I'm running for 6 players, all veterans, and a couple of optimizers, so as a baseline I typically add 2 to the CR of most encounters, and 4 to 'big' encounters.
With that in mind, we've had some casualties. I've had 4 character deaths spread out over the course of the first two books, but I'd say part of that was because of party makeup. The group is very martial heavy. They have a lot of damage output, but are beginning to struggle with only a bard and a sorcerer picking up all of the magic slack.
Last night things came to a head in the Choking Tower with a TPK near miss. There were three deaths before they managed to escape and regroup, but again, I'd attribute it to some mistakes, rather than the AP in general.
Spoiler:
They let the invisible stalker go when they found him in the ship under the town, and he returned to Xoud, so Xoud and the stalker have been harrying them throughout their exploration of the Choking Tower, hitting them during other encounters, then retreating. Last night, they were busy trying to deal with the haunt, and Xoud popped up and used a wall of stone to split the party, with 2 PCs on one side (the sorcerer and a gunslinger, and the rest on the other.
The party was covered in mist, and couldn't see each other, and they had positioned themselves badly with the bard at the rear of the party in a 5" hall, and the invisible stalker got the jump on him and slipped a garrote around his neck. By the time the wall was brought down, the haunt dealt with, and the stalker killed, half the party was dead, and the rest were in bad shape. It was a blast, but I thought we were going to be rolling up new characters for a moment.
But again, I think with a more balanced party, and a bit more coherent strategy, they'd have fared better.
I think this is a good idea for a thread, but it might be better to wait until after anonymity is no longer a requirement. A contestant's mistakes, formatting errors, or other writing conventions might inadvertently out them when comparing things posted here to entries.
I don't think continuing actions from one round to another was intended for most actions, just the ones listed as "at least 3 acts", as there seem to be a lot of potential issues cropping up. If it works for spells, it would presumably work for other things, and I think it rapidly devolves into a mess.
For example, if you can cast 3 spells per two rounds, does that mean my fighter can hit a guy twice, then spend his last act to start a charge towards another target, then finish it when it gets to his turn, and then hit the new target 2 more times in addition to the charge attack? Can I grapple you, then start tying you up, finish tying the next turn, and then charge a new opponent as soon as I am done?
If the answer is yes for 3/2 spells, then it has to be yes to these situations, and anything else a player thinks up to abuse the system.
It is a flavor thing, which affects your familiar's personality, and such. But flavor is very important for most multiclass concepts, I think!
That's my interpretation of it. A player wants to add the patron spells automatically to an oracle. I looked over a few other forums, and no one agrees, but to me "patron" =/= "patron spells".
Here's a question that has come up: Is there any mechanical benefit for having a patron from the witch VMC, or is it purely fluff?
I ask, because it says you choose a patron, but nothing else is explained under the witch VMC, and witches don't have a class ability called "patron". I am personally of the opinion that it is the same as choosing a deity, and there are no mechanical benefits. Others disagree.
I like the new action economy rules, but they need some serious work. I dig that it was a subtle buff to martial characters (in general), a subtle nerf to casters, and puts the brakes on some of the cheesier builds, but there are a lot of unintended consequences born of the minimal page count they devoted to it.
Vital strike was the first thing I thought of, then some of the swift actions. For things like this, I think the best fix would be to go through them one by one and make a call rather than play them as written.
Some things that are swift actions currently, should be free actions using this optional rule, and some things that are currently standard actions (like vital strike) should take 2 actions. I'm fine with a character making a vital strike and a single normal strike at -5 in a round, but not 3 greater vital strikes.
This looks kind of too good now. Specifically I'm thinking that the combination of effectively full BAB, swift action buff spells, and scaling weapon damage on top of bonus feats every three levels sorta edges the fighter out.
If I were introducing this to my game I'd ditch the good BAB part of sacred weapon and base fervor off of wisdom instead of charisma. The self buffing from fervor can take care of the average base attack bonus, especially if we relax the MAD on the class and let them focus a bit more on wisdom to get additional uses per day.
I am the only person in our circle of friends (of which many are part time DMs) who does allow summoners. They require oversight from the game master. I like the dick magnet comment, they do seem to attract a certain group of players.
So far I have had only a few players try the summoner, and the results were mixed. On player who is a bit notorious as an optimizer played one, and I enjoyed his character, but the eidolon ended up being the primary combatant for the party for a long while. He overshadowed both the monk and the fighter in the party in a big way, and it eventually lead to a situation where the summoner or eidolon was singled out by the bad guys in most fights. He was eventually targeted by an NPC wizard and focused down because the eidolon was cutting a swath through his henchmen, which lead to his death, and the player elected to roll up another character (turns out he felt bad for "showing up" the fighter, but couldn't force himself to pull his punches).
My group has a pretty good range of power gamers and method actors. My takeaway from the experience is that summoners are probably excellent in the hands of a method actor, but in the hands of a dedicated optimizer they just can't help but be tweaked into something innately overbalanced. That just seems to be what happens when you give someone a pool of points and let them pick put their mechanics.
If a player becomes emotionally invested in something, how does it not add to the game?
Players can become "emotionally invested" in a lot of things that don't add to the game. I'd rather nix a few things preemptively rather than dealing with the look of disappointment on my player's face after banning a character after he's spent 2 weeks between games obsessively tweaking his cheesy death combo.
"I do a million points of damage with my fireball" and "I have all the attacks in the world with sneak attack and a 30 strength" are not concepts that should be rewarded. They're not concepts at all.
I have no issues assisting a player with bent rules and special considerations when they have an interesting concept they want to explore that fits within the story and doesn't detract, but when your only contribution is making sure that no one ever gets a second turn in combat while making the other players feel like sidekicks because they chose to make concept characters instead of full throttle death dealers, you're likely to get hit with the nerf stick. The end result of that unchecked cheese is either half the table is board, or no one rolls concept characters anymore and every story is only about how many ways your players can paint the countryside with monster gore.
It makes me sad that so many DMs do not trust their players to the extent that they outright ban things without discussion.
Why are you even playing, if you feel that way?
Some things are just broken, or only show up in cheesy ways that don't add to the game, better to ban them preemptively than have a player build a character, become emotionally invested in the concept, and then be hit with the nerfbat when they show up to play.
As an example for me one item was the 1 level crossblooded sorcerer dip that every third wizard took to juice his AOE damage. I nerfed that because those sorts of exploits don't feel like the intent of the rules, and they don't add anything to the story or the game. Besides, wizards don't need help being broken.
With the Pathfinder books we've been able to "grow with them" and not have tons of issues.
I allow pretty much everything from the core hardcovers, but tend to look sideways at PCs built with rules from several splatbooks. A rule of thumb I sometimes use is that if your character pulls rules from more softcovers than your level divided by 4 or 5, it's probably too cheesy.
Kind of handwavium. Below a certain price threshold they are readily available, but it takes a gather information check to track down specific items. The threshold is larger or smaller depending on the size of the city, and small villages may have only a few specific minor items for sale. These are the items provided by "magic marts" and people who live off of providing magic to those who can pay.
Above that threshold, I have a specific list of what's "on the market" at a given time that cycles on a monthly basis (I just randomly pull a few items off and replace them with others). These more expensive items are found through gather information checks as well, and offerred for sale on a case by case basis from private sellers. These are the sorts of things sold by other adventurers and usually brokered by merchant guilds or other professionals for a cut of the sale price.
Aside from that, players can commission specific items from contacts.
Ditto for third party stuff. There are a few specific 3rd party items I have added in myself, but for the most part, just because someone put it in a PDF and slapped a pathfinder logo on it I'm not letting my players abuse it.
1 person marked this as FAQ candidate.
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Howdy folks. I'm just curious what sort of material is banned in your games, either those you play in or DM for. Obviously this is about home games, not PFS stuff.
For my own games, aside from some things disallowed for setting reasons in my homebrew campaign world, a short list is the following:
Alchemist - Vivisectionist Archetype: Banned.
Fighter - Swordlord Archetype: Banned.
Sorcerer - Crossblooded Archetype: Bloodline arcana that grant similar effects do not stack.
Sorcerer: Bloodline powers that modify spells (such as those that add damage per die) apply only to spells cast as a sorcerer.
Summoner - Synthesist Archetype: Banned.
In addition, there are a few other ways that I have toned down problems in my game, For instance:
I have adjusted the way teleportation works. You must know how to get from where you are to where you want to go, just seeing a destination in a patch of random trees isn't sufficient, you must know how to find that place if you were to walk there. (Mostly so 9th level wizards don't put every bounty hunter everywhere out of a job.)
Magical item manufacture requires a rare substance called "quintessence" (which accounts for 50% of their cost) to manufacture. This element is manufactured by a pair of competing guilds and available only in large population centers in limited quantities. This helps to limit crafting a bit without removing it as I can limit the flow of the resource and tone down item inflation. I also allow magical items to be disenchanted, which destroys the item but reclaims half of the quintessence that was used to create the item. This can help to siphon some gold out of the party.
That's about it off the top of my head, I'm curious what other people do in their games to deal with problem areas or nerf problem combinations.
Something like that would definitely be needed, but it may also cause some other issues that require other things to be re-balanced. Any combat build that relies on a lot of small hits loses out with a lot of DR floating around, which is going to necessitate something like a melee version of "clustered shot" to compensate.
Another option, rather than applying armor towards DR, might be to turn it into a pool of bonus HP. Mechanically it will necessitate fewer changes than balancing around new DR values applied to everything.
This is one of those things that I always like the idea of, but never the implementation of (at least not in this system).
It starts out looking ok on paper, but in practice it requires the entire combat side of the game to be re-balanced. It guarantees the supremacy of the full BAB classes in every form of combat since they're going to have significantly higher ACs, a better chance to hit, and generally better DR from armor. That may be a feature and not a bug for some, but reserve some pity for the already underpowered rogue in such a system.
Another wrinkle is in the bestiary. A lot of monsters gain all of their AC from natural armor, some of which is absurdly high, which gets weird depending on how your convert it to DR, and that is further complicated when monsters already have DR and whether you choose to stack DR or take the better value.
There's also the fact that a world of excessive DR/- pushes all combat into one flavor, that of the 2 handed power attack fighter (which already enjoys the major market share in most games) and shifts monks, two-weapon fighters, and finesse fighters from slight under-performers to totally obsolete.
That being said, I appreciate the suggestion as a concept, as I have in every variation of this sort of thing that has cropped up in 3.x, but in practice I've never liked the results. Other systems do this sort of mechanic better, and I don't think that will change without a complete overhaul from the ground up in combat, including weapon damages and combat scaling.
There are a few strategies I use to de-power casters compared to martial characters:
I borrowed the "short rest" rules from the 5th edition playtest. Basically this lets the players spend 10 minutes after a fight resting and recouping to get a significant portion of hit points back. This takes a bit of strain off of clerics, but primarily it means that the martial characters are able to tackle multiple encounters per day and therefore discourages the wizard from dumping his full load of spells on every encounter.
Another strategy along the same lines is "timed" adventures. If the players know that the bad guy is going to sacrifice the princess on the full moon, two nights from now, they know they can't stop and sleep 8 times between now and then, again forcing the casters to conserve resources.
The "Nightmare" spell, used occasionally, is pretty significant for casters, and a minor inconvenience for martial characters. A lesser restoration potion gets the fighter in tip top shape after a bad night, the wizard might be screwed. You can't overuse this one without a player revolt, but it does serve to knock the wizard down a peg or two now and then.
The classic "archers with a readied action" (the poor man's counterspell) also can be used to great effect.
Overall it's a cultural thing. My caster players embrace their martial comrades, and know that the goal of every major encounter is for them to play chess with the opposing forces so the fighter can play checkers. They battle the opposing caster, acting and reacting to their spells with the goal of getting their meat shields to connect while keeping the opposing mooks from chewing them up while the meat shields focus on mulching targets the casters present to them.
The enemy isn't game design, it's the Damage meter mentality that comes from MMOs. This is a game of cooperative storytelling and both roles are important. A god wizard needs his cleanup crew, just like they need him. You might benefit by just taking the caster player aside and reminding them to be a team player.
At high levels of play, blasters are not terribly viable. A tweaked blaster may be able to mulch an encounter, but a tricked out archer can do it every encounter, all day. The god wizard becomes the "correct" sort of wizard for a balanced party, and they should act out the role of adviser and facilitator. Rather than taking the shine away from the martial character, his focus should be making sure the martial character is operating at his peak efficiency and clearing the roadblocks from his path.
edit: If you are going to use combat manuevers it might be worth it to invest in the feats anyway since the bonuses will come in handy later.
The main benefit to this as a function of the archetype is that as a non-human barbarian I am pretty feat starved. Just having the option to make use of a wide variety of situationally beneficial combat maneuvers is pretty cool.
It also means I can take lucky halfling instead to fit with my superstitious sailor barbarian.
I am playing a halfling titan mauler for an upcoming Skull & Shackles game and was debating about which combat maneuver feat I wanted to take, when it occurred to me:
SRD wrote:
At 5th level, as a swift action, a titan mauler may choose one creature within her line of sight. Until the end of her turn, that target’s reach is treated as if it were 5 feet shorter with respect to reaching the titan mauler, and this reduction increases by 5 feet for every five levels beyond 5th.
Does this mean that I can designate a medium target (using a non-reach weapon of course) at 5th level and perform any combat maneuver against them and avoid an attack of opportunity since they would have an effective 0 reach?
I did a dwarf sorcerer (with the empyreal bloodline) that I built as a battle type sorcerer. I didn't stack my prime casting stat super high so I focused mainly on touch and buff spells to avoid saving throws. I also enjoyed wading in to give the fighters flanks and other things, especially against giants.
I went with these feats for the core of my "battle feats":
1 Light Armor Prof
3 Arcane Armor Training
5 Defensive Combat Training
7 Dodge
9 Mobility
On a 20 point build I put 14 in str, dex, con, and wis (con and wis bumped to 16 with racials). With defensive combat training my cmd was formidable, especially with stability. I took extra hit points for my racial and with the +4 con belt I got as a hand-me-down from the fighter I had some mad HP.
At low levels I cast shield pretty much every fight. Eventually you'll want an enchanted small mithril shield. It ended up being pretty effective and got real ugly against giants with defensive training. . Magic Circle against evil and haste go up every fight and then I made liberal use of other buff and control spells to make the martial characters super awesome. Telekinetic charge became sort of a signature spell for me while I used the ranger / rogue in the party as a missile and provided a flank for him.
You may want to run it past your other party members as you will be competing against other characters for items you would normally not be interested in like trying to take the mithrial chain shirt from the rogue and the amulet of natural armor from the fighter.
I was thinking of going the brawler archetype for my
Sword and board fighter, for the extra damage with the shild, and the free stand still feat.
Does anyone have any experience with this archtype.
I am planning a brawler fighter with a shield for an upcoming game. I plan on going captain america style and using a heavy spiked shield as his main hand weapon and a cestus for his offhand weapon (using that hand free for holding torches or whatever as well).
Here are the feats I have mapped out through 13th level:
1 Improved Shield Bash
1 Two Weapon Fighting
1 Improved Unarmed Combat
2 Double Slice
3 Power Attack
4 Improved Bull Rush
5 Spiked Destroyer
6 Shield Slam
7 Greater Bull Rush
8 Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
9 Combat Reflexes
10 Stand Still
11 Shield Master
12 Two-Weapon Rend
13 Bashing Finish
Everything gels at 6th level with shield slam. You get two shield attacks, each giving you a bull rush attempt and an off hand cestus swing. If you successfully bull rush a target you also trigger a free attack with your armor spikes as a swift action for another attack in the round.
Your cestus, heavy shield, and armor spikes all also fall into the close weapon category so this guy ends up being a beast with a lot of battlefield control and good ability to keep shoving people away from squishy allies.
I had my goody two-shoes group of PCs chase a group of kobolds back to their warrens. During the course of clearing them out they encountered a hatchery where some females had taken up a defensive position around a clutch of eggs and young.
The females begged the PC who could speak draconic to spare their young, while they were deciding what to do someone got ambushed by a rogue who ran out of the room, they gave chase and the adventure continued. By the time the PCs returned the females and young had abandoned ship.
Long story short, as the characters kick ass through whatever complex they are in have the noncombatants bail out when the alarm bells go up. You can let the PCs see them leave, or see the tracks as they scatter into the wilderness. Most groups who are playing good characters will look the other way when women and children of a normally evil race flee.
See if your GM will allow you to apply the half-fiend template to your character. That should be a good representation of what your character has gone through.
Yeah I would ask but even I think that maybe that would be kind of imbalanced. What with all the resistances and immunities and huge ability score add-ons. I have to wait until the next session to figure out what happens to me, but he did tell me one thing that will change among many possible other things is that my ranger Quarry ability will change to demonic rage and will function like a barbarian's rage ability. Which I thought was kinda bad ass.
This is a week old, but I think the easiest way to sort this by giving you a taste of the flavor without pushing balance out of whack would be to have you come back as a tiefling when you get raised (ressurected, whatever). Just use the reincarnate spell as a guideline on how to pull it off.
First, by raw potions are at the min level, so it's a +1 magic fang, not +5. So we'll ignore that part. Even if you could get a 20th magic fang, it only affects 1 attack (or gives +1 to all 3).
Second, they are still very squishy... said dump monkey will have low AC and poor saves. Which is OK (solid HP probably), but the returns aren't there.
D8 + 7 * 2 d6 + 7 * 2, at +8. VS same level fighter (18 strength, power attack, weapon focus and spec) 2d6+15 * 2 at +10. And don't get started on archers /summoner beasts. And both do their damage with no prep alll day, every day; not 50 mins / day (works in dungeons, not so well over-land).
The alchemist just can't do anything sadly; even trying to pull off neat combos.
I am playing a "Mr. Hyde" Vivisectionist in a game right now and we are 5th level. Working with the fighter my damage output is much higher than his, and he is a 2 handed power attack smash build. 22 strength, plus power attack, plus 3d6 sneak attack, and whatever buff infusions I have access to add up quickly.
You're forgetting the alchemist "enhance potion" discovery which lets you buff a potion caster level to yours, so it's a +1 to all weapons right now, eventually I will be able to buff 1 weapon higher or ramp up all three attacks over multiple rounds of prep (or get both claws in one go thanks to the ability to combine potions).
Most people also are not aware that there is no stipulation on how many mutagens you may make in a day, just that it takes an hour and you may only have one active mutagen at a time, so although you may not have it all the time, you can make use of it multiple times per day depending on encounter flow. Master Chymist eventually means that you have access to your mutagen as needed.
Personally I sort of feel cheesy running this build, because it kind of just crept up on everyone. No one thought the alchemist, which our group considered a sort of clunky concept class, could turn into a sneak attacking, mauling, behemoth.
Edit: also by RAW there is nothing that prohibits you from making a potion at 20th caster level, it only has this to say "The price of a potion is equal to the level of the spell × the creator's caster level × 50 gp." Most potions are just made at minimum caster level to save on the cost. Greater Magic Fang +4 is listed in standard pot tables as 2400gp
Howdy folks. I recently began a campaign and decided to require everyone to create a follower of Iomedae. I'm posting here because I would love to see some examples of Iomedaen oaths, prayers, war crys, or whatever that you guys might have had crop up organically or otherwise in your own campaigns.
From my own game I used this as an oath administered to the group in their "graduation" ceremony from the Seventh Church:
Justice and honor are a heavy burden for the righteous. We carry this weight so the weak may grow strong, and the meek grow brave. We bring light to the darkness and stand the line between the monstrous and the common man. We shed blood for the innocent that their innocence is kept.
So long as we draw breath, so long as we can clutch a sword, so long as the Goddess' light fills our hearts we will not falter in our valorous pursuits, nor abandon our honor, nor compromise in the face of evil. You kneel as supplicants but you rise as weapons of the lady's will. I christen you Knights of the Lady and I name you the Circle of Seven Stars, and I bid you make me proud as the products of my tempering. Stand and take these swords and wield them forevermore in the Inheritor's name.
I recently started a new campaign with some friends, and we had a lot of advance notice so I set to painting up a nice, big barbarian figure for the game. I think the figured turned out great, I was really excited to get going, but wouldn't you know it - I made it through 2 sessions before dying.
