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I've recently recieved my first mythic tier on one of my characters and I looked into the special item as well when I got the chance. To me it seems like you get the one item, unless you take the ability again later, and you can then improve the item as you increase your mythic tier. I quite agree that the rules on the item is confusing, which is why I decided to leave it alone and take another ability instead, but I doubt that we'll see clarifications on the matter any time soon.
Relax, you're on the right track. When you roll a critical hit i Pathfinder, you multiply the weapon die and ALL numeric bonuses, but not additional dice. So your guy with the d10+3 would roll 2d10+6. When he get a +1 sword he rolls 2d10+8. :)
personally I think there should be options to play generic versions roles like [Master] Spy or Mystic Theurge off the bat. We agree on that one. Things like the Thurge and the spy could easily have been full classes in their own right. What I’m looking for is the corner cases, the things that can easily be done with a few of the base classes, but would gain from being available to everyone.
I assume that when the developers are ready to announce the play-test it is because they have the actual product ready for testing, not because they just thought it would be funny to announce it something they’ve been kicking around at the office for a couple of days. Thank you for clearing that up. I know that I alone am quite unimportant to Paizo as a buisness, but I honestly doubt that I'm the only one feeling the way that I do about this. So it might be worth considering internally. Besides, you sounded a little agitated there, I wasn't out to get you, I was merely expressing an opinion.
For the Guild Thief I'd do abilities that would make fencing stolen goods easier, I'd give him benefits in his local enviroment akin to the Ranger, but focus on stealing, staking out a mark and maybe assassination. For the Dragon Slayer I'd give them some benefits against dragons, obviously, but with increased benefits to attack, damage and AC against true dragons and lesser benefits against all other draconic creatures. The Demon Hunter shouldn't depend on magic abilities at all, it could add caster levels, to make it more acceptable to casters - both arcane and divine, but it's abilities should be open to every class, like the dragon slayer. The point of having prestige classes like these would be to build concepts. You are right that it's easy to make a good fighter or ranger dragon slayer, but making a rogue or cleric is a different matter. Prestige classes like these would make it easier for the less obvious classes to be something that fits the campaign better, a fighter could become a guild thief - classic bruiser, while a magus could go demon hunting, or a rogue could become a dragon slayer. And seen from the GM perspective - which is most often my position - it would be easy to design a group of slick thieves operating within a city where their power grants them benefits no normal rogue would have. Or a group of mighty dragon slayers looking for fresh young recruits. So it could be a benefit to everyone, both players and GMs alike.
So Archetypes getting more and more wacky as the developers run out of ideas - or even believable concepts - is just fine, because nobody will use them anyway? You may think that the powergaming problem is solved, but it's still very much there, and it's even easier than before, since none of the combinations has requirements anymore. But powergaming is entirely besides the point of what I would like to see more off. What I'm proposing is prestige classes for those of us who doesn't play in Golarion. It doesn't have to be a ton of more and more powerful stuff, front loaded for maximal powergaming. What I proposed was simple, flavorful prestige classes that can easily be used to create organisations outside of Golarion. That you hate prestige classes because you've seen some powergamers hunt the perfect powerbuild doesn't make them inherently flawed. If the issue with throwing all the powerful abilities in at the low levels is solved - not a hard thing to do really, then prestige classes would again be an interesting, flavorful option for those of us that like to have something to achieve outside of the next level or the next spell. On the other hand, archetypes doesn't give you anything to strive for,, you've already got it from level 1.
I find that the “double standard” is entirely a matter of perception. Feeling cheated because you’re not allowed to do all the things that the GM can do seems a rather silly to me. I mostly GM myself and I have no qualm saying no to something that I feel will have no place within the campaign, or something that might be bothersome for the party to lug around. As such I often veto large (huge and so on) creatures that aren’t animal companions. I could deny a race that would fit terribly within the desired setting. And I would have no trouble scrapping a concept that I feel would increase my workload. Does that make me unfair? Maybe, but I prefer to have a party that matches the desired setting – as outlined for the players before actual character creation, instead of having to hammer it into a shape fitting some oddball character that a player insists is the only right thing for him to play. Does it make me lazy? Not at all, I’m busy making a setting for the players to explore. I have to make believable NPCs, plotlines and alternative plotlines for when they go off the beaten track. And then I have to run the actual game, where I try to keep a measure of control over a bag of goblins while allowing their choices to have actual impact on the game. As for “creative rules interpretations”, I think those three words says it all. It sounds a lot like “creative accounting”, or “creative editing”, both of which are frowned upon by most rational people. I have a player in one of my groups that uses “creative rules interpretations” quite a lot, resulting in such claims that his paladin’s aura of good enables him to sense good creatures entering it. It’s three very unfortunate words to put together, because they imply that you want us to play by YOUR rules, instead of the common interpretation, even though you’re not the GM. As a player I can’t really follow your viewpoint. I love it when my GM throw something at us that we do not expect, I find it awesome when he bends the rules to the point of breaking to make us a flavorful and interesting encounter. If I was allowed to do anything he could I wouldn’t find the game interesting, there would be nothing to achieve for my character. So answer your question: Of course there’s a double standard, without one we might as well be playing board games, at least everyone is playing by the same rules in those.
Many actually changes things, yes. I agree. But most doesn't really do anything the class didn't already do on its own, only very slightly better. Examples: Breaker (barbarian), Arctic Druid, Two-weapon Warrior (fighter), Hospitaler (paladin), and so on and so forth. None of these does anything the class couldn't already do quite well, especially the poor two-weapon warrior. And these are just from the ARG, where archetypes were still interesting and new. The more books we get, the more thin and uninsteresting the archetypes become; such as the gunwielding paladin archetype from UC, or even worse the gunwielding wizard from the same book. My complaint is that they're the new prestige classes, with all of the old baggage. As the game expands, archetypes will become stanger and stranger, with less and less shape or idea. It's been there since the beginning and it's only getting worse, since each new book carry the promise of new archetypes, just as each new 3.5 book carried the promise of new prestige classes. Most of them aren't even archetypical, they're just alternative class features. A gunwielding paladin? A wizard with a firearm? The concepts are interesting, but could be done just as well with picking the right feats.
Closing statements: I like Pathfinder a lot; the core book brought us a lot of changes that the game really needed, though we didn’t know it before we saw them. The APG brought us a wealth of new classes and new options for our characters, both PC’s and NPC’s alike. The Ultimate Magic gave us our first true hybrid class since the Bard and Ultimate Combat brought us guns (like them or not is another discussion). Golarion is a world rich in different flavors, but my players and I are not very interested in it as a whole. It has too many flavors, placed too closely to each other, it’s like going through a buffet, putting everything on your plate at once and then trying to separate the different flavors afterwards. It’s a hodgepodge of everything and not a very much of one thing … a bit like a Bard actually. Don’t get me wrong, I like many of the elements, especially Numeria and Galt are quite interesting to me, but mashed up with a great many average fantasy elements it all becomes too much to be interesting to my group. In my last thread, someone asked how many classes one could possibly need to play the game. I would have to say a lot. As I GM far more than I play I am always on the lookout for something new and surprising to spring on my players, since I find the humanoid monster to be far more interesting than the grotesque. I also like to vary my villains a bit more than “just another wizard out to dominate the world”, so new classes are always a welcome way to vary the game for my group. I like the d20 way to game, it is varied enough to support many concepts, but sadly far from all. It’s rigid enough in its rules set that my group can quickly agree on a rules interpretation in the middle of a session. And it’s simple enough that new players can play it without too much fuss, though I must admit that character creation can be a nightmare to new blood. All in all I like the Pathfinder system, but that shouldn’t be a reason to ignore the possibility for progress, even good things can always be improved upon.
Third Point; the teasing about upcoming products: When the developers post something about the new Advanced Class Guide beginning play-tests later this fall, I immediately look very much forward to the play-test because it is something new and interesting to play around with. Then when it takes 2-3 months to get the actual play-test on the website, I lose most of my interest for it, even forgetting about it sometimes. If instead, they got the play-test on the forum within 2-4 week; I would keep up the enthusiasm and still be very interested when the play-test became available. I assume that when the developers are ready to announce the play-test it is because they have the actual product ready for testing, not because they just thought it would be funny to announce it something they’ve been kicking around at the office for a couple of days. So what I propose is to get the play-test on the website as soon as possible after the announcement. I’ve worked in the graphics/web design business, so I know how easy it is to adjust a forum and put in a new category, especially when you already have a template, as they do from the previous play-tests. If the delay has something to do with waiting for the sketch art from Wayne Reynolds (who is an awesome artist, no complaints there), or not having the material completely ready, then they should also delay the announcement until such a time when they can have the play-test up and running within a few weeks. When I talked about Paizo stepping up their game and be the big company that they have become, this was mostly what I was talking about. It’s unbecoming for a leading company in any industry to announce something coming in the near future and then going silent about the product for an extended period of time. And we should all be able to agree that in business, 2-3 month of silence is an extended period of time.
Second point; Archetypes: I stated that Archetypes doesn’t really replace prestige classes because they only bring minor changes to the table and so become rather bland in their execution. The problem: Archetypes has only a very minor impact on the flavor of the class. We can probably all agree that archetypes find their roots in the old D&D edition Kits and the newer 3.5 variant classes. I cannot talk about the old kits, because I was not playing with those when I first started out. But I can say that I found the variant classes of the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana to be vastly more interesting. The variant classes were really varied; some lost base attack bonus and took a step down in their hit die, some changed basic class features radically to become something quite different from before. Common to them were that they all changed radically, not just changing minor features. I would suggest that archetypes took on some drastic measures to make them stand out from the basic class. Things like the two-weapon warrior and the archeologist bard is a step in the right direction, but for each interesting archetype coming out, we have a ton that is basically the same with some minor changes that really changes nothing about the class. Example: make a rogue that doesn’t have sneak attack, but instead has the ability to create a magical weapon ala the soulknife. Or make a druid without wildshape but with added spellcasting options. Change the game through the archetypes instead of just making a load of more or less successful/interesting class features seemingly at random.
My last post received some sound replies, especially from DeathQuaker – thank you very much, so I’ve decided to revise my approach to the subject and post what I would like to see in Pathfinder and how it could possibly be achieved. Broken up into several posts, for your convenience. First point; Prestige Classes:
First problem: We sorely lack more generic prestige classes in Pathfinder. By generic I don’t mean things like the ones the old 3.5 books where filled with to the point of overflowing. I mean instead classes like a Guild Thief, Dragon Slayer or Demon Hunter, classes that are solid in concept, but broad in organizational possibility. I quite like the Paths of Prestige, but it is very specific in scope, limiting itself only to prestige classes for organizations in Golarion. The problem with it is that while I can make quite the awesome Aspis Agent, I cannot make a Guild Thief without seriously re-fluffing – and sometimes re-crunching – large parts of the class. A more generic approach will allow us to make our own societies that fit our own worlds better. So a bunch of generic classes that would scream out for being included in an organization and therefore be real prestigious classes, in the spirit of the original intent. Second problem: Prerequisites. Prestige classes are known – and hated – for their, often, strange or excessive requirements, which often makes little sense to most of us. A class like the Master Spy has a good Will save and gain a few abilities that help out with preventing mind control, and yet, it has Iron Will as a requirement. What I propose is that prestige classes eliminate feat requirements, keeping the base attack and skill prerequisites and adding story prerequisites. Example: Dragon Slayer would have a base attack requirement, knowledge (arcana) and probably survival and knowledge (dungeoneering) as well. Then it would have the story requirement of having to slay a dragon of a certain hit dice, to turn theory into praxis. Now anyone can fulfill a base attack requirement and a reasonable skill requirement, but you’d have to go find an actual dragon to fulfill the story prerequisite and gain entrance into the prestige class. So we’re back at having a feeling of fulfillment. Remember: I know that I can easily covert 3.5 stuff; I’m doing it quite often already. The problem with this is that if we keep recycling the old stuff, nothing new will come along. So if we keep milling the same old grain, we will end up having nothing left.
Well. I have said my piece(s). Thank you all who listened and threw in with your own opinions :)
A lot of stuff Allow me to rephrase it for you. I miss vision and inspiration from my generic Pathfinder books. I belive that I have already said that most of the art os of the iconics doing something heroic and, well, iconic. the 3.5 books was loaded with artwork of all kinds of characters and places, not just the same old bunch all the time. Granted, the Ultimate books have new character shots for each class with the archetypes. But that's not really very much.
The problem being that those lines are much more Golarion-focused than setting neutral, when the OP wants more setting neutral options. Bingo! When I show my players the Paths of Prestige, which I happen to own, they find a class that they really like and which we could easily re-flavor from Golarion to whatever we are playing at the moment and then they stop. The flavor made for Golarion is so pervasive, too completely woven into the prestige classes, that my players have trouble rethinking the concept and adapting it. It's not that they're dumb, they're just either very new, or very focused on what the description of the class actually say, since that is where all the fluff is found.
And now we have archetypes to fill that void. :) But they don't, that's the problem. With archetypes I can play Generic Fighter/Magus/Wizard/Alchemist, or I can play slightly different generic Fighter/Magus/Wizard/Alchemist. I will gain abilities as I level they will just be slightly different, I will gain the same Base attack, Hit die, Saves and most often skill points and class skills. There’s very little difference in playing generic, or archetype, besides a little hardcoded flavor of course. With prestige classes I had a goal for my character. Become a Fighter/Rogue/Wizard, so that he can join the Daggerspell Mages. It was a challenge for several reasons; I had to make it viable throughout the game, so that I wouldn’t lack behind the others and be a burden. I had to fulfill the – arguably sometimes strange – requirements. And I had to actually join the group to receive the training. It was hell, but the good kind of hell, where I got both whipped and rewarded at the same time. Everything archetypes is more or less free. It takes no effort, has only little effect on the game and doesn’t help me visualize my own, or my fellow player’s characters any better than saying “I’m a fighter with a polearm”, or “I’m a paladin with a gun.”
Hello again, everyone. Let’s see if I can combine what I feel is a lot of good points into a single reply. I understand that most 3rd party things are loved by quite a few people, their continued existence is enough proof of that. As I said earlier; I don’t fancy it myself, having been disappointed with what I’ve seen more than once. BUT! I am always open to options being brought in by my players and if I find it appropriate for the campaign/setting, I will most certainly allow it. That said; none of my players have ever brought in a 3rd party product. I find the massive feat section of the UC to be a complete horror. My mind glaze over long before I even get through the 13 pages of index and reading through all 50 pages would be a dreadful chore for me. Now we had (as someone showed us) a lot more feats in 3.5, but they were spread over a great many books in nice, bite sized, chunks. The worst part is that quite a few of the new feats seems to be redundant due to other feats already doing the same thing better, or the feat being so situational that it almost needs an adventure focused around it. I loved prestige classes dearly, it was a wonderful, flavorful mechanic, which gave me something to strive for, something to achieve for my character. With Pathfinder I can achieve my next level, my next +something gear or my next spell or feat. It’s not nearly the same, and archetypes will never replace the feeling of achievement I got when I was finally able to enter my prestige class. I understand that Paizo’s money maker is Golarion and the Adventure Paths and I can really appreciate the lack of need for a new edition every time they see a drop in their sales numbers. I’m not sorry that we don’t get more books, I’m sorry that it takes 15 people a year to make something and that the quality of that something seems to be steadily dropping. I like most individual things about Golarion. Everytime Paizo send out a new Golarion product it’s flavorful, interesting, sometimes gutsy and well thought through, it’s beautiful. My problem is that we do not get anything this good in the general books. Besides, Golarion is everything but the kitchen sink and I prefer my worlds to be a little more specific about what is touching borders with what and how. We have a lot of very different nations that are lying right next to each other, apparently without the cultures affecting each other very much. This makes Golarion hard to believe in for me. About how many books we should have; I don’t have a set number. My point was that wizards did it faster and more interesting with a small group making a book than pathfinder does slower and with a large group. I would have vastly preferred to see UC with a bunch of flavorful prestige classes for martials, making it possible to make a martial character viable in the long run. Instead we got 50 pages of more or less useful feats. Last. This is supposedly the year of the GM, and that sounds great. But what I got was Ultimate Campaign, which isn’t at all useful to me or my players. I got the NPC Codex, which gives me a lot of generic types suspiciously like the ones in the GMG. And we get a new Bestiary, of which – combined with my 3,5 monster books – I already have more than enough. I got no new ideas to use for guilds and organizations. I got no books that help me organize a complete campaign. I got no books helping me doing what I should really do; mainly write interesting and flavorful settings and adventures for my friends to enjoy. 
the older I get, the better I was I sense the Sarcasm-smurf lurking somewhere in this ;) But I don't feel that way, I always have room to grow, to learn, to become better. I have learned a lot from Pathfinder, but that doesn't mean that I should forget what I learned from 3.5.
Now that is just blatantly offensive. I have said nothing of the sort, nor will you ever catch me saying anything as tacky and simple minded as that. I have simply stated which trends I miss from 3,5. I have at no point asked, demanded or required anything from Paizo, nor will I. This is their game and therefor theirs to do with as they see fit. I simply posted a small piece of my mind and you are free to agree or disagree as you see fit. I will not stop speaking my mind, nor will I descend to the level of throwing insults, sorry.
I was especially disappointed with the updates to the Soulknife, but let’s not get into that.What? No, let's get into this, because now I'm curious. I thought the Soulknife revamp was one of the best things about the book - it made the class playable and on-par with the other psionic classes, rather than a straggling lower-BAB featless fighter who got a free weapon. Hmm. I'll try. My main problem with the old Soulknife is the same as everyone else's; it was a weird mix between a Fighter and a Rogue, with some psionics thrown in for flavor. It wasn’t very good at fighting, it was quite on the slow side at rogueing and its psionic abilities took up actions that prevented you using it effectively. Basically it seemed like a poor attempt at making a psionic assassin core class. Now it has been updated to something of the same. If I’ve read it correctly – and I must admit that I haven’t studied it extensively – it got full base attack and the corresponding d10 hit die. The skills is pretty much the same, the ability to psionically charge his weapon still takes up actions to add dice and the blade can still be improved to some version of magical. So now he looks like a psionic Magus without powers. He’s become an acceptable fighter, but his damage is still lacking, he’s still a bad rogue and he hasn’t quite become the psionic assassin he once tried to be. Overall that’s quite disappointing to me. Had the update been in my hands I would have either taken him more in the warrior direction, giving him weapon traning with his weapon, weapon specialization, improved critical, heavier armor and maybe a psionic shield ability. Or I would have gone more rogue, adding trapfinding, a sneak attack-like psionic ability and possibly something like the ninja’s ability to use vanish. The ideas are probably not very balanced in and on their own, but they’re just that, ideas. What, I think, the class really lacks is focus. It seems to suffer a bit from the same confusion that has the monk trying to be many things and ending up not being very good at any of them. I love the idea of the Soulknife, but it’s one of the cases where the crunch doesn’t match the fluff.
Paizo is a company that makes adventure paths, modules and campaign setting material as their primary products and source of income and rules as their secondary product. WotC got that the other way round. So as long as Paizo is operating under that paradigm, you'll never see them churning rules options at the same ratio as WotC did. That also means you'll see a new edition of the game far later (if at all), because the business model is not dependent on having people re-buy stuff every X years. Hello sinister talking bag. I understand their buisness model and in may ways I must agree that it seems to be far more solid than the "relaunch every five years" of Wizards. But that said, I still miss the options of the old edition. It's like Pathfinder is being made as a system to run Golarion the RPG and I think that's a little sad, a solid, tested and loved RPG is beautifully updated, only to become the gears of the Golarion money machine. 3.5 is dead, Golarion the RPG thrives. That said; I have reflavored a great many things from the various Golarion materials to suit me better, I just yearn for something more general in build.
Hello there. You both misunderstand me, and get it precisely right. I'm not upset about the effort they put into their products, it would require me getting upset about people actually doing their jobs and that'd just be silly. What I miss about 3.5 is the freedom, the vast and multiple options, both as a player, and most certainly also as a GM. The reason I loved going through the books wasn't that I love the books more than playing the game, no it was that the books was a vast source of pure inspiration. I dearly miss finding some strange new prestige class that wasn't in my world before, but could become an interesting organization if I tweaked it just right. Pathfinder is either us using their world and their organizations, or not getting anything new in the prestige class department – We still get more and more archetypes, though the quality seems to be dropping steadily and they’re becoming more and more lackluster. I have tried looking into the 3rd party marked on various occasions, for a few dollars per PDF I can manage a peak every now and again and there's always the d20pfsrd to browse if I'm feeling poor. My problem with 3rd party materials is that so far they have disappointed me every time. Either the fluff promise a lot more than the crunch delivers or it seems uninspired and somewhat flat overall. Tying that to the Ultimate Psionics book, I must admit that it seemed mostly like a reprint of the old 3.5 book with some very minor changes, I was especially disappointed with the updates to the Soulknife, but let’s not get into that. As an aside, I felt slightly offended that you concluded that because I miss going through the books, I didn’t miss the gameplay. The gameplay in 3.5 and Pathfinder is basically the same, so since I’m still playing Pathfinder I have no real reason to miss it. I still miss the options though.
When Pathfinder first came out I was very excited, to say the least. Here was a brand new core rulebook, updating the classic races and classes, implementing CMB/CMD and updating a rather annoying skill system. It was the promise of a new dawn and my group embraced it immediately. It was glorious. Now, some four years later, I am getting bored with it. Why you may ask? Allow me to explain. During the reign of 3.5 we had a truckload of options. I would scour the books for hours upon hours for the perfect feat, prestige class or spell for precisely my concept, my character could be precisely as I envisioned him and all it took was me doing something I loved, going through the books. Now I know that many of you hated the many … many, books of 3.5, citing such things as power creep, feat creep, spell creep and so on. But the thing Wizards gave us was choice. We were free to use and abuse, or to forbid and restrict as we ourselves saw fit. True, wizards was pumping out books like there was no tomorrow and some of the material where downright insane, but we had options and it was up to us to sieve through it to find the gold. Pathfinder has given us a wonderful – and much needed – upgrade for the core rulebook and some great new classes, but they are losing steam. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the things they do, especially when they make material for Golarion. But when we talk new core material things doesn’t seem to move very much. For a long time it has seemed to be due to Paizo still wanting to be the small company who is every geek’s friend and as such they have been reluctant to drop the kiddy gloves and make things interesting. But they’re not that small company anymore they’ve become the publishers of one of the best selling RPGs in the world, adding staff at an insane rate, leaving behind their small-business days. They’re the big boys now and they should act like it. Being a big boy in the RPG business means having visions and acting upon them, not holding the hands of scared geeks, who keep on ranting about such horrible monsters as the creep. I realize that I can just use my 3.5 material with Pathfinder – and I do, modified of course, but I miss seeing something new, something interesting, Paizo started out so strong with the Core Rulebook.
In short: I miss vision and inspiration. It would suit Paizo to put on the bigger shoes and get things done. Hinting to musings on psionic magic and making corrections to existing material – such as the recent update/new juju oracle, is wasteful and a cheap tease, when that time could be spend getting the ACG playtest going as they promised almost a month ago I know that not all personnel can be included in getting the playtest ready and on the website, but when I look at how many people can be crammed into making a single, 64 pages, PDF, I find it amazing that it usually takes a month or two from the playtest is announced to it actually getting started. Wizards easily put out about one core book a month, having 3-4 people make the entire book and getting it on the marked, granted, it had its bad sides, but mostly it was good. When Paizo makes a book it takes a year, includes 10-15 people and so much hinting and teasing that I begin to lose interest long before the PDF is ready for purchase. I miss the days when I could get new options for my world building almost as often as I felt the want/need, instead of this slow, boring, extended wait every time a new book is announced. Thanks to Paizo for all you have done so far, it has been - mostly – great, but you need to step up your game, be the big boys you have become, not the geek-pleaser on the side.
Hello there, fellow pathfinders and paizonians. In a situation like this I would suggest having a bugout plan for when the monk show up. Give him a look of scorn, throw a few insults and then leave. Or even better; ignore him when you leave. This is obviously a very frustrating enemy for your group and I'll second what's been said before by others; you won't defeat him. It's obvioius that your GM likes the monk very much and won't let him get taken down. The most effective thing to do in such a situation is to have your characters realize that fighting him is pointless and find ways to avoid/run away from him. There are two or three advantages to this. First: you don't have to waste ressources on a hopeless battle. Second: if you ignore him, your gm will get bored with him and maybe retire him. And/or third: He'll get as frustrated as you are now and make some mistakes that will allow you to finally defeat his monk. Note that I do not reccomend a war of passive aggression, everything should be done in-game. Smart characters learn from their mistakes after all ;) |
