Wolfgang Hype's page

So looking at how stats increase drastically every 5 levels seems really odd to me. I would think it would be more rewarding to spread that out more so you don't see a big power spike at lvl 5. I can kind of get that you probably don't want players dumping all their bonuses on one ability score, but you can add in a line preventing that.

So basically this is how I'm thinking of running the ability score increase in my game:

* Every 5 levels is a tier.
* You gain an ability score increase each level except when going up a tier
* You can only increase an individual ability once each tier
* Ability score increases are the same as normal (16 or below +2, 17 or above +1)

I am curious though- is there any real issue to doing things this way? The end result at every 5 levels is the same, but it makes most levels a little more rewarding for the players. I suppose rewriting any effects of those bonuses may be a little tedious to do each level, but maybe less so than doing it for 4 different abilities at the same time.

I feel I get the gist of rarity for most things, except I'm not sure how it is supposed to work with Clerics. If I'm reading it right Clerics still get their full spell list to choose from when preparing spells. So how would you restrict rarity?

The first thing that comes to mind is by the deity they serve. So clerics of Sarenrae and Pharasma who have the Healing domain would likely get it as common. Maybe some others like Desna, and Shelyn that might have it in their domains or be likely to grant it more freely. But then any other would have to make an argument to their god why they should provide the spell to that cleric, or perhaps perform a task to earn that spell.

What are your thoughts?

The way each class has their own feats is interesting, however I don't think that the Fighter should have their own feats. Looking at their list they basically stole all the combat feats and are hiding them in their room from the other classes. Sure some classes get their own versions, like Paladin gets Attack of Opportunity and Ranger gets some two weapon feats, but others say hidden in the fighter list- like Power Attack which they refuse to share with the Barbarian.

So no, I don't think the fighter should have feats, he should have means of getting more combat feats than others, not be a gatekeeper to the cool toys.

Something that came up in game today: does Telekinetic Charge have to be a straight line? We were debating this. The only thing that specifies one way or another is being able to lift your target over attacks. Personally I view it as lifting and launching the character, but I was curious if there was anything that indicated this was more than GM's choice.

So, something I saw brought up was certain Eastern Armors that have 0% arcane spell failure and 0 armor check penalty. The discussion was about if you could basically wear this with no drawbacks as an arcane caster. Consensus said yes but Mage Armor was generally better. This got me to thinking about if you could use the armor to gain some Ability bonuses but use Mage Armor for the actual armor bonus.

For example: You have a Spell Storing Haramaki +1 (so +2 armor bonus) and Mage Armor (+4 Armor Bonus). You now have a +4 Armor bonus and take a hit. Could the stored spell go off?

I know Bracers of Armor would specifically say no, but that's also a specific magic item and I'm reluctant to take a rule based solely on the functioning of one magic item. I looked at the section for magic armor and didn't notice a similar rule mentioned there or in the Mage Armor entry.

I'm curious what, if any build rules you guys used for this and if you felt it made your players stronger or weaker than intended for the module.

Is this a thing you can do? I did a search and it seemed to be up for debate in the threads I found. I just dug out my book and this is what I found:

Creating magic double-headed weapons is treated as creating two weapons when determining cost, time, and special abilities.

That last bit about special abilities makes me lean towards the answer being yes, but I'd like some additional input.

Are these counted as a poison effect? I've run into this a few times and I wasn't sure how to handle it. It doesn't say anything about being a poison so I ruled it wasn't but I wasn't quite sure about that.

Also since it's a paralytic secretion would someone with poison use be able to theoretically harvest it and coat it on a weapon?

I'm looking at a fairly feat intensive build making use of rogue talents and something that occurred to me was perhaps being able to "shuffle" my feats and talents to get better use out of them. Admittedly I might end up just wasting gold but here's a full explanation:

Basically using the Archaeologist bard archetype to build a whip focused character. Whip Mastery requires +2 and Weapon Focus, Focus requires +1 and I don't start with +1. So basic plan was simply retrain lvl 1 feat at lvl 2 so I have all the requirements for Whip Mastery at lvl 3. However at lvl 4 I finally get a Rogue Talent.

Now while Combat Trick would work fine here, it might be more useful for something else down the road (as my understanding is you can only take it once). My thought was to retrain my Weapon Focus into something new, and take the Weapon Training talent instead. However I could see some potential issues.

An alternative, if more expensive method would be retraining both Weapon Focus and Whip Mastery, taking the Weapon Training talent then retraining the feats back in. I don't think I'd be running into issues with legality. The downside being it's four times as expensive.

I've been thinking about trying to make a combat maneuver focused character for a bit and thought it might be interesting to try to make something similar to Indian Jones using a whip. The thing is I'm not sure what would be a good route to take. I suppose I could go straight up fighter to help with all the feats I'd want to get a whip to a reliable weapon. One downside to that IMO is a lack of skills, which I think might be nice to have (knowledge history is a must).

A few alternatives I've come up with are:

• Slayer using the Whip based combat style (though since I'm likely to attempt this in PFS I'm not sure that's legal). Has a nice increase in skill points while still able to take a decent number of feats. Sneak attack is handy for once I can get Improved Whip Mastery and threaten or just an secondary to move in and flank with after tripping.

• Swashbuckler- gets feats and can actually use an extra one: Slashing Grace to use the whip for swashbuckler abilities. Unless I take Mysterious Avenger, which gives me whip proficiency and lets me use them with Swashbuckler abilities, at the cost of a feat and several AC bonuses.

• Rogue- Lower BAB which means lower CMB, but plenty of skills and free Finesse if I go Unchained. Can get a few extra feats with Rogue Talents but I believe you can only take Combat Trick once. The trapfinding stuff is thematically appropriate as well. On the other hand I've already got a rogue character I'm playing and would like a bit of variety.

• Gunslinger- Just occurred to me as I was making this list but Indie did carry a pistol. I've not looked much at Gunslingers to know what all they do but I would likely lose out on feats they want if I wanted to increase my chances with my trip/disarm checks.

Anyway, that's all I've really come up with, what are your thoughts on this sort of thing? I get the feeling the whip isn't going to be optimal no matter how I slice it, but I'd like to make something that can still be of some use in a fight.

I've been experimenting with adding class levels to monsters recently in my Kingmaker game and my general understanding was that it was basically the same as multi-classing. You add the class levels on top of the racial HD and add what benefits you'd get from those levels. However, I then came across Ngara.

She appears to be getting the benefit of a full lvl 10 Sorcerer instead of just the 3 bonus levels. Specifically access to all the bloodline bonuses. Is this the correct way of doing this? Should I be treating, for example, the Hill Giants I gave 2 Barbarian levels as being level 9 Barbarians? And would this only apply to key classes or to any classes added?

I've looked around a few times but I don't think I ever found a definitive answer for how the Grab monster ability works. I've seen pages of people discussing it but I haven't found an official ruling. So I just figured I'd ask to see if I simply missed it somewhere. I don't really want this to turn into another discussion, because I've seen a dozen different interpretations of the rules. I just would like to know if there's an official way it works, with and without constrict.