When one of the Elminster books first reveals its villain, he is busy trying to get too gryphons (or was it hippogryphs?) to mate in a vat of magical crab oil, the offspring from which would be a crazy new race of crab-gryphons under his control.
I picture high-level wizards doing s+*$ like this all day.
There is a tiny voice in my head which says I should be worried about a base class for this; that this may be an element of the D&D mythos which will die if quantified. I don't want anyone saying that the evil arcanists who wrought most of D&D's monsters were "against the rules" for having too many monsters at once/making them too quickly/giving them abilities which this base class can't grant/etc.
I doubt we'll see much of that attitude, though.
Also, thanks for real this time Heathan.
=)
It also sounds like a psion with the Astral Construct power. Seems a bit of an odd way for the generally anti-psionics Paizo to go.Huh?
The idea of the wizard creating his own monsters has been around in pulp fantasy for decades, and has been a huge part of D&D settings and fiction for as long as the game has been around.
There's nothing innately "psionic" about it.
There is a great section in the Belgariad where Belgarath fights a sorcerer who summons a demon which inhabits a custom made body from magic... I'm describing it poorly but it's a great section of the book. The description of this class makes me think of that section. Regardless, the idea goes back a ways.
I remember the bit in the Belgariad. They forced a demon to fit their picture of it. If they failed it was freed to rip them up, if they succeeded they could command it. Something like that might be intertesting. Or maybe the fantasy version of Frankenstein although the wizard already covers that. The cavalier, alchemist and oracle might be more in tune with my game though. Well, we will see -- open playtests are good for that...
The "Summoner" class sounds like the dude has a single "pet" and he can "buff" it in different ways, giving it bigger teeth, more horns, make it faster, stronger, better, etc. Kind of like a druid who focuses on buffing his animal companion. Maybe like that "one-armed" dude from "Brotherhood of the Wolf."
Of course, I'm just guessing here.
Please tell me somebody at Paizo has heard that WotC has trademarked "Players Handbook". Going to need a different name.
This guy is going to be upset:
http://www.playershandbook.com/ (Possibly NSFW?)
He'd get more money if he sold his PDF on RPGnow...
If the "pet" can be a construct, and the character can be framed as a crazed soot-stained machinist, well... I know at least one guy who has wanted to play that character for as long as I've known him.
Please tell me somebody at Paizo has heard that WotC has trademarked "Players Handbook". Going to need a different name.This guy is going to be upset:
http://www.playershandbook.com/ (Possibly NSFW?)
He'd get more money if he sold his PDF on RPGnow...
My understanding is that this guy is the main reason WotC/Hasbro trademarked players handbook (and that the cease and desist is in the mail).
The summoner and alchemist both sound extremely cool (as those are both hard to make with the current rules). I just hope they gain continued support. I actually had a player who wanted to play a bomb-based non-casting character, and I didn't really know what direction to point him in without going too far on a limb.
The other two classes fill me with dread. There are already numerous classes that can become a cavalier quite well, and there's a reason clerics get divination spells. At best, these seem like PRCs to me. The existing base classes are already quite broad, so, when new classes begin to feel conceptually redundant, class bloat seems imminent. (At least we haven't had to have the ninja argument here...it's a rogue, damnit).
As for psionics, I'd really like to see what Paizo would do with them. On one hand, I'd rather see them all converted into feats and PRCs, so the setting isn't riddled with subsystems. On the other hand, I thought the 3.5 psionics system was really solid and interesting. Is there a forum consensus on this?
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Golarion has mention of a race of Proteans filling the Chaotic Outsider niche. In theory, such a race, from a plane of incarnate chaos and eternal change, would also be innately formless and evershifting. Coming to 'alien' lands that are not as innately chaotic, such Proteans might assume a (more or less) static form to adapt to their new environment.
A Summoner, following that line of reasoning, would be able to tap into the plane of Chaos, pulling forth some Protean matter that may or may not be entirely sentient, and imposing his will upon it to force it to assume whatever nightmarish configuration suits his current needs or whims, as he brings it from the protean realms to the world of Golarion.
As he increases in understanding and power (i.e. gains levels), he can pull greater quantities of this protean pseudo-life into Golarion, shaping it into larger and more powerful creatures.
If he fails his attempt to impose his will perfectly upon the living essence of Chaos, it might display some unexpected traits.
If he spectacularly *botches* that attempt, on the other hand... Hrm.
"Clean up on aisle five!"
The Summoner and the Alchemist sound most appealing to me, and I'm intrigued by the nature of the Oracle as spontaneous divine caster (with a divination focus? divination is so hard to do well...) and even the idea of the Cavalier as less 'battle-charger' and more 'leader of men.
Looking at niches, the Alchemist might be more of a skill-based class, than an Artificer knock-off, which could be intriguing, as skill-monkeys other than the Rogue and Bard seem few and far between. The Oracle might fill the Favored Soul niche (although with a very different flavor). And the Cavalier sounds a little bit Warlord, a little bit old-school 2E Cavalier.
Interesting, more so than an attempt to re-write the Psionic classes (which already exist in the SRD and wouldn't be 'new base classes' so much as 'updates'), IMO. Also neat to see that the Blackguard / Hellknight class that I pretty much assumed was fait accompli isn't going to be part of these four.
It does make sense that we'd see a new face for each of the 'core four roles' of fighting-man (Cavalier), divine caster (Oracle), arcane caster (Summoner) and skill-monkey (Alchemist).
wow myan gooooooooooood nyborg.Great movie.
Absolutely. Every line from the script and note from the soundtrack is permanently etched into my brain.
There is a great section in the Belgariad where Belgarath fights a sorcerer who summons a demon which inhabits a custom made body from magic... I'm describing it poorly but it's a great section of the book. The description of this class makes me think of that section. Regardless, the idea goes back a ways.
<nitpick>That's actually in the Mallorean -- Demon Lord of Karanda, I think.</nitpick>
Definitely an excellent section to draw inspiration from, though, in all manner of ways.
The other two classes fill me with dread. There are already numerous classes that can become a cavalier quite well, and there's a reason clerics get divination spells. At best, these seem like PRCs to me. The existing base classes are already quite broad...
This is where you lost me.
I don't think this is true at all. D&D classes are actually very focused and genre-specific. Worse, the "genre" that they are specific to is that of D&D fiction; in other words, these classes do their own thing, with little regard for the fictional archetypes that the game was based on.
It's hard to find anything in pre-D&D genre fiction that bares any resemblance to a cleric.
I'm not saying that that's bad- clerics are awesome, and that the founders of the game invented them virtually from whole clothe doesn't make them any less so- but I simply can't understand people who say that the existing classes have all the bases covered.
(edit: sorry, Velderan never implied that the existing classes had all the bases covered, merely that the cleric has all the divine/holy archetypes covered. Which is what I meant to disagree with.
Really, this is probably a lot like music, where a dabbler in a given genre complains "this band's songs all sound the same"; meanwhile, a die-hard fan listening to the same album hears a sweeping range and variety of music, and can't for the life of him figure out what the dabbler is talking about.
No accounting for taste.
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It's hard to find anything in pre-D&D genre fiction that bares any resemblance to a cleric.
That's probably because pre-D&D, the cleric was called "Paladin". I remember an old dragon article (probably by Roger Moore, but I'm not sure at the moment), talking about that a hero like "El Cid" is probably better depicted by a cleric than by a paladin.
And as we're already talked about D. Eddings, Sparhawk and his friends are probably better described as mounted clerics than as paladins (in terms of D&D, that is).
Apart from that, I tend to agree with you, though the different opinions probably depend more on how much you feel a character concept should be transported by the rules. I don't think so much that it's a dabbler vs. die-hard-fan thing. I don't mind new rules options but I don't think that they are absolutely necessary to play certain character concepts, they just make it easier to fokus on those concepts rulewise.
This is where you lost me.
I don't think this is true at all. D&D classes are actually very focused and genre-specific. Worse, the "genre" that they are specific to is that of D&D fiction; in other words, these classes do their own thing, with little regard for the fictional archetypes that the game was based on.
It's hard to find anything in pre-D&D genre fiction that bares any resemblance to a cleric.
I'm not saying that that's bad- clerics are awesome, and that the founders of the game invented them virtually from whole clothe doesn't make them any less so- but I simply can't understand people who say that the existing classes have all the bases covered.
(edit: sorry, Velderan never implied that the existing classes had all the bases covered, merely that the cleric has all the divine/holy archetypes covered. Which is what I meant to disagree with.
Really, this is probably a lot like music, where a dabbler in a given genre complains "this band's songs all sound the same"; meanwhile, a die-hard fan listening to the same album hears a sweeping range and variety of music, and can't for the life of him figure out what the dabbler is talking about.
No accounting for taste.
This is sort of true and not-true. I shouldn't have made a blanket statement that classes are broad. But, most characters can fit into fighter, rogue, wizard, or cleric. (I actually think at least a third of the core classes could just be PRCs...).
The Cleric definitely depends on view. I sort of see the cleric as a stand-in for any priest/priestess of an individual deity or ideology. The 'I'm an automatic undead fighter' aspect of the cleric has basically been gotten of by paizo (long live channel energy, extending the 15 minute adventuring day since 2008), making them even more broad. This view is why I think an oracle is so unnecessary. Really, it will depend on implementation. If it's something unique and interesting, great. If it's "A sorcerer with cleric spells and deity instead of bloodline" It will be the first sign of bloat.
However, if you take a more specific view of the cleric (which one could), I could see the use of an oracle class. Especially since the current cleric does bear a striking resemblance to a hit-point battery.
And really, it's less bad than a class for a ninja, samurai, pirate, viking, or nursemaid.
When one of the Elminster books first reveals its villain, he is busy trying to get too gryphons (or was it hippogryphs?) to mate in a vat of magical crab oil, the offspring from which would be a crazy new race of crab-gryphons under his control.
I picture high-level wizards doing s*&@ like this all day.
There is a tiny voice in my head which says I should be worried about a base class for this; that this may be an element of the D&D mythos which will die if quantified. I don't want anyone saying that the evil arcanists who wrought most of D&D's monsters were "against the rules" for having too many monsters at once/making them too quickly/giving them abilities which this base class can't grant/etc.
I doubt we'll see much of that attitude, though.
Heavens to Ishtar, it's all right there in the mythology. You know where the first hippogriff came from? The wizard in Orlando Furioso got the wind to pork a horse. And the minotaur resulted after Daedalus (an artificer if there ever was one) made a mechanical cow suit so King Minos's wife could get serviced by the Bull of Poseidon without being crushed. Really, it's all there in the mythology. And Circe made Charybdis the whirlpool monster by pouring some cursed bath oil into the water where a nymph who'd ticked her off liked to bathe.
An army of magical crab-gryphons? When do you want them?
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And as we're already talked about D. Eddings, Sparhawk and his friends are probably better described as mounted clerics than as paladins (in terms of D&D, that is).I'd call them gestalt fighter/wizards. Sure, their magic is divinely powered, but (a) it doesn't come from the god they actually worship, and (b) the effects seem more wizardish than clericish (illusions, fire, stuff like that).
Hell no, they were all paladins dammit! </irate fanboy>
Either way, definately full BAB with some minor magics. So far as I remember, they never did much more than minor illusions and wards.
Coming to the thread a little late. The new four are alchemist, summoner, cavallier?, and what?
I'm not sure what to think about the new base classes. At first glance, they sound underwhelming and concepts that you can recreate with the other classes but I don't see them adding such unneeded classes to the game. It'll be interesting to see what they come up with especially for the Cavalier. I'm at a loss at how a Cavalier will be completely different from something that you could make with a Fighter.
I think the Church Knights could almost be clerics. Definitely give them the Holy Warrior variant to exchange domains for Good BAB. It's not perfect, but Paladins don't work because of the Paladin code primarily, but also due to the fact that they don't have certain spells. Wizards have too many different kinds of spells. You'd be unlikely to see a Pandion throwing a fireball, for instance. The cleric isn't perfect either, but I think it's the closest.
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These are all poor choices for base classes! An alchemist is an NPC. Players already have the option to create whatever an alchemist can create. Cavalier has been tried before, and failed. It is nothing more than a cross between a fighter and a paladin, and ends up being worse than either of those two. Summoner??? So what happens to all those Summon Monster spells? Oracle??? Not quite sure what that is except it sounds an awful lot like a cleric.
The most obvious, and needed, choice for a base class would be a Blackguard to offset the Paladin.
I have a lot of trust in Paizo, and if Lisa says that the ideas behind the names are far more exciting than it looks at the first glance, I'm willing to wait and see, before I complain. And Kyle indicated that for these classes , too, an open playtest was planned, so I guess that we can help Paizo to make those four as awesome as they can get.
Regarding the Blackguard, I seem to be in the minority here, but I never needed (or used) one. There's no way I would allow my players to play an evil character and in fact I consider the Blackguard to be one of the lamest concepts in the history of roleplaying games. Golarion's Hellknights are exponentially more interesting in my mind so at least as far as I'm concerned they can stay in the trash bin.
It's hard to find anything in pre-D&D genre fiction that bares any resemblance to a cleric.That's probably because pre-D&D, the cleric was called "Paladin".
I can think of a particular book that has a character casting "Sticks to Snakes", "Lower Water" and "Create Water". I'm not going to comment on whether the Bible is "genre fiction" or not, however. :-)
I have to admit I'm skeptical about how the Cavalier will work without stomping on the Fighter's toes, but I'll keep an open mind. The Summoner sounds a bit goofy to me (I keep thinking of My Pet Monster or Build-A-Bear Workshop), but the Alchemist might be neat (although I don't know how it would work without requiring a lab and some down time for creating stuff). The Oracle name is too vague to comment.
I'm looking forward to seeing what they are, especially since it's supposed to be an open playtest.
Cavalier - From what has been described, I'm thinking the Cavalier may be a cross between a fighter and a buffing bard (in other words, a Marshal by another name). I'd be very much ok with that. I like the marshal concept, just hated the half-hearted way WoTC made it.
Oracle - I think this is open for debate, but that debate would have to wait for us to see the actual class. A spontaneous divine caster (ala Favored Soul) that's done by Paizo would be very exciting to me. A specialist who see's the future only... welll... not so sure, npc class possibly? I didn't see any announcement from Paizo that these would be 4 PC classes, just 4 base classes. Another NPC class or two is not a bad thing.
Summoner - This could be very exciting for me. But then, I love Final Fantasy, and when I hear Summoner, I can't help imagine summoners from there. I would love a class that summons a huge special summon (customized by them based on their preferences) that fights along side them for X rounds. It might be hard to balance out. I will probably be very disappointed with this one, as I doubt this is the flavor they are going for.
Alchemist - This might fit a good niche. I had a player who wanted to play someone who specialized in making equipment (masterwork, magical, custom, wierd) but didn't want to be a spell caster. We finally ended up making him a custom class that was something like a cross between a bard and an artificer. Few actual spell points, only 1 per level of spell he could cast, plus whatever he got for high int. But he had a HUGE number of spells known (about 3 times what a sorcerer gets). And each level he could replace one spell of each level he already 'knew' with a spell of equal level. Turned out to be a very fun game and a very fun character. He was not a front line fighter, but he always had a bomb in his bag, or whatever he needed to McGyver the teams way out of whatever. The funniest thing was he had a donkey that drug a small wagon around with a ballista on it of his making. His favorite thing was to shoot sighted enemies with it from maximum range. Then when they got up to the wagon, he'd hide under it while everyone else killed the bad guys. :)
Obviously, I'm not willing to wait and see, none of these will ever make it into my campaign except as NPC's. Golarion Hellknights are specific to Golarion. They have no place in the core rules. Believe it or not, some people create their own campaigns and the only thing they require are the core rules. Furthermore, dictating the alignment of your players is patently absurd!I have a lot of trust in Paizo, and if Lisa says that the ideas behind the names are far more exciting than it looks at the first glance, I'm willing to wait and see, before I complain. And Kyle indicated that for these classes , too, an open playtest was planned, so I guess that we can help Paizo to make those four as awesome as they can get.
Regarding the Blackguard, I seem to be in the minority here, but I never needed (or used) one. There's no way I would allow my players to play an evil character and in fact I consider the Blackguard to be one of the lamest concepts in the history of roleplaying games. Golarion's Hellknights are exponentially more interesting in my mind so at least as far as I'm concerned they can stay in the trash bin.
By all means, then don't use them. I think it's a bit silly to say 'They will not be in my game, I'm not going to wait and see what they actually are first'. I assume you disallow Paladins in your game as well? And Druids? And Monks? All three core classes force your players into an alignment.
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Turned out to be a very fun game and a very fun character. He was not a front line fighter, but he always had a bomb in his bag, or whatever he needed to McGyver the teams way out of whatever. The funniest thing was he had a donkey that drug a small wagon around with a ballista on it of his making. His favorite thing was to shoot sighted enemies with it from maximum range. Then when they got up to the wagon, he'd hide under it while everyone else killed the bad guys. :)
That. Is. Awesome!!! LMFAO!
The "Summoner" class sounds like the dude has a single "pet" and he can "buff" it in different ways, giving it bigger teeth, more horns, make it faster, stronger, better, etc. Kind of like a druid who focuses on buffing his animal companion.
That might be a very cool bad guy, especially if they have more than one companion
By all means, then don't use them. I think it's a bit silly to say 'They will not be in my game, I'm not going to wait and see what they actually are first'. I assume you disallow Paladins in your game as well? And Druids? And Monks? All three core classes force your players into an alignment.There is a huge difference between the core rules dictating alignment and the DM telling players they absolutely cannot play a particular alignment!
Ah,
I see, I misread the previous quote you were quoting from. However, I do limit alignments. Not that I will not allow someone to play an evil character, or a lawful good, but I won't let anyone play an alignment diametrically opposed to someone else in the party on the good/evil axis. If someone wants to play evil, and everyone else is neutral, that's fine. If someone wants to play good, and everyone else is neutral or good, that's fine. But no lawful goods running around with neutral evils. It's not worth the headaches or the amount of hand-waving you have to do to keep the person in the party. The good person would eventually either leave or try to put the evil person in prison, and the evil person would either leave or murder the good person because they keep interfering.
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Obviously, I'm not willing to wait and see, none of these will ever make it into my campaign except as NPC's. Golarion Hellknights are specific to Golarion. They have no place in the core rules. Believe it or not, some people create their own campaigns and the only thing they require are the core rules. Furthermore, dictating the alignment of your players is patently absurd!
That seems a bit harsh, don't you think? We have such limited information regarding these new classes, how can you say, "none of these will ever make it into my campaign except as NPCs" without ever seeing how they work? I mean, it IS your game, and you're free to do as you please, but you finish your post condemning alignment restrictions, while you open with restricting PC class choices. Everything we do as D/GMs involves "dictating" things to our players, be that class restrictions, race restrictions, alignment restrictions, etc.
Kudos to you for creating your own campaign, but your statement that Golarion Hellknights have no place in the core rules is totally absurd! Of course they do...it's the PATHFINDER RPG, and the PATHFINDER Campaign Setting. It's all designed to revolve around Golarion, because, believe it or not, a lot of D/GMs don't have the time, energy, or creative capacity to create everything aside from basic mechanics from scratch! If the campaign setting specific PrCs have no place in the "Core" rules, how then the campaign setting specific dieties? There should be a splat book that covers those sorts of campaign setting specific details, and you should have to buy it or create your own, right?
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Believe it or not, some people create their own campaigns and the only thing they require are the core rules.
Oh, you can bet I believe that you because that's my prefered style of playing. And the Core Rules have no Blackguard. Which is quite fine by me, it's all I'm saying. The thing is, just because I won't use it I won't complain about it being presented to other gamers. And I especially won't make any conclusions before having seen what we're actually talking about.
Furthermore, dictating the alignment of your players is patently absurd!
Not more absurd than if I'd let dictate the books what is allowed at my table. I don't mind if you (or anyone else) like playing evil characters or evil campaigns. But I've not the slightest interest do so myself and I'll simply not run a campaign for evil characters (or be a player in an evil campaign). And as far as the Blackguard is concerned he would be such a rarity in my world(s) that I simply consider it a waste of place to give him his own entry. Your mileage may vary, and that's fine. We both state our opinions and thereby enable Paizo to make a decision. As simply as that.
The psionic classes will probably be somewhere late in 2010, if I had to guess. But they are coming. For right now, figure out rough discipline abilities to add on to the psion, maybe "bloodlines" for wilders.
Hm...
Psion: Specialises in a discipline, as usual, and getting a suit of "discipline" powers somewhere between a cleric domain and a specialist wizard school.
Wilder: Accesses the power of her mind through emotions, so maybe instead of bloodlines, there are "emotional paths" for the wilder's defining traits, or the emotion that caused the outbreak of her latent psionic abilities.
Alternately, have the 7 virtues and 7 sins as paths. You'd have a wilder of justice and wrath, for example, or hope and lust.
They'd probably have a basic telepathic ability to amplify or dampen those defining traits in themselves and others, and a bunch of abilities (and bonus powers) that match the theme.
Please tell me somebody at Paizo has heard that WotC has trademarked "Players Handbook". Going to need a different name.
What? But that's ridiculous! How can you trademark something as generic as "players handbook"?
I hope that Paizo understands that if they're going to introduce new core classes, they're going to have to support those core classes in all future supplements going forward. Then again APHB seems at first glance like it may be a book of rules that where to far from standard 3.5 to make it into the core.
I guess the book will have the basic feats (Extra Uses Of Class Ability and so on), and that beyond that, you'll be able to use other stuff for those classes, anyway.
I am also hoping for a web enhancement or product that redefines classes in our other non-core 3.5e books, like the Marshal, Warlock, Samurai, etc.
Take a look at that Tome of Secrets. It seems to do exactly that: Create PFRPG versions of those concepts.
After all, if I say "Add these abilities to the Warlock class in Complete Arcane",
... you have called one of their products by name and they will send their Infernal Lawyers Swarm at you.
You're not allowed to create stuff that builds on that stuff.
They could create, say, a warlock class of their own, and follow the concept without copying the layout and exact rules, but they cannot refer to the specific incarnation as it appears in Complete Arcane.
you're actually helping WotC with profit instead of harming them because then people will buy Complete Arcane.
One would think, but:
Wasn't the whole point of Pathfinder to be backwards compatible? Well, if the 11 core classes got a power-up, you kinda made the other 40+ classes from my other D&D supplements not worth playing save for a few of them.
Well, you have to establish a baseline. They can't change the other classes, so they have to change the core classes.
And note that not all 11 classes got a power up. The weaker ones got power ups, and some of the strongest were even toned down (i.e. cleric).
While most classes are more powerful than before, and the average power level of classes is higher now, they didn't break the record for most powerful stuff. The classes are just a lot closer now.
That may leave some of those older classes even worse than before, but well, call them victim.
And some of those other classes should go away!
Some of those classes don't really offer any new character concepts that cannot be created with the core 11 - especially the new and more versatile core 11.
Some were just some game mechanics without any real innovation in concept, and I won't regret their going.
Some were attempts to fix problems with D&D. Like the scout, who was supposed to take care of the fact that moving and attacking was not that effective in 3e. I agree that it's bothersome, but creating a whole class for this? PF just made feats for it, which I think is a lot better. In fact, I could see turning the feats into general abilities everyone can use.
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By all means, then don't use them. I think it's a bit silly to say 'They will not be in my game, I'm not going to wait and see what they actually are first'. I assume you disallow Paladins in your game as well? And Druids? And Monks? All three core classes force your players into an alignment.There is a huge difference between the core rules dictating alignment and the DM telling players they absolutely cannot play a particular alignment!
I'm wondering exactly how such a DM adjudicates the evil actions of one of the players (even though they may not be of evil alignment). Does he simply say, NO! You can't do that, it's evil?
Well I do make it clear to my players that this is a "heroic" game in which the PCs are the "protagonists". Furthermore, how I handle characters doing something obviously evil when thier characters aren't is to just happpen to have "karma intervene" by said characters failing a skill check (regardless of how high they rolled) or some other such thing.
Anyway DMs/GMs have, for a while, dictated characters alignments due to the fact that having an evil character in the party tends to be more disruptive to play than being an interesting "role-playing challenge" for the party of players. This is because that, for the most part, (and notice that I said "for the most part" and not "always") players who want to play evil characters are (again "for the most part" not "always") power gamers who want all of the spoils of being a hero but want to make none of the sacrifices that is called upon one to be a hero.
felt like the APHB's primary focus is adding rage abilities, rogue tricks, etc, and alt class options.
This is the part I'm most interested in, if it's done right (a la Unearthed Arcana). I love mixing and matching class features.
Golarion has mention of a race of Proteans filling the Chaotic Outsider niche. In theory, such a race, from a plane of incarnate chaos and eternal change, would also be innately formless and evershifting. Coming to 'alien' lands that are not as innately chaotic, such Proteans might assume a (more or less) static form to adapt to their new environment.
A Summoner, following that line of reasoning, would be able to tap into the plane of Chaos, pulling forth some Protean matter that may or may not be entirely sentient, and imposing his will upon it to force it to assume whatever nightmarish configuration suits his current needs or whims, as he brings it from the protean realms to the world of Golarion.
Oh yea, we have unlimited quantities of Cerulean Matter for your summoning needs.
Disclaimer: Protean Matter is delivered "as is". We give no guarantee and will not be held liable to any damage caused by unadept handling!
I think the Church Knights could almost be clerics. Definitely give them the Holy Warrior variant to exchange domains for Good BAB. It's not perfect, but Paladins don't work because of the Paladin code primarily, but also due to the fact that they don't have certain spells. Wizards have too many different kinds of spells. You'd be unlikely to see a Pandion throwing a fireball, for instance. The cleric isn't perfect either, but I think it's the closest.
Totally off-topic but no, I disagree. Actually, the books specifically point out at one point (been a while, but it's in the first trilogy) that the Church Knights used both fire and lightning. Paladin code can be waived; it's a different campaign setting, it just overwrites the paladin code with an order-specific code. Clerics also don't work because three of the four orders use full plate mail and Pathfinder clerics don't have heavy armor proficiency ;)
They're definitely paladins with an alternate spell list and custom vows. Even the strongest of them, magically, never cast a spell that'd be past 4th level in D&D, and many of them could hardly cast any spells at all (Kalten...).
These are all poor choices for base classes! An alchemist is an NPC. Players already have the option to create whatever an alchemist can create.
If we don't need alchemists, we don't need fighters, either. There's the warrior NPC. All it does if fight, just like fighter. So there.
On the other hand, it could be that they have some really great ideas about the concept, how it can be pulled off as a kick-ass PC-grade class. Jason has shown before that he can come up with great stuff.
Cavalier has been tried before, and failed.
Others have tried. Others have failed. Doesn't mean that Paizo will fail, too.
After all, how many men have tried to defy gravity and fly? How many have failed? Did mankind give up?
It is nothing more than a cross between a fighter and a paladin, and ends up being worse than either of those two.
Previous concepts might have been nothing more than that. Doesn't mean this time around, it won't be a great concept that is different from both and can pull its own weight.
Just wait and see.
Summoner??? So what happens to all those Summon Monster spells? Oracle??? Not quite sure what that is except it sounds an awful lot like a cleric.
Given that we don't know a lot about it, I can hardly agree that it sounds anything like a cleric.
Unless I'm wrong, all we know about the class is its name.
Obviously, I'm not willing to wait and see, none of these will ever make it into my campaign except as NPC's. Golarion Hellknights are specific to Golarion. They have no place in the core rules. Believe it or not, some people create their own campaigns and the only thing they require are the core rules. Furthermore, dictating the alignment of your players is patently absurd!I have a lot of trust in Paizo, and if Lisa says that the ideas behind the names are far more exciting than it looks at the first glance, I'm willing to wait and see, before I complain. And Kyle indicated that for these classes , too, an open playtest was planned, so I guess that we can help Paizo to make those four as awesome as they can get.
Regarding the Blackguard, I seem to be in the minority here, but I never needed (or used) one. There's no way I would allow my players to play an evil character and in fact I consider the Blackguard to be one of the lamest concepts in the history of roleplaying games. Golarion's Hellknights are exponentially more interesting in my mind so at least as far as I'm concerned they can stay in the trash bin.
Dude, chill. There is nothing to be gained by telling people that the way they play is 'patently absurd'. Your games are not inherently better simply because you have the time to devote to creating your homebrew world. It's great that you do, but realize that without the success of the APs you look down your nose at, there would likely be no Pathfinder RPG.
There is a huge difference between the core rules dictating alignment and the DM telling players they absolutely cannot play a particular alignment!
I don't quite say they absolutely cannot play a CE character in my average campaign, but considering the nature of CE, I all but say it. I don't consider that absurd at all.
I'm wondering exactly how such a DM adjudicates the evil actions of one of the players (even though they may not be of evil alignment). Does he simply say, NO! You can't do that, it's evil?
If we agreed beforehand that this won't be an all-evil game and that characters will generally play nice?
Depends on the action. Could be a "this puts your alignement closer to evil", in cases like "That thug we captured discusts me, I don't care about the sheriff - I'm sending this one straight to hell.", or could be "this character is an NPC now and you get the hell out of my house" in cases like "I don't like that the lady won't just give the apple to me, so I'm torching the whole marketplace with meteor swarm".