erik542's page

I really don't know how parties were getting wiped in the first adventure. We ran Fighter, Sorc, Bard, Rogue. As the Rogue, I made sure to stealth ahead to preview the various rooms and disable traps. Once the fighter remembered to actually use his shield (which are immensely OP), he was able to just tank everything once the the fight actually broke out which was usually on our terms due to my scouting. Then the bard's healing was enough to get us of the way through the dungeon on one day. Oh and the sorc was useless. Everything was pretty smooth sailing until the boss where we suddenly remembered hero points existed because of him getting 3 crits in one round to drop 2 people and nearly a third.

This is essentially what I was asking for in my other post;

THREAD

Obviously, I am all for Arcanist style casting for prepared casters. Especially with having fewer spells per day (3 per spell level max) I cannot imagine wanting to play a character who has to decide "how many magic missiles do I want to prepare?" or "do I want a 3rd level magic missile or three fireballs?" Honestly, this has been a problem for me ever since I was introduced to the alternative casting method as I first discovered in 5e.

I feel that sorcerers do need a bit of an overhaul as presented. I have no specifics in mind, as none of my players have shown any interest in the sorcerer as is, which in itself can be seen as a problem. One of their strengths, as is, is that they can choose which type of magic to use via their bloodline, but there has to be a reason to want to play Sorcerer vs Wizard for arcane spells, Sorcerer vs Cleric for divine, vs Druid for primal, and vs Bard for occult, otherwise there is no point of a sorcerer. I think bloodline based abilities and bloodline powers that use Spell Points will be the answer to this (as long as each bloodline gets some neat powers to make use of that are both interesting and viable for regular use in game). I feel that sorcerers should get more powers as opposed to other full casters, but that's only my own opinion and I have no real playtest data to back that up.

In the end, all options need to be fun and interesting while still being distinct from one another. This is a tall order, but I feel that it is well within the scope of what Paizo can do.

If you make all prep casters as the arcanist, then I think you should adopt the power point system from 3.5 psionics or dreamscarred's PF1 psionics. This allows the prep casters the level of spontaneity that honestly feels very good to play as I personally thoroughly enjoyed playing the arcanist as long as a few things are kept in check while keeping the sorcerer and possibly other full spontaneous casters distinct. Honestly when they previewed the wizard, I thought that this is what they were going to do.

I am personally opposed to Dex to damage being in the game at all, because their +/- 10 critical system does a much better job of representing how a character would hit more accurately and do more damage from it than a relatively lazy gamist mechanic like switching the damage dealing attribute. I would almost rather see the rogue's finesse strike add either a static +2 to damage, or a scaling + 1 to damage that goes up ever other or every third level, but caps at your Dex Modifier.

But the STR based character is just as accurate as the Dex character.

Love how the most important thing in this thread now is Khajiit.

First off, thanks for the great post. Now I'll take my stab at how I'd fix each of your concerns if I were designing it.

and it is a problem as the monsters appear as doing more cool things than the players.

Ok admission time. I haven't had a session nor am I looking at the bestiary because I'm going to be a player not GM in the playtest campaign but this has me tremendously worried.

- Resonnance is immersion breaking and gamey like I have never seen before.

Because it's unnecesary bookkeeping that gets in the way of the players doing cool things with the stuff they got, doubly so for the alchemist. What needs to be done is to make sure that as many items as possible are "verb" items. Then if their monsters are stat'ed up properly, PC's don't need +numbers items to survive or something like the automatic bonus progression (which was a big win in my book). The final touch is to take a hard look at the economy of items.

In PF1, everyone actually reading this knows about the CLW problem. Looking at the XP table for monsters and, if you're good at math, the player XP table, the game predicts that a guy that is 2 levels higher is twice as strong as you. This generates an exponential power curve. The problem is that items were priced at spell level * caster level which is quadratic. In order for the pricing to not be utterly laughable, there was a region where items were actually a bit over priced relative to their effect. Now the other side was the items that should be underpriced were simply expensive enough anyways to be rare. I could get into why damage scaling in PF1 is roughly cubic in level and that explains why the other cure spells were weak in terms of action economy but that's a post for another day.

- Healing is a huge problem, and the players feels like sick and crazy blooded people chasing cooler monsters than they are.

I am actually OK with fairly high lethality monsters due to my preference for story based games over dungeon crawls. In strongly story driven campaigns, it is difficult to shoehorn in the typical 4 encounters a day to make the players drain their resources on a regular basis. Thus fewer, but deadlier, encounters actually fit better for those kinds of campaigns. But what about all the people who just want to get drunk and fight some monsters, whom market research seems to show is a larger segment than these boards would like to admit? Well you can simply throw many lower level monsters at them.

- Skills are still too weak, and still not able to emulate magic in the medium levels.

In order to do that, they need to be less constrained by the physical at mid to upper levels. In 3.0, you could squeeze through a wall of force with a high enough check (like DC 75 or something). Here they have the foundations to do that with the proficiency system. Legendary in acrobatics? Yes you can roll to get through that wall of force. Legendary in medicine? Yes you can roll to resurrect someone recently dead. Paizo got too cautious. Rule of cool might be the way to go here.

- The three actions economy feels like a scam when you are a spellcaster, and casting two spells in the same round is still very rare and difficult to do.

Action economy for casters has moved to concentration spells since concentrating is a single action. Look at spells like Flaming Sphere instead of Lightning Bolt. I think this is a design choice that might turn out fair.

- Our Barbarian and Figther felt like they were doing less cool things that they can do in Pathfinder, with Rage Powers and Archetypes like Mutagenic Mauler and the like.

Because they objectively have fewer things to do each round. The fighter can no longer charge and power attack. They pushed too many core mechanics into class feats (I'm looking at you Counterspell and Attack of Opportunity). First they need to return a number of those core mechanics, and then increase the number of class feats each class gets so they have more customizability.

- Reading and navigating the book felt like a chore from an organization standpoint.

I felt some of that too, but might be related to only having the PDF personally.

- Goblins as a playable Core Race got eyes rolling all over the place. As Paladin LG only. Yes, this is not trolling.

Should've been something like Catfolk or full Orc.

- They are still way too many complicated or specific rules in the skill sections. About the time for a Diplomacy check, or the malus/bonuses for a Stealth check, or for gathering informations. Damn, thse things should be for the DM to decided, based on the situation. And the Skill Feats felt like they allowed the players to do things that they should not need a feat to be able to do.

GM's need guidelines and those are skills that are fundamentally complicated. Without extensive guidelines, it gets harder to adjudicate stealth. Not everyone has years of experience GM'ing. They might just need to approach stealth the same way they do AoO. Go and read the attack of opportunity section. It is very detailed and well written with examples. Stealth needs the same sort of thing and likely diplomacy.

- Ancestries Feats are unbalanced, weak, and you feel like you are discovering your origins and things you should be able to do from the get go as you level up.

They're essentially the same as any of the race-gated feats from PF1 but they've chosen poorly on the details. Here I feel it is more of a flaw in execution rather than in concept. Look at the Drow feats from PF1, those were a good execution of what I believe they're trying to do with ancestry feats.

- Attacks of Opportunity are a core part of D20, and removing them from the core combat make errors way more affordable. You should not be able to cast when an angry Barbarian with a giant two handed sword is in close combat with you like it is Chistmas.

Concur, my proscription is the same as above. Return the old core mechanics to being core mechanics. If you want fighters to be better at AoO then give them feats to improve it in ways other classes can't.

- Wealth by levels, items by levels, and level/class locked abilities often felt like a MMO game.

Item levels merely impose a limit on crafting and serves as a guideline for availability. It is an independent requirement to craft the item outside of the required spells. Without that, a very wealthy level 5 guy could make a bracers of armor +6 without respect to the fact that his magic just isn't good enough despite actually having the spell necessary. The structure of the treasure by level is very good for newer GM's who aren't really sure how much loot to give to keep the party up to the expected gear thresholds. Though I'm afraid players will throw this table at the GM and ask why don't we have X?

Here is what I've been able to piece together by going to blog posts linked in another thread.

* PF 2e should feel just like PF 1e. [1]

* Creating a character should be smoother and more intuitive. [1]

* Clean up flow of play, and add interesting choices in every part of the story (in between adventures, adventures, and combat within adventures.)

* Monsters should be easier to design. [1]

* Magic items should be interesting and fun. Characters should get the ones they want, not have "mandatory" items they need in order to be succesful. (I read this as avoiding what's called the "christmas tree" effect.) [1]

* Simplify the combat system so that it runs more smoothly and intuitively. [2]

* Make levelling up "more rewarding". (Not sure exctly what this really means. More fun? You get more new abilities with each level?) [3]

[1] http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkl9?First-Look-at-the-Pathfinder- Playtest

[2] http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lklh?All-About-Actions

[3] http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lklr?Leveling-Up

Thanks for finding that.

1) They fell flat on their face. A guideline to this would be if characters and most content were convertible and presently you cannot convert because the rules are too drastically different.

2) Depends on whether you're building a one-trick pony or not. Quite frankly it is harder to build a fighter who can competently shoot a bow and swing a sword. That being said, one-tricks are very easy, just pick every bow feat since there's only one bow feat at a time to pick.

3) Flow of play: yes. Expanded choices? No. Look at a level 1 universalist wizard from PF1 to PF2. In PF1, the wizard got a familiar, hand of the apprentice, scribe scroll and could counterspell. Now they pick one. That's fewer options not more.

4) Probably so.

5) They could've just done the automatic bonus progression and otherwise left it the same but sadly the +stat items are even more important because it's one of the few sources of unconditional bonuses.

6) Seems like it.

7) I don't they truly achieved this. They got a better Skinner box, but actually rewarding levels? Jury's still out.

erik542 wrote:

NielsenE wrote:

Lady Melo wrote:

Maybe Nat 1 and Nat 20, should just just give you an automatic 1 degree shift. Any Nat 20 thats a hit would be a critical success, as normal.

If your performing something so Trivial that you Critically Succeed on a Nat 1, then the worst that will happen is you simply just succeed.

A Nat 1 in which you still fail, results in a Critical Failure, but at least enough skill can possibly out weight it.

The two systems (Nat 1 always a failure/Nat 20 always a success) and (nat 1/nat 20 shift the degree of success one step) are functionally identical in 99% of the places you're rolling dice. They only diverge in places where you need to roll a 0 to succeed ot a 21 to fail. In which case why are you rolling dice? If you're crit-fishing there should be a negative. (ie on a 1-5 I succeed, on a 6-20 I critically succeed.)

I made a thread regarding a very important case which is tying people up. The possibility of success even if only on nat 20 means that a level 1 character can escape from being tied up by a level 20 rogue in 40 seconds.

I don’t think so. Per my reading of the rules, either the level 1 character can’t even attempt it, or after a couple of failed attempts, it becomes “fruitless” (see the Difficulty Classes section of the Gamemastery Chapter).

Got a quote on that because I'm not seeing anything stopping the character from trying in the section you cited? As long as they can try, they can get a nat 20 and succeed. Since escaping from bindings is an untrained skill use anyone can do it.

Lady Melo wrote:

Maybe Nat 1 and Nat 20, should just just give you an automatic 1 degree shift. Any Nat 20 thats a hit would be a critical success, as normal.

If your performing something so Trivial that you Critically Succeed on a Nat 1, then the worst that will happen is you simply just succeed.

A Nat 1 in which you still fail, results in a Critical Failure, but at least enough skill can possibly out weight it.

The two systems (Nat 1 always a failure/Nat 20 always a success) and (nat 1/nat 20 shift the degree of success one step) are functionally identical in 99% of the places you're rolling dice. They only diverge in places where you need to roll a 0 to succeed ot a 21 to fail. In which case why are you rolling dice? If you're crit-fishing there should be a negative. (ie on a 1-5 I succeed, on a 6-20 I critically succeed.)

I made a thread regarding a very important case which is tying people up. The possibility of success even if only on nat 20 means that a level 1 character can escape from being tied up by a level 20 rogue in 40 seconds.

Now in a few spots in the book like p. 8, 178, 292 it states that a natural 20 is always a success. Last time around skill checks did not automatically pass or fail on natural 20 or 1 for reasons like trying to jump to the moon and walking up a mild incline. However, I have found no such exceptions except the impossible clause on p. 292:

If you lack the

proficiency for a task in the first place, or it’s impossible,
you might still fail on a natural 20.

Things such as escaping from manacles and being tied up are not impossible since there is an actual DC to do so, the creature just needs to get good. That's a problem since a level 1 character can get tied up by a level 20 rogue and escape in 40 seconds. That's why skill checks not being subject to natural 1 autofailure and natural 20 autosuccess must be reintroduced.

Me and my friends found a falcon punch build that and it is not a monk or brawler build. It goes 10 sorcerer / 10 arcane trickster.
Race: Probably human so that you have this thing called feats.
Build: 9 sorcerer / 10 arcane trickster / 1 sorcerer.
Feats:
H) Improved unarmed strike because your GM won't allow this cheese without it.
1) Spell focus evocation
3) Rogue variant multiclass option
5) Elemental Spell (fire).
7) Rogue variant multiclass
Bloodline bonus) Blood Intensity bloodline mutation
9) Accomplished Sneak Attacker
11) Argue with your GM that multiclass options are compatible with prestige classes that are related to your base class.
13) Quicken?
15) Multiclass cheese again
17) Empower spell
19) Maximize spell
Bloodline: Red Draconic
1) replace your level 1 claws with Blood Havoc bloodline mutation.

Now thanks to your arguing you now have full casting and 10d6 sneak attack and +2 damage per die on fire evocation spells. So you cast greater invisibility and sneak up to someone. Then you pull your arm back very slowly and when it is pulled all the way back, you yell "Falcon Punch!" to cast a Blood Intensified (with 30 charisma of course), Empowered, Maximized, Fire Elemental Shocking Grasp for 17d6 + 134 fire damage to burn them to a crisp. However, in order to actually kill your target, they must go flying off the stage and you must salute while saying "Show ya moves".

Get several chargers and grapplers. Use an anti magic shield. Grab him and slowly crush his throat. The end.

Careful with AMFs in a wizard lair. You don't want to suppress a Polymorph Any Object that transformed lava into masonry.

Oread Monk 1 / Synthesist 11

Self:
Due to synthesist replacing my physical stats, I can dump them to get 20 Wis then pump it to 23. Use Oread favored class bonus on synthesist. Buy +6 Wisdom item, +6 Dex item, +3 Ring of Protection, Dusty Rose Ioun Stone, Jingasa. Take Combat Expertise, and Crane Ripose (and pre-req's). Cast Mage Armor, Shield, Barkskin, Haste, Reduce Person and Blood Armor.

Eidolon: Using a Serpentine base form. Taking Improved Natural Armor evolution 3 times as per errata. Taking the Improved Natural Armor feat 5 times. Take Improved Ability Score (Dex) evolution 3 times assuming same errata as Improved natural armor. Stat up Dex twice. Rest of evolution points don't matter.

AC: 10
+ 9 (wis)
+ 3 (expertise)
+ 1 (dodge)
+ 4 (Mage Armor)
+ 4 (Shield)
+ 5 (fighting defensively with Crane)
+ 5 (Blood Armor)
+ 1 (Ioun)
+ 4 (Barkskin)
+ 1 (haste)
+ 1 (reduce person size)
+ 12 (dex (16 base + 4 progression + 2 stat up + 6 item + 6 evolution))
+ 3 (ring of protection)
+ 23 (natural armor (+ 2 base + 5 feat + 6 evolution + 8 progression + 2 favored class))
+ 1 (Jingasa)
= 87 AC, 47 touch.

Edit: upon friends suggestion I have a bit more optimization that might allow me to break 100 AC.

This reminds me of when me and my roommate calculated the half-life of people traveling in the Silver Marches in Forgotten Realms. I believe it came out to something like 10 hours. However, since it was Forgotten Realms we could realistically write off the necessity for traveling because epic level wizards were a dime a dozen. Now if you want the world to make sense with level 3 guards, you will have to lean heavily on the power of aid another. Level 3 warrior archer will have a +5 to hit likely and thereby make the aid another check 80% of the time and as a result a cluster of 20 archers will effectively have a +30 to hit. Using these tactics thought up by our level 4 expert / warrior general, a country's armies could quite possibly take down an group of 500 rakshasas.

I've always been a fan of rune staves from Magic Item Compendium in 3.5. They had a number of spells of various levels contained in them and all of it was run off of your own slots.

My philosophy is that the WBL table is the recommended value of the player's entire assets. Under this interpretation, you do not get things at half price if you craft them for purposes of WBL. Also this value does not include things that they have previously owned. Finally, it should include things of soft value.

The results of this are as follows. First, crafting does not allow you to break WBL. Crafting merely opens up the magic-mart. This also encourages the usage of consumables, which can be hard at times due to what I have called the "ether" effect. Also it encourages upgrading the same equipment, thereby giving a bit more predictability to the GM. Lastly, the soft value clause is to close the gap created by the first two regarding things such as wishes, permanencies, etc. If a player starts getting wishes from an efreet, just keep track of how many and adjust his WBL accordingly. This also puts things such as spellbooks into play.

Best for sorcerers. Eating the slot to recharge doesn't hurt nearly as much and gives them access to those highly situational spells like water breathing.

#1 Grease can make snakes fall to the ground. Snakes cannot be tripped because they have no legs. Grease is not a trip effect. Snakes can still fall to the ground if they fail that save.

#2 Wood is immune to mundane fire. Mundane fire deals 1d6 damage per round. Wood has a hardness of 5. Energy damage is halved before applying hardness. At most the mundane fire can do 3 damage which is less than 5 so it deals no damage.

#3 Ordinary house plants are immune to disintegrate. A house plant is an object. House plants are composed of living matter. Disintegrate can only affect creatures or objects composed of nonliving matter. A house plant is neither.

#4 Tower shields have total cover. You can hide behind a tower shield to receive total cover. Items in your possession have the same level of cover / concealment as you do. The tower shield you are hiding behind is in your possession, therefore the tower shield has total cover.

@People who say poor / overpowered options are OK.

You guys are missing an important point in Game Theory. (This game theory not this game thoery)

We have to ask, what purpose do those options serve in the game? Do they enrich the gaming experience? They typically do not. While exotic weapon proficiency (bastard sword) seems like a harmless feat that it should be obvious for no one to take, what of EWP (Spiked chain)? Inevitably someone will take it and be disappointed (particularly 3.5e converts with the later), that will reflect negatively on the game and by extension Paizo. Games should not have things that reflect negatively upon themselves. Same thing happens with overpowered options. Sure 13 BAB or improved evasion look nice, but it sure doesn't match up against the wizard who uses planar binding to ask for the hair off an efreet to make a simulacrum out of it and get 3 wishes per day, for free. How is that rogue or fighter going to feel after a few days of that? Yup, really gonna feel like they're contributing to the party now. Now people could just choose to not pick the overpowered options, but it is well known that not everyone is considerate of others in their gaming group.

Now I'm making a slightly tangential point here, what we need to eliminate are options that provide bad gaming experiences. While overpowered and underpowered options are certainly the largest set of them, there are others as well. Some options provide bad experiences while not being over/underpowered, examples of this are charms / dominates cast on players, 3.5e disjunction, and diviners.

There are three kinds of balance points in a game such as this. First is trivial balance point of homogeneity. It is trivially balanced because everything is the same. The second is the unstable balance point of non-homogeneity. This is what would be the balance point that would be achieved if we were to balance things solely by judging around numbers; for example, the paladin gets an additional +1 HP at levels 3, 7, 9, 10 to counter balance fighter's +1 damage at level 2, 8, 11. With a small amount of thought, it is quite obvious that this approach is not very friendly to the introduction of new material; we need now need to shift the fighter's +1 damage to level 7 because the wizard gained +1 to perception at level 3. Now for the third balance point which is what people are strawmanning to be the first balance point see this post:

Pathfinder is bad at game balance for a simple reason: that wasn't one of Paizo's design goals when they created the system.

4E is very balanced because that was the primary design goal of that system. It gave up several other things to get that balance though.

As someone who plays both systems and enjoys them both, here is my perspective:

4E was created for the players (who mostly played Fighters and Rogues) who were sick of the godlike Wizards and Clerics dominating the game. They screamed out for balance and got it. I really enjoy that aspect of the game, but dislike the lack of fluff and flavor in 4E.

PF was designed for players who really enjoyed 3.5 and didn't really want it to change. Thus, the terrible brokenness of that system lives on in PF. I primarily enjoy playing PF for the excellent setting fluff and flavor of the game, and am willing to put up with the brokenness of the system.

I play a Fighter in both games, and there is a massive difference. 4E Fighters and Rogues are definitelty much better designed and more powerful. In PF, as with earlier editions of D&D, Fighters are mostly an afterthought and Rogues are mostly useful for skills, not their combat abilities.

So, I would say both editions have their strengths. For Paizo, their strength is their excellent setting and flavor material, while 4E is better known for game balance. Play what you like, or play both like I do. Flaming is useless all around though.

The third and reasonable point that me and other reasonable people are asking for is the stable balance point of non-homogeneity. This could be thought of as balance by specialization (yes I know this is hard to do with jack-of-all-trades classes like the bard). Need to disarm a trap? Better find a rogue because no one else can really do that. Need to heal people? Get a cleric. If you look at PF on the whole, this is very much the balance that they aimed for, but missed. Where they missed the mark is that some classes heavily encroach on other's schticks. This is the reasoning behind the drastic changes to the polymorph line of spells. With just a handful of spells, suddenly a wizard had the option to do the fighter's job better than a fighter. Go read the monk thread. You see the fighter being better at being a monk than the monk. Where the issue lies is in the fact that non-casters really don't have anything that caster's can't do. What I am arguing for is the polar opposite of homogeneity. What I am arguing for is MORE distinction between the capabilities of the classes. I wrote down some of the details in this post: Caster / non-caster imbalance

erik542 wrote:

cibet44 wrote:

erik542 wrote:

cibet44 wrote:

Hmmm. I'm sticking with my interpretation of Empower in that it only affects damage dealt. At the very least it clears up a lot of issues with the feat. I do think it is the true spirit of the feat as well. If PF or even a 3.5 splat book inadvertently changed this I guess that explains why my group has never had a problem with it to begin with.

What about ability damage? Ability drain?

Any kind of damage as long as it is variable and random (see my above post).

No empowered enervates? I mean there's a reason why they specifically worded intensified spell the way they did.

Nope Enervation can not be Empowered. In our games we have always done this.

Another example:

Vampiric touch
Your touch deals 1d6 (random) points of damage (damage) per two caster (variable)

Vampiric touch can be Empowered.

Then your games are not RAW.

I guess it's bad that my mental image of Sherlock Holmes is from that episode where Data plays him on TNG.

erik542 wrote:

If it is not directable, then why is the phrase "if not otherwise directed" in the description? The note about what it does when it is not directed implies that it is capable of being directed.

Now that we have established the fact that you can direct it. There is nothing stopping you from simply sitting on it. There is nothing stopping you from directing while you are sitting on it. Now you sit on it and direct it to move "that way". This is not hard.

The fact it can be directed does not inform you how it can be directed. I think the fact that it "accompany" you and that it "maintains a constand interval" could be interpreted as the "direction" still have to stay in those parameters - you may augment or close the interval, and it will still accompany you, but that is the amount of control you have regarding the disk, whose position must still be relative to yours.

If you sit on the disk and move it, you are thus sending it away from you. So there is tree results I can see:

1) it gets away from you by repulsion, like the two poles of a magnet, leaving you into place, falling to the ground.

2) the movement is compensated - because it cannot get away from you, it stands still.

3) cascade effect - it is getting away from you, but as you stay on, it will continue to try to get away, moving you along.

So, I don't think the wording is of any help here, as there is as many good reasons to go for each solution.

If you can't find the anwser in the wording, next step is to look at the ruling - meaning, the power level of the spell. I would rule, as it has been pointed out before, that the effect may be sligthly too powerfull for level 1, so I would rule it out and make it a second level spell (with maybe, a 10' bonus to deplacement, and a five foot height for making it on par with other second level spells.)

Or, more simply, ask your GM.

Your argument hinges upon the description that comes after "if not otherwise directed" and therefore doesn't apply to when it is directed.

The disks only follow the casting wizard

This actually doesn't make sense.

It floats along horizontally within spell range and will accompany you at a rate of no more than your normal speed each round. If not otherwise directed, it maintains a constant interval of 5 feet between itself and you.

There's two reasons why being able to direct it to move is the only reasonable reading. First off, since it is capable of following you at your move speed, you need to contrive some pretty weird circumstances for it to exceed spell range. It is, however, very easy to simply direct the disk to exceed spell range. Occam's razor tells us that it is likely that it is directable.

If it is not directable, then why is the phrase "if not otherwise directed" in the description? The note about what it does when it is not directed implies that it is capable of being directed.

Now that we have established the fact that you can direct it. There is nothing stopping you from simply sitting on it. There is nothing stopping you from directing while you are sitting on it. Now you sit on it and direct it to move "that way". This is not hard.

erik542 wrote:

Black Fang wrote:

What is the reach for a large whip wielded by a large humanoid shaped creature?

5 ft. more

A whip has 15 ft. reach, or triple rather than double.

If you assume a large whip is proportionately larger, it would produce 30 ft. reach. If you look at the rules, a balor is a Large creature wielding a Large whip and has 20 ft. reach with the whip, which is identical to the reach with a Large longspear according to the equipment chapter.

"Most reach weapons double the wielder's natural reach, meaning that a typical Small or Medium wielder of such a weapon can attack a creature 10 feet away, but not a creature in an adjacent square. A typical Large character wielding a reach weapon of the appropriate size can attack a creature 15 or 20 feet away, but not adjacent creatures or creatures up to 10 feet away."

Actually pointing out the Balor example proves my point. The whip itself only grants 10ft. additional reach. Since the Balor is large, it has a natural reach of 10 ft. Adding 10 ft. gives it the indicated 20. Tripling the reach would yield a result of 30 ft.

Take a five foot step back.

Trip them at 10 feet. Standing up is a move action that provokes an attack of opportunity. If they stand up they can't take a 5 foot step that round. Their best option is to take another move action to get inside your reach. This provokes another AoO. You have combat reflexes, right? ;)

You may still 5 foot step if you've taken a move action. You simply can't step if your move action was spent moving.

Dread Necro:
Pre-reqs: Ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells, Knowledge: religion 5 ranks, Evil
Class skills: Spellcraft, Intimidate, Religion, Arcana, Disguise, Fly

Level 1: Channel negative energy
2: Undead Might +1, Undead Toughness +1
3: Desecration, Undead Control 1
4: Undead Might +2
5: Negative Energy Body, Undead Control 2
6: Undead Might +3, Undead Toughness +2
7: Animate Dead, Undead Control 3
8: Undead Might +4
9: Awaken Undead, Undead Control 4
10: Undead Might +5, Undead Toughness +3, Phylactery

Channel negative energy: You may channel negative energy as a cleric using your dread necromancer level as your effective cleric level.
Undead Might: Undead under your control gain a +1 enhancement bonus to Strength and Dexterity. This bonus increases by 1 at levels 4,6,8,10.
Undead Toughness: Undead created by you gain +1 hit points per hit die. This bonus increases by 1 at level 6 and 10.
Undead Control: You may create 2 + your undead control bonus with a single casting of animate dead. You may control 4 + your undead control bonus at any given time.
Desecration: Your devotion to the dark arts exudes an aura of profanity. You have a constant aura of desecration. Creatures within 10 ft. per Dread necromancer level are affected by desecration as the spell.
Negative Energy: You have expelled all the positive energy from your body and now are sustained by negative energy. You are now harmed by positive energy effects and healed by negative energy.
Animate Dead: You can imbue beings with negative energy more freely. You can cast Animate Dead as a spell-like ability 1/day without paying the material costs.
Awaken Undead: You have learned how to channel the negative energy from your own body into the undead your control.
You may cast Awaken without paying the material on an undead that you control. Undead awakened this way are under your control in a manner identical to dominate monster. Undead awakened this way are capable of commanding undead under your control as you choose.
Phylactery: You acquire undead traits and the lich's rejuvenate ability.

A few words about Awaken Undead, it is supposed to function effectively like a cohort yet still be fully under your control. Idea is for those annoying times when you need to go into a town that wouldn't be too thrilled about an undead army walking in. Or if you need to "lease" out some of them, or simply when you need them to act intelligently when you're not around.

Even though it's a capstone, I didn't quite want to give the full lich template. Even giving undead traits feels like a lot especially considering a number of the level 20 capstone. I like the idea, but it seems much more powerful than I want.

I still don't see "take 10" as an "always on" feature for any skill. It's a way to speed up common skill checks, not an aura of perception that the player can depend upon.

Except that people do have auras of perception. It's called your eyes and ears. We notice things going on around us without active effort all the time. Let's take the whole "actively looking" aspect out of the equation.

Let us suppose that you are sleeping. Now if you are approached by someone trying to sneak up and kill you, you are entitled to a perception check. While you are sleeping, is it reasonable for you to possibly make a 20? Is it reasonable for someone to randomly be as aware while asleep as when they take 10 for 8 hours of guard duty? To me if you're actively looking you can make a roll, but it is unreasonable to say that someone can be actively looking for something like an ambush for 8 hours.