mcv's page

I love Bards for their versatility and flexibility. Note that a Bard doesn't have to be a musician. In a Kingmaker campaign, I'm playing a politician who uses Perform: Oratory to give speeches and inspire courage. A Bard can also be a kind of wizard or sorcerer with more focus on knowledge and buffing (in fact, people have argued that Gandalf fits the Bard class better than the Wizard class). Or you can be a kind of rogue. Or you can take any of the crazy archetypes to turn it into something completely different.

Back in the 3.5 days, I liked rogues because I felt you could turn them into anything. They were never very good at it, though. Pathfinder Bards are similar, except they really are good.

Sort of tangential, but I have to wonder why "I read books a lot so I have super powers" and "My great grandmother dated a dragon so I have super powers" and "I'm really religious so I have super powers" and "I'm a hippie so I have super powers" are all things we readily accept and nod along with but "I've trained my body beyond the point of human perfection, so I have super powers" is in turn so readily balked at as absurd. Except when a monk or barbarian does it I guess.

To me at least none of them seem particularly more absurd than the others.

I totally agree. High level fighters should be just as much world-shattering heroes as high-level spellcasters are.

It's worth looking at legends of ancient Celtic heroes. One could play a game of Hurley (hockey with less rules) against 150 opponents and win. Another could throw a spear at an opponent, jump on the spear, ride it towards the target, and then jump off the spear and behead the target just before the spear hit. Realistic? Of course not! They're high-level epic heroes.

But even if you do want realism, there's a really easy solution to that: magic is unrealistic, so it shouldn't work on high-level fighters. They can shrug off any spell, and maybe magic even stops working near them if they want it to. That would seriously tip the balance to the other side, and I'm only arguing for it in order to shove the realism argument down the throats of the spellcasters.

A more interesting mechanism to make fighters more awesome can be found in DCC, and was also tried in a playtest version of D&D Next (but didn't quite make it into the final version, unfortunately):

Fighters (and rogues, I think) would get special dice (expertise or superiority dice, I think they were called) that they can use for all sorts of things, like increasing the damage they deal, decreasing the damage they receive, but also all sorts of other things. The dice would start small (1d4, probably), but increase in size and number as you level up, so you could end up with 3d8 or more at some point. And as you level up, you get access to more ways to use these dice, giving fighters their own sort of quadratic growth. You get these dice every round, and if you get multiple, you could use one die for to-hit, and another to reduce damage, for example.

I forgot the list of all the things you could use them for, but I think they included extra damage (only 1 die), sneak attack (multiple dice), bonus to hit, parry (reduce damage, great for wading through hordes of mooks), and a lot more. I'd certainly be for adding dice to saving throws too. High level fighters need to be tenacious and unstoppable, so the ability to boost saves fits perfectly. It's an inexhaustable resource, which is very martial, and it won't bend reality the way spells do, but it will make fighters a lot better at the things they can already do, while introducing interesting decisions beyond "do I use power attack or not?".

But I also think skills need to remain more relevant at high levels, and fighters need to get more of them. More importantly, they need to become more reliable. A rogue who maxed out his disable device should be able to pick every lock he finds. DCs shouldn't be going up at the same speed as skills.

I also think fighters should excel with every single weapon. That a fighter has to focus on one specific weapon and sucks with any other type of weapon, feels very unfightery to me. A fighter should be able to attack effectively with anything.

His alternate idea is a mage specializing in necromncy. We are about to play the newest adventure path with a LG paladin and cleric is there anyway to put him in the group without everyone killing each other. The player thinks that he is not evil, but I need to knw is he?

Don't ask us, ask your players. How will the paladin and cleric react to a necromancer? How will the necromancer make clear that he is not evil? They're the only ones that can figure this out. You can't, we can't. This is up to the players. Have them discuss it amongst themselves.

Get out of that group, and get a better one. If it happens naturally (through deaths etc), a few levels difference isn't a big problem, but giving a new player a level 9 character when everybody else is level 1 is ridiculous. I can't imagine a justification for that. If she then proceeds to kill your character (simply for being a Drow?), then it really starts to sound like a toxic group, or at least one or two toxic players.

Discuss it with the group, or at least with the other players. Do you want to play in this group, or maybe start a new group without them?

If you're in his field of vision then nothing short of magic will prevent him from seeing you while slipping from shadow to shadow. The alternative where you can always make the check results in stupid side effects as much as never being able to make them.

You need facing/scanning/distraction house rules.

Most of all, you need common sense.

The simple answer here is agency: is he looking at you directly, or is he looking at something else? If he's not looking directly at you or at the spot where you're coming out of the shadows, then you have a chance not to be seen, even if he's facing in your direction. If you're sneaking up on someone who is fighting someone else, you have a good chance of not being seen. If he is poking his head in the place where you are hiding, no amount of stealth will keep you hidden.

Hiding is easy. You don't need a stealth roll to hide behind an obstacle. What's hard is hiding in plain side, taking advantage of shadows, distraction, etc. That's what the stealth skill should do.

In Basic D&D, that's basically how it worked: anyone could hide, but only the Thief could hide in mere shadows. Shine a light in his face and you'll see him, but give him some shadows, and on a successful roll, he might as well be invisible.

The fact that the combat system doesn't have facing rules doesn't mean that people don't have backs. You can still sneak up on people behind their back and then stab them in it. It's not a miniature combat system, it's an RPG.

What the spell says it does is explicitly vague. That first sentence covers an enormous amount of ground before it starts to specify the extreme cases. It doesn't cover just the extreme cases, it covers even those extreme cases. That you get to ignore regular difficult terrain on top of more extreme terrain (like water) seems rather obvious to me.

In real life, it is entirely possible to use a spear as a double weapon. Staff, spear and halberd are closely related weapons.

In real life, a spear is very versatile, being usable with many different fighting styles (which is why it's by far the most popular weapon of the past 300,000 years). There are different one-handed grips possible, there are different two-handed grips possible, and that includes a very staff-like grip.

Same thing goes for halberds and other pole arms, by the way. I've been in a halberd workshop where we did use the blunt end for parries, and when stabbing with the sharp end, your little finger would be closest to the tip of the weapon, not your thumb.

But I also think the way Pathfinder handles "double weapons" is unrealistic. Or actually combat in general. But hey, it's a game. And a fantasy game at that. I see no reason not to introduce more interesting fighting styles for a spear.

Tanking works very well in narrow corridors. Not so well elsewhere.

Are people here seriously suggesting that NPCs should not have access to anything players can't do? What kind of crazy attitude is that? Since the dawn of roleplaying, no since the dawn of the fantasy genre itself, have villains had access to unique powers they needed to have for plot reasons.

Are you people playing a wargame or an RPG here?

You are correct: they don't stack. I believe they say so explicitly.

It's always worth considering how smart your opponents are. Animals and stupid monsters won't know the difference between one fleshy human thing and another, but humanoids are likely to figure out pretty quickly who they can hurt and who they can't.

It might be fun to emphasize this to the group by having some leader figure shout at the others: "Leave the ironclad one! Get the others!" or "Don't hit him, tackle him! Take him to the ground!" It makes sense that the most strategically inclined enemy figures this out first and tells the others, but it also explains to your players what's going on.

Let him. Don't increase the attack bonus of your enemies to try to hit him. He invested in this for a reason, so he deserves to feel invulnerable.

If you want to challenge him, challenge him not on his strengths, but on his weaknesses. How are his saves? Will he always be able to prevent baddies from reaching his casters?

In warfare, you don't waste all your resources trying to breach a pillbox. If you can't take it, you go around it.

It sounds like this group is well organized and plays smart. That's good! Of course you could challenge them by increasing the numbers, but it's much more fun to challenge them with fights for which their standard tactics don't work. Flying creatures can attack anyone, not just the fighter. And trip doesn't work so well on fliers either.

I'm afraid that an unavoidable effect of extra books with spells and feats is that spellcasters get more powerful. Their access to even more spells is more powerful than fighters' access to more feats, because your number feats is far more limited than your number of spells. Especially for wizards and divine casters where number of spells known is effectively unlimited.

If Paizo wants to prevent that, they should either not give out new spells in supplements, or make them part of new colleges or domains that you can only get by giving up something else.

I realize I've got a surprising amount of trouble making up my mind here. My Wizard just reached level 5, and I can take a feat. But which one? There are a lot of interesting ones, but nothing that really jumps out as the "take me now!" feat.

I'm a Conjurer, Teleportation subschool, specializing in battlefield control. Background-wise, it'd make sense if I summoned lots of Devils. I don't have Summon Monster I (probably because it has no devils for me to summon), but I do have Summon Monster II. I've got an insane +13 on initiative.

My wizard is not actually lawful evil, just neutral, but he grew up in a lawful-evil environment and only recently left. He didn't object so much to the devil summoning itself, but he hates the tyranny and the decadence of his former masters.

Our group consists of a 2-H Fighter who's planning to focus on crits, a Tiefling reach Fighter with a glaive, an archery Ranger, a Monk (who's often absent), and a Druid with a big ape.

Were using Core, APG and UM.

Feats so far: Improved Initiative and Craft Wondrous Items.

When I get to level 7, I'm going to take Improved Familiar, to get an Imp. I believe that's still legal when you're neutral, right?

But what to take right now, at level 5? Some ideas:

Spell Focus (Conjuration) - increased DC for many of my battlefield control spells, and is prereq for augmented summoning. But so far I haven't actually summoned all that much yet.

Metamagic -- I already have a Rod of Extend Spell which I love, and I think it's way too early for Quicken Spell or Dazing Spell to be useful.

Item Creation -- I don't know what more I need beyond scrolls and wondrous items. Rods? I only need a few and I'll just buy them when I get there. Unless the GM wants to restrict my access to them, of course. Then being able to make my own is a nice workaround.

Combat Casting -- I don't really plan to be in melee at all. Plenty of meleeers to hide behind. Although I do have a tendency to be a bit too much to the front (for a better view of the battlefield to get that first vital spell in), but I use my Shift ability to move to the center of the group as soon as possible.

Defensive Combat Training -- suggested by Treantmonk, but I can always Shift out of any grapple. Shouldn't I be focusing on offense (well, control) rather than defense?

Spell Penetration -- No doubt useful eventually, but is this something to take right now? We haven't encountered anything with spell resistance yet.

Preferred Spell -- Well, first I'd have to take Heighten Spell, but aside from that, I have no idea which spell should be my preferred spell. I suppose spontaneously summoning devils would be cool, but it's only going to work for one specific summon spell. Later on I may want to summon more powerful monsters.

Spell Specialization -- Again, no idea which would be my favourite spell for this. Does this +2 also count for DCs? Also, I'd need Spell Focus first, so it's going to have to be a Conjuration spell, probably.

Toughness -- I don't intend to get hit, but you never know what happens. Last session I got sneak attacked and nearly went down. I had 23 HP at level 4, and a +1 Con modifier. Do I really need something defensive rather than something offensive?

After writing all of this down, Spell Focus (Conjuration) is starting to look like the best option. Still, if I take a feat just for the prerequisite, it's going to be until level 9 before I can finally take the feat I'm taking it for. Because Imp at level 7.

So I'm hoping someone here has some interesting insights or new suggestions I haven't considered yet.

Didn't Oglaf just explain why you don't want to make a long journey on the back of a giant eagle?

As for broken spells, isn't Magic Jar basically: "I win the encounter if you guys protect my body"?

Make the adventures themselves not centered around combat. Make them story-driven or even character-driven. Involve the characters' background, beliefs, goals, drives, quirks, connections, etc. Reward players with interesting characters by giving them more story hooks, instead of rewarding mechanically optimzed characters with combat awesomeness.

Make whatever they can do relevant, but also make the stuff they can't do relevant. Create situations where it's not just the face that has to make a Cha check, but everybody does. The check doesn't have to be hard, but the person who always fails it for having dumped it should feel the suck. Then again, maybe the wizard has to use Str at some point.

I also feel that this approach works better with the old-school "roll below the stat" system. It emphasizes stat differences. Dumping a stat hurts more.

Matt2VK wrote:

I also find it kind of strange that adventures can roam around town in full combat gear with weapons out, without running into trouble with the city guards. This includes that large pet companion/summoned creatures.

This would propel Monks to tier 1 in any urban adventure ;-P

Nothing wrong with that. It's the one thing that class has.

I learned something new today. I've always thought that a goedendag was exactly the same thing as a morningstar, and both were a spiked ball on a chain. According to Wikipedia, neither has a chain, and one of them doesn't generally have spikes.

As I understand it, the two positions in this thread are:

A - Rogues are mechanically inferior to other classes, especially if you use the right archetype,

B - Yeah, but I'm having tons of fun with my rogue anyway.

Has anything meaningful been added to these two positions for the last couple of pages worth of replies?

I kind of agree with mplindustries here. I mean, I love rogues conceptually. I love them even more because they're not necessarily thieves. They can represent any kind of profession you want to. Plenty of skill points to throw at whatever you want to be good at.

See, the thing is: I don't come from a D&D background. I grew up with WFRP, which has all sorts of cool careers, and then GURPS, which has all sorts of cool skills. In those systems, you can play all sorts of characters that don't fit the traditional fighter/wizard/cleric/thief mold, and those characters work.

But in D&D they don't. D&D as a system revolves almost entirely around combat. Yes, you can do other things, but they don't really matter as much as combat does. They don't really matter as much as they do in other systems. So characters need a combat role, and that means the rogue has to be able to deal damage, even if your rogue represents a non-spellcasting sage or something. The Thief did start as the non-combat role (undermining the non-combat roles of the other classes), and the combat role of the rogue has always been somewhat problematic.

In the days of the Thief, I used to hate D&D for its inability to represent any characters outside the core 4. With the Rogue, I expected anything to be possible, but it really isn't, because play ultimately revolves around combat.

A fighter with more skill points would definitely be a better idea. Or make the rogue more like the fighter. If you can't do magic, you basically need full BAB to be meaningful in combat.

My biggest issue is that having rules for magic item creation makes magic items mundane. Wondrous items aren't really all that wondrous anymore.

Finding a +1 goblin bane longsword with a name and history is cool. Creating your own is less cool. Creating the exact item you need to optimize your stats even less so.

He's playing a paladin that doesn't take the easy road. This is noble and praiseworthy, but also hard. Maybe having him receive some recognition for his choice for the narrow road would be nice.

Maybe he encounters some people who have been doing great work, and it turns out they've been inspired by the paladin's mercy and self-sacrifice.

Maybe some deeper, harder, long-lasting good comes from his choice for mercy and justice rather than simply killing whoever needs to be killed. Maybe one of the recurring villains changes his ways and is redeemed. Maybe the ex-villain even turns into a powerful ally who turns out to be vital in a greater conflict.

This topic looks like it may have quite an impact on my Elf Wizard. His background (mostly to easily introduce him in the middle of ad adventure in Council of Thieves) is that he was captured and enslaved by Cheliax nobility when he was young, and after years of abuse he was sold and trained as a wizard's apprentice, and became a promising Conjurer. (Then he wanted out, snuck around a mansion he was visiting, ran into the PCs and decided to join them and escape.)

But how does that work for an elf? If it takes 80 years to go from child to adult, no Cheliax nobleman is going to wait for that. Should he have been (almost) adult when he was abducted? I do like the idea of him having a very twisted idea of what elven culture and values are like.

On kids: Charisma is not a measure of cuteness, it's confidence, persuasiveness, empathy. Nothing kids are any good at. Cuteness is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Sure, you can give them circumstance bonuses in specific situations (kids can make very effective beggars, for example), but it's not something innate. I'd rather give them a penalty to Charisma.

The best explanation I've heard is that Knowledge Local is the ability to quickly pick up general info about new towns. It's basically an implied Gather Information about general topics, while you need Diplomacy to gather information about specific details that aren't common knowledge.

Knowledge Local is hardly the most useless Knowledge skill. I'm playing in Korvosa (Cure of the Crimson Throne, I believe?), and Local seems to be the only knowledge skill that really matters. We use it a lot.

Bard. He uses a sword, can fight hand to hand, knows a lot about pretty much everything, but doesn't really cast all that many spells. He doesn't seem to wear any armour though, so it's no perfect fit. He also doesn't sing.

Yes, talk to the Bard, and figure out what she expects from the game, and how the GM feels about that. In fact, involve all players. It's good to agree on what the game's about before you start. Is it going to be mostly about combat? Or is combat going to be avoidable?

With a rogue and a bard, a stealthy combat-avoiding group is definitely a possibility. It could be a very social and investigation focused campaign.

If Umbranus is correct and you shouldn't be able to use just any fire spell to light a torch, then it follows that not every ice spell will be suitable for freezing ice.

But personally I agree with Mark Hoover that creative uses of spells are a good thing. It's just that you really need to be careful that they don't end up duplicating more powerful spells for no real cost or otherwise become more powerful than they were intended.

I think if it's mid winter and around freezing, then the little bit of frost from ray of frost won't melt so easily, and you might be able to accumulate a larger amount of ice. Especially when water is available. But it's going to be slow.

Suppose Ray of Frost can freeze 1 cm^3 of ice. Casting it every round for a minute would create 10 cm^3. Keeping that up for an hour would create a block of ice 10 cm x 60 cm x 1 cm, nearly the size of a skateboard. Maybe a single casting could create more ice than that (a cubic inch perhaps, if you prefer inches), but you're still not going to be able to do anything big within a reasonable amount of time, especially when they're in a hurry.

So look for small ways to exploit these. Maybe you can freeze a lock for a +1 on an attempt to break the lock? (You can't duplicate Knock, and a +1 seems to be the standard for cantrips.) I'd say that's already bending the limits of the spell quite far.

If the wizard is tapped out, I'm afraid you're going to have to rely more on the martial types. These are the limits of spellcasters.

And you can also be creative outside the spell list. Cut down a tree if you need a bridge.

A realistic view on HP is simply impossible, and always has been. It's one of the most abstract and gamey aspects of the system. Trying to explain it is the road to frustration, because there will always, always be things that don't make sense.

It's an extreme abstraction. Either you accept it, or you use a different system.

The primary question is: how do they get their food? Do they trade with the surface? Do they have big underground caverns with mushrooms, or bioluminescent fungi that allow them to grow other stuff? Is there an underground river of lake where they catch fish? (Likely white, blind and with weird tentacles.)

Second question is: how do they get rid of their waste? Do they dump it in that underground river? Do they have some gigantic shaft where they dump it in? (And what lives down that shaft?)

And to what extent is that underground river a liability to their security? Do the drow have access to the same river?