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Weakest I've seen was in a 3.5 Homebrew I ran. My first step into 3.5 was with the eberron setting, so I told my players hey, "anything goes" - I was fortunate that the other people were as new as I was so none of the CODzilla or absurd template builds popped up.

No, what we got was a Kender Warlock. Imagine a Kender. Now make it an edgelord, played by someone who is intentionally being Ironic. Skull motifs, spikey dyed hair, angsty prose. All while still being a Kender. With all THAT entails. The line "This isn't a phase! This is who i REALLY AM!" was yelped in a squeaky voice to the group's very paternal druid several times before they even got to the dungeon.

Where the kender, brave, fearless, and stupid, rappelled down into the abyss without a second glance. No attempt at stealth or caution.

he got eaten by dire rats that he tried to make friends with before the rest of the party was even halfway down. The player was a good sport about it. "Well, that's how he would have wanted to go." Literally all the character did was steal laundry, hit on the halfling rogue, and feed the local wildlife.

After that... what comes to mind is an Iron Gods game I joined on Roll20. We had a tengu whose player was one of "those" guys. The character was a cleric who never cast a spell, but was first on the corpse to plunder their riches ("OH BOY, PURPLE GOO TUBES!") and a running gag was that he would run from a fight, trip, and get his beak stuck in something. he also frequently made passes at the halfling rogue. Which the Tengu player did in their best Steve Irwin voice... you can imagine where that went. basically he tried hard to play "comic relief," but wasn't terribly funny, sponged (or stole) party resources, and contributed nothing.

He still illustrates that it's possible to write the story so that you don't get shot on sight or dominate the story.

Star Trek is a franchise about politics, discovery, and diplomacy. Ironfang Invasion is a story about chopping hobgoblins into little bits to make them stop chopping townsfolk into little bits.

You could write a Star Trek story where Worf or others like him just get a lethal phaser dose to the face... But then you wouldn't actually have Star Trek. Similarly you could run a pathfinder game where a hobgoblin PC manages to get by without arrows sprouting in his eyesockets - but that game wouldn't be the Ironfang Invasion AP.

It really is comparable to bringing your Lamashtu Antipaladin to a hell's Rebels game. While there is probably some way to make it work at the table, you end up having to basically re-work the entire thing. Which is fine if that's what you wanna do, but at that point you might as well just homebrew from the start.

And yes, if you are drastically re-writing an AP for one player's character, that character is literally dominating the story.

• Toughness is better than you think.

• You're not going to "win" an RPG, so build for fun, not for pwning all the things.

• Don't be afraid to make hasty or even bad decisions; adventure was never had by "playing it safe."

• Use transparent dice with clear, simple faces; They're better-balanced than opaques and you want to know what they say.

• Turn off your damn phone.

• "Evil" is okay, but "jerkass" is not.

• If you have extra gold, buy a mithril waffle iron, just to remind everyone at the table that yes, there are mithril waffle irons in this game.

• Aid another is better than you think.

• It's cool that your character has a +50 modifier to Diplomacy, but remember that there's a barbarian in your party too.

In my games, I use Background Skills 100% (with some exceptions; Perform is an adventure skill for Bards, Craft Alchemy is an adventure skill for Alchemists, etc.). I'm a fan of fractional bonuses as well, since it makes multi-classing a little less painful. Variant Multiclassing is hit-or-miss for me, but I use it as an option for my players.

Unchained Barbarian, Rogue, and Summoner replace the original classes at my table, but players can choose which of ht two monks they want to take - since U-Monk invalidates most archetypes, I figure it's only fair.

The Combat Stamina system is nice as well, though I keep it as a "buy a feat to use this" system. I'd originally planned to give it to Fighters for free, but then they came out with advanced weapon and armor training options, plus item mastery, and a few feats to make maneuvers and styles less onerous, so I figure fighters really didn't need another system put on them (not for free, at least.)

A cavalier does not have to be mounted to be useful in a fight. You've got a lot going for you on two feet. You can also use your mount as a druid would use their animal companion (Well, without the magical stuff.)

Also, all of the archetypes that replace or significantly alter the Mount feature are PFS-legal (except for the Musketeer. Heck, be a Ghost Rider and store your mount in a pokeball whenever it gets inconvenient.

The Great Lord Furbledonker once counted you among his loyal courtiers, as skilled with words as with a blade, always on the edge of court fashion and with your ears in the right places. Sadly, you were a creature of base appetites as well, and alas, the Lord's daughter is quite a lass! Disgraced, stripped of rank and title, you were thrown from the court, with dire threats about how parts of your body would become property of the lord should you ever return.

Since then you've found solace among those you once dismissed, the smallfolk of the land. You're rougher around the edges; small beers fill your liver more than fine brandy these days, and your clothing has more frayed hems than cutting edges. But you have become something of a champion. No, you're no great knight in gleaming armor smashign dragons. But you did best that bandit Rupert Half-Hand in a personal duel, forcing his men to return all their filthy lucre to the town of Kornsburg. You did the same to the tax collector as well. Word has it you're pretty handy with that rapier when it coems to the local goblin problem, too!

You can't entirely shake your past though; Lord Furbledonker has learned who "liberated" his tax money, and now you have to lay low, further afield. By now you're rather used to living rough, but with these companions at your back, at least hte road is a little less lonely.

(i.e, a combination of ronin, goodly rogue, and folk hero archetypes. it works with the Vigilante and Cavalier classes, too! Basically Robin Hood with a rapier rather than a bow. For the crunch, any trait that gives you Survival as a class skill is a must-have. Besides that, there's really nothing to hold the swashbuckler back)

You can use bracers of armor if the spell failure bothers you. More expensive, but it's a choice if you want 0 failure.

A much cheaper method? Add an armored kilt to silken ceremonial armor or a haramaki. You now have a base of +2 armor, at 0% spell failure. There's also 0% ACP, so you're not losing anything for non-proficiency. You do lose speed (adding the kilt to light armor makes it medium armor) but hey, you just got the equivalent of a 4,000 GP magic item for 50 GP or less, and your wrist slot is free for something.

well, it's +2 Cha, +2 Wis / Int, for what it's worth.

Hulking changeling is good for any "striker" character, really. +1 damage really never goes amiss.

Personally I rather like a changeling rogue / Investigator, especially at low-level play. Both classes can have a hard time really "working" before thei combat abilities start piling on. The changeling though, gives you two 1d4 natural attacks, +1 damage to all melee, and +1 natural Armor.

Probably worksb est on the Investigator, since changelings can boost their core stat, and 'gators have the weaker starting combat ability of the two classes.

Well, as we're all sitting at different tables, the only setting / game commonality we have is what's in the books, right? And that default is kinda-wacky heroic fantasy set in a world of Tropetopia "countries" where interplanetary travel to 1917 Russia is really a thing (and Rasputin is a half-hag creature with Tesla-tech weaponry - even HISTORICAL EARTH ain't realistic in Pathfinder)

if you want to sit at your table and say "Okay, James, you can summon black tentacles fro mthe abyss to cripple every foe in a forty-foot radius becuase you read a book about it, but Andy, you can't half-hand your greatsword' that's fine. Andy's just going to re-roll a wizard, but that's your group.

"But DRAGONS!!!!"

Sigh.

The existence of one or many fantastic things in age do not suddenly mean that all fantastic things should be the mode.

You're creating a false divide on this, where you're basically arguing "realism for some."

It's not "but dragons,' it's "but sorcerers." That's the whole idea of the draconic bloodline, isn't it? That some ancestor of yours was a gigantic scaly reptile that decided to test its biological compatibility with bipedal primates? And now you, the sorcerer, have a list of magical powers that just come out of that?

So you're playing this sorcerer, the offspring of a human (or hey, maybe an elf, from another planet) and a metaphor for greed shaped like a flying iguanodon and you'e sprouting claws and breathing fire. You're fighting a sweeping horde of demons pouring out of a literal hole to another dimension. To your left is a gnomish ninja who is somehow getting in attacks all over this huge goat-headed monster's vulnerable spots instead of just shredding its ankles, and on occasion he teleports via smokebomb. At your back the witch is floating around laughing like a maniac and making the demons fall over through the power of laughter or something. And you look to your right, and the fighter is hacking away with two large swords.

"Dude, that's not realistic," you say.

Nope. It's not realistic to swing around two greatsowrds. But it's not realistic to swing two weapons, period. About hte closest you ever got were the assorted fencing styles that used a dagger in the off-hand.. .and even that was used for parrying, in a heavily ritualized and stylized form of combat. Dual wielding is not realistic.

But twirling scottish claymores like you're a helicopter of death is still more realistic than spewing fireballs because grandaddy was a lizard. 'Cause scottish claymores are real and so are idiots with hands. Put the two together and you get the Wallacecopter. Put a tuatara and grandma together and all you've got is a misdemeanor in most US states.

we accept all sorts of stylized, fantastic elements in the game as a matter of course. It's just an integral part of the game. We accept that being wise makes you harder to hit when you're naked than when you're heavily armored. we accept that being heavily armored actually makes you more difficult to hit. We accept that there are globally-recognized deities that actually empower their worshipers. We accept that a devil-worshiping empire, revolutionary France, Colonial america, and a state based on the writings of Wes Craven are all neighbors. We accept that you can buy magic swords at magic sword stores. We can accept that leather armor is form-fitting and sleek when worn by females of the species. we can accept that a glorified jockey has a larger range of skills than an all-purpose infantryman. But we can't accept if said infantryman whips around with two big weapons.

It's silly.

Triune wrote:

So after reading a thread in which monkey grip was called cheese, it occurred to me that people seem to have lost the idea of what that word means. For those unfamiliar, monkey grip is a 3.x feat that allows you to use two handed weapons one handed, at a -2 penalty to accuracy. This reults in almost all cases in a dps loss, even before figuring in the feat opportunity cost, and is pretty much solely for flavor. Even in the face of that, it was called cheese.

It seems like any time there is an option that lets you do something you couldn't before, it's called cheesy. Guns, for example, hit touch ac, but a well built gunslinger is no match for a well built archer in terms of dpr, yet they're constantly banned and called cheese. Why is a new ability always cheese? Doesn't cheese mean game breaking, not game expanding?

Well, you've a couple minor errors here.

One, dual wielding greatswords is looked as cheesy, not because it's impossible, but because its anime-ish, and not something even a hugely strong person would attempt in reality. The fact you could lift such a thing doesn't mean you could wield them well, as any weapons practitioner will tell you. You don't have leverage, you don't have range of movement, and you don't have momentum. To somehow do this effectively, you'd probably have to be standing at least three feet above the floor to get the full range of effective motion.

And lest you think it's cheesy much, there was an Epic feat that allowed you to wield weapons up to 3x above your size. The depiction was a Halfling wielding a Huge Greataxe.

Lastly, a well built gunfighter will trample the DPR of anything into the Dust, because they can target Touch AC. The resulting auto-hits will nicely trounce any archer in a DPR contest.

==Aelryinth

Arguing cause for "realism" in a game where a 17 year old can have the ability to sprout claws and throw up magical "force bullets" becuase eight generations ago a dragon got busy with his great-times-eight grandma isn't especially compelling. Especially when he was born in revolutionary france and is currently exploring an ice planet because an old lady gave him a house on chicken legs.

"no one wields two great swords because it's dumb!" yeah, same reason no one covered themsleves in belts and straps. same reason swords never had spikes on the blades. same reason that armor was not created to hold to a flattering shape on the wearer's body. Now open your pathfinder books, and flip through some of the art.

"becuse realism" just isn't a valid argument for this game. It's not a game that even tries for realism. it's a stylized gme about often (usually) magical heroes who run out from their assorted trope-and-pastiche-flavored homelands to have heroic adventure against crazy things like pyromaniac midgets with shark-faced melons for heads and inexplicably sexualized snake-ladies in forgotten temples.

It's like complaining that Conan isn't doing the sensible thing and putting on some of that armor that his enemies always wear and is instead running around with his Austrian man-boobs hanging out and never once getting a scratch on them.

No, it's not at all realistic. But it's not supposed to be. it's heroic high fantasy. The characters are supposed to be able to achieve pretty ludicrous things, and I think being able to use a voulge like a double-weapon is, if anything, more realistic than having magical powers because gran-gran got busy with a flying monitor lizard.

Sneaking might work, if the party Fighter wasn't in heavy armor and constantly drunk. Plus, the GM is noticeably fond of ambushes and ignoring the rules for surprise rounds unless it's in the enemy's favor.
Funnily enough, his previous GMPC (!) didn't have that problem when he snuck into a group of 50+ enemies and took out their leaders without being detected...

Your DM wants to "win," and your characters are there to watch his "DMPC's" be awesomazing. I suggest finding someone else to run stuff for the group.

Meaning the average zombie is more pleasant with company than the average dwarf.

Go figure.

I find gunslingers to actually be rather underpowered. Most of their class features are just there to mitigate how awful guns are as weapons. Imagine if 1/2 of what a barbarian got was there just to keep his axe from hitting him in the face.

The class itself is neat, but they went a bit overboard in pre-nerfing the signature equipment. Plus the problem that the gunslinger doesn't actually do anything except sling guns. They're profocient with martial weapons so in theory you can get into the scrum... except the class has absolutely no support for that whatsoever (and the archetypes that CAN do it tend to make your guns more worthless than usual)

In the first handful of levels, yes, you're hitting touch AC... in the first range increment. meanwhile the wizard is back there hitting touch AC from as far away as he wants to. And the ranger and barbarian aren't too worried about their attacks, and they get twice as many as you.

I'm sure there are no shortages of players who picked up the gunslinger thinking they were going to rock... only to find that most of their advancement of the character is geared towards simply keeping par with the int 7 guy with an axe.

Working on one myself, actually. Jburz put up a Shaman Guide too.

Thing is, the shaman is a flexible class that lacks blatantly obvious roles or strengths. Not to say it's weak at all, but where the Druid sort of hits you over the head with its power level, you have to actually figure out the Shaman.

My one and only personal ghost experience has been like one John Kretzer experienced; the phantom cat.

I would climb into bed, and a few minutes later, there would be the sensation of a cat jumping from the floor onto the mattress, walking over my leg. It would then knead the blanket between my knees, and then curl up to sleep. Sometimes it would purr.

Now, as we actually had cats, this wouldn't be unusual. Until you reach down to pet the cat, and there's nothing there. But there's still pressure on your leg, from where it's lying. It's warm. It's purring. but it's just not there.

It only happened on the bed in my room, and not always when I was trying to sleep; I'd lay there reading a book and it would happen (I spent the last four chapters of R.A. Salvatore's "The Spearweilder's Tale" with this going on). and it wasn't localized; I could feel it jump onto the bed with my whole body, there was the sensation of covers moving as it padded around and kneaded them, and it wasn't always laying against the same place on my legs; sometimes it would be between the thighs, others it would be against one calf, or draped on an ankle, or even over near the wall next to my hip. if it was a hallucination it was a surprisingly vivid, frequent, and complex on.

I don't believe in the supernatural. Ghosts aren't real, as far as I can figure. but... this was definitely a series of sensations I experienced regularly for over two years. And frankly if it WAS some weird, freaky, paranormal entity? I figure that in the scheme of things, appearing to me in the form of a cat who just wanted to snooze on my legs is probably one of the better possible outcomes of such a thing's presence in my bedroom. I just came to accept that I had a fourth cat who happened to be invisible and (mostly) intangible, and rolled with it.

Hell, my best guess is still that I was actually sharing a moment with an alternate-dimension me who actually DID have a cat flopped on his lap while he was in bed. It's as good as anything else I've got, I figure.

I would celebrate, because the first thing I ask every GM i play under is, "Will gnolls be allowed?"

1) You're a 7th+ level transmuter. Presumably your family knows this. You can transform yourself into a fart. Or a platypus covered in spider legs. You can animate your armpit hair to do chores for you. showing up at family gatherings as a humanoid hyena-monster is frankly one of the LEAST unusual things they could expect from you.

2) Your church probably wouldn't care - in fact very likely there are some helpful people there would would just love to give you grooming advice, designer collars, and know just the fragrance to overcome that... very interesting musk. It's not as if suddenly having a muzzle makes you a worshiper of Lamashtu (though it helps, if you want to convert)

3) Stat-wise, you're set for a wizard and... not much else. Witch, maybe. You'd come out a pretty mediocre ranger, especially given you're dropping the potential to be a furry master of the universe, to being a dog-man who lives in the woods and sings about wearing tights. of course if you want to get in touch with your gnollish side, swapping over to witch might not be a terrible idea. You can even keep your animate armpit hair, with the right hex.

strength 16: He's a warrior, first and foremost. He's not the giant bear-smasher that he brother Rollo is, but he's hardly weak and is depicted as above average.

Dexterity 14: he's a fairly agile fighter who uses light and medium armor and favpors the ability to move around the battlefield. he's also depicted as a pretty good archer. This puts him below the limit for TWF, but TWF is sub-optimal anyway - and hte show seriously over-uses it, people twirling around with axes like dummies.

Stamina 14: Ragnar's a tough dude... But he's not the toughest dude. he's shown as somewhat smaller, and lighter-built than others in his warband (though larger than the English). He's also taken some grevious wounds, and isn't exactly a young man (he's in his late 30's by the end of season 2, assuming bjorn is 17 or older - this isn't old age, but by the period standards, he's not a young'un)

Intelligence 10: Ragnar's not stupid. But he is a guy who thinks yelling "shield wall!" is a solution for every battlefield event EXCPET a rain of arrows. So, uh... yeah. This would be lower, except he shows some aptitude with assorted skills, and has an okay time grasping new concepts and ways of doing things.

Wisdom 14: Here's why people think Ragnar is really smart - he has a quite strong Wisdom for a fighter... and has invested skills and traits into Sense motive and Perception. The dude is a hawk in interpersonal relationships, is able to plan around other people, and enjoys poking them around to learn what they do.

Charisma 10: Travis Fimmel is a charming guy. The character he's portraying is a self-centered jerk. The two bleed togehter becuase, well, that's what happens. But there is nothing in Ragnar's character that makes him especially charming. Ragnar has followers not because people admire and like him - even his friends and family think he's a jerk - but because associating with Ragnar is a good way to get rich. Bjorn and Lagertha have charisma scores. Ragnar does not.

Another option is to use the ARG, and let him play a Grippli or Vishkanya, since they secrete their own poison.