drew m's page

First off, let me just say that after toying with almost every single combat management tool on the Google Play Store, this is quite easily the best one I've found. (I had to uninstall and reinstall, because it was crashing out as soon as I tried to load monsters, spells, treasure, anything other than feats really...Samsung Galaxy Tab 3, working fine now though).

The one glaring absence that I've seen in monster customization is the ability to add new monster templates. I'm going to be running the Reign of Winter soon, and while you have the winter redcap found in the adventure path listed as "Winter Fey," the lack of a winter template for other creatures is a hefty gap.

I'm not sure if there is a way to do so on the Android version even though the PC version allows it, but is it possible on the app to import custom content such as monsters? Being able to build the missing monsters on PC and then moving them over to my tablet would be a decent workaround

I didn't even know they changed dread necro to base class. meh I'll just use the Necronomicon PrC.

I think the real problem people have with "intruding" upon the niche of others is that they are core concepts (priest-type for example) that have given up most other things in order to specialize in one or two particular arenas (the cleric has excellent healing and buff spells, but next to no attack magic and only limited utility spells). While I think it's perfectly legitimate to similarly limit a character (few buff spells, but lots of healing and utility for example), the reason people say no one should heal better than the cleric is that the cleric has given up most other abilities in order to be the best at healing. If you want to have something better than the already specialized classes, be prepared to give up even more (like the cloistered cleric giving up physical combat proficiency). No one likes a Mary Sue (though granted even they tend to give up most physical combat ability and use some dinky little stick).

As a note, in my intial post when I talked about the abyssal and infernal bloodlines being from unseelie fae, I more just meant the bloodlines themselves were from fae. You can still keep actual demons and fae completely separate even with that. If you like the idea of blurring the lines a couple of things to keep in mind.

-Eladrin are already fae in all but name (if you disagre, read book of exalted deeds; if you still disagree, get your eyes checked), and so I would advocate giving this to them in name as well. Guardinals, being anthropomorphized animals, have a little bit of a fae feel to them (animals are often used to represent various spirits which might otherwised be deemed fae). Angels should either by eliminated (bleh) or created as wholly separate entities, perhaps directly by external gods as their direct servants. Finally, archons are a very mixed bag...despite their group alignment, they have the most varied in feel, from angel-like (trumpet archon), guardinal-like (hound archon), or fae aka eladrin (lantern archon).

-If you make demons and/or devils be fae of sorts, be sure to give them some differentiation in back-story, whther it be that they descended from different unseelie courts or a schism in the one court. If you don't meaningfully differentiate the two, make sure you don't include any part of the Blood War (demons vs. devils) in your setting to keep it consistent. Your campaign setting sounds interesting, when you finish developing it, you might consider posting it somewhere.

A fun way to throw the group off with monsters is to just ignore the hit points and let them sweat it out until finally someone in frustration screams "Why won't they die!!!!!" Then start having the things die about two rounds later.

I did that one time with a group, averaging level 10, who came across a small band of kobalds. Needless to say they never took any monsters for granted as easy kills after that encounter. :-)

Better than my DM in one game. After we took down his boss monstrous spider in 1.5 rounds at level 4 (our fighter critted on both of his attacks dual-wielding bastard swords) he decided that the best way to have a boss encounter that lasted for four or five rounds was to give the thing enough hp to survive for 5 rounds if every member of the party critted on every attack. Thus we fought the (no joke) 600 hp L6 orc captain. He also had DR 5/fire (magic weapons weren't allowed...we were only one of the most elite strike forces in this military organization, we weren't worthy of getting any sort of magic gear...) and reduced all elemental magic damage by 5 (but we weren't given any indication that our efforts were being blunted so that we might try something different). Did I mention we were on a wooden ship and he expected us to use FIRE ATTACKS!? Amazingly after about 10 rounds, we had taken him down by a whopping 250 hp (even after DR and magic resistance). And then we finally got a deus ex machina that dealt 320 damage to him and took off his DR (the ship spontaneously combusted). Yeah, we were all pissed at him. Especially since all it took to heal up was a CSW on the tank and one or two CLW on random others.

I'd like Psionics to remain as they are. You know, balanced, playable and well fleshed out.

3.0 psionics is an example of a natural 1 on profession (writing). MAD no scaling, damage dice lower than a pure caster... Having played sorcerers, battle sorcerers, duskblades, and[i] XPH psions, erudites and psychic warriors I can say they play [i]nothing alike. Anyone who tells you that has never played them.

Edit: My last 'Psionics are balanced essay: here

First off I do agree that 3e psionics were poorly done in a lot of ways. I felt though that psionic combat were the only thing wrong in concept, and while I did feel that it needed to be buffed any weaknesses ended up balancing themselves out based on being able to essentially manipulate my spell slots at will. I played a 3e psion along-side a 3.5e sorcerer and we found I was generally only slightly less powerful. When we tried updating to 3.5, I tried keeping all of my abilities roughly the same (choosing the same or similar powers in most cases), and I was suddenly doing a lot more than the sorcerer. We were 14th level, so both the sorcerer and I had just gotten 7th level spels when XPH came out. His main offensive spells were cone of cold and chain lighting. I had energy wave. We did just as much damage, but I could hit more targets more easily, and I could choose my energy type AND got little extra bonuses depending on which type I chose. When your party's melee characters are a monk and a rogue, guess which save they don't care about having to make.

I agree with some of the moves they made in XPH, (eliminating psionic combat, simplifying bonus power points, giving more pp), but I think they overshot the mark by too much (too many pp, consolidation into a non-choosable stereotypical magey ability score, scaling [which needed the most improvement] was generally not that useful, and forced specialization to the exclusion of all five other disciplines). I think though for all of that, my biggest problem was that they forced you to use Int as your primary ability score, which is really ironic since I almost always made Int my main anyways. I think with a couple of house-rules, that 3.5 would be the more fun class, but as is, for all of its flaws, 3e psion is more FUN for me, and so I prefer it. Most people I've talked with felt the same way, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Also, the value of being a DM with 3e psionics and seeing your players' faces when your throw the troll savant/kineticist at them is PRICELESS.

I thought that it was better balanced and was based on a more interesting mechanic.
IMO, it was beter balanced because in terms of casting amount, the ability to allocate all of your power into a dozen 9th level powers in a day, or a ton of weaker ones balanced out much better with say the sorcerer (the most similar other class) who would get a lot of spells of each level but couldn't do what psions could do in terms of essentially freely combining spell slots to cast higher level spells in place of lower level ones. You were giving up some overall quantity for absolute flexibility. In 3.5, you got both in even greater amounts. A L20 3e psion had 223 power points (assuming a +6 primary ability mod, not THAT hard to get at 20th level). In 3.5 the same psion would have 403 power points. Not sure, but I think 10 extra 9th level spell slots counts as at least a little broken. (for comparison purposes: a sorcerer's spell set of 6 spells of every level [not including bonus spells, but those don't add that much] costs 486 power points). Is the ability to shift your spell slots around at will really only worth 80 pp?
As for the mechanic, the fact that the psion suffered from the worst MAD out of any of the classes was one of the reasons I loved it. It made you really choose what you wanted for your character, and also gave you a flexibility in playing style unmatched in really any other class. How many other classes can you choose your primary abilities? Plus it made it interesting; you never knew what to expect when you came up against another psion, and assuming a good dm, your opponents would be just as off-balance. In 3.5, you were basically an int-based sorcerer with even better flexibility in casting, and based on your mandatory choice of a discipline you got a couple of exclusive powers, so you lose the ability to take multiple core powers of the disciplines. Oh woo, you balanced being able to take any power and bumping up the number of pp by 180 by restricting nomads access to astral construct.
I feel they destroyed the very things that made psionics so interesting to begin with by overpowering it and stripping it of its different FEEL; ability score-wise, a psion now is like a wizard in that there is one UND PRECISELY VON ability that you place your highest score in, and then you have two secondary priorities that, while you can decide which is more important to you, they must always take your next highest scores, and then you dump wisdom, strength, and charisma (in that order), vs. before where there was no one true build, and whatever you chose, it was your own path of attaining perfection (kind of like the class's fluff...hmmm). The only thing I think they improved in the 3.5 version was getting rid of psionic combat, but who didn't house-rule that anyways?
Sorry that I always rant at such length, but this time I think it's completely warranted.
TL;DR: 3.5 psion is an OPed sorcerer clone.

I just noticed something that might be hinting at another at-release core class. The Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, under the half-elf entry has an interesting little note...
"[T]heir unique psychic structure also enables them to manifest psionic powers far more commonly than any other race..."
*hopes psionics will be more like 3e than 3.5*

Many of the classic immunities for undead stem from the lack of a Con score. Adding a Con score changes that mechanic and requires revisiting the lack of a Con score in animated objects for unification of the rules.

Most of the undead immunities overlap with not having a con score. If you notice, even intelligent undead retain the bonuses for not having an Int score (i.e. immunity to all mind-affecting effects). Also, clearly type has absolutely nothing to do with null ability scores (let's ignore warforged some more =D).

Also, haven't looked through the new bestiary yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if the undead resurrection rules contradiction is still there. The resurrection spell description (in both PF and 3.5) explicitly states that it cannot be used on undead creatures. The undead type (in 3.5, dunno about PF yet) explicitly states that resurrection can directly affect them. It doesn't usually come up thanks to the lovely 100-round casting time on resurrection, but wish and miracle with their lovely standard action casting times are OHKO (one-hit knock-out) against any undead pending overcoming spell resistance (creatures like nightshades or even atropals don't have a living form before they became undead, and even things like demiliches which did have living forms before becoming undead are suddenly a LOT squishier and butcherable).

Also, rules explicitly say undead can't have regneration. sorry folks, you're cheating to get an even more cheat-tastic monster

As I look at it more, and at a more reasonable hour, I think you really have two options really, if you want to keep the other bloodlines. Use my idea or something something similar. Or just don't call it sorcery (and have it function exactly the same; the "flawless manifestation of will" idea). The latter is completely functional and takes less work, but (IMHO) also feels more artificial, a cop-out almost, like you're actually admitting to the players that you just want to include those other bloodlines but had no way of doing so without saying poof. It might just be the kind of player I am, but when I look at a world, I like to see it deal with all the ramifications of various decisions (hell, in designing worlds, I use environmental simulation to calculate the effects of multiple suns, landmass to ocean ratio, effects of the size of the landmasses and such).

Clearly, I am not one of your players and so my tastes in game world should not apply to your group unless they prefer it that way as well; do what suits your group best, whether that be to remove some options that you don't feel work in your setting (the easy and consistent way, but also restrictive), gloss over the fact that they don't work and allow people to take them anyways for the sake of fun (the easy and fun, but inconsistent way), or spend a bit of extra time that you could spend preparing a game to instead flesh out your world more fully (harder and more thematically consistent, but possibly at the expense of fun or deeper role-playing implications [evil fairy just doesn't have the same ring to it as demon]).

Anywas, that's one DM's advice to another (I assume you're the DM of this campaign anyways, and not a player seeking to circumvent your DM's canon XD).

Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

As I said earlier: Hell no.

The moment I notice a class creep in Pathfinder will be the moment I stop buying. I came to Pathfinder to get a better set of core rules; I don't need a reprint of every single 3.5 book I own.

That's too bad you feel that way.

Me, I feel exactly the opposite. Class creep is to be welcomed with open arms (and closed armored mouths). Embrace it! Revel in it!

You know what's really cool?

If there is class creep then *everybody* wins! I win, because I like having all those extra options. You win, because you just don't need to use it or buy it - no money spent, no extra classes. We all win!.

But if you get your way, and Paizo (and all the 3PPs out there) refuses to allow any class creep, then only you win.

Wouldn't it be nicer if everybody wins?

NEVER! If they make class creep I lose because they could have spent that time making stuff I WANT, and who cares whether anyone else wants it.

To be honest, while my previous post doesn't quite express it, I'm on the border of this. I think what it boils down to is this: For my core books, I only want the main archetypes represented, and really I feel the only archetypes not represented by the core 11 and/or the Core PrCs that I can think of are the psion and the skirmisher, as represented by a scout-like class. I think the standard 3.5 ranger can be customized to fill this role (particularly with a bit of liberal application of UA rules) but I think the new ranger is a little too beefy for it. I'm looking for Robert Jordan's Aiel, not Tolkien's Aragorn as the missing archetype. As for the Psion, if and when they do release it, I personally hope that they go more to 3rd edition than 3.5. It might have been a weaker class, but it was more fun IMO (I'm sorry, but the half-orc kicking ass as something other than a barbarian in 3e? And as a Strength-based caster no less?).

It's mostly a matter of application: the core books should be exactly that. They should be the classes that should be represented in virtually all high fantasy settings. There are always exceptions, but consider this: When you look through any set of prestige classes, which TRULY represent the breadth of character subtypes (cavalier and whatnot), what are they focused on modifying or improving? The rare, specialized additional base classes, or the core classes? I may like a ninja concept, but I absolutely do NOT want them to be considered on the same level as rogues in terms of focus.

Look around you. There are thousands of people who, for their various reasons, chose not to switch to 4e. As far as I can tell, most of them are coming here. Thus, the massive engine of players who create homebrew material (and a mirror of the engine that releases supplementary books to cater to those who want more specialized material) will be transferring to PF. Most of the people who would be more inclined to make really bad anime and video game clone classes (I've seen good ones, but they are very few and far between) I think are more likely to make the transfer to 4e, so we get reduced (though of course not eliminated) bad design in that realm; while there's plenty of bad homebrew in every other genre, anime/video game rips have about a 1% quality rate, while everything else hovers around the Sturgeon Mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law).

What it boils down to is that everyone who wants to build their own stuff, with some assistance from supplementary material, gets it the way they like it, the people who want to build their stuff up from scratch will do so anyways and be content regardless, and the people who just want a way to plop down with little to no prep so they can relax get that too. The only people that really lose are the self-centered jerks who demand that everything made be designed with them in mind.

Whee, I like eaily side-tracked ranting [/rant]

Just a point about the number of spellcasting and non-spellcasting core classes: Let's be honest with ourselves, pallies and rangers consider themselves casters just as much as fighters do. I believe that counting those two puts the core class count to 5 casting (bard, cleric, druid, sorc, and wizard), and 6 non-casting (barb, fighter, monk, pally, ranger, and rogue). Even assuming the 7-4 ratio, consider what we're dealing with: Magic is an impossibly nuanced, with fields completely divorced from other fields (no science analogies to correct me, 1. it's 4 AM here, 2. sciences are all interconnected) divine magic has virtually no similarity to arcane magic in fluff, whereas a monk is close enough to a ninja to be used in most siutations, perhaps trading a few extra features of monk for sneak attack, etc.
I think hybrid classes beyond the bard (who is explicitly the jack-of-all trades class) should be dealt with purely by either multiclass, or variants.
Thus I think only classes like the scout should be allowed in, as that is a common archetype (skirmishers).

I think he's saying that sorcery explicitly comes from dragons as his condition. The problem is, your question (as I understand it) is kind of self-answering: the other bloodlines DO NOT AND CAN NOT make sense because your very premise is that they do not make sense. If you wish to have this part of canon, you really have only one other option. Make each of the "bloodlines" more or less independent of ancestry. What I mean by this is not that a sorcerer needs no bloodline and then still gain the bloodline's benefits; rather, I mean that those bloodlines beyond your typical Fae and Draconic bloodlines are merely specialized branches of those two. Dragons are almost always associated with elemental traits, so you can easily make that into a sub-bloodline that replaces the benefits of the normal inherited abilities. At a glance through the bloodlines this is how I would categorize and rationalize them:

Aberrant - Fae subtype: The fae are beings of primordial chaos, taking form only when it suits them (and often permanently anchoring themselves to a paticular form). Sometimes, the result isn't always pretty, or "natural." Cthluhu Ftaghn and what-not.

Abyssal - Fae subtype: As seen in mythology throughout the ages, the fae are not always nice. The Unseelie Court provides some of the more evil of the bunch. Primordial Chaos + Psychotic Cruelty...demons?

Arcane - Dragon subtype: Magic is not always the stablest of things. Why then, should ability to wield it remain unchanging? Over time, a people's innate abilities can mutate, giving rise to new, and often very different forms. Although this reasoning really applies to either fae or draconic heritage, I feel it is more appropriate to the dragons given that their magic is supposed to have been originally "purer," and the arcane bloodline is supposed to represent raw arcane might.

Celestial - Fae subtype: Similar to the abyssal line, this bloodline could represent a connection to the Seelie Court rather than Unseelie.

Destined - Fae subtype: The destined bloodline deals with fate, a domain much more in the realm of fae than dragons.

Draconic...

Elemental - Dragon Subtype: explained above

Fae...um...yeah.

Infernal - Fae Subtype: See abyssal

Undead - Fae Subtype: This one is really hard to fit into either, but of the two it fits better into fae for similar reasons to aberrant

Yes, this gives fae many more sub-types than dragons. But look at mythology, or even the Monster Manuals. What racial type has more variety: Fey or Dragons? I dunno, just my opinion, take what you like, leave the rest.
Personally, at this point I would take this one step further, I think. All of these other beings that you might normally have acquired these bloodlines from are in fact heavily mutated forms of the fae or dragons. Outsiders are easily dealt with as fae essentially are outsiders. Aberrations can be the misshapen cursed and mutated unseelie fae. Elementals could be the draconic equivalent of ghosts (rather than going to an aligned plane after death, a dragon's soul goes into an elemental plane and gathers energy from the plane to take a physically manifested form (this has the added bonus of explaining why you can't easily raise elementals...it's hard to return something that's double-dead to just single-dead).