glass's page

Requirements to use Detect Magic as a trap detector:

1) Standard action every round.
2) The person using it must be in front of the party.
3) The area being explored must not have any other magic.

#1 may slow the group down.
#2 means that if there is someone else with magic on them in front the detector must wait three rounds in order to determine the location of magic sources. Imagine doing that every 3 rounds. We move, detect, detect, detect. Repeat.
#3 is basically the same as #2 but may also mask the aura of the trap.

I know this post from a while ago, but I did not see this pointed out: Regardless of whether there is anything else in the cone or not, it takes three rounds to get to the locations of magical auras (beyond "somewhere in the cone"). If you are looking for magical traps, the location is quite an important piece of information.

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glass.

glass wrote:

Mystic Theurge (or any other "advance two classes" PrC) is not allowed in gestalt.

Also, with the possible exception of the first one (I do not know much about Mesmerists), all those combinations seem to be about as MAD as it is possible to get. Do you have some archetypes in mind to switch the stats around?

Oh, i didn't realize that. I was going to have one side be Witch with the other side Oracle into Theurge. Oh well.

My ideas aren't super MAD. My Bloodrager/Alchemist idea has just a 14 Int and 12 Cha, for example.

Presumably those are starting stats and you will be putting resources into boosting them later, otherwise you will be limited to level 2 Bloodrager spells and level 4 Alchemist extracts. Even if you are fine with that, it still indicates that classes' different stat requirements are forcing some tough choices...IOW, MAD.

The Gestalt Rules have this to say on Prestige Classes.

-snip-

It also says:

Prestige classes that are essentially class combinations-such as the arcane trickster, mystic theurge, and eldritch knight-should be prohibited if you’re using gestalt classes, because they unduly complicate the game balance of what’s already a high-powered variant. Because it’s possible for gestalt characters to qualify for prestige classes earlier than normal, the game master is entirely justified in toughening the prerequisites of a prestige class so it’s available only after 5th level, even for gestalt characters.

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glass.

I haven't been in a gestalt game yet but I definitely want to try sometime. My current list of characters I'd want to try are U.Rogue/Mesmerist, Kineticist/Cavalier, Bloodrager/Alchemist, and Oracle/Witch->Mystic Theurge.

Mystic Theurge (or any other "advance two classes" PrC) is not allowed in gestalt.

Also, with the possible exception of the first one (I do not know much about Mesmerists), all those combinations seem to be about as MAD as it is possible to get. Do you have some archetypes in mind to switch the stats around?

It looks like I am going to be GMing again the nest time we do a gestalt weekend session, so it will be a while before I get to play in one, but I would rather like to try a Warblade*//Wizard.

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glass.

(* D&D 3.5 class from The Book of Nine Swords - we do "3.P" for these kinds of games.)

One other thing that I do not think has been mentioned yet: Archetypes only affect the particular class they modify, not the character as a whole.

By way of example, a Rogue with the Bandit archetype gives up the Uncanny Dodge ability. If they multiclassed as (say) Barbarian, they would get Uncanny Dodge right on schedule unless that also took a Barbarian archetype that swapped it out (Scarred Rager perhaps).

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glass.

What are the current legal races for Society? My GM said there should be a PDF with them but I can't find it.

I'm planning on making a monk based on a fanfic character I came up with who is basically a maned wolf beastman (GM already said I can reskin a Gnoll to look like a maned wolf instead of a hyena, just can't chance his stats any).
Can I play a Gnoll or, if not, a Kitsune, under current society rules?

As other's have already said, you can play a Kitsune but not a Gnoll. However, you cannot do the bit I bolded, and your GM does not get to tell you that you can. Things in PFS have to look like what they (mechanically) are.

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glass.

Thanks guys. I do not really get on with online play, unfortumately. But I was able to spend the bank holiday Monday GMing chapter 1 of Feast of Dust, so mission acomplished.

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glass.

I love to be your guinea pig for that!! So for a 4 class gestalt what kind of character would you be looking to see i can try and make one...

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I don't get on with online gaming so unless you live somewhere near me (central England) that's unlikely to happen.

In other news, since getting three people together for a day's gaming is a lot easier than five or six, we have experimented with using gestalt and a couple of other tweaks to play modules with two players, starting with Chapter 1 of Feast of Dust

Specifically, said tweaks were +1 level compared with the minimum for the module (so level 12 in this instance), 35 point point-buy with an extra +2 (not stacking with racial bonuses), and four extra skill ranks per level. We are probably going to up that to to six bonus skill ranks for the next chapter, as the party was still struggling for skills (although to be fair neither character was remotely Int based), but aside from that it worked really well.

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glass.

Hi all,

Today I started runing a high-level mini-campign (specifically, the Feats of Dust module, although that is not particularly relevent to the questions).

One of the players was playing an Elemental Sorcerer, and after the session wrapped up and we were talking about what he gets next level, and he gets Elemental Body III as a bloodline spell (already having I and II). He commented that they were badly worded to the point of being non-functional, and after looking them up I could not really disagree. I did think their might have been some errata since our very old CRBs were printed, but the PRD seems to have all the same issues.

Elemental Body I says you can assume the form of an Small Elemental. And then says "If the form you take is that of a Small air elemental..." etc.

Elemental Body II says you can also assume the form of a Medium Elemenal, but then each elemental types is "As Elemental Body I, except (better bonuses). Conspecious by its absence is any indication when those bonuses apply, so it inherits the if-you-choose-Small from EB I.

As written with EB II you gain the better bonus if you assume the form of a Small elemental, but just the base stats from the Polymorph Subschool when you assume the form of a Medium elemental. The same problem propegates through EB III and EB IV. This is clearly not intended, but unless I am missing something it is how it is written.

The intention is presumably either that you gain the bonuses for the spell you are using regardless of which size you select (with the only differences between size being damage and things auotmatically modified by the size modifier), or you use the bonuses appropriate to the size you select regardless of spell, but I have no idea which.

Thoughts? Am I missing something?

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glass.

For that level you are pretty much looking at Curse of the Riven Sky (levels 9-11), Emerald Spire 12 or 13 (9-11), 14 o 15 (10-12), 16 (11-13) or Feast of Dust (parts 1 or 2). There will be AP segments which count as well.

Thanks andreww. Feast of Dust seems like a winner, assuming I can find sufficient players...

If you want to do Eyes of the Ten you must be on exactly 33xp.

I did know that, but I wasn't sure if it also applied to All for Immortality. The implication her is that it doesn't, right? (Although if my plan comes to fruition I will have exactly 33 XP anyway, so I guess it does not really matter).

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glass.

Hi all,

I have a character that has been stuck at 11th level for literally years, and with this being the last season of PFS1* I would like to get a crack at at least one of the seeker arcs sooner rather than later. Obviously, a 3 XP module would do it in one hit, but the trouble is finding enough players locally with high-enough level character to join me.

What would be a good module? Preferably one that can support slightly lower-levelled players be get me a level 11 chronicle sheet if I run it?

I have already played The Ruby Pheonix Tournament (that's how I got to 11).

Thanks in advance.

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glass.

Well, we know male harpies and dryads are gonna be a thing in PF2. I'm cool with this.

Generally, I'm cool with magical monsters being single gender as well, simply because magic is a sufficient explanation for this...but it tends to get weirdly one-sided with the vast majority of seductive ones being female and similar issues. That I'm not cool with at all, so the change seems generally positive to me.

I was just going to say something similar. Always-female fantasy species would be considerably less problematic if there were not so damn many of them.

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glass.

I am not seeing any evidence of a Monk-like class per se, but there does appear to be at least one Monk archetype that gets manourves.

Failing that, the original Swordsage from Tome of Battle for D&D 3.5 (the book on which Path of War was very loosly based) is pretty much an initiator-monk. Aside from a few tweaks for skills that no longer exist and the like, it should work fine with Pathfinder.

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glass.

Hi all,

I have volunteered to make characters for a couple of extra players who may be joining a Shattered Star game I will be playing shortly. If they do join, we will have quite a large group, which obviously has an impact on character choices. Pet classes are not so favoured, while anything that buffs the whole party is great. Bards or skalds are an obvious example of the latter, as are cavaliers for the Teamwork-feat granting (with an archetype to lose the mount).

And then I got to wondering, are there any Bard or Skald archetypes that do anything interesting with teamwork feats (preferebly without losing Bardic Performance or equivalent)?

On a largely unrelated note, are there any ways to build a character who punished enmies for attacking his allies, like a D&D 4e defender, or a PF2P Paladin (but hopefully better implemented than the latter)? I am aware of the Warder class from DSP's Path if War, but are there any other options?

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glass.

I ran Age of Worms with gestalt characters - initially because we thought we were going to have a small group, although it did not turn out that way. I have played a couple of short term minim-campaigns but sadly never a full longe term campaign in it. If I was to run or play Pathfinder with a 3 or 2 person group, I would definitely use/suggest gestalt again.

I also have this idea bouncing around in my head for solo games with four-class gestalt and some other tweaks, but nothing has come of that yet.

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glass.

Add me to the "it does overcome DR" pile. If it said "as Greater Magic Weapon" or similar, it would inherit the restriction but it doesn't so it doesn't. Nor does the ability quoted above include any restrictions.

If there is any general rule saying that temporary enhancment bonuses do not count for overcoming DR, I am not aware of it and nobody has yet managed to produce a citation (plus the specific restrictions on GMW and GMF imply there is not such general rule, or they would be unnecesary.)

Absent any restrictions on what it does stated in the description itself, a general rule for temporary enhancement bonuses, or inherited from elsewhere, and enhancement bonus does what an enhancement bonus does.

And that include overcoming DR just as much as it includes adding to hit & damage rolls.

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glass.

Just to add another box to the alignment bingo, I would be inclined to say true neutral.

I agree that having a personal code does not make one lawful, but conversely I would say that not deferring to authority you perceive as corrupt does not automatically make one chaotic. Also, I would say his current distrust of authority is a reaction to his being being too trusting of his superiors when he was in the military.

He is generally pretty careful to avoid colateral damage, and killing evil people is not generally considered evil in D&D/PF, so true neutral.

Although that is not factoring in the torture (partly because prefered to forget about it), so that probably tips him over in NE.

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glass.

I don't know yet how functional it's is going to be, but we are starting s Shattered Star campaign in honour of the recent Humble Bundle and our party is looking like being a Theurge, a Path of War Warder, a Scarred Witch Doctor, and a D&D 3.5 Spellthief.

Although to be fair the players of the latter two are wavering, so we might end up with and Occutist Arcanist or Saurian Shaman Druid and one of the Occult Adventures classes instead.

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glass.

If the bad guys are aware of you and you aren't aware of them, they ought to be getting a surprise round, so you shouldn't be acting at all.

Yes, but the mechanic for that is rolling our perception vs their stealth, not rolling inititive and hoping the bad guys don't roll too low. In the cases I am talking about, we had already passed that stage (or possibly skipped it entirely - as I say there are many instances of this against multiple games and editions).

But if you can act before the enemies appear, and you don't have a useful general-purpose 'Haste'-type spell to cast, you can either Delay until you see an enemy, or ready an action to attack any enemy who appears.

Spells are a limited daily resource - at lower levels very limited. I do not want to waste a haste spell if it turns out that our ambushers are three slightly-arthritic kobolds. Conversely, if I am high enough level that I can chuck third-level spells around with abandon, and the big bad and her three toughest lieutenants just walked in I might want to use something more dramatic. Similarly, given near-zero information, I cannot word an appropriate readied action. If I wanted to gamble, I would be playing Blackjack not RPGs, so I am limited to delaying and whatever resources I spent on getting decent inititive area wasted.

And not all games are as flexible as Pathfinder when it comes to messing with the initiative order. Shadowrun for example has no delay option for example IIRC.

And even if none of the above were true, we would still have the fundamental truth that initiative roll represents how fast you react to something. You should never be in the position where the GM cannot tell you what you just reacted to!

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glass.

The poor ruling was letting us get away with this instead of figuring out a way to get most of the platinum out of our hands. We shattered wealth by level.

I disagree. Much better to own the mistake and run with it than to abuse GM fiat to try to weasel out of it. I had a GM do something similar once:

Back in the early days of 3.5, the group I was in defeated a big draconic thing (a dragon with a couple of templates - the details are hazy). We were in the middle of nowhere with not much available transport, so the GM decided that this was an opportunity to give us a seriously epic treasure hoard - several million gp worth. At best he expected us to scare up a couple of wagons and cart out a fraction of it, which would still have been a decent haul for our level, but he had forgotten we had recently acquired: a) a castle, with a temporarily empty treasury, and b) a pair of ring gates, one of which was in the aformentioned treasury.

Needless to say, wealth by level went out the window, but I can't say the campaign really suffered for it. And the extra money meant we could do extravagant things like buying a +6 Cloak of Charisma for my Wizard. And really doing up our castle.

-

Anyway, my least favourite GM ruling is not that terrible in any single instance, but it happens way too often and its really started to grate over the years: GMs calling for initiative rolls at the wrong time. It plays out like this:

* GM has some bad guys waiting to burst in on us or some such. Calls for inititive rolls, and rolls for the bad guys.

* Through invested resources, "lucky" dice rolls, or both, I get a high inititive score (often several other PCs too).

* My turn comes up before the bad guys. The GM was planning on having the bad guys burst in on their turn, which has yet to occur. Therefore I have no targets and no information about what we are facing so cannot even buff with any confidence. I essetially have to skip my turn, and ask the GM something like "so, I reacted incredibly quickly to...nothing?"

* The bad guys get to actually take their turn, and effectively get the drop on us as a reward for rolling poorly.

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glass.

Yeah, I already had everything but Mythic Adventures and We Be Goblins 4, and I really don't need an extra copy of everything else to clutter up my already cluttered gaming library! It was an incredible deal, though!

And the first of those is free anyway...

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glass.

SS is Serpent’s Skull. S&S is Skulls and Shackles. I've seen S* used for Shattered Star.

Thanks Matrix. I was more concerned about SS being Schutzstaffel than another AP, although that is a good point too. Hopefully everyone won't read S* as a wild card...

Do the players know who the final fight of Rise is against? If they do then I can't think of too many other spoilers in the early portions of Shattered Star.

Thanks! I asked the same question over at RPGnet, and got largely the same answer, so it looks like we should be good to go as long as they have figured our who is doing the rising (which should not be hard given the information they have already uncovered).

We have not actually played for a few months as we have been going through Doomsday Dawn, so I was due to send them a "story so far" email anyway. So I have sent them list of what the definitely know, and asked them how much beyond that they have figured out.

But it looks like we should be go for Shattered Star! Thanks again!

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glass.

PS Is there an accepted abbreviation for Shattered Star? I am already getting fed up of typing it out, but for obvious reasons I do not want to abbreviate it to SS!

I am thinking about buying it myself, but in the meantime one of my players has bought it for another, and the latter is getting ready to run Shattered Star for us. I have actually just posted a question about it in the AP forum, but it seems like it might be more relevant here. Hopefully nobody will mind if I leave a link to the question here.

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glass.

Hi all,

I am currently running Rise of the Runeslords for my group. In the light of the humble bundle offer, one of the other players has offered to run Shattered Star. We are only about halfway through RotRL, so if we wait until we are finished it will be a long time before we get round to playing Shattered Star, which would be a shame since one of the other players bought the bundle as a gift for the prospective GM. So I am thinking about alternating sessions of the two.

This would also have the advantage of reducing pressure on the pair of us - GMing weekly canbe stressful sometimes.

However, my understanding is that Shattered Star is a sequel of sorts to Rise of the Runelords, so spoilers are a concern. Would playing or prepping/running Shattered Star give rise to spoilers for RotRL (or vice versa)?

Hopefully it goes without saying, but just in case it doesn't: Please no spoilers for either in this thread.

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glass.

Mobile Bulwark Style wrote:

Benefit(s): While using a tower shield, add the shield’s bonus to AC (including its enhancement bonus) to your CMD against bull rush and overrun combat maneuvers. While using this style, you can use a tower shield to grant you total cover along one edge of your space as a move action.

This adds an untyped bonus to your CMD. They would stack on bull rush and overrun combat maneuvers.

I disagree. Absent any text to the contrary, "your shield's bonus to AC" is a Shield bonus. Two shield bonuses do not stack. Not that this matters because you only have one bonus to add, you could not add it twice even if it was untyped.

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glass.

Will check into this, far as I know you were still extraplanar if you were fully on the transitive planes (ethereal, shadow and astral if your home plane was the Material (but it's been years since I had my head wrapped around 3.5 the way it was 'back in the day'). Happen to have a link to the 3.5 rulings about it?

I'm pretty sure I read it in one of the hard-copy books, but searching around a bit, the 3.5 SRD says "No creature has the extraplanar subtype when it is on a transitive plane, such as the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, and the Plane of Shadow." Which is fairly unequivocal.

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glass.

Did the 3.5 thing about nobody counting on Extraplanar on transitive planes (ethereal etc) make it into Pathfinder?

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glass.

I'm going to rage against one of my personal pet peeves. Tanks. Tanking is a MMO term that people drag into Pathfinder.

No. "Tank" is a D&D term in common use years before MMOs were even a thing.

For something to be a Tank you really need an ability to force an opponent to come to you or stay with you. 4th edition D&D had that for 'Tanks'. It is the only addition of D&D with real tanks.

No & no. Old-school tanks were just able to take hits their teammates couldn't, and could take better use of the attack-of-opportunity equivalent.

The term may have gained extra connotations in an MMO context, which is why D&D 4e defenders are not MMO tanks (or old-school tanks). They do have abilities that give the monsters (and their controlling GM) difficult choices, but generally do not force anything.

One last thing. Pathfinder generally works better when you don't pile all of the damage on one player.

For the record, this is also true of D&D 4e. The exact numbers are different of course, but defender take more than their fair share of the damage. But not all of it, or they will end up dead in short order.

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glass.

My play of Mirrored Moon went rather differently, it sounds, but we have a similar complaint about the research-point system. By luck, we found the bad guys' base almost straight away which got us enough research points for the boss lady to commit her mecenaries, which then immediatey started decaying (the points, not the mercenaries), so we had to set off to launch the attack immediately otherwise we would have lost half our forces on route (we had managed to recruit the giants* on our way back, but going looking for other allies would have been self-defeating.

I was a player, not the GM, so I don't know how explicit it is but our GM's reading of the module was that re-scouting the camp would not refresh the research points even though the stated reason for the decay was that things could have changed.

I'm not sure what difference it would have made if we had had more allies, but possibly it would have prevented the TPK that ensued - although to be fair that was partly due to terrible rolling on our part and red-hot rolling on the GM's. The last time the big bad used its breath weapon, it managed to catch all four of us in the area and three out of four roll 1s (the fourth also failed, but at least not critically). Which killed the cleric outright (he was already WOunded 2), and took everyone but me down too. One crit with his melee attack later and I was down too.

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glass.

(* Were the cyclopes? Something like that anyway.)

Also gestalt games which reach level 20 without starting there basically don't exist. Plan for something which peaks earlier, much earlier.

Mine did. Age of Worms all the way to the end.

None of the characters in my game were particularly broken...the one who ended up being the most effective was a vanilla Fighter//Rogue, but that was due to the player rather than anything inherent in the combo.

There were quite a few other characters, as two players left early on, then came back, and then left again. Later, another player went off to university and then another had to drop out for work reasons, but they both came back towards the end. We went with Gestalt and a generous point buy so we could keep going with three or even two players, but as it turned out IIRC we never dropped below four and at certain points had five and for the finale has six.

Apart from the aforementioned we had, at various times, a Rogue//Artificer*, Cleric//Sorcerer, Ranger//Wizard, Swordsage**//Wizard, Paladin//Monk, and Paladin//Fighter.

We converted to Pathfinder from 3.5 early on, hence the lack of archetypes or PF specific classes.

Unfortunately, my main answer to the OP's question is "none of the above".

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glass.

* D&D 3.5 class from Eberron Campaign Setting.
** D&D 3.5 class from Tome of Battle: The Book of 9 Swords.

LTTP on this, but personally I would be fine with either the current treat wounds or something more like SF Stamina. I would even be fine with the return of happy-stick spam, although it is not my prefered option. As long as there is is some answer to the question "how do I get my HP back after a fight" that is not "hope there is a (positive-channelling) cleric in the party, or pack up for the day".

I have not actually got around to playing SF yet, but having just re-read the relevant sections the only thing I do not like the look of is bleeding RP when you are down. I much prefer the death saves like the current playtest or D&D 4e/5e*.

My preference would be something more akin to D&D 4e healing surges, albeit with a better name (I am fond of "recoveries"), but that seems even less likely to happen than Stamina. The 4e is actually quite similar to SF in terms of how it answers my question posed above, but it has a couple of advantages. Firstly it applies to (almost) all healing from whatever source, which reduces the pressure on healers while still making them useful - instead of determining whether you can heal at all, the healers speed it up and/or add a bonus. Because each surge is worth a quarter of your hit points (plus bonuses), surge healing is roughly proportional to total hp, so you do not get weird nonsense like high-level fighters taking longer to heal up than high-level wizards, or than low-level anything. Finally, having two pools (hp and surges - broadly longer term & short term endurance) is obviously simpler than three, all other things being equal.

Also in the realms of things I would prefer but that are almost certainly not going to happen: If we could top refering to recoving hit points as "healing" that would be great. Even those of us who are fully in the "hp are not meat points" camp can get suckered into into thinking that "healing" actually involves meaningful actual healing from time to time, and I am firmly convinced that the terminology is largely the reason why the "hp are meat points" camp exists at all, despite clear statements to the contrary in every edition of D&D and Pathfinder to date.

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glass.

(* Which are different from each other, but all better then SF IMNSHO from reading the latter. I rather like the Wounded condition, although again I think it needs a better name.)

When showed proof that their sentiment wasn't shared by JJ, and how to correctly apply those effects, they doubled down on their claims instead of just accepting it. Their argument was that 'older effects' should be applied first, and that the cap of the feat would occur before Sense Vital was applied.

But if they had actually bothered to read the linked posts, they'd have known their idea of 'older effects first' had already been disproved.

I cannot speak for anyone before me, but I have "bothered to read the linked posts", and JJ explicitly tells you to apply the Ioun stone (and by analogy the Sense Vitals spell) first.

You seem to be getting hung up on the words "least advantgeous". But as you yourself extracted and quoted upthread, JJ refers says that "Basically... Magical Knack has to take the LEAST advantageous route to giving you those extra caster levels." That is not the same as taking the least advantageous possible reading of the whole combination, which would preclude the caster level being over HD in the first place - which JJ clearly says is possible.

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glass.

It’s amazing this discussion is still going after the James Jacobs quote. It’s very clear how the designers rule on this kind of thing. If your people want to rule otherwise, then fine, but don’t pretend it’s the “right” way.

I think it is still going on because people are interpretting JJ's words differently. Some seem to be interpretting him as saying the cap from the trait (/feat) applies to the bonus Ioun stone (/spell), but I read him as saying that you get the full benefit of the Ioun stone (/spell), but if this takes you to or above the cap you cannot raise it further by means of the trait (/feat).

It is debatable whether this strictly matches the RAW as printed in the book (it would hinge on whether you can choose not to apply a feat you are not benefitting from anyway), but it is good enough for me.

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glass.

The median is not 10.5. It is the pair: 10, 11. The median can only consist of actual possible results.

The median is 10.5. If you have an even number of elements in a set, the median is the mean of the two middle values.

I guess you can get uppity about why I don't like something, but so far you haven't convinced me that I should like it.

"Uppity", really?

I am not trying to convince you of anything (except possibly the correct way to calculate a median). De gustibus nil est disputandem, plus I did not even know you did not like rolling a d20 until your latest post - the post I responded to was about KujakuDM not liking it.

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glass.

If everyone disagrees with you then maybe, just maybe...everyone but you is wrong. Or, generally, not.

It is eminantly possible that everyone but you is wrong (I've been in that possition), so everyone disagreeing with you does not prove you are wrong (and suggesting it does is a fallacy, as the OP noted above). OTOH, it should give you pause and make you recheck your position because it is quite likely that you are in fact wrong (been in this one too).

It is also possible that everyone's conclusions are right but their arguments for it are nonsense. Been on both side of that one too.

For the actual question of the thread, it comes down to two overlapping things. Firstly whether the treasure types are part of base statistics, and secondly whether the rules about treasure being what you get at the end of an encounter have any bearing (but are silent on any other uses for AFAIK).

My thoughts are that the answer could be clearer, but I do not think that you can make a case that treasure in general is a base statistic. However, there is a stronger case that the attack/full attack lines are, so the impproved familiar should probably come with items mentioned therein.

OTOH, if you have tracked down a specific creature that you wanted for your improved familiar and negotiated for its service befpre taking the feat (as the OP has implied is normal in his campaign), then that puts a different complexion on it.

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glass.

I agree with willuwontu. Finesse Training applies to (one type of) weapons that an be used with Weapon Finesse. For the Warrior Poet, that includes Katanas et al.

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glass.

glass wrote:

Slyme wrote:

Deliquescent Gloves and Demonic Smiths Gloves both give an ability that applies to weapon attacks, and therefore applies to Mystic Bolts.

Demonic Smith Gloves give an ability that applies to weapon attacks, so they work fine with Mystic Bolts. But Deliquencent Gloves are more specific than that.

Deliquescent says it works with wielded weapons as well.

So it does, thank you. I must have read that half a donzen times, and I skipped over those four wors every time.

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glass.

If you're going to say "Technically" you best have your facts straight.

Indeed, and luckily I did. You didn't.

The number you are describing is the mean of all possible results. it is neither the median, nor the mode.

What is the mode of all possible results? (hint: it's a flat distribution)

You are correct that I did not specify which of the three measures of everage I was talking about. However, the mean and median are both 10.5, which as I said, you cannot roll. The mode, as you hint, does not exist, so you cannot roll that either.

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glass.

KujakuDM wrote:

I don't want to play a system where there are "average" rolls. It's why I dont like 5e's (dis)advantage system. There is just something about the finality of rolling a single die.

You are playing a game with "average" rolls. d20 systems all have a flat distribution system.

Technically, a d20 does have an everage like any other distribution, but there is no way to actually roll it (since the average is 10.5 and there is no 10.5 on the die).

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glass.

Deliquescent Gloves and Demonic Smiths Gloves both give an ability that applies to weapon attacks, and therefore applies to Mystic Bolts.

Demonic Smith Gloves give an ability that applies to weapon attacks, so they work fine with Mystic Bolts. But Deliquencent Gloves are more specific than that.

Pretty sure all this was settled several years back when the class and archetype came out.

Then it will be easy for you to point out what I am missing (and I could easily be missing something, I am home from work sick so I am not eactly firing on all cylendars at the moment).

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glass.

If the above quotes are accurate, then the gloves only work on natural attacks and unarmed strikes, and I am not seeing anything that says mystic bolts count as either of those things.

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Admittedly, it's a bit pedantic.

I would not say pedantic, I would say accurate. The ring puts it on your list for the purposes of casting it, but Greater Bloodrage does not involve casting the spell so that clause does not kick in.

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I'm no lawyer, but all those terms were things in the OGL. Attunement is new to 5e, thus not part of the OGL. Seems like there could be issues there.

If by "part of the OGL" you mean open content, then yes it is.

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Nope, they kept Channel as its own pool of high level heal spell slots (looking at the premade cleric). It seems it is still 3+cha and it is separate from focus.

I really hope they reconsider this. The amount of healing from channel is ludicrous and just isn't needed in a world with Treat Wounds.

I really hope they don't!

The whole point of the separate pool is to allow clerics to actually use their domain powers once in a while.

The amount of healing from channel is certainly significant (I would not say ludicrous, because my group has just finished Sombrefell Hall with two clerics and a channeling paladin and we needed almost all of it). Maybe it should be toned down a little, but the main thing is to make sure that other classes have the option of significant healing resorces of their own so the that clerics are no mandatory.

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Also all caster classes with spell pools have powers that are heightened to max spell level. Non-casting classes are half/level rounded up.

Slightly off topic, but I do not understand why they do it that way. "Max spell level" and "half level rounded" are exactly the same thing, so why explain it differently for different classes and make it look at first glance like they are different. It is unnecessarily confusing.

Anyway, the difference in healing between a party with a claric is massive, and I agree that is a problem. OTOH, I would rather there were other options for hit point restoration that were in the same ballpark as the Cleric, rather than toning bringing the Cleric down too much.

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100% of my players misread this to mean 1/2 caster level. (Paizo staff attempts to craft clear rules. They rolled a natural 1, what happens).

I don't think they critically failed. I'd say they definitely got a few failures, but that is because Write Clear Rules tends to have a pretty high DC.

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It works as is without taking future proofing into account: You have no alignment prerequisite so a CE sorcerer can take the paladin multiclass feat with the only restriction the inability to use 'magic' abilities. So nothing stops you from that CE sorcerer/paladin ;).

No explicit alignment restrictions, but you have to "choose a deity as if you were a Paladin", which creates an implicit one. Not many Paladin compatible deities that also accept CE worshippers (without bothering to check, I suspect the number is zero).

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More to the point, the two obvious things to replace it with seem worse that Vancian casting:

- Spell Points or Mana has issues where it feels video gamey, and causes all the "psychic nova" that was so prevalent with 3.5e psionics.
- "Daily spells" makes magic even more limited, and is so reminiscent of 4e that it'd alienate a larger proportion of the playerbase.

I like vancian casting, and get rather annoyed by people who want to take it away from me instead of just playing one of the other options. But this in not really fair.

Arcana Evolved/5e/Arcanist style readying is already in PF1, and sorcerer-style spontaneous casting is already in PF2P. Both of those options seem like more obvious replacements than spell points of fixed daily spells.

Those are the only complaints about Vancian casting? How about the fact that it encourages weird behavior like the 15 Minute Adventuring Day?

No, dailey resources encourage the 15 minute adventuring day. Vancian magic can very occasionally make it slightly worse, but there are a number of solutions to that do not involve burning the whole edifice down.

Fourth Edition may be everyone's favorite punching bag but it did have some good mechanics. The problem with "encounter/daily spells" was that Fourth Edition made every class mechanically identical.

It did nothing of the sort.

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A-freakin-MEN! If PFS is causing problems, then abolish/fix PFS.

Don't f&&$ up the entire game for those of us who wouldn't even notice if PFS died in a fire and never came back.

Oh, you'd notice, if you ever wanted new players or new products. Because without PFS providing a bunch of almost-free marketing for paizo there would be considerably fewer of both.

Also, PFS does not cause problems. What it does is highlight them.

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Balance reasons is my guess. Multiclass archetypes are much more powerful than 1st level class feats, meaning that the only thing keeping them from being ubiquitous choices for your 2nd level class feat is the inconvenient ability score investment required to access them.

It seems to me that the fix for that would be to make the other low-level feats more impressive, rather than sticking a bunch of restrictions on archetype feats (multiclass or otherwise).

I am not saying no restrictions, but like the OP I think they could be a little bit looser.

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