Vak's page

Wonderful :) I hope monsters in this one are more detailed than the last!

This will give PFRPG what it's missing and will hopefully reduce the need to look at SRD for monsters!

To tell you the truth, I don't think Golarion suffers from the lack of beholders and mind-flayers. There's the serpentfolk that have enough mystery and 'scare' about them that I don't miss the flayers, and they give me a more lovecraftian feel which I love about Golarion

In all honesty, its these little things that set Golarion apart from other campaign settings for me. Its not 'another world with the same stuff and different fluff', its a world which looks like some others at first glance, but digging into it you realize it isn't. I've managed to catch my very experienced D&D players off-guard with Golarion, which isn't something Eberron achieved, for example. The only thing that vexes me about golarion lore is that it appears in chops and bits in adventure paths, making it very difficult to get quick refference.

On that note, it'd be nice to have a consolidated lists archive similar to the one on the WotC site to get quick reference on stuff.

Back on topic, I've looked through the book again to find these 'mistakes' I so brazenly claimed to find in the book, only to discover it was me who wasn't paying close attention to all the little things like size and such. So the only negative thing I can really say about the book is the lack of easily accessible upgraded version of monsters.

At some point I'd like to see a book with stat blocks for npcs with classes. like 10 different levels of fighters, 10 different levels of wizards, etc. Just quick stuff to throw in without breaking your head, you know?

statblock reconfiguration should be a maxed out skill :)

I dissagree.

As it is, I already spend most of my free time planning the story of the campaign. If it takes me, an experienced GM 10-20 minutes to set up a simple encounter at lv 14 because I don't have ready monsters, then it will take me approximately 3-4 hours to prepare for an 8 hour session's encounters alone. That's 3-4 hours more than I have. Yes I will take time to plan a specific NPC or monster that is special or story-based or in some other way important (Like for example a dragon, so I'm not entirely miffed about the dragons thing), but I don't want to break my head over 'run off the mill' encounters.

I suppose I'll have to wait for the second bestiary.

I was wrong about the balor, I forgot to calculate size penalties :P

I've noticed other such disrepancies with some other creatures but it happens. I'm sure some of us still remember the horrible errors of monster manual 3.0

Whatever the case the purpose of my rant isn't to flame the book. It's a good book, just not what pathfinder core books and adventure paths had gotten me accustomed to. It seems rushed and lacking in content that, I for one consider important.

A pity.

This is the first pathfinder book that actually dissappointed me.

The artwork is marvelous as always, no flaws there. We've seen most of these monsters in other paizo books already but that doesn't mean they can't be used again. In fact I smiled as I saw monsters I could identify with certain afventures in the pages of this book.

However, the stat blocks for each monster are more often than not, cheap. In the effort to make every monster entry exactly one or two columns (A full page or half a page) long, there has been a lot of skipping and missing out of important information. In general this book is a good guideline on how to make your monsters, but if you're looking for ready to use monsters, you will likely find it lacking. Advanced versions of monsters like the dread wraith and mummy have been cut out, with guidelines on how to create them left around. You need to devote time to build a dragon of the color and age category you require him, and in general this book makes poor material for a new DM. I myself often refer to classic SRD monsters because I just can't be assed to spend the 5' required to attach a template to a monster and roll its hp to get my dread wraith.

A shame, but hey. After the glorious core book, can one really complain? I'm just miffed that, in my oppinion, this book isn't up to the usual pathfinder tier.

[/qq]

PS: Oh yeah, there are also mistakes in the stat blocks, or I've failed in calculating some of them. I think the balor had fudged attack bonuses but I'm not sure. I'll do an inspection when I get home and see if I can get back to you with specifics or with a humiliating 'I was wrong' apology post :P

Pathfinder sucks! I don't see how a new book will-

*SLASH* 'AARRRGH~'

...Damnit, Sorry guys, I happened across a mirror of opposition last night. Don't worry. The dupe's taken care of now.

I must say I'm waiting with eager anticipation to see how the new classes will finalize in this book, Not to mention how WAR's Awesome new artwork will look colored :D

He may have been using the stats for her from this thread - though that's only at 17th level.

Great battle (this is in two weeks for me!) - can't wait to hear the rest!

Here's the draft I put on a txt file. The rest are handwritten... Somewhere, and messy :P

Several parts here are wrong as well as I just copied the text from the original PDF and modified it to get an idea of what I was looking at, hopefully you can get the same idea.

Vak wrote:

If anyone's interested, I'll post the full battle. All in all I'm amazed they pulled it through, which is exactly what I wanted from a final encounter :D

I'm interested - I can't imagine how they pulled it off!

Hm. Perhaps I should have used spoiler tags from the start? I'll edit the first post.

Anyway. Here are the specifics. Note that they are modified, but based on the original encounter diagram.

For any that are interested, Here's what the confrontation with Allevrah looked like on the mat

Final Battle

This encounter is quite modified from the original as I like to run a tougher game than the one presented in the adventure.

The PC's are 14th level. The enemies are:

Alevrah: 18 level pure cleric
6 x 11th lv drow priestesses with harm and quickened cause light memorized
10x 9th level drow fighters
6x vrock
2x glabrezu.
and Denrelwre(sp)hanging around with imrpoved invis. I accidentally typed her in as sorceress on that jpg.

We had 3 pc deaths in total, 2 on the same PC who got revived via breath of life once. If anyone's interested, I'll post the full battle. All in all I'm amazed they pulled it through, which is exactly what I wanted from a final encounter :D

GEEEECK!
/me runs away

I'm putting this here simply because I can't find another relative forum thread in the messageboards.

The adventure is overall an awesome experience for both DM and players, at least from a personal take, but there is one 'mistake' with an NPC tactic.

On another note, this adventure is a real challenge for players not used to being told what to do by NPC's. If you want your players to learn some manners, this adventure is for you.

arent darksun elves 10 ft tall with alien-like legs and called runners?

And yeah, I was thinking green elves.

Me, the reason I play races other than humans was purely because of the RP.

Heh, with the exception of grey elves back in 2nd edition that could start with 19 str, I don't remember any other time where you could say making an elf was a blindfold better option than human, but I'll tell you this much:

Humans age fast. I know most campaigns don't last more than a year in-game but if you were in one of my parties you'd probably start thinking on your next char being something with a bit more life in it.

Then there's the other thing. Human player characters are exceptional, yes. Human npcs are not. Human characters are the whip cream of humans, due to the sheer amount of humans there are in the world. Does that go to say that human npcs dont get the bonus stats? No, they do get them, but a random elf npc compared to a random human npc will be 'better' due to its experiences and racial background.

When you play a non-human, you also get special treatment. A human won't be allowed in a dwarven city, whereas a dwarf character will.

So yes, humans should give players more a reason to go human than anything else. Its basicly the choiec of 'will I be another exceptional, yet boring human? Or will I be a less cookie-cutter, but cool <yourracehere>?'

Yes if you use it up, the win button is disabled, but that makes it no less a win button usable X times a day on evil foes, when involving 2wf.

Slightly exaggerating here, but think of it as a no-save disintegrate spell with a range of melee.
How so? The paladin has a high base attack, and with his cha + str modifier applied to the to-hit it is unlikely he will miss many primary attacks on the target. This basically means 'double the extra damage' of a regular smiting paladin, minus some minor fractial stuff (like extra damage from overhead chop. A 2h doesnt really do more damage than 2 weapons since you still add 1.5 your str modifier to your attacks. Also with the present condition of the paladin you don't need 2 good magical swords, one will do, and you can divine bond the other to do the trick.)

Furthermore with the changes to the powerattack tree, a 2wf paladin furthermore benefits from his double attacks since he can't just take out as much patk as he wants with a 2h and benefit from the increased accuracy of the 2h (read: no 2wf penalties), so essentially you could say the bonus to-hit from smiting 'goes to waste'.
So a 2wf paladin gets double his level to damage, and double his str modifier to patk when he is smiting, effectively 'win buttoning' them for many cases.
Will the paladin's 2wf skills be useless in the rest of the battles? I don't really think so. In fact he will be dealing more damage than the paladin with the 2h, I think, if we're talking about a charisma based paladin. Will he be less of a tank with his decreased AC? Maybe, but paladins can now lay on hands on themselves as a swift action, so I think they can survive the drop to AC.

Yes its a choice, but it seems to me like the benefits of going 2wf heavily outweigh the benefits of any other style, when playing a charisma-based smiteadin (or charismadin). I personally can't think of a good reason for me not to play a 2wf paladin, other than that it bothers my mental eye to see the classic iconic paladin turned to another legolas or drizzt.

To me a paladin who hides his aura is not really a paladin.

There's always the case of a paladin working undercover in an evil city with a rebellious organization in order to overthrow the evil rule, but that's questionable and in my opinion, dependant on the paladin's deity. A paladin of law would for example, in my eyes, fall the moment he tries to circumvent present law through the shadows. It might be fine for a paladin of a less lawful more good deity, though. I dunno. Its a fine line anyway.

Yeah, a 2wf paladin at the first levels will basically get double damage smites for holding two weapons.

I always kinda hated the transition between lv 5 and 6, or lv 10 and 11, in 'good batk' characters. Lv 5: suck. lv 6: god. lv 10: trying. lv 11: bloody murder. lv 15: being owned, lv 16: owning, etc. Oh well. Necessary evil! :p

Not often, but the ammount of cool points earned for the paladin when someone DOES go 'augh, Nooo! Chardun! My light!' as it did in one of my previous scarred lands campaigns, is quite priceless.

Personally, I keep the awesome power of mindblank intact.

Enchantments are win-button spells in my games, and if the players want to use up so many high-level spell slots to make themselves immune, by all means, I let them.
Illusions are ganked by true sight as well, but its also not such an easy spell to come by. With its limited range and 1min/level duration, I can see many ways of illusions still being effective.

Now yes theoretically you CAN get these spells permanent for all the group at minimal cost but that stuff is not my playstyle so I don't worry about it.
If I were to get to that stage at some time though, yeah. I would follow the mindblank nerf, as well as the 3.5 heal nerf. (i still play heal as a full hp restoration spell, dissintegrate as a death spell, etc etc.)

No +1 spiked gauntlets involved. In my games smite evil always bypassed any DR of anything that was evil, just like detect evil always bypassed most spells that cover evil alignment.

The paladin dropped his greatsword when the dragon picked him up in his maw and started punching the dragon. The paladin was actually level 21 with the epic smite which doubles smite damage, and also had divine power available to him. This effectively gave him his charisma bonus, and double his level to damage. He also used a fair amount of power attack on his blows and also scored one critical hit. Exceptional situation? Maybe, but even without that, the damage would be quite high.

About the "I glow good" thing, as a DM I always give paladins a glamorous introduction and keep reminding the party how secure they feel next to the paladin and how all of their worries seem to shrink, and that now that the paladin is here, everything feels like it is going to be just fine.
Unless of course one of the pcs is evil, in which case he gets an ominous description on how he feels the paladin's gaze pierce through him and burn whatever possible places there are left on this world for him to hide.

Back to the balance issue, yeah I am inclined to agree that the paladin needed a boost to come up to par with the lovely PF barb and fighter.
In my eyes he was even 'nerfed' by taking away the whole divine might/extra smiting etc feat selection from him. Still, I don't think full round smites is really the answer.
Lets not forget though, the paladin has some pretty awesome points, especially now with the good will save. A paladin with cha as his main stat is unlikely to fail saves, lets not forget.

About running many encounters per day, I run quite a few encounters per day. This is why I compared the paladin to the wizard. The wizard runs out of good spells after the first few important encounters, too. The only difference is that it is smite evil that the paladin runs out of, not fireball. He can also put up a fight still. Not like a warrior can, but better than a wizard can so there.

Truth, Confusion is powerful.

As is hold person, hold monster even, charm person, dominate person, etc etc.

All of these however are mind-effecting compulsion spells. There are several ways to be rid of them so, I find that confusion is quite on par with its peers in the school of enchantment.

On another note and rather off topic, I was miffed about the original pathfinder version to lay on hands myself, to the point where I didn't use it at all and just went with the classic lay on hands, and left all the other abilities that consumed lay on hands uses to times per day.

Now with the d6/2 paladin levels and the ability to heal himself as swift action, I'm using it, for the sake of playtesting. I still like the paladin's awesome ability in 3-3.5 to heal amazing amounts of hp in one standard action, but I'm waiting to see how the paladin plays out in a full campaign with pf rules before making any final decisions.

Hehe. Actually when I saw the duskblade for the first time I screamed like a girl and threw the book towards the nearest wall. It is quite possible however that our playstyles are immensely different, since in my campaigns, the paladin's smite evil has always been one of the most fearsome abilities in the system, and the paladin class arguably the most powerful class there is, which is why they are so limited (in my campaigns) to their RP, and may fall from favor at the slightest mistake, such as not upholding their word, being wrong, and so on.

This of course was all in 3-3.5

With pathfinder, its a fact that the paladin needed a buff. I dislike giving nicknames to classes such as 'tank' or 'dps' because I find that any character can be played to fit any of those roles. To me, its all about how someone chooses to play his/her character and not predetermined by the class, as per the logic mmorpg's and 4th edition want us to assimilate.
When you look at a class, however, you need to look at all of its features. I've read the other thread where it was discussed that the paladin class was sub-par to the other warriors in pathfinder, and the smite ability being the only thing that separates the paladin from the warrior npc class.

Perhaps in levels 1-2 this is the case, but you need to keep in mind of what other abilities the paladin earns through the levels. If you play a paladin whose main stat is charisma, It is unlikely you will be failing any important saves during the game. With the new ability to lay on hands as a swift action on yourself, you can keep taking hits without requiring the party's cleric to heal you every 2nd turn, and so giving the cleric time to do something else.
A paladin also has spells, some of which unique to the paladin, such as bless weapon, a truly fearsome spell, especially when combined with smite evil. (glory domain priests now get bless weapon too, something that made me squint, but I accepted it eventually)

I suppose you can see the paladin as a weaker class to the fighter or barbarian in any one fight, and you would be right. However, in my experience both in pathfinder and 3-3.5, there is nothing more fearful than a paladin against those encounters in which the paladin will use his smite evil effectively.

As an example, It was a paladin who saved the party from an old green dragon, when he was grabbed by the dragon's flyby snatch and then proceeded to full attack the dragon's face from where he was being gnawed, with his smite evil fists. The damage was quite astronomical for my campaigns, even with fists, and resulted in the dragon's death.

In conclusion, I'd suggest looking at the full package before writing the paladin off as underpowered. To me, that is like suggesting the wizard is underpowered because he runs out of spells. What is true however, is that a feat similar to extra smiting needs to appear in the pathfinder books.

My 2 cents.

Not so much on topic but I'd like to drop some thoughts on that:

A mage can't really contingency heal unless he's a mystic theurge with enough levels. Remember contingency only allows spells that you yourself cast to become contingent. You also can't cast contingency on another person.

Mirror image can be negated by an experience adventurer who closes his eyes just before attacking, taking instead the 50% miss chance and -2 (or was it -4) to attack due to not being able to see the target (as with darkness or invisibility). If the adventurer in question has blindfighting even, his chances of ignoring mirror images increase drastically.

As for invisibility, if the party is not in some way locating invisible when facing the arch enemy wizard, they're doing something wrong but, the paladin can at least make use of his detect evil ability to pinpoint the location of the wizard, if all else fails.

Yes, smite is all about chances to hit. With the old smite rules, I used to smite either on a charge, or in one of the 2nd or 3d attacks of a high level paladin, as to increase the chances of secondary attacks hitting, beyond the first.
The way smite works now, it is too much of a 'waste' to use it on a round you can't let your entire full attack out. When there's no 'extra smiting' feat available too, those smites are even more precious to spend in a situation you are not certain wether you'll be hitting or not.

More on topic, whoever it was that said that munchkinism isn't a rule problem but a player problem, for the most part you are right, but I will point once again to rogues. When 3d started they were not immediately 2 weapon wielders, they developed into such because of the sneak attack mechanic. The system is not to blame for munchkinism, but it can sure help. Universalist mages are right now facing the same problem. The universal school abilities are too good to give away for spell like abilities with DC's based on your charisma. Yeah, the players who really want to play an evoker will play an evoker but, if you look at it from a different perspective it starts to look as if RPG's have started penalizing those who stick to RP and favoring those who go with the obvious choice. In the case of rogue, that choice isn't even considered munchkinism anymore, it's just the standard. When a player first told me he'd be playing with 2 weapons to dish more sneak damage, I frothed at the mouth. Now, its just another 'well-played' rogue.
I'm afraid the same might happen to the paladin, is all.

Empirically you have a non-issue here, it just feels like an issue because humans aren't built to see empirical evidence easily.

I see what you're saying and I can't say you aren't right in a degree, but from experience, I still think that if pathfinder were to have the RPG influence 3d edition has had on rpg society, all paladins will eventually end up using 2 weapons.

I mean how long has it been since rogues went from holding a single dagger to being trademarked multi-weapon fighters that always fight with 2 pointy things in their hands? I know for sure they rarely held two weapons in 2nd, and they only started appearing with 2 weapons when 3d came out, and the 'exploit' of using 2 swords in combination with sneak attack came to play.

It probably is a non-issue, as you say, but I think that charisma-based paladins, that I like to call Charismadins or Smitadins when I'm joking around, are generally weak with non-smite attacks so the miss chance when not smiting is pretty high in any rate. The -2 penalty however does become nearly obsolete with a high charisma. Of course with a 2h you can take better advantage of the better attack bonus with power attack but it still won't outweigh the doubled damage taken from 2 weapon fighting.

In the end, this is probably not enough a reason to call full round smites as a reason, but I do think it deserves some better looking into to see if there's a better option, keeping the paladin buff while not pushing the class to get as many attacks as possible to get more 'juice' out of their smites, and that includes many other things other than two weapon fighting, such as paladins starting with Aldori dueling mastery feat, or paladins begging for haste, et cetera et cetera.

Well, the same thing could be said for a Fighter and his Weapon Specialization/ Greater Weapon Specialization/ Weapon Training bonus.

Or for a Ranger and his Favored enemy bonus (ok, Rangers are already Two-weapon fighters, but you get my point...)

The fact is, such a Paladin would be high-dependant on a Feat chain that:
1) requires at the bare minimum 1 feat just to be able to hit the enemy (or he would have a -4/-8 with a one-handed and a light weapon) - more to be able to make more attacks with the second hand
2) requires at the bare minimum 13 Dex (usually, one of the dump stats of a Paladin) - WAY MORE to be able to take the Improved and Greater Feats for TWF
3) lowers the AC of the Paladin (unless he is an atypical Paladin with EXTREMELY high Dex and a light armor; in that case, it would be more or less the same)

A Paladin has not bonus Feats like Fighters or Rangers, and has not (usually) high Dexterity like Rogues. If such a Paladin is...

A few points I'd like to make out:

Smite now boosts the paladin's AC by his cha modifier, so the lack of a shield is not as dreadful as it would be otherwise.
In 3.5, the feat 'divine shield' which gave you your cha bonus to AC required a shield in both versions of the feat, which did drive the paladin down the typical sword + shield crusader style, but people still played paladins with 2h weapons now and then.

I'm with you on the high dex requirement and the number of feats you need to spend to get the 2WF tree, but remember, PF gives you +2 to your stats more than 3.5 did. Furthermore, PF gives you 1 new feat/2 levels instead of the 3.5 1+1/3levels system. Also a lot of 'old feats' like divine might, divine shield, extra smiting, extra turning etc, that a typical charisma-based paladin would take up, do not exist in the PF system so if you run a PF-exclusive game like I am, you'll not leave the paladin with many options, so they will probably notice the 2wf tree and go for it out of lack of 'better options' (tongue in cheek)

When I think of psionics in general, I think of mind flayers and aboleths.

When I think of psionic characters, I think of wild talents and 2nd edition.

When I think of 3d edition psionics, I grow pale. The idea of playing in a campaign as a player where another player is a psion is enough for me to depart that campaign simply knowing the amount of power that psion will have.

Psionics as a concept are great but, to me, psions should be on a powerlevel on par with the sorcerer. As in, a wizard should still be able to put down a psion in a duel of spells/powers. As things are with present psions, Just using feats and abilities from the expanded psionics handbook, a psion is a one-man army so long as he has power points, starting at very low levels with the ridiculous vigor power which allows you to keep boosting yourself with ridiculous amounts of temp hp so long as you have 2-3 power points.

I like the versatility of psionic powers as a mechanic, but not as balance.

So I've been running an adventure with the new rules of the paladin as found in the playtest forum.

While I liked the idea of lay on hands becoming swift when using it upon the paladin herself, and I liked the mechanic behind smite evil lasting a full round, here's the problem I faced.

My players (and I) at first liked this. Then, one of the players who was playing a paladin, picked up the two weapon fighting feat because of the potential he saw in smite evil lasting a full round of attacks.

I fear that if this mechanic is kept, paladins of pathfinder will develop the 'habit' of going for 2-weapon fighting like 95% of the rogue populace to exploit their sneak attack bonus dice.
While its fine for the rogue concept to go with 2 knives, the paladin, smiting evil in a dexterous flurry with a longsword and shortsword in hand
seems quite off to me.

Perhaps smite could be limited to the paladin's 'main hand' if the mechanic to keep full round o' smites is kept. For now, I've reverted to the old rules to avoid munchkinism :P

Omg yes!

Important informashun!

Personally, I can't wait for vigil.
comeon comeoncomeon.

can't wait.
can't wait.
can't wait.
can't wait.

Okay silly question: I have the older deck on backorder.. Does that mean I need to cancel this and pre-order this one, or does my old backorder work too?

About stabilize, when a player used it to stop bleeding from a rogue's bleeding attack, I let it happen. I considered it too much of a waste of a standard action not to, and it seemed reasonable to me.

nitpicking, but yeah. '2 lay on hands uses' does sound odd.

It might make things more confusing to put everything in the context of faith points, though.

Or you could use 2nd ed rules for AC, and have different armor values for piercing/slashing/bludgeoning. I'm sure you'd see a lot of people prefer breastplates to chainshirts when it came to piercing in that case.

Then again, it would make things more complicated and everyone would start running around with bludgeons once more.

the problem, I think, is in balance. Most armors seem to have been made to give a total AC maximum of +8, combining dex along with armor.

I for one am of the oppinion that medium and heavy armor should give some other benefits aside from AC such as a static DR 1/- for medium and 2/- for heavy, but some would say that's too much, and it would start that sort of discussion so, how about giving all medium armors a +1 ac and all heavy a +2.

Then of course heavy armors would have to have even higher prices to make them more unlikely for 1-3 level characters to wear them since, a lv 1 fighter with a fullplate and shield, and a base 12 dex would start at 23 ac, which would be pretty frustrating.

Bagpuss, irresistable dance is a mind affecting spell.

Mindblank is the first thing a warrior in a powersteamed game should have 24/7 which should not be hard, since mindblank has a duration of 24 hrs.

Just to put a few more things on the table:

Ring of spell turning.

Ring of elemental immunity

Scarab of protection...

With a certain rule from a certain book you can combine magical abilities too, so you can have a ring of spell turning AND elemental immunity, and so on and so forth.

There's only a handful of spells that exist that can still take you out permanently, msot of which are fort save which the fighters will make.

There's always the trap the soul, for which you have the ring of spell turning.

Its called evolution :P

It doesn't make much of a difference, really.
Its a clear boon to chars who have a high dex, sure but, not everyone can afford both high dex and the rest of the stats he needs for his class.

So yes, the chainshirt is great armor for those who have high dex. Its not so great for those who don't, though.

kyrt-ryder, its not that I haven't been reading the discussion, its that I do not agree, from personal experiences, that the MT needs any sort of buff.

Its perfectly balanced, in that a character who multiclasses between two caster classes should not be as good in wizardry as a wizard his level, nor should he be as good a cleric as a cleric of his level.
He is however, both. Once the difficulty of the low levels passes, the mystic theurge has the amazing ability to use both clerical and wizardly powers.
To see how powerful the MT really is, I suggest rolling one in a party that's anywhere between lv 10 and 20, and seeing what the MT does with a party. Just remember, use one casting class as a buffing one and the other for offensive purposes. If you try to optimize both classes for offense, you will not go very far.

If that doesn't convince you, think about this. With spell synthesis, an MT has the ability to cast miracle/wish.
As a DM, I grin to my ears if a player cast that. The results it can bear through rp alone are just way out there :D

I agree with Pendagast. The MT is just fine.

I suppose I enjoy both types of games. I just have more RP fun with teh non-minmaxed ones, while I get more laughs with the powersteaming ones.

Bagpuss I'll see if I can get you the character sheets, but you'll have to wait till I get back home from the holidays.

For now, what I can tell you is that while there are ways to increase your saving throws and gain immunity to stuff (scarab of protection, mind blank spell, etc etc), Spell DC's eventually stop increasing.
Unless you go to epic levels and go with increasing each and every stat to 50+, that is - Because when that happens, you either use a death spell to kill your enemy outright, or let the fighters do it, because damage spells that work (like disintegrate which deals since 3.5) still has a cap on damage, while fighter melee damage does not.

In my most prominent minmaxed party, the most powerful character was a wizard yes, but it was not his spells that did the work ,but his cohort due to his leadership feat - an eladrin that would smite evil for +500 on the atack roll and deal some 2000 damage total in a full attack.

The wizard could do a maximum of twin maximized maw of chaos + quickened twin maximized maw of chaos. Maw of chaos deals 1d6 per caster level. The wizard was lv 24, and had a caster level of 31 for chaotic spells. That's 124d6 maximized,756 damage on a 20ft area burst, no save.

Yes both these character had their main stats around 80.

This difference was not so visible in lesser levels but still, go check out the iaijutsu master prestige class. Its in the oriental adventures book. That's one example of a prestige class that makes fighters elite.

Now, if you want to talk about a pure fighter class, I can't talk of that, since I've not had the chance to play a minmax PF campaign yet, and nobody would follow his starting class to lv 20 in 3d, or 3.5 if he called himself an optimizer.

I don't in any way consider munchinism to be some sort of insult. I just keep a tight noose around it in my campaigns because I like to keep a realistic medieval feeling about them.

I do enjoy the occasional powerplaying minmaxing and munchkining campaign, in which I assure you, fighters are perhaps the most prominent.

Pack them with the right magical gear, prestige classes and buffs and they will put any caster to shame.

Thijs is so because after a point in a by-the-book campaign allowing splat-books and the like, the party has the option to be invulnerable to most energy-type attacks, immune to mind effecting, touch AC of around 50 (see belt of monk for a small example of how to get started with this) and other fancy trinkets such as belt of battle which in short allows you to move next to your target, activate it and then proceed to mercilessly annihilate him with your dreaded fighter-style full attack.

Its a circle game. In low powered campaigns like mine, fighters are as good as the mages.

In high power campaigns mages will rule.

In too powerful campaigns where everyone has access to virtually anything, mages are practically useless since you can find other means to do what they do via their class, you can get your saves to godlike levels, and then all that matters is how many attacks you make, and how much powerattack you can cut off to dish mroe damaeg :P

Statwise, halfelves are the weakest race, yes.

RPwise, helves are perhaps one of the most prominent races to play.

They can be liked by both humans and elves and are far more rare than the average human paste.

Halfelves have the mysterious feeling of elves about them while maintaining the +2 to any attribute they chose.

To put it in other words, who do you think is a mroe intereting individual. That human bard girl at the bar, or that half-elf bard lady singing songs of an elven forest by the fountain?

Don't forget teh arepee benefuts! iz importants!

I have always gone with weapon focus longsword or longbow if the class of the elf already has proficiency in the weapon, but that's me following the complete book of elves of 2nd edition.

Some name it overpowered, oh wel. I was never one to keep a close eye on balance.
In truth I think too much balance makes a roleplaying game feel moer like a computer game. this is also the reason I never use point-buy system.

as for it being silly to think elves watch the leaves fall from season to season, I recommend you read complete book of elves as well.

You might have trouble finding it now since its a 2nd edition book but, with some searching i'm sure you'll uncover it somewhere.

Yep, its drizzt.

Its also the reason drow started popping out of evil and wanting to do good and love the world and all other shiny things they wouldnt have thought of before.

Drizzt was great when I first read about him. Its funny to see how too much publicity can make you loathe a character.

Armors do not need to be 'balanced'. the chainshirt was historically the best armor to be wearing when you were plannign to move around a bit.

In dnd statistics, a chainshirt is not as great as a breastplate for someone who doesn't have the dex to support what the chainmail gives him leeway to.

Chainshirt is and most likely wil lcontinue to be my favorite piece of armor and, now that fighters increase maximum dex bonus on their armors, I can finally see archer specialized fighters wearing chainmail instead of getting rid of it and wearing obnoxious magic items like bracers of defense for their armor needs.

Frack that. chainmail ftw.

I found a lot of 'hire the red mantis to do it' in this thread.

Has everyone forgotten?

The mantis don't do regicide. Its the king this thread wants to keep dead!

My suggestion? If you want to keep a king dead you don't send an assasin in. You send a wizard with a valuable gem and a certain 8th level spell at the ready.

Then you store that gem someplace safe or sell it to the baatezu. Assasins are fine.

My two cents:

Mystic theurge was and still is one of the most broken prestige classes out there.

The PF revision has made it even more powerful, especially with the spell synthesis class feature.

Yes, it loses some spellcasting levels to one of the two classes, yes, it ends at 10 levels of the progress leaving you as an 'incomplete' dual class person but, you have to stop for a second and wonder, who else has the array of spells a mystic theurge has?

The minmax way of playing a theurge is to select one of your caster classes as your main and keep the other one as the support/buff caster cass. I've seen a sorc/cleric mystic theurges annihilate parties on his own, but that one went a bit overboard with a spell called 'ruin delver's fortune' and the persitent spell feat.

other than that, you can't really call a mystic theurge an underpowered class. Overpowered is what it is, if anything, and the requirements are just fine. Personally, I am thinking of dissalowing this prc entirely since it ends up being real eye candy for any priest or wizard.

These guys seriously never run out of spells.

Clarification: The paladin did not bother to lay on hands in the PF version of the fight also because that would mean not using smite.

Thinking about it, if lay on hands were to be a swift action for any healiing purposes, i could see it replacing the 3.5 version of lay on hands in my campaigns.

Otherwise, well. I'll wait for the next revision before switching it to teh PF one, in my official campaigns.

My perspective:

The paladin is perhaps the only class in PF that I do not like the changes.

I simply prefer the good old standard 3.5 paladin as it is, perhaps with a few changes to how many times/day the smite evil should work, and the final benefit for hitting lv 20.

Still, I playtested the changes recently in a 3-session adventure I set up for 3 of my players at lv 15. One of them played a paladin, the 2nd a barbarian, the 3d a fighter, using the revised rules for barbarian and paladin, and the standard rules for the fighter from the PF beta.

Here is what I gathered:

The paladin lay on hands ability now lasts longer than it did in 3.5 but it still does not hold the awesome power it did, being able to channel your full charge to someone immediately. sure enough, a 15th level paladin heals 7d6 hps which is a hefty chunk, but this forced the paladin (being the only healer) to use lay on hands almsot every round to keep the party alive, so in any major encounter the paladin was not showing his melee capabilities

In a similar situation with a 3.5e paladin, (who had a cha of 28) he could instantly heal 135 hps, he would wait until someone was majorly injured to heal him for most if not all of that ammount, giving him the rest of the rounds free to open the can of smiting - I liked that more.

Smite evil as an ability that lasts for more than one attack is something I was originally unsure about.
Seeing it in play, I liked it even less. True enough, the ability makes the paladin a lot more fierce in a fight against evil but I always liked the concept of smite as something that you use to boost a single attack - not something that just lasts through the round. The paladins I've played usually used smites after their first attack to make sure all attacks would hit, or only with the first two, adding full power attack for more damage - Strategies and smart playing like that becomes annuled with the new cookie-cutting smite.
It also does not feel like smiting to me anymore as much as activating some sort of holy power buff.

My thoughts about smite:
1) Leave it as it was in 3.5. Add a feat that adds double paladin level to damage if you feel its too weak. A non epic such feat, that is.

2) Bring Divine Power in PF. The feat that allows the paladin to expend a then-turn attempt now-channel energy to add his charisma modifier to damage for the round as a swift action, and make smite part of an attack, as ti was. This, stacking with smite makes up for lofty damage numbers that push the paladin back to what he should be, in my eyes: A burst-damage dealer vs evil.

3) Scrap the idea of including AC in smite. Name it something else. Don't involve defensive abilities into smite, or rename it. Smite evil has a very specific purpose: To smite evil. Giving it all these new parameters is taking its concept away and making it look like a full christmas tree. Just go with a new ability called Aegis of light x times/day, but leave smite alone.
There was a feat for this called Divine Shield or something, which existed in 2 versions, swift action and standard action. Both did the same thing, give the paladin a sacred bonus to ac equal to paladin's charisma modifier, the swift action was for 1 round, the standard action was for charisma modifier rounds.

Concluding on smite: I suggest instead of making all these changes to the paladin class abilities, just incorporate these feats into play or, if you do not like them as feats a paladin must take, put them in as class abilities but don't make smite a swiss knife that does everything at once and is cheap to boot.

--

Back to the playtesting: To make for an interesting encounter that would check things up, I had the party run accross 3 mirrors of opposition. They each picked an enemy and fought with them. The real paladin was pitted against the mirror barbarian, the real fighter was pitted against the mirror paladin, and the real barbarian was pitted against the mirror fighter.

Conclusions:
The real paladin obliterated the mirror barbarian who, being evil could not survive the pounding of all those rounds of full smite combined with power attack.

The real fighter whopped the mirror paladin. He took the initiative, and trips/disarms/sunders put the evil side of the holy fighter out of commission. He did do a number on the fighter with smite fists (which, for flavor purposes were not considered unarmed attacks provoking an attack of opportunity, because I dislike the idea of a smite fist being something that would be considered an 'unarmed attack, but either way the paladin lost in the end so this is not important. with full rules he would have just lost faster.), but in the end the fighter prevailed by making good use of his feat array.

The real barbarian blew away the real fighter who, paniced by the barbarian's howl rage ability, dropped his shield and sword and was pinned to the floor by knockbacks and the like until he was dead, dead dead.

-

Of course as DM I had a general suspicion that this is how things would have come out, which is why I arranged the pairings this way. All in all, what bothered me was the ease through which the paladin creamed the barbarian, but with smite lasting for a full attack and the paladin's sword through the celestial union being made a speed weapon, the damage combined with power attack was pretty far out there.

The ease with which the barbarian demolished the mirror fighter also surprised me but then again that was all in the intimidate check. Had he failed to intimidate the mirror fighter, he would have been able to harass the barb with his feats to criminal porportions,as fighters often do.

For fun and games, I ran the paladin vs barb fight again, this time using the 3.5 paladin. The result did not change, but the paladin had to play a bit smarter with his smites. He was out of smites after teh encounter unlike in the PF version, and he was wounded more, but he made use of his lay on hands to get out of it.

In the pathfinder fight, the paladin did not bother using lay on hands, knowing that the barb's damage output could easily wipe the 7d6 healing (averaging 24.5 hps) in one hit.

All in all it was a battle of who would roll their critical threat range more, since bless weapon for the paladin and a rage ability from the barbarian both automatically confirm their crits.

----

Thats it for now, I hope it helps. Let me know if you found this of any use, and I'll run another.

The mirror of opposition encounter was courtesy of mr. halaster blackstaff and his wonderful undermountain. The mage grinned in paranoid delight watching this fight in the miniature set of his cute dungeon that he holds in his own very last level.

PS:
I always found the idea of teleporting horses funny. It kind of breaks the spirit of fantasy roleplaying to me, teleporting horses. That however is strictly point of view, and the reason I encouraged the paladin to take the other form of celestial bond.

What bothers me isn't so much that this ability is powerful, but that its part of the universal school.

Does anyone else feel that the benefits for being a non-specialized wizard grant more benefits than any specialist?

The bonus gained by not preparing prohibited school spells are often light, too.

IMO, having the ability to automatically enhance your spells with metamagic feats like the universalist can starting at lv 8 is easily the most prominent ability on any of the specialist lists and, it is one of the things a specialist must 'sacrifice' along with 2 schools in order to gain access to an ability such as '+5 armor bonus at lv 20' which can already be almost achieved with an extended mage armor spell at lv 12.

Furthermore, universalist mages benefit from chosing spells from any school as their spell-like ability spells, whereas specialists are limited to their own school which makes specialists look even less attractive.

Essentially, what specialists 'gain' as opposed to universalists is:
1) A list of abilities that seem inferior or at best, up to par with the list of the universalists' abilities.
2) A limitation on their selection of spell-like abilities
3) A free buff available only when spells from prohibited schools are not prepared, that can for some cases be replaced by a spell or two.

My suggestion would be to at least give specialists their extra slot back, and to reduce their prohibited schools to one, making it truly prohibited instead of this 'half assed' prohibitation that currently exists, if you pardon my expression.

In general, I strongly feel specialists should be superior to universalists in some aspects, at the cost of versatility. This does not seem to be the case. Instead, specializing seems to be like willingly gimping your wizard.

Yeah, converting these adventures to PF rules takes a bit of time in some occasions.

Especially when you're dealing with a cleric, wizard, sorcerer or barbarian.

Not to mention if the cleric is a dwarf or the wizard an elf, you have to increase their wis/int by 2, which means more spells and, in the elf case, more skills!
You usually don't care for an npc you'll run for 2-5 combat rounds enough to add the new skills but I like being by the book to the letter :p

In all seriousness though, If a small pdf companion to the actual books could come with buying them, which included a list of npcs in the other version, I'd be much obliged. I understand the adventure path books don't have the space to include both versions and that its a fuss to build each npc both ways, but maybe you could do with just the major ones.

On that note, if there was a forum, I'd be willing to write the conversions but I suggested the idea of a pdf companion so that forums would remain spoiler-free for players.

I'll agree with you about locational weaknesses but I will go as far as to say that its not all that goes in a sneak attack vs a normal attack.

A sneak attack needs specific circumstances in order to be valid. That's why if the rogue crits on a target she hits with a normal attack, she does not apply critical hit damage and, to me, the reason a critical sneak attack does not deal double sneak damage is because you exploit the weak point to its fullest and at the same time your blow was hard enough to cause more collateral damage on the surroundings.

To be clearer, If the rogue, when hitting the same areas the fighter would cannot sneak attack, the fighter can't either.

If the fighter knew how to hit weak points then sure, he would be able to cause more damage via sneak attacks (read: if he gained a rogue level) but he would still be unable to cause more damage through a lucky strike in whatever he is hitting, if it is immune to criticals.

Meh. I'm getting hungry and losing my ability to make clear points, but i think the idea gets through.

Shouldve been merissiel. [-(

God I love this art, btw.
Such a long road ahead of me.

and the Evoker (specialist wizard) was actually scary..

They were called Invokers, and they had to start the game with 16 con.

That for a wizard in 2nd ed was scary on its own, since you stopped rolling for hps at level 10 and just got 1 for every level (unless you were a fighter, where you got 1 + con modifier. Also the fighter was the only class to benefit in hps from a con score higher tahn 16.)

On that note, at 20th level of 3d or 3.5, magic missile seems pretty useless. My mages usually cast it to see if the target has spell turning or something but in 2nd, where your hps at lv 20 were like 50 if you were an average mage, Magic missile was still good.

Enough reminessence though.

I'll put it this way. Fighters suck or are great depending on how you play your world and what you allow your players to have in their hands.

A fighter in a minmax munchkin world will end up sucking yes, unless he opts for the more 'twinked' prestige classes like the iaijutsu master.

A fighter in a campaign such as those I usually run where I only allow feats and spells from the core books (and in my latest campaign, only PF books) is going to be just as good as anyone else.

The most major perk of the fighter is his versatility. He has so many feats to chose from he can go from extremely focused on one thing to having a few feats in every area, making him part ranger (track feat), part archer, part 2-handed, part sword-shield, part monk, and even a scary barbrawler who goes about and deals 1d8 damage with a chair in a bar that crits at 19-20. All of this in one character.

Well it depends on how you view critical hits, I suppose.

To me critical hits are lucky strikes on a vital area, unlike sneak attacks which are carefully placed hits on areas the rogue knows will hurt its target. Organs for living things and, with the new rules, cogs or powercores on constructs or golems.

For those looking for a rule representation and explanation of this:
A rogue that crits on a normal attack won't apply sneak attack damage, so its safe to say that crits and sneak attacks are different things.