Zenogu's page

Oh! I also forgot another houserule. We treat Rapid Shot and Manyshot like Two-Weapon Fighting rules, since Full Attack actions are gone.

Play a Shaman instead, and simply behave and roleplay like a Cleric.

I would love to see Unchained add optional temporary Emotional Conditions. Such as being Happy, In-Love, and Melancholic. And maybe some condition cards to go with it.

Am I the only one who likes the Revised Action Economy? It obviously needs tweaking, but it really does help out to enable martials who aren't archers, lack reach, and don't pounce.

My fav part of the book, honestly. I've implemented it in games I run, and have no intentions of going back to the old ways. Of course, I have some amendments to it that really just feel like common sense at the end of the day. Most 1-round-duration swift actions become free actions (i.e. Arcane Strike, "Litany" spells, etc). I made Rapid Shot and Manyshot behave like Two-Weapon Fighting does.

If I had to rank things...

1. Revised Action Economy
2. Stamina & Combat Tricks
3. Automatic Bonus Progression
4. Unchained classes
5. Skill Unlocks
6. Dynamic Item Creation
7. Diseases & Poisons

We give Combat Stamina to all Full Base Attack classes, with absolutely 0 complaints. Other classes may simply select the feat anytime they qualify. I have a modified ABP chart that includes everything minus the legendary gifts and weapon/armor attunement. Also, I have the bonuses from the chart listed as untyped, just so players can enjoy their abilities to the fullest (Rings of Protection never played well with Protection From Evil). Unchained classes are just the player's choice (minus Summoner, because reasons). Skill Unlocks are surprisingly neat; kudos to Heal and Sense Motive. Dynamic Item Creation is just flavorific. Disease & Poison tracks, while less diverse, offer a different take on afflictions.

Dream Teamwork. Any of the 4 listed below;

Holy Tactician Paladin
Vanguard Slayer
Strategist Cavalier
Exemplar Brawler

Inquisitor, using Cooperation Domain
Hunter
Bard, using Battle Song of the People's Revolt
Divine Commander Warpriest
Battle Scion Skald

All gain bonus teamwork feats, and nearly all are able to share with other PCs even though they don't meet the prerequisites (including ACs, mounts, or familiars). Fun Fact: quite a few of these are eligible for animal companions right out of the gate.

Brownie points if you get a familiar with the Valet archetype.

We enjoy stamina in our group so much that we give out Combat Stamina to all Full BAB classed for free, but only at level 1 (to prevent dips just for free Stamina). Other classes still have access to it, but must select the feat naturally. It's played out very well.

Still has poor will save and is still bad at battlefield control.

I grow weary of seeing this phrase. Not all classes can have good Will saves. And this coming from a Monk is like a Wizard/Magus fretting about not enough skill points.

Now, I'm not saying that Clerics need to be as powerful as wizards, but perhaps a few more special class features? Literally nothing a Cleric has is unique.

Cleric:
9-level divine casting: Shared by Druids, Oracles, and Shamans
Cleric spell list: Shared by Oracles and Shaman FCB
Simple weapons and medium armor: Shared by Oracles and Shamans
3/4 BAB, d8 HD, strong Will and Fort: Shared by Druids, Shamans, Magi, Inquisitors, Skalds, Warpriests, and Occultists
Domain: Shared by Druids, equivalent to Wizard arcane school
Channel Energy: Shared by specific Oracles, Shamans, Necromancy Wizards, Paladins, Antipaladins, and Warpriests

So much of this.

Pretty much all of the thunder of the cleric has been stolen under the radar by the Shaman. Spirits were meant to be a spinoff of Oracle's mystery, but the way I see it they're more like Domains. You get 2 of them (not simultaneously though), and you gain the "extra spell slot" from either of them (rather than choosing 1 from 2 Domains).

And that spell list? Yowza!

Compare the class features of a Cleric to that of an Oracle. Both get 9 levels of spells, but only one gets interesting class abilities at every few levels. The other gets scaling group heal and domain abilities at two, exactly two, levels. One is fun to play and level, the other... is a Cleric.

I think Pathfinder may have went a little overboard in toning the Cleric down from 3.5 to now. You can't tell by looking at the charts, but there's alot of tiny, incremental changes that added up just enough to make the class underwhelming. Losing heavy armor, certain spells taking a hit (Divine Power etc.), not many useful ways to use Channel Energy like Turn Undead in days of old. And they didn't get a "facelift" like other classes did in transition, resulting in a severe lack of class features and/or interesting abilities.

Suddenly, every NPC statblock would be flooded with potions of True Strike, Shield, and See Invisibility.

Have fun with that.

Sometimes, these rules are for the player's safety.

Zenogu wrote:

Interestingly, Animal Companions are a prime target for the Maze Spell. It will never, except under rare circumstances, be able to make the DC 20 Intelligence check to "escape" the maze.

Well... To be fair, they aren't much worse off than any other non-Int-based class...

Unless you're using point buy so high that characters can afford to invest in tertiary stats, most characters will have either 0 or 5% chance of success. So if they aren't casters with Plane Shift or similar spell, they might as drop the dice and go to the kitchen for a snack.

Very true. We've started using the Automatic Bonus Progression from Unchained, which will give you bonuses to all ability scores sooner or later. Even then, that's about a 10% chance to escape a Maze on a given Martial. Things like Heroism help, if they've got it anyway.

Interestingly, Animal Companions are a prime target for the Maze Spell. It will never, except under rare circumstances, be able to make the DC 20 Intelligence check to "escape" the maze.

Hexes for Shamans come in 3 flavors; General Hexes, Chosen Spirit Hexes, and Wandering Spirit Hexes.

General Hexes are the ones available to any given Shaman. Spirit Hexes are from their Chosen Spirit list (or "primary" spirit list, if you will).

The ones gained at 2nd, 4th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 16th, 18th, and 20th level can all be selected from General Hexes or Chosen Spirit Hexes. Same regard for the Extra Hex feat, if selected.

At 6th level, the Shaman gets Wandering Hex, which allows them to choose from any of their Spirits for that day (Their primary Chosen Spirit or their Wandering Spirit of the day). At 14th, they may select two in this regard.

Shout out to everyone who read this in Aku's voice.

Options.

Even if they're "bad," I'll take them anyway if it fits what my character is trying to do. The character creation process has become so modular that you can tweak your character to be juuuuuuust right. Yeah. I like that. Alot.

Also, being able to play the character I have in mind from the get-go is greatly appreciable. No having to wait until level 6+ to -finally- have my character come around with some prestige class that's barely even heard of. Or some horrible blend of multiclassing.

3.5 is full of its problems, but Pathfinder has managed to patch up some things that bothered me. Remember when Favored Class was a bad thing, and Crafting costed XP? Blechk. Some classes I would never touch in 3.5. Pathfinder has convinced me that every class is worth my time in some fashion.

It may gave actually been intended to include another swing at your highest attack, but was forgotten. The designer, Stephen Radley Macfarland, had only a few pages worth of word count to work with. I'm surprised he got as much information inside one chapter as he did.

For some GM judgment, this new AE really helps me consider the "spirit of the game" from certain angles. The way Haste is originally written, and the rough translation toward this new system, gives me a feeling that the extra swing at highest is probably what it's intended to be. My GM gut instincts isn't always certain however. But I can see many tables ruling it this way.

Haste has always been a power-house of a spell/effect throughout every edition, and it's not much different in that regard in this system. Besides, it would work for enemies the same way, right?

Some of my PCs may learn Slow just to counter/dispel it on the occasion. More often than they already do anyway.

So what do we do to "fix" the Cleric and make them a little less boring? Because when compaired to Oracles and Shaman I just don't think Clerics stack up. NOT in terms of raw power but in terms of features and flavor and things to look forward to at each level.

Scrap the Domain Abilities that are written as is, and give them a wider variety of options that are similar to Rage Powers/Talents. They would have restrictions based on level and Domains chosen. Have them acquired at even levels, of course.

Yeah, that's a ton of paperwork and word count, but the Cleric already takes up the most pages in the CRB as it stands. Somehow, they still manage to be boorish.

I think that's a little pitiful that it is a challenge to make an "exciting" Cleric. If you modify the table to be more accurate,(since Channel Energy can be listed as a scaling ability like the Paladin's) it would look something like this:

1. Channel Energy, Domains, Spontaneous Casting
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. Maybe Domain Ability
7.
8. Maybe Domain Ability
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20. Maybe Domain Ability

I left out Aura and Orisons on purpose. They're not awfully special.

No official capstone, barely anything to "let go of" for archetypes, and incredibly situational Domain abilities. Some Domains are pretty solid, like Travel and Luck. But out of like 50 Domains/Subdomains, that's not saying much. Also out of all characters I have made, my Clerics suffer the most from 2+ Skills per level. There were times where I would make it to level 5 without any ranks into Knowledge Religion, Planes, or Spellcraft. Luckily, I didn't encounter a Chase Scene on some of them.

Goddity wrote:

I don't normally use magic items for attacks with save DCs. Most of the time it's buff items, but fun ones not the "Big 6"

I know most players go this route, but after 15 yearsmof D&D, I'd really like to explore magic items outside of the typical static bonus to a stat.

Yup. One of my biggest pet peeves.

I'm actually going to implement the Automatic Bonus Progression from Unchained, except without Armor/Weapon Attunement (and legendary gifts). Since the game assumes you have these "big 6" items, you may as well just give them to everyone.

Some considerations I took in while going over this idea:
1. The Armor/Weapon Attunement didn't feel right, so I left it out. It's rather odd is "consumes" your enhancement bonuses to charge the special weapon abilities. Also, it doesn't help the idea of carrying a few extra magic weapons around for those "just in case" moments, as you can only Attune 1 or 2 weapons at a time.
2. Likewise, I left out the legendary gifts. Literally half of them dealt with your armor/shield/weapons. The rest are just ability score enhancements.
3. Seeing as some characters can go their entire career without actually wielding a weapon (or a suit of armor), giving them free Armor/Weapon Attunements didn't seem fair. Much like a tax on their WBL, since the default system cuts WBL in half.
4. In order for these Automatic Bonuses to feel more natural and "automatic," I've removed their types of bonuses they give to the characters so as to allow certain things to stack.
4a. The Deflection/Toughening bonuses are essentially just "AC Bonus." The only difference between the two is if they will add to Touch/FlatFooted or not. This will let some class abilities to remain relevant and useful throughout the character's journey. (I.e. the Protection Domain's Aura of Protection ability). Similar regards to "Resistance" bonus, and spells/abilities that grant Resistance bonus to saving throws. (Holy Aura, Magic Circle, etc)
4b. Ability boosting items are gone. However, since the physical/mental prowess abilities are just "bonuses," they stack with spell such as Cat's Grace/Eagle's Splendor/Bull's Strength and such.

This leaves the rest of the players' wealth to consider and play with other neat and nifty Magic Items that they would rather avoid, just to save that "slot" for something the game requires of them.

The one time I used Mass Suggestion, I convinced several opponents the only way to defeat us was with Bludgeoning weapons, which my character noticed none of them had. They continued the fight trying to use the flat of their blades, going for -4 and nonlethal at that. Archers put down their bows and drew their crummy secondary weapons.

Another time I was struck by a Dryad with Suggestion. She convinced me the forest she dwelled in was incredibly dangerous, and made the suggestion for me to leave immediately.

Caineach wrote:

Because you are only sundering the string.

I disagree.

I would be sundering a projectile weapon and targeting it's weakest point, which as others have said is the string.

The whole item should be broken or destroyed. It says that in Sunder.

Pulling the string away from the attacker is represented by the CMD of the person with the bow. Which, try as he might to pull it away from you, might get the wooden part of the bow in the way. Unless there is some guaranteed method of attack to directly hit the string, it's going to use hardness and hit points of a projectile weapon.

This is wandering into "called shot" territory.

Myth: busted. Thank you, talking brain in a receptacle!

doing something is better than stopping somebody from doing something else, especially if doing your thing stops them as a result.

Generally speaking, you are correct. There may be some things that might stop you from doing those things however. Such as the enemy having impossibly high Spell Resistance, Saving Throws that will trump your spells, or a Globe of Invulnerability.

Yes, you can use a Dispel Magic against his globe, or use a Sicken/Shaken/Curse effect to lower his saves. However that will likely eat up your turn's worth of actions. While you were busy doing that, this may give the enemy time to cast his Time Stop, Dominate your party Ranger, or use Wall of Force to separate you from your friends.

Suddenly, you would kill for a successful counterspell.

It has a very tiny niche field of use. I would probably lump it into the same category of usefulness as Grapple, since one person is essentially "stopping" the opponent. And it probably doesn't get a lot of merit when you do pull it off. But you may inadvertently save the day by doing so.

I have a houserule that you can counterspell as an immediate action, however it eats up as much of an action on your next turn that it would have normally taken to cast the spell in the first place.

i.e. Countering Fireball with another Fireball will cost an Immediate action, and a standard action of your upcoming turn.

As insanely lenient as that is, I still haven't seen a single counterspell. ):

Unchained Cleric, plz

Will give $$$

^ What Jeff said.

Taking an extra 50% of 0 damage is still 0 damage.

So to add back to the original topic:

Counterspell rules. I wish there was a more cut and clean way to perform this spell-maneuver. The way it stands, it's practically worthless. I've maybe countered a spell once, across my journey of 3.5 to Pathfinder today.

Another dumb question, but I couldn't locate any information on it. Can you take the "run action" with other types of movement speeds? (Fly, Swim, Burrow, etc)

Unchained has hit things off very well in our group. The new rules and ways to make tweaks to the game are very eye-opening, almost making it feel brand new again. In light of this, our heads got to spinning as to where else may have things gone, had Paizo had more pages to spare in this book

One player decided to go out on a branch and attempt to, essentially, make the classic prestige classes (Arcane Archer, Shadowdancer, etc) into a Variant Multiclassing option. The basis for his decision to try this is that Prestige Classes are slightly lackluster (at least in our group), and a handful of them require you to "burn" feats just to enter them anyway. So why not VMC?

If he gets somewhere with this, I may make a separate thread elsewhere sparing some details. What would be some concerns or issues on going about this?

I'm amazed that Cleric wasn't in Unchained..... for a class that has soooooooo much RP potential and soooooo badly put together for PF.... its been crying out for a complete overhaul since Day 1...... but no all we get is...

"The cleric is fine.... it can cast using a shield!!!"

Yes. The first thing I pointed out when I opened the Core Rulebook for the 1st time is that Clerics have no capstone ability at level 20. ):

As an exotic one handed you're basically spending a feat for the Deadly property and +1 crit range, which might be nice for a CdG focused build... but if you are building for CdGs wouldn't you be better off with a weapon with a better crit multiplier? The two features are asynergistic with each other anyways, since CdGs autocrit.

I've never seen anyone survive a Coup de Grace. Is that something people actually build for?

Excellent! That will probably encourage me to do something I normally wouldn't try otherwise. You know, for a heroic sake and such.

The creature may have Earth Glide, but the grappled creature does not. I would imagine the grappled creature would stop at the surface if the Earth Glider would continue to descend.

I'm going to have to go with the Bleed cantrip.

Saving Throw and SR involved (although I though unconscious creatures were automatically considered willing?)

I'm just curious who would spend the standard action using it, rather than throwing a dart or something at the downed guy.

"I've upped my will save, now up yours."

"It's my Will Save, and I need it now!"

Although expensive, Boots of the Battle Herald and a courageous weapon would help out big time.

Biggest pet peeve for me? Monks not getting Diplomacy.

When I think of monks, I usually think of the "master sensei" that runs the dojo, who has some good advice. They're chock-full of good wisdom, and it's usually better to make friends and not enemies.

And yes. Rangers not getting Acrobatics. Also feels ... off.

Magus makes for a surprisingly good anti-mage. Seconding what everyone else has already stated on it.

A greataxe. If you need a 20 to hit anyway, why not make it a heck of a hit? But even better... I had a halfling wizard who carried a greataxe that he was not proficient in. He used it to coupe de grace mooks he knocked out with color spray while the warriors made better use of their time taking care of anyone not affected by the spell.

My brother had done the same thing with a wizard awhile back. Everyone laughed at him. And then... there was just... SO MUCH BLOOD

I use a few tunes from Castlevania, Chrono Cross, Deus Ex, Metal Gear, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill, Two Steps from Hell, and Vampire Hunter D.

I give kudos to players who can guess what music is playing at the table. (:

I actually came to a sort of middle-ground for stat generation.

Point-buy offers equality, but can be "boring." Rolling offers authenticity, but can leave someone in the dust.

So, what my group does now is have the GM roll a "pool" of 6 stats, and everyone uses that same pool to distribute as they see fit.

Only used it twice, but it's pretty neat.

Crossbow + alchemist bomb = grenade launcher

I use the magic-mart only to usher into the real part of the game. Our group doesn't have the luxury of time, so I try to get the ball rolling quick

Incredible. I like what I've read. I feel like some character concepts are able to flourish from the get-go, instead of waiting to blossom around later levels.

If I get a chance, I'll be trying a few of these out this winter break with our group.

baleful polymorph would be hilarious though I hit you...you're now a squirrel

"Look at me. Now look at your man. Now back to me. Now back to your man. Your man is now a squirrel."

The clockwork room which you must rotate in order to make the "doors" appear in the right places. Or else monsters are released if its incorrect.

The cieling comes crushing down, requiring the strongest party member holds it up. Tye others must figure a way out.

The room fills up with water up to your waist, and aquatic denizens attack from below.

A trap room with water knee high, and chains dangling from the cieling. Pull the wrong one, and a lightning bolt shoots into the water, hurting everyone inside. How can we determine which one is right?

The room divides the party in half, with rotating walls of spikes. One side has monsters, the other has a hidden switch to stop the room.

Carrying capacity for Small creatures are at 3/4 of a Medium creature, but most of their belongings weigh 1/2 the normal weight.

Profit?

There is -one- thing I miss from 3.5, but it's only from the later Monster Manuals.

Each creature had a separate box that had something for the GM to read if a player made a successful Knowledge check. The higher the check, the more you would be able to discern from the monster.

Hot diggity daffodil! Everything about Pathfinder just got more awesome. Wasn't sure it could be done

Cheers!

I pay my respects to the martials.

Especially when I roll up a squishy level 1 bard or something of the like

E6, low-wealth/low-magic, modern, primitive, etc., etc., etc... There are many, many different circumstances where "Sub-optimal choices" achieve something very close to parity with their "Optimal" cousins.

Just because you play in the standard "High Fantasy Adventurers are the Most Significant Part of the Game World" type of games, doesn't mean the game is broken.

+1

Some things tend to be situational, but when said situations arise..

Sorcerers and Wizards have an interesting relationship regarding their spellcasting (setting aside actual class abilities). One has what the other wants. Sorcerers generally crave more spell knowledge whereas wizards idolize spontaneous flexibility. At the end of the day, it comes to personal preference.

In order to answer the OP, I say both.