to notice this but I couldn't find a thread talking about it. I agree it's fine as it is, just led me to an odd moment of fridge logic. It forces you to prioritize the interesting parts of your theme, rather than taking the one that gives you the mechanically best attribute benefit.


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I've been working up a couple of character sheets, one for SFS and one for a home game, and I've come to an interesting conclusion: the +1 to an ability score you get from your theme means very little. Since point buy is a flat rate, 1 to 1, your theme's bonus ensures that you will end up with at least 1 odd score, which as we know ends up having the same modifier as the even score value below it.

This would all be fine, except for the interesting way ability score increases work. Since they are +2 for scores 16 and below, and +1 for scores 17 and above, it takes exactly the same amount of ability score increases to reach a score of 18 in a stat for any given modifier. For example, scores that give a +3 modifier, 16 and 17, take 1 ability score increase to get to 18, while scores that give +1, 12 and 13, take 3 increases.

If we were working off the old point buy method, the +1 from your theme would be invaluable, but as it stands it seems to me to not have much in-game effect, save for effects that actually lower an ability score (do those exist?), or times when you need a certain score to qualify for something, such as the 13 strength needed for the Cleave feat. Has anyone else noticed this? Am I totally off base? I'd appreciate any thoughts on this.


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Paizo.com front page wrote:
Deep 6 FaWtL, 6 minutes ago by Rosita the Riveter (28,116 new)

Wow.


No, you're right, they're not the same as the Republicans of that era. But they're still Republican in all (or most) of the ways that matter to Republican voters. The things they hang their hats on. Or at least they do a VERY good job of making the case that they are. The Democrats, in my estimation, are no longer Democrats in many of the ways that matter to me, and probably to many others. It doesn't help that Democrats and Independents tend not to be single issue voters, and so can approve of much of what a politician does, but disapprove of enough to feel kinda gross voting for them.


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thejeff wrote:
The whole "Damn the Democratic party, let the neoNazis have the country if we can't get the purity we want" attitude is as much to blame as anything the party has done.

I can't speak for anybody but myself, but I don't think it's necessarily 'purity' we're looking for. Just people who stand up for progressive interests the majority of the time, and don't back corporate interests over those of the common people so often. As President Truman famously said, "The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time."


I did something similar with a homebrew ruleset once. I gave each character a number of 'learned feat' slots, which could be filled by being trained by specific npcs or by reading magical tomes which bestowed the feat. Training took quite a while and quite a bit of gold, whereas the tomes worked pretty much like the attribute books. I think by the end of the several months long campaign, the characters ended up with about 3 more feats than they normally would have.


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The proper pronunciation, I believe, is CAM-bee-on.


As far as I know, there's only Path of War, Path of War Expanded, and the yet-to-be-released Medic class. I haven't heard if they're planning a hardcover "Ultimate Path of War" or anything like that yet, I would imagine they'd want to wait until they had a similar amount of content as the Ultimate Psionics book.


Woo-hoo, 2 more Master Generals on board! When do you guys think we'll be hearing more about the details of this tier's rewards? I don't expect anything solid till after the campaign has wrapped up, just curious.


Wraithguard wrote:
Now I need to think about what type of character I should try to get immortalized.

Oh man, I'm agonizing over this. Right now I'm strongly considering trying to recreate my Warlord (Path of War) shield-basher that I'm currently playing in Hell's Vengeance. He's not Chelish Captain America, I swear XD


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Just upgraded my pledge to Master General, since the Commander tier was all gone. Couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a character immortalized in print, and the special session at Paizo Con is just the motivation I need to finally go for the first time.


Echoing the request for add-ons, I would love to add an additional hardcover so I can have two at the table. Happy to see your project picking up steam so quickly, I thought I was on the ball with this and I was already the 52nd backer!


It was less of an fix and more a clarification of what the original designer intended, before the archetype was edited. Basically from what I remember, the original author stated that his intent was for the Titan Mauler to be able to wield progressively larger weapons, as you might expect from the description, breaking the 'handedness' rule along with mitigating the penalties.


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Before Joon, perhaps?

Full disclosure, I watched the youtube video and was crushed for about 5 seconds when I saw "2017". Like, oh yeah, it's a new year now.


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For some time now I've been tinkering around with a way to combine Spheres of Power with Rogue Genius's Talented classes, to create a totally modular character progression system. I'll gladly throw that idea out the window if this is as cool as it sounds. I'm a MASSIVE fan of Spheres and I can't wait to see how you guys fit martials into the paradigm. Consider me pledged. It's going to be hard enough waiting for Saturday, never mind the actual release date.


The way I would go about that would be to make a ritual that mimics the effects of the restoration spell. It would result in a 1-hour ritual that costs 1050 gp in materials. It avoids stepping on the toes of the advanced talent, as that only requires a single standard action to use making it viable in combat or other stressful situations.


Definitely going to be echoing Ssalarn's recommendation of Spheres of Power, a talent-based magic system. A Spheres game without the advanced talents makes for a great low-magic setting. The effects a spherecaster can create will still be impressive and mechanically useful, but you won't see them creating demiplanes, teleporting across the world, or even raising the dead. Those and more are the purview of the optional advanced talents. You'll also see your spherecasters specializing in certain types of magic, like illusions or transformations, since you only have so many talents to spend.


I have a question about the maneuver recovery method of warpath followers, a class template for inquisitors and warpriests. Under the Maneuvers Readied section, it states that "At 4th level and again at 10th, 15th, and 20th levels, the number of maneuvers granted to the warpath follower at the beginning of the encounter increases by one. Unlike the warpath follower's initial granted maneuver, these additional maneuvers are randomly determined." However, the Controlled Insight class feature states that "When he readies his maneuvers, he selects two to be granted to him at all times, rather than one." This seems contradictory to me. Do you start with two you picked, then immediately get a third random one? Somebody please help me understand this XD


Wraithguard wrote:
Let’s take the normal Fireball, perhaps the most iconic 3rd level evocation spell. To achieve this same effect a caster would need to have a Caster Level of 15 (15 levels in full casters, no half measures here), have selected the Explosive Orb, Sculpt Blast, Fire Blast Magic Talents as well as the Calamity Advanced Talent. Not only this but a caster would need to spend about 3 SP just to use it once, which might seem inconsequential for a very focused caster, but if you need to spread the SP as a Prepared Caster between 5 schools, this gets tricky.

Not sure what you mean here. You only need Explosive Orb to turn your destructive blast into a fireball-like burst, and Fire Blast to change the damage type to fire. Sculpt Blast changes your destructive blast into either a line or a cone, and Calamity is for making very large AoE effects. You can throw a fireball in SoP with only a single caster level, two talents, and a single spell point (two if you want the extra damage).


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The other night in our Hell's Rebels game, our party's vigilante (in social persona) was trying to hold a door against incoming Chelish Citizen's Group thugs. They managed to wrench the door open, and he threw up his hands in surrender. "I'm unarmed!", he exclaimed. He then whipped out his bladed belt and skewered the first guy, shouting "just kidding!". Everybody died laughing.


Jason Nelson wrote:
We've been having some problems with the back end of the webstore. I'll see if I can sort it out when I get back from church. Meanwhile, email me at makeyourgamelegendary@gmail.com and I'll send you the PDF as an attachment.

Thanks for your assistance! Eagerly awaiting your reply. I have a vigilante in my Hell's Rebels game who I think will love this.


Just purchased the physical copy / pdf bundle on the Legendary Games store, and the pdf isn't showing up in my downloads. Is there a delay on the pdf, or is this an error?


Monkey Grip! Stack stuff to get the barbarian or fighter the most absurdly large weapon possible.


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Sundakan wrote:

I dunno, of all the movies to get a sequel Wreck It Ralph seems like the worst. It was fully wrapped up in a nice little bow, lessons learned, happy ending.

Any sequel will either A.) Ruin that or B.) End up at the same place.

Does a sequel really need to advance the plot or innovate the medium? It's a fun family film, a well-made sequel that gives us more of the same would be totally fine in my book. I just want to see Ralph wreck some stuff, get a few awesome video game cameos, and have some feels.


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Carrion Crown: Universal Studios horror, the campaign. Ghosts? Check. Frankenstein and his monster? Check. Werewolves? Check. Lovecraftian horror... wait, where the heck did this come from? Oh good, it's gone. Vampires? Check. Weird cults? Double check.


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What I want to know is why charts have to sounds so delicious.


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As far as 3rd-party adventures go, the only one I've purchased is Sword of Air, by FGG. I haven't had much chance to really dig into it yet, it's mind-bogglingly huge and in-depth. It's gotten really good reviews though, particularly by Mr. Endzeitgeist. However, I'd say the single most revolutionary 3pp product you can get is Spheres of Power, by Drop Dead Studios. It, in my humble opinion, makes magic so much more interesting, flavorful, balanced, and fun.


I posted this back in December, but never got a reply. As such, I thought I'd give it another shot. Lately I've been working on a ruleset that replaces all classes with 'talent-based' versions, using RGG's Talented line of class books as inspiration for martial classes and Spheres of Power for casters. After looking at each of the 'Talented' classes, I've got a couple of questions I was hoping you guys could answer.

First off, what exactly is the logic behind each class's edge/talent progression? The Fighter starts out at the bottom with only a single talent at first level. Next is the Rogue, with one talent and one edge. The Barbarian gets a talent and an edge, as well as an actual class feature (primal reserve). The Ranger's up next, with one edge and two talents, followed by the Cavalier with two of each. Finally, we have the Monk, with three edges and two talents. I get that each class has different HD/BAB/saves/skills/proficiencies, and that might be part of the calculus. And the fact that they get qualitatively different talents. But the Fighter having only a single talent doesn't seem balanced when the Cavalier has two and two edges. Is this just a case of the developers learning as they went, or is there something I'm missing?

Related to the above question, do Fighters need edges to be consistent and competitive with the other Talented classes, or are they fine as they are?


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Can't believe I'm only just now discovering this awesome thread. I gotta give this a shot, let's see what we get!

23 - Lizardfolk
70 - Spriggan
43 - Pixie
25 - Vanara
56 - Minotaur

Hmm... These races seem to lend themselves to a forest setting, except for the minotaur. This should be interesting, I'll be back soon with a rough draft.


Lately I've been working on a ruleset that replaces all classes with 'talent-based' versions, using RGG's Talented line of class books for martial classes and Spheres of Power for casters. After looking at each of the 'Talented' classes, I've got a couple of questions I was hoping you guys could answer.

First off, what exactly is the logic behind each class's edge/talent progression? The Fighter starts out at the bottom with only a single talent at first level. Next is the Rogue, with one talent and one edge. The Barbarian gets a talent and an edge, as well as an actual class feature (primal reserve). The Ranger's up next, with one edge and two talents, followed by the Cavalier with two of each. Finally, we have the Monk, with three edges and two talents. I get that each class has different HD/BAB/saves/skills/proficiencies, and that might be part of the calculus. And the fact that they get qualitatively different talents. But the Fighter having only a single talent doesn't seem balanced when the Cavalier has two and two edges. Is this just a case of the developers learning as they went, or is there something I'm missing?

Related to the above question, do Fighters need edges to be consistent and competitive with the other Talented classes, or are they fine as they are?


Sharoth wrote:
Yeesh!!! Cait is one hard girl to impress.

Try going around with no 'undergarment' under your armor. That apparently gets her motor running.


Not very recent, but I can recall a setting that uses something similar to D&D/Pathfinder's 'fire and forget' magic system. It was Roger Zelazny's Amber books, specifically the ones in which Merlin (no relation to the Arthurian legend) was the main character. He described preparing his magic as 'hanging' spells, in which he would complete 99% of the lengthy ritual required to cast the spell but leave out a trigger word that would complete the casting at a later time. If any of you haven't read the Amber series, you should give them a shot.

That being said, I think the magic of just about every other fantasy setting I've come across would be better represented by spell points. I recently ran a game in which I homebrewed a point-based casting system. The players unanimously agreed it was superior to the clunky spell slot system, and I think it made some of them interested in playing a caster when they otherwise wouldn't be.

In regards to the OP, I agree with most of your sentiment. After seeing how they went in a totally different direction with the Kineticist, I was really disappointed that all the other classes adhered to Paizo conventions so strongly.


I recently got a physical copy of Path of War (finally!) after having tinkered with a few characters using the rules on the d20fpsrd. Having never played a paladin or cleric type character, I was shocked by how drawn I am to the Battle Templar prestige class. What 5 levels synergise the best with Battle Templar? I was thinking either Warder 1/Cleric 4, or Warlord 1/Cleric 4, the first leaning more towards defense and the second more toward offense (and with better CHA synergy). Are either of those classes' 2nd level abilities worth losing another caster level? Is there a more interesting way into the Battle Templar? Any thoughts would be appreciated!


If you feel like doing the work to create some homebrew of your own, look into making some specialist casters in the vein of the 3.5 Dread Necromancer or Beguiler. I've been doing this for my homebrew setting, and so far have a Battlemage, a Mesmer, a Necromancer, and a Conjurer, and I'm currently working on a Seer. The basic concept is a 9th level caster with a very limited spell list, who knows every spell on the list and casts them spontaneously. Then sprinkle in class features that support the flavor. The biggest thing to remember is that it's ok for your Transmuter, for example, to have a few non-transmutation spells on his list. They should be specialized, but not necessarily locked into one school of magic.


Well after looking at it again, I did give my homebrew class a different progression for number of Wild Shapes per day. I gave it 1+WIS mod uses per day at first level, then an additional use at 5, 10, and 15. So it comes out about the same in the end, but you get more uses front loaded.


I made a homebrew base class that has full BAB, Wild Shape, full animal companion, and martial maneuvers (a la Tome of Battle or Path of War). It ended up not being any more or less powerful than any martial initiator class, and felt very balanced. That being said, I didn't give it 'at will' unlimited Wild Shape until level 20, as part of the capstone. After seeing it in play, I can tell you that unless your group or play style is significantly different from mine, you won't ever need to Wild Shape more than a handful of times per day. If you feel like you need more, plead for the existence of an 'Extra Wild Shape' feat. They have 'extra' feats for just about everything else, after all.


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Just wanted to chime in and say I absolutely love this idea. I've been wracking my brain to come up with better uses for Stamina, and this nails it. It also lets you play a competent initiator while retaining familiar classes and not having to play Mr. Shield Tank, Leader Guy, or Other Rogue (not that those classes aren't great on their own!). I may have to tweak it a bit in regards to things like BAB = IL, but otherwise I think I'll definitely be using this.


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If the axes are less than ten feet long and less than one foot thick, I'd imagine you could fit ten of them stacked on top of each other in a ten foot cube. Assuming they're about 6 feet long, 2 feet wide, and about 4 inches thick at the thickest point, you're looking at a 6x2x3.33repeating foot rectangular prism of space being used.

That said, Pathfinder doesn't really have rules for the volume of items. So ymmv.


Hopefully this is the right place to put this. My favorite 3rd party product of all time is Malhavoc Press's Beyond Countless Doorways, a planar sourcebook originally written for D&D 3.5. I love its approach to planes, where each is a distinct (and sometimes very weird) world and not some grand 'archetypal concept', like the plane of fire or the abyss. My question is, does anybody know of any other books of this sort, or any online resources where people have done similar things? The system it's written for doesn't matter to me, I'm just interested in more planar ideas to spark my creativity.


A while back I played a half-elf Wild Caller with an eidolon named Cecil, who I described as a displacer beast minus the tentacles. He was a combat monster with his extra set of claws and pounce, not that unique though.

My most unique was a goblin Synthesist I ran as a cohort NPC while GMing Skull and Shackles. I played him up as having no idea he was a Summoner at all, and he never (knowingly) cast any spells. Whenever he was threatened or enraged, he would black out and turn into this big flaming monstrosity (very dangerous aboard a ship!), and later have no memory of the event.


To those calling the canyon ambush a CR 8 or 9 encounter... Eh. I tend to think the CR of class levels is overvalued, particularly at low levels. From what I read (rotating attack pattern, self-preservation instinct, ect.) this encounter seems perfectly within the scope of of an APL ~4 party, not even remotely close to being an 'epic' challenge and not at all comparable to fighting, say, a bodak or a juvenile black dragon. In my mind it was only unmanageable for the party due to an utter failure of tactics and prior planning. A party with an oracle, a magus, a druid, an arcanist, and a shaman should have been able to do SOMETHING at range, rather than try to get into melee. Spells like acid arrow, hold person, create pit, or glitterdust come to mind. Try running away and hiding when you're blind and rocking a sparkly -40 on stealth checks.


Rakshaka wrote:
There seems like a lot of combat in the module; did anyone who's ran it find it overwhelming or did it work for you group? I ask because I want to maintain the horror aspect of the module, even at high level. Some of the fights don't look that impressive on paper, so I am wondering if there are any fights that you omitted or wish that you had (or changed)? I've seen some of Tybid's changes and may use some of them, but would love other takes.

For the sake of your players and all that is holy, remove some of those fights. I was just in a group that finished this book, and my GM had decided that we were too powerful for our own good. So not only did we have to fight all that junk, lots of things had their HP buffed to ridiculous levels and there were extra things to fight on top of that. I'm not sure what it would have been like without him tinkering with it (I've never read the actual book), but for us that part of the adventure took us at least 3 months, playing about 4 hours per week. It was a grind-fest and the ending was not that satisfying.


My Skull and Shackles game had quite a few character deaths, with three in the first book alone and 7-8 by the time the campaign fizzled out in book 4. I think the key is to tell the players up front if you're not going to hold back when it comes to lethality in a particular campaign.


Melkiador wrote:
Facets of Golarion are incorporated in the core rules, so it makes sense to assume some version of Golarion in someone's home game. Of course the flip side of that is that even if it's "mostly" Golarion you can't take anything for granted.

Except when the point of the post was asking for story-related advice, not whether his idea was mechanically Golarion Approved (tm).

Soilent wrote:
...I need ideas on how to improve the feel of the village for the PCs...

is what the OP came here for, and instead it devolved into arguments about the alignment of undead and the mechanics of raising them in Golarion.

As for advice, an idea I had was make them completely ok with their condition for the most part, at least at first. They were taken from the poor child they loved so much, and he's only doing what he thinks is best. As time wears on, have them become increasingly uncomfortable with their state as a growing existential horror builds within them. What will happen to them as they continue decomposing? How will outsiders begin to treat them? Will they be overrun by undead hunters if their secret gets out? Is their only purpose now to exist for the well-being of the white necromancer? Were they ripped away from a perfect afterlife to continue the drudgery of a mortal life, except without any of the little comforts actual life brings? Ect. Hopefully those questions might help develop little hooks for your story.

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