jikl2001's page

I can't wait to be able to play a solo game without having to shuffle all those cards after every scenario. I seriously spend more time shuffling and setting up the scenario than I do actually playing the game when I play solo (granted, I'm a bit OCD when it comes to shuffling, to make sure everything nicely randomized). It's not that bad with a group, where everyone pitches in on shuffling and setting up the cards, but half the time, I don't want to bother playing because I don't want to spend all that time setting it up.

Oh, I didn't notice that when I read the rules previously. Thanks, that explains things.

Sorry in advance, because I feel like this question just had to have been asked and answered already, but apparently my search-fu skills are weak. Anyway, I just recently got the Rogue Class Deck and I noticed that Merisiel is marked down as having 5 items by default, but I was only able to find 4 items with the Basic trait in the Class Deck. I was under the impression that you're supposed to create your character deck from just the Class Deck.

I've both counted the number of cards and compared them to the official card list, so I know I'm not missing a card. Are one of the other "B" cards supposed to have the Basic trait? Is there an errata or FAQ somewhere that already addressed this? Or am I just blind, and there really is 5 items with the Basic trait?

Hallo to everyone,

I think that it will be without doubt Jade Regent for only one great clue.
As Vic said they are evaluating carefully the heroes that they have to include in the PACG series. Until now they have put (in the 2nd and 3rd box)7 new heroes and 4 returning heroes.
The iconic heroes that still we miss are 6 heroes (skald, brawler, investigator, assassin and....ninja+samurai).
So in the next installment these 6 heroes I think have to be included.
Ergo, you will have a PACG with a ninja and a samurai. All other heroes could be compatible with Jade Regent, while the ninja and the samurai don't fit with the other adventure path.

For this reason I think that saturday Mike will announce Jade Regent as next PACG

Yes, this is exactly what I said. And ryric said it before me, but he said it in such few words, I accidentally skipped right over his post when I was reading. XP

Well, CE characters may not work terribly well in parties, but Seltyiel is LE, and he's there! :)

A CE character and an LE character are different beasts entirely with regards to how well they work in a party. LE character can be expected to act within specific boundaries set by their own personal codes of conduct. They can also reasonably be expected to work with the party as long as their goals align. This is often not the case with CE characters, which are likely to do just about anything.

Whenever you see the hero-villain team-up, and it ends with the villain walking away, no attempt to backstab the hero, that is a classic example of a LE character working with the good guys. Usually the end of the team-up is marked with the uttering the phrase, "next time we meet, it will be as enemies once more," by the villain, and there's a sense that the villain somewhat respects the hero, because he meets some internal standard that the villain himself follows.

The CE character is much more likely to backstab the hero as soon as their goal has been achieved or even before it's been achieved. The hero usually is ready for it, spouting something along the lines of, "I knew you'd betray me, you just can't help yourself." Of course, the villain may just choose not to backstab at all for some completely illogical seeming reason, such as, "this bores me, I'll kill you next time." You just never know with CE characters, which is what makes getting them to work well in parties so difficult.

Paizo considers the Ninja and Samurai "full" classes, but not the Anti-Paladin. You'll find they have an iconic ninja and samurai but not an iconic Anti-Paladin.

Ah, I was curious what they were going to do for the Antipaladin character, since I was already aware he has no iconic. I didn't realize they were just going to ignore him outright. Makes sense, since CE characters generally don't work well in parties (unless he's named Belkar).

So just 6 new character classes next base set. That'll work fine since Occult Adventures is coming out with 6 new classes (which I refer to as the non-psionic psionic classes), and I'm guessing those will feature in the base set after next.

I'm leaning towards Jade Regent as my pick for the next PACG AP. I have one reason and one reason only for this. There are exactly 7 classes left that haven't been introduced in PACG, yet. Of these 7 classes, 3 of them are the alternate classes, Antipaladin, Ninja, and Samurai. Since Ninja and Samurai are both on the list, I'm leaning towards Jade Regent.

Of course, this is based on the assumption that PACG will treat them as actual full classes in of themselves rather than as the weird half-state "alternate" classes that they seem to be stuck in with the RPG. What I mean by this is that the Antipaladin, Ninja, and Samurai receive very little individual support from Paizo. They lack in the sheer number of archetypes that all the other classes have. They basically seem like they might as well have just been archetypes rather than classes in of themselves.

If those classes won't be considered full classes in the PACG, I'd predict Kingmaker instead, because it has Leadership-based rules that might be viewed as interesting to use for the PACG.

I would personally love Legacy of Fire, because I have a weak spot for "Arabian Nights" themes. I doubt that Paizo would use an AP that was written in the D&D ruleset, though. Not that it would pose any difficulty or anything using the AP, since the PACG is a different beast entirely, but I just get the feeling Paizo would rather stick with the PFRPG ruleset APs.

Sweet, thanks for the official answer! That's really all I wanted to know, just to satisfy my curiosity. Thank you.

I know it's been a while since the last post, but I was just curious, and was hoping maybe that I could gain some insight from the designer.

Why does Seelah use Wisdom for her Divine Skill when the Pathfinder Paladin uses Charisma as her spellcasting attribute?

I created a forum thread asking this question, to see if there had been an official response previously, but I didn't receive any responses that suggested so:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2s7gd?Why-does-Seelah-use-Wisdom-for-Divine

Hmmm... I'll admit that I don't pay enough attention to the Paladin class to be anywhere near the definitive authority on Paladin builds. I've just personally never seen a combat efficient Charisma-based Paladin build. Yes, Charisma grants higher saves, more spells, higher spell DC, and more ability uses, but as far as I can tell, none of those things really help you enough in combat to counteract a low Strength score.

But yeah, I've completely derailed the original topic of this thread. Sorry about that. Mostly I was curious to see if the game designers ever gave official response on why Seelah uses Wisdom for Divine. Hmm... I think I'll just post a comment on the blog post from Chad on Seelah, and see if I can get a response.

As I said, I never played Pathfinder RPG so I had no idea it was that focused on combat... and I'm afraid you're correct, Pathfinder is not something my group would enjoy since we prefer to have a balance between combat and role-playing [which is probably why we also enjoy various Storyteller RPG's].

And in that game, having +2 [or +3] to attack is nowhere near as important as having +2 [or +3] on saves... especially since we consider any roll of 1, 2 and 3 to be automatic fail. Which tend to get ugly when faced with "save or die" type of poison.

Then again, two of my most enjoyable times playing Paladin was in Ravenloft and Planescape settings... there is just something about being more or less disliked or outright hated by almost every NPC you encounter [even other LG ones in Planescape!]

My favorite campaign setting was Dark Sun, and paladins aren't even an option in that setting. Wizards had the big distinction of being the hated class, but it was less "more or less disliked" and more "frothing-at-the-mouth hatred", since wizards were the ones that turned Athas into a hellscape.

And even though I like Pathfinder, I generally prefer story-heavy games. The Storyteller system and Savage Worlds are the systems I most tend to use in the games I run. I have a particular love of the Pulp era (1920s/1930s), so I tend not to use Pathfinder or any of the d20 systems when I GM. I play plenty of Pathfinder, but I rarely run them.

I find d8 for Strength with Melee: Str +2 to be just right. I'll admit that I never played Pathfinder RPG but in "classic" RPG even when I played Paladin, I never put more then 14 [and I'd usually put just 12] in Strength due to his "good" BAB.

Charisma was always Paladin's main ability score [going as far back as 1st Edition D&D!] due to almost all of his class abilities are Charisma based, followed by Wisdom with Constitution and Strength fighting for 3rd place with Constitution usually winning. In the end, it would usually depend on how good I'd roll for my ability scores since we never use Point buy system, it's usually one of the 4d6 [or 3d6, if we want to challenge ourselves] variants...

Wow, just noticed how much I wrote. Here's the TL;DR:

TL;DR - Charisma-based Paladin is sub-optimal in Pathfinder RPG. Nothing wrong with going that route, but usually you want to make sure you have the right gaming group, or else that could cause problem.

Yes, in 1st and 2nd edition D&D/AD&D Charisma was the Paladin's main ability score, requiring a 17 to even play a Paladin. In Pathfinder RPG (upon which the card game is based), though, unless you're going for an archer build, Strength should be your primary attribute.

Yes, nothing stops you from making Charisma your main attribute, but it is completely sub-optimal. The Paladin doesn't get enough spells, and her Charisma-based abilities are far from strong enough to counter a weak Strength score in her effectiveness. Unless you're playing in a game with little combat and a lot of social encounters, making Charisma instead of Strength the primary attribute for the Paladin is generally going to result in a significantly weaker character. And Pathfinder, like "the world's oldest fantasy RPG", is primarily a combat RPG. It wouldn't have one of the most intricate combat mechanics for RPGs and base its XP on monsters slain if it wasn't.

And the paladin's high BAB is precisely the reason you should loading up on Strength (or Dexterity as an archer). That high BAB is telling you, "hey, I'm a martial class, expect to me to be hitting things a lot". You don't pick a wizard, see his low BAB, and go, "oh, his BAB is low, so I should shore it up with a high Strength score." No, you go, "his BAB is low, so I probably won't be hitting things, so I should probably avoid putting a lot of points in Strength."

Like I said, though, nothing stops you from putting all those points in Charisma. And if you have a group that encourages that sort of play, more power to you. I think that's fantastic if you have a group like that, I really do. But if you play in the typical Pathfinder/"world's oldest fantasy RPG" group, where you have a couple optimizers, you're going to run into some issues.

You won't be able to keep up in combat, and a lot of people tend to feel dissatisfied when they realize their teammates are doing an average of 150 damage per combat while they're barely pulling 50 (and these numbers won't be an exaggeration if you're only putting 12 points into Strength while your teammates put 18). The encounters will probably have to be made easier to account for the fact that you have one or more ineffective characters in your party, so those optimizers will probably make the encounters trivial, which makes the game less enjoyable for everyone involved. These kinds of things can really detract from the group's enjoyment of the game.

It really does depend upon your gaming group, but if you're in a gaming group that prefers heavy roleplay and little combat, Pathfinder probably isn't the best choice of RPG. There are other systems out there that are better suited for that kind of game. Pathfinder is an RPG that focuses on combat, and its players tend to keep that in mind when building their characters.

You mentioned you never played Pathfinder before, so I'm just giving you some background based on my knowledge of the system and my experience playing it. I hope that it didn't come off as me being harsh or anything, cuz that was not the intention at all. I just wanted to provide you with the reasons that I (as Pathfinder veteran) was surprised that Strength wasn't higher than Charisma. I don't think there's anything wrong with them choosing to go the way they did, as the card game is not the RPG, even if it's based on it, and Charisma does seem to play a significant role. I was just personally surprised.

The box set that you purchase is irrelevant. You can easily download and use the Rise of the Runelords Seelah if you want. There wouldn't be any balance issue with RotRL Seelah. Even Wrath Seelah, it wouldn't be significant. It obviously bothers you since you asked about it.

Oh, I didn't realize they were available for download. I just noticed the character sheets were available for download with the characters information all printed on them. Well, in that case I'll offer the option to switch the RotR Seelah to Charisma to any body who may want to play her. I still think the balance of the WotR Seelah will be thrown off too much to offer that option for her, though.

It only bothers me as far as the fact that it creates an inconsistency between the RPG and the card game. It really doesn't bother me all that much, particularly because I personally have no intention of playing Seelah. The paladin has been my second to least favorite class since as far back as I can remember (and I've been playing the "world's oldest fantasy RPG" for over 2 decades now). Only the bard ranks lower on my list.

The flavor of the classes just never appealed to me. With the bard, I just never could personally get into the whole "[sing/perform music] while in battle" concept. As for the paladin, I've just never been very good with the LG alignment. It runs too counter to my own mentality. My groups have regularly told me that I play the CE alignment better than pretty much anyone else they have ever met, and I've made a habit of playing the "Belkar" of the group.

For your home game, I don't see why it would hurt switching Divine from +2 Wis to +1 Chr. The Paladin class deck won't be out for months and there's nothing that says you have to use that variant character.

Having the Divine skill under Wis is actually a benefit to Seelah since too many of the best characters already focus on charisma. Sorcs, bards, oracles are all popular and I find that when there are too many characters focusing on CHR, they feel redundant. There are only so many locations that have allies.

YMMV

Well, I don't own the PACG, yet. I was just doing some research before I buy. I'm planning on getting the upcoming Wrath of the Righteous set instead of Rise of the Runelords, and I agree with the previous statement that the new Seelah can't be as easily converted to use Charisma while maintaining balance.

Also, the Wrath of the Righteous set will be fairly WIS heavy, between the Cleric, Shaman, Inquisitor, and Hunter, as well as the Paladin. Only the Sorcerer and Summoner will be CHA, though the Bloodrager will likely have a decent CHA score, much like the Paladin's WIS score. Neither I nor the other players will have the Bard or Oracle as options, since they're not included in that set.

Yeah, I personally found the Paladin's stat array surprising. The Paladin has always been a mostly martial class. The I would've had STR d10, DEX d4, CON d8, INT d4 WIS d8, CHA d8, with Melee: STR +2, Diplomacy: Charisma +2, Divine: Charisma +1. This puts the Paladin just behind the Barbarian and Fighter in pure melee ability (in Rise of the Runelords, anyway, not sure about anything after), while offering a decent Diplomacy and Divine.

Ah, I never even saw the new Seelah. I didn't realize it would be different from the old one.

Basically, I was going to balance Charisma's d10 vs. Wisdom's d8 by changing Divine from a "Wisdom +2" to a "Charisma +1". That reduction to the static bonus coupled with the fact that you can only increase Charisma by a total of "+2" vs Wisdom's "+3" should've made for a fairly balanced trade-off, I felt.

But yes, I agree. The new Seelah clearly would benefit a lot from moving Divine over to Charisma. She has Diplomacy, a total of +4 potential to Charisma, and a power that utilizes her Charisma. That's too much of a benefit in this case for me to see a simple way to make her Divine use Charisma instead of Wisdom.

And I don't like the idea of making her Divine skill be "Charisma +0". AFAIK, there's no character with a skill set as "[Attribute] +0". Though, I suppose you can add a power instead that says "You may use your Charisma skill for any checks listing the Divine skill. You are considered to have the Divine skill." Like I said, though, I don't think I'm going to be switching it to Charisma, due to potential balance issues.

It could also be that they forgot about the change because PF rangers (the only other Core minor casters) still use Wisdom, making it a simple misremembering rather than referencing obsolete material.

Now, the better question is why it will persist in WotR, which has Seelah still being a Wisdom-based divine caster.

Yes, I would very much prefer that they fix Seelah to use Charisma for Divine. I'm considering implementing a houserule for any games I run where Divine becomes a "Charisma + 1" skill. Does anyone think there might be a problem with this? I don't think it'd be unbalancing, but I'd like the opinions of people who've played more than I have (only first two scenarios).

That's interesting... as someone who never played Pathfinder RPG having Paladin use Wisdom for spell-casting seemed normal to me because that is what they [and Rangers] use to cast spells in "classic" RPG.

The use of Charisma is specifically a Pathfinder change to the Paladin's spellcasting attribute (D&D3.X used Wisdom). Pathfinder did this because the Paladin was considered a MAD (Multi-Attribute Dependent) class. It required high Strength for combat, Constitution for hit points, Charisma for various abilities (such as Lay on Hands), and Wisdom for spellcasting.

When using a Point-Buy system, this would often lead to the Paladin having to spread their points too thin to be properly effective, and the class tended fair poorly in comparisons made with other classes. By switching the spellcasting to Charisma, the points that used to go to Wisdom could be redistributed to Strength, Constitution, and Charisma. This change allows more efficient Paladin builds.

The reason I find it so odd that the Seelah is using Wisdom for her Divine skill is specifically because the change to Charisma for Paladin spells was a Pathfinder change. It's almost as if the creators of the card game were referencing the old D&D version of the Paladin instead of Pathfinder.

Sorry if this has already been discussed/answered, but I wasn't able to find a post addressing the question (my search-fu skill may just be weak).

I noticed in the blog that Seelah's card (http://static1.paizo.com/image/content/PathfinderACG/PZO6001-Seelah1.jpg) indicates Wisdom as her Divine skill attribute. In the RPG, Paladins cast using Charisma not Wisdom. So how come Seelah uses Wisdom for Divine? Seoni rightfully uses Charisma for her Arcane. I would think Seelah would likewise use Charisma for her Divine.

Is it a balance issue? I'm having a hard time seeing how having her use Charisma instead of Wisdom could be considered overpowered, seeing how she doesn't get to keep a lot of spell cards in her deck. Did the creators reference the original D&D3.x Paladin instead of Pathfinder's when they created her character card? Was this ever explained? Does Alahazra use Wisdom for her Divine as well?

It just seems incorrect to have her use Wisdom instead of Charisma for her Divine skill. Has anyone tried homebrew rules where they switch her Divine skill to using Charisma? If so, have you noticed any balance issues?

You learn the skirmisher tricks as normal tricks, so I'd learn towards unlimited personally. Strong? Yes, but the hunter's entire gimmick is having a really strong pet.

The ranger would get WIS + 1/2 ranger level per day. This is an extremely limited number of uses per day. A level 7 ranger would, on average have 5-6 uses per day. In combination with the fact that a lot of these tricks are free actions that can be used per attack, this means that the right Animal Companion (Big Cat) would quite easily blow through what would normally be an entire's day's worth of skirmisher trick uses every single round of combat. To me that just screams overpowered.

The alternative, however, would mean the Animal Companion would get too few uses, to the point of making it nearly useless. The Big Cat has a WIS of 6 IIRC. That means at level 7, the Big Cat would have only a single use per day. That's just too few to make it worth getting at all.

Hmm... I just thought of something. Perhaps if the Animal Companion's uses per day were limited by the Hunter's WIS + 1/2 Hunter level, rather than it's own, it may make more sense. That would make the ability fairly strong, but not overpowered. However, I feel the Hunter would still be a weak class if you go that route. I don't know... perhaps it's designed to be unlimited use per day to make up for the fact that the Hunter gets little else of any use. But I feel that anytime anything that's normally "per day" becomes "at will", it deserves a good bit of scrutiny.

jikl2001 wrote:

I looked for this thread because it personally felt to me that the Hunter class just wasn't very good. It seems to me that both the Druid and the Ranger are superior options. Upon reading your posts, though, you guys see a lot more potential in it than I do. Maybe I'm missing something...

I think you are missing a lot.

I have a 3rd level ranged focus hunter with PBS, Precise Strike and Rapid Shot. My tiger animal companion has dark vision, energy resistance 5 to cold, electricity and acid. My tiger has a 23AC without being boosted in any way and DR5/Adamantine.

Let's imagine he's attacking the enemy now. He gets 3 attacks and gets to roll twice for each attack and take the highest roll. Each attack he can use a free action to entangle for 1 round as well as the shaken condition for 1d4 rounds. There are no saves for this. The tiger just has to hit with one of his 2 rolls for each of his 3 attacks.

Next round my hunter shoots twice and let's assume hits once. Hitting that opponent with my arrow has now granted my tiger with +2 to hit and +2 damage against that opponent for the next hour.

This is all at 3rd level. Oh, and my tiger can smite once per day.

There are lots of hidden gems for the Hunter if you just know where to look.

I think you didn't read the part where I explained that if indeed the pet can use skirmisher ranger tricks an unlimited times per day, that makes this class very powerful, perhaps too powerful. Considering the skirmisher ranger has a very limited number of uses per day for the skirmisher tricks, it seems unlikely to me that this was the intention. And if the Animal Companion has to abide by the strict number of uses per day the ranger has, then I believe this ability is too weak, because most animals have a low WIS score. And I specifically pointed out that the Big Cat is pretty much the only Animal Companion that stands a chance of making this class a viable threat in the damage department. I didn't miss any of that.

I looked for this thread because it personally felt to me that the Hunter class just wasn't very good. It seems to me that both the Druid and the Ranger are superior options. Upon reading your posts, though, you guys see a lot more potential in it than I do. Maybe I'm missing something...

Anyway, here's my breakdown of the class by comparison to the most relevant classes:

TL;DR: The Hunter class gives up too many of the key abilities of it's parent classes and only seems to gain a stronger Animal Companion in return. This doesn't seem to be enough to compensate, but perhaps I'm missing something.

Druid
- Gains: Teamwork feats, more stuff for the animal companion, Animal Focus (which applies to both you and your animal companion), Tracking, spontaneous casting
- Loses: Wild Shape, full spell progression, full access to spell list

Basically you give up the best features of the druid, Wild Shape and full caster progression, to make your animal companion stronger. Animal Focus is a poor substitute for Wild Shape since all you gain are mechanical bonuses. You lose the ability to change size, gain flight and a ton of various useful abilities, like pounce, grab, trip. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the most useful bonuses of Animal Focus (bonuses to physical attributes) count as enhancement bonuses, which means they don't stack with magic belts. Yes, it saves you money, but the fact that they don't stack ultimately makes them far less useful. And as far as spells go, gaining spontaneous casting far from makes up for the loss of full spell progression and full access to their spell list. The fact that you gain bonuses to Tracking is hurt by the fact that you will be treating WIS as a secondary attribute. A caster Druid will likely be able to track nearly as well as the Hunter, anyway (though without the ability to swift track). The only real gain seems to be a slightly stronger animal companion with whom you share your Teamwork Feats, most of which have been quite lackluster from what I've seen. Maybe there are more Teamwork Feats in this book (I haven't had a chance to look at the Feats thoroughly), but I remember looking at the list when I played an Inquisitor and there were only 2 or so feats that seemed worth getting to me.

Ranger
- Gains: Teamwork feats, significantly stronger animal companion, Animal Focus, better spell progression, spontaneous casting
- Loses: d10 Hit Die, full BAB, Combat Style Feats, Favored Enemy, Favored Terrain

Once again you are giving up the best features of the original class. The Hunter is clearly a combat rather than caster class, so the loss of the d10 Hit Die, full BAB, and Combat Style Feats is a major blow. Animal Focus makes up for the lower Hit Die and BAB progression a bit, but like I said, the fact that the bonuses are enhancement bonuses means you could achieve the same with belts or spells that are already on the druid list. Also as previously stated, Teamwork feats have been lackluster, and they are a poor substitution for Combat Style Feats. The loss of Favored Terrain is a small detriment, but the loss of Favored Enemy is major. Favored Enemy is the chief means through which a ranger is able to push his damage potential, and the Hunter received nothing really to counter this loss to damage. The animal companion is significantly stronger, but just a single feat, Boon Companion, is enough to make a ranger's companion catch up quite a large amount. It will never catch up fully, I understand this, but I don't believe it falls so dramatically far behind that the Hunter's Animal Companion is enough to make up for all that difference. The main draw here seems to be the better spell progression. However, the druid list of spells is more oriented towards control and debuffs rather than self-buffs, which are usually the bread and butter of medium BAB, medium spell progression classes. Those that they do have seem to overlap with Animal Focus, and they largely don't stack. Since control and debuffs rely on spell DC, the medium spell progression hurts the effectiveness of using those spells.

Inquisitor

I've included the Inquisitor here because it is one of the most similar classes to the Hunter in overall design. They both have medium BAB and medium spell progression, and they're clearly meant to be more combat oriented than spell. However, the Inquisitor's Judgment and Bane abilities are far superior to the Hunter's Animal Focus. This is attributed in large part to the fact that Judgment and Bane tend to stack with nearly everything. That and Bane is simply outright better than anything the Hunter has to offer. They also both gain access to a lot of Teamwork Feats, however, the Inquisitor may treat any ally as having the Teamwork Feat for the sake of using it himself. The Hunter can only use them in combination with his animal companion. Granted, the animal companion also actually gains the feat, but this bonus only evens out with the loss of flexibility. The Inquisitor spell list is also packed with self-buffs, which are the most useful type for these types of classes. The Inquisitor is capable of some insanely high damage potential given enough time to self-buff. The Hunter simply does not seem capable of keeping up with that kind of damage potential. It instead relies on the Animal Companion to make up for this. Unfortunately, most Animal Companions are not terribly useful in that regard, unless you are specifically going for the Big Cat (granted the Big Cat is terrific at this).

Summoner

I personally don't know too much about the Summoner class, as I've never played it. But from what I've seen, the Summoner is still by far the superior option for a pet class. Not only is it's main pet option clearly superior to the Animal Companion, but it has access to the full spectrum of Summon Monster spells, where the Hunter is still limited by his limited spell progression. Of course, the Summoner feels a bit more like a caster class that relies more heavily on it's pets than a combat class, the way the Hunter feels, so that may be an unfair comparison. However, from what I've seen, the Animal Companion seems to be the main attraction of the Hunter, so I think a comparison is warranted.

Overall

Basically, what this class feels like is that you are looking for ways to optimize your Animal Companion rather than yourself. Unfortunately, historically there are a very limited number of options to help in that regard. As stated, I haven't had a chance to look through the whole book (the Hunter was the first thing that drew my attention), so I'll have to check more of the book to see if maybe they added a ton of support to make this more viable, but I don't think (I may be wrong) the Animal Companion has ever had the support to make it the primary part of any build design before. For the most part, it was simply a bonus ability to aid your PC. A very useful bonus ability, but still secondary to your others. Everything the Hunter tries to do, it feels like other classes can do them better, and it doesn't simply seem like it's a matter of this class is better at this portion, and this class is better at this portion. It feels that the other classes are simply better and the Hunter tries really hard to make up for those shortcomings by giving you the strongest version of the Animal Companion available to date, and I'm not sure it's enough. I don't see how you can build anywhere near as effective a character when the class's whole schtick seems to revolve around the Animal Companion rather than the character itself.

Of course, I hadn't realized the whole Skirmisher Tricks aspect of the Animal Companion at the time I first started reading this thread, but I'm of like mind to Pyralissa. I don't think it was meant to be able to use them at will. Considering the strict limitation the Ranger had in the number of uses, giving the Animal Companion unlimited use (and a fair number of those tricks count as free actions) seems like it may be broken good. If you treat the Animal Companion as having the same ranger level as your hunter level, the lower WIS of most Animal Companions would make this ability far less useful. In my mind, either this ability is too powerful, or not powerful enough to compensate for other shortcomings.

Like I said, maybe I'm just not aware of some additional options available in this book that help the Hunter specifically. Or perhaps I'm just drastically underestimating the value of the Hunter's Animal Companion. But the Ranger and the Druid are both amongst my favorite classes and some of my most commonly played characters, so I'm fairly familiar with them. Of course, I've never built my character around the idea of using the Animal Companion as a primary aspect of my character, so there's a good chance I am unaware of some things. I'm looking for any arguments to counter mine, or perhaps an explanation of why I'm thinking about it the wrong way with this class.

EDIT: minor grammatical fixes

Check out the 3rd party psionics stuff. Soulknife (who doesn't even USE psionic powers unless you take a certain archetype) has a blade skill called Focused Offense. As long as he has psionic focus, he uses Wis for attack *and* damage rolls with his mindblade. Then add in the Soulbolt archetype, which turns the mindblade into a ranged weapon but otherwise works as a mindblade. Two levels of Soulbolt, and you have a ranged attacker getting Wisdom to attack and damage.

Having been introduced to D&D through Dark Sun back in 2nd edition, psionics has always been a favorite of mine. I'm already aware of the Focused Offense ability, but it's not what I'm looking for.

The concept I have in mind is a crossbow wielding kobold ranger. I want the ranger flavor, the ranger mechanics, so I want the ranger class, not a soulknife. I just wanted to create some way for the crossbow ranger to be a worthy alternative to the archer ranger, rather than just it's dim-witted cousin. It doesn't make sense that an entire ranger combat style is outright inferior to another. It's not a case of give and take, better at this and worse at that. It's just pretty much straight out inferior.

Crossbows have inferiority to bows because they function as the primary ranged option for characters that don't have proficiency in martial weapons, which makes sense both mechanically, historically, and realistically. The logical homebrew solution is to make a martial crossbow that has similar properties to a shortbow. It could have a "composite" version that adds Intelligence modifier to damage, which makes more sense than Wisdom in my opinion. This might make crossbows attractive to wizards and Dexterity-based magi, but both these classes are generally not suitable for ranged builds.

By the way, there's already a feat called Focused Shot that lets you add Intelligence to a bow or crossbow attack as a standard action.

I don't think creating a martial version of the crossbow that adds INT/WIS is the way to go about this. The whole point of the crossbow over the bow is that it's simple to use and takes little to no training. But while I think it's believable that you could create some version of it that takes a bit more effort (we have exotics after all), I can't think of a reason why a weapon would have a built in way to allow for either your intelligence or wisdom modifier to be added to it's damage. I think that should either come from training or magical assistance, hence the feat and/or enchantment suggestion I initially gave. And because it is a simple weapon, I like the idea that it takes more effort or magical assistance to achieve the same level of effectiveness as you would from the bow.

I'm also aware of Focused Shot, but the fact that it requires a standard action makes it pretty much worthless for anyone who's going to focus on ranged combat, where the damage generally comes from your ability to make full attacks more often. It might be good for the smart character that just needs to take a shot every now and then, but not so much for a character whose build revolves around ranged combat.

I very much like the flavor, and I think that something like this should be the way to improve damage for crossbows, rather than giving them more shots, as the current system is. Feats that cost you a full attack, but lets you make one really powerful shot seems more like what I would expect from a crossbow, but the mechanics just don't support it right now. I don't want to go through the trouble and effort of creating an entire parallel system just for the crossbow.

The mechanics are also why I think WIS makes more sense than INT. Sure if you're taking the time to think it out, to consciously decide where to place your shots, INT is the obvious choice. But like the flavor text of my suggested, the fact that you are shooting so rapidly would suggest you're placing your shots more on instinct than intelligence.

Sorry guys, if it seems like I just have my heart set on this one specific feat, and I don't want to hear any other suggestions. That's not really what I'm trying to do. It's just that I've put a lot of thought into this, and this is the best that I could come up with. It's just what seems to make the most sense to be logically, within bounds of the currently existing game mechanics. If I do hear another suggestion that I think makes more sense, I will be more than happy to incorporate it. Mostly, though, I'm looking for any reasons you can think up of that would make this feat broken (like how the first guy pointed out the zen archer, which made the enchantment a no go).

Thank you guys for the feedback. Even if I don't sound like I'm grateful in how I respond, I'm grateful you took the time to read my posts and to give me advice.

Instinctive Shot (Combat)

"Crank, load, point, shoot, crank, load, point, shoot. The speed at which you do this is breathtaking. It's become instinct to you. It has to have with a weapon normally that difficult to load. And your instinct is strong. You know just where to point her to make every shot hurt."

Prerequisites: Dex 15, Wis 13, Point-Blank Shot, Rapid Reload, Rapid Shot, Crossbow Mastery.

Benefit: With any crossbow made for a creature of your size category, you may apply your Wisdom modifier to damage rolls.

What you think?

EDIT: I forgot to add the Wis prerequisite initially.

Wisdom to damage with ranged weapon is flavorful and match with a certain conception of the «eagle eyed archer». I think it could be both a feat and a enchantment.

The only real way I can see this kind of ability being open to abuse is on the Zen archer monk. He already hit using his Wisdom, add his wisdom to AC and, now, could use his Wisdom to damage rolls. But even here, this is not really worst than dervish dancing, which allow Dexterity to hit and to damage.

The power of the zen archer isn't so much linked to this Wisdom thing, but much more on the built-in mechanics that allow him to skyrocket his archery skills beyond any other class capacity (flurry with bows, bonus feat, no attack of opportunity in melee, free re-roll, etc.).

Ah, for some reason I thought the zen archer already added WIS to damage. Not sure why I thought that. Thinking about it, that combination might be broken good.

Archery builds already put out a lot of DPR due to their ability to pull off more full attacks. The Zen Archer gets more than any other archer build already, I think. That would amount to a ton of additional static damage.

Maybe it should be a feat only, so we can limit it to crossbows only. Since zen archers can't use crossbows with their abilities, that would negate that combination as a possibility.

Not sure how I could fluff that to have it make sense that it only applies to crossbows. Hmmm... I'll have to think on that for a bit.

I had a concept in mind to play a kobold crossbow ranger, but it irks me that the crossbow is generally inferior to the bow. I was trying to come up with a solution to the issue, but simply creating a "mighty" version didn't appeal to me. It might be mechanically fine, but the flavor doesn't make much sense, since the power of a crossbow comes from it's mechanics, not human strength.

Now I apologize if this has already been asked elsewhere (I couldn't find anything on it when I searched, but admittedly, I didn't spend that much time searching). I was curious what the general consensus would on creating an enchantment that adds WIS mod to damage (in place of STR). It'd be a +1 enchantment like Agile, but for ranged weapons only (though, I'm not sure I see much problem with it being for melee as well). Let's call it Insightful.

Since the attack and damage stay in two separate stats, I can't see this being overpowered. The few features I saw that let you use WIS instead of DEX or STR all seem to let you switch out both attack and damage, so I don't think there's a danger in a specific build suddenly become overpowered because of this. But I'm just me, and I don't know everything within the game.

The main possible issue I see is that archer builds could benefit from completely dumping STR since WIS is the more desirable attribute anyway. I'm not sure a +1 enchantment cost would be enough of a deterrent to prevent WIS replacing STR for every archer build.

The other possibility I thought was making it into a feat instead. For the already feat-hungry builds this may likely be the bigger deterrent than the enchantment, but I'm not sure if that would really be the case. Nor am I sure that this would be enough of a deterrent either. I can definitely see it being undesirable at low and possibly mid levels, but at high levels, when you have the spare feats, I could see completely supplanting the STR 14 builds that's the mainstay.

I mainly just want a way to allow crossbow builds to be just as viable as archer builds. I'd like to hear your opinions on this. Once again, I apologize if this has been brought up previously, and my search-fu skills were just too weak to find it.