dharkov's page

I mean. I'm happy to brainstorm an Ancestry here with you.

Thanks, Saedar. This ancestry is vaguely based on the physical appearance of giants that appear in Banner Saga. The idea is that they are almost large horned powerfully build creatures. They are smart and strong and they live in a very complicated cave-dwelling society full of intrigue, and backstabbing since their time of glory has passed them and now they live and opulent decadence (They dress sort of the vultures in the dark crystal). They have huge esteem for their physical and mental prowess to a fault.

So far I have heritages that grant them damage when they succeed in a shove action (they use their horns). Another one to obtain dark-vision.
I want some to show their mental prowess, perhaps something to help with arcane knowledge or some sort of control over random variables in spells.

But I am missing the ability to use large weapons. I Could do without it, but it was part of the original race in pathfinder 1e

I just flipped through the existing Heritages and couldn't find any example of a flat (or really even situational) damage boosts. That would make this particular Heritage one-of-if-not-the-strongest option for smashing fools. Seems a tad overpowered, relative to existing Heritage options which seem to grant either situational bonuses, additional scaling survival features, or some quirk that increases options.

I could see something like the above as a series of Ancestry feats that expand options around being "just wow big".

Having said all that...

Let's go, dude. Keep in mind that overlapping options are thing and are part of the design conceit of the game.

If I wanted to build this as a Heritage, I might consider something like...

Giant-Blooded [AncestryName]
The blood of a giant runs through your veins, giving you the ability to wield weapons of a larger size than normal. You gain Access to a single Large weapon at character creation. Additionally, gain a +2 status bonus to weapon damage while under half health and wielding a Larger or larger weapon. If you are a Giant-Instinct barbarian, instead of the above bonuses, you ignore the clumsy effect of the Instinct Ability.

I still think this is on the high-power side of Heritage abilities.

(Also: Flagging this as wrong forum, as it should probably be in Homebrew.)

Thanks. Perhaps you are right and the ancestry benefit is too good. I was trying to model the old "powerful build" race trait that half-giants had, but since weapon size is no longer a game element is harder to model. I saw that the enlarge spell in 2e had a comparable benefit and this one does not have a reach increase. I thought that this power, a simple +2 to damage was comparable to the dwarf fire resistance, or a bite attack or a +1 to saves. However, perhaps the benefit is way too general. Making it a go-to power.

I am creating an ancestry of almost giant-sized creatures. One of their heritages is associated with their capability to wield large weapons for a medium-size creature. The way I modelled the larger weapons was granting a +2 damage when wielding large weapons with no disadvantages. I consider this a fair enough benefit for a heritage. However, I don't like the way it interacts with other abilities, especially, the Giant barbarian instinct, since the titan mauler says specifically "You can’t remove this clumsy condition or ignore its penalties by any means while wielding the weapon." Since my heritage grants a large weapon with no penalty. Creating a Giant instinct barbarian of my ancestry will in effect create a member of that heritage that is actually worst at wielding large weapons than someone that is not a giant instinct barbarian.
My question is:
How can I word a way to circumvent the penalties from the barbarian or even the enlarge spell that is not quite wordy or cumbersome.
Or should I grant the clumsy condition to members of my heritage to be consistent? And If I do it, will it be underpowered to grant +2 to damage in exchange of the clumsy condition?

Thanks in advance.

I am creating an ancestry of almost giant-sized creatures. One of their heritages is associated with their capability to wield large weapons for a medium-size creature. The way I modelled the larger weapons was granting a +2 damage when wielding large weapons with no disadvantages. I consider this a fair enough benefit for a heritage. However, I don't like the way it interacts with other abilities, especially, the Giant barbarian instinct, since the titan mauler says specifically "You can’t remove this clumsy condition or ignore its penalties by any means while wielding the weapon." Since my heritage grants a large weapon with no penalty. Creating a Giant instinct barbarian of my ancestry will in effect create a member of that heritage that is actually worst at wielding large weapons than someone that is not a giant instinct barbarian.
My question is:
How can I word a way to circumvent the penalties from the barbarian or even the enlarge spell that is not quite wordy or cumbersome.
Or should I grant the clumsy condition to members of my heritage to be consistent? And If I do it, will it be underpowered to grant +2 to damage in exchange of the clumsy condition?

Thanks in advance.

I really like the analysis presented here. It puts into well put arguments many of my concerns.
What if fear the most in PF2 is the feeling of “gameish” in the system. I like the core new systems but most feats and abilities seems like an exercise of balance rather than flavor. Also I fell that many bonuses to damage in high levels become pointless with the large amounts of HP in the game. (I am looking at you Paladin Blade of Justice feat. I thought it added extra damage dice but NO it add extra damage equal to your damage dice meaning a likely +1 or a whooping +2 in level 6)

AS for the proficiency system is kinda weird and I am still not sure about it. The idea is that high level play is equal to low level play. Meaning two 15 level characters will face each other in mostly the same way plus some new tricks since both get bonuses to AC and attack. meaning they cancel each other. But at the same time you could argue that you could create a word with NO level bonuses at all. Or half or anything in between. I think the reason for the bonuses is for encounters against hordes of low level enemies. Since every point you go up means the chance to hit them and crit them increases and also means you will strike them with all 3 attacks and since you AC goes up they will not hit you or crit you as often.

However the set back is weird feeling of possible uncanniness when describing reality. A level 20 Gargantual fighter giant just for being level 20 will have 20 in stealth and even with low DEX it stills gets +21 to stealth (Since I have not seen any penalty or benefit from being large or small except reach) So a few level 5 character will not see a gargantual fighter giant hidding behind a bush.

Keep the great work

I agree, for a level 4 feet it seems pretty useless. If you are pretty far away you could make use of the distance (Again sudden Charge is better) But more often than not you gain nothing since moving and atacking once will be the same (Specialy since monk already move more than the average encounter area by that level). Ofcourse, unless fights crossing pits are common in the game.

I agree. More "genetic" elements should be natural traits. And give way to more interisting ancentry feats. Right now some feats are just ok in level 1 and trivial at level 5. Besides it feels "video gamey" as some things suddenly grow into you.

For a GM Describing societies becomes harder as you don't know anymore the general characteristics of them and they end up being the same as humans and the special flavor that could make a Dwarven town be next to a poisonus river possible but harsh now is just not feasible.

I dislike also that small characters are just about the same as medium characters. No bonuses, no penalties. It makes size pointless when it used to be an interisting element. Less Damage VS better AC and some skill bonuses.

For what it's worth, take what you like it in the corruption system and don't use other parts. In my Giantslayer campaign, I had a character who wanted to be a Dragon Disciple, so I created a custom "Dragon Soul Corruption" taking relevant mutations with their benefits and drawbacks from the various corruptions that made sense for what I was doing. That player had a custom quest to master the corruption in order to become an actual dragon disciple (whole thing spanned the level prior to him taking a level in the class).

In your campaign, you could just change the criteria for gaining a new manifestation level to be based on the contamination point threshold you've discussed. Pick and reskin various corruptions from all the options to build a table you can draw from when people reach the next level. The nice thing is they've already been sorted in order of relative strength/drawback and in some cases piggyback off one another. Use the ones that make sense and drop the ones that don't to create a sort of custom corruption that works in your world.

As I pointed out to Nixitur, the issue is the pool of damage to be deflected by special items, filters and such will be resourse. Besides I am running a great deal of campaigns both locally and online and I want to avoid special tailoring as much as possible after the initial start up of the campaign setting. However thanks for pointing out the large amount of afflictions in the system that I can incorporate and use as a benchmark for my own.

Rather than create an entirely new system for corruption, have you looked at the rules for Corruption already in the game? I've never played with them, but they seem like a pretty solid system for implementing a corruption that you can never quite get away from.

There's a few really fun ones and you could even give each PC a different corruption or create an entirely new one. The progression of your corruption would be linked to being exposed to powerful wild magic although given that it's so common, you might want to have more than three stages. It nicely sidesteps the issues you've pointed out with your own system because gaining mutations is separate from moving towards death. The more mutations you have, the harder it gets to not succumb to the corruption, but they're not directly linked.

Corruption damage is not HP damage is a different pool that builds up. I think it could be called corruption accumulation or something to avoid confusions.

Thanks

Maybe rather than garunteed mutation from next corruption damage after curing, roll d% to see if mutation happens. If not, increase the %chance the next time they take corruption. Keep inceasing the % each time they avoid mutation until a couple checks before the threshold, then make it 100%. A couple checks later a chain reaction occurs and they get the next threshold mutaion, though skewed to be lesser or worse effects than normal depending how long they bested the d%.

Thanks. I like this approach. I think I can even go further than that and say that even if you reach the threshold you are not guaranteed a mutation but you rather roll against a 50% that increases every 10 points you take by a 10%. Once you take a mutation you % lowers to 0% but keeps increasing even if you are not cured. If you are unlucky enough you might end up with more than one mutation at the time. I thanks will tinker further. Any more ideas?

Hello, I been working on a homebrew campaign based on the pathfinder system. My idea is a setting that is constantly ravaged by eldritch storms and frequently random portals appear to random parts of the universe, anyway the end result is something akin to Magical Fallout with a Mad Max vibe. Large contaminated wastelands, strange monsters, harsh and difficult survival and wild magic.

One of the key features is the idea of a sort of contamination that appear everywhere, something like magical radiation. I initially wanted to use the radiation poisoning rules that exist in pathfinder, however this rules are not comprehensive enough, radiation is treated like a one time poison check everyday you are exposed to it. I wanted to create a system in which character get progressively "sicker" by the magical fallout.

The system I created works like this.

Corruption is a magical effect that permeates most of the setting with different grades of intensity. If somewhat follows the rules of cold environment damage in which for each unit of time exposed to the corruption in the environment the characters has to roll a fortitude check that increases for each unit of time the player is exposed to the corruption. If the player fails the check they receive 1d6 points of "corruption damage" this damage is tracked separately and is not hit point damage. It keeps building up until it reaches a threshold. (51-101-151 and 200). When the player reaches the first threshold it rolls in a table of magical mutations, and as they reach higher thresholds they roll in different tables (Low, mid and High corruption).

The mutations are interesting changes that give disadvantages and some of them small advantages usually with drawbacks.

Healing corruption is hard, the idea is that treatment is a costly and a time consuming effort. This with the idea of avoiding the common problem with environmental hazards that become irrelevant fairly quickly as many spells and feats make them trivial.

I decided that mutation can be heal depending of the nature of the affliction because curing the damage will not remove the “mutation” even if you go below the threshold . Some of them are physical, requiring a heal check, some of them are curses requiring remove curse, (I am still thinking of other classifications and treatments). The idea is that the skill check or caster check required is DC 10+1/10 of the current level of corruption the character has.The idea is that the more infected the character is the harder is to remove the affliction.

Now here comes the problem.

How to deal with cured afflictions and re infections?
Let's say the character reaches the 51 threshold and rolls in the affliction table and gets... let's say, a third eye. The player rushes to a healer and it successfully removes the eye with a heal check.
Now the character is sitting in 51 infection but no mutation whatsoever. So, there are two ways to handle it. You could say that now the character is immune to reinfection until it reaches the next threshold (At 101). Or you could say the next time it takes damage a new affliction will appear.

I dislike both approaches, the first one makes it too trivial. Acquiring the next 50 points of infection will take a great deal of time and the player will become effectively immune during that period, and if it gets close to 200 (reaching 200 will kill the character) and reaches all three thresholds and cures the character is now completely immune.
In the other hand acquiring infection is fairly common in this setting so taking damage again is almost certain, therefore making healing kind of irrelevant, because you will end with a mutation no matter what.

So, I am stuck here.

What do you all think? What do you think about the system in general? And what solution can be used for the reinfection problem? Also does anyone forsee any more problems?
Sorry for the long post. And also for my sup par english.
Thanks

I think is important to clarify, (unless it is And I did not read) to what old 3,5 system is related the pacing. Because my first idea was that medium pace was the 3,5 equivalent.

My main concern when I made the change was that my players group have many healers and heavy fighters both range and melee. So the party works pretty well in most circumstances. So I ended up with higher level encounter that they breeze even without lots of magic items, and they started to advance at higher pace than the story. Therefore it became evident that Sub plot about thugs robbing people in forest was not appropriated for the wonder team! (Ranger, fighter, cleric, bard, and a weird soulknife) specially since some areas are not fit to be level to the players, in this case there is no reason for forest thugs to be 12 level with 2 cold damage swords. (I mean, why should be robbing farmers, they can sell one sword and live happy for 10 years, also, the example is not real just to get the idea)

Any way! Thanks a lot for the clarification on the pace. I will try to reward them more for roll play and skill use. If that proves infective I will switch to medium.

I decided to make things slower paced in XP terms. However I found out that the slow pace IS WAY Too slow.
Between level 12 and 13 there are 125 000 Xp points of difference. Each level 12 monster is worth 19200 that, divided among 5 players is 3840 each, meaning that they have to face 32 encounters to level up. With an average of 3 encounters per session it takes 10 sessions to level up given that each one is so heavy on combat or reward able activities. I am using level 12 monsters as an average, because not every encounter is challenging or easy.
After all 10 sessions for most players that play weekly is worth 2 and a half months of play,
I would like to know what is the felling with other advancement rates, also what is the equivalent rate of the standard 3.5 system.
Also if my math is wrong in some place. :P

Althou I agree that shield might be out the bard's desing idea. It is still a typo on the rule set that I would like to see it clarified. Perhaps bucklers could be and exception. A bard in my campain does use one, and althou I don't oficialy ignore Arcane spell failure for that one. Most of the time I forget about the 5% :P

Also the other reason for dropping the x4 at first level comes with the +3 to class skill and the 1 to 1 cost of cross class. So now with 1 skill point you get a +4 bonus in first level. in 3,5 you could have 4 as well since it was Level +3 max ranks. I think is a good simplification. Doing the math also you end up with less skill points, but there are also less skills to use those points in. In the process also favors characters taking non class skills just because the process seems to pay off right away instead of half ranks here and there.

As for the favor class. I do think favored class is an unnecessary, for role-playing characters that have a good reason for their multiclass seems like a necessary felling of loss, and for game sharks the planned benefit of their overkill multiclass is better than the hit point or skill loss.

dharkov wrote:

Not really because they are both combat feats. So you can only turn on one at the time. Besides the old many shoot allowed you to shoot more arrows. And it was useful for DR (since probably thou misread I did added damage for DR)

They are, but combat feats aren't 1/round in the Beta. As for DR... the old Manyshot had DR apply to each arrow, too. See?

Interisting. Thay aren't, how do they work now?

dharkov wrote:

The only problem is that still overlaps Rapid Shot. That idea although neat makes the rapid shot completely useless. It is still shooting one more arrow per shot but under PFRPG with out penalties.

Right, but you could use both. So you could get 1 extra shot with Manyshot, and add an additional extra shot by using Rapid Shot too, but you'd take the penalty then.

Not really because they are both combat feats. So you can only turn on one at the time. Besides the old many shoot allowed you to shoot more arrows. And it was useful for DR (since probably thou misread I did added damage for DR)

I find rather problematic the Lore master in higher levels. Most Knowledge DC end up around DC 30, specially in story related knowledge. Not hit dice related. So Let say a bard at level 12 has 12 ranks in knowledge of arcana. And has +2 int. +3 because is class skill, and half her level. 6. You End up with a static 23 in that rank. If she takes 20 you have a raw 43. This is far more that most knowledge requires. And since you can do it once per day and those story related knowledge don't come as often as a swing of a blade. The bard ends up knowing it ALL. I really don’t enjoy placing pieces of information that are just absolutely unknown. It feels like cheating the players. The take ten can be a problem too, because it eliminates the chance of failure, meaning that below certain DC a characters knows it all again, an given a 23 skill. DC 33 seems pretty obscure knowledge. Perhaps level 12 seems pretty high but In 5 level is 22 still. I just want to be able to add certain chance of failure. I am cool with a very knowledgeable person but not nearly omniscient.

How about make it "in lieu of an attack, but no more than once per round"? That way you can use it in a full attack, but also as a standard action.

Really, the only class I've ever seen Manyshot used successfully with (in normal 3.5) is the Scout...and then only once they have Improved Manyshot so they can add skirmish damage to each arrow.

The only problem is that still overlaps Rapid Shot. That idea although neat makes the rapid shot completely useless. It is still shooting one more arrow per shot but under PFRPG with out penalties.

In campaign Many shot becomes very useful in more complex scenarios were the targets try to ovoid the damage from the ranger or moving environments (trains can be lot of fun). Forcing the ranger to keep moving to have them in sight of to avoid harassing enemies. In any case, I think a way to improve the many shot would be to make it standard action again with -2. Also make the damage form many shoot add up for purpose of damage reduction. Giving the ranger a way to deal some damage to those pesky DR 10 creatures.

The new many shot feat takes the position of the rapid shot feat for most purposes, In 3,5 the rapid shoot grant you an additional attack during a full attack action at -2, thus being the equivalent of improved two weapon fighting in range. And Many Shoot as a STANDAR action allows you to shoot 2 arrows or more with a penalty as well -4. That made both feats distinct, the rapid shot add more attacks to full attack and the many shot was used to take a move action and shot more than one arrow. Now the Many shoot is an extra arrow during you fist shoot in a full attack without penalty, becoming pretty much the same as rapid shoot but without the penalty. I know that rapid shoot is a lower level feat, but I am certainly against feats that are just steps with no purpose of their own. I think those feats should be back the way they were, or some other arrangement. Anyone has any suggestions?

I find rather problematic the Lore master in higher levels. Most Knowledge DC end up around DC 30, specially in story related knowledge. Not hit dice related. So Let say a bard at level 12 has 12 ranks in knowledge of arcana. And has +2 int. +3 because is class skill, and half her level. 6. You End up with a static 23 in that rank. If she takes 20 you have a raw 43. This is far more that most knowledge requires. And since you can do it once per day and those story related knowledge don't come as often as a swing of a blade. The bard ends up knowing it ALL. I really don’t enjoy placing pieces of information that are just absolutely unknown. It feels like cheating the players. The take ten can be a problem too, because it eliminates the chance of failure, meaning that below certain DC a characters knows it all again, an given a 23 skill. DC 33 seems pretty obscure knowledge. Perhaps level 12 seems pretty high but In 5 level is 22 still. I just want to be able to add certain chance of failure. I am cool with a very knowledgeable person but not nearly omniscient.