VargrBoartusk's page

On the other side of the coin from the general consensus here...
After doinking around with the playtest for ten sessions or so I'm going to have to go with none. Absolutely no converting anything to it, ever. PF 2nd isn't my table's cup of tea, especially mine personally as I'm by far the most picky about what I do and don't like in a system. In fact I'm the only one at the table who just outright can't have fun in the game if I think the system is bad <by which I mean I find it to have negative fun value not be poorly designed per se.> Two of the six in my group plan on getting it, as they enjoyed it and plan on playing it with other groups/PFS. Amusingly enough, to me at least, is it's the same two out of the six of us who liked D&D 5th Ed. enough to buy into it.

These four categories feel related to Bartle's model of 4 player types:

Quote:

Achievers regard points-gathering and rising in levels as their main goal, and all is ultimately subserviant to this.

(...)
Explorers delight in having the game expose its internal machinations to them. They try progressively esoteric actions in wild, out-of-the-way places, looking for interesting features (ie. bugs) and figuring out how things work.
(...)
Socialisers are interested in people, and what they have to say. The game is merely a backdrop, a common ground where things happen to players.
(...)
Killers get their kicks from imposing themselves on others. This may be "nice", ie. busybody do-gooding, but few people practice such an approach because the rewards (a warm, cosy inner glow, apparently) aren't very substantial. Much more commonly, people attack other players with a view to killing off their personae (hence the name for this style of play). The more massive the distress caused, the greater the killer's joy at having caused it.

Hmm.. I've never seen this before.. It's sort of like a non joke version of the REAL gamer types.

It think it is played like different games, but not like what you describe.

At low levels they are like regular people.

Then they become more like action heroes

Then they become more like super heros.

Later they basically become almost god-like.

As they go up in level you can't throw the same stories at them.

An investigation that takes days or weeks to solve with skills gets taken care of a lot faster with divination magic as an example.

The castle wall that keeps them out can be flown over or just dismantled later on. Eventually, they just teleport, and the wall is about as close to being a barrier as grass is.

Other challenges become insignificant in the same way.

I don't disagree with any of this but that's not quite what I was referring to. This is more of a power level thing and I was going more towards peoples different ideas on how important the rules are, how official the FAQs are, acceptability of 3PP, and how much 'balance', ie how powerful the characters are in relation to each other, is important for the game to have.

Basically the 'as a guideline group.' are the people who don't focus much on either the rules or the setting of the game they play in and are getting together for funsies more then anything. Alternately they're the type of gamers who usually play Amber Diceless, Noblis, or Wraethu. In either case system mastery and setting are far less important to them then such things as character growth, communal storytelling, beer, or that cute girl with glasses who invited me to come check it out while we at the bar last night.
This group doesn't get a detailed definition because they aren't so much a way of playing as a group of people who aren't actually interested in playing the game as written for whatever reason but are there and sorta going through the numbers anyways.

So I've been kicking this idea around for a while since there is usually a bunch of disconnect and I personally use it to try and help avoid the headaches it can cause.

Pathfinder works best to me when viewed not as one game but several and i'm going to try to touch on them as i see them. There might be more and there might be less but these are the ones that work best for me.

Pathfinder as 3.X Framework
In this type pathfinder is a bare bones mechanics set you use to provide a rules framework to the game you want to run. This is the default assumption of most of the big hardback books. In this rules set class names are skins you use to define your characters abilities and how they interact with the world you're in. Fluff and crunch are disconnected. Fey foundling is a way to get better heals, Goblins are not all comical pyromaniacs and your character can claim paladin/gunslinger/wizard/ninja/samuraihood without having a single level in the actual class. Feat and trait names try to be generic because they are meant as mechanical options and while Golarion examples are given it's largely contextual or as filler information. Fluff where it is present is also somewhat barebones and largely easy to ignore. For example my bloodrager has the dragon bloodline because I like what it give me more then because he had an actual dragon ancestor. Rulings here are simple straightforward and based off of rules interactions. Math is king here and nebulous concepts lead to exploitation. Let's use the following example of tail. Tail is not a thing covered in the rules. Kobolds from a mechanical point of view do not have a tail since having or not having a tail does literally nothing. If I take a feat that gives me the ability to make an attack with my tail it is no different from a feat that gives me a bite or a claw attack that i also do not have. the human heritage feat to gain access to the kobold tail attack is fine since 'tailed' is not a race trait that is toggled on and off like say darkvision or weapon familiarity. House rules are not really as much of an issue because your adding or subtracting stuff as you want to make your game. 3PP, The race building rules, it's all good since basically it's all house rules.

Pathfinder as Golarion
This is the middle of the road. It's also the default assumption of most of the APs and splat books. You're playing in the official game setting so fluff and crunch work together and the names of things have context in the world. You can't take traits pertaining to being from Cheliax as an andoran, wizards and sorcerers are mechanically and socially different with wizards using magic from studying books and sorcerers having magic in the blood reflected both in the rules and the knowledge of the world. As the GM since this is a home game you have final say. Maybe in your world osrion has a different king or maybe Geb is helping Clexiax take over the River Kingdoms. They designed the sandbox and you bought it so now you can tweak it but if you try to bend it to far it's not going to be the same sandbox anymore. Now let's go back to the tail. Kobolds in golarion have tails, there's still no mechanical justification for a tail but artwork and fluff back this up. Kobolds can take a feat to attack with their tails. The human heritage feat does not call out that if you take it for kobold feats you gain a tail so a human taking it to take the tail attack probably will not work unless you work it out with your GM that the heritage feat gave you a useless fluff tail like the kobolds have. It's more of a GM fiat sort of thing. The rules aren't so much different as the assumptions are and fluff relevance has mechanical fallout. House rules happen, it is after all still a home game but, but for the most part RAW and RAI matter. This type of pathfinder is where thing like 'Virtual number of hands' tend to crop up the most.

Pathfinder as A living campaign
Pathfinder Society games are set for a very specific balance level. Weather or not you agree with how it's balanced or that it is balanced don't matter much. What they shoot for is what they shoot for and your opinions don't matter. Not only do the rules have relevance but some options are different or just not allowed to better facilitate it's particular playstyle. Not many rules are seemingly designed for this but FAQs and Errata seem *strongly* influenced by this as it is the largest collection of feedback available to the company. If you never had the problems they make the changes for in your home game it doesn't matter. Because of the balance aims here some things are just flat out no. Back to the tail example. Here it doesn't work. Virtual number of hands problems sort of occur but are less of a problem because at the end of the day this is their sandbox and your just building castles in it.

Pathfinder as a guideline
You have friends, dice, snacks and the books. You don't care about making your own world, you don't obsess over exact rulings. Beer and pretzels and good stories are your goal so all the rules discussions are kinda pointless for you. You're probably on these forums for the same reason crash fans go to nascar rallies. YaY explosions. No one really care about tail attacks.

I think of 'adventurer' like i di 'football player' A quarterback, linebacker, running back, and kicker all have vastly different skillsets, purposes and training methods. When talking about the team as a whole it's way easier to have a term for them as a collective.

The last group I actually played with was an halforc brawler, a halfling cleaner investigator, A cleric who's religious preview was solving logic puzzles and bringing lost ancient wisdom to light, and a lunatic hedge wizard sorcerer who focused on conjuration and illusion magic. We called ourselves a freelance adaptable solution providers.

My first 3.0 group was a half ogre barbarian strongman, twin human rogue contortionist acrobats, a druid animal handler, A bard based entirely off of Elvira and my Elven carnival barker/ringmaster/snake oil salesman Necromancer with the leadership feat who made a side income reanimating plow animals as zombies to help farm production. That group called itself Dr. Karrodius's Wandering Artists of the Whimsical Macabre.
They all likely would have nodded if anyone asked if they'd say they were adventurers.

Treantmonk wrote:

Reverse creep isn't really possible. If every option in a splatbook is universally trumped by abilities in the existing material, then power levels have stayed exactly the same.

Soon as a single ability in a splatbook allows you to do something you could not do in the existing material, and is balanced, then you've increased character versatility, and the power level potential has increased (just a bit).

Generally speaking, a splatbook induces power creep, it's pretty much inevitable if you are providing mechanical options. The question isn't as much "if" it produces power creep, the question is "how much?"

That said, if splatbooks have interesting options that improve a player's ability to make unique characters, and make the game more fun, then a bit of power creep is a small price to pay right?

It's interesting how this philosophy has been proven incorrect over time as Paizo starts actually nerfing things or creating feats that limit stuff that was assumed to be part of a skill.

Turns out it is possible, it just has to be a lot more explicit than "this feat is a bad one".

Or just full out rewriting certain archetypes *cough*scarredwitchdoctor*cough* to make them less appealing when their new class has a core mechanic that is an arguably worse version of their shtick.

I think UAE's point is more that the flavor text of the Inquisitor class is more appropriate as a PrC. Mechanically, the class known as "Inquisitor" is an incredible base class.

Personally, I'm a bit more 1E on this, I suppose, in the sense that I personally don't see you as fully being a member of your class until you reach like 3rd or 4th level (anyone else remember the level-based titles? Like, a level 1 cleric was an Acolyte, a level 2 cleric was an Adept, you weren't a Priest until 3rd level? A level 1 thief was an Apprentice. A ranger didn't earn the Ranger title until 8th level, and a paladin didn't earn the Paladin title until 9th level, etc?)

Classes, to me, are more abstractions compared to the much more fixed natures of prestige classes.

3.x in general seems to go back and forth on how ingame it wants class names to be.

For the most part my characters are never 'A member of their class' weather its a base class or a prestige class. The class is just a shorthand name for the collection of mechanical abilities that are appropriate to my theme. If the prestige class in question requires membership in a particular organization that's different but i also play games in Golarion so rarely it hardly comes up.

Hell back in AD&D I had a troll PC who introduced himself as a wizard because he used a greatsword instead of his claws and thus the other trolls thought his improved killing ability was the result of spellcasting. That his only spell was 'Whack 'em with shiney hurty stick.' in no way made him less of a mage in his mind.

As to the original question I loves me some rage prophet. Divine Buff and Bash has been one of my favorite ways to sling dice dice for the past several years and I'm just not super huge on the Warpriest.

Air0r wrote:

As a DM, I generally open the floodgates and tell my players "play whatever you want, even 3PP. Just let me see what you want to do first."

Asa DM, I generally just give the players Core Rulebook and whatever supplements I have on hand. They just get confused by optional, extraneous and cross referenced rules on d20pfsrd, and forget what their character can actually do. Do you not experience this and how do you avoid it?

I usually don't run into it as a problem since i ask my players what they want their characters to do then try to find a way to make it work in the rules. After that its jut a matter of a character sheet flash cards for spells or wordier abilities and the occasional hint. Rarely for X uses per day I've had chits when dealing with players who just could not keep track of resource pools

So one of the big things causing a lot of this is the general diversifying of role playing game themes. D&D and many of the other old school games were rules for combat and a vague skill system plugged in and often ignored. As times went by some people likes the beer and pretzels monster killing and others liked the detailed character acting. Some new games arose to meet the new demand which drew in more new gamers and so on. Fast forward till today and we have a bunch of different schools of gamer thought that don't all jive with every game out there.
Pathfinder ad a descendant of D&D is a combat heavy dungen crawly sort of game. Combat is a huge majority of the system crunch and no small part of the campaign. Reasonably it can be expected to take up from one to 3 fourths of any gaming session. So the d20 PTB decided to make it that every class had nearly equal opportunity to be useful in combat because players were no longer willing to sit out half a game waiting for their turn. This isn't necessarily a bad thing on their part... Ask anyone who had to wait thirty minutes in a shadowrun game to finish the Decker's 2 seconds of real time battle to do something in the middle of a fire fight how frustrating it can be. Expecting this game to be a collaborative narrative crafting game is not something I'll tell you you can't do, but I will say it's sort of like trying to use a football as a potato masher. Sure it can work with the right effort and setup but that's an improvised use of it. If that sort of game is what you want you might be better served with a different system and/or a different gaming group.
That being said I know that in the world of finding games beggars can't always be choosers and it's not fair that everyone can't always get what they want out of a game but games have to some degree specialize or they become to unwieldy or unfocused to be fun for anyone.
Personally I'm blessed in that my players all trust me enough that they just play in my games and have fun at this point and trust that I'll set the pace to match their capabilities depending on the group and genre i'm fiddling about with at the time.

Really the big problem is 90's asskicking movie ninja and fudal japanese assassin ninja share a name but very little in the way of a common skill set. Seriously the turtles archvillain organization was way more ninja then they ever were... You just kinda have to have some background in stealth to fight a shadowy underworld organization. Add in the usual comic book problem of every different author puts his own spin on and emphasizes different traits of the characters and genre so often it's hard to pin them down after all the years and versions. Personally I actually like the recent movies of them because they were all visibly different in a way beyond their bandanas. Hell Eastman even said at one point the different weapons were more of a way to consistently differentiate the characters in a B&W comic then anything.

*stuff*

Mikey might need the dex to damage.. He's the one who's all about acrobatics and extreme sports.. Also considering how he uses his chucks <and in the later seasons of the cartoon the grappling hook because of all the anti nunchuck stuff that cropped up around the world> He's the most likely to be a finesse fighter.. Also Leo might want some refluffed sawtooth sabres instead of katana just to not tank his attack bonus.

I don't remember who or where but one of the writers in another post had mentioned that it was because the book was written before the PCable dark folk were a thing.

I know it started sooner but I mostly blame the 3rd Ed Miniatures handbook for a large portion of the more irksome positioning and movement problems...

Honestly I've never understood the whole 'I can only swing more than once if I stand still' thing. Especially in melee combat you're moving while you swing rather than taking one step left and flailing your sword around a bunch. I'm experimenting with just let everyone get their full allotment of attacks at any point along their movement as a full round action. Since charging actually gets you a double move and 1 attack there's still a reason to do it and letting vital strike and such function on charges helps it a bit.

I was talking about this in another thread.. To me it seems like in most D&D clones good and evil are both objective and subjective... I mean yeah paladins can detect it but thankfully not every bad guy walks around twirling his mustache and tieing nice girls to railroad tracks. Evil when it knows it's evil and goes along wallowing in it's own crapulence is just boring and tacky. For some people it's a fun form of escapism to kill the bad guy and take his loot and XPs guilt free, for other people we just roll our eyes and violently sigh at the genre trope before murder hoboing it for a gear upgrade.

So I'm super late to this party but I just found all these evil iconics and then read all this discussion so this might get kind of rambly.

As to this Iconic and why I think she's evil is as many people have mentioned her utter lack of empathy and her willingness to use brutality to inflict her world views on people who disagree. <More on this in the evil chunk to follow.> It's in her willingness to consider feelings or motivations or circumstance. They broke the law. Period. They deserve what they get. That she never pauses to go is this taking it too far is why she's evil.

D&D evil from everything I've seen mostly boils down to the more willing you are to disregard the feelings, rights, lives, etc. etc. etc. of other thinking people the more you lean towards E. If you dedicate your life to making other people happy you're G. If you focus on making yourself happy but don't screw anyone else over ? Welcome to N-town. If your willing to do anything to anyone for your desires? E all the way. Yes, this is a great oversimplification but this is as close to a baseline as I can break it down to before the alignment system starts arguing with itself. So basically, D&D evil boils down to pure selfishness with some fancy window dressing to make it seem more profound.

Now we get to the super fun parts. Since in pathfinder good and evil are both subjective and objective with paladins being able to detect it but people still occasionally doing it in the furtherance of good aims. Really no one honestly thinks they're the bad guy not to mention mustache-twirling villainy as a virtue 'I do evil for the evil of it' villains are the height of slapdash hack writing and are never as interesting as someone with actual relatable motivations, even if the lack of relatability makes it easier to square away one's feelings over stabbing the crap out of them for their loot and XP. This leads to all sorts of fun if odd mental space where objective evil is subjective good that leaves a lot of fun space on the ethical dance floor to get funky in. Like for example, your goal is to make the world a good happy safe place for everyone to live in but you'll gladly murder everyone who violates a law to do it. Viola, you have an Evil person with a Good goal and a liberating amount of grey area for those of us who are tired of the usual Hero's vs a badass Snydly Whiplash paradigm popular child-friendly fantasy shoves into us like needles into the eye.

As to the torture is evil round about discussion I can see how some people would believe torture is evil and with subjective morality being what it is I'm not going to argue it, but I have to put in that if such things are always evil then at times evil is a required tool to deal with otherwise unwinnable situations and people who could't torture the crap out of someone to accomplish a goal that *must* be accomplished, such as the saving of multiple lives, should be thankful there are those of us who are willing compartmentalise, all so the lily white hands of someone else can stay clean. People who aren't awful who have had to dip their pen into the monster ink from time to time tend to feel bad enough about it that calling them evil is gauche. It's necessarily an incorrect judgement but, after all, there's no need to torture them about it.

Which brings me to my last point. Most people don't usually flock towards evil Campaigns to 'Just be bad guys and kick puppies.' It's because the traditional hero paradigm has tropes that give you much less moral wiggle room to play in and pull apart the psyche of one's character for drama and or catharsis.

>Is optimising characters actually suboptimal?

What kind of loaded question is that? Before anyone can decide if something is "suboptimal", you first have to define the criterion for which you are optimising, because "optimal" thing is just a thing that has a minimum(or a maximum) of that criterion. E.g. damage per round, or fun per second, or thrown bears per minute, or whatever. You can't "optimise" in general.

So, OP, what is your criterion?

Whatever it was before it is now thrown bears per minute. Full stop.

Then there is the fact that what 'people' would do is different for each particular value of 'people'. While technically an average person exists, I'm not sure I've ever met that person.

To a degree, abnormality is normal.

For a lot of things this is more applicable though. The question is less 'What soda do you prefer?' and more 'Your drinking soda through a straw do you put the straw to the left, right, or center it ?' If there's a suitably overwhelming predilection for one action it's what I'd start with because it's 'normal' if all three are about the same then they're all 'normal' and I have a list to pick from. Lists of likely responses are nice to have. They're how I'm able to function socially. It's sort of like texas hold'em with conversation. Outliers still happen but it's uncommon enough they're more interesting than surprising but the percentages are visible. I actually at one point had a really good track record guessing how strangers mt friends would pick at random would respond to 'Hi" ie whether they'd just say hello back or 'how you doin' and the like. Also you'd be surprised at how often even abnormal people still behave 'normally' <relative to age, gender, culture and such> in common everyday situations. Which I assume ambushes would be for bandits.

VargrBoartusk wrote:

A big part of the problem I run into when it comes to encounters and tactics as a GM and a player is I'm a somewhat unhelpful blend of freakishly smart, mildly autistic, irritatingly unmotivated, situationally lazy, and of strange humor. What this odd egotistical diatribe boils down to is I have no earthly idea how a person of 'normal Intelligence' thinks. This, in turn, makes for a bastard of a time trying to not 'oversmart' what I play.

Yeah I find I have this problem as well, specifically with int 10-13 levels. Int 14 is perfectly workable and int 9 and below is pretty easy to handle, but since my closest real-life metric for normal people have all been complete morons it's hard to tell what an average person would not think of for tactics.

I considered polling people on the street or facebook but I already get in enough trouble for my attempts to study the average human creature in it's natural habitats. I hardly wanted to tac on 'Hey you don't seem like your a particularly brilliant sort of person... How would you initiate combat with a group of four people wearing metal and carrying oversized cutlery and potentially possessed of the ability to rewrite reality in a variety of ways but all with the end goal of bopping your thinker out of your pooter'.

VargrBoartusk wrote:

wraithstrike wrote:

VargrBoartusk wrote:

wraithstrike wrote:

In an actual AP a human with an intelligence of 3 actually had PC class levels. That is all you...

To be fair any level of intelligence using any tactics is a house rule as I've yet to see an Int score to tactical option chart in any sort of official publication..

Did you really not understand what I was trying to say? <---not being sarcastic. I am really asking so I can explain again if I have to.

Understand ? Yes. Strictly agree with ? No. Calling any form of NPC tactics 'house rules' is sort of awkward to my way of thinking, It's almost on par with calling my choice of a particular accent for a NPC a house rule. I'll make a very reluctant nod to published APs having tactics as rules instead of just guidelines on how not to be a derp. I tend to not think about them since I've yet to use a single AP for any of the actual adventure material mostly just pilfering the odd magical item, monster, or prestige class from them.

Then you should have just quoted my entire text vs selective text and trying to argue out of context, however I am grateful that you didn't put a complete spin on what I said.

I will add the rest of it

"... which is fine, but it should not be presented as "not legal/right"."

To clear things up my main point was that anyone saying you are mentally hanicapped at a score of ____ or that you can't do ____ with a score of ____ needs to realize that is not in the rules, and should not present it as an "actual rule".

It was how the auto quote thing cut it off and not a deliberate attempt at misrepresentation. My reply was because calling that a 'house rule' made my brain pucker a little. I really just deleted to the start of the sentence I was replying to and didn't think to look at where it was cut off on my reply post cause... Well, lazy, mostly.

A big part of the problem I run into when it comes to encounters and tactics as a GM and a player is I'm a somewhat unhelpful blend of freakishly smart, mildly autistic, irritatingly unmotivated, situationally lazy, and of strange humor. What this odd egotistical diatribe boils down to is I have no earthly idea how a person of 'normal Intelligence' thinks. This, in turn, makes for a bastard of a time trying to not 'oversmart' what I play.
The closest I can come is cobbled together from recollections of my multitude of fistfights and such in my early teens or bar fights when I got older and reviewing accounts of small unit engagements to try to gauge an array of average choices and responses.

Dumb is easier to do for me than normal. For dumb I tend to go with a simple, fast, and visceral response to emotional stimuli... Basically the things my brain warns me against as too short term or not worth doing on a risk vs reward scale I just do. It might not be accurate for the right reasons but it does the trick.

Animals are fairly easy since they do a fair amount on instinct and kneejerk reaction to situational awareness. Barring the odd outlier like a surprising number of shark bites are less out of a desire to eat people and more because they use the mouth to see how things feel, or so I remember hearing at one point on the discovery channel, animal behaviors are a good deal more predictable.

When I try to 'just turn up the tactics' I have an irritating tendency to over perform and lay the hammer down on either my GM or players. As a player I tend to play for character development and growth over 'winning d&d' so I'm more than happy to die making a stupid choice that fit the character. As a GM ? It's way more simple and often less brutal to cheat a few rolls and fudge some numbers to inflate the difficulty and drama when it's what the players ask for than it is to get all Gen. Patton on someone who doesn't know what they're in for

VargrBoartusk wrote:

wraithstrike wrote:

In an actual AP a human with an intelligence of 3 actually had PC class levels. That is all you...

To be fair any level of intelligence using any tactics is a house rule as I've yet to see an Int score to tactical option chart in any sort of official publication..

Did you really not understand what I was trying to say? <---not being sarcastic. I am really asking so I can explain again if I have to.

Understand ? Yes. Strictly agree with ? No. Calling any form of NPC tactics 'house rules' is sort of awkward to my way of thinking, It's almost on par with calling my choice of a particular accent for a NPC a house rule. I'll make a very reluctant nod to published APs having tactics as rules instead of just guidelines on how not to be a derp. I tend to not think about them since I've yet to use a single AP for any of the actual adventure material mostly just pilfering the odd magical item, monster, or prestige class from them.

In an actual AP a human with an intelligence of 3 actually had PC class levels. That is all you...

To be fair any level of intelligence using any tactics is a house rule as I've yet to see an Int score to tactical option chart in any sort of official publication..

VargrBoartusk wrote:

For a general idea of intelligence I tend to multiply the score by ten and compare it to the Stanford–Binet IQ score. It works out fairly well and has similar distribution to the standard 3d6 die rolls bell curve. That being said it's an even rougher estimate of capability then IQ normally is but it puts your average orc at the smarts of Forrest Gump who was a completely capable individual and a somewhat accomplished soldier and businessman.

'Mama always said life was like a box of half elf ears... You never know if it's gonna have a point.'

That's a bad system for measuring intelligence. Since the difference between a person with a 7 INT and a person with 11 INT is only 10% success rate. 10%!

You're also forgetting the two fewer skills. The skill point system being stupid making everyone with a case of the derp an idiot savant does little to dissuade me from using t as a 'Will this NPC think to dig a pit and put spikes in it' guideline

For a general idea of intelligence I tend to multiply the score by ten and compare it to the Stanford–Binet IQ score. It works out fairly well and has similar distribution to the standard 3d6 die rolls bell curve. That being said it's an even rougher estimate of capability then IQ normally is but it puts your average orc at the smarts of Forrest Gump who was a completely capable individual and a somewhat accomplished soldier and businessman.
'Mama always said life was like a box of half elf ears... You never know if it's gonna have a point.'

Frankly, it really Gauls me to tell you that I don't know where France's name came from.

I see what you did there...

Anyways onto the main point of the thread basically what it boils down to is weapons in this game aren't really meant to represent real world weapons in any way other than vaguely. No one wants his fighter to dual wield kragsmerlofs so they gave their collection of stats real world appropriate names. What they are is a collection of stats throwing weapons are less statistically awesome then melee and ranged weapons because if they weren't then there would be no point if having the other options... basically if the throwing axe were as good as the short bow, but could be used in melee or the hand axe, but could be used at range why would you ever take the less versatile weapons. Then you take it to the next logical step, if feats were in place to bring these weapon styles to parity with the others those feats would be more powerful then the feats for the other weapon styles so either way you're making one subset of things objectively more powerful the similar options in other categories.
Now there is an argument to be made for 'If I'm just being up to par with these other styles does that really matter ?' Well... *probably* not so long as you make it pay for the versatility in other areas like having greater investment costs. since money at high levels is so laughably easy to come by then feats and class features are the only way to actually do this. If that makes classes with more spesific feat selections not able to do itI think it's a small price to pay.

Edit @ VargrBoartusk: "+2 bonus on melee attack rolls, melee damage rolls, thrown weapon damage rolls" - how...

Don't the static stance rage stance powers just buff damage and/or accuracy? I don't have access to the book right this second but I was pretty sure they weren't melee specific. Those kinds of numbers tend to better apply to ranged combats ten billion arrows philosophy.. more attacks thrown the more uses you get from those smaller bonuses adding up.

Continuing with the side note.

Weirdo wrote:

cablop wrote:

As a side note, with the other comments i was getting here, i am starting to think the UBarbarian is a sidegrade too and not an upgrade. But i have to wait and see it for myself before making me an idea.

The UBarbarian is supposed to be a sidegrade, because the barbarian's overall power level was fine. They just wanted to make some tweaks, like preventing the barbarian from dying when they stop raging and their temporary HP goes away, and getting rid of the "once per rage" powers that encouraged rage cycling.

A quick review of both classes let me think it is a very very small upgrade; cause danger sense is more useful than trap sense. It is more a tweak and polish thing.

What i really love to see is an Unchained Fighter class.

It's a definite side grade. Some rage powers were improved or made into 'rage stances' but rage cycling still gave you more bang for the buck. They also stealth nerfed a few of the more OP rage powers. Also new rage scales better with bows but worse with two handing a big weapon. I dislike it because it has a higher floor, which barbies didn't really need you were really bad at paying attention, overextend your hitpoints while raging and died and a lower ceiling because the powers that were turned into rage stances and last all rage give smaller numbers then cycling did and any lowered ceiling on something that has no 9th level spell casting annoys me.

Thinking of monks and monk-like characters in fiction, I can think of as many drunken monks and monks who can't resist temptation as wise / high willpower monks.

The defining factor of monk-like martial-artists is usually their amazing dexterity. The defining factor of other 'monks' is their refusal to resort to physical violence.

To be fair how many of those were

Plus, being quick is also a big part of the monk legend ("snatch the pebble from my hand") and we're not talking about giving a monk a poor reflex save to encourage them to keep their Dex up above 14.

This. Though mostly for the quote.. Kwai Chang Caine is more or less what I think the Monk class was trying to emulate rather than any of the wuxia action movie guys. It's a very westernized pulp genre monk more than any sort of honest attempt at an accurate cultural depiction.

Not a single time have I mentioned DPR. I think you are having a conversation by yourself here.\

Oh ?

I find this to be incorrect. The Monk has s$&# ass accuracy and you are spending ki points to get extra attacks to hit some day. The UnMonk hits more reliably, and thus spends less ki on extra ki attacks.

Accuracy corresponds to ability to deal damage which is DPR

STR-based Ascetic Style 2H Unchained Monk is the highest damage + mobility out there, second only to the likes of Magus. Plus, you can rock a 20 + level AC without much issue.

More DPR

Just for the record, I'm trying to see if I can make a Sohei that can have as high damage, Will save or AC as the character listed above and I'm failing to do that.

Unchained Monk ("low will saves" and so on). The only way to disprove them is actual build comparison. People are keen to forget how much better is the UnMonk in fulfilling the Monk fantasy of mobility, good damage and good resiliency.

1. I didn't miscalculate anything. +8 BAB +5 STR +2 enhancement +1 weapon focus = +16. I could make a really snarky comment about something like "it's not my fault that you can't see how blah blah blah" but I'm a really swell guy and above that kind of unnecessary jabs. PS: Clearly I'm not ;P

2. You never qualify for Weapon Specialization. Am I missing something? You don't actually have an effective Fighter level.

3. UnMonk doesn't have Weapon Training but it has scaling unarmed dice and access to Ascetic Style. Once I'm level, say, 9, I can pick up Ascetic Strike and a Monk's Robe and turn my 1d8 dice to 1d10. Not something I would personally do, but yannow, stuff scales with level. By level 12 I'm dealing 2d6 damage with my weapon.

4. Your damage plummets without Flurry. My guy, on the other hand, has Flying Kick. That's an non quantitative bonus you cannot ever compensate for.

End result, you are not dealing more damage, just have a bigger critical hit rate... and to top it off, your defense will be much worse.

Here your're building to match DPR rather then showing just how much higher your Will save would be if you maxed it out as a core monk but I digress...

Your damage is only ahead at 8th level.

Earlier, before you have Weapon Training, my guy is ahead.

Later, after the likes of Ascetic Strike, Monk's Robe and the new +full BAB attack on Flurry, my damage is head.

I think we just compared both of our builds at the point where yours is stronger and I think mine still comes up winning.

Maybe your Will saves might outgrow mine, but I have more reasons to get Headbands of Wisdom whereas your Chain Shirt dependency makes you adverse to it.

How it not being as needed for AC makes a wisdom rock take on an actual Adversarial role I've yet to figure out.

VargrBoartusk wrote:

Chess Pwn wrote:

The only "monkness" it lost was the good will save.

And some of the more permanent abilities turning into ki pool features that you have to waste some of your customization choices or resources on.

I don't understand how you think that being able to not go that route is a bad thing (considering that the Quinggong is one of the better Archtypes).

Which is good since I never said anything of the sort. All I said was that to many people the UnMonk was not in fact a better monk largely because the monk is one of the more polarizing classees as to what people want from it. Honestly I like the UnMonk. In fact given my preferred playstyle I'd take levels in it over the old monk any day of the week. This however in no way makes it a better monk. It doesn't feel very 'monkish' to me for several reasons, largely because it switched its role from skirmisher to front liner but to be fair I also don't associate class names with any sort of preconceived social role. Monk was the name of the collection of abilities it offered me to build characters with and not a reflection that it grew up learning anything in a monastery.

I am trying to start a conversation and all I'm getting from you is "bro no" rather than any arguments.

OP mentioned low Will saves. I proved he was wrong because better attribute distribution and more feat leisure on the UnMonk grants you the ability to make up for it.

OP mentioned losing ki powers. I put up a build which had all the thing he wanted save for poison immunity (which, as a high fort class, is not particularly important). The only CRB Monk builds people made GIVE UP high jump, slow fall, etc. so they don't even get to keep the features he wanted. The UnMonk is better at that too.
Sure, Diamond Soul is activated, but that's just better design. Now you are not spell resisting your own healer's cure wounds out of combat.

So unless you want to give me some arguments with your posts, I really have got nothing to add. If you want to keep commenting about my font editing choices like that's what makes me wrong, I, uh, can't help you, buddy.

No what makes you wrong is you've confused the words monk and DPR as assume that because you have an easier time optimizing it that it makes a better monk. What makes a better monk is rather subjective and based on opinion so when you go around saying think like the UnMonk is a better monk rather than saying that it is a better combatant or it suits my personal view of what a monk should be better you are in fact wrong in a way that posting builds has nothing to do with.

The only "monkness" it lost was the good will save.

And some of the more permanent abilities turning into ki pool features that you have to waste some of your customization choices or resources on.

It's a better Monk.

No.. Not at all.

It is a better martial artist.
It is a better wire-fu practitioner from hong kong action hour.
It is a simpler chassis with fewer trap options.
It is better out the gate at dealing teh damages.
If these things were what you expected out of the monk class to begin with then I suppose the class was an upgrade.

The UnMonk in many people's eyes lost a lot of the iconic monk things trading away it's 'monkness' for combat viability. This is not everyone's definition of better. In fact it is many people's definition of worse.

Also for the record posting things in bigger fonts and bolded letters doesn't make you more right it just makes you look like a belligerent jerk.

It does but Barby Von Wallbuster's party is usually built to handle it.. the real problem is frightened enemies bumblefarking around being terrified dim dooring double moving and teleporting away from you is very rarely as helpful and cowering with a +4 AC can sometimes make the fight last longer further wasting per round resources

A better example might be to look at Japanese culture for what is honorable.

I think you need to do a more thorough read on bushido and google the Nanking massacre before you try to use japans definition of 'honorable' as in any way better than the code of chivalry..

memorax wrote:

That's the problem. What is a evil act. Maybe acceptable depending on the situation.

Negative. Pathfinder deals in OBJECTIVE morality not SUBJECTIVE morality.

Tell you what. You show me the lines is the rulebook where Pathfinder codifies good or evil in anything but the vaguest of generalizations. For example is giving candy to a baby good ? You've made a child happy but this particular piece of candy was also enough to push him into diabetes. You a have inflicted a disease on a small child is inflicting a child with disease evil ? Show me where the books come anywhere near defining the morality of a situation like that as anything shy of dude it's a GM call.

There are some Dwarf racial feats that let you cleave all targets you threaten.

Goblin Cleaver
Orc Hewer
Giant Killer

with Cleave through letting you take a 5ft step this could be very deadly against large groups

If you're a dwarf it's not bad. Going six feats deep into a chain that borders on garbage until you have great cleave and orc hewer should, in my opinion, be way more impressive then whirlwind with a five-foot step.

Inarguable is sort of like "undisputed champion". If it isn't in dispute, why are these guys boxing?

Fame and money usually...

I just want to point out that the use of both Witch and Warlock predate the founding of Wicca as a religion by several centuries. The term has been kicking around since long before all the nice neopagans were around to find it offensive.

At to the main point I'd say each class would call themselves whatever was culturally appropriate to his or her self-perceived role in society based on whatever their native language was. Class names are just shorthand to write on your character sheet so the GM doesn't get confused.

Due to the nature of the paizo boards most of my best quotes would turn into an unreadable string of shift+numbers...

I actually think Dragonheart is one of the best redeeming a fallen paladin stories there is out there.. I single manly tear almost every time the knight recites the old code and regains his strength when he recites the code on Avalon.

I'm going to go watch it now.

The problem isn't about deserving it...

The problem is that if Paladin is ONLY an in-universe title, that those restrictions DO NOT exist for the vast majority. There would be crazy amounts of misinformation going around in-universe.

"I lied to save my friends from certain death and I retained my holy powers, and I am a Paladin." (Paladin is a Warpriest)

Suddenly, word gets around that (insert God/ess here) doesn't care if people tell little white lies, if they are trying to save someone's life. Then 4/5 "Paladins" confirm that, in fact, there are extenuating circumstances to certain parts of the code.

However 1/5 this can lead to disaster and with no way, not even for the character himself, to know who is and isn't a Class Paladin then nobody is going to understand these codes.

The crazy part is that a lot of these codes DO leave wiggle room that are totally open to interpretation.

One of Iomedae's codes prevents a Paladin from refusing a challenge from a worthy enemy.

Define worthy? Heck, define challenge.

Someone in this thread, when I used the example of a Paladin being challenged to a dual using no special abilities, said it was okay for a Paladin to refuse the challenge under those stipulations because those powers are given by their Goddess and so they must always be allowed in any duel.

You also pointed out, yourself, that anyone worthy of the title would never break their code. How do you know? Class Paladins do this occasionally, but how would anyone know if a Paladin deserved the title? I mean, under the established pretenses, there is no way to judge criteria and as such a high enough bluff score and a backstabbing rogue can pass himself off as a titled Paladin.

I'm actually more and more okay with that. The way I think about it since the misinformation actually protects paladins more than it hurt's them.. If a bunch of 'Paladins' don't fall when they break the code then you won't have villains setting up campy comic book style DIYD-DIYD situations.. Seems better then sheriff gomer not always believing it wasn't self defense since things like being arrested are usually Gm plot devices and sometimes it's just better to roll with them then fight them.

When one of the Paizo devs, the creative director himself, states that it works when forcibly changed "as that is not a general situation" then its not a house rule. Its actually not a rule AT ALL that you can change alignment whenever you wish.

So.. I actually half agree on this one. It is stupid that as written the rules do not conform in the case of the mace of blood like they do for the helm of opposite alignment. Likely this was because whoever wrote the mace of blood for whatever reason hadn't read how free wheelingly written the alignment 'rules' are. Not that the mace of blood was well written either. They should have put a duration on the alignment change... But as written Alignments just don't force action. No rule says if your characters alignment is thus he must do thus. In fact what it seems to say is if his actions don't match his alignment change the alignment not the behavior and that causes RAW to conflict with RAI in a few places. It's dumb but that's the way it is.

HyperMissingno wrote:

Wait a second, weren't the first classes of DND Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic User, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling?

OD&D is a bit before my time, but I think the first classes were Fighting Man, Magic User, and Thief? Either thief or cleric wasn't in the first published stuff and was added later.

I'm pretty sure by the second "Edition" of D&D (the blue tinged softcover book, still pre-AD&D) the classes were as you describe. Certainly by B/X they were that list of seven.

I'm not sure if the paladin first appeared in a Dragon issue or if it was first in 1e AD&D but it hasn't been around since the very beginning.

Oddly, BECMI allowed evil paladins "officially" long before 3e came out with Blackguards...in the Companion set any Lawful 9th level+ fighter could choose to become a paladin. BECMI had no good/evil axis, and Lawful character were "generally" good, but it wasn't a requirement.

Yeah that was back when the alignment flavor was all sort of a rip of.. erm.. homage of Moorcocks stuff. Chaos and Law as absolutes were both not to good for human kind but law was 'better' because once again no one wants a neighbor who's going to ser their house on fire.

Okay.. wall of text warning

VargrBoartusk wrote:

Aaaaand because of this whole thread the world I run for my housemates kids now has an entire order of paladins without paladin class levels that are just as respected and trusted if not more so then chosen or classed paladins because they don't get fancy gewgaws for following the code.. just more hardship.

Aaaaaand because of this I did the same thing... Then made them all evil beings who abuse their power and went hidden for so long because they could. One person who was evil got in, got power, and since nobody could detect it, and there was no way to notice that anyone fell, they became an evil organization who have crushed all opposition while fooling the populace that they are good.

They are the next enemy for the PCs to crush, when a real Paladin shows up and realizes something is up with the fact that one of these "Paladins" is evil aligned.

EDIT:

To add... Also what bonuses are you giving class Paladins then? If they are suddenly deemed as "lesser" because they get divine power, then what normal class abilities do they get? Because Fighters get extra feats, and other classes get things for their class. Without Paladin abilities Paladins are really lame warriors... So if they are going to get the reputation for getting "gewgaws" then they should actually GET "gewgaws" that other classes don't...

So I recommend all class paladins in your world be given 1 feat per level and weapon/armor training to make up for the fact that their CLASS ABILITIES aren't actually any stronger than other class's abilities yet you are claiming, in universe, that they are.

Sounds to me like you just made a world where the entire planet thinks less of Paladins simply because they have divine abilities that put them on par with other classes...

Like I said... This is just some DM's dislike of Paladins OOC manifesting in game.

Universe actually.. it's a magical space faring game. Nope. No one thinks less of paladins or any of the ethical warriors in my universes because of anything.. they just don't think any more of them because of it. Paladins are preferred to antipaladins of course because no one want's a neighbor who wants to burn down your house and do unmentionable things with your misses.. But they recognize that paladins have an agenda that doesn't always mesh with theirs and treat them accordingly. They just figure someone who holds to a code without their devotion to it being so strong it gives them mystic powers might be slightly less b+&+#&@ insane and open to reason.

No I don't hate paladins.. What I hate is the idiocy that keeps perpetrating that alignment and roleplaying checks make up for design balances. The alignment system in it's current form is fairly dodgey in its actual mechanics at best. The paladin code and ability loss for it's violation are better and more hard coded then alignment so it is a better step in the wrong direction at least since really you can pull the idea out of it's alignment roots and make up your own codes for other moral and ethical focused or inspired warriors. I should also point out I have zero interest in Golarion. Pathfinder is a system for me not a setting just like 3.5 was I care about the chassis here not the fluff. Lawful good being the only ones in the divinely inspired but not directly tied to worship sandbox is in a word stupid. Giving paladins a mechanical bonus because people don;t always shower them with love and respect is equally stupid. I also don't penalise people who want to play a weird race by making torch and pitchfork happy mobs show up to burn them all the time because guess what ? That's not a balance. We have ECL for that.

So what I'm going to do is break it down into what paladins have and what other classes have that has a vaguely close design space. Because paladins being special is fluff only really.

And here is the required rubber stamp boiler plate. The following bits are my opinion and I could care less if you agree or don't. I don't care if you listen to me or don't. This is my way. Not the right way, not the best way, not the one true way. It's the one I like.

First off paladins have smite. In the hands of a player for most games this ability is great since as a hero a large portion of what your fighting will be things that are evil. This is pretty good its a powerful damage boost for important fights. Alright so what do other stabby dudes have in the role ? Barbarians have rage and rage powers for it, fighters have weapon training, rangers have favored enemies. Barbarian has the in most situations easiest to use bonus since rage hard for the GM to mess with, followed by the fighter since he just needs the right weapon group, Then we have the paladin's smite and finally the rangers favored enemy since it needs the most GM cooperation to work. Other classes have abilities that are close enough, Inquisitors have judgements and bane, bards have performance, monks get flurry and increases damage dice and so on. Swashy falls sort of flat because his damage boost just keeps them in line with the other martials unboosted for the most part. Is being the antithetical opposition to a force unique to good ? No. Should it be ? Well that's an opinion but mine is also no. Fortunately since some other things get smite without the baggage the rules agree with me. Huzzah. Paladins aren't snowflakes in the damage adders here and theirs isn't always the best so this ones a wash. Moving on.

Divine grace. Hoah boy this is the most iconic one to me. Belief in oneself and ones nature as a paragon of what one represents is positively dripping with thematic badassery. Crunch wise this ability is also just the t&#$ and for the longest time this bonus to saves was more or less exclusive without fairly serious investment. This ability makes sense with the code and is one of the few reasons I can see for it's justification. This one is aesthetics and function flowing into a beautiful whole. Does anything else have this as a freebie ? Nope. Monks just get all good saves, Superstition can come close and fighters get a sort of with the WM handbook. Does unflagging devotion to an ideal nail itself firmly to lawful good? Well no. They do hold hands very nicely though but since their chaotic evil buddies get it obviously this sort of thing is more tied to a code then an alignment. Cool fairly unique defensive ability. Props.

Lay on hands and it's riders. So this one is definitely all about the good since teh healz and we'll ignore the minor flavor fail of it just being better when used selfishly as a pool of bonus hit points. No one else has this nearly as good. Barby gets rage and some rage powers and a chance to use the least used polyhedron in the game at every level. Fighter gets some middling armor use bits, monk gets some ac, there are probably a few others but paladin shines here because it makes him probably the hardest someb%+!# to kill his faith pushing him on where less devoted men would fall. Oh and i guess he's good so.. he can help out bob too instead of just face murdering the bad guy... Cool i guess.

Bond thingy. So you get a wonder horse for acting in ways Roy Rogers would approve of. A'aight sure.. Functions as druid... wait So scratch the magic animal comes with good behavior since animal companions are popular and honestly not super hard to get. Good ability but not much inherant flavor. As for the Weapon bond.. Every time a bell rings another angel gets shoved into a sword to help you kill stuff.. Well it doesn't rhyme and a billion other classes have a way of the i'm awesome so is my stabby thing trope. It can be good

Spells. Every alignment has spells. These are the paladins situation buttons much like the fighter feats and the barbarian rage powers of limited use or situational bennies we all know spells are good we also know nearly everyone has them and a fair margin have better ones.

So going through all this Paladins are just a class.. a bunch of numbers that you combine with other numbers to give a flavor paint job to play whatever you want to play. The paladin ones aren't better enough for me to care at all about the hoops it has to jump through to get them especially since I don't believe any alignment is inherantly harder or more restrictive to play than any other and despite the several dozen times you've said otherwise I'm going to disagree.
Always.
Forever.
Is the paladin cool ? Hells yeah. Should it be alone as a force in the universe as an ethical enforcer ? Well That's an opinion question. I say no because there's really no sense behind it. It's arbitrary. We obviously have different games and different playstyles and both of us should go to bed probably go to bed thankful we don't play in the same circles. You think the paladin is an awesome ball of special and you don;t want anyone else to dirty it up with their dirty dirty ideas ? What evs. But seriously you've got to drop whatever it is you're doing that makes it seem like you think your way is the right way to play.

Aaaaand because of this whole thread the world I run for my housemates kids now has an entire order of paladins without paladin class levels that are just as respected and trusted if not more so then chosen or classed paladins because they don't get fancy gewgaws for following the code.. just more hardship.

This one is always hard and often has a lot to do with the setting. Sometimes orcs themselves lack enough racial consistency to assume any sort of 'common' half breed traits. I tend to think like tiefling but with orcish traits more then demonic. Some get the green or grey skin, some get the 'tusks' or lupine ears, some get the feral eyes and snouty nose or any combination there of. Because Orcs tend to vary a lot from setting to setting on size and such I don't always assume bigger but I do assume more sturdy frame, denser muscle tissues and less fatty squish along with heavy and thicker bone structure.
With how orcs look in Golarion I'd probably say that they have strong and sharp features with strong jaws, wide foreheads and hawkish noses with overgrown lower cuspids that rarely extend up past the nose and all the teeth in general being larger and more carniverous with additional canine teeth perhaps replacing the premolars. I'd also assume hair to be straight and somewhat more wiry than the norm and less facial hair since I can't recall ever seeing a bearded orc.. Perhaps a reflective tapeta lucida structure to explain the dark vision. The skin i assume would be thicker and a bit rougher but still pliable and springy.
In 3.5 the Orcs were a much more gorilla/neandertal crossbreed looking thing with protruding almost muzzle like lower jaws and an almost mane like hair pattern they had large jaws but small chins with prominent side burn like hair growth on both genders and an abundance of wart like skin growths on skin with a texture like fine leather driving gloves.
In one setting I played in orcs were more or less the pig/boar equivalent of gnolls with the males tending more towards nearly fully boarlike heads complete with snouts and true tusks and the females having more human preportioned but still piggish faces.

I should point out my favorite orcs or Orks as they were called are from the EarthDawn setting and have a very close look to what i see Pathfinder half-orcs as being.