The_Hanged_Man's page

Interestingly, I think the removal of alignment as a personality type will actually move it closer to Moorcock's original material from which Gygax was obviously inspired.

In Moorcock's universe Law and Chaos were cosmic factions with whom individuals would align themselves. Hence, alignment. On some worlds, the Lords of Law would be worshipped as gods while on others tyrants, and the same for the Chaos Lords. While they were beyond good and evil, their champions would commit acts in service to them that could be viewed as such depending on your point of view.

I've always felt ambivalent about the Myers-Briggs-ian thing alignment morphed into over the editions. It made for fun arguments online, but at the table it felt subjective and arbitrary.

Personally, I think alignment works better as an affiliation than a personality type, so I am fine with the changes being made.

It’s threads like these that remind me why WotC and GW gave up on forums and this type of direct communication years ago. The majority of customers either don’t know or don’t care, and the minority that do care seem impossible to please. There’s just no winning here. I do give kudos to Paizo for at least continuing to try despite it all.

And also they DO list specializations, so it's not that they can't.

I’m not an expert in this field. Could you point me in the direction of some law firms on this scale that do list DEIB as a specialization?

From a layman’s search it appears DEIB is an employment practice rather than an actual specialization of law. Laws relating to it would fall under Employment law for sure and the closest legal specialization seems to be Civil Rights.

The_Hanged_Man wrote:

Megistone wrote:

I don't think that Paizo's intention is clear on this matter.

I think it is pretty clear. Right now expert in weapons and armor are locked behind the highest level feat in the archetypes that grant them.

Allowing general feats to replicate that would render those archetypes (or at least the proficiency feats in them) relatively pointless and would only create a new problem.

I'm unconvinced. The two general feats and the fighter dedication one were probably there before they decided to grant expert proficiency to every class, and it could well be that they weren't reviewed.

Now, the developers could easily just leave everything as it is, but not fixing two broken feats because then you would have to fix another one isn't how I would handle this thing.

Yes, they potentially could have overlooked that in the Core Rulebook, but there are already supplements that continue the same philosophy of expert proficiency in archetypes (Hell Knight & Knight Vigilant in Lost Omens CG). I suspect the ship has sailed at this point as I expect future archetypes to continue support expert in weapon and armor proficiency and I don't think they would undermine that by making a general feat that does the same thing.

I don't think that Paizo's intention is clear on this matter.

I think it is pretty clear. Right now expert in weapons and armor are locked behind the highest level feat in the archetypes that grant them.

Allowing general feats to replicate that would render those archetypes (or at least the proficiency feats in them) relatively pointless and would only create a new problem.

As it is support for spear wielding wizards (or whatever) clearly exists. As noted, you can take the general feat, which works fine for low to mid-level campaigns, or you can pursue an archetype if you wish to progress beyond. Retraining feats are even built into the system to facilitate more flexibility.

At this point, fixing the general armor and weapon feats just seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.

Ventnor wrote:

Paradozen wrote:

Champion, Hellknight, and Hellknight Signifer dedications get you to expert with a feat.

The Knight Reclaimant archetype also has a feat that gives you expert in heavy armor.

Which feat is that? I can't seem to find anything indicating that, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.

I think he meant the Knight in Shining Armor feat from Knight Vigilant.

There are also minimum proficiencies as well to consider in which the die doesn’t matter at all. The Jack-of-all-trades-but-master-at-none is going to have exactly zero percent probability of success (and a nonzero chance of critically failing) at a task that requires master proficiency. This effectively stops the issue of characters who only are trained from stealing the spotlight from deeply skill invested characters in challenging tasks.

There is more than one type of symmetry going on here. I’d argue that symmetry of interpretation is more valuable for gameplay than statistical symmetry particularly among new players or those who struggle with remembering asymmetrical rules.

The system where X is a success, X+10 is a crit success, and X-10 is a crit fail is symmetrical and elegant with regards to interpretation, and I’m willing to give up perfect statistical symmetry (which honestly goes unappreciated by most) in favor of game flow and ease of learning.

Looking at the backgrounds I’m noticing some of the Lore skills granted are essentially covered by a broader skill also granted by the same background. For example, Herbalist gives the Nature skill and the Herbalism Lore skill, Detective gives the Society skill and the Underworld Lore skill, and Animal Whisperer gives you the Nature skill and a terrain Lore skill.

Other than being keyed to a different stat, what benefit does having a lore skill already covered by a more general skill provide? Do you potentially get more in depth knowledge than you otherwise would? Thoughts?

Good point. It looks like there might be an “Int Tax” of 1 on Wizards then compared to other casters. You could give a lore skill that focuses on their specialization to even things up.

Wizards aren’t 2+ In skills because of high Int. Sorcerers, Druids, and Clerics are also 2+ and Int is not a key ability for them. The only caster to not have a 2+ is Bard which has a history of being a skill focused class. My guess is that this decision was made as casters have spells to provide utility that can partially replace the need for skills.

A classic trap, it does what it says.

If by trap you mean generally sub-optimal I would agree. The main reason to take would be for flavor purposes.

Personally, I’m fine with that. You want a wizard in plate you got it. I don’t see the need for every option be optimal.

Personally, I think the best way to handle this would be through sub-class style archetypes (think Eldritch Knight) as opposed to multi-class ones. Not everyone wants to be a champion.

I think the addition of more general armor feats would erode class identities and make things feel more generic. I'd also worry that those feats (particularly heavy) would become perceived as optimal and drift into feat tax territory.

The APG playtest is coming up soon, and I'm way more interested in the 60 new archetypes than the 4 classes. I do agree that build options are fairly narrow now and I'm hoping those new archetypes will really open things up from a design perspective.

It just occurred to me that this system might be limiting for adventure designers too.

Can't give the NPCs uncommon items and spells. What if the GM running the adventure doesn't want them in his game? Putting them on a bad guy is a sure way to get it to the PCs.

That's going to make for a much narrower selection of NPCs.

It just means they need to tag everything with the appropriate rarity for GM consideration.

Take a look at AP #145 Hellknight Hill. It is loaded with uncommon, rare, and unique magic items, monsters & NPCs. Technically, every custom built NPC is going to be unique. It’s not going to be constraint for adventure designers.

That said, making a level 20 archetype feat for mastery wouldn't be exactly game-breaking. If you want to give up a wildly powerful capstone ability for a +2 to hit or AC in the few sessions you have left before the end of the campaign knock yourself out.

Except we're not multiclassing into other martials, we're multiclassing into Fighter which ends at Legendary. Hence, one level below would be Master. Much like, you know, multiclassing into caster classes.

The legendary abilities of martials exist to make them shine comparitively against other martials, and are not intended to be for archetype cherry picking.

It is pretty obvious the design intent is if you want to be a master of weapons or armor then you need to be a martial class.

The intention of the Multiclass archetypes is not to get your secondary power in the vicinity of the actual class it's coming from. It's to open options, not give a power boost.

This. Most martial classes top out at Master level in weapon and/or armor proficiencies and spell casters top out at legendary in casting. Thus, the archetype feats are one step below that.

Also, take a look at War Priest which is the gish version of cleric. They top out at expert in weapon & armor profs and master in casting which similarly is one step below full martials and casters.

Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.

You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

To the OP.

We need time to assess the sales results.

Which are the only reliable way to objectively decide if PF2 is "better" than PF1.

It’s hard to judge sales results in a vacuum. PF1 did so well in the marketplace because 4e was....well it is was 4e.

PF2 is not only competing against 5e which is leading a new renaissance in role playing games, but also against PF1 which is beloved by purists. So I strongly doubt PF2 will beat PF1 in terms of sales.

I think PF2 will be more of a niche product which aims to offer up a game with more complexity and options than 5e, but is less intimidating and more new player friendly than PF1. Personally, I hope PF2 takes off as it offers the sweet spot of play that I was looking for.

This was fixed through my e-mail contact to customer service, but I think there is a glitch in the system. I'm fairly certain I selected #145 when I signed up for the sub, but for some reason, #144 went into my sidecart.

Hello,

My sidecart currently lists #144 as my starting issue, but I want to start with #145 that is the beginning of 2E content. Could this change please be made?

Thanks,

Lee

OD&D borrowed heavily from the fiction of Michael Moorcock's fantasy worlds in terms of alignment. Law versus Chaos, with the Cosmic Balance holding both in check.

I envision a champion of True Neutral would serve deities like the Grey Lords from Moorcock's fiction who hold up preserving Neutrality and the Cosmic Balance above all else. In practice, role-playing this could be tricky though unless the campaign had a clear "save the world" theme where the PCs are fighting to prevent evil (or good) from taking over.

I agree with most of the above that if someone wants to be Mr. Perception then just let them notice hidden traps. This is usually a fairly boring sort of trap anyhow that is usually resolved in a few rolls. Personally, as a GM I would still include them however to acknowledge the player's investment.

That said, I would also make it a point to include some puzzle type traps as well, which are obvious and in plain sight, and which would not be automatically defeated by skill rolls and involve some player interaction.

One other thing that some GMs do (and that I hate) is to force players to narrate every square inch of what they are looking at or they don't find anything. Very tedious and undesirable gotcha style of GMing imo.

Yeah, I think SCAG isn't what I'm looking for. Too much fluff, and I'm going to be running a homebrew campaign, not FR or Golarion or anything like that.

I'm looking for something with a lot of crunch, or failing that, something that will help inspire my campaign, which is going to be 75%-90% "Dying Earth" and 10%-25% "Urban Steampunk."

I'm probably going to wait for the 5E version of Primeval Thule or the Tome of Beasts. Or maybe both.

Primeval Thule is out for 5e now on rpgdrivethru. Keep in mind that is mainly fluff though too although more it has more crunch than SCAG. Most of the crunch comes in the form of new and very powerful backgrounds for the setting. Also, there is some equipment and monsters too. The fluff is nicely done and novel though...much better than the forgotten realms rehash in the SCAG. My only real criticism is that while the fluff makes a big deal of how rare and evil magic is, there is no crunch to back that up. However despite that If the idea of swords & sorcery plus Cthulhu appeal to you it is a good buy.

The_Hanged_Man wrote:

My take.

A cleric who is atheist is feasible, but a cleric of atheism is nonsensical.

The cleric who is atheist ("atheist" here defined as someone thinks the "gods" are not worthy of worship) could channel their divine powers through belief in some cause or domain in the abstract.

A cleric of atheism is a contradiction in terms. Clerics receive their powers through prayer and worship, something that antithetical to atheism. In other words, you can't worship atheism.

So basically you can be a cleric of battle/love/whatever, who just so happens to be atheist, but that atheism would not be central to your role as a cleric.

>You can't worship an ideology that opposes worship

Sure you can. Look up "Malal" from Warhammer 40k, he is pretty much an atheist god(not IRL atheism, those guys aren't violent). He is described as "having a tendency towards destruction, even of itself and it's own agents".

Hmm, a cleric of Malal sounds fun.

Malal is a god not an ideology. Clerics of Malal actively believe in and worship in their god, which by definition means they are not athiest. They might be insane and worship a god that will consume them...but they are definitely are not atheists.

My take.

A cleric who is atheist is feasible, but a cleric of atheism is nonsensical.

The cleric who is atheist ("atheist" here defined as someone thinks the "gods" are not worthy of worship) could channel their divine powers through belief in some cause or domain in the abstract.

A cleric of atheism is a contradiction in terms. Clerics receive their powers through prayer and worship, something that antithetical to atheism. In other words, you can't worship atheism.

So basically you can be a cleric of battle/love/whatever, who just so happens to be atheist, but that atheism would not be central to your role as a cleric.

For 3pp, I purchased The Lost Book of Spells, and so far am unimpressed. I'm playing a sorcerer, and the sorc spells have left me with "why are these spells made for sorcs; they're highly situational and not something worth casting multiple times a day." I haven't looked at it for other classes, but it just seems as f the authors (there were many) were not in a 5e mindset when they wrote the spells - they were still in a 3.X mindset. As such, it left me underwhelmed.

I've also purchased a 5e monster book, but I haven't read it yet.

5th Edition Foes? Both that and the Lost Book of Spells were disappointing to me. I completely agree with you on the Lost Book of Spells...too many odd situational spells that seemed out of place for 5e. As for 5th Edition Foes, it was mostly recycled monsters and art from the Tome of Horrors and were predominately low CR. Not a big problem on its own, but since the 5e Monster Manual also is thin on mid to high CR monsters it did not fill the gap like I was hoping. Neither book was really bad...they just felt warmed over.

I backed the Tome of Beasts Kickstarter, and that looks fantastic. Gorgeous color art, new and innovative monsters, and an emphasis on the higher end of the CR scale. High hopes for this one.

Heh, since I'm in the minority, I'll post a bit more. The plot problems are best described as a quote from a seven-eight year old boy as he's talking to his friend behind me as we're leaving.

** spoiler omitted **

Actually, I think

I'm hoping for a Dark Tapestry/Dominion of the Black one. Other adventure paths have touched on it, but a full eldritch horror AP is the dream for me.

Close enough! The dream is real!!!

I'm hoping for a Dark Tapestry/Dominion of the Black one. Other adventure paths have touched on it, but a full eldritch horror AP is the dream for me.

I didn't read all 9 pages but here is my take.

There is no need to be a slave to the grid. It is possible to play RPGs (including Pathfinder!) without counting squares.

If you were playing without a grid the answer is obvious. A 10' pit requires a 10' jump which is DC10. Why should it change if you add a map?

If the GM allowed it, I had an idea with bying a scroll of dominate person as a low-level character (2-7) and using it on a higher lever wizard (10-13) and the commanding him to use his money and spell components to create more dominate person scrolls for me.

How would you handle this as a GM? Is it "against his nature" to spend money for another person?

Even if spending money is not against his nature, then making him work as a slave to create items to continue his enslavement certainly would be.

Ok, unless this is some kind of magical hell storm getting hit by lightning should be pretty rare. Maybe once or twice for some sort of narrative encouragement and then be done with it. For comparisons sake the Empire State Building is hit by lightning an average of 25 times a year with the record being 8 times in 24 minutes. So, unless the PCs are at the highest elevation in the area with lightings rods strapped to their backs it should be less than that.

First, I'd like to applaud your noticing the issue in advance and coming here for advice.

In PFS you HAVE to be very liberal as a GM in terms of judging alignment infractions or the game will just collapse. Paladins are legal characters in PFS even though they arguably work for an organization that more or less constantly breaks the law.

Quite frankly, you have to loosen up a lot or step down from GMing. In PFS, you can't impose your views of alignment except in the most egregious cases. And this doesn't even cone CLOSE to that line.

Agreed. If I sat down at a table and the GM made me auto-fall just for having the temerity for playing a legal character in a certain scenario regardless of the actual play choices, I would have a chat with the VC. I would also make a mental note to never play with that particular GM again as well. That attitude is the opposite of fun to me.

Milani is perfect for a straightforward choice. Between being the goddess of uprisings and the connection to Aroden she is a natural fit. Great viva la resistance vibe.

On the other hand, Calistria would be perfect for someone who wants to sow chaos and smash the system in a quest for vengeance. Asmodeus' disdain of Calistria could also serve as great motivation. Calistria is not a goddess who tolerates being ignored.

Either way could be a blast!

That is just bad luck, more than a sign of a problem with negative levels if you only fail by one.

I don't consider being down by one level to be that bad, even if it is not desirable.

If the party has a cleric he might be able to summon an outsider that can get rid of it.

Luck and the GM making things difficult. Generally if you have access to raise dead and the required 5k gold for that, the restorations and additional 2k are usually not a problem. The death tax in Pathfinder is about 7k all told. Why couldn't you get a restoration?

eh, it's not so bad considering. Anybody who has been at this long enough knows it's par for the course.

I wonder about this. Is anyone keeping count relative to other books? I wonder if error on the cover (which admittedly is embarrassing) is biasing things.

Since I have posted this times and times again in the Wotr area, so to keep this short:

- Either mythic characters are fine, or mythic monsters are fine, they do not work in combination, characters are just to good.

- Mythic rules break the encounters per day structure

- Mythic magic items seem fine (with the possible exception of mythic bane)

A 2-3 PDF "errata" could fix it.

Pretty much this. Mythic works fine. I ran mythic version of the Shattered Star AP for a year and everyone had fun with it. However, it requires the GM to substantially rethink encounter planning. WotR mostly stuck with the old paradigm of encounter design and thus falls apart in the back half. Unfortunately to make that AP work you need to start redesigning encounters around book 3 or 4 if you want the PCs to be challenged.

Perhaps I missed this but was the policy for delivering subscription PDFs changed? I know it used to be on shipment date, but my August shipment date is on the 22nd but I received all of my PDFs including the Advanced Class Guide and Iron Gods 1.

FYI, I did have some payment method glitches due to moving and a couple months got lumped together. Maybe something happened there. I love getting stuff early, but wanted to point out a potential glitch in the system.

If I was right with a Call of Cthulhu inspired AP, I will be the happiest fanboy ever.

Right there with you. Come on Aucturn! Papa needs a new pair of sabatons.

Hmm...the guide suggests taking constructs and humanoid (android) as favored enemy. However, androids count as constructs for the purposes of such things. Any point in not just taking constructs (other than flavor)?

I'm going to guess something culminating in Aucturn and the Citadel of the Black. Previous APs have danced around mythos/dominion of the black and distant worlds, but there has not been one directly focused on it yet. Plus James loves that sort of thing too. (Hmm...not exactly traditional fantasy though...) This would be my number one pick for an AP though, so I hope we get it at some point!

Stars are right!

Ok I have to to ask. What is this Croloch of which they speak? Google is not producing a useful answer.

Edit: I get that it is slashfic, but I don't get the reference.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

LazarX wrote:

it's not necessarily a case of a GM restricting access.. The OP may want an answer for when he's out in a desert or in the middle of a jungle, places which generally have a dearth of marketplaces... or Magic Marts.

If you have access to 9th level spells, you have access to teleport, and place is no longer an issue.

Goodness, you don't even need to teleport yourself. Just summon something (like a ghaele) and ask it to go shopping for you.

Two possible problems.

1. Most Divine characters (the ones that would be casting miracle) don't have access to teleport (and keep in mind that if the spell is being run properly, you're rolling for mishap on BOTH legs of the trip.)

2. The ghaele will be expecting something for it's services.

Miracle can replicate any non-cleric spell up to 7th level without needing the diamond. So Greater teleport is no problem.

@The_Hanged_Man: Oh no, not at all. In fact, the only cleric I'm presently playing is level 4. And I've got no reason to think my GM will restrict DD when it becomes relevant. I asked because I wanted to see if there were ways I could make it/aquire it regardless of local supply :)

@icehawk333: That made me crack up. Good job xD

-Nearyn

It won't be a problem. Things like teleport and high level divination magic make finding and getting to a fairly basic commodity a non-issue as long as the GM isn't trying to prevent it for some reason.

Is there way to get the requisite 25.000 gps diamond dust needed to cast the empowered(not the metamagic) miracle, other than rely on the market? I'm not talking about adventuring, striking deals with dwarves, or buying them from insanely rich gemcutters or whatnot.

What I want to know is if there is a way to take 25.000 gp and turn it into 25.000 gps worth of diamond? Not looking for blood-money shenanigans or anything related to saving money on the transaction, merely the transformation of cash into what I need.

Thanks in advance :)

-Nearyn

Is your GM trying to restrict diamond dust for some reason? As a GM I would consider allowing a regular miracle to either transform the gold or allow access to purchase it. If you have access to 9th level spells issues like these should fairly trivial. As you said you are not trying to milk the system so I'm not sure what the issue is.

My Pathfinder Society Witch has a Faerie Dragon Improved Familiar (and the Chronicle it requires, of course) - I'm double-checking what I can do with him, based on things I've read around these forums.

Can I:

- Keep the standard Faerie Dragon hit point total if it's better than what half of mine would be?
- Swap out either or both of the feats he comes with (particlarly for the sake of feats like some of the ones here)?
- Swap out his Spells Known (the Faerie Dragon Bestiary 3 entry merely lists what is "normal" for a Faerie Dragon to know)?

Then there's this:

"Hit Dice: For the purpose of effects related to number of Hit Dice, use the master's character level or the familiar's normal HD total, whichever is higher."

How far does this extend? Should his BAB be as though he has 8 HD (which would be at odds with what it says about BAB - unless familiars with superior BABs would be allowed to keep them)? How about his saving throw bonuses (this is more plausible)? I imagine it increases his Breath Weapon DC. If he uses a staff, does his CL equal mine for the purposes of determining the staff's power? The Big Question: What about his CL (for sorcerer spells and/or his spell-like ability) and concentration bonus? Should he, by chance, get ability score increases commensurate with having 8 virtual HD (I'm assuming one thing he doesn't get is increased spell levels/spells per day/spells known)? A Faerie Dragon has 3 HD by default, so I'm sure it's no coincidence that their CL is listed as 3rd.

You only get to do exactly what it says in the familiar entry. So, the HP are half the master's hit points and you can't change the feats or spells. The HD just relates to effects like spells affecting the familiar, for example sleep or something like that. Familiars don't really level up with the degree of customization that animal companions get. You just get the the extra stuff listed in the table (NA, Int, etc.) in the familiar entry.

On the other hand, if its only a few prcs that are good then what am I paying for? What is all this extra bookspace? Books are expensive things!

Good question. If enough people vote no with their wallets Paizo will stop making them or change (for better or worse) their strategy. Paizo can't please everyone though. If they release books with consistently good options people complain. Power creep! Fluffy options? Pointless bloat! Seemingly balanced options? Marginalizing or replacing core material!

Honestly I have no idea how game developers maintain their sanity in the face of all this.

Otherwise, if book space is a problem get PDFs. If money is a problem then just pick and choose what you want for free off the srd and prd sites. Paizo gives away all of their rules for free, which is one of the reasons I love this company.

Paizo has not released an actual rules book in what...almost a year now and people are still panicking about bloat. Paizo is a publishing company. They need to publish stuff to stay in business, and in order for people to want to buy their new stuff it has to offer something new.

So, there are a handful of PrCs that were released in a campaign guide that happen to actually be worth taking from a mechanical point of view. How is this a problem? If you don't like it, don't include it in your campaign.

In my last campaign we stuck with mainly Core, APG, and Mythic. Stuff from other sources were allowed on a case by case basis. Everything was fine, and people had fun playing the game which is what really matters.

Auto-hit + Force damage + No save = Always useful.

Yep, good ol' magic missile is safe reliable damage. Not exciting but it gets the job done.