mrrtn's page

the "subtle" approach might not work too well in the lawless lands of Kingmaker. Still, if your PC's do some outrageously evil things the word will spread and the swordlords might send someone to investigate.

What I would suggest is another approach: evil attracts evil. in other words the NPC's your players interact with will become more hostile towards them; no more freebees, items cost goes up, stuff gets stolen, etc. Especially when your players start building their kingdom, cities would attract all sorts of lowlives that agree with their evil way of life. Imagine the negative penalties a CE city would have on law, economics etc. You can hint at this before it happens, and hope your players realise the impact their actions have on their environment

Im currently playing a h/elf fighter L2 wishing to start his own school of swordfighting later on, kind of like an Aldori swordmaster with an Elven curveblade (love that sword!). Improved and Greater Disarm sound pretty good as a focus, but I dont want to invest in these feats if I'm only going to be fighting animals, fey or other creatures without weapons 90% of the time..

Is a disarm fighter going to be any good in Kingmaker, or should I go for Improved Trip or something else?

Has the cavaliers' Challenge ability changed at all?

It used to be "add level to damage + order bonus" vs. the target of your challenge.. until one of you dies

I remember a demonstration at a Medieval Fair some time ago - two men shooting at the same target with a bow and with a crossbow. The guy shooting with the bow was hitting the target nicely and the arrows stuck halfway in the bail of hay. What surprised me, when the guy shooting the crossbow hit the target, THE BOLT WENT STRAIGHT THROUGH! (Good thing they had several bails lined up) Make of that what you wish, but that experience makes the armor piercing quality of crossbows believable in my eyes.

A big difference between bows and crossbows is that the crossbow relies mostly on it's mechanics (as in it's construction) to do damage. So in order to be really good with a crossbow, increasing the archer's quickness or strength isn't going anywhere, if the build of the crossbow itself is not going to be improved. What I mean with this is that feats like Crossbow Mastery, which let you reload Heavy Crossbows as a free action, are not the way to go because they are absolutely unrealistic and disadvantage the archer who has to take 2-3 extra feats to be as fast as a longbow. Instead, if the construction of the crossbow itself was improved so that it didn't take as long to reload (as in repeating crossbow) the archer would not have to take all those extra feats. This would effectively make it similar in power to bows (but not longbows unless the Mighty ability gets added).

As I mentioned in my last post, please make repeating crossbows martial weapons so people using them aren't disadvantaged by having to take exotic proficiency feats. The price would still make it relatively exotic, as commoners would not be able to afford it. I would also love to see more options in PFRP for crossbows at higher levels, such as bolt-cases that hold dozens of bolts in an extradimensional space and fit on top of crossbows for easy use, special auto-reloading enchantments for crossbows or magical crossbows that fire energy-bolts (as in NWN2 or BGII)

Summary:
-Repeating crossbows as martial weapons
-More options for (repeating) crossbows as in enhancements and enchantments, such as self-reloading or extradimensional bolt-cases.

I'm playing a crossbow based ranger (dwarves and longbows just don't go together) and I found crossbow based rangers are sub-par to rangers using regular bows. It took one extra feat to make a light crossbow shoot more than once per round and it would take three extra feats to do this with a heavy crossbow due to pathfinder's crossbow mastery feat. Compared to making a longbow based ranger there are no benefits at all. So please fix this! Also it is very easy to increase damage with composite bows by adding your strength bonus, but no such option exists for crossbows.

Increasing the damage to 1d10 for light crossbow and 2d6 for heavy crossbow would be a start. Also I see no reason why the repeating crossbow is an exotic weapon - making this a martial weapon would give a nice alternative to taking rapid reload and make the crossbow a more appealing weapon. It also opens up the path to using an extradimensional quiver (like in Planescape Torment) that fits more bolts without taking the useless rapid reload feat.

Summary:
- increase damage for crossbows
- allow possibility for adding higher strength to crossbow damage (like composite bows)
- make repeating crossbows martial weapons

Nice Prc the channeler, although it could use 1/2 caster level progression - channelers will run out of turn/rebuke undead and will have to rely on spells like good ol' clerics do.

Any yeah, I full heartedly agree - Bring on the divine prestige classes!

I always liked the idea of monks and divine spellcasting, seeing that monks are not that different than clerics in their devotion to a certain deity or principle - however the Sacred Fist just doesn't do it for me. Please make a deity specific Prc for clerics/monks of Irori!

Just wanted to say I agree with the original post on this thread - I would be happy to play this class if only the prereq's were lowered caster level 2nd (instead of 3rd) and keep the SA 2d6.

Im currently playing a L11 rogue specializing in UMD and rogue magic talents. In the party he identifies all the magic items and buffs the rest via wands. I have considered entering the arcane trickster PRC since it would suit this character, but 5 levels of Wizard is too much of a commitment! Already I am having trouble hitting anything (especially giants in RotRL), even with flanking bonus and them being flat-footed. Lowering my BAB even more by taking lots of spell caster levels is a big no-no. (On that same note, increasing the BAB progression of the PRC is a good idea)

I don't care much about the Arcane Trickster abilities, the most important reason I would take the class it because it combines sneak attack with spell casting progression - the spells themselves offer the variety and options I seek. Please put it in line with most of the other PRCs so it can be entered around level 5-6, the best way to do this is lowering the caster level requirement to 2nd level spells. I also like Dennis' suggestion of lowering CL to 2nd and the SA to 1d6 and having a skill requirement of 5 or 6 ranks.

Good point Reddog, I don't think Weapon Finesse should increase damage though. However, I would love to see another feat that would enable increased damage for weapon finesse-users. At the moment, the only viable build for a weapon-finesse melee-fighter to do any decent damage is to take levels in the Rogue class. And that's just not right.

A feat such as Power Attack, but that uses Dexterity instead of Strength would solve the issue too I feel.

Synergy bonuses existed because being good at one skill, improved your ability to do another, similar skill. By combining all the similar skills, the synergy bonuses became obsolete.

However, nothing has changed in the Knowledge skills area and that's where I see the possibility for synergy (or knowledge-based) bonuses. E.g. it sound logical to me to be better at survival (and possibly handle animal) if you have a high Knowledge - Nature skill.

Has anyone used Arcane Strike in play yet? It seemd a little underwhelming for a combat feat. I'm thinking that a damage bonus equal to the highest level spell you have available to cast may be more appropriate.

Are there plans to add additional combat feats in the Beta that have Arcane Strike as a prereq?

The only reason Arcane Strike is underpowered, is because it's a combat feat. Since you're only allowed 1 combat feat per round, you are forced to choose between the +1 to hit/damage and for example Improved Disarm or Arcane Armour training. Arcane spell casters who brave the melee combat desperately need the extra +1 and IMO should be able to use it in combination with Improved Disarm, Trip, etc. OR cast spells with Arcane Armour training and be able to make AoO's with the +1 bonus.

Volsung has another good point there, which is to change the bonus from static +1 to a variable dependent on the highest available arcane spell-level. This is a great idea, and would encourage me to play an armoured mage who risks melee combat. The +1 to hit/damage is a great offset for the wizard/sorcerer poor BAB-progression, which would mean they actually have a chance of hitting something. To balance things out, it could be a requirement to sacrifice a spell-slot to activate this feat each day. Your bonus to hit/damage would then be equal to the level of the spell-slot sacrificed.

nightflier wrote:

The idea is that ranger should be distinctive, not watered-down fighter or druid, or some weak combination of those two classes. And why in Nine Hells d8 for hp?

I dunno about that. Actually, I think they are supposed to be a combination of fighter, rogue and druid, but I don't find find it to be a weak one. The d8 thing, kinda makes sense to me. They aren't hardline soldiers like fighters and barbarians. It doesn't matter, I'm fairly certain they're changing it with alpha 3

I guess it is to balance out the extra skill point and extra saves. It tells you: this is not a fighter or barbarian, use stealth, traps or ranged attacks to survive!

I agree with this thread though, gaining a watered-down animal companion at lvl4 is absolutely rubbish! The only reason I can think of why I should get one is to use its scent-ability to track or its fly ability to scout. Never for combat, because at that level animal companions are hopeless and die. Definitely some tweaking needed here, I like the idea of making the companion more powerful. Perhaps choosing a path between more magic or more powerful animal companion is the way to go to keep things balanced.

Dear Game Designers for Pathfinder RPG,

2. Add a class skill(s) depending on the chosen bloodline. It doesn't make sense for the sorceror to gain Skill Focus for a skill that is cross-class.
3. Create Sorceror Only Spells that the Sorceror can cast depending on his or her bloodline. Make these automatically known IN ADDITION to spells known. Make enough that the player of a sorceror can choose different bloodline spells at a given spell level.

These are all excellent ideas, and I'd love to see them implemented in the next pathfinder rules. This is exactly the fix needed to balance the sorcerer out. If there would be a vote, i'd vote for these as well as the eschew materials feat for free at 1-st level! As someone pointed out earlier, this is part of house rules all over the world anyway.

Get rid of the melee touch attacks on so many of the bloodlines. Today I watched an armor wearing sorcerer get ripped to shreads when he tried to use his Elemental Touch attack (acid).

I'm not quite sure what the intention of all these touch attacks were, but they need to be revisited.

I agree with this. Sorcerers are not meant for melee combat, so I'm surprised to see most bloodlines give touch-attack powers.

I'd much rather prefer a wizard-like approach and use a 30ft ranged touch attack, as most specialist wizards get.

Still, I don't feel like this "fixes" the sorcerer. Sorcerers have a plethora of spells per day anyway, a spell-like ability that does less damage than the average spell is not an improvement, but just unnecessary. I very much like the bloodline abilities gained at higher levels and would like to see the 1st level ability to be in line with them.