Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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You bolded the wrong parts of the AR requirement. You overlooked this part:
a PC must first participate in an adventure that takes place partially on the plane and successfully complete at least one encounter on that plane
As far as I know, there aren't any adventures with encounters on Nirvana and Elysium, so you can't normally take those planar infusions. This boon seems intended to enable you to, although the phrasing is a bit obscure.
Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic
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Boon 18-19 #4 Celestial Traveler
Between your missions for the Pathfinder Society, you seek opportunities to connect with the Upper Planes. You may spend your downtime and 4 PP to travel to either Nirvana or Elysium. If you do so, you may select one of the following benefits, crossing the other off your Chronicle sheet.
▫ Celestial Spark: You gain a +1 bonus on saving throws against the spells and spell-like abilities of outsiders with the evil subtype. Additionally, you may check the box that precedes this boon to send forth a surge of channeled energy that harms evil outsiders, as you were a cleric of your level with the Alignment Channel feat. If you already possess the Alignment Channel feat for evil outsiders, you may instead check the box to increase the damage you deal by 2d6.
▫ Planar Conduit: You have infused your body, mind, and soul with the plane’s essence. You gain access to the Planar Infusion, Improved Planar Infusion, and Greater Planar Infusion feats for Nirvana and Elysium (Pathfinder RPG Planar Adventures 31) as if the feats appeared on the Additional Resources page."Additional Resources Planar Adventures
To qualify to take the Planar Infusion feat, Afterward, the PC can spend her Downtime and 2 PP to attune herself to that plane.
How is possible than ussing a boon cost you double that normal rule to get access to Planar Infusion?
Is Celestial Traveler the worst boon even created by Organiced Play?
It allows you to skip a big prerequisite, as there aren't that many scenarios located in Nirvana and Elysium.
Also the Celestial Spark is quite decent.
So IMHO: No it's not the worst boon ever created.
[EDIT]Ninja-ed by Lau[/EDIT]
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It's not as bad as Xenophobia, which makes you torch a race boon for a pretty piddly return.
(The one person I know who could exploit that boon properly is my FLGS's owner, who has a box of unused boons for races that have since been opened up for play without needing one. But he hates bookkeeping too much to bother.)
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It's not as bad as Xenophobia, which makes you torch a race boon for a pretty piddly return.
(The one person I know who could exploit that boon properly is my FLGS's owner, who has a box of unused boons for races that have since been opened up for play without needing one. But he hates bookkeeping too much to bother.)
Oh no, Xenophobia is totes awesome. I had a friend who made a ranger/Pathfinder delver who shoved every race boon he received onto that character sans the one he used to make the PC (he was a Wang). That dude had a bonus to hit damn near everything.
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Adopted Weapon Training is the worst boon in my collection.
"You have spent an extended period of time training in a culture other than your own, and as a result, you have learned that population's weapon styles to the exclusion of all others. You gain the weapon familiarity racial trait of one of the following races: dwarf, elf, gnome, halfing, or half-orc.
This specialization comes at a price, and you suffer a –1 penalty on attack rolls made with manufactured weapons other than those granted by any weapon familiarity racial traits you possess. You ignore this penalty when using a weapon that benefits from any Weapon Focus feat or weapon training class feature you may have."
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I don't think there's necessarily a "bad" boon, though some are certainly more useful than others. And many are just fun role-playing flavor.
The major (usability) problem I have with Xenophobia is that the boon races tend to not show up in scenarios.
So yeah, you've got +2 bluff/perception/sense motive/attack/damage against wayangs, tengu, aasimar, tiefling, ganzi, dhampir, fetchlings, and sylphs... but do you ever SEE one of those? Or is it "core races and bestiary monsters" all the way?
You see a lot of NPCs whose type is outsider (native). You only need one race boon to get the xenophobia vs. all of them.
Adopted Weapon Training is the worst boon in my collection.
Adopted Weapon Training goes great with the Adopted trait. I was amused to run into the "world's tallest gnome" at a convention a few years ago. (A half-orc who had been adopted by gnomes and whose primary weapon was a gnome ripsaw glaive. I think it was an urban barbarian.)
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I mean, if you're planning to use a particular weapon, then a penalty on other weapons isn't really a problem. Getting a dwarven long hammer on a non-dwarf, or elven curved blade on a non elf, or (*shudder*) butchering axe on a non-half-orc is pretty good. Certainly not the worst boon I've seen.
Erratic Luck is one of the worst I've seen in practice, because it's so random to fulfill the requirements.
You may be especially lucky, but recently you have experienced only bad luck. Once per scenario, if you roll (and keep) a natural 1 for any saving throw against a non-harmless effect during a scenario before rolling a natural 20 for a saving throw during the same adventure, record the name of the adventure and a brief description of the event below. After recording five such unlucky situations, a god or goddess of luck gives you a change of fortunes. As long as you have yet to roll a natural 20 on any saving throw during the course of the scenario, you may re-roll the first saving throw of the scenario for which you roll a natural 1.
So five times you have to roll a 1 on a save, keep the roll, and not have already rolled a 20 on a save that session. Then, if you roll a 1 and haven't rolled a 20, you can rereoll once per scenario. I mean, I guess if you actually manage to fulfill the requirements, then it's worth it. But it's really convoluted to get there.
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I don't mind the randomness of fulfilling the requirements for Erratic Luck. It could definitely have benefited (like quite a few Paizo published materials) from a pass by someone with a probability and statistics background to see how likely it is to be fulfilled.
The calculations depend on how many saving throws you have to make in an adventure and get pretty complicated quickly. The short version is that if you stick with it from your very first scenario you may succeed by the time you are hitting 9th or 10th level.
If you have to make 10 saving throws in an adventure (which is higher than normal), you have only about a 1/3 chance of rolling a 1 before rolling a 20, 1/3 chance of rolling a 20 first, and another 1/3 chance of rolling neither in 10 rolls. So at 10 saving throws per scenario, the math says it will take you 14 scenarios (almost 5 levels) to have a 50/50 chance of having completed the boon.
However, if you calculate based on a more reasonable 5 saving throws in an average scenario, you're up to 23 scenarios before you get to a 50% completion chance.
And that's just to get to that 50/50 chance. It's not even close to guaranteed by that point.
If I was writing the boon I would make it a "succeed once/use once" recycling benefit. When you roll a 1 before a 20, write down the scenario name. You can use the benefit once, then cross off that scenario name. You can then gain the benefit again if you once again roll a 1 before a 20. Repeat as desired.
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Yeah, that would be better. Keep in mind on the existing boon, you have to keep the result of the nat-1. So not only do you need to roll enough of them, but you have to decide not to use your folio/shirt reroll on any of them. Which may mean enduring confusion, fear, paralysis, hold/dominate person, etc. just to be able to mark off a line on the boon.
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I mean, if you're planning to use a particular weapon, then a penalty on other weapons isn't really a problem. Getting a dwarven long hammer on a non-dwarf, or elven curved blade on a non elf, or (*shudder*) butchering axe on a non-half-orc is pretty good. Certainly not the worst boon I've seen.
No need to tremble, friend; butchering axes aren't included in orc weapon familiarity. ^_^
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I mean, if you're planning to use a particular weapon, then a penalty on other weapons isn't really a problem. Getting a dwarven long hammer on a non-dwarf, or elven curved blade on a non elf, or (*shudder*) butchering axe on a non-half-orc is pretty good. Certainly not the worst boon I've seen.No need to tremble, friend; butchering axes aren't included in orc weapon familiarity. ^_^
Ah, right. Thanks for reminding me. The hornbow, then. Which is less fearsome, but nice to get as a martial weapon (if you have access to it at all).