cartel's page

Hey there, I'm looking to move Pathfinder into the 1800 - 1830 era. I'm taking an equipment list from an old GURPS supplement and using late-era musket and muzzle-loading rifle gun stats from the D20 Modern: Past supplement.

What I'm having trouble with is cavalry charges and cannons. I think both should be nasty.

A cavalry charge is a devastating attack. Being trampled by a heavy horse is very often a death sentence. The sight of a line of charging cavalry causes ranks of hardened infantry to break and run. And in general, in historical combat, a warrior on his feet was rarely a match for a warrior on horseback.

My thought is to allow a combat trained mount to make all of their hoof attacks on a trample attack instead of just the one. Jumping out of the way of the overrun is now not automatic, you have to make a reflex save (open to suggestion as to what the DC should be) to jump out of the way. And lastly a combat-trained mount may as a free action as part of a charge activate frightful presence against all creatures at least 1 category smaller than itself that it would attempt to overrun (so possibly more than one if the rider has Barreling Overrun (which I'm going to allow)).

A couple of other thoughts: the size modifier chart is ridiculous. I'm thinking of replacing it with: Small: -4, Large +4 etc. It should not be possible for a less than mightily heroic halfling to wrestle and pin a horse.

But I'm really lost on cannons. The siege engine rules seem to assume you're targeting an object or fortification and have nothing to say about a cannonball fired into a dense crowd.

With all selections of abilities in the game, favor ones that get used over and over and over again. Silent Spell and Still Spell are the opposite of that. WIth a good character build, you should use nearly every ability you have every gaming session. This is less true at very high levels, but at level 5, you should pick something with broad utility.

Which is to say I strongly disagree with Dal Selpher. Sure it sucks in that one combat out of ten where you get silenced or you're in manacles or whatever, but it sucks more to have a feat sitting there doing nothing for the other nine encounters.

In my opinion the only Metamagic really worth the feat slots are Empowered and Intensified for a blaster, Persistent for a controller, Extend for minute/level buffs if your GM is willing to let you get nitpicky about time, and Quicken for high-level casters. Those you'll use all the time. You can build around some of the narrower metamagic, sure, but in general, those are the winners.

You might be able to make an argument for taking Intensified Spell at 5th to start getting extra jolty Shocking Grasps, but that's more of a Magus trick. At 6th level Persistent Spell is really useful for Grease and other first level save-or-suck spells (a well placed Persistent Color Spray can be a devastating use of a 3rd level spell slot), and an Empowered Scorching Ray is probably the most damage you can do off of a 4th level spell slot at level 8 (I'm sure that's wrong somehow, but it is a lot of damage). None of that works immediately at 5th level though.

In my opinion Persistent spell is the best of the bunch. I'm a math guy, and the math on Persistent Spell is just great. The average D20 roll drops to about 7, and your target only has a 1/4 chance of getting an 11 or better, 1/16 for a 16 or better, it is much better bang for the buck than Heighten Spell, ESPECIALLY with the Arcane Bloodline bloodline arcana.

If summoning monsters is your bag, Augmented Summoning is a fine 5th level pick.

My DM is loath to create setting-inappropriate magic item shops, and so we wind up with piles of gold with nowhere to go if we're away from a big city. Scribe Scroll is an excellent way to turn extra GP into extra spells per day.