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There aren't that many Str skills - just climb and swim. What does your Str 20 fighter do with their 3rd strength skill point if they actually do want both climb and swim? Can they save it for next level?

Do rogues get compensated for losing their 8 base skill points at all? (or the 6 base skill point classes similarly)

Would belts of giant strength and similar items have skill points included the way headbands of Int do now?

Skill points roll over so they can save what ever they want - if you wanted to make fighters skills go a bit further, you could let players invest strength into skills such as ride or intimidate.

I personally don’t boost up the other classes who lose out; except the rogue who may lose 1-2 points the other classes all get a boost, just some more than others. I run a bit fast and loose with the sneak attack rules so the rogues can keep up with damage. If you do play Raw I can see they may feel a little less useful, however I’m how a rogue is always the first in a room, so I suggest rogues don’t come to table aiming to be the person who just does the skills.

I allow belts and headbands to grant extra skill points - it can get a bit silly at level 20 but I’ve not had a problem pre 12.

One last thing I forgot - you can also apply this to companions so they’re a bit more useful out of combat. In this case I don’t give the 2 general points, they just get the ability dependent skill points.

I don’t like class defined skill points. I’ve always found it annoying that clerics, fighters and sorcerers are just expected to fail at everything except the one skill they lean afford to be good at. Personally I prefer games where the bookish wizard is the one that struggles to survive in the wilderness and the less magically endowed characters help them out.

With this I’n mind I’ve created a home brew skill point system that ‘hopefully’ balances out the skill point allocation but still allows for deep customization.

Ive used it in my 4-5 player games and thought it really helped boosted player satisfaction around the table.

I’m fully aware no one may read this, or use it, but if you do, let me know how it went.

Everyone gets 2 general skill points per level
On top of this
- At 13,17,20,23 etc attribute points get +1 skill point to distribute into a skill fromthat area per level
- Con points are general
- general points can be allocated into any skill
- Minus 3 in a category means ranks in those skills cost 2 skill points (7 int means all knowledge skill points cost 2 skill points)
- You can chose to spend 2 attribute specific skill points for one general. (In example, I could trade my 1 strength skill point and 1int skill point for 1 general)

Humans get +1 general skill point per level

New General feat - specialist choose one attribute except constitution. Get +1 skill ranks in that attribute per level.

Fighter lvl 1
S 20 +3 skill
D 16 +1 skill
Con 12
Wis 10
Int 13. +1 skill
Cha 8
* new system: 7 skill points per level
(3 in strength, 1 in dex, 1 int, rest can be allocated freely.)
* Old system: 3 skill points

Rogue 10th lvl
Str 8
Dex 24 +4
Con 12
Int 14 +1
Wis 10
Cha 14 +1
* Old: 8 +int (10)
* New: 2 free, 4 dex, 1 int, 1 cha, (8)

Every character ends up with about 6-10 skills per level - you can still still have a massive hulking barbarian who specializes in perform dance.

You have enough skills to specialize in a few areas and still function in a few others and you’re not gonna have high int rogues be invalidate 80% of your other pc’s out of combat.

UnArcaneElection wrote:

^I figured that anything that is not an Int-based caster should get at least 4 + IntMod skill points per level, so meeting your specifications would just bump this up by 1 (unless you want to do it even for somebody who Thogs their Intelligence, in which case classes/archetypes expected to do that should get an Unencumbered by the Thought Process ability that gives them skill points based upon their Charisma modifier, but which must be spent on social skills).

Funny that some classes got bumped from d4 to d6 in HP, but we STILL had classes with skill points equal to 2 + int modifiers.

Oh, and Fighters NOT getting perception is still pretty dumb... No wonder your guards can't detect a sneaking rogue...

You know I hadn’t even thought about that. Yeah it is pretty hilarious that the one profession nearly exclusively guarding every town and city don’t get perception as a class skill.

I should probably clarify, I meant 5+int. Maybe it’s a bit high, but I like my PC’s to have a broad spectrum of skills to work with.

Merfolk alchemist construct rider + white hairs witch. She sits around in a porcelain bathtub with mechanical legs all day mixing potions in her tub with her hair. I like her to be a merfolk princess on safari. Not by any means the most powerful combo, but it’s pretty fun chucking bath bombs at people.

Scavion wrote:

Boomerang Nebula wrote:

I don’t agree with the premise of the opening post, in thirty plus years of gaming in dozens of different RPG systems I’ve rarely felt like it was character vs character or player vs player. In other words the mechanics are independent of the overarching goal.

I find the premise difficult to argue against. Ashiel isn't saying Pathfinder is about Player Vs Player interactions within the party(Or more accurately Player Vs PlayerS), but is saying that TTRPGs(atleast the tactical ones and definitely D&D/Pathfinder) play out similarly to MMO PVP style combat. The relationship of the DM playing NPCs or monsters faithfully is nearly identical to PVP.

The extrapolation is that because of this paradigm, class balance matters since it determines threat and how enemies perceive you. The question further is "Should the DM play the enemies as intellectually honest as possible?" <-By that I mean playing NPCs or monsters as they are depicted. Do they softball or do enemies/NPCs just not do things despite having no real in-game reason to not? Just because a DM is rooting for their party(or atleast probably should be), doesn't make the game not PVP.

The classic example is the big full attack. A Creature full attacks and drops a PC on their 2nd attack into the negatives. Do they simply ignore the other 3 it could have? No one is adjacent so it's just wasting actions. Time is an abstraction so laying fully into a creature as they fall seems reasonable.

The extrapolation is wrong because the underlying premise is false. D&D was designed as a cooperative game in shared storytelling, not as a competition between players. As far as I can tell Pathfinder follows the same philosophy. In no game I’ve played was a winner declared after the session. The wizard character may be significantly more powerful than the fighter but it is irrelevant because their goal is not to defeat the fighter, it is to cooperate with the fighter to overcome...

While I agree with you in principle, I think the highlighted problem was that as part of a collaborative experience, having one character eclipsing the others is not a very rewarding experience for the other players.

As a rule the journey should be more important than the destination. By assuming everyone should be happy if the group wins the encounter, no matter their contribution, you may be ignoring the personal journeys of each member.

As a system pathfinder offers many martial options that would function well in a PvE game, however they often require the GM to act in a particular way to be relevant.

If pathfinder were balanced more along the lines of a PvP, these imbalances in character performance, could in theory be avoided. even if, as rightly argued, pathfinder is not a pvp game.

As an example of this, fighters in PvP games are usually much better at preventing movement, regening health, applying debuffs, and generally being a nuisance. All of which I think would be a positive if it were applied to the current pathfinder fighter.

One other thing I would’ve loved is a overhaul of the skill point system. When I GM I make sure 5 is the lowest amount skills per level everyone gets. Rolling for skills is the bases of all out of combat activity it’s crazy that some classes get 4X the amount of pints to throw around than others - playing RAW has caused loads of problems at my table before, as it’s so easy for a rogue or a bard to make everyone else feel completely inconsequential. I’m really surprised the team never addressed it in 1e.

A fixed Cavalier would be nice. For a home brew I’ve been playing around with the idea that the mount could be some kind of spirit manifestation. You can summon it and I summon it, when summoned you get all the mounted tastiness, when unsummoned you get bonuses to AC and combat maneuvers. The orders each have unique mounts as well, for example order of the dragon gets lizards, drakes and dragons, which progress as the class levels.

I know core Cavaliers can be extremely good at what they do, and I love small Cavaliers, I’ve just always found the class as it is holds back many great character ideas.

+1 to Melkiador's post.

Charisma is about more than just looks. It's total force of personality. If the game hadn't established Will as the mental save decades ago, I'd almost call Charisma will.

Intimidation doesn't just have to be about threats of violence. People can also be intimidated when they meet their heroes, or somebody of great fame. To be intimidated is to be somehow overwhelmed or thrown off balance. Game mechanics may just have that result in shaken condition, but fascinated, dazzled, maybe even dazed could all be appropriate too.

Yeah, I get that intimidation can be about much more than big and scary, I just think 90% of the time it isn’t. Living in the country side I’ve seen people intimidated by cows, horses, aggressive rams, farmers with shotguns, farmers mums with shotguns. Outside of farm life I’ve seen people intimidated by bullies at school and at work, as a rough figure I’d say 90% of the intimidation that happens in real life is based in size and strength. I’m not saying intimidating someone with your sheer force of personality isn’t impossible, it’s just a lot less common than your run of the mill thuggery.

There’s a lot of little rules that stop fun builds being viable, for example you can’t use kinetic blast or kinetic blade on conductive melee weapons - so no awesome elemental swordsman. You can only use spell strike or spell combat on magus spells, so there’s no way to make a melee focused Druid warden. There’s loads of feats with this problem (dervish dance/fencing grace), they’re really cool but way to specific. Maybe when pathfinder was still doing society play there was a reason to stop weird fringe cases of power gaming, now however I feel the freedom of pathfinder 1e is its biggest selling point. Why not open it up a bit and let us have some crazy power gaming, mad character creation, fun.

I always thought it was stupid that intimidate was a charisma skill. It makes much more sense that it’d be strength and then intimidating prowess would give charisma to intimidate.

At the moment you get situations where a troll has +9 to intimidate due to intimidating prowess, but a troll fighter cr10 has negative to intimidate as he doesn’t. It’s also the case that the most terrifying member of most groups is the 3 foot halfling bard wearing a silk shirt and playing a flute.

I’m 100% behind the no 2+ int skill points, I hardly ever play paladin or fighter just because I hate having so few skills.

Oh, I’d also like an unchained Cavalier. Monstrous mounts should be a given. They should also remove 80% of the rubbish orders no one takes. 2 good saves would go a long way. Maybe a few order specific buffs when not mounted? It’d be nice to Tank and provide support when you can’t charge around easily. Personally I wouldn’t mind giving them a familiar that can turn into a mount at will.

I’d like more ways to apply SLA’s and conditions to weapons, currently unarmed has divine strike, staggering blow, and many more - apart from not wanting martials to have any fun I have no idea why you don’t get anything comparable.

Last thing I’d like is a removal of spell failure chance on arcane magic. It’s just annoying,

Arcasus wrote:

It's sad that when I get off of social media and come to the advice page to look up character builds I'm hit with the same world I need a break from.

Just looking for different perspectives and approaches, that's all.

I don't mean anyone ill, but I've come to see that not having prejudice myself isn't enough. I want to take active measures to stand against such things.
As far as my hobbies go, I think a good place to start is to make a conscious effort to avoid being offensive and ignorant.

There are a lot of pretty huge issues in the world. I get that it's draining, overwhelming, etc. But I think questions like this still bear asking. It may be sad, but...that's the world we're in, I guess. Already seeing a lot of interesting takes. But if this isn't a conversation you feel you want to be a part of right now, please don't feel obligated on my count.

I think from your original post and this one, it’s clear that you’re a considerate and conscientious person. With this in mind I’d say you should trust yourself. you know the difference between what is offensive and what is immersive and if you approach the table in the same way you approached the forum your players won’t have any issues.

For general advice, if playing something like Legacy of Fire, which is set in Katapesh, I’d say keep as much culture as possible but be mindful of stereotypes. Accents are risky if done badly, but really it’s what’s said with the accent that’s more important than the accent itself. We don’t need any more ‘Big chief like fire water’.

Last point. Orcs are not just disguised black people and elves are not all Scandinavian. Goblins being Cockney is fine (I asked guy ritchie)

As Kineticists draw their powers from the different planes perhaps more thematic names could be something like

- plane-shaper
- conduit
- vessel
- creationist
- cultivator

It’s a shame we probably won’t be getting kineticists any time soon. I really liked the design space they occupied. I loved the 30ft range and string elemental themes, you could even make elemental warriors or archers by multi-classing; which is something that is near impossible without them.

Energize weapon doesn't add overflow damage. It should work on a flurry of blows just fine. Blue flame blast works with it like that.

I'm pretty sure you could add a normal blast via conductive weapon separately from the damage bonus via energize weapon, they're separate actions. Be careful about stacking up burn though.

At L11 with that multiclass, during a flurry of blows you have a +2/+2 attack bonus (+4 BAB & -2 'TWF' penalty; +2/+2 on the table) from the monk and +5 BAB from the kineticist for +7/+7/+2.

I added in the Ki strike for another attack :D. Oh, ok I see now, I was working out the FoB table all wrong.

thanks for the clarification.

with the perfect strikes from Zen hopefully i'll still be able to hit.

Hello everyone,

i'm trying to make a zen archer kineticist multiclass character, but im having some trouble working out if I can use flurry of blows with a conductive weapon and use energize weapon at the same time. there is also a small section of the energize weapon form infusion I need clarification on.

i'm pretty sure I can use a conductive weapon and flurry of blows, adding the blast damage to one attack in the chain. first small question, would I be able to add overflow damage to this attack?

now, Energize weapon is a form infusion that states I can chose a manufactured weapon in my hand and I imbue it as part of an attack action, charge action, or full-attack action. as flurry of blows is like a full attack action does that mean I can use energize weapon on it and if so would I get the extra 1d6 damage on every iterative attack?

the energize weapon also mentions the blue flame blast doubles the additional damage done by energize weapon. energize weapon usually does 1d6 , then 2d6 at 7 and 3d6 at 13. would that mean blue flame blast would do 2d6, 4d6, 6d6?

finally... if I use a conductive weapon, can I use energize weapon do a flurry and conduct a blast on the first attack?

At Level 11, 4 zen 7 kineticist. I think id be flurrying, with no modifiers, for +9/+9/+9/+6 at 4*(1d8 + 2d6 (4d6)) with potentially another 4d6 from the conductive, does that sound right?

if you like the concept of a elemental Zen archer i'll send the full build. its not really finalized yet however as the kineticist rule set has had me put a haze of confusion for the last few days.