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Right, but the problem is that the way Styles work you can't "switch up your depth" without having the prerequisite Style Feats already. They're the chainiest Feat chains in the game, for better or worse, so there's not really any way to simultaneously make the archetype flexible in depth without making it flexible in breadth as well. At least not a truly satisfactory way IMO.
I'm going to run it as Wildcard Feats ignoring prerequisites for now, since I think that would fix all the issues. Getting a 9th level Feat at 6th or an 11th level one at 10th isn't really a big deal balance-wise, as the Ranger can attest.
That re-write would be pretty solid as well, though I think a much bigger, sweeping change than is really feasible with the way errata work?
Yeah, it's definitely completely impossible. But as a designer, even just late at night and other random times, I'm often thinking of all the possibilities and other ways to handle things. A kludge that works similarly would be to ignore skill rank prereqs if the number of ranks is less than or equal to your monk level, combined with the feat prerequisite semi-lifting I mentioned above. That would be actually more possible to accomplish, and it mostly does the same thing.
Yeah, it'd be helpful (though should probably extend to Ability Score prereqs too, at the very least), but probably pretty wordy.
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Maybe require you to have all the feats from the style chain, but not other prerequisites? That means that in order to take, for example, Grabbing Master, you have to either have Grabbing Style and Grabbing Drag already, or use multiple wildcard feat slots, but you wouldn't have to worry about tons of pre-reqs and if you invested in a style you may be able to use a wildcard slot to access its capstone at level 6 (instead of level 7-9 as typical).
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Mark, I would like your opinion on two feats for the Swashbuckler
Greater Daring-Do: preq: 3rd level
Your exploding d6 improves from requiring a 6 on a d6 to a 5 or 6 an a d6. At 10th level your exploding d6 improves one more step to a 4-6
There are no other changes to the daring-do class ability
The other Feat is a corner feat for the Inspired Blade
Pricing Strike Preq 7th level Inspired Blade
Your fencing style is very deadly. Your critical multiplier increases to 3.
Hi, I actually had a question about Rend itself from way back that I never could resolve. The wording is weird:
Rake (Ex) A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks under certain conditions, typically when it grapples its foe. In addition to the options available to all grapplers, a monster with the rake ability gains two free claw attacks that it can use only against a grappled foe. The bonus and damage caused by these attacks is included in the creature's description. A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn already grappling to use its rake—it can't begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.
Format: rake (2 claws +8, 1d4+2); Location: Special Attacks.
So you get extra natural attacks which you can use when you have a foe Grappled. How do you use them? I.e with what action?
strongly implies that this is another sub-option of the Grapple action that applies when Maintaining.
In that case, outside of Pounce, you would never do Full Attack+Rake, only the Maintain with 2 Rake Attacks.
(and you are getting to do these 2 Rake attacks in place of NORMAL Grapple Option for 1x Natural Attack)
In which case I wonder, now you have to roll separately for Rake attacks AFTER making Grapple/Maintain check?
(the normal Maintain for Damage option of course allows automatic damage, no further roll)
Or is the "in addition to the options" wording misleading, and the Rake attacks are not an additional option,
but merely a parallel effect on top of WHATEVER Maintain option you choose, i.e. on top of Move, Damage (1x Nat Attack), or Pin?
But to use these Rake attacks they need to be Grappled at the time, which runs into issues from the rules for Maintaining/Releasing a Grapple:
If you do not release the grapple, you must continue to make a check each round, as a standard action, to maintain the hold.
Is that a choice at the beginning of the round, and if you do not Drop at beginning of turn, your Standard Action is force-dedicated to Maintain?
(must you IMMEDIATELY do that, or can take Move Action/Swift first?)Or is the causation the reverse, i.e. if you do not Maintain by the end of your turn (or round), then the Grapple expires?
If it is the first, then we seemingly cannot Full Attack+Rake a Grappled target. If the second we can.
OR is Rake still triggered if you Drop, then Full Attack also triggering Grab/Grapple? IMHO you can't, but this isn't 100% clear:
A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn already grappling to use its rake—it can't begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.
The first parameter is fulfilled, but the second isn't (when Dropping then Full Attacking+Grab),
but the structure of that sentence seems to not consider the possibility that you can start your turn Grappling, Drop it, AND begin a Grapple in the same turn....???If you CAN do a Full Attack before dropping the Grapple (implying the Grapple will expire at end of round),
what happens if you hit with another Grab attack? Does it effectively "re-initiate" a Grapple, even though the existing Grapple hadn't been dropped yet?
(and the Condition is set to expire at end of turn since you didn't Maintain)
Does that Grab/Grapple check do much at all? (I guess this ties into questions of Multi-Attack monsters with Constrict focusing 1 target)
.
..
...Sorry for being so verbose... :-)
Faq Friday? have things been fixed yet?
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Question about Force Ward, under the ability it says,
"Whenever you accept burn while using an aether wild talent, you siphon some of the energy from the aether flowing through you and your force ward recovers a number of temporary hit points equal to your character level, up to its current maximum."
Force Ward is listed as a Defense Wild Talent for Aether.
Does this mean you could pop a point into Force Ward and regain temporary hit points? Since no action type is listed for putting burn into Force Ward is it a Standard or Immediate like the other Defense Wild Talents? So potentially you could pop a point of burn in as an immediate action gaining 1/2 level THP + refilling the pool level THP?
Mark, I would like your opinion on two feats for the Swashbuckler
Greater Daring-Do: preq: 3rd level
Your exploding d6 improves from requiring a 6 on a d6 to a 5 or 6 an a d6. At 10th level your exploding d6 improves one more step to a 4-6
There are no other changes to the daring-do class abilityThe other Feat is a corner feat for the Inspired Blade
Pricing Strike Preq 7th level Inspired Blade
Your fencing style is very deadly. Your critical multiplier increases to 3.
I wouldn't recommend either of those. They both do some things with the math that are unpredictable and skew high. Also, the former creates a weird probability distribution with check results (granted it was possible to get those same results with the original, but the probability approaches 0 of rolling so many 6s more than twice as quickly) and the latter is a feat that is only for an archetype.
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Hi Mark! There are dozens of Rules Questions threads relating to rend floating around with no definitive answers, so I thought I'd run some questions by you:
If a creature hits with two claws and deals rend damage, is that damage applied separately from the damage of the two claw attacks, or is it added to the damage total of the claw attack that triggered the rend? I thought it was the former, but then I read the Improved Rending Fury feat (and its Combat Trick variant) and realized the only way a critical hit would be relevant is if you added rend damage to a claw attack. On the other hand, that would also mean that the 1.5xSTR mod bonus to damage on a rend would overlap with your usual STR modifier to claw damage. Is this intended?
Follow-up: If rend damage is added to the damage of the triggering claw attack, is that damage multiplied on a critical hit? I'd assume not, but the above feat makes me wonder.
I was really glad to see that the troll stat blocks in Monster Codex revealed that miscellaneous bonuses to damage don't apply to rend, such as weapon training, enhancement bonuses, etc. That was a big question!
Thanks for your time!
Rend is pretty ambiguous, so it's definitely good fuel for a FAQ. I've generally run it as a separate damage instance, but you are correct that Improved Rending Fury has weird wording (it is honestly weird to mention not multiplying on a crit no matter how you slice it; I've never seen rend multiplying on a crit to begin with, and extra dice don't multiply by default).
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Hi, I actually had a question about Rend itself from way back that I never could resolve. The wording is weird:
Rake (Ex) A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks under certain conditions, typically when it grapples its foe. In addition to the options available to all grapplers, a monster with the rake ability gains two free claw attacks that it can use only against a grappled foe. The bonus and damage caused by these attacks is included in the creature's description. A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn already grappling to use its rake—it can't begin a grapple and rake in the same turn.
Format: rake (2 claws +8, 1d4+2); Location: Special Attacks.
So you get extra natural attacks which you can use when you have a foe Grappled. How do you use them? I.e with what action?
On one hand, the "In addition to the options available to all grapplers" wording
strongly implies that this is another sub-option of the Grapple action that applies when Maintaining.
In that case, outside of Pounce, you would never do Full Attack+Rake, only the Maintain with 2 Rake Attacks.
(and you are getting to do these 2 Rake attacks in place of NORMAL Grapple Option for 1x Natural Attack)
In which case I wonder, now you have to roll separately for Rake attacks AFTER making Grapple/Maintain check?
(the normal Maintain for Damage option of course allows automatic damage, no further roll)Or is the "in addition to the options" wording misleading, and the Rake attacks are not an additional option,
but merely a parallel effect on top of WHATEVER Maintain option you choose, i.e. on top of Move, Damage (1x Nat Attack), or Pin?But the wording isn't very clearly stating you make these attacks when you take the Grapple ACTION, it is just saying you "gain extra natural attacks / two free claw attacks". Normally you have to make a Full Attack to use multiple natural attacks, so Full Attack would seem to be the way to make use of these extra attacks atop the normal...
While they both share being ambiguous abilities often associated with claws, your post is actually about rake. The way I run it is that once per round, when you begin your turn grappling and maintain the grapple, you get two additional free claw attacks. It's definitely ambiguous, as you have shown.
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Faq Friday? have things been fixed yet?
I'll make sure you guys know when it is!
Question about Force Ward, under the ability it says,
"Whenever you accept burn while using an aether wild talent, you siphon some of the energy from the aether flowing through you and your force ward recovers a number of temporary hit points equal to your character level, up to its current maximum."
Force Ward is listed as a Defense Wild Talent for Aether.
Does this mean you could pop a point into Force Ward and regain temporary hit points? Since no action type is listed for putting burn into Force Ward is it a Standard or Immediate like the other Defense Wild Talents? So potentially you could pop a point of burn in as an immediate action gaining 1/2 level THP + refilling the pool level THP?
As you said below, with no action stated, default should be standard. Since a defense wild talent is a wild talent and force ward is aether, it does indeed count, so you can use it as a trick to "recover" hp, for instance if you were level 10 with 4 burn in force ward for 30 temp max but had none left, you could take 3 burn to take 30 nonlethal, refill the ward, and add 15 more, for a net gain of 15. It hurts badly but is potentially a lifesaver in corner cases. Clever idea!
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Mark, does a inspired blade swasbuckler regain panache when he rolls a critical threat with his rapier when using his Parry and Reposite ability?
If she confirms a critical with riposte, she gets panache. Parry doesn't do criticals. So in total, yes, she can, just like a normal swash. My swash gets back the panache she spends on a parry from the riposte fairly often (about 25% of the time).
EDIT: Xel is completely correct.
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I have an idea for an Earth/Aether Tank since I think they work synergistically. Figure you start with the bare minimum burn in Force Ward and use additional burn to not only boost it but recharge it as well.
Yep, aether/earth is pretty rad. It's a good way to prevent grab and things like that.
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When storing a spell in a Ring of Spell Storing, does the caster have to be wearing the ring?
Can permanency be used on a spell cast from a Ring of Spell Storing?
Magic items generally involve the wearer/holder/user unless stated otherwise, so likely the spellcaster should be wearing the ring, but either way, they can just take it off and give it to someone else (and the ring's description of finding it makes it clear that you can trade it). Technically permanency says "you first cast the desired spell," so the question is really whether or not you are casting the spell in the ring or using an activated item ability. The answer to that also affects AoOs and a bunch of other stuff.
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Hello Mr. Seifter I was wondering if I could ask a question regarding Greater Serpent Lash (rival guide). one persons view this allows someone to move another being 35 ft (essentially a +35 to cmb rolls to reposition) even if they just beat the cmd by one. was this the intended way the feat works(also requires no reposition feats)? their is a player who repositions characters next to the bbeg so they may full attack, or positioning the enemy 15ft in the air so they land prone.
thanks in advance.
I'm interested in the sudden change on stance for the Extra class ability feats. (Aka there aren't many of them in Occult Adventures and the vigilante might not have them at all.) Could you talk me through the though process behind it?
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I'm interested in the sudden change on stance for the Extra class ability feats. (Aka there aren't many of them in Occult Adventures and the vigilante might not have them at all.) Could you talk me through the though process behind it?
From what I remember being said in the vigilante discussion where this was brought up it's something along this line.
We want extra X feats to be kinda niche, something that you could take but isn't required, but right now extra X feat is the feat to take for a lot of classes. That (every feat/your first 5 feats) could all be extra X and that it's your best choice is something we don't want. We wanted the choice between the options to matter, and for it not to be easy to just have all the options. Because if most of these classes all take extra X it's limiting versatility. So since we want you taking feats for feats (or class abilities for feats) instead of feats for the generally stronger class abilities, we feel that the extra X we've made before are too good and we wish we could go back an not release them, but moving forward classes will either not have them, or have them with penalties (like the kineticist) to make them a niche choice.
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I'm interested in the sudden change on stance for the Extra class ability feats. (Aka there aren't many of them in Occult Adventures and the vigilante might not have them at all.) Could you talk me through the though process behind it?
Chess Pwn has some of it. Basically, when Pathfinder was newish and the APG came out with those feats, something crucial hadn't been decided yet (much to the rogue's detriment). The decision that hadn't been made was "should selectable class features be better than feats, worse than feats, or balanced with feats." Unfortunately, some classes (like rogues) had ones that were worse than feats (and at best you could use them to get feats), where nearly everyone else had ones that were way better than feats. Incidentally, I think that with the way we have feats and class features set up right now, better than feats is clearly the best option, since it makes the things the class uniquely gets more special, compared to feats that everyone can take. In any case, once you've decided that class features should be better than feats, one of the side effects of that decision is that a feat that gives you one of those class features is inherently an unfair trade. It's actually such an unfair trade that it leads to weird situations with archetypes where, while normally trading out higher level class versions of a class feature should give you more powerful abilities than lower, if you trade out low level versions of an ability like revelation or hex all in a row (starting from the first), it actually costs more because it prevents taking the Extra feats for the levels until you get the first one.
I think one of the guide-writers for kineticist accidentally explained it best, when he said: "Extra Wild Talent (green): For most other classes special abilities, this would be blue or purple" (this was for one of the post-Treantmonk guides that added purple as a new color over blue, where blue was the previous "you must take this" color, purple means "you you really have to take this seriously or you are weakening yourself big time"). While the fact that it wasn't purple had a vaguely negative connotation in the guide, honestly green (the color of "this is a great choice, but not a necessity; take it if you have some space for it") is the best color around because it means more options for strong builds and more creativity than if there's lots of cookie-cutter blue and purple feats (and honestly, in kineticists I've seen around, they've been taking it more than usual for something marked green in a guide; it may still even be a light blue). Probably a class that had almost everything in it marked as green would be the holy grail of flexibility and build creativity.
So that's sort of a summary of the gist of the PDT discussion. The other members might be able to explain it better.
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Hello Mr. Seifter I was wondering if I could ask a question regarding Greater Serpent Lash (rival guide). one persons view this allows someone to move another being 35 ft (essentially a +35 to cmb rolls to reposition) even if they just beat the cmd by one. was this the intended way the feat works(also requires no reposition feats)? their is a player who repositions characters next to the bbeg so they may full attack, or positioning the enemy 15ft in the air so they land prone.
thanks in advance.
It's not in the RPG line, so take this with more grains of salt than usual, but it seems clear to me that the line in question is a relaxation of a requirement that they stay in your reach, not an automatic guarantee that any success lets you put them wherever you want.
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I thought rend adds to the damage of the second claw?
And as a matter of fact, I found the clarification from James Jacobs HERE
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I thought rend adds to the damage of the second claw?
And as a matter of fact, I found the clarification from James Jacobs HERE
JJ is not a rules guy, and when he answers a question like that, it's usually just how he would run it instead of what the rule actually is.
As written, it's not clear if rend is separate damage or bonus damage applied to the second claw attack.
While they both share being ambiguous abilities often associated with claws, your post is actually about rake.
:-)
Thanks for sharing your take on it, I guess it's one of those cases where the RAW isn't quite ideal no matter how you look at it.It's probably true that the "bonus attacks on top of Maintain" approach has the benefit of not introducing broader complications/implications re: Grapple.
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Would the AC bonus from a Defending magic weapon stack with the armor bonus from Archmage mythic ability Enduring Armor?
That should work for certain, since defending is not an armor bonus and enduring armor is.
Would the AC bonus from a Defending magic weapon stack with the armor bonus from Archmage mythic ability Enduring Armor?That should work for certain, since defending is not an armor bonus and enduring armor is.
but remember it's not official. This is just Marks personal view of things. You should always add, "In my personal non-official view ..." ;)
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but remember it's not official. This is just Marks personal view of things. You should always add, "In my personal non-official view ..." ;)Would the AC bonus from a Defending magic weapon stack with the armor bonus from Archmage mythic ability Enduring Armor?That should work for certain, since defending is not an armor bonus and enduring armor is.
Agreed. It's my personal view that it works for certain, but that's still only a personal view.
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Mark, the Divine Tracker archetype for Ranger is granted blessings like a Warpriest. Would a Divine Tracker who multiclassed into Warpriest receive four blessings or only two?
Thanks! :)
It seems like it would be similar to domains for a cleric/inquisitor, and thus you'd get up to four blessings, chosen from your deity's domains, and the class levels would not stack for determining the effects of the blessings.
EDIT: Read it wrong! Bad Mark, no skimming.
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It seems like it would be similar to domains for a cleric/inquisitor, and thus you'd get up to four blessings, chosen from your deity's domains, and the class levels would not stack for determining the effects of the blessings.Mark, the Divine Tracker archetype for Ranger is granted blessings like a Warpriest. Would a Divine Tracker who multiclassed into Warpriest receive four blessings or only two?
Thanks! :)
I thought that was the opposite of the Inquisitor/Cleric interaction. Aren't Inquisitor-Clerics forced to share at least the one domain that the Inquisitor has? And levels stack for all domain abilities (but not bonus spells)?
I'll grab a PRD source in a min and edit it in.
EDIT:
If the inquisitor has cleric levels, one of her two domain selections must be the same domain selected as an inquisitor. Levels of cleric and inquisitor stack for the purpose of determining domain powers and abilities, but not for bonus spells.
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It seems like it would be similar to domains for a cleric/inquisitor, and thus you'd get up to four blessings, chosen from your deity's domains, and the class levels would not stack for determining the effects of the blessings.Mark, the Divine Tracker archetype for Ranger is granted blessings like a Warpriest. Would a Divine Tracker who multiclassed into Warpriest receive four blessings or only two?
Thanks! :)
I thought that was the opposite of the Inquisitor/Cleric interaction. Aren't Inquisitor-Clerics forced to share at least the one domain that the Inquisitor has? And levels stack for all domain abilities (but not bonus spells)?
I'll grab a PRD source in a min and edit it in.
Correct, I misread it in haste. This is how blessings would probably work then too!
I think they stack for bonus spells, but you only get spells you have spell levels for (So it may be a moot point)
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Is there any explicit decision not to make more Samurai archetypes?
I've noticed several Antipaladin ones pop up occasionally but Samurai has been pretty dry. it also applies to the Ninja but, yannow, I just like the Samurai chassis more.
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^Ninja has the advantage of being able to take some Rogue archetypes. Samurai as well, I believe.
Mark, can a Kineticist use the Weapon Versatility Feat (this again comes down to what "Wielding" means...are we ever going to get a FAQ/Blog on that one?)?
This is largely relevant for Water and Air Kineticists. Can I Wind Slash people?
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^Ninja has the advantage of being able to take some Rogue archetypes. Samurai as well, I believe.
Mark, can a Kineticist use the Weapon Versatility Feat (this again comes down to what "Wielding" means...are we ever going to get a FAQ/Blog on that one?)?
This is largely relevant for Water and Air Kineticists. Can I Wind Slash people?
Yeah, antipaladins definitely can't so they need their own to have any.
As for Weapon Versatility, wielding may be ambiguous overall, but for kineticist, it definitely doesn't work. "The kineticist is never considered to be wielding or gripping the kinetic blast (regardless of effects from form infusions; see Infusion)"
Balls. That's disappointing, considering how common the slashing water/air thing is in media.
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Balls. That's disappointing, considering how common the slashing water/air thing is in media.
If it did work, people would be likely to try to do bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing damage with fire (or cold or any other energy) too. Honestly for water and air it's pretty reasonable. For an energy it isn't. The feat itself should have said it changes you from one of those three (B/P/S) to another, but it has messier wording.
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Since there's already been lots of Occult questions in here; Mark, do you know if it's intended that the Occultist's Sudden Speed Transmutation ability is untyped? Stacking it and Expeditious Retreat seems like it would be quite fun, but I doubt that it was intended to let me have a low-level character running around a fight with a speed of 90'
Yeah, antipaladins definitely can't so they need their own to have any.
Just for the record, there isn't a single Cavalier archetype that can be used on the Samurai except the Wave Rider and that's crazy specific.
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I wouldn't recommend either of those. They both do some things with the math that are unpredictable and skew high. Also, the former creates a weird probability distribution with check results (granted it was possible to get those same results with the original, but the probability approaches 0 of rolling so many 6s more than twice as quickly) and the latter is a feat that is only for an archetype.Mark, I would like your opinion on two feats for the Swashbuckler
Greater Daring-Do: preq: 3rd level
Your exploding d6 improves from requiring a 6 on a d6 to a 5 or 6 an a d6. At 10th level your exploding d6 improves one more step to a 4-6
There are no other changes to the daring-do class abilityThe other Feat is a corner feat for the Inspired Blade
Pricing Strike Preq 7th level Inspired Blade
Your fencing style is very deadly. Your critical multiplier increases to 3.
To be fair, there is some precedent. Painful Anchor can only be taken by an oathbound paladin with the Oath Against Fiends.
I believe there are a couple of others floating around as well. ^_^