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Their weird proportions (giant heads, exceptionally thin limbs compared to their torso) make them look really odd in a way that I find makes them feel out of sync with the rest of the game's aesthetic.

Contrast with ratfolk art from Pathfinder and they sort of look like super-deformed caricatures you might find in cartoons.

Sorta bummed this is how they're supposed to look, might just be me though.

Relevant text on style feats:

As a swift action, you can enter the stance employed by the fighting style a style feat embodies. Although you cannot use a style feat before combat begins, the style you are in persists until you spend a swift action to switch to a different combat style. You can use a feat that has a style feat as a prerequisite only while in the stance of the associated style.

So the question: Do you have to activate your style every combat or do the styles persist between combats(and if so for how long do they stay activated)?

It's always sort of annoyed me that you can't have a swashbucklker with a hammer, or a bladebound estoc or so on. Especially when these distinctions don't really have any balance implications behind them. Wondering if anyone else feels the same.

It seems unnecessary and kind of weird.

Has anyone found that path yet?

So I was reading over the dragoon fighter again so I could rant about FAQs and I noticed that there seems to be a typo, though I can't quite tell where.

Specifically it requires you to pick weapon training with spears and then further increases your weapon training bonus by +1 to attack and +2 to damage rather than +1/+1 at 9, 13 and 17.

But the ability says that it caps out at +4/+8

But 1+2+2+2 = 7, not 8.

So either the ability needs to say that it increases the bonus to a maximum of +4/+7 or the ability needs to say that it gives you +2 to damage rolls at level 5.

I can't tell which is likely the right answer though.

Just started making a druid and was looking at types of companions and I got kind of confused at the Bear's size.

It starts small and upgrades to medium at 7.

From a thematic perspective that seems really weird that a bear is the same size as say, a badger. Doubly so when you look at the Bestiary and see there are no small bears and three of the four bears are large size.

From a mechanical perspective I don't see any real balancing factor either, given that the bear has fairly comparable stats to the big cat.

So what am I missing here?

tl;dr A number of bloodlines/spirits/mysteries/etc have options that do 1d6 + 1/2 level damage and they're so comically bad I cannot for the life of me understand what would possess Paizo to continue actually publishing them.

Why is this a thing?

Better to ask actually, why is this a formula that keeps coming up? It shows up a lot in various places as a low level power, usually for some blasting themed bloodline or spirit or whatever.

The thing is it's... really bad. It peaks at level 2, where it's roughly the same damage as a pistol, except less accurate because it can't be made masterwork and most of the classes that have these features are 1/2 BAB. That's.. almost okay. At least if you have the ranged version. If you've got a melee version of it that comparison is even less favorable.

So it starts out not super great but maybe usable if you really don't want to waste a spell and it's basically double the damage of acid splash so that's cool.

But the scaling. The scaling is abominable on these things. At level 10 it's going to do an average of 8.5 damage. At level 20 it's up to 13 and a half. Which using the Monster Stats by CR table means you're doing roughly 3.5% of an enemy's health on average with this thing. Basically there's a negligible difference between using this power or simply skipping your turn altogether.

Funny thing is the first time I read it I assumed that it actually meant the whole thing scaled every 2 levels. So at level 2 instead of 1d6+1 it's 2d6+2. At level 10 instead of 1d6+5 it's 5d6+5.

And you know what? If you calculate it that way it's still bad. Which I think really speaks to how horrific these class features are, that you could multiply its scaling by a factor of four and still have it underperform at nearly every level except 2.

But mistakes happen. Bad options get printed. That's life.

So the really damning thing here isn't that it happened. It's that it keeps happening over and over. Nearly every blasting themed caster option in the game has something like this. The shaman, printed in 2014, a full five years after the CRB first introduced this mechanic, has 1d6+ 1/2 level damage as its opening ability in the Flame, Wind, Waves and Stone spirits.

Despite every possible metric showing this option to be at best marginal and at worst actively detrimental.

Despite blasting bloodlines and options being considered bad in large part because this option is so bad they might as well not even get a class feature at that level at all.

Despite every guide you can find on any of these classes emphatically labeling such abilities as bad as possible.

It keeps happening. Over and Over. And I just don't understand... why?

At this point it's so obvious and so easily documental how substandard these abilities are that the only reasonable assumption has to be that Paizo actively dislikes blasting and puts abilities in to intentionally deter people.

I don't want to believe that Paizo is that malicious though, but I just can't understand why they'd keep adding these options into the game when they're so demonstrably bad.

Edit: Oh and the cherry on top of this all? Some of them, like the Bones shaman spirit ability or the Starsoul Sorcerer Bloodline level 1 power do 1d4 damage instead.

Which means someone actually decided that 1d6 damage was too strong an it needed to get toned down. Wow.

I remember when the ACG came out a few people mumbled the class looked overpowered and then since then I haven't really heard... anyone mention it ever.

It hasn't gotten a lot of post ACG support outside some a thin addition of new spells.

It's just like everyone forgot it existed suddenly.

Light shield proficiency is a trait. Buckler proficiency is part of the shield proficiency feat. Just feels odd.

Take a class. Give it nothing to do but hit things, but put it in a combat focused game so everyone has to be good at hitting things. Make it your baseline martial class for balancing.

Bam. There's your C/MD.

Take a class. Make it 'simple, but modular'. Its main class feature is having tons of feats. But how are you going to justify giving someone that many feats when you realistically don't need that many different combat styles?

Bam. There are your feat trees and narrow feat focuses.

the list goes on.

Lots of new toys have come out for the fighters to make them more interesting and powerful, which definitely improves their playability.

But in this case many of the problems are fundamentally systemic to the game and instead adding these fighter specific toys exacerbates rather than solves problems. Things that shouldn't be gated are, all of the sake of making the class that is not a class look better.

Wrist Launchers and their heavy variant are odd little weapons from UI. Strapped to the forearm, the regular version shoots damageless darts that can contain a dose of poison and the heavy version shoots bolts and does damage like a hand crossbow. If you're proficient with hand crossbows you're also proficient with both of them, too.

-Do they benefit from other effects like hand crossbows? Or just proficiency?

-If above, do they benefit from Crossbow Mastery? Can you take Rapid Reload with them?

-Is your hand free while wielding one? Seems like a yes from the fluff, but they're a weapon and there's nothing explicit one way or the other so who knows.

-If the above is true, can you fire a wrist launcher while holding another weapon or shield or something?

-Given that they're strapped to the forearm, do they interfere with your glove or wrist slot or other pieces of gear that are worn similarly (like spiked gauntlets or if the above is true, shields since they're also strapped to the forearm)?

-What fighter weapon group do they belong to?

If you're looking them up on d20pfsrd after reading this thread, note that the site is incorrect and wrist launchers are not ring slot items, they're weapons.

I've been mulling over a few ideas for switch hitting characters lately and I've been kind of stunned at how incredibly hard it is to build someone who can use two or more weapon styles effectively.

Even with access to fighter bonus feats or ranger styles or something similar it still takes quite a while to get online and you still end up hitting some sort of roadblock eventually. With a rogue or investigator or cavalier or barbarian or swashbuckler or something else I've decided it's more or less a lost cause to even try.

This seems really weird, especially given how common the concept of someone with two or more fighting styles is in fiction.

It really seems unnecessary.

Wondering if the must select a horse or pony clause would override the effects of Monstrous Mount or any other similar feat or PrC that replaces your mount, or if it just only matters at level 1 and then you can do whatever.

Lenses of Darkness exist, but +1 to attack and perception only in specific conditions seems hilariously overpriced to me. So I'm hoping there's some other option.

If it matters the player in question is making a kobold for a game I'm running and while it's not the biggest problem, light sensitivity on what's already the weakest race in the game just seems unnecessarily cruel.

Guess this could go in the homebrew forum too, though.

Kobold tail attachments are their own weapon group, but they do not have an entry for the versatile training advanced weapon training.

Any suggestions what skills to give them?

Does anyone else find it sort of strange that goblins are basically described as universally stupid, reckless, incompetent and cowardly despite having average baseline intelligence and wisdom?

In many ways goblins are often described as even more backwards than orcs and even some examples of trolls, which doesn't seem particularly in line with the race's mechanics.

A level 20 fighter, a master of war who fights demons and gods, is only going to naturally be marginally (+2) stronger than her level one, wet behind the ears slightly better than an average joe just starting out counterpart. And despite having potentially years of adventures and heroics under her belt she's going to be no tougher, no more agile, no faster, no smarter, no wiser and no better at dealing with people than when she started out that adventure.

Until you throw in a huge pile of magic items of course.

Now naturally she's going to be better at combat (+19 better to be specific). Or at least, hitting people. The actual greatsword strike itself just gets bumped up from 2d6+6 to 2d6+9 which is pretty inconsequential.

She also gets a bit better at shrugging off conditions (+10, +6 and +6 better) and paradoxically despite theoretically being no tougher (same con score) she's dramatically better at taking punishment and would take a dozen direct hits from an orc's falchion when in the past one good blow could have knocked her down. She can also go jump off mountains for fun. So that's something.

But it still feels weird that at the core of that her physical and mental faculties hardly improve at all.

I can't find anything, but figured I'd ask before I give up.

Being capped at level to AC seems like it doesn't do anything other than make low level Kensai kind of miserable to play and makes Strength based Kensai nearly impossible to swing unless you start at level 4 or 5 or something.

It works for the Duelist (ish, duelists are terrible, but still) because it's on top of your armor. But for the Kensai it's a replacement to your armor like the monk's AC bonus.

Seems needlessly punitive at low levels to me.

Title.

This seems really hard to do in Pathfinder. You can cast dimension door, but you need a bunch of feats to do anything with it and most ways to use it are still at least slightly limited.

Outside of Pathfinder though, characters with 'blink' abilities in film and games and books that allow them to teleport rapidly between short distances are pretty common and teledashing (which isn't quite teleporting but is more or less treated as the same) is basically a staple of high powered action cartoons anymore.

I dunno. that's just. A thing I wanted to talk about.

Are there any guidelines on what to do with weapons that.. don't appear to have a weapon group assigned to them?

Stuff like the dwarven maulaxe, boulder helmet, barbazu beard, longhammer, longaxe, piston maul, garrote and so on? There are more than just that too.

Some are obvious-ish but others aren't.

I've seen a pretty common thought on various forums discussing Pathfinder that italicized text at the heading of feats and monsters and other things doesn't matter.

This was a source of a lot of debate back when Pummeling Style was first printed and I've seen similar contentions with people arguing whether Iron Golems are valid targets for Detect Metal and Rusting Grasp and so on.

I haven't been able to find anything one way or the other in the rules though. So is there anything definitive?

Title.

That's crazy!

Sacred Implements are alternative implements from Occult Origins. Question is... just the title.

The potential issue here is that the only downside to Sacred Implements are that they impose a caster level penalty if you cast certain spells opposed to the deity associated with the implement and psychometrists don't cast spells.

By the numbers I don't think that disqualifies the archetype from taking them, but it might not be RAI since for a psychometrist they're just free implement powers.

Thoughts?

There are a number of effects that specify that they work with manufactured weapons, or natural weapons and a couple that specify they work with manufactured and natural weapons.

Mystic Bolt isn't classified as either, but the rules as written seem to generally imply that those are the only two kinds of weapons. Is there a general rule here?

Feats like Weapon Trick and spells like Sense Vitals rely specifically on manufactured weapons. There's a few other effects that specify natural and/or manufactured, which leaves as written mystic bolts sitting in a weird grey area.

A couple

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Do the Revenge and Undeath variant channelings really do absolutely nothing for a cleric who channels positive energy? and likewise in reverse for a cleric who channels negative energy with the bravery variant? I mean, they say they don't but it seems strange to have a variant that doesn't do anything, so I thought I might be reading something wrong.

-Speaking of, Undeath's harm effect. It says the healing is enhanced for undead, but the description for Variant Channeling says that the Harm effect works when you use negative energy to Harm, so how are you getting enhanced healing

-How does VC interact with channeling feats like Alignment Channel or Elemental Channel. I assume you just get whichever variant channel lines up with your base channel but I'm not completely sure.

A level 1 fighter can walk 30 feet or charge 60 feet or run 120 feet every single round and do full damage.

A level 6 fighter loses a little bit of potential damage, but can still pull it off because iteratives are inaccurate.

A level 11 fighter is losing more than half their potential damage.

A level 20 fighter is going to end up doing maybe 30% of their total damage while moving.

This seems kind of backwards. Shouldn't a newbie who's just finished their training be less competent at darting around a battlefield relatively than the ultimate master of martial combat?

And yeah, the level 20 fighter is doing more damage with that standard action attack, but comparatively, against CR relevant threats the value of that attack is increasingly less impressive.

Vital strike helps. But it's four feats and still not all that great unless you're doing some specific tricks.

It's even sillier for classes like Rogues and Swashbucklers who theoretically exemplify mobile warrior archtypes in fiction but are also terrible at it. Heck, with TWF and sneak attack rogues are arguably the least mobile class in the entire game. Which seems entirely backwards for the sorts of archetypes associated with the class.

An archetype all about shotguns and siege weapons.

Except it can't full attack with a shotgun unless it takes another archetype that loses proficiency with siege weapons (and won't let you start with a blunderbuss).

That seems like a janky design choice.

I guess you're good if you don't mind starting with a blunderbuss and then immediately dumping it for a dragon pistol before 6 and never using an advanced firearm (or any other firearm period really).

STILL seems like a janky design decision though.

It's a shame too. Pretty cool archetype, even if it does lose two bonus feats and a nice feature for some niche stuff.

Just checking to see if anyone thinks this houserule/suggestion breaks anything.

Basically, class features that are functionally identical or extremely similar to other class features can take feats/bonuses related to that class feature.

Examples: Bloodrider Bloodragers (Feral Mount), Mounted Fury Barbarians (Bestial Mount), Horse Lord Rangers (Mounted Bond) all can take any options that require the Cavalier's "Mount" feature just like Cavaliers can.

Horse Lord under this house rule also qualifies as Hunter's Bond, because it's basically just a more restrictive version of it.

Archer Fighter's Expert Archer, Swashbuckler's Swashbuckler Weapon Training, Crossbowman's Crossbow Expert and so on all count as weapon training.

And so on.

Because to me these abilities largely function the same, there's no power advantage incurred by them and it's not really niche protection either because other archetypes and classes that can copy the class feature don't have the same issue.

Good idea? Bad idea? Potential issues?

What are my options for this? I can't find many. Glove of Storing works well for drow/buccaneer fighting style but runs into RAW issues about switching items from one hand to the other. Ditto with Prehensile Tail.

So are there any other options?

Some table arguments earlier today over the title question.

Is it 3 burn, for the cost of the composite blast plus taking one additional burn?

Or is it 5 burn, for the cost of the composite plus the cost of gravitic plus one extra burn for applying gravitic to a composite?

Tending toward the former, because paying nearly as much as doublecast for something weaker than empower doesn't really make any sense, but the wording is vague enough and the kineticist is held back in a lot of other regards in ways that don't make sense, so I could see the latter being the case.

Does anyone have any idea why these are slayer only feats? They're certainly thematic for a slayer, but nothing about them seems like it should necessitate that class in particular.

Heck, Killing Flourish is just a slightly worse, lower level version of Dreadful Carnage anyways.

Blood Rider bloodragers, horse lord rangers, mounted fury barbarians and so on all functionally get the same class feature as the cavalier's mount, but can't actually take any mount related feats because they have a different name. Like Monstrous Mount.

S'shame. Horse Lord Ranger is especially hilarious because rangers normally can take feats like monstrous mount, but the horse lord's feature has a different name.

Though they do all qualify for the crappier and more confusingly written monstrous companion I guess.

Now for sure, an animal companion is a great addition to anyone and constructs are particularly awesome, but the Construct Rider Alchemist draws from a limited list and doesn't have easy access to upgrading that list.

In exchange for that mount you lose mutagen, brew potion, your 4th level discovery, 1 extract per day from each level and a prohibition against ever gaining a mutagen.

Contrast with the Winged Marauder goblin alchemist archetype, which only loses mutagen and persistent mutagen and gains a flying mount instead.

Now, constructs are arguably better than animal companions, but the construct rider's companion doesn't gain full construct benefits in the first place and that's at absolute best a wash with the ability to fly.

Also notably the Construct Rider never loses persistent mutagen despite not having the ability to ever acquire a mutagen in the first place. Which is also pretty silly.

Necromancy is described as manipulating the forces of life and death.
Enchantment is described as manipulating emotions and minds.

Cause Fear fills a target with dread. Seems like a better fit for the latter.

For that matter, why is cure conjuration? As said above, necromancy manipulates life force and.. cure is literally all about life force. Its counterpart (inflict) is necromancy and does basically the same thing in reverse.

Seems odd.

I might just be crazy but I see a lot more straight swords (usually with fancy tassels on the end) in kung fu or other similar movies than most of the weapons on the monk list.

And yet it's really hard to build a monk that can actually wield one effectively.

But you can totally make it work with a seven branched sword or a tripoint double edged sword. The first of those is a damn ornament and the second doesn't even to appear to be a real thing that actually exists.

Looking to buy Blood of Shadows but do most of my work via paypal and don't want to wait a week to transfer money to a checking account to pick up the PDF.

Are there any alternative websites that sell them? Not looking for a physical copy, just the PDF.

It really is.

Now on its face it's an awesome class feature: It single handedly enables full attacking with two handed firearms, making the musket master the go-to archetype for fighting with them.

And that's exactly why it's bad. Because it's single handedly the only thing that enables full attacking with a musket, and therefore the only thing that enables functionality for said musket past level 5/7/12.

This means that every single character in the game who wants to use a two handed firearm and plans on getting a second iterative needs a 3 level dip in that archetype, minimum.

Which also means that any gunslinger archetype that conflicts with Musket Master can never use a two handed firearm. Which in and of itself is criminal because frankly an armored juggernaut (gun tank) with some heavy weaponry is thematic as can be.

And relegating twenty-five whole weapons to a single specific archetype is just plain terrible.

Basically, there are archetypes that get something diminished/taken away as a class feature, but usually in turn the archetype gets some freebies or imbalanced trades on the backend to even things out (they're not technically either since you're giving up something else, but I think you all know what I mean).

But lately I've seen a stint of archetypes that have something diminished/removed but the rest of their class features all seem to be normal trades anyways.

My example (and please don't make all the comments about this one archetype) is the Kami Medium mystic. It loses the ability to channel one of its spirits and makes a second spirit extremely difficult to channel.

But the rest of its archetype is pretty much normal trades that are washes or situational downgrades/upgrades.

It's just weird. Like, the archetype wouldn't be that great if it could channel Archmage anyways.

And it's not the only one. There's a bunch of other archetypes that seem to get reduced something in exchange for very little.

Consequently, the Storyteller medium archetype is another good example of this: It gets significantly reduced spirits.. and then everything else is a pretty mediocre trade after that. Where the archetype still wouldn't be anything special even without diminished spirits.

I have a sorcerer who picked an evocation themed bloodline and feats/class features to enhance her evocations.

She casts haste on a party member and Summon Monster to throw more enemies into the fight and while a Transmutation or Conjuration specialist might do a better job there, both spells end up being very effective in contributing to the successful conclusion of the fight.

I have a fighter who fights with two sawtooth sabers and has all her feats dedicated toward improving that combat style.

She tries a trip combat maneuver in that same fight, takes an Attack of Opportunity and gets knocked prone and then gets ruthlessly murdered by monsters on the next turn.

One of these characters has baseline competency as an expected function of the class and can choose to spend feats and other resources to specialize, while the other is assumed to be incompetent and requires specialization simply to function.

It really seems like the classes were designed by wholly different groups with wholly different goals.

It just seems strange because the direction the two classes take is so radically different. Not just in terms of specialization, but in terms of abilities too:

The sorcerer gains efficacy (her blasts hit harder and kill faster) but also gains expanded functionality (blasts that are also debuffs, nonblsating ancillary spells) whereas the martial only improves in efficacy.

Again, feels like they two characters were designed by different people and maybe even for different games. It's odd.

The Weapon Master's Handbook has a lot of great tools for martial characters and is often brought up (along with the other recent martial sourcebooks) as making fighters not suck anymore.

But did it put too much emphasis on the fighter to the detriment of other characters?

My key example here is the Ricochets Toss feat. You take this feat, throw a weapon and it instantly returns to your hand.

This basically single handedly makes full attacking with throw weapons functional and removes the need to rely on the availability of a 5000 gold magic item that locks you out of your belt slot.

Except it's fighter only (well, some archetypes too, but still). That means that this feat that makes a terrible combat style kinda functional is just not available to anyone else. Which seems terrible. Because fighters aren't the only class that uses throwing weapons. In fact I see a lot more rogues and ninjas try and fail to throw daggers than anything else.

There's a lot more examples, but that one always stuck out to me really badly.

Like even if one of my players is playing a race with a Cha bonus I'd be hard pressed to not recommend that they just play a normal kineticist and trait in the social skills.

Like even if Mental Prowess' activated effect was at will instead of 1/day it'd still be a mediocre archetype.

Is there anything I'm missing here?