Virgil's page

The spell says that you need a clear idea, and gives a guideline for how clear of an idea you have, explicitly citing scrying as a method and without any other language hinting otherwise. Saying that you can't teleport with the information given by a scry spell is not a change, but a 'clarification', comes off as disingenuous. A less favorable interpretation would view it as condescending, implying that those who have run it as written have either failed at reading comprehension or are rules-lawyering munchkins.

Is "we feel that what is known colloquially as 'scry and fry' is not a favorable outcome, and advise the following change" somehow not an option? Even just calling it errata would be acceptable.

Can you cast Summon Monster V to summon 1d4+1 crocodiles, then cast Alter Summon Monster to turn each one into a Kyton?

You're describing a world that has never had legends before the players entered the scene, and 'spectacular' doesn't exist in the dictionary until they do something that deserve it. This implies very self-centered bards, because the only tales they can tell are about themselves. I guess slaying dragons, zounds of bandits, dark necromancers, and the like just never happened before? You know, all the stuff the PCs would be doing in a non-mythic game, unless adding the <mythic> tag to your notes somehow makes it more special.

What's the difference between a warrior and a fighter, despite both being +1 BAB/level and requiring the same amount of experience to level? The Fighter is a PC class, which is also by definition more special than an NPC class.

I and many others have stated what is actually desired out of the Mythic rules, and that is something more evocative than a "slaying marginally more enemies or surviving some fraction more damage."

Here's another option if raw power is all you care about, which doesn't need an entire book; just set the XP for the fast track, give high-fantasy wealth (double WBL), use epic fantasy point-buy. Everyone else in the world can be stuck with the low fantasy point-buy, wealth, and slow experience.

Alan_Beven wrote:

I agree with the OP. Paizo is great at creating fun "fluff" and this is sorely missing from this document. I hope that the full rulebook will fill the gap.

I honestly have no doubt it will.

Remember, the play test is literally just seeing if the rules are okay and what needs tweaking. This is entirely numbers work, seeing what works and what doesn't, what needs a buff or needs a nerf, what should be added or taken away, etc. Once the rules are all ironed out and fine-tuned, then they'll add in all the wonderful fluff that they do really well.

Rules are what we use to play the game, and if the rules don't support the fluff in cases like Mythic play, then you'll end up perilously close to 4E or those Final Fantasy spells where you nuke a planet in your cut scene...to deal some damage against the party.

A hopefully more lucid explanation of the concern is that the mythic rules don't feel any more mythic than adding another +1 to your character sheet and saying hero points are refreshing each day rather than each level. From the point-of-view of the characters, they're not going to look any more mythic unless you staple fluff onto them to describe their actions as being bigger and better, which is something you could've been doing with a level up to begin with.

Epic and mythic are both synonymous in expectation with a shift in paradigms in how your character's abilities interact with the setting. Slaying marginally more enemies or surviving some fraction more damage is neither dramatic nor is it 'mythic' unless you inflate the numbers to something obscene. Lifting wagons and buildings, stealing the colour of someone's eyes, cutting someone so deep that others who see the wound suffer stigmata-level sympathy wounds, scaring people so profoundly their kin are shaken regardless of distance; these are the kind of things that go beyond 'get two actions this round' or 'you succeed at your action 15% more often'.

The githyanki one being claimed is a little weird, personally, as they were written two years prior to being published/associated in D&D by George R.R. Martin in Dying of the Light; in which they were a psychic race of warriors enslaved by an alien race. This is without attribution to George, I might add, who didn't even know of them until sometime after the new millennium.

And illithid visually resemble star spawn by a fair bit, an established Lovecraftian race that are essentially man-sized version of Cthulhu, who itself would be best described as a mindflayer with wings.

RaW, it's allowed. Regardless of the RaI, I don't see how it's a problem. You can have an empowered shocking grasp be a 0-level spell, since Empower is a +2. One of the better 'tricks' is a toppling magic missile, and we've got a thread specifically calling out its marginal utility. Outside of that, you're essentially paying two traits for a super-charged cantrip; and if anyone remembers the switch over to Pathfinder when cantrips universally became at-will, you'll notice that your casters are hardly dominating the game because of it.

If you don't use it for infinite 1st or 2nd level spells, then you're essentially getting a spell a couple more times per day (instead of a lower level spell), and I just don't see the disparity as something to be concerned about.

If it was a game like chess, everyone would use the same rules, and the game itself would be about tactics and strategies and clever use of abilities, but on a game that involves roleplaying, interpretation, and weaving of a good story, balance is not just useless, but absurd as well.

Yeah, good thing Pathfinder isn't about the rules and is only about the story and roleplaying. Excuse me, the kid wants in the room, but the core book fell in front of the door and now she can't push it open...

Where was I? Ah, yes, the misconception that better mechanical balance creates a bland 4E clone that's about nothing but combat. I'm sure if you changed the AC/damage numbers on the monk class table (thus making it more balanced than before) then suddenly the rest of the book will rewrite itself to excise everything noncombat related. I've seen balanced monk rewrites, and they also come off as more flavourful and evocative than before.

Yes, I can have fun with less balanced systems, but that's in spite of their mechanical flaws. Having a more balanced ruleset lessens the chances of intraparty imbalance, which can and has created social strain; I mean, you try and feel good about yourself when you solo a single mook while another killed the BBEG and three other mooks in the same time frame. It's also easier to design encounters where everyone contributes.

I've run regular 3.5 games and I've run Den-inspired games, and while both have been fun, the latter has honestly mitigated intra-party imbalance (not eliminated, as player skill remains) and encounter design is appreciably easier.

When are you throwing fireballs? So far you've said you would summon, then you said you wouldn't summon you would cast buff spells...

Seriously, the fighter is stabbing you with a sword. You don't think they are going to need to address that in order to not, you know, get stabbed to death.

Also, you can't have a sage with an Int of 3.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/basics-ability-scores/ability-scores#TOC-Intelligen ce-Int-

Aelryinth is right, it is like you are arguing about a different game with a whole different set of rules.

You're being incredibly nitpicky in response to basic descriptions here. People aren't getting on your case on the fact that a fighter can't trip with a sword or that suffering an AoO and maybe a charge (assuming they even hit) is actually appreciably less damage than a full-attack at the mid-levels. People are also being relatively generous, unless you're CoDZilla, in assuming that the fighter actually his fairly hard to hurt. Suffice it to say, the wizard is throwing spells that are by and large obvious and show way more potential than just stabbing.

Also, did you not read the page that you're trying to use to 'counter' the claim of an Int 3 sage?

Finally, you KEEP acting as if the stance being proposed is that wizards win everything and cannot lose when K has explicitly stated on more than one occasion the stance is just that wizards bring more to the table than fighters. In fact, a decent number of casters are capable of bringing their own fighting man to the scene that isn't too far behind the fighter (companions, summons, bindings, mind slaves, etc) while still maintaining their own usefulness of spelling their enemy's doom (pun intended).

I love how it's munchkin cheese to defeat a visual illusion by doing the logical thing of closing your eyes. Just look at the medusa (not literally). Her gaze attack is much more potent than mirror image, yet it's solved just as easily with the power of eyelids, and all it does is make her have total concealment rather than inflict blindness of all things.

It looks downright perplexing if the shuriken is made of adamantine. A disk made of one of the strongest metals known shattering like fine china against a stone wall. This even happens against the gelatinous cube, the softest of monsters, whose acid doesn't affect metal.

@OgeXam: As written, because concealment doesn't stack, and that is an established written part of the rules; this is how an extreme situation should go:

Concealment: displacement*, blur, obscuring mist, invisibility, and a blind attacker.
Non-concealment miss chance: entropic shield
Total: two checks with a 50% & 20% miss chance = statistically identical to a single check with a 60% miss chance
*Interpreting the "as if it had total concealment" line to mean it stacks with other concealment effects as if it were

The only reason blink is such a bother is because its own math is wonky. Two separate 20% miss chances do not equal a single 50% (should be 36%), but it does for this spell for some reason, which makes predictions based on other effects wonky. I'd personally shoot from the hip and declare that any concealment greater than 20% would override the invisibility portion of blink and you'd have one chance for concealment and another for ethereality; which would be 60% miss chance mostly since any concealment greater than 20% would be 50%.

EDIT: Mathematically, here's a list of multiple miss chances and their equivalent, so it can be reduced to a single roll without changing the chances.
*20% and 20% is equal to a 36% miss chance
*50% and 20% is equal to a 60% miss chance
*50% and 20% and 20% is equal to a 68% miss chance
...that last one is for a displaced blinker shielded by entropy. It's a good thing that the resolution text for mirror image makes it effectively a form of concealment.