beej67's page

Put simply:

All full casters and pet classes were reserved for NPC's only.

Wealth by level was ignored.

Put even more simply..

.."make all PCs play the same class and suddenly there's no power level issues between classes."

I view this as an Oxford Comma issue:

Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple

You can also choose (unarmed strike or grapple), not

You can also choose (unarmed strike) or (grapple).

Yep. Control Winds at CL20 gives you your tornado without any other spell. The Control Weather / Control Winds combo is only necessary if you're a lower level caster and trying to achieve the same trick.

You're a druid. You cast it from inside the walls, leaving the wall but turning all the buildings in the town to mincemeat.

However, anything else coming into contact with the wave takes either 6d6 points of bludgeoning damage (if the tsunami) or 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage (if the swell).

The wave damages any manufactured object or structure.

Then you tornado the debris, turning the occupants to mincemeat. First by Control Weather (probably do this before World Wave due to casting times)

You change the weather in the local area. It takes 10 minutes to cast the spell and an additional 10 minutes for the effects to manifest. You can call forth weather appropriate to the climate and season of the area you are in. You can also use this spell to cause the weather in the area to become calm and normal for the season.

You control the general tendencies of the weather, such as the direction and intensity of the wind. You cannot control specific applications of the weather--where lightning strikes, for example, or the exact path of a tornado. The weather continues as you left it for the duration, or until you use a standard action to designate a new kind of weather (which fully manifests itself 10 minutes later). Contradictory conditions are not possible simultaneously.

Control weather can do away with atmospheric phenomena (naturally occurring or otherwise) as well as create them.

A druid casting this spell doubles the duration and affects a circle with a 3-mile radius.

6 miles across gets the whole town easily. Then you control winds, giving you a 1,600 ft diameter tornado centered on you, as you fly around town in air elemental or bird form, with a tiny eye in the middle so you're fine. Arguably, you may not need the Control Weather at all, depending on how high a caster level you're throwing Control Winds at.

Tornado (CR 10): All flames are extinguished. All ranged attacks are impossible (even with siege weapons), as are sound-based Perception checks. Instead of being blown away (see Table: Wind Effects), characters in close proximity to a tornado who fail their Fortitude saves are sucked toward the tornado. Those who come in contact with the actual funnel cloud are picked up and whirled around for 1d10 rounds, taking 6d6 points of damage per round, before being violently expelled (falling damage might apply).

...and that doesn't even include damage from the debris caught in the tornado.

Hell, based on text within Control Winds, you might not even need the World Wave:

A tornado (175+ mph) destroys all nonfortified buildings and often uproots large trees.

Presuming every building in the town isn't a fortification, they're all immediately destroyed and turned into flying rubble, while everyone in town takes somewhere between 6d6 and 60d6 points of damage, from that one 5th level spell alone.

The best city destroyers aren't even lich sorcerers, really, they're druids. If your lich has access to druid scrolls and can properly use them, then throw a few tricks from the Druid Death To Civilization Toolbox at them:

World Wave levels every building within the walls. Then Control Weather and Control Winds stack, so they give you a 1.6 kilometer wide legitimate tornado, carrying the debris from the World Wave. So that alone would do it, with purely environmental effects. Much more effective than Storm of Vengeance even.

If you want to be more mundane about it, Greater Siege of Trees gives you six gargantuan trebuchets hurling an infinite supply of rocks for 20 continuous hours at the same point in the wall, or up over the wall. They'd have to at least come out and confront you.

If you're raiding the door, Blood mist the guards at the gate means they lose control of the front door for 20 minutes. If it's metal, transmute metal to wood gets it a form you can use, then woodshape around the hinge points and the door falls down. So that's a quick and dirty way in.

If your antagonist was actually a druid, you could do all this wildshaped as a bird sitting in a tree in the town square, spontaneously summoning purple worms and whatnot.

beej67 wrote:

Does PFS allow you to play characters of differing age categories?

Yes, but you don't get any mechanical benefit for doing so. You can play a character of any age, but ability scores do not change based on category.

So all those witch spells that adjust ability scores based on age, and eliminate penalties due to age, are pretty much worthless in PFS?

Does PFS allow you to play characters of differing age categories?

beej67, except that the BMI is just so wrong. It is not an accurate measurement of "fatness". Link

BMI is an accurate measure of fatness in my fantasy game world. So there.

beej67 wrote:

Limited Wish is pretty awesome, but it's expensive.

You are right on that, but our group does not play with spell components.

SM7 is never a bad choice

Well hot damn.

If your GM allows you to eschew all mat components regardless of their cost, then Limited Wish is not only the obvious choice, it's game breakingly obvious, in such a traumatic way that you can expect your GM to reverse his decision with regard to that spell within three to four gaming sessions.

Limited Wish is pretty awesome, but it's expensive.

Greater Shadow Conjuration is absolute quality for a sorcerer with a limited spell selection, and would be my choice.

Form of the Dragon II is also highly useful and you can still cast spells in the form.

I demand someone do BMI calcs for each race and rank them in order of fatness.

Go.

ALL GUNSLINGERS

@CraziFuzzy: if the 3rd-level crafter is more or less within WBL, can he even afford CL-17 items?

Candle of Invocation is the example I like to default to. Which, you know, opens a gate to another plane of existence and yanks an entity through it.

Hard to justify a world where the evil cultists don't have a crapton of those laying around, if you stick with the core crafting rules.

Even if it did, the magical beasts the Druid would have access to all suck at the allowable sizes.

More seriously, AFAIK the whole point of the Inquisitor class was to approximate the Catholic inquisitors of the past, who's primary tool to root out heresy was torture in the name of the greater good. It's, like, their whole point. I'm honestly surprised they don't have torture based CLAs in the core rules.

So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions.

Well, we shall see.

Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair!

Oh man, if you think sneak attack is too much, wait til your players discover Power Attack.

beej67 wrote:

...In the end, most class names aren't really in-game 'names' for what a person does. Most of them are just rules descriptors.

Yeah, the Oracle is particularly guilty here. You'd think according to the name that they'd get augury, divination and commune for free at the appropriate levels, but it turns out the majority of them have very little skill at seeing the unseen, knowing the unknown or scruting the inscrutable.

Or, you know, at least have perception as a class skill.

My male witch called himself a "hermit."

In the end, most class names aren't really in-game 'names' for what a person does. Most of them are just rules descriptors.

Vampire Druid can make sure it's always cloudy.

We dumped it a decade ago. Best decision we ever made. We just rank when the story is done, and then pass the hat to the next Player-GM with a story to tell.

So what were the lessons like?

Was it just gaming, or were there other lesson plans tied to the game? Like, "Write a five part essay on the best way to sweep and clear goblins from a cave" or "rank these three concepts for burst DPS" or "develop a Visual Basic program that can allocate skill and attribute points on a character sheet" or something?

I'd love to see some of these lesson plans.

I'm pretty creative, but I can't think of too many instances where I knowingly stretched RAW. Perhaps you could cite a few examples from the gallery.

In any case, even if you can, the point is moot. If a program doesn't have the versatility to allow you to do that, it's basically worthless in a game of imagination (which, by definition, is supposed to have far fewer limits than, say, a video game).

I paid $15 for iPad Numbers and once I had my basic framework of a spreadsheet built, I can do anything HeroLab does for no additional cost, by copy/pasting text from d20pfsrd.com.

THAT is the real great thing that Pathfinder has, imo, over 3.5. d20pfsrd.com is a fantastic resource.

I can also build in any custom buffs I want in boolean boxes, and the like, customize my sheet layout, and all the same sorts of stuff I used to do with pen and paper on blank sheets instead of with pregenned character sheets, so I don't have to play with a laptop eating up my table space. It's nice to play from a couch.

It's at least 4.5 times more fun than mowing your lawn.

If I own a car, and the car is missing the right front wheel, then I can still probably drive that car as long as I put a bunch of weight in the back left seat and only make slow right hand turns.

Is that car "not always broken" ..?

Um... we don't write for a target demographic.

Begging your pardon of course, but the OP shows some pretty definitive evidence to the contrary.

If by "target demographic" you mean "gamers who are interested in playing and seeing all kinds of people in their choice of roleplaying game" then yes, we are writing to that demographic. :D

..and who may be slightly more interested in reading about sexy bisexual female demons than sexy bisexual male demons. At least according to the statistics presented at the beginning of the thread.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I wouldn't go to Hooters if half the wait staff was dudes in jock straps. For the record, I have brought my wife to strip bars, and if she wanted me to come with her to a similar bar with male dancers I'd do it. I probably wouldn't order the hot wings though.

This whole thing reminds me a lot of the big feminist outcry about how Marvel Comics shows women's butts and oversexualizes women's bodies in their comics. Which .. well .. yeah, but have you paid attention to what they do to men? It ain't like they're being particularly realistic with the male forms of their super heros either. I just wish everyone would lighten up and treat sex in fantasy media as fun and interesting instead of some kind of morality statement. Next month someone will post the LG dress code.

To the OP:

I said this in an earlier post, but it got bilged, perhaps because its language was judged to be too pejorative. Which it probably was. I'll try and say this more nicely.

One:
Paizo are such nice guys that they made their whole system open source. That means anyone can write an adventure path for it, not just Paizo.

Two:
Paizo are clearly writing material for a certain target demographic. Just like Marvel Comics. Or Hooters Restaurants. If you don't like the target demographic for whom they're writing, you are free to write and publish material for a different demographic.

Three:
I'm sure a certain demographic would flock to a story line driven by gay incubi NPCs, and if you believe that market is large enough to turn a profit on an adventure path, you should write one for that market and get rich. There is nothing structurally within the rules that prevents such an adventure path from being written, so they are not discriminating. They are merely meeting what they perceive to be the demand. Just like Hooters. Or Marvel Comics.

The way we solve this in our campaign is by making all male elves gay.

What were they running from?

Thanos.

The CR system was built for your problem.

Shoot for 3-5 monsters and follow the CR rules in the GMing guidelines. Run the encounter, see how well they do. If they spank it, add 1 to the CR of the next encounter. If they spank that, add one more. You can easily manipulate CR on the fly between encounters by adding the advanced template, or adding an extra monster.

It's harder to do this with NPCs, so try to stick to some monster-only fights for a bit. Use the monster template generator over on d20pfsrd to swap templates in and out. Once you get a firm grasp on what CR your party is actually performing at, draw up your NPC encounters to properly entertain that CR.

Epic charades game.

Need goblin for the +4 dex.

So would you do a 50/50 Monk/Fighter then? If you're going to go Monk/fighter, why go with "unarmed fighter," when you get most of that from Many Style Monk anyway? Wouldn't there be a better fighter template to adopt?

Never has a PC needed an immovable rod more than this guy.

(Y'all do know you can sink boats with those things, right?)

I am going to be running Skull and shackles soon. I know the player a monk is going to want to be launched from a siege engine as means of boarding an enemy vessel.

Pretty sure a huge trebuchet can launch him but I am not sure how I should run the actual mechanics. He wants to end up near the rigging and use slow fall to avoid damage.

1)

2)
Calculate the height of the trajectory using this:
http://www.virtualtrebuchet.com/
(you can save your boat's trebuchet characteristics with a link at the bottom)

3)
Slow fall comes off that total height, as does anything he gets from rolling with the fall using acrobatics.

4)
Don't be a dork. Let him do it if the numbers work out. It's a pretty cool idea.

What restrictions are there for a CN character? I'd like to hear what folks think Chaotic Neutral should truly be all about.

Not everyone has fun playing an alignment. I'm fine with players using CN as a dumping ground for unaligned PCs.

Yes but you don't get the ninja tricks to spend on the extra feats. Right? I would think that would be a slower build to the trick, with less skill points to spend, and no sneak attack dice.

But you need Improved Unarmed Strike for the Panther Claw thing as well. Won't it be something like level 10 before you get the full trick off going Monk/Fighter?

link?

Okay, so getting all the feats in line for this trick/combo within a reasonable level progression is proving difficult. Can anyone beat this?

(1) Monk 1 (Master of Many Styles) - Unarmed Strike, Panther Style, base feat Weapon Finesse
(2) Ninja 1
(3) Ninja 2 Trick: Dodge, base feat Mobility
(4) Ninja 3
(5) Ninja 4 (Scout Rouge Archetype) Scout Charge, Trick: Roll With it, Chosen feat: Underfoot
(6) Monk 2 (Master of Many Styles) - bonus feat: Panther Claw
(7) (doesn't matter) - Chosen feat: Tangle Feet

That's 7 levels to pull the whole thing off, then the thing to do in future levels is probably pick up spring attack and another combat style, since Master of Many Styles allows 2 active.

Any quicker way to do it? There's a lot of feats in there.

Oh this is cool:

If the ninja possesses levels in another class that grants points to a ki pool, ninja levels stack with the levels of that class to determine the total number of ki points in the combined pool, but only one ability score modifier is added to the total. The choice of which score to use is made when the second class ability is gained, and once made, the choice is set. The ninja can now use ki points from this pool to power the abilities of every class she possesses that grants a ki pool.

So if a ninja splashes one level of Monk, he can tie his wisdom to the ki pool instead of his charisma, which allows a third dump stat as long as he doesn't intend on picking up CHA based ninja tricks.

Very slick, and pretty important for the Goblin with -2 CHA.

Isn't restorative touch a standard action, though? If so, it doesn't really help the action economy any, since the staggered condition will go away in a round regardless.

Panther Style is intriguing. Roll With It doesn't state it can only be used once in a round. It's conceivable this build could go bouncing around the board two or three times, and with Panther Style could make attacks at a lot of different people along the way. That's wild.

I think an agile returning dagger could be a real winner here. You Tangle Feet someone, move away, throw the dagger, and they can't pursue without falling over. Repeat. Could allow you to easily solo large targets with poor acrobatics. The returning dagger also gives you something to do in the rounds you're staggered.

After a review of Ninja, I'm leaning that way, since any of the combat feat prereqs can be taken as ninja tricks. Now, how to cram Panther Style in there. Perhaps 1 level dip in Monk to get unarmed strike, WIS AC, and Combat Reflexes, while spending Ninja tricks on the other feat prereqs for Tangle Feet. Then apply the Scout rogue template to the levels of Ninja, which again allows precision dice damage on the partial charge during the staggered round.

Yes. That sounds nice.

How much CHA does this concept really need? If I'm going with the monk/ninja spread and leaning on agile weapons, I can dump STR and INT to dirt. If I presume I'm going to be able to avoid most damage with Roll With It, I can dump CON pretty low as well.

On a reexamination, I agree. I'm not abandoning the concept yet, though.

They're both great synergies with the Acrobatics skill, and a really twinked "roll with it" character might be able to dump CON on the expectation that any major damage he takes he'll be able to avoid.

If you're building around an agile weapon, you may also dump STR, presuming you can keep your encumbrance down. Goblins get +4 DEX. Presume we dump CHA (goblin yo!) you're talking 3 dump stats and 1 stat through the roof. That alone can produce some really effective builds.

So Magus stands out to me, since rapier is kind of an obvious choice for an agile weapon build and is also a Magus staple. Could work well with single swings after movement. Seems like a long way to go, though, since Magi are so feat starved anyway. It'd be nice to catch something where the tangle feet prereqs are bonus feats. That leads me to either Monk, or some kind of Fighter multiclass.

Ninja? Idk much about them.

For me, that party makeup screams "Summoning Druid."

Gives you full column caster plus melee potential, many of the divine support spells you're lacking, as well as spontaneously cast summon fodder for the Bard to buff and to provide flanking for the Paladin. Plus, you know, all the other broken druid stuff.

And you can please all these weirdos looking for tiny PCs in their "tiny party thread" by wildshaping into tiny sized animals.

These two in combination intrigue me, but I'm not sure how best to combo them for effectiveness - in terms of what classes and other periphery feats to take.

Seems to me that any goblin build with both of them is going to lean on Weapon Finesse and an Agile weapon, so lets presume that as a starting point. (or Monk and an Agile Might Fists amulet)

What's the best route to max this combo's potential? Any ideas?

These two in combination intrigue me, but I'm not sure how best to combo them for effectiveness - in terms of what classes and other periphery feats to take.

Seems to me that any goblin build with both of them is going to lean on Weapon Finesse and an Agile weapon, so lets presume that as a starting point. (or Monk and an Agile Might Fists amulet)

What's the best route to max this combo's potential? Any ideas? My first pass seems like Monk is the way to go.

I've said this a couple times, but I'm going to repeat it here: I really dislike "enemy races". The concept as a whole offends me. The idea that a group of adventurers is entirely justified in killing something and looting its body because it's a goblin or orc or whatever strikes me as very video-gamey.

Or, you know, "historically accurate."

Hell, it wasn't two centuries ago that people in the United States of America were totally justified in buying, selling, owning, whipping, and killing if they so chose, an entire race of people.

Shoot, the Hutus were doing that to the Tutsis a decade ago. And I can't even tell the Hutus and Tutsis apart!

Racial genocide and looting of dead corpses is sorta the way humans have always worked. And we may think we're better than that now, but we're still turning a blind eye to it whenever it suits us to do so. (Rwanda) Doesn't seem video gamey at all to me. Seems almost too real.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.
Follow the Yellow Brick, Follow the Yellow Brick,
Follow the Yellow Brick Road.

Not my kind of game either.

dot.

Let me know when you get to 18th level. I've got some highly sketchy ipad numbers spreadsheets I'm using now, which I'd love to vet against another source.

I do believe you'd forget your spell column due to dying, would you not? Might impede your ability to get a great advantage out of this in combat.

Otherwise, sounds like a great idea.

Here is what I would do. Go along with your dominated orders and go investigate things like they tell you. At the next evil monster combat doing this task, drop a protection or magic circle against evil as a party buff.

Everybody gets another save. If some people start saving successfully, they can start dropping more protections, dispel magic, break enchantment, whatever, and break the domination in the middle of combat.

That was my first thought. Then I thought maybe having everyone switch to Liches and Grave Knights and Antipaladins and the like might make for a much more entertaining story arc.