I know folks get tired of hearing it.. but soon.
Noooo! Paizo has turned into Blizzard Entertainment!
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"You're shaken." "What does that mean?" *tosses out the card* "Oh."
The player who keeps putting off making a character for the upcoming campaign and then complains that all of the roles she wanted are taken or that she is being forced into a role she doesn't want. Every. Campaign. The one who keeps rolling poorly and has learned to adapt by cheating on dice rolls by rolling their dice right against the GM screen and by the time they've picked it up to show you what it is, they've changed which side is up. The character that rolls to hug someone... and then rolls to see if that person liked it... and then rolls to see if they're now friends... and rolls to see if they'll be penpals after the adventure... and rolls to see if they get retirement villas together... The guy that complains he sucks and didn't get to kill anything after doing the most damage in a battle, but not actually getting the 'killing blows' on the baddies. "Everything bad always happens to me" guy. Nuff said. We do have someone that falls asleep halfway through the session sometimes, but she's a nurse and she's got an incredibly screwy schedule. So, we forgive her.
If there was a particular order you were looking for assistance with, let us know which one and we'll try and get it all straightened out for you. I had already received the ship message which is why I went to go check. I was going to purchase the Kingmaker #2 pdf from my DM's wishlist for him. However, the items are still showing up as $13.99 instead of the discounted price.
Well, my first item has shipped from the Pathfinder AP subscription, but I don't appear to have my Pathfinder Advantage discount on items yet.
The artwork is awesome, as always. I wonder if you're getting spoiled having such great artists available to you.
"There is no potion. It was the girl." +1 Internets to you, sir. The scale between Overpowered and Unplayable can be adjusted by the DM. In other systems, I've had characters which were overpowered to the point of broken during the first or second little outing, but the DM came up with counters that balanced the character back down. These were not house mechanics that the DM had to add, but rather looking at the game and seeing what he could present to keep my character occupied so I couldn't do all of that overpowered stuff. He and I treat it as part of the game by trying to challenge and get around each other. On the other hand, I'm currently playing a character that really kind of sucks, but we work together a bit to come up with things it can do to get around its shortcomings. He's not giving me special privileges, but instead we're both working within the game system to figure out how the character can better contribute to the group.
Well, they can try. And there are no bigger companies for PnP then WotC, but Paizo is known for quality so I see no reason not to try with them unless Warcraft RPG was a big success (I do not know anyone that really played that) and they want to continue to work with S&S. Well, S&S is the d20 OGL offshoot of White Wolf. As far as I know, they essentially closed up shop around 2 years ago and haven't released anything since. I'm not even sure if their website is still up.
Well, mainly my question comes down to asking if there are any plans to eventually create and support a sci-fi ruleset for 3.5 d20 like you guys did with the fantasy ruleset. My local gaming group keeps asking me to run a Star Wars campaign at some point in the future, but I'd like to run it with something that's still in production. I've got books from the West End Games days, WotC days, and WotC revised days. However, as WotC doesn't have the SW license anymore, they're not going to be supporting their sci-fi ruleset. Also, a generic sci-fi ruleset to use for those people who want to run any of the popular settings (Firefly, Star Wars, Star Trek, BSG, etc) in d20 would be useful and fill a market niche. I realize with everything that you guys have been writing for PF and likely have planned, you're probably busy until 2012 or so. However, I thought I'd check.
My DM and I were discussing it later. An Arcane Duelist Bard feels more like a Magus than a Magus does.
Are we going to start Magus v2.0 next or the Words of Power system?
I really like your full round action spellstrike. It takes out the cast this round and attack next round fumbling that it was having previously. I'm not sure how it would scale up with more attacks at higher level, though.
We were testing out some APG classes as well as some odd race selections just to get the feel for things before our next campaign. I ended up playing a Tengu Magus. At this point, I'm about 1/2 way through level 1 on fast track after having 3-4 small to medium fights. Our party consisted of a Tiefling Cavalier (Cockatrice), Aasimar Oracle (Life), Hobgoblin Paladin, and a Drow Inquisitor along with my character. Yes, I know these are odd race selections, but like I said earlier, this was very much a "play with something new" session for everyone as well as letting the DM play with using races from the Beastiary to see how they're balanced. My feedback really has nothing to do with stats or spells. It has to do with feel. At level 1, all of the other classes had cool things available to them. The Paladin had Smite Evil, Aura of Good and Detect Evil. The Oracle had her first revelation and curse bonuses. The Cavalier had Challenge and Tactician. The Inquisitor had a half dozen things I'm not going to look up. I had an ability that doesn't really do what it needs to until 2nd level and a handful of spells. I did try using Spellstrike once when I had time to pre-prep a spell before ambushing our opponents. I ended up rolling a 1 on my attack and the DM fizzled the spell (which likely wouldn't have changed as a touch attack). Although I did like having the spells available and they came in handy, I didn't have anything that made me feel unique. At level 1, I could have just as easily have been a Wizard for all of the good it did me and would have more cool things available. Getting a Magus Arcana at level 1 might help with that. It is something to get you committed to the class. As it was, if this were a real campaign, I might feel like letting my character get killed so I could roll something new or retiring it after the first adventure and beg my GM to let me start something else. From a playing point of view, this will likely change when I hit level 2 or more (I've looked over the entire class several times, so I know what all I can get). However, at level 1, there is no hook. There is no immersion. You're just a Wizard who can wear light armor and play with different weapons. Because of this lack of unique flavor at level 1 (and this all might just be due to Spellstrike needing rewritten) the class feels very un-Pathfinder. When moving from 3.5 to Pathfinder, the great thing about all of the classes was the depth of the customization and unique mechanics that you could sink your teeth into right out of the gate. Magus is missing that 'cool thing' that the rest of them have at level 1.
hey look at this peasant crafting I've done Uhm, virtually all crafting is peasant crafting. Nobles don't dirty their hands with such things.
So your two answers are "drop your points in hilariously worthless skills" and "hope the DM takes pity on you" I know, right? God forbid you have fun and do silly stuff with your character. This is srs bsns! I know my DM and I both play this as if it were a corporate business transaction and adhere strictly to letting those with a high Charisma bonus get the girl and those without one to just get tromped in the mud like the troglodytes they are. In all seriousness, RP your character like a good player. My examples were outlandish, but play on your circumstantial bonuses you might have. Can you do something with craft and profession? Possibly. Use them. Also, don't forget that you have a spell list. There is useful stuff in there even though it's not nearly as open ended as a Wizard. My DM wants his players to have fun. If we can argue a case for something to work, he'll let us attempt with a low percentage chance of success. If it works, then it's golden. If we fail, then we suffer the consequences. And we usually fail, but even the fails add to the fun of the adventure, because it usually twists the story slightly different from what the DM had originally planned. We had our short-tempered, half-orc fighter decide to dance in a ballroom. This is a recipe for disaster. She rolled a natural 20. Tada, she could dance like a pro. We all laughed and it made a memorable moment in the campaign.
It depends on what his Craft and/or Profession stats are marked as. Craft: Jewelry - He would make an elegant necklace or some earrings that would bedazzle the princess giving her a keepsake of their tryst. Profession: Pirate - He would be able to relay tales of daring and danger from the high seas. Or you could just RP your character's background appropriately. You don't have to have a high charisma for every romantic situation. Sometimes the princess is impressed with your strength or dexterity or even all of those ranks you have in Use Rope, if ya know what I mean.
I really think people need to stop looking at this as a fighter/wizard and look at it as a rogue/wizard. That actually fills the shoes much better for what it's trying to do. A magical damage dealer who can stand and participate in the melee, but isn't supposed to be the one absorbing damage. This is different from a bard who is essentially a rogue/sorcerer. There are other differences as well. Differences from bard:
Prepared spells - While this does lock him into certain spells each day, the selection of spells becomes much larger. All business - The spells the class focuses on are concerned more with dealing damage than the utilitarian nature of the bard. If it doesn't help him in a fight, it's usually not worth learning. Things magus still needs:
Spellstrike - It has potential, but not well worded at all and leaves all sorts of questions currently. Also suffers from the lack of touch attacks being the whole point of this ability. Being reinvented as that Su or Sp touch attack feature might be a good idea (other threads have already touched on this concept). Spell Combat - Should work a bit better with the previous two issues fixed. However, removing some of the penalties might help. I do like the idea of an archer version of this though, but that might be reserved for an actual arcane ranger type class at some point in the future (yes, I know there's the arcane archer prestige). Stat Focus - Str melee or Dex melee? The one-handed part of the class really makes me lean Dex based for the attacks and letting my spells provide the extra damage.
I was under the impression that Spellstrike turned your touch attack into a melee attack. Since you are now delivering that touch attack with your weapon, you have to roll against their full AC and not their touch AC. The two benefits from this are A) you add the crit range of the weapon (but not multiplier) to the spell and B) you combine them into 1 hit. There is the C) of being able to use a touch spell via a reach weapon as well, but you'd still have to roll against full AC. Anyway, if you're trying to hit someone with a melee weapon then you're trying to deliver a melee attack. Period. If my players said, "But it's a touch attack now." I'd say, "Then deliver it with a touch instead of your weapon. Weapons go against full AC."
Wouldn't that make the magus a spontaneous caster? It would... well... unless you prepared spells that added up to your points, but that's getting tedious and you wouldn't necessarily be able to cast everything you prepared.
I like this idea. Level + Int mod points per day. Certain more powerful Magus Arcana can be balanced by costing a certain amount of arcana points. That means that they will scale better with levels instead of being stuck with x/day (unless they really need balanced against that). You could burn points to do elemental attacks with your weapon adding damage. Summoning your weapon as per Weapon Bond would also cost arcana points.
Lightning Bolts shooting from your sword is fairly awe inspiring. Agree on the sentiment, though. There is also the Elemental Touch spell which gives you a 1d6 touch attack ability while it is active, but the spell itself is not a touch attack.
As it stands, you're right. There aren't hardly any touch attacks. Shocking Grasp is the only damage dealer, although you could do Darkness, Daylight, Light, or Arcane Mark to annoy your opponent (and party). Elemental touch gives you a touch attack ability for a period of time. Though this might be helpful. I'm curious if touch includes ranged touch attacks or if we're getting a whole assortment of touch attack spells in this book.
I agree with the sentiment of making Medium Armor and Heavy Armor magus arcana rather than automatic class features, in exchange for a different class features or getting magus arcana slightly more often. I think these go better as class abilities, because anyone who games the system to build the most ridiculous damage dealer would just ignore these if they were Magus Arcana and go straight for anything that boosts damage. Having them as they are, you don't have any choice in the matter and can start grabbing some of the chunkier armor that will keep you alive. Besides, I hate it when something +3 that I can't use gets looted when I'm wearing +2. I do like the spell-storing idea. Be able to store a single spell in your Arcane Weapon to be used in the next 24 hours or it is lost.
OK, I reread your other post, and perhaps I am just being obtuse, so my apologies if I'm just reading it wrong, but is it the case that you think that melee touch spells normally use Dexterity rather than Strength so you would therefore need both stats to hit with both kinds of attack? Yeah, sorry about that. I've had ranged touch attacks on the brain lately as I've been playing a character that uses them all the time (it's not my fault my DM lines the bad guys up for a lightning bolt every other fight). So, yes... Str is more useful with melee touch. I should probably go through the spell list and see how many are ranged vs melee touch attacks.
Yeah, getting a potential 15-20/x2 on your spell is a huge advantage. I' confused though, why would you need Dex with any more regularity if you didn't have Spellstrike? Misread and edited: sorry, was thinking that Touch attacks were dex based, but I had Ranged Touch attacks in my head when thinking it.
It only really becomes cool when used in conjunction with Spell Combat at level 2. Then you're only rolling your melee attacks instead of the touch attack separately. This means you don't have to worry about stacking Str, Dex, and Int and instead can just concentrate on Str and Int (or Dex and Int if you're using the Weapon Finesse feat). It also would allow you to calculate off of the weapon's threat range instead of the spell's threat range.
Let's try this. Here's how I would rewrite it for running in my campaign (the forums ate the first version of this and here's my attempt to recreate it): Spellstrike (Su): Whenever a magus casts a spell with a range of touch from the magus spell list, he can deliver the spell through any weapon he is wielding as part of his next melee attack or, alternatively, using a free hand to deliver the free touch attack as per normal. This spell must be used by the end of his next turn or it will be considered lost. When using a melee weapon to deliver the spell, if the attack is successful it deals its normal damage as well as the effects of the spell. This ability does not grant the magus a free melee attack--such attacks must be made normally. Any critical hits are calculated as per the weapon's threat range and damage, but the spell damage itself uses a x2 multiplier unless specified otherwise.
It's an either/or (thus the "Alternatively" it prefaces when it says you can just use a normal touch). You can charge your weapon with it for a touch attack or you can just use it as a normal touch attack that has nothing to do with your weapon, but you can't do both. When combined with Spell Combat, you can do the touch spell first and put it into the weapon and then do the full-round attack with that first weapon attack being your touch attack. Or you could just do an actual touch attack with the spell and then the full-round attack (or the full-round and then the touch). I agree it needs to be rewritten, because it's causing confusion for a lot of people.
This block about sums up my initial thoughts. There is just too damn much. I imagine (hope) some of it gets cut in the playtest. This class gets a new gimmick or three pretty much at every level. Actually, after reading through the class a couple times, it's a lot simpler than some of the APG core classes that got added.
So, as I'm understanding it, at 1st level if you wanted to use Shocking Grasp through your weapon the sequence goes like so: Round 1:
Round 2:
As opposed to just doing it normally: Round 1:
Round 2:
So, there are two advantages with this. If you are expecting to have an attack of opportunity, then you can pre-cast a touch spell and wait for the person to provoke an attack. The other option would be using a reach weapon to deliver your touch attacks so that you can stay a bit further out of range. All of this is moot at level 2 where you can cast and hit in the same standard action.
Cleaving Touch: You may treat a spell touch attack as a melee attack for the purposes of the feat Cleave.
So, I take it Magus will be the only additional core class? My DM was curious if we'd see a Pathfinder version of the Eberron Artificer.
Any Bonus Spells are usually over and above Spells Known. That's what I had figured, but I thought I'd double-check.
Do the bonus spells granted by the haunted oracle curse take up spell slots from the limited number of spells known or are they freebie extra spells known outside of the list?
You mean like the raven that only exists when a certain Wizard suddenly rememers that s/he has it? :) S/he is doing better about that now. Witches could always just have a Hex or other ability called "Raise Familiar" The 500/lvl gold fee would be used in the event that the familiar couldn't be raised for some reason.
And for those who suggest hiding the familiar away, I thought the point was to make the familiar a more integral part of the class rather than then something you pulled out once a day for an hour when you need it and then conveniently ignore the rest of the time If you've got an Achilles heel, you protect it.
One thing that suddenly hit me: In most of the larger cities you have temples to just about every deity. What's to say that there isn't a local coven in each large city? If you're part of Witch's Local 542 and head to a new major city, why not meet up with the coven there? Infrastructure might end up being the solution here.
All hail the crazy cat lady! ;)
I suppose if Paizo is alright with having one of the orders be known as the "Order of the c!&*," then I have no problem with it. Cockatrices are horrible little beasts and I always thought naming the teamwork oriented cavalier after them was kind of a weird choice. I still think that Dragon and Teamwork don't fit together that well. If I were to name any of the heroic orders after dragons, it would be what is now called the "Order of the Sword" (unless you were really going for the Arthurian Knight - Excalibur link with that one). Sword cavaliers are heroic, while at the same time solitary, just like many of the good dragon varieties. It takes a lot of people working together to kill a dragon. The order doesn't have to take the virtues from the thing itself, but could be from how you kill that thing.
I've rewritten it to be consistent with the situation you've suggested. Since the hexes do not stack with themselves, this new text does not seem to say what you want it to say. Where does it say that hexes do not stack with themselves? I'm not doubting you, but I didn't see text stating such. This also causes all hexes on each creature to be affected instead of just one per creature.
Cackle (Su): A witch can cackle madly as a move action.
My interpretation of the 'an' and 'that hex' leads me to think it only affects one hex. However, it affects one hex on every creature within 30ft that has a hex on them.
no, it doesn't. It invokes the best of all comic books Avengers (when we're not talking TV shows, movies, or comic books who use it as a cool word to label their group with) are people who are trying to right some misdeed done against them or someone close to them. That is their goal in life. That is what drives them. They're not clerical in the slightest. They're fueled by pain, hate, and rage. Inquisitors are the secret police of the church. They do underhanded things for a greater cause. They are devoted to some ideal of the church or some particular facet of their deity and are trying to punish those who go against it. They don't necessarily have any ties at all to their prey. They are just on a mission from their church or deity. Avenger is a _horrible_ name for this class. It would be a better name for Cavalier (and it isn't all that hot there with oaths being removed) than it would be for Inquisitor.
Heh, didn't we cover this a few times? The mount is the point of the class. Take out the mount and ya might as well not have the class. They are not a core class, they are a focused class, the mount being the base of the class.Everything else is extra, taking the mount out is like taking holy from a paladin or casting from a wizard. This. It doesn't hurt for something to be focused every now and then. If you don't like it, then take fighter or paladin.
I think simply adding a sentence to the description that has the familiar come back with all spells it knew previously is the best solution. This offsets the onerous cost of replacing a familiar, far and away more than the cost of a backup spellbook. This is probably the best solution. I can see Crazy Cat Lady picking up her new familiar and looking into its eyes and claiming to everyone in earshot that it's her beloved Mr Muggles reincarnated into a new form.
Being able to turn someone into a newt is enough for me. (He got better.)
I like the dual familiar idea, because I like the crazy cat lady witch concept. Wandering around with a couple apparently random critters that you commune with on a daily basis would make your party think you were a bit crazy. However, yeah, at low levels, the gold costs are a little extreme. On our recent starter quest in our campaign, we were fighting on the roof of a building and eventually, the roof collapsed while everyone was on it. Everyone took a bit of damage and it could have killed a familiar if it were involved and unlucky. The other idea is that you're dealing with an animal spirit meaning that your familiar were vaguely incorporeal. That would keep it from a lot of the unlucky situations that would cause its demise.
From what I've gathered from reading through the rules, there is no way to backup your familiar in the event you've added scrolls and such to it. Am I missing something? Do you keep a second familiar at your hut and have them sync spells when you're home?
I'm also running into the issue where the PDF isn't updating. My copy was still personalized from earlier today and telling it to re-personalize didn't appear to change anything. I'm guessing that it's an issue that the personalization server has an old copy cached somewhere that it's continuing to use. |