johnlocke90's page

So interesting thing to note, low and mid level mechs can do more damage just falling on their opponents. A colossal object falling on you does 10d6 damage, reflex save for half. Do it from 30 feet and with a decent acrobatics check the mech only takes 1d6 damage itself.

At low levels, a mech can reasonably one a shot another mech doing this.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

The durability of humanoid beings in roll 20 has never made sense. Just don't think about it too much.

Makes more sense than the durability of inanimate objects. ;) At least heroes and villains having high HP can represent their capability and importance within the story. Walls having ridiculously absurdly high HP mostly serves to prevent decades old dungeon-bypass strategies that probably should have been perfectly allowable back in 1980.

Wall HP is not too bad actually. A 6 inch wooden wall has 60 HP and 5 hardness, which a low level adventure can break through within a minute or two. Thats reasonable.

What is odd is that a Tier 6 mech has lower hardness than a wooden wall and only slightly more HP.

Hylax is fairly close to an alien bug diety.

More likely, the list of deities is incomplete and details on them are fairly limited because the team wanted to focus on the scifi elements.
The information we got feels like a brief overview for people who didn't play Pathfinder. If someone wants to know more, they can always look there.

As for love, Cayden Cailean had the subdomain in Pathfinder. No reason to think he doesn't still have it in Starfinder. He just hasn't come up yet.

Xenocrat wrote:

Beyond the "it can't be found" handwavium, it might also be prohibitively expensive in ships lost to attack a planetoid with shielded and dug in capital weapons systems installed. The cost of leaving the Free Captains alone is higher insurance costs (they don't kill people who surrender and they honor their bargains) and higher costs on ship armament (probably a good idea anyway). The cost of destroying Broken Rock might be a double handful of battleships and cruisers with all hands even if none of the actual pirate ships in the vicinity fight.

In the Magefire Assault Absalom Station's defenses were enough to trash a sneak attack from what was probably then the strongest planetary fleet in the Pact Worlds' system. If Broken Rock's are even 5-10% as strong, the value of a similar attack is doubtful.

How would pirates with no industrial backing have a station armed so much as tu survive a attack by military vessels?

It has a few capital ship weapons and thats it. Do you know what else has capital ship weapons? Capital ships which navys and a few paramilitary groups have by the dozen.

There is no way Broken Rock could stand up to a single task force. And sending one is not too much of an effort either as it is still inside the Pact System.

All it takes to make weapons is enough UBPs and a guy who knows how to craft them.

Making the capital weapons is actually fairly easy.

I have been reading the Pact Worlds book and it came to attention that the Free Captains have their headquarters based in the Pact Worlds system which is home to various factions that would like to see them dead. Their headquarters know as the Broken Rock is a 450-mile-wide asteroid (similar to Ceres) so it's not exactly hard to notice. The only explanation as to why this asteroid has not been atomized is:

To keep law-enforcement organizations such
as the Hellknights and the Stewards off these ne’er-do-wells’
backs, only Free Captains and those they vouch for know the
exact location of Broken Rock. In the event of an attack, an
array of automated capital laser weapons known collectively
as the Broadsides defends the asteroid.

Pact Worlds pg 82

You would think factions like AbadarCorp, Stewards, Hellknights, Knights of Golorion, and the various militaries of the Pact Worlds would have the resources to track down this one base that has been used for centuries.

Because Paizo thought it would be cool to have pirates in the home system.

With drift drives, there really isn't a reason to have your pirate base in a populated system.

Unless you invest whole hog in armor , NPCs have enough hit to hit you every time anyway and you rely on miss chance and damage reduction for mitigation.

So picking a few random CR 5 monsters, theBarathu has +12 to hit. The medium elemental is +15 and the Ikeshti Rivener is +11. Someone with level 4 Defrex Hide, Basic and +4 dex is at 19 armor. Meaning they reduce enemy damage by about 10-25% just from their armor on a regular attack. On a full attack, they are reducing damage by 30-45%.

So for an equivalent CR monster, they certainly aren't hitting you every time.

The game relies on you wearing armor because its the only way to significantly scale your AC.

If you wanted to go unarmored, you would need to homebrew a feat or class feature that gave you something like +1 KAC/EAC every level.

I'll address everything going by RAW, since it's slightly entertaining.

Garretmander wrote:

I'd assume rolling profession to earn a living is like working gig jobs, or getting a low paying job working behind a register, that sort of thing. There's probably a different pay scale for 8-5 office jobs, or say construction work.

Earn a Living

You can use Profession to earn money. A single check generally represents a week of work, and you earn a number of credits equal to double your Profession skill check result.

Increasing your CR and, by consequence, your Master and Good skill bonuses, would represent getting a better job or getting paid better in your regular job.

It sounds bad, but NPCs tend to have a free ranged and /or melee weapon with an item level that matches their CR and that isn't cheap. There are some upsides!

David knott 242 wrote:

Things are cheaper if you have a long term lease on an apartment and cook your groceries at home.

I couldn’t find rules for buying a house or renting it, other than the hotel prices. Still on lodging, a suite with one bed would cost at least 37,5 credits a month, if "you book in advance and pay for them in 30-day blocks", instead of the regular 150 credits if you pay up every night. Maybe a couple can share a bed and split the bill - that'd be only 18,75 credits a month, what a steal!

But on cooking by yourself, no such luck.

Crafting Equipment and Magic Items
“A player character can create all the items presented in this chapter as long as he has the skills, materials, tools, and time needed to construct it. He must have a number of ranks in the appropriate skill equal to the item level of the item to be created.”
“For any food or drink, the appropriate skill is Life Science.”
“To create an item, you must have UPBs with a total value equal to the price of the item to be created.”

And since 1 UPB = 1 credit, cooking your own food costs the...

Keep in mind, if a DM was running a campaigned centered around people doing 9-5 jobs every day, he wouldn't just have the players roll profession checks over and over. He would have them run encounters where they get an education, interview for a job, deal with projects and employees. Then reward them credits based on their performance.

For an NPC, his job isn't just something he does on the side with casual profession checks. It *is* his adventure, so he is going to get more money as a result.

Its not true that the APs all take place far from civilization. Attack of the Swarm has an entire book in a capital world. Signals of Screams and Deadsuns do too.

I do agree though that nuclear weapons were a mistake. Its easier to handwaive plasma torpedos or laser guns, but nukes are something we all have specific expectations about. And I do wish we had a better idea how much money different people have.

David knott 242 wrote:

What sort of inheritance taxes do the Pact Worlds have?

The difference between members of long-lived races and members of short-lived races is that members of short-lived races have to pay that tax more often.

Otherwise, any differences should cancel out. For example, longer lived races would compensate for their experience preventing mistakes from inexperience by being less flexible in their ability to innovate.

it's a lot more than that. Say you get 10 generations of human to 1 dragon

The dragon doesn't go to college 10 times, spend 180 years in school, spend 10 times as much on diapers and babyfood raising generations of kids, doesn't spend 10 times as much when they stop working for 20 years to retire etc. Those all add up, and over 1,000 years they add up a LOT.

Also, a lot of those generations will have multiple kids. By the 10th generation someone could easily have thousands of kids diluting the money.

Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

I'm, personally, a socialist. So the base Pact Worlds setting being what amounts to a capitalist free-for-all definitely comes up often for the group I GM. With the increased scale of the setting, we only really see the problems inherent in an uncontrolled economy ramp up. Wealth hoarding by nigh-immortal beings is definitely a problem but corporations and wealthy families have already been doing it for centuries.

Starfinder is hardly a "capitalist free-for-all".

The economy in SF is completely made up to support a dungeon crawling type itemization and has no basis in reality.

It is funny how from a player perspective, Starfinder is simultaneously an-cap and has a rigidly controlled market. You can buy nuclear weapons for your ship with little trouble, but nobody will sell you guns 3 levels higher.

In real life, a businessman only has 50 years or so to accumulate wealth. However, some races of Starfinder can live a very long time. Providing quite a lot of time for compound interest to do its job.

A human who averages 6% post-inflation returns can turn a hundred thousand credits into 1.8 million. An elf with 200 years turns it into 11 billion credits. And a dragon with 500 years gets into the quadrillions!

How will this influence Starfinder societies?

I could see most major corporations run by competent Dragons who reasonably serve 500 year terms and own majority shares in the company. Even in middle management, imagine if your boss has another 150 years left before he retires.

Dracomicron wrote:

I am so confused right now.

What's so confusing? I just described some alien life living in the Constellation of Canis Major. I don't know which star their planet orbits.

Its confusing because your race sounds like a setup bad pun more than a real race.

However, I couldn't find anything in Pathfinder lore referencing them actively damaging the cycle of souls.

Its a bit of a weird topic. You have to read James Jacobs forum posts to get a definitive answer, but he certainly treats it as true for the game. When non-evil undead have slipped through(like Juju zombies), he erratas it and gives that as justification.

I am not sure why they aren't willing to just outright say it in books.

So all in all: As a player playing a mid-level wizard, why should I bother switching from 1e to 2e?

Probably, your DM wants to switch because 2e is easier to run so you don't get a choice.

Yeah none of your casters are playing correctly. A martial in PF1 can do a lot of damage, but a caster (especially wizards) can end a fight with one spell or completely short circuit an entire dungeon or plot. Look we had enough of linear fighters, quadratic wizards. Maybe it’s time for something else.

Wizards have more plot warping power, but a well designed martial can just 1 shot anything within 4 CR.

Against those creatures, casters would often struggle because the saves and spell resists are just so high.

Stone Dog wrote:

I think that being incarcerated (or executed) prevents the Paladin from doing actual good in the future, so the second tenets safety clauses feel like they give the paladin a decent buffer to choose inaction if necessary.

It sets up a paladin's player with interesting challenges, but one thing should be kept in mind (okay, at least one). A paladin doesn't have to win. A paladin can stay Lawful Good, not commit any Anethema, keep to the Code to the best of their ability and still not succeed in saving innocents from immediate harm.

It isn't a weakness .

If the threat of death or incarceration is enough for a paladin to decide not to act....what's the point of the second tenet, except for them to be able to break tenets 3 and 4 with the excuse of "I'm saving an innocent!It's fine!"?

Basically any situation where you'd need to save an innocent would involve going up against something that could "[...]sacrifice their life and future potential in an attempt to protect an innocent", be it a band of marauding orcs, a house being on fire, or a Katapeshi slave-driver mistreating slaves. Which means the Paladin is free to ignore the situation.

If so, then the entire second tenet after "You must not take actions that you know will harm an innocent" is essentially pointless.

The reasoning is probably: Paladins should be obligated to protect the innocent, but players will feel bad if their paladin is obligated to engage in a suicide mission. So they get an excuse not to.

The issue is world design. In the Dresden Files, the Knights of the Sword have some pretty lawful stupid seeming requirements, but they also have an omnipotent god on their side who ensures things turn out well if they have faith. Real life Christians have chosen to be martyred rather than break their faith for the same reason.

However, if you have a simulationist GM who will just let the paladin die for nothing, then the code needs more wiggle room.

The armory book should help a lot it sounds like it is going to flesh out most of the progression holes which would help make power armor viable for those who want to try it. I am still curious if they make any changes to the battery usage on power armor to make it more viable for anything other than short duration fights/encounters.

A "low power mode" upgrade would be a nice fix. Something that you can toggle to give you a -4 penalty to strength in return for using 1/10th the battery drain.

Boarding an active combatant ship is something they said they were specifically avoiding (at least for now) because too many people would just ignore the space combat rules in favor of making it a dungeon run. A derelict, disabled, or otherwise non-struggling ship I wouldn't imagine would need specific rules, just dock and do your thing.

If people don't enjoy spaceship combat, giving them alternatives sounds like a very good idea.

graystone wrote:

N N 959 wrote:

Poison use isn't strictly against code, but that doesn't mean its use can't be evil or dishonorable.

Nothing says it can't be good and honorable either... Hence the talk of cultures. With 2e, it's neither dishonorable or evil at base.

Culture does not determine good or evil in Pathfinder.

You will get very different definitions of Good or Evil depending on the culture of your GM. Culture plays a very big role in determining good or evil in Pathfinder.

The Raven Black wrote:

No retraining class levels ? :-(

It mentions retraining character options in the blog. As to specifics, who knows? Maybe it will allow swapping out an entire level of one class for a level of another class, maybe it will only be for stuff like feats.

MerlinCross wrote:

So with a hard level cap, crafting might not be as busted. Unless there's a way around it but I'm hoping there isn't. Above level stuff should be doled out by GM.

It wouldn't break the game to be able to make stuff 1 or 2 levels above your character level. Just like how in Starfinder, the rules let you buy items a couple levels above your own level and that works fine.

It's generally good to avoid stuff 5+ levels above the party except by GM fiat, though.

As a Starfinder player, the rule felt pointless there because items 3+ levels higher were also very expensive. You weren't going to by a 10th level item at level 5 regardless.

johnlocke90 wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

graystone wrote:

"You can craft items of your level or lower": I'm not sure I like this much. This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level: master craftsmen are always higher level meaning learning to quilt well means you can kick someone's butt by default...

EDIT: I forgot to say the rest seems good. ;)

Fortunately, pretty much all standard quality mundane items are at most level 1 items (or rarely level 2), so pretty much anyone can craft them. They just might not be able to craft a +5 sword (this was already the case in PF1; weapons had a caster level requirement based on the enhancement bonus).

As I understand it, You could bypass that with a +5 to the crafting DC, which was not difficult to do for someone who specializing in crafting.

Only if it didn't say like "MUST Be Level/Caster Level X".

Example, Basically every Construct is barred by this "Must have Caster Level X".

Meanwhile look over at Wonderous Items or just Magic Weapons/Armor and I think the list of "Must be Level X" is far smaller.

So with a hard level cap, crafting might not be as busted. Unless there's a way around it but I'm hoping there isn't. Above level stuff should be doled out by GM.

Its not just about PCs. In 1e, you could make the local master crafter 7th level and he could still craft some pretty awesome equipment, just by boosting his bonus high enough to ignore prerequisites.

In 2e, it sounds like the master craftsman also has to be really good at combat.

graystone wrote:

"You can craft items of your level or lower": I'm not sure I like this much. This means long lived races with hundreds of years of experence at their craft can't make items without also being high level: master craftsmen are always higher level meaning learning to quilt well means you can kick someone's butt by default...

EDIT: I forgot to say the rest seems good. ;)

Fortunately, pretty much all standard quality mundane items are at most level 1 items (or rarely level 2), so pretty much anyone can craft them. They just might not be able to craft a +5 sword (this was already the case in PF1; weapons had a caster level requirement based on the enhancement bonus).

As I understand it, You could bypass that with a +5 to the crafting DC, which was not difficult to do for someone who specializing in crafting.

Time travel would make more sense than people suddenly deciding to trust goblin, who were literally trying to kill and eat them a year prior.

On the plus side, archetypes as just buckets of feats might be useful for niche games. A general pirate archetype that gives some nautical/pirate themed abilities would probably be more efficient than having to create relevant archetypes for each class. Same with archetypes that grant gun rules and so on.

On the other hand, I think if archetypes lack built in abilities, its going to limit them severly compared to the current system, as far as exploring new rules interactions.

In a pirate themed campaign, everyone is going to want a pirate archetype.

If everyone is just taking the same archetype, that will be pretty boring.

I agree OP. Customizable Archetypes are a balance nightmare.

In PF1, you could substitute archetype abilities for class abilities of equivalent power.

If you can pick and choose, people will always sub out their weakest class ability, which really limits the archetype.

I agree with the OP.

The problem is not weapons and armor. Its everything else. The cool spy gadgets a party would want to buy tend to be incredibly expensive or not included in the equipment list.

I still try to figure out what exactly speaks against goblins as core race because no one could tell me a single compelling argument against it

the only thing I read here all the time "all goblins are evil, blah bla blah" - yeah we know what is written there in the books

But with release of PF2 your PF1 rulebooks are out of date. The world of golarion changes. Okay so the old books about goblins are (maybe, not even surely) outdated because...stuff (we dont even know what stuff) does it make them inconsistent? no, just outdated (which will also probably be the view on goblins of most intelligent races, especially the longer living ones)

I think I see the confusion.

Paizo has stated the lore of Golarion has not changed. the writeups on Goblins in PF1 is still going to be true. Golarion advances in real time, so only 7 years have passed since we got the ARG writeup, with lines like this:

Goblins tend to view other beings as sources of food, which makes for poor relations with most civilized races. Goblins often survive on the fringes of human civilization, preying on weak or lost travelers and occasionally raiding small settlements to fuel their voracious appetites. They have a special animosity toward gnomes, and celebrate the capturing or killing of such victims with a feast. Of the most common races, half-orcs are the most tolerant of goblins, sharing a similar ancestry and experiencing the same hatred within many societies. Goblins are mostly unaware of half-orcs‘ sympathy, however, and avoid them because they are larger, meaner, and less flavorful than other humanoids.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/featured-races/arg-gob lin/

Many of us don't see how that description of goblins fits with Goblin Adventurers being a common sight.

I loved Zen Archer and Qinggong Monk, I was kind of glad that the last one was already baked in into the UC monk (and I modified the Zen Archer Monk to make it UC Monk compatible)

You are right that many archetypes only make sense for some classes.

The starfinder Archetypes are really bad in many cases, but that is only partially through the skills the archetype gets but more through what the archetype looses (imo usually too much)

Some archetypes need to lose more than others. An Archeologist bard would be broken with Bardic Performance. An Archivist would be horrible without it.

The problem in Starfinder is that its difficult to give every archetype the same level of power, so we end up with several Archivist level archetypes and Archaeologist level sacrifices.

Poisons were specifically excluded from the things explicitly forbidden by any tenet, unlike lying for example

I feel that in trying to erase the usual causes for Gotcha, we end up with nothing really differentiating the champion of Law and Good from the casual murderhobo

Or maybe that will cause even more arguments between GM and players about what is truly cause for a fall. Thereby defeating the entire purpose of the code's redesign

The problem is that a rigidly Lawful alignment ends up looking stupid and not very good. Humans have known this since Biblical times("Then Jesus asked them, 'If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?'").

But as you noted, a flexible code makes it much harder to distinguish a Paladin from your average NG character.

johnlocke90 wrote:

Monstrous races in general are still useful as targets you can morally kill them on sight.

This has never been canonically true or well supported in Golarion. I doubt PF2 is gonna make it so.

There are 1 in a million exceptions, but by default these races are evil and PCs will encounter them doing evil things.

For example, the writeup on orcs

Orcs are aggressive, callous, and domineering. Bullies by nature, they respect strength and power as the highest virtues. On an almost instinctive level, orcs believe they are entitled to anything they want unless someone stronger can stop them from seizing it.

Orcs have few redeeming qualities. Most are violent, cruel, and selfish. Concepts such as honor or loyalty usually strike them as odd character flaws that tend to afflict members of the weaker races. Orcs are typically not just evil, but chaotic to boot, though those with greater self-control may gravitate toward lawful evil.

Writeups like this are very useful for certain kinds of adventures. Nobody has to ask why the orcs are raiding villages. Its just in their nature.

IMO PF2 Would greatly benefit if ALL Archetypes are Class Agnostic and Prestige Classes in general are integrated into the Archetype System.

It makes leveling up simpler, it prevents worsening of MAD Ability Scores for some classes, eliminates the need for Feat Taxes (Instead they should PROVIDE the Feats at specific levels which a PC would have been required to take anyhow), and allows much more freedom for natural character development and leveling up more gracefully.

Ex : A Fighter, A Cleric, A Rogue, and A Bard all take the "Master Spy" Archetype.

Level 1 Skill Feat is Replaced with : Art of Deception "Bluff, Disguise, & Sense Motive Skills are Trained Skills. Every 4 Levels after 1st Level the Proficiency Raises 1 level.

Level 2 Skill Feat is Replaced with : Sneak Attack : Extra Damage to Flat Foot/Flanked Foe. +1d6 + 1d6 Per every 4 Class Levels with the Master Spy
Archetype

We have this in Starfinder and it hasn't benefited the game. We have one archetype thats playable in some builds. The rest are just bad.

Many of Pathfinders best archetypes would not work in this system because they focus on substantially changing the core abilities of a class.

Off the top of my head, Urban Barbarian, Zen Archer Monk and Quiggong Monk are all very popular archetypes that just don't make sense outside of their classes.

PF1 Divine Grace added a static bonus which is more a Lawful approach to me (not random)

A Chaotic equivalent IMO would be roll twice and take the best roll (some luck involved)

The issue is that your idea of chaotic and lawful are completely different from Pathfinder's.

Antipaladins and Barbarians both get static bonuses to their defenses. Barbarians even have DR, which is the least random defense in the game.

Meanwhile, Witches get rerolling and they can be any alignment.

I would personally maintain that the PF2 Paladin code, by virtue of its tiered nature, is considerably *less* restrictive than a Cleric's anathema. A PF2 paladin is completely free to be utterly underhanded so long as its in service of protecting the innocent and he doesn't outright commit evil. A Cleric of Shelyn's anathema against denying surrender, striking first, or allowing art to be destroyed, meanwhile, is rather speciific and unqualified.

Thats a good point. I suspect in PF2 we are going to get a lot more complaints about anathema than codes. Its very easy for a Shelyn follower to get in a no win scenario.

I always saw PF1 Divine Grace as a Lawful thing. Same for the immunity to fear and diseases (being protected from such dishonorable states by your rectitude) as well as the auras (because of the collective aspect)

Actually, Cayden Cailean is the god of bravery and PF2 Divine Grace is going to worked more like Charmed Life, which the Swashbuckler uses(another Cayden similarity). Meanwhile, the LG gods don't have much to do with disease. That fits the NG ones like Sheylin better.

Paladins draw power from all over the spectrum of Good, so they work just as well for any Good character.

Seems like the 5e method, but made complex to just be complex.

It solves an issue of people going up and down every round. In 5e, bard heals you back to conscious at 8 HP>you stand up and take a full attack>monster hits you for 40 damage and you fall>bard heals you back to conscious at 8 HP

I prefer the Pathfinder 1e death rules though. Being low on health should be scary.

johnlocke90 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Bardess wrote:

I am for paladins as any good, and antipaladins as any evil. Neutral deities must choose which ones they want.

I feel that relaxing the alignment restriction on the LG Paladins to being Any Good would really hurt the people for whom the Paladin being LG is an essential part of the class

I believe there are other ways to bring happiness to people who look for non-LG Paladins

The "other way" would be to print a class mechanically identical to the Paladin but open to "any good" alignment. Which would just be a waste of pagespace.

Or create a new class with different powers that would fit the alignment better, beginning with the CG alignment (my favorite solution)

Or if you wish make the all Good Paladin an archetype of the LG class

None of the Paladins powers are related to law, so the current powers fit a chaotic good or neutral good Paladin just as well as a Lawful Good one.

In fact, Neutral Good Shelyn is the only god mentioned in the Paladin Features section of their blog post.

Bardess wrote:

I am for paladins as any good, and antipaladins as any evil. Neutral deities must choose which ones they want.

I feel that relaxing the alignment restriction on the LG Paladins to being Any Good would really hurt the people for whom the Paladin being LG is an essential part of the class

I believe there are other ways to bring happiness to people who look for non-LG Paladins

The "other way" would be to print a class mechanically identical to the Paladin but open to "any good" alignment. Which would just be a waste of pagespace.

If casting isn't stealthy, then they should to rewrite Charm Person.

In most cases where a new player would think it works, it doesn't.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

CG people, being Good and willing to make personal sacrifices, are more willing to have a very few rules imposed on them for the good of others.

This suggests that chaotic is only chaotic when it's not busy being lawful, and bears no mechanical distinction from neutrality. "I don't do rules, except when I do some rules..." as opposed to "I don't do rules. I just do what I do. The rules don't matter." It appears as a distinction of degree (i.e. <3 rules, you can be chaotic; 3-6 rules, you can be neutral; 6+ rules, you've got to be lawful). The good portion of the alignment spectrum isn't what's in question here; it's the chaotic portion that's the salient point, but the conversation keeps on revolving back to good as if that completely negates the chaotic factor.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Oh, I'm not conflating anything. You're absolutely right about a CN or CE person's attitude, which is precisely why I used a CG person in my example. Being willing to put up with a few laws (and only a few laws) to protect others is a very specifically CG attitude to have, of the Chaotic Alignments, because it's a self-sacrificing one, and Good is the Alignment for that.

I hear what you're saying about how the LG character won't follow all laws because tyrannical laws would conflict with goodness, and I understand that the CG character wouldn't be against all laws because doing so might conflict with goodness. The problem lies with, "I accept all these laws (or behavioural rules in the case of a chaotic good paladin) consistently, each and every day." In so doing, they edge away from CG toward NG (and possibly toward LG), as they follow a consistent behaviour pattern (not chaotic in any sense of the word) that is codified into a set of rules or laws. If you hold these 5 tenets to be true at all times, you're acting in a purely lawful fashion with regard to those tenets, not a chaotic one.

It goes back to the earlier point about "how many rules do you accept before you're no longer...

Your definition of Chaos makes Chaotic Good impossible.

In Pathfinder, some acts are intrinsically evil(like torture, killing innocents or using Evil spells). If a CG character can't obey these rules , then they are at best neutral.

You can stick to a Tier 4 ship and get easy checks if you prefer.

Its nice having inherently evil humanoid races so that the adventurers can kill them without having to worry if these are the "good orcs". Especially nice if I have a Paladin or Good Cleric in the party.

If I want morally ambiguous bandits, I can use humans.

If I want evil ones, orcs are great.

Low scores in unimportant abilities are, if anything, a sign of competence in pathfinder. Because it means the person is probably stronger in other areas.

Its the Oracle with 12 charisma who is questionable.

See, here is one question...

If Chaotic is the alignment of honor, dedication, honesty, and all about following codes... Which is what it seems like the argument here is...

Then what does Lawful mean?

A Lawful Good character should be believe in large-scale organizations that enforce their beliefs.

A chaotic good character would avoid such organizations in favor of doing things on his own.

thflame wrote:

The reason why dumping for no benefit is not an acceptable solution is that nobody in their right mind would adventure with the guy who is just plain weaker than everyone else.

Personally, I'd rather adventure with someone who is a little bit weaker than adventure with someone with an attitude like that.

I would rather play with someone with a good attitude, but if I was going into battle, I would definitely rather the stronger guy.

johnlocke90 wrote:

graystone wrote:

johnlocke90 wrote:

Paladins as knights in shining armor would be concerned with the appearance of impropriety

They are? I missed that part of the code... "must act with honor" doesn't equal 'must APPEAR honorable'.

Honor is all about reputation. You don't do honorable things because they are good acts(although they might be those too). You do them in order to defend your reputation.

"One can distinguish honour from dignity, which Wordsworth assessed as measured against an individual's conscience[2] rather than against the judgement of a community"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour#Social_context

I disagree.

you should be using the definition of honour that goes:

Oxford Dictionaries wrote:

The quality of knowing and doing what is morally right.

A paladin should on every level should be far more concerned with being honourable over appearing honourable.

Paladins are already required to do whats morally right. Your definition would make honor redundant in the Paladin code, while mine would actually contribute something to the code.

Edit: Also, Paladins are Lawful. Lawful people care about reputation because reputation is vital to a functioning Lawful society.

Obedience to authority breaks down if leadership is not viewed as honorable.

Paladins as knights in shining armor would be concerned with the appearance of impropriety in addition to actual wrong doing. Even if poison use isn't evil, if its viewed as dishonorable a paladin would avoid it to keep his good name.

Real Chaotics follow the rules when it benefits them to. As soon as it doesn't benefit them, break the rules.

If someone only does what benefits them, they are either Neutral or Evil.

Chaotic Good has to have principles it follows in order to stay good.

Poison has always been a better tool for Paladins than anyone else. Think of it this way, if a Paladin is trying to apprehend the evil cultist leader, he can:

Approach the leader, offer an ultimatum, and then when the leader predictably fights for his life (see: every stat block with morale listing of 'fights to the death'), the paladin takes his sword and cuts gashes into the fellow's flesh until he falls unconscious, almost dead.

Fire a blowgun dart at the leader with sleep poison, knocking him unconscious almost painlessly. The paladin then ties the leader up and takes him to a jail where he can be interrogated.

Which of these two options sounds like its more evil? Because the first one involves a whole lot more bloodshed and pain than the second. Yes, the second is less honorable, but its a hell of a lot more peaceful and significantly less cruel. And in my mind its way more humane than dealing non-lethal damage to knock someone unconscious (mental image: paladin hitting someone with a stick until they pass out, covered in non-life-threatening welts), something that I've seen many paladins do in hopes of not killing their targets.

Aversion to poison stems from real life uses.

IRL, sleep poison isn't really a thing you use against people in a fight. There is a good chance it either does nothing or kills the person outright. Even in modern day, dosage has to be controlled very carefully and you have to hit very specific points on the body. Historically, poisons were just used to kill or horribly maim someone. Generally in traps(like smearing poo all over a stake hidden in the ground to give the victim a horrible infection).