Whisperknives's page

The issue here is that the answer to any question about monster statistics is just going to come down to, "Ummm, that is what the books says" and that is all.

Want to know why that goblin chief has such a good to hit compared to your own character, sorry, no explaining. Heck, you can not even tell if something was a typo or not because you have nothing to go on.

Maybe that monster was supposed to have a +8 instead of a +10 to their stealth, who knows, we have nothing to go on other than an entire beastiary based on supporting their new math and just putting in what would make that work.

The whole concept of using +1 to everything per level, and the crit of +/- 10 does not work.

My issues with monk are thus:

1. No proficiency in anything, not even a dagger or a quarterstaff, and thus no ranged option at all really. They are not even proficient with weapons with the trait "monk". Having a feat required just to use a dagger or a staff is insulting and an obvious feat tax.

2. The only way for them to have even close to competitive AC is if they get magical Bracers of Armor... what about a gm who does not like magic items all that much, or just does not feel like you should get them at the appropriate level. No class should require the use of level appropriate gear just to be functional.

3. Perfected Form does nothing. Essentially their capstone gives you nothing.
It allows you to consider any attack roll a 10 if you rolled less than that. However, you will NEVER hit on a 10 on anything but your first attack in a round, and even then you will still never hit on a 10 unless the enemy is below your level or you have assistance to get some bonuses.
Just give monks Master Proficiency but only in unarmed or monk weapons. The fact that a fighter gets master unarmed but a monk does not is unacceptable.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Now that Signature skills are gone, here's hoping that deity skills get another look over. I remember paizo saying that a deity couldn't grant Diplomacy because Clerics already had it as a Signature skill - but now that's no longer a restriction since Clerics only get Religion + their Deity's skill as trained by default.

Good point, we will definitely take that look.

Why not just go back to a class skills type of format.

You start with X number of skill trainings that you can pick from your class skills, skills from intelligence bonus can be any skill, making them a class skill for you.
When you hit level 5 you may become expert in any class skill, or trained in a non-class skill.
At 9 you can become master in any signature skill, or expert in non-class skills.
At 13 you can become legendary in a class skill or master in a non-class skill.
At 17 you can become legendary in any skill.

Everyone can eventually become legendary in any skill.
Certain classes can get it sooner.
Multiclass feats can give you 1 skill from their list to yours, except rogue which would give 2.

Seems like everyone wins.

One more design issue:

Perfected Form, does almost nothing.

Being able to turn anything under a 10 into a 10 does not mean much when you would never hit on a 10 anyway, without being able to consider them flatfooted or some other bonus, and that is only on the first attack. It is completely pointless on anything but the first attack.

Just give them legendary in unarmed and a small bonus, like your unarmed strikes multiple attack penalty is only -3, -6 if agile or -4, -8 if not.

I have never understood this issue.

Role-playing can be done in any system, from almost no rules to super crunchy.

Numbers and skills and stats help define that.

It is why all characters start with a concept.

Numbers and crunch are up to the system, role-play is up to the player.

The issue is whether role-play will change the dice.

If I am playing a big dumb lug but I come up with a genius plan on how to get in to a high tech base, is that ok?

If the character is a super genius hacker but the player needs help to use google, how does it play out?

It would be fine if it was a free action and if it could work based on tracks or discription

Cool idea - if I had any experience at all with the Vigilante, I'd probably have some cool insight. With that warning, I'd say any class that rewards a high Cha score (Paladin, Cleric, Oracle, Bard, Swashbuckler, Sorcerer, Arcanist, etc). I'm a big fan of the Medium class from Occult Adventures. You could make one of the characters a daily swiss-army knife by channeling different spirits, while using the Vigilante class to focus on combat.

Why can't they build their own characters?

The reason they can't make their own characters is that they are lazy stoners and would never do it.

It completely depends on how you want to write your campaign.

We have played multiple world building campaigns, (Well technically we played multiple continent building campaigns, and after years had our own world.)

You can play it from level 1, where you literally stake a piece of land and run with it all Kingmaker style, or you can just start it at level 10+ and go with your people to found/take a land for yourselves.

Dazing flaming sphere.

Dazing Snap dragon fireworks.
Dazing Melfs acid arrow.
Dazing Molten orb
Dazing Silver Darts.

The list goes on.

There has to be some irony in the fact that I list a strategy and say "done", then the next post is by someone named Undone.

Would this now be Re-done.

I played an Neutral Evil Small Teifling Alchemist/Master Chymist who was a vivisectionist.

I took a dire bear and essentially hollowed out it's chest to ride in, and also stored some alchemical items there, I also had the tumor familiar and vestigial arm x2 and Parasitic twin.

I worshiped a god of disease and used a ton of poisons and diseases as a plague-bringer.
When the bear would stand up on its hind legs, there would be an evil, diseased demonic "child" partially hanging out of its chest cavity, with a conjoined twin, a tentacle coming out of its chest, and a tumor in the shape of a bat that would scuttle around its body and screech at you. Who would sometimes fly out at people and change into a clawed and toothed monster, who would attack and drag people back "home". I wish I could have gotten enough levels of Witch for Cook People hex but couldn't.

The even more scary part, I was the party diplomat.

I played an Neutral Evil Small Teifling Witch/Alchemist/Master Chymist who was a vivisectionist.

I took a dire bear and essentially hollowed out it's chest to ride in, and also stored some alchemical items there, I also had the tumor familiar and vestigial arm x2 and Parasitic twin.

I worshiped a god of disease and used a ton of poisons and diseases as a plague-bringer.
When the bear would stand up on its hind legs, there would be an evil, diseased demonic "child" partially hanging out of its chest cavity, with a conjoined twin, a tentacle coming out of its chest, and a tumor in the shape of a bat that would scuttle around its body and screech at you. Who would sometimes fly out at people and change into a clawed and toothed monster, who would attack and drag people back "home". I wish I could have gotten enough levels of Witch for Cook People hex but couldn't.

The even more scary part, I was the party diplomat.

One of my characters was a Catfolk rogue who utilized Vital Strike with her sneak attacks and using the sniping stealth rules. It helps deal more damage with single stealth attacks with the relatively low-damage shortbow. At 20th level, a sniping rogue would deal 3x1d6+10d6 sneak+other weapon bonuses such as weapon enhancement bonuses. The character was designed as an assassin and really only makes one attack per round.

So at level 20, you did 13D6 + some bonuses...

That is horrendous, do not brag about it.

Whisperknives wrote:

DrDeth wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Dark Immortal wrote:

Healing is -FAR- more reliable than an attack roll that can miss. Your healing won't.

You can roll a 1 on a d20 and a d8. Healing is no more reliable than attacking.

Except when you roll a 1 on a D8 you still give healing, when you roll a 1 on a attack roll you do nothing but waste a round.

Rolling crap healing is more likely to just get the person killed one round later instead of now and you did nothing to hamper the enemy at all.

Combat healing negatives:

1. If they were taken down by melee there is a chance you will have to cast defensively, which is not as easy as it used to be.

2. When they stand up they are going to provoke an Attack of Opportunity from whatever almost killed them the first time if it is in range. Heaven forbid you are fighting many enemies at once.

3. The later in the game it goes, unless it is the actual spell Heal, your healing will not heal for enough to matter.

4. If I am a smart enemy, and I see someone healing a fallen comrade, they just became area attack fodder because now I know you are the healer and the other person is very hurt.

5. You spending a round to heal means you did not spend a round effecting the enemy. So instead of you stopping it now it has a chance to kill someone else.

I have even seen multiple times over the last 15 years where someone choosing to heal a teammate instead of dealing with the enemy has gotten the whole party killed.
D&D is not an MMO, you do not have to have a "tank" and a "healer" in the group.

We nearly lost an entire group because out Fireball specialist dual blooded sorcerer could throw out a 110 - 135 damage fireball at level 8, however his will save was a 4.

1. A dedicated healer can get around this.

2. Which is why you heal before they go down.

3. Not true.

4. Great! Now you're spreading your damage out between multiple foes instead of concentrating on just...

1. Dedicated healers are even more pointless, again better to not take the damage to heal it. You are building a character to fix a problem instead of building a character to prevent a problem.

2. Short of the spell Heal, the enemy will cause more damage than you heal in one round past the low levels.

3. See answer 2.

4. Read what I said. The enemy now has 2 people standing within reach of each other 1 is a healer, 1 is hurt. Any smart enemy will throw an area spell against you, if they are not a caster, then they will definitely have the offense to kill him before he gets up and may have an attack or 2 left for you.

Golden rule: Play to prevent damage, not to heal it.

Still a hell of a narrow circumstance to be spending a feat on, let alone three.

In whose universe was the old Crane Wing overpowered? Seriously, I would love to know. I'm not being sarcastic here: Was this feat nerfed because a subpar version of Swashbuckler Parry/Riposte is going live, and Crane Wing was making it look bad?

Yes that is exactly why it happened.

It is much easier and faster for people to gut 1 feat and make another useless than to rework a class mechanic.

It is simple laziness.

This was obviously not play tested with in the least.

I will not be using this errata in any of my games.

Play an entire group of Paladins on a crusade.

The GM would blow a fuse trying to kill you through all the self healing.

We played an entire campaign where we were all Bards in a band.

It worked rather well actually.

Singer - Primarily caster
Violin - Archer (kept a cello that worked as a longbow)
Drummer - Dex Melee (used a pair of agile daggers as drumsticks)
Bass - Str based beat stick (played an Great Axe Guitar)
Manager - Skills, tons and tons of skills and Face.

The name of our band was Ale and Whores

I've heard a party of Seven Samurai is pretty neat, but Seven Gunslingers would be magnificent.

At some point the seven gunslingers should come across the seven samurai, just so the samurai could call them a poor mans remake.

Reminds me of a situation in one of my games.

A player in the game I was running was playing a melee class, honestly I do not remember what exactly but he was a non caster.

He had a tendency to execute criminals at the drop of a hat, or they could "duel" him to prove their innocence.

One day while in the marketplace said character encountered a thief, who chose to challenge him to a duel.

The thief, a rogue, made a very good bluff/diplomacy check, "How is this fair, you have all the armor and magical weapons and equipment, I am just a peasant, this is not justice, this is murder."

To that the crowed kind of got behind the thief, and to make it more fair the melee PC, threw the rogue his +1 keen, flaming, vicious falchion and pulled his back up longsword.

The rogue just kind of looked at him, looked at the sword, looked back at him... and ran.

The PC never did get his sword back, due to the rogue losing him in the crowed and acrobatics/stealth checks.

Lessons were learned.

The Healin' Stick

Aura: Moderate Conjuration and Abjuration; CL: 8th
Slot: none; Price: 8,000 gp; Weight: 3 lbs.

Description:

The Healin' Stick might often be confused with a rod due to its shape, it is roughly 2 feet long and carved from knotty, gnarled hardwood. This stick was used in the past to teach would be adventures a lesson during training by keeping them alive not not much happier. Any creature struck by the Healin' Stick takes damage as if being struck by a Club. However this damage is all subdual, the club heals a number of hit points on the target equal to the amount of subdual damage cased. This healing can not succeed half the targets hit points.

Construction:
Requirements: Craft Wondrus Item, shield other, false life; Cost 4,000

That is right folks you can heal your friends by "Beating them half to death" with a knotty club that hurts like hell.

He he he, A Blinkback Belt with just a rock on it.

"Loaded and ready to rock"

Your house rules are rather unbalanced.

Battlefield positioning and tactics are less important when everyone can just move around the battlefield and full attack or throwing combat maneuvers around like candy because if built correctly they will only fail on a 1.

A few pointers.

1. Offense will always beat defense in D&D/Pathfinder.

2. Know your power levels of your characters: certain classes or builds are just plain not as powerful or useful as some others. Make sure that everyone gets a little spotlight once an arc.

Ex. My group that I play with is always full of well made and well built characters who will have very few weaknesses. We had two very well made archers and a blaster specialist sorcerer, the last character was a healing and tanking based Paladin. With the Paladin's very poor skills, crappy offense outside of a smiting situation and generally the team almost never getting hurt die to good tactics and powerful builds 90% of the time the Paladin sat around bored.

That was until the giant hoard of undead showed up, then the Paladin got a moment to shine throwing around damaging channel positive energy abilities and offensive and defensive lay on hands.

Share the spotlight.

3. Be brutally honest.

As I said, not every build is useful, let people know what they are getting into.

Ex. If you have a well made Healing Oracle, a Fighter who is both a monster on offense and defense, a skillful and well rounded Ranger, and versatile Wizard with good feat selection, you might want to inform the guy who wants to play a low charisma, strength based, Gnome, Bard with a dagger that he might want to rethink a few things.

4. The most important thing of all though, plan a good story ahead of time.

Get your plot set and monster or NPC cheat sheets ready ahead of time, nobody likes sitting around while you look up a spell or a monster ability. Think your plot out like a TV show, each game is an episode, and each story arc is a season. Progress plot with cliff hangers and reveals in mind

I do not abuse the "spell-like ability qualification" loophole because it's unnecessary power gaming that's in poor taste.

That ruling was one of the stupidest rules changes/rulings I have ever read.

I will not rant here about the idiocy of it but it will NEVER be used in any game I ever run, and I will never play in a game that allows it.

Just take Throw anything at low levels and replace Improved Critical with Improvised Weapon Mastery, problem solved and actually net better results.

252. If play a Paladin, at some point 5 things will happen.
a. You will get blamed for the party not getting a piece of loot.
b. Your GM will use your code against you.
c. Your team will hide things from you.
d. You will meet an evil NPC that you can not fight/attack/question/confront.
e. Someone else in the group will be a criminal or start a thieves guild.

253. No matter how powerful, how optimized, how powerful you are, yes, the GM can still kill you.

254. (I do not sugar coat things, sorry) "It will be cool." is not a reason to play a character that is a hamper or a determent to the party. EX. It does not matter how "cool" it would be to play a gunslinger in a campaign with no guns, you are an exp leech.

255. If you decide "I can kill the bad guy, all I have to do is nuke the party member/members" do not be surprised if they decide "Lets get rid of that caster and get one that makes better choices."

256. Never tell the troubleshooter to hurry up because you want to get to the combat, that is a sure way to get to it the hard way.

We had a tournament like this once.

Everyone was level 20, 25 point buy, maxed HP, and with the same amount of gold (I honestly do not remember the exact amount of gold, but it was standard for starting level 20s.)

We had 8 people:

1. An Evoker Wizard with lots of tweaked out ray spells
2. A zen archer monk
3. A big two hander Barbarian built on "Come and Get Me"
4. An Enchanter Sorcerer built to shut people down
5. A Ranger switch hitter
6. A Paladin Warrior of Holy Light, Hospitalier, self healer
7. A Fighter/monk/duelist built all around dervish dance and counter attacks and unhittable AC
8. A rogue knife master stealth expert.

The Cleric went first and cast Wind Wall, which saved him from being targeted by the archers.

The Ninja was next on initiative and disappeared. He moved up on the Sorcerer and readied an action to interrupt.

The Zen Archer went next and killed the Evoker wizard with 5 shots and fired 3 more at the Ranger.

The Barbarian and the Duelist went at the same time and closed on each other.
This led to an hour long argument about Can you Crane Wing/riposte a Come and Get Me AOO...

The Sorcerer took a 5 foot step and tried to cast a spell defensively, he was interrupted, half killed by the sneak attack from the knife master, and then failed the Fort save to be slain and died anyway.

The Ranger went next killed the now visible Rogue with one full round of bow attacks.

The Paladin went last, and had been completely ignored by the rest of the group because "None of us are evil so he can't kill us". He charged the ranger and thanks to a crit on a X4 weapon killed him. (If the ranger had not taken 3 arrows from the monk he would have lived.

At the end of round 1 the only people left were:

Monk, Paladin, Barbarian, and Duelist

The Zen Archer held his action.

The Barbarian and Duelest both beat each other senseless. with a crap load of counter attacks and Attacks of Opportunity.

The Zen archer then took his action and killed them both with he full round 8 attacks.

The Paladin was too far away to charge the monk but he could run to him. However he took 2 or 3 arrows thanks to snap shot feats along the way.

At that point the monk just used his MUCH faster movement rate to easily stay out of the paladin's range even on a run. and used a full movement standard attack, combo to kill the paladin who never even got off a swing. It took the monk well over 60 rounds to do it thanks to the massive self healing of the paladin's Fey foundling, lay on hands, and channel.

So in the end the Zen Archer won and never even got attacked, including a well over 60 round fight with the Paladin at the end.

Zen archers are scary.

Ok so for those who saw my last thread, A follow up. For those who did not to summarize.

We have a group of 5 VERY skilled players starting a Rise of the Rune Lords campaign.

1. An Aasimar Ranger Switch Hitter build
2. An Aasimar Zen Archer Monk
3. A Human Evoker Wizard with mostly Ranged touch Spells.
4. A Tiefling Dawnflower Dervish Bard
5. Finally me. A Tiefling Rage Priest, who specializes on Natural Weapons.
(Rage Priest found here - http://mcarchetype.wikispaces.com/Rage+Priest )

Notes on our DM.

- He will make everything much harder than in the book because those modules are not made to challenge expert players with well made characters. Generally he doubles the HP of critters and raises their AC and saves by 3 to 5 each.

- He hates build shenanigans or abilities that trivialize encounters.

We are all cool with these things it is to be expected to make the game challenging.

My question is however, without giving away any spoilers, will we be ok on rise of the rune lords modules 1-20?

Notes on my Character
As a Cleric who essentially traded a domain, spontaneous casting and changed channeling in for Rage and rage powers. Due to racial alternate traits and a roll on the alternate table I have Claws and A bite attack. When I hit level 3 I will gain a 4th attack due to rage powers.

At level 3 while raging I should have Claw/Claw/Bite/Gore, but is that all?
Are there more ways to get natural attacks that I have missed? Unfortunately Tieflings can not take the wings feats that Aasimar can.

Any advise would be very appreciated.

Take favored Enemy: Deity, aim high.

8 players is a lot, unless they are just completely one dimensional they should have every aspect of the game covered and then some.

Also it depends on the skill of the players in the game and their ability to make characters.

If they are just kind of average: Level 11
If they kind of suck at it: 12 or 13
If they are the kind that know how to twink out characters: 9

I usually play or GM in one of 2 groups:

One group is a bunch of guys whose entire extent of combat tactics is Hit it with a spell/sword.

howerver

My normal group have been playing for a minimum of 15 years together, and know tons of ways to trivialize an encounter, or solve a situation in creative ways.

Against the noob group they would have to all be like level 13 or 14.

Against my normal group. Level 9, and you better not give us a chance to see it coming.

50 Feather Token Anchors.
All on the same key word.
Keep them in a pillow.
They will never see it coming.

Killing someone with a pillow that explodes into 50 anchors is always funny.

Having a discussion with someone who want to dual wield. He thinks Rogue (Combat tricks and Dex) I say Ranger (forgo some requirements). I'd like to get some thoughts on it to help him with his next character. Thanks!

For Dual wielding, just about any class can pull it off, just that some have nice advantages.

Rogue:

Pro:

Tons of Skills
Sneak Attack
Nice choice of tricks to be versatile

Cons:

Lower BAB
Lower HD
Honestly overshadowed by other classes now

Ranger

Pro:

Full BAB
Combat style extra feats
Still plenty of Skills
Back up casting

Con:

Jack of All Trades syndrome
Not usually as social as the Rogue

Fighter:

Full BAB
TONS of feats, which for TWF there are a lot to choose from
Best selection of weapons or armor
Many class specific combat abilities or feats

Cons:

Garbage on skills: (the main soldier type class does not have PERCEPTION in class...)
Outside of combat has less use than others.
Really those skill issues deserve to be added twice, 2 + int/level and no Perception...

Of all the classes though I would go Ninja.

You get a weird combo of Rogue/Range

Pro:

Ki Pool is freakin nasty. Invisible and such is very useful
Sneak Atacks
Deadly up close or ranged (Wakasashis or shurikens)
Lots of Skills
Honestly just plain better than a Rogue in my opinion

Con:

Still 3/4 BAB
Still lower HD (although with their level of stealth it does not matter)

The weirdest one I have been in was actually a shodawrun game.

We were breaking in to a minor corp, not even single A.

We had a necro type mage
A Rigger/explosives expert.
Captain Spaulding the psycho clown Street Sam with 6 points in fry chicken
and
Myself, the social elf with 8 charisma and a professional singer.

The Plan:

1. Necro made 5 zombies
2. Captain Spaulding put them in clown outfits and gave them buckets of chicken.
3. Wires, the rigger, filled them with C4 and remote detonators
4. I played the spokesman and sang a nice jingle for "Captain Spaulding's Fried Chicken"
5. The zombies could only walk Frankenstein like and say "Chicken"

We went to their office as a sales promotion handing out chicken to everyone, we even got out with the data by hiding it in a chicken bucket.

There are many ways to properly do a villain.

1. The Understandable Evil: A villain who is evil but at least some people will see him as a hero, some people in the party might even believe in his cause but they do not like his methods.
Ex. Magneto

2. The Evil Psycho: A villain who does not really care about much other than just causing pain, killing and making people's lives hell. Harder to predict and almost impossible to understand, he does it all simply because he wants to.
Ex. Joker

3. The Power Hungry Evil: Evil for the sake of gaining more power, all they care about is control over others and influence. They will lie, cheat, steal, murder or anything else it takes to gain what they want.
Ex. Handsome Jack

4. The Egomaniac Evil: A person who is so arrogant that they can never see themselves as being wrong, they have to be correct, so everyone else is wrong. All those who believe something different, or disagree have to be eliminated.
Ex. Dr. Doom

5. The Diametric Evil: Evil simply because it is opposed to good. No bigger goals other than to simply make things more evil and to destroy things that are good or holy. Evil because they hate things that are pure.
Ex. Many Blackguards.

6. The Evil Genius: Evil because nobody else can see the big picture, or because only they really understand how it all works. They are the evil simply because it is effective.
ex.

7. TheEvil Mastermind: Evil in the sense that they control everything, they want to plan out the pieces like an evil chess master and watch the game play as they have set it up for.
ex. Kingpin

8. The Evil Scientist: Science is the most important thing in the world and you can not learn all you need with you have morals and laws holding you back. Evil because sacrifices must me made.
ex. The villain from Bioshock

9. The "Greater Good" Evil: A villain who does what they do because they think it is the right thing or what is best for the person/world/universe but really what they do is just evil.
ex. Zoom

10. Mindless Evil: Evil because it is their nature, they do not plan things out to be evil, they do not even have a concept of good or evil, they simply do what their base urges tell them to.
Ex. The Tarasque

11. The Charismatic Evil: Evil and is great at getting others to see things their way. Evil that can persuade others into seeing them as being good. Deep inside though they are still evil
Ex. Hitler

Find the evil that works for your party.

If most of your party are LG and very boy scout like. then a good villain for them might be a LE villain who shows them that not everything is as good as it seems and that they need to open their eyes. Or even a CG villain who tempts them into thinking that the ends justify the means.

Personally I like the understandable evil guys who are a threat across the board: Physical, mental and social.

Ex.

For a long time I had a standing villain in a campaign named Mr. White.

He was a genius, a manipulator and a political villain who could back it all up with some amazing combat skills.

He set things up to raise up the ranks of the military as a war hero. He was instrumental in the deciding battle in the war, he infiltrated the enemy camp and found their battle plan, and walked them straight into a trap.

He was a hero, who was loved by all. All except his own troops who found him to be a little shady.

Soon the old King grew sick and died, leaving his more dictator like evil son in charge. So the the "war hero" led the revolt against him and freed the nation from his clutches.

It did not take too long for the party, who were from his old military unit, to start noticing that he was always in the right place at the right time, or was extremely lucky.

Eventually it was a campaign to uncover his secrets, without tipping him off, and to out him as the villain he is.