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.

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.

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.

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.

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!!!

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.

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.

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.

I hit FAQ and agree this is unclear. Personally, I lean towards the not getting everything back side of things (this can lead to some stacking of buffs issues on 10 min/level or longer spells), but think the difference is small in practical terms. The reason why is if the group can afford to sit around for an hour (two with memorizing new spells) then they might as well be sitting around for eight hours in most situations. Both cases involve the group being able to rest peacefully for an extended period of time which can be easily interrupted.

Since generally everyone in the group has this same ability it is easy for a GM to plan around this for time critical situations. Instead of having a few days to stop the evil wizard from opening the gates to hell you only have a few hours. Personally, I think the later is much more exciting than having a group laze about for an entire day because they are out of juice when the world is about to end.

If the intent is to completely restore all spells, then I would probably houserule that any ongoing spells count against the daily limit to prevent stacking though.

See? That sucks, if I wanted to break the Druid, I could, I get that, yes, they're powerful, but I wanted to use a cool character concept and the game just doesn't support it well at all.

Well, there's your problem. It's not that Druids or wildshape suck, it's that bears are not particularly impressive in Pathfinder. Some animal forms are just better than others, and bears got the fuzzy end of the lollipop this time around. Talk to your GM and see if he will let you re-skin a large cat. Alternatively, you could ask to apply a giant template to dire bears if you want go huge.

The large/huge thing in a corridor thing will exist no matter what though. You can't expect a medium sized bear to be particularly impressive (Black bears only have a 17 str and a 17 AC, for example). However, there are lots of other options (Earth Elemental, for example) that still shine in that situation. One of the defining characteristics of a druid is versatility. You are welcome to stick to one form if you want, but you are limiting yourself.

Sure you can meta magic the hell out of spells if you have enough feats. BUT those 1st level slots are still sitting unused.

Right because spells like charm person, cure light wounds, prot evil, and true strike never get used at high levels.

Oh wait...they totally do. Just because a spell is not the big gun for your level does not means that it is useless. Also, all those other non-combat utility spells are part of what make magic-users awesome.

Plus, low level spells scale for free for magic-users while psionicists always need to pay for exactly what they get. Have you seen what a Heavens Oracle can do with Color Spray? Or what a Magus can do with Shocking Grasp (Magical Lineage+Intensify)? Both of those are used with amazing effectiveness even at higher levels for a level one slot. Show me a usage of a Psionics power that can come close to that for one PP, and we can talk about Psionics being overpowered again.

Edit: In a game I am playing, the group was fighting a critter whose extreme beauty forced a save or die each round for anyone beholding her. My 12th level/ 2nd Mythic Tier druid dropped an Obscuring Mist and totally shut that down. First level spells useless at higher levels? Ha!

I admit that I did not like how this was set up either. It is enough punishment to deny the group the goddess's favor in the form of aid, and it seems crass and petty for her to effectively torture the group for not giving her the answers she wants to hear.

I think the trumpet blasts even fail to teach humility since they have a DC attached to them. Once you attach numbers to gods they just become another monster to kill for some groups, and this is bad form IMO. Sure, the DC is pretty high but at this level with mythic surges the saves are completely within realm of possibility to make, and the group might think they could take her at that point. IMO, a true god should be several magnitudes of power greater than any mortal and should be able to smite them down for their hubris with but a thought if they so choose.

Its a RPG guys, not a board static game.

To be really honest Pathfinder is not great at depicting cinematic combat when the rules are followed exactly. There is always GM fiat, but if you prefer a loose cinematic style a less deterministic system might fit your style better.

DonKeebals wrote:

and I'd love to buy my minis from them too because their customer service is outstanding. But if I can save $30 on a brick of minis, I will.

So their customer service, while 'outstanding' is effectively worthless to you. You won't pay for it and go to others for a cheaper price .

There is a big difference between "worthless" and not worth an extra $30 or 30%. I'm pretty sure there is a price difference ($50, $100, $1 million, etc), where anyone would buy from someone else regardless of disparities in customer service.

Mmm...delicious Crane Wings

how is it a hindrance for a fighter who dump int and cha to 7 if he never has to make a roll, letting the int and cha based build make those rolls?

The lack of ability to make those checks *is* the hindrance. In non-combat situations the fighter that has no skills will be a sandbag to the group. Plus, that fighter might need to speak for him/herself once in a while or make some other sort of check, and they will most likely fail in dramatic fashion.

All the fighter gets from dumping int to 7 is enough points to raise their strength from a 17 to a 18 or maybe bump their dex/con up a couple of points. One or one-half modifier point is not that big of a deal in the long run, so why invent new ways to punish a player for having the audacity to optimize?

Edit: I also think a lot of the perceived problem is due to GMing style. For example, in PFS I always try to give my characters semi-decent skills as I know they will need to make checks for their faction missions, and you can't always depend on your group mates. However, if a GM allows the group's skill monkey to make all the checks and never involves the other players I can see how that how dumping could be perceived as a non-hindrance. The same could be said for a game that revolves around combat too where skills aren't needed as much.

All the 'ban it' and 'omg overpowered' stuff is coming from people with no playtest examples posted and no builds posted.

It's the mystic theurge all over again. Sounds super, in reality, not so much.

I agree with this. Once spells are prepared for the day the Arcanist severely lacks in flexibility. My prediction is that it will be very swingy in practice. Very strong in situations where the handful of spells prepared work well, but will struggle when things don't line up right. I still don't particularly like this class, but it is because of this swinginess and general lack of flavor, rather than it being overpowered.

In the Mouth of Madness with Sam Neill is very heavily inspired by Lovecraft's work and is not bad at all.

Yep. In the Mouth and Madness and Event Horizon are two of the best examples of the genre that are not direct translations of Lovecraft's work. John Carpenter's body of work in general does a really good job of exuding a Lovecraft vibe. His Apocalypse Trilogy (The Thing, In the Mouth of Madness, and Prince of Darkness) all do a great job of building dread in a Lovecraftian sense, and I highly recommend all of them if you have not seen them yet.

Exactly. A Mite is just "eww... gross," while a Hag is a thing that cannot be unseen. And, as I said before, Eldritch Horrors are things who's appearance literally breaks your mind if you gaze upon them for even a moment. And that's just regarding appearance; go back to my example of the relationship between God, Metatron, and Humans from Dogma to see how it translates from the visual sense to the auditory sense.

Agree with this sentiment. Aboleths are another great example. Their description starts off with "As befits their hideous primeval appearance..." and they pack a 17 Cha.

Appearance in this case clearly means how well your form can influence others. An aboleth is a truly alien and terrifying creature, and they use their appearance to cow lesser beings into doing their will. Also, Intimidate is keyed off of Cha as well, and being having a terrifying appearance doesn't hurt here.

Edit: That said, appearance is just one piece of the package. Cha is just a lump sum total of a number of factors (personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance), and you can't single one piece out and make a definite claim.

Zhayne wrote:

I disagree that anything that can act on its own is 'mindless'. it has to have some mind, even a rudimentary one, or else it could not receive sensory input and process it even to make a 'flight or fight' reflex.

Jellyfish disprove your beliefs. They are clearly mindless (literally not having a brain or similar organ), but are still considered living creatures.

I came across a neat article on slimemolds today. Slimemolds are single cell creautres with no brain or nervous system, but they are capable of remembering, making decisions, and anticipating change. According to the article, when researchers placed oat flakes or other bits of food in the same positions as big cities and urban areas onside laboratories slime molds have effectively re-created Tokyo's railway network in miniature as well as the highways of Canada, the U.K. and Spain.

That's pretty darn impressive for an ooze. In terms of the game, I guess that shows you that "mindless" creatures, while probably not particularly inventive, would be capable of fairly effective tactics at least in a fairly narrow and predefined way.

So we should just ignore that Druids have a more powerful resurrection spell?

Yes. We are talking about BoL which is cleric spell. Please compare it to other cleric spells in terms of power and functionality.

Regenerate is relevant because some are claiming BoL can restore missing parts.

Reincarnate is a 4th level spell that by all means is better than Raise Dead AND Resurrection with a far less cost. You might say "Oh man but at what roleplaying cost", but honestly its just a cool roleplaying opportunity with the bonus of coming back to life.

Please address the regenerate issue directly rather than throwing out a spell that comes from a different class and functions in a different way. The druid spell list differs from the cleric list both functionally and in terms of spell power per level.

Whale_Cancer wrote:

My point is that the existence or non-existence of god, gods, or divine forces is irrelevant to a discussion of how ethics works out in Pathfinder.

Well, except for Pathfinder's gods, right?

I think a key point here is that in real life practically no one thinks of themselves as evil. Most people do what they think is right, even though others may think it is wrong.

In Pathfinder, however, most evil gods and their followers hold up evil as a philosophical ideal. They aren't just misguided or hold a different perspective on things. In fact, they generally hold the same views on right and wrong...however they embrace and revel in doing the wrong thing because they are frickin evil.

See the example above of a +2 Sword of Dancing (+2 enhancment bonus, +4 special ability bonus) that bypasses the DR of an Adamantine Golem (DR/Epic), but can't scratch any other golem (DR/Adamantine).

Actually, based on the mini-bestiary in MA, I think that Adamantine Golem should have DR/ Epic and Adamantine. The pattern appear to be that if normal version of the creature had no DR, then the mythic version gets DR/Epic. If the normal version has a pre-existing type of DR, the mythic version gets DR/Epic and whatever it had before. The exception appears to be elementals, which logically keep DR/-. I think this pattern is why you see the silly result of having DR/Epic and Magic on the dragons(You know, just in case someone had a +0 Weapon of Ultimate Badass).

I'm mulling it over and am not sure if I like it. DR/Epic seems to be the new DR/magic in the sense that it is a somewhat trivial form of DR.

Edit: On an unrelated note, is anyone else slightly disappointed that the Mythic Blue Dragon does not have the ability to turn the blood of adventurers TO SAAAAAAND?

Alright. I think that I'm going to rule that Supreme Stealth counts as concealment versus the chosen sense which would allow stealth rolls. Invisibility, or other types of existing concealment, will be ignored as normal. Does this sound reasonable?

The_Hanged_Man wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

I don't think I do. Dead is dead. Killing is killing.

Do you know who said, "Killing is killing, whether done for duty, profit or fun"?

Richard Ramirez. Real world serial killer and avowed satanist.

Cool, I guess? But the context isn't even close to being the same, so mind explaining the relevance?

My apologies. It was a cheap shot. I removed my offending post.

Guys, as multiple representatives of the company have already mentioned, Paizo's just as frustrated as we are by this ordeal. It isn't optimal and they know it. Cut the guys some slack, and trust that things'll look better come GenCon '14. :)

Don't get me wrong. I love Paizo products and don't have any plans to cancel my subscription. However, when I feel I receive less than adequate service on a particular transaction I will make it known. All reasoned feedback is good, particularly when it is critical in nature.

I love Paizo, but I think they dropped the ball on this one. Sure, they had a ton of products and Gencon to deal with. However, they also had months to plan around this and make adjustments. Half of their warehouse people being away at a conference? No excuse when they had plenty of time to hire and train temps to help with shipping. In my opinion, Paizo is getting too big to just keeping on doing things as they have in the past, and it might be time to rethink parts of their business model.

Also, "free" pdfs for pre-ordering or Kickstarting is getting to be pretty standard for rpgs these days. I definitely appreciate getting them from Paizo,but its not enough for me to overlook other faults.

This is pure fluff and is non-binding. Again, if you 'dislike magic', you're going to divest yourself of all your magic items. Does the power says it does that?

Nope. It just says the barbarian needs to save against all spells while raging. No exceptions. The RAW is clear, and if you don't like that houserule it as desired.

And as noted elsewhere Brent, they can't due to the credit card agreements.

Strictly speaking, Paizo could give subscribers the PDFs, but they couldn't charge them for it until it they ship. However, that could get messy if people want to cancel.

I hear tell Bestiary 4 will have some truly mythic tentacles.

I wish there was a way to lock-in our subscription purchases so the PDFs could be downloaded. Seriously, just take my money. I have no problem waiting on the hard copies.

Alright. It is now officially maddening that my subscription has not been shipped yet. Paizo shipping goblins please hear my desperate plea!