amorangias's page

amorangias wrote:

Color Spray - it only affects low level creatures, but when it does, it's an area save or die effect.

Error you are stuck in 2E when it had a HD limit.

In 3.5 and Pathfinder, Color Spray afects all creatures of any level. It has more profound effects on weaker HD though.

Technically true, but the effect it has on higher HD creatures is pretty negligible. Still, it's nice that it scales at all, unlike - say - Sleep.

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Grease is probably the most versatile first level spell. It creates an area between the team and the monsters where anyone who enters has to save or fall down, stopping chargers and giving team's archers a few rounds of free shots. It can also help with escaping grapples and act as a magical disarm, depending on what you need.

Weaker in Pathfinder as it no longer denies dex except as AoO.

Also true, but still pretty effective as area denial effect.

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Web is Grease on steroids, with higher save DC and a much more debilitating status. Everything that gets caught in it is a free target for all the team's fighters. In certain environments, it can even stop flying creatures.

Web is 3.5 grease on steroids.

Even better then ;)

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Glitterdust cancels invisibility and inflicts blindness - both are area effects. Blinded enemies have a hard time doing anything against the team, and the ability to effectively dispel invisibility is a godsend at such low levels. The only downside is, the blindness effect allows a save each round.

Yah, they added a save in Pathfinder.

Still a good spell in my book. It just means it'll wear off... eventually... on some enemies... instead of "not until long after all enemies are dead".

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Pyrotechnics also blinds enemies, but with only one saving throw - the downside is, there has to be a source of fire nearby. Or, if you don't wish to blind enemies, you can instead create a cloud of smoke that obscures all vision and inficts a -4 penalty to Strength and Dexterity....

Just cast Flaming Sphere (2nd level spell). Best note, the spell doesn't deactivate the flaming sphere only non-magical fire sources are turned off.

And since Flaming Sphere happens to be a pretty cool spell in itself, it makes for a really nice combo.

One on One is the Only way to compare power level. Anything else brought into the mix changes the math and will make one class better then the other depending on the situation, environment, creatures etc... The only True way to compare power is one on one. I am not talking group dynamics but strictly class power.

One on one gives you a thorough and objective analysis of how the class acts in a situation that never occurs in the game. I'm pretty sure I can build a Monk that will do very nicely in 1v1 combat against different classes.

@Amorangias If your winning encounters with those spells well you have not faced a veteran DM of worth.

Ah, the No True Scotsman Fallacy, my old nemesis!

As for RP... Paly can out diplomatic a Bard any day of the week. Lol.

How does he do that? I can understand blowing ranks into Diplomacy, but how does that compare to Charm Person/Monster, Suggestion, Dominate Person etc?

Level 1 - Color Spray and Grease

Level 3 - Web, Glitterdust and Pyrotechnics
Level 5 - Sleet Storm, Spiked Pit and Slow.
Level whatever - black tentacle

Wow. I must go read up on these spells. They've never been part of my repertoire but now that someone is making a list of all the win buttons i'd better do some homework...

Is this really true? Are web and color spray win buttons in pathfinder? I have to admit I've never bothered to read them partly because they're just not my style, put partly because they used to kinda suck... I've never been much of a combat wizard though...

Perhaps we can make a separate topic where we list all the win buttons so that they can be erratad and people can start playing campaigns above level 8 again...

Color Spray - it only affects low level creatures, but when it does, it's an area save or die effect.

Grease is probably the most versatile first level spell. It creates an area between the team and the monsters where anyone who enters has to save or fall down, stopping chargers and giving team's archers a few rounds of free shots. It can also help with escaping grapples and act as a magical disarm, depending on what you need.

Web is Grease on steroids, with higher save DC and a much more debilitating status. Everything that gets caught in it is a free target for all the team's fighters. In certain environments, it can even stop flying creatures.

Glitterdust cancels invisibility and inflicts blindness - both are area effects. Blinded enemies have a hard time doing anything against the team, and the ability to effectively dispel invisibility is a godsend at such low levels. The only downside is, the blindness effect allows a save each round.

Pyrotechnics also blinds enemies, but with only one saving throw - the downside is, there has to be a source of fire nearby. Or, if you don't wish to blind enemies, you can instead create a cloud of smoke that obscures all vision and inficts a -4 penalty to Strength and Dexterity.

Sleet Storm is a mixture of Grease and Pyrotechnics - it creates an area where no one sees anything and movement is hampered. Again, put it between the team and the enemies and you gain a few rounds to prepare for the oncoming battle.

Spiked Pit is just what it says on the tin - you create a spiked pit into which the enemies can fall and take damage. Use in conjunction with any of the vision-obscuring effects above (or even Fog Cloud, another good 2nd level spell, just not as versatile as those above).

Slow is a straight up mass save or suck. Staggered is one of the nastiest conditions you can put on a monster relying on physical attacks.

None of these spells is an absolute "I win" button, except maybe Color Spray on really low levels. Instead, each of these significantly hampers the enemy forces, either straight up debuffing them or buying your team time to buff without dealing with those pesky attacks. Each of them affects many targets and leaves a relatively long-lasting effect, which is key to proper use of magic in PF.

Then, there's Black Tentacles, the closest you can get to a true "I win" button at low-middle levels. It creates a field where everyone who enters is attacked with a grapple, and then crushed for your pleasure. No save, no SR. Just roll for grapple using your CL as BAB and adding +5. I've seen it wreak havoc from level 7 to about 13, then it starts falling behind enemy CMD, but while it lasts, it's absolutely amazing.

I am just not in the wizard camp. They are all situational and bound by feats and school choices. Yes they rock at higher levels (say 7th or more accurately 9th) if they have the right spells ready. Paly rock from 1st level and do not need team support as wizards do until later levels. Most my game I have players end between 10 and 12 the level. So penny per pound I would take paly against any class one on one.

Level 1 - Color Spray and Grease

Each of these can effectively win an encounter. School choices matter little in PF because you can still learn and use all spells ever. And they aren't even situational - you really can't go wrong memorizing either of these spells. Ninth level isn't more accurate than 7th because 7th level is where you get Black Tentacles and win every encounter against ground-based enemies until long after tenth level. One spell expenditure, one standard action - BAM! entire room full of enemies is now hardcore hentai material, while the martials can only watch and grind their teeth. Again, this is a no-brainer spell and you'll never regret memorizing it.

Self-reliance and 1-on-1 comparisons are the worst way possible to gauge class power, because a)you won't be going alone and b)neither will the enemies. It doesn't matter how awesome you can be in a duel, it matters how much you can contribute to a 4-5 person party fighting an equal or greater number of opponents. And in this regard, the paladin has nothing on wizards and clerics.

Paladin is good as far as martial classes go. Smite makes him king against single big evil dudes, and his overall survivability carries him through the rest of encounters. He also gets a very badass list of spells, perfect for boosting his offensive when evil isn't around.

That said, he's still a martial class. He can't teleport out of the dungeon when there's no other way to escape. He can't stack miss chances on himself until the enemy BAB becomes irrelevant. He can't divide the enemy forces with walls or single out the boss with Resilient Sphere/Prismatic Sphere/Forcecage. He can't handle entire rooms of weak enemies with one casting of Black Tentacles. He can't Gate-in a 30HD outsider to help with the fight. He can't effectively cover for other classes with a right use of high level Summon Monster. He can't create his own plane of existence where the whole team can chill and rest while only a fraction of time passes in the outside world. So on, so forth.

Even other martial classes can keep up with him, except poor fighters. Barbarians get all sorts of nice things (Reckless Abandon is practically Shock Trooper on steroids, then there's Pounce, Witch Hunter, Spell Sunder...). Cavaliers lose out on the awesome saves and immunities, but their Smite-equivalent works against any enemy you might encounter. Plus, they get Mount, they get ridiculous damage on mounted charge, they get a few extra feats... Rangers also get an animal companion, a very versatile spell list, free combat feats without needing to meet prerequisites, awesomeness that is Favored Enemy/Terrain, and ultimately even Save or Die effects on their weapon attacks.

Can a Paladin dominate an encounter when there are other martial classes around? He can, situationally. Just like the Ranger will dominate against his favored enemy (and preferably in his favored terrain as well), or the Cavalier will dominate when there's room for mounted charge, or the Barbarian will dominate... pretty much all the time when others can't get their preferred situation, but especially against magic users.

Meanwhile, a Wizard with the right spells memorized can dominate any of the above, regardless of whatever the martial types want to do about it.

Just tell her that the Ranger will eventually cover everything she wants out of her character, she will just have to wait a couple of levels for some of them (not unlike in WoW).

And I actually wouldn't recommend either Skirmisher or Trapmaker. Quite a few Ranger spells function in a way similar to WoW "special attacks", and generally having spells is much better than... not having spells (duh!).

Is there a nature themed rogue Archetype?

Have you asked the players why they are "dissatisfied with the full Base Attack Bonus"? Why don't you ask them what they want instead.

There isn't one per se, but a Scout archetype with lots of Rogue Talents blown on Favored Terrain could work for the kind of character these guys have in mind.

I used to love the rogue. But not so much anymore. Just about the only thing the rogue brings to the table is the ability to find magical traps.

Also possessed by the Sandman and Archeologist Bards and the Urban Ranger, each of these a much better class.

Sneak attack is a cool thing, but I view it as sort of like crit fishers. It's awesome when it works, but it's never easy to make it work.

It's not even that awesome when it works, as proven by various DPR calculations on this board.

The best thing a Rogue can do with a damage-dealing contest is not to enter. Sneak Attack is kinda alright as a vehicle for Crippling Strike and Bleeding Attack, but it's just too much of a hassle for an option that's not that powerful in the long run.

amorangias wrote:

Aeric Blackberry wrote:

With a +1 Amulet of Mighty Fist with Agile ability Dex si your primary atribute, closely followed by Wis. You don't need strenght for anything but taking power attack...

If you're going to buy your way out of MAD-ness, why not just enchant it with Guided and make Wisdom primary?

Because Dex is necessary for stealth, acrobatics (and Disable device with a trait), reflex saves...

Which means you're still trying to shoehorn the Monk into a scout role, which is still a bad idea.

Using Guided instead boosts your Will save (and effects saved with Will tend to be much, much worse than those saved with Reflex), more Perception (the most used skill in the game), more AC (in this aspect, it admittedly ties with Dex), and most importantly - your Ki pool, which lets you make more attacks for more damage.

Either way, buying your way out of MAD is not such a hot option compared to just being a Str-primary, Wis secondary Monk. You can stack more actually helpful effects on the Amulet, or your weapon of choice, you maintain relative equipment independency - sure, you still want to squeeze every gp until it bleeds to be competent, but now every monk weapon found in the loot is potentially a boon to you, rather than something you have to sell for half it's value - and you don't go from 'relatively competent' to 'completely useless' in this one moment it takes to sunder your amulet.

well I had meant that with there big skill spread they can be tooled to most if not all jobs E.G. mouth(bluff,diplo) theif, forger, crafter ect.

Or you can be a Sandman Bard. Six skill points instead of eight, trapfinding, half sneak attack, six levels of spells, some powerful performances, adds half his level to all essential thieving skills. Better as a party face because he gets so much more out of high Charisma.

Or the Archeologist Bard. No sneak attack, but that's actually a good thing, sneak attack is a trap. Still gets trapfinding and bonuses to infiltration skills, still gets six levels of spells with the Bard's wonderful list. Trades performance for a decent self-buff and a bunch of rogue talents - not the best deal ever, but workable, especially since you don't need to blow any of those on making Sneak Attack somewhat usable.

Or the Urban Ranger. Also gets trapfinding and six skill points, on a full BAB class with an animal companion and four levels of divine casting.

If you're really into Sneak Attacking, go Vivisectionist Alchemist instead. Full Sneak Attack, four skill points on an Int-based class, can take Rogue Talents essential to maximizing the usefulness of SA. Six levels of "spells" with a very nice list, can buff his physical stats to "over nine thousaaaaaaaand!", can build himself for using natural attacks to somewhat make up for medium BAB.

It's sad, but there's really no mechanical reason to ever pick Rogue. Each of the guys I listed is a better scout, better combatant, and at least the Bard options make for vastly superior "party faces". All at the same time. To borrow from Order of the Stick, these classes have single features that are stronger than the Rogue's whole 20-level progression.

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Dex isn't a primary ability for Monks. It's barely tertiary, considering they get almost all the benefits of Dex from boosting Wis instead.

You can build a Monk to be a good scout, but Dex-based monks suck in combat, so you better make sure you get a lot of fun from being the stealthy dude who doesn't contribute in any other way.

With a +1 Amulet of Mighty Fist with Agile ability Dex si your primary atribute, closely followed by Wis. You don't need strenght for anything but taking power attack...

If you're going to buy your way out of MAD-ness, why not just enchant it with Guided and make Wisdom primary?

Dipping into Wizard is great, but the caster level will be a steep limitation - consider getting the Magical Knack trait, it will make the difference between your spells' duration being painfully short (with it) and so-short-it's-actually-worthless (without it).

Still, great utility. Having three cantrips to cast at will makes it almost worth it alone (Detect Magic, Ghost Sound, Prestidigitation, Dancing Lights...). Then you get first level goodies such as enlarge/reduce person, silent image, vanish (with Magical Knack, it's three rounds of invisibility - not very powerful, but it has it's uses).

Also, you get a familiar with all your skill ranks - absolutely great for scouting, and a one level dip into Wizard is much better for it than getting it via Rogue Talent.

I guess the rules weren't fine-tuned for dealing with three-armed characters. Preposterous negligence, might I add.

Best answer - ask your GM. I'd personally allow it.

BTW, any 1h weapon can be wielded in two hands for 1.5 Str to damage, so don't bother with the bastard sword.

ITT: Paizo forum goes full /tg/.

Roberta is right - you can apply your PA bonus damage alright.

By pure mechanics, the monk is probably your best bet. The two primary skills for a scout are Stealth and Perception, which plays right into a monk's primary attributes: Dexterity and Wisdom.

Dex isn't a primary ability for Monks. It's barely tertiary, considering they get almost all the benefits of Dex from boosting Wis instead.

You can build a Monk to be a good scout, but Dex-based monks suck in combat, so you better make sure you get a lot of fun from being the stealthy dude who doesn't contribute in any other way.

the question i have is if the were rat was in hybrid or human form when it was trying to parley with the party in the first place.

in hybrid form its alignment is lawful evil. no doubt.

in human form its alignment might have been different.

Source please?

I'd like to point out some things:

1. I just checked the lycanthrope template on the PRD and it says nothing about forcing alignment change. So all this talk of wererats in general being dangerous, untrustworthy rabid beasts is just people talking out of their behinds. Maybe it's true for specific settings or campaigns, but I fail to see the merit of judging a nebulous situation based on people's favorite houserules.

2. I also checked the Detect Evil rules, and I don't get where some people get the idea that concentrating longer would have detected whether the creature had evil intent. The spell says those with evil intent also detect as evil, but it's a moot point when the creature is evil to begin with. There's no point in the spell's description where you can use the spell to go from "I know this creature is of evil alignment" to "I also know it intends to do evil".

3. Assuming it was in the dungeon, how does that change anything? The "dungeon" is a form of a habitat existing in fantasy worlds, it's not a magical place where everything you encounter is evil and out to get you. Whether they encountered the wererat in a town or in the sewers, or in the gorram Evil Temple of Ancient Doom(tm), the situation remained the same - a sapient creature asked them to leave her home, and didn't even fight back when attacked.

I am sorry but share spells is not two separate abilities. Separate abilities are denoted by separate entries, not multiple sentences in the same entry.

You mean like wizard's abilities to learn, prepare and cast spells are denoted separately?

I see no reason why the cleric couldn't have it, so feel free to homebrew it in.

Rynjin wrote:

Seems like they'd come out even to TWFs, it's basically the same thing except they can keep a hand free for Deflect Arrows or something.

Except that, if a monk flurries using a weapon, they can use that same, single weapon with all of their flurry attacks - in other words, they only have to spend half as much money on their weapons as a TWFer. And now that their unarmed strikes can count as both cold iron and silver, it seems like they'd have less trouble with DR than twfers would... to say nothing of the way their unarmed damage scales.

Saving up on a weapon - yes, at the cost of giving up the use of two class features and some very good fighting styles.

Additional options for bypassing DR - yes, long after armed characters can afford the same set of options, and using it forfeits the advantage of only having to buy one weapon.

Scaling unarmed damage - yes, technically. Practically, it's only a minuscule addition to your average DPR. The cost of taking advantage of it includes buying an expensive amulet rather than saving up by sticking with one weapon, and still having problems with DR (see above).

All in all, it's a very small change that doesn't affect the balance of the class drastically. I welcome any positive change to the monk, but instinct tells me it'll be hardly noticeable.

Noone has metioned Caustic Slur yet? It is actively worse than Monkey Lunge and Elephant Trample because not only are you losing a standard action, you are using it to make your opponents stronger. Now that prone shooting is out of the equation I think it takes the cake.

Ouch, that sucks.

Another completely useless feat from Gnomes of Golarion, btw.

My candidate for the worst feat ever is Helpless Prisoner.

You thought Strike Back was bad for locking an intuitive option behind a feat? Well, thanks to this little gem, it now takes a feat to bluff a guard into loosening your bonds just a bit in order to get a circumstantial bonus on Escape Artist! And apparently only Gnomes can employ this sort of arcane trickery.

To add insult to injury, it lets the GM arbitrarily screw with you by declaring the guard a cruel sadist, in which case your action actually penalizes your EA roll.

I hate this feat so very much. It's bad game design at it's finest.

yeti1069 wrote:

One thing that really galled me in 3.5, and still does in PF, is that your choice of race typically has only a little impact for the first few levels and then drops off from there.

I agree with the OP in that i would like to see race play a bigger role in character progression. It isn't a matter of it being "better" than any other option, and you shouldn't restrict any races from playing any class, but I think a level 20 elf fighter should be different than a level 20 dwarf fighter.

Ultimately, there's only so many things you can do with any single class - even if PF classes don't follow molds as strictly as, say, 4e, roles do exist.

Mechanically, there's only so many ways to make a character good at any particular role. If you want to do damage, you want power attack. If you want to do maneuvers, you want the improved/greater maneuver feats. So on, so forth. Since the characters fulfill a role by interacting with a small subset of the greater Pathfinder system, the number of effects which can affect a given subsystem is limited, and it's nigh impossible to make all such effects equally viable in the long run. Thus, tying more vital options to races will inevitably limit the number of possible builds.

Note that the game already accomplishes your stated goal in a much more elegant way - while theoretically you can build your dwarf and elf fighters exactly the same, they will not be equally effective with the same build. This gives you the incentive to find builds that synergize better with your racial abilities. You're much better off building an elf fighter as an archer, or making use of his Int bonus to qualify for Combat Expertise and maneuver feats with a smaller hit to more important abilities, than you would be if you tried to match a dwarf fighter in terms of front line stamina.

That way, race matters, but not so much that single race/class combos dominate the game entirely.

Stome wrote:

I have to disagree. With alternate favored class options, Racial archetypes, Racial feats (some of which are very good.) and types of sight (dark vision is always good.) There is plenty of long term effect.

More specifically half elf is great if you need EWP on a class without full BaB and many times can make a build come online faster and be more effective long past the early lvls.

Human as any spontaneous caster will always have the edge over about any other race.

Half-orc in a intimidate focused build will always be measurably better.

A halfling with a mounted build does not need to worry about having room for their mount like a medium race does.

Could race choice perhaps mean a little more? Sure. but it is hardly as little as you make it out to be.

Well, as I said earlier, I had forgotten about the favored class bonuses, although for some combinations the bonuses are quite strong, while for others...not so much, but I'm also over-emphasizing the point a little, yes.

I'd like that "little more," and would like to see a lot of the feats tied to races show up on character sheets. Clearly, I'm in a minority among posters here, at least.

I'll thank the people who contributed with cogent arguments and points at least for stopping by. The few who did nothing constructive can go troll somewhere else now, as I'll drop the point.

Consider what the human favored class bonus did to spontaneous casters, or the half-elf bonus to Summoners.

The more incentives there are for a certain race/class combo to be built in a specific way, the less chance you have of seeing differently built characters in your games. That's unanimously a bad thing, because sometimes you just really want to play that Dwarf Bard or an Elven Barbarian, and they already fare noticeably worse than more optimal race/class combinations - push that even further and what may be a weaker but enjoyable concept right now may become completely unplayable. It's not realistic to expect that increasing the number of options will also increase the number of viable options - consider how many feats PF has now vs how few of them are endorsed by optimization guides for each class, time and again.

Rynjin wrote:

I mean bad because it locks you into a certain race if you want some Feats that would make a lot of sense for there to be available to everyone.

Elven Accuracy, for example. Or Cleave Through.

Race SHOULDN'T matter too much beyond RP value and a tiny bit of class optimization. It keeps variety going.

Think about if Power Attack was Half-Orc only. Would you ever use any other race for a Fighter or Barbarian?

depends on if other races get roughly-equivalent feats or not.

With a mechanic like feats, you'll always end up with some options being vastly better than other.

At my table, there's an ongoing rule: you can cast Ray of Frost on your beverage to create 1d3 ice cubes in it.

That's about the extent of the spell's usefulness as far as I'm concerned.

Lord Snow wrote:

being mythic is all about beating impossible odds, not about being the strongest dude around

I totally agree. Being "the strongest dude" around would be Epic not Mythic !

Heracles was so strong, he could hold the sky. Odysseus was the wittiest man in all Greece. Achilles was the best warrior of his time, even before we took his invulnerability into equation.

Three traits from three mythic heroes that were essential to their myths. All of them are primarily expressed through numbers in Pathfinder.

Fundamentally, the concepts of epic and mythic are closely intertwined.

Fortification on your armor is a no-brainer here.

Other than that: please post your character sheet so that we know what we're working with.

If you want a trained full caster with a hint of martial prowess, why not simply take the Cleric with Magic and Protection domains?

Medium BAB, decent HD, high Fort and Will saves + bonuses from Protection + high Wisdom, up to medium armor, lots of spells to screw with casters and/or buff your combat capability. Most definitely requires a lot of training.

Edit: Details on Kyra Steelskin

i built a female Suli Battle oracle of Gorum a while ago, i had trouble thinking of a name, the DM handed me his inner sea guide and told me to browse the Keleshite names, i asked him which would be easiest for him to remember. so he picked "Kyra" because of the iconic cleric, and after the campaign, i gave her the title "Steelskin", referring to her power to harden the carbon in her body to the point her skin was strong as steel. (reflavored revelation). she wore Glamered Plate, and slew powerful eldritch horrors with a greatsword, she carried a glaive as a backup weapon.

the easy ways to recognize a Kyra Steelskin Expy in our group are

planetouched human crossbreed with a bonus to strength and charisma (Suli and Angelkin for Example)
worships gorum
wears a suit of glamered full plate or eventually buys one
either has a reach weapon or some means of gaining reach
dumps wisdom
martially oriented oracle
usually comes at around 7th level or thereabouts

...and here was I, just getting my hands on Blood of Angels and thinking "hot damn, would it be cool to play an Angeltouched Oracle of Battle!"

So thank you for shattering any delusions of originality I may have still harbored regarding this cheesy build.

amorangias wrote:

It pains me greatly that whenever I think of a Rogue character, I keep asking myself "why not take either Sandman or Urban Ranger instead?"

Sandman has same BAB and HD, better saves, bonuses to all essential rogue-ish skills, six levels of spells, trapfinding, ton of bardic performances (although he loses out on the ever awesome Inspire Courage), the absolutely amazing ability to screw with spellcasters by stealing their spells. The trade-off is Evasion (this one admittedly hurts) less sneak attack damage and two skill points less per level (though he easily compensates for the latter with Jack of All Trades). Now that's what I call a rogue!

Urban Ranger has full BAB and better HD, better saves, only slightly less skill points, trapfinding, four levels of spells, animal companion, favored enemy, greater invisibility... not as good at social stuff as either rogue or bard, but definitely good enough at infiltration and trapfinding, and can pull his weight in a fight much better.

Rogues definitely deserve better.

none of them can chain fear every enemy they encounter.

I feel enlightened. Truly you have shown me the folly of my ways.

Oh wait, you didn't. You just proved a class marketed as a multitool can be spec'd into a one trick pony and do his one trick slightly better than classes that simply have better things to do than fear-locking enemies.

Still, a cool one trick pony. I'll probably use it someday as an enemy to troll my group.

It pains me greatly that whenever I think of a Rogue character, I keep asking myself "why not take either Sandman or Urban Ranger instead?"

Sandman has same BAB and HD, better saves, bonuses to all essential rogue-ish skills, six levels of spells, trapfinding, ton of bardic performances (although he loses out on the ever awesome Inspire Courage), the absolutely amazing ability to screw with spellcasters by stealing their spells. The trade-off is Evasion (this one admittedly hurts) less sneak attack damage and two skill points less per level (though he easily compensates for the latter with Jack of All Trades). Now that's what I call a rogue!

Urban Ranger has full BAB and better HD, better saves, only slightly less skill points, trapfinding, four levels of spells, animal companion, favored enemy, greater invisibility... not as good at social stuff as either rogue or bard, but definitely good enough at infiltration and trapfinding, and can pull his weight in a fight much better.

Rogues definitely deserve better.

Ashiel wrote:

Nicos wrote:

Ilja wrote:

Nicos wrote:

You ae missing the point againg, if it can be done it can be don, if th player do it poorly is playres fault not class fault.

Alaso, besides spells, what rebuild...

That sounds like an excellent design philosophy. Why don't you start a gaming company? I'm certain it would go well! Why not start with a superhero game?

I mean every class can be used wrongly, it is not special about fighter so i do not see how that can be an argument.

In a current campaing of Red hand of doom the paladin choose dodge, ewp (bastard sword), combat expertise. He do somthng like 1d10+2 of damage. bad choises are bad choises, and with fighter and most of classes they can not be cnaged so easily.

I pretty much thing EWP:Bastard Sword blows regardless of your class. I'm curious though. Which of those poor choices prevents him from tanking, hitting stuff, and healing stuff?

He tank and cure great, but he does +10/+5 1d10+3 (including weapon bond).

Is he actually interested in dealing damage, or is he content with being a tank/healer?

Paladins get as many feats as warriors, that's why I didn't account for that. And yes, it was obviously a hyperbole, but if you're in a campaign that isn't heavy on smiteable foes, getting your bonded weapon sundered at 10th-12th level will feel far worse for the paladin than the fighter.

If you're in a campaign light on evil foes, a Paladin isn't that hot a choice anyway. At least if you aim for being the damage dealer - he still makes an outstanding tank and a good secondary healer/buffer.

Even if you want to be the damage dealer, at the levels you speak of a Paladin can carry his weight with spells like Righteous Vigor and/or Deadly Juggernaut - weapon bond is by no means necessary to stay competitive.

Nicos wrote:

Ashiel wrote:

Paladins don't need evil enemies. They are OMGWTF-AWESOME if their enemies happen to be evil, but are still quite capable of preforming with quite literally any weapon they pick up and don't lose their class features because they're swapping between a bow, a mace, or an axe..

Unless somebody sunder his weapon.

Agreed on that though. The fighter gets his sword sundered? "Oh well, I have a backup one here and I'll get the other one fixed asap"

The paladin gets his sword sundered? "Oh well, now I'm going to be a lot weaker for a month, basically a warrior against anyone non-evil"

Oh my, it's almost as if the Paladin had only two class features, Smite Evil and Weapon Bond!

Oh wait, he doesn't. By the time he has to pay any special attention to getting his particular weapon sundered (assuming he chose that over a mount, which I'm pretty sure many people wouldn't), he can also heal people several times a day while simultaneously removing one negative condition from them (that includes a self-heal as a swift action), cast one or two spells (including Magic Weapon which at fifth level acts exactly like the weapon bond), and grant his allies a +4 bonus on saving throws vs fear while being immune to fear and disease himself. That... doesn't sound like "basically a warrior", and doesn't take into account what happens should someone evil cross his path after all.

Mind you, this is just at the lowest level when getting your chosen weapon sundered becomes an issue for the paladin, and doesn't account for feat selection in any way.

I don't feel competent to comment about the fighter in specific, but I don't like feats as a mechanic too much. My biggest gripe with them is, as the line progresses, the demand for feats increases, yet each particular feat loses value.

Now, I'm not sure I can explain myself properly, so please bear with me. Say you're making a fighter. Screw optimization, you want to have fun doing lots of things in combat, so you want to do a lot of maneuvers. Core gives you sunder, disarm, trip, bull rush, overrun and grapple. Each of these maneuvers has at least two feats tied to them, one of them negating the enemies' opportunity attacks and the other upgrading the maneuver in some way. You probably don't need to worry much about upgrades, but eating AOOs hurts, so if you want to utilize all these maneuvers, you really want the Improved feats on them. That's six feats spent just on not being hit a lot of extra times by the enemy. Still, for a fighter, that's not impossible - in a few levels, you can collect them all.

Then, APG comes, and with it: Dirty Trick, Drag, Reposition, Steal... that's four more maneuvers, and again, each is handled by two feats minimum.

Obviously, few people actually care about being able to do all the maneuvers, but what I'm getting at is this: playing with core only, each Improved or Greater (Maneuver) feat you took covered 1/12 of total possible competence when it comes to executing combat maneuvers effectively. After just the APG, each feat covers 1/20 of total possible competence. Meanwhile, the total number of feats a fighter can take in the course of going through his twenty levels stays the same.

The same principle applies to any feat chain one could be interested in. Every big sourcebook adds something to the chain, and sometimes player companions add something useful as well as a racial feat. This way, each particular feat becomes less awesome, because no matter how good it makes you at doing something, you can count on there being another feat that lets you do the same thing even better - so you want it as well, hence you want more and more feats all the time. It's a never-ending race which you cannot win, because you keep operating on the same limited resource.

One could say the same applies to spellcasters and their toys - casters generally don't get to cast more spells with consecutive sourcebooks, not anymore than fighters get more feats. This is partially true for non-prepared spellcasters, but vastly mitigated by how many spells they get to learn. A 20th level Bard knows 40 spells total, a Sorcerer 52 including those granted by his bloodline. Same for Inquisitors and Oracles, and that's before things like human's favored class bonus adding another 20 to the lot, or blowing feats on Expanded Arcana (purely theoretically, you can gain another 20 spells this way). Meanwhile, wizards, witches and magi can pay to include worthwhile new spells in their books, and clerics, druids, paladins and rangers simply get every new addition to their list at no cost. These eleven extra feats fighters get suddenly don't look so hot, do they? Sure, casters still have a limited number of spells they can cast at a given moment, but somewhere around 5th-6th level, it turns out they can cast enough of them to pull their weight in several encounters, and high level casters rarely deplete themselves in the course of the day. Huh, wouldn't it be nice if fighters could retrain all their extra feats each morning?

One could also say it doesn't matter whether you have absolutely all the feats related to what you want to do, as long as you can do it effectively enough to contribute. This is essentially true, at least for most teams I know of. Still, if you have a role overlap in your team (say, more than one person wanting to dish out damage from the front line), this may cause unhealthy competition and make a character unfun to play if the other guy keeps upgrading his performance while you'd rather take a few "fluff" feats, like some very cool but ultimately kinda useless racial stuff. Again, it's not about some abstract DPR competition or other form of theorycrafting - you'll probably be alright doing a few points of damage less, but if it ever reaches a point where it's clear that the other guy can do all you can in your chosen field and half again as much, pursuing that activity may suddenly seem pointless and a lot less fun. Of course, some players will not care even then, so more power to them!

Phew, this turned out longer than I expected. I hope it's comprehensible.

I haven't tried playing this kind of bard, so this is just a hunch, but in my experience you want to have Inspire Courage up most of the time you're fighting, so getting Dazzling Display to debuff the enemies while you buff your team seems like a worthy investment.

TarkXT wrote:

Because it's ultimately a waste of time on your part.

I don't know what to tell you. With regards the Pathfinder playtest, that wasn't my experience at all. Many errors of that type that were pointed out during the Pathfinder playtest got fixed, and many errors that weren't pointed out (or that weren't pointed out loudly enough) made it to the final product.

The kind of open playtest that Paizo does has it's advantages over a more formalized form of playtesting usually employed.

One of them being, the feedback on spellchecking and minor stylistic mistakes can be delivered separately from the really important stuff, because everything gets sorted into forum threads.

In a classic closed playtest, the same information stuffed into your playtest report is just white noise. You know, just like you don't start threads in the playtest forum on the topic of "X looks like it needs to be toned down, also they spelled Y wrong".

It's still good advice, just not directly applicable to the kind of playtests Paizo's running.

The gist of Monte's advice, as far as I understand it, is to acknowledge there's a thin line between helpful playtest data and the "white noise" of things that might seem important to potential playtesters, but prove ultimately unhelpful to developers. I see nothing insulting about it.

I firmly believe Monte Cook made several very poor decisions when designing 3e - decisions that up to this day negatively affect all incarnations of the d20 system.

I also think his advice for playtesters that Sean linked here is pure gold. Monte may have ideas I neither share nor endorse when it comes to design, but he's also a consummate professional who knows how things work.

Painful Bugger wrote:

Try adding mythic tiers to the eidolon equal to the summoner's. I have a feeling that will make things a bit more even.

That wouldn't be useful for the playtest, though, as there's no current way to add mythic tiers to a summoner.

It wouldn't test the rules as written, but it would test a possible solution to an established problem with the RAW. Sometimes, Jason fishes for such solutions, so it may prove handy for the playtest.

MyTThor wrote:

blackbloodtroll wrote:

Ishpumalibu wrote:

Why does everyone like the prehensile hair so much? I guess I just don't understand it's power...

Reach, and caster stat for damage/attack rolls.

Secondary natural weapon, which means caster stat for attack but at -5 bab, and 1/2 caster stat to damage. No?

Not if it's their only natural attack. Then it's Primary, and x1.5 for damage.

SKR agrees.

See SKR's post here.

Even with that, it's still a physical attack on a low BAB full caster. What's the point?

Archmage almost literally means "a (very) powerful mage".
Champion is a word with many different meanings, one of them being simply "a person who fights". Other being, "guy who is really good (at fighting or any other form of competition)" and "one who fights for a specific person, cause or ideal".
Hierophant means "one who reveals divine mysteries".

All are appropriate to the flavor of their respective paths. They sound nice and are broad enough to encompass many different concepts.

You're building a Barbarian/Wizard, yet you worry about optimal allocation of resources? :)

Smug jokes aside, I don't see your concern affecting a whole lot of people. Those who have a concept in mind are unlikely to worry about losing out on 3-4 HP due to their first level choice, and those who optimize will... well, optimize, whether they have a concept in mind or not. After a few levels, those few hit points won't make that big a difference after all.

If it really bothers you, just hand out maximum HP at each and every level, for PCs and NPCs both. This way nobody is ever cheated out of his meaty hit points. The downside is, fights will last longer this way.

EDIT: And why is this topic in the Mythic playtest subforum?

That'd be good. Still a bit punishing to Paladins and Rangers, but take what you can get - and they're objectively a fringe case anyway.

Put is shortly, I think the requirement of Endless Power to be able to cast 5th level spells is unnecessary. The prerequisite of being a Tier 6 Archmage/Hierophant is more than enough to keep this ability limited (for a moment, let's assume that being able to cast infinite spells potentially up to level 3 can pass for "limited" in some way).

All the second requirement does is favor full casters over other classes who might potentially want this ability. Six level casters can qualify for it whole 4 levels after cerics, witches and wizards, while four level casters don't qualify at all. I see no reason for this, considering full casters already can cast many more spells (including those of higher level) and tend to have better spell lists. If we assume the ability to be balanced in the hands of a 9th level wizard, it's definitely balanced in the hands of a 9th level bard or paladin.

Paladins and Rangers especially could benefit greatly from this ability - they aren't the most likely classes to tread the path of the Hierophant, I'll give you that, but I can see a lot of appeal in a "Holy Man" paladin at least. Plus, they are already the weakest classes that can call themselves "casters", so the buff at mythic tier would be handy.

Thoughts?

My own DM expressed her concern with the ability, which is why I brought it up. It's a Planescape game using pathfinder rules, and though she wants us to eventually obtain mythic tiers, she doesn't want us carving through swaths of angels and demons like they were goblins. As well she doesn't want to go and hand out mythic templates to everything we fight.. So I dunno.

To be honest, her expectations may be a bit contradictory. Mythic rules are heavily biased against non-mythic opponents.

That said, she should still be able to challenge you if she knows her job as a GM. And if you ask me, Planescape is a perfect setting for keeping an entire gallery of mythic opponents on retinue.

If it was Tier 1, I'd share your worry. At Tier 5, it seems about right. A spellcaster who knows his job will simply fall back on spells that don't require saving throws, so this mostly shuts down already suboptimal tactics and various "cheap shots".

Cool, finally some AP report instead of just theorycrafting.

Those damage numbers are really scary.