king phar's page

So i have recently come across a very similar problem to this in a kingmaker game involving a cavalier and I have one thing to ask.

Charge says:

You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and nothing can hinder your movement (such as difficult terrain or obstacles). You must move to the closest space from which you can attack the opponent. If this space is occupied or otherwise blocked, you can't charge. If any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can't charge. Helpless creatures don't stop a charge.

And if I had read this right I surmise that any angle the lance wielding halfling comes in on as long as he is in the air will not only run him straight into the enemy but also into the ground due to how ride-by attack requires you to continue on your movement in a straight line.

My basic problem is; does hurling count as an improvised thrown weapon and thus qualify for feats that improve improvised thrown weapon attacks or give me the ability to make multiple attacks with them in a single turn.

So lesser hurling has the following text:

And I want to throw.... wagon wheels, those are roughly small sized. But I would like to know if I can use this rage power with any of these feats:

There is always White Mage from the arcanist but they are secondary healers at best.

the new measured foe feat would let you learn the Bab of the monster which can be a good measure for its hit dice and thus hit points.

So investigator is cool... but I don't wanna spellcast. What can I say? Just too lazy. So sleuth lets me do that.... for a really lackluster panache....... that stacks with regular panache into one pool.

So here is the build idea we go with one level in inspired blade swashbuckler grab the new fencing grace feat and then dump the rest of my stats into investigator sleuth making a super clever duelist with which to take on the wild lands in Kingmaker.

base build:

lv 1 swashbuckler
gets weapon finese and weapon focus rapier
grab fencing grace with feet along with street smart.

lv2 Sleuth investigator
my panache/luck pool now equals my charisma x 2 + int and regains on natural 20 sense motive and knowledge checks plus rapier crits and insperation 6s. With 16 int and 14 charisma that ends up with a nice 7 point pool each day.

Put the rest of my levels into investigator to become a psuedo rogue for the party.

Yall think this build would work? I'm not really aiming for top dps but I don't want to be useless in a fight. I am also looking for suggestions on the rest of my feats and investigator talents, I am currently looking at the street smart tree but would like advice.

I was actually looking into a stalker with the twisting fear talent and dazzling display, but I do like the full bab of avenger along with the access to the fighter feats and heavy armor.

So I recently had my very admirable level 1 whip fighter killed to death along with most of the party in a session of kingmaker and I have decided I like the new vigilante class. (vigilante talents cool, social talents meh) So I have decided to make a vigilante as my next character and luckily enough for me we already have some melee some ranged so I have some freedom in what I bring it.

What I need is some advice and suggestions on how to build this mysterious stranger, as far as inspiration I'm thinking along the lines of Rorschach (Watchmen) or Lamb (Red Country), some guy who goes unnoticed in his social identity who turns into an utter psycho in his vigilante. Sadly for me though I am very split on what to play, whether or not to go an archetype what build to go. So I would like to know what builds yall are looking at for this class so I might shamelessly rip them off or maybe just borrow some pieces for my own masked warrior.

So here is the base of it, I actually love the Vigilante. The talents are cool, and on top of that you can build a terrifying monster of a pc. Thinkin somewhere between Red Country's Lamb and Watchman's Rorschach

To start I want to go human Stalker Vigilante with Weapon Focus, Dazzling Display to do AOE scary, my char is an wounded worn out warrior who turns out to be a ruthless killer in his vigilante state and with the Twisting Fear talent i start doing AOE nonlethal scary.

From there I go Up Close and Personal, Leave an Opening, and Vital Punishment for talents and Gory Finish, Combat Expertise, Improved Dirty trick, and Cloak and Dagger style for feats.

My turns are basically, move to provoke an attack of opportunity jump out of the way, stab him (with vital strike hidden strike) and leave an opening to vital strike him during his turn with a bunch of dirty tricks thrown into the mix, aaaand when I kill guys the others freak out so much they fall unconscious.

end build is looking like this:
20 point buy
Str: 14 (12 +2)
Dex: 14
Con: 13
Int: 14
Wis: 10
Charisma: 14

feats/talents
1f Weapon focus shortsword (start with a gladious)
1f Dazzling Display
2t twisting Fear
3f Gory Finish
4t Up Close and Personal
5f Combat Expertise
6t Vital Strike
7f Improved Dirty trick
8t Leave an Opening
9f Cloak and Dagger Style
10t Perfect Vulnerability
11f Notorious Vigilante
12t Leathal Grace
13f Combat reflexes
14t Evasive
15f Cloak and Dagger Subterfuge

Actual build, you go monkey/raccoon/otter/sloth.

You do this because you can argue that they have hands that can grab stuff, like a Katana (hint hint)

Start with Katana Proficiency.

go great weapon fighter

The pet gets your feats

Samurai Raccoon

Google it... your welcome

So update:

Set
Ehhhh i don't really like the sneak attack damage build.

SanKeshun
We are selecting our ability scores via point buy with 20 points.

Avr
You bring up a good point.... currently looking at the benefits especially with the startoss style since I'm not technique needing to hold a weapon in my free hand.

Gisher
Kinda requires melee, at the very least requires me to sink a feat into weapon focus for a melee weapon

Hayato Ken
Good ideas but I'm thinking I'm gonna stick with a psuedo strength build simply due to lack of feats in unchained.

So I am to be playing in a game of Kingmaker starting next week. we are literally just starting, and I am the last person to build a character. We have a Kitsune Oracle, a Sylph Beastmaster, a Dhampir Ghostrider, and a Elfen Dueling Master Alchemist. So yeah, we have a weird party and I have decided to take up the role of the midranged dps capable of moving into melee when I wish but preferring to stay about 10 feet or more from my enemies. Initially I was gonna do the Flying Blade Swashbuckler but we were already kinda charisma heavy (with the oracle and ghostrider) and our alchemist was worried we would be kinda lacking in wisdom. So I have come up with the best idea, lets see if I can do a shuriken based monk using unchained.

Now this build looks promising with a literal tone of auto attacks and a good bab to get behind them but I have run into a major snag, a bunch of the monk abilities only effect their unarmed attacks (ki strike, style strike) and I was wondering if there might be a way to get around these, maybe swap them for other moves or maybe be able to use weapons for less damage like the brawler's strike ability.

Also just looking for some general build advice.

PS: One last thing, I am not opposed to going melee with the monk I would just prefer not to and stick to shurikens for my main source of damage.

We tried out the Dawn of Worlds rules in a play test with someone who is going to helping me run this game and with very few changes it is something that could possibly work. Thanks for the link

Alright so the pitch for the game goes like thus.

In the beginning in the absence of all there was chaos, but Chaos quickly grew bored and spawned forth multitudes of gods. That's you. So creation begets creation and the gods too grew bored with each other choosing to sire the world to entertain themselves. They filled this world with their creations and molded that which they created crafting a beautiful world filled with wonders beyond imagining. This perfection was not forever though because soon enough their sire found them and Chaos saw what they had brought into the void. He saw what creation brought and he raged swearing to end what he had begun by consuming all that was and returning the void to how it was. Seeing their destruction at hand the god fled from the heavens and plunged down to their creation the fall pulling them from their people and stripping them of their power. This fall did protect them, for it is something far more difficult to consume something you have not spawned, but it did so at a great cost. For 500 years the world was without it's gods and so it fell into a great darkness. Now the gods must rise again in a world that curses their names. Forge a new legend and become more than the creations of Chaos, Become Gods!

Basically this is a Mythic Pathfinder game where the players start as gods forging a world, populating it with custom races, and playing a small game of pseudo Civilization before I the dm are given free reign of it to make terrible things happen. Then the players wake up in craters remembering their time as gods but uncertain of what has happened to this world in their absence. Any advice?

*PS please forgive any grammar/spelling errors it's like 6 am and I am to tired to do more than spellcheck this.... also more information on what I have already thought up will be typed up tomorrow after I have a good sleep.*

king phar wrote:

I, personally, found the whole experience to be really boring. Throughout the campaign the only way my character really felt like he had changed was in his spell list, even in the spell list though I felt like I was just choosing what charm I thought was most amusing at the time. I didn't really roll dice unless it was for some skill check and for those checks we basically just threw dice at them until one of us succeeded (It wasn't until the 3rd or 4th level that my diplomacy checks got more than 2 points higher than the party warlock and I'm the bard).

Our experiences are very different. The bard gets to choose two different styles at some point that makes him pretty versatile. He can cast spells, he can perform martial attacks, use a shield...His spells are great, everything from thunderwave to more utilitarian spells. The bard, to me, is one of the best things about 5E.

Generally I found that when boiled down most of the spells were the same, it came to it's head when I looked at my third level spell list and found Hypnotic pattern had basically the same effect as my sleep spell but with the ability to be used on any hd of creature. Many spells were simply older spells with larger numbers and to be honest, it didn't really matter because the Dc remained the same for all of my spells, so why waist higher level spells on a big enemy with tasha's hideous laughter will put them on their ass for the next round no matter what level they are.

Then in reality each class is basically the same no matter what path/feats you choose, in pathfinder my monk based around attacking many times a round and doing more damage with each attack is completely different from my friend who takes the sensei archetype and plays a more supportive role. By contrast in 5th when my friend said he was playing monk I basically had to choose a different class because while the shadow monk might be slightly sneakier than his open handed brethren we would both be doing much of the same thing.

Im in shock, cos the bard is rather cool in 5th...and isn't the auto-sing monkey he has to be in PF or everyone gets grumpy cos they aren't receiving some bonuses each round

The Warlock and the Bard should both be charismatic.....one in an alluring charming way, the other a more sinister more manipulative way

if you are rolling dice till you succeed how ism this any different to PF? Doing it this way is clearly not the spirit of the game? You have quoted two campaigns you have recently played and neither sounded great TBH!

Still each to their own. It would be a rubbish world if we all thought the same....people are dying in the RL to prevent this from happening so despite our differences of opinion we are only playing silly games afterall!. Its a good thing we can discuss what we do and don't like!

Well in the few sessions I played a bard in pathfinder I found myself doing way more than just singing, stuff like starting a fight with an opponent fascinated and then trading into some melee spellcasting because I was ether an arcane duelist or a dervish of dawn. In general my PF bard had a lot to do every turn while in 5th I did the generally the same thing, charm highest threat target then shoot with bow until target breaks charm.

Yes Warlock and Bard are both Charasmatic but since I was only gaining 2 points for having the diplomacy skill for the first few levels we had very close to the same chance of succeeding a given diplomacy roll.

The difference is that I felt like my choices in making my character meant something. I was tied with the warlock for highest charisma and was focusing on diplomacy but it wasn't till level 3 or 4 when I got more than a 3 to 4 point lead on the Lowest charisma character. This meant that when it came to a situation it was commonly better for each character to go up and give their own diplomacy bit and then roll dice with advantages/disadvantages based on what they had said as opposed to in pathfinder where this strategy usually just leads to one character rolling badly and ruining it for the whole party.

But yes, both campaigns were kinda meh, it's just for pathfinder I found that my character progressed more as a character and my choices (in character gen/levels) had more of an effect on the game, thus even though the 5th edition game was run better I preferred the play style of the pathfinder game.

I've wondered about this dichotomy too. As well as the simple-complicated spectrum (which most of the discussion has been about) ít seems to me there's also a spectrum of how closely one likes the mechanical options provided within the character creation part of a game to replicate the flavor one is trying to portray.

It seems to me that 5E's default assumption is you can do much more without any mechanical backup - that duty falling on the DM to adjudicate rather than the rules. In Pathfinder, by contrast, there is more a general assumption that the rules empower you to do various actions/stunts and that the DM doesnt need to come up with rules, but that you cant do them without the appropriate mechanical gizmo.

We have one player in our group whose tastes in this regard mirror yours, I suspect. He's begun saying things like "well, that's not in the actual rules" when things come up in our 5E game and I suspect that in the long run he's going to find it limiting/boring in the same way that you did.

For me I find it the opposite - my pathfinder characters are all built very simply because I have no interest in the effort required to tweak them mechanically so I just make them good at one thing (and I'm not terribly good at that, so they're not even that good at it). Having done so, I cant then do anything else - since there's feats and options I should have taken but didnt, so I'm either forbidden from trying it or I'm nearly always going to fail. It seems to me these two different ways of playing arent really captured by the simple/complex dichotomy we've mainly spoken about in this thread. Nonetheless, I think it will prove a significant element long-term in which game one prefers.

You make a great point and I must agree.

Alright so I'm gonna start this post off saying that I have only played one campaign set in 5th edition using the Tyranny of Dragons adventure book and playing Bard (a class I have never played before but heard good things about).

I, personally, found the whole experience to be really boring. Throughout the campaign the only way my character really felt like he had changed was in his spell list, even in the spell list though I felt like I was just choosing what charm I thought was most amusing at the time. I didn't really roll dice unless it was for some skill check and for those checks we basically just threw dice at them until one of us succeeded (It wasn't until the 3rd or 4th level that my diplomacy checks got more than 2 points higher than the party warlock and I'm the bard). On top of that there was rarely a fight that I didn't just rehash the same spells I used the last encounter. The DM tried his hardest to make things interesting but my character, my window to the story, was so static that when he threw us up against the harder stuff I was at first afraid, because I didn't feel stronger, then I found out that in reality the bosses weren't all that stronger than their lesser bandit brother in. Sure they would have one new ability that they would use every turn, but it was still hard for me to keep myself from rolling my eyes when my paladin started calling my name praying for heals when the enemy had barely scratched him. I also felt as if I have very few choices in how my character did things, from his leveling to his play style he followed his path like a good little elf and I was just a guy watching from a distance making notes on a piece of paper and rolling a dice.

Comparing this with the last Pathfinder campaign I played in. I found that even though the campaign was kind of excruciating due to a Dm putting in some rules and fluff that were just ridiculous in some cases, my character progressed. My hunter learned new techniques and each fight was a new lesson in ways to use my abilities. One fight I would be dodging in and out of combat with my giant vulture companion and the next I would be using my new ability to make my pet hulk out while I provided ranged support. With Pathfinder I was able to craft a character which was Mine to experience an adventure like no other and I just didn't get that feel with 5th.

From these experiences I have to say that as things stand Right Now on December 21st 2014 I prefer Pathfinder as a player. This might changes as more content is released and 5th gets a bit more crunch but for now I will be sticking with Piazo.

Note: A couple of responses to posts I have seen on this thread

1: Yes I know that 5th is new and that Pathfinder didn't have that much in the way of character uniqueness when it was first released Aaaaand I don't care. Right now I'm not playing Pathfinder the way it first came out, and I am also not playing 5th the way it will be in 3 years this is my judgement for right now.

2: In dnd my character is my window into the world and thus the way he plays is of utmost importance, this is not an opinion shared by everyone but tough, it's the same reason I don't enjoy WOW.

3: I almost forgot about the questions

Stylistically (the art, race and class descriptions, etc.), do you prefer the 5th Ed. style or the Pathfinder style?

I use mostly art I find on deviant art to inspire the stuff I do in games soooo.... this does not matter so much for me. No opinion

Mechanically, what did it do better than Pathfinder?

I like the umpf it gave to dex based characters and it certainly is a much better system for beginners. You grasp the concepts almost instantly and this has made it a book I will reach for when newbies ask me to run a game for them.

Mechanically, what did it do worse than Pathfinder?

I dislike the progression, initial character generation remains classic but when I look back at the last 4 levels and see that the vast majority of my tactics haven't changed I get sad. Also I like big numbers, I wont lie.

Among those things it did better, can or should any of them be translated to the PF system?

Yes, I will be changing the rules for finesse weapons for my pathfinder games... not sure how much yet but it will be happening.

Among those things it did worse, was the PF mechanic the clearly superior option, or could they be fixed with small tweaks?

Content will define how the game plays out, more options for each class would be nice, maybe some more interesting spells that aren't just deal damage or control target thing in some way.