So I joined a wilderness based exploration game and asked the DM if it was okay to take drawbacks. Cue the big grin on my face when they said yes.
I went straight for the Warded Against Nature "drawback" so now I'm immune to any wild animals the party encounters.
Are there any other poorly written feats/abilities I could take advantage of? I'm playing a gunslinger magus so I'm already planning on taking the arcane bullets feat chain to bypass all DR and not have to bother with money.
Edit: Oops, meant to put those under Advise.
It might be cheese in the right party. Just keep a couple things in mind.
Animals do not willingly approach within 30 feet of you, unless you or the animal’s master succeeds at a DC 20 Handle Animal, Ride, or wild empathy check. Animal companions, familiars, and mounts granted by your class abilities are immune to this effect.
Your class pets are immune. Your party's class pets aren't, and miscellaneous animals you might want to adopt aren't. So when my druidic BFF wants to help you stay out of melee, your 30' aura of nope will make it hard for her wolf companion or Summoned Animals to do that. If she wants to help ME stay safe - and lord knows I need it as a level 3 sorcerer - then I have to make sure I have a line of movement to her pets that doesn't include your aura of nope.
And I don't relish the thought of needing to pump Handle Animal just to allow my pack mule (whom I need in order to travel with my Strength at literal pillow-fist levels) to walk normally within your stank field.
Not only that, but see what happens when you walk within 30' of the stable in a settlement you enter. It's not just WILD animals that are put off by your stanky aura of no.
No one else in the party has animals, there're no druids, no one's got summon monster, our sorcerer is vermin-blooded and will just be handling vermin anyway, and it's a wilderness exploration game so there's not gonna be any settlements.
Plus it just says they don't willing approach me, nothing saying I can't approach them or that they'll bolt if I do.
Kinda focusing too much on the "drawback" here, what I wanted was similarly written abilities that are equally exploitable.
It's not a loophole if it's literally what's written on the text.
It's all perception.
Loopholes are are written in text, it is either through publisher oversight or applying the text in a narrow, unique context that it becomes a perceived loophole.
All the various broken meta-builds are are literally written in text, by applying them to very narrow, unique context (builds) they exploit perceived loopholes.
Alright, since this isn't getting dropped apparently
What part of 'Animals can't approach within 30 feet of you' is a loophole?
Ray of Enfeeblement says your Strength score cannot go below 1. That is its own sentence, seperate from the penalty to strength. So use it on yourself so Shadows can't kill you from Strength damage.
Strength damage does not reduce your Strength. You accumulate Strength damage points and, if inflicted by a Shadow, you die if this Strength damage equals or exceeds your Strength score.
If both you and your mount have the escape route teamwork feat then you never provoke attacks of opportunity for movement.
Okay now that's a good one
I mean it sounds like you're deliberately doing things to provoke interpretation arguments in your group, and I'd recommend against that. If you're planning to use an ability in a seemingly unintended way, you should be bringing that up with your GM when you take the ability, or you're just going to cause exhausting arguments down the line. There's a reasonable chance that your GM agrees with you and so you get what you want, but if they don't, that doesn't mean that not telling them is an excuse to pull the precise wording of the drawback out as a gotcha later on. They get to interpret the drawback how they like, and if they think it means that the party's mounts will move away from you or that animals won't come close enough for you to hunt, then that's a reasonable interpretation.
The best possible outcome of this is that you'll have one encounter where you pull out your drawback as a defense, and then the GM just stops using animals as encounters. Owlbears instead of bears.
Deleting an entire category of encounters sounds good to me, it's one less enemy type to worry about.
If Paizo has poorly written content available to use, it's not my fault for it being busted RAW.
There is no interpretation to be argued, the drawback does what it does, no more and no less. If it was supposed to actually be a drawback, then it should've been written as such or gotten some sort of errata.
Fair enough, just tell your GM what your plan is upfront then.
Sacred Geometry.
Sacred Geometry.
Oh god, I remember laughing so hard when I read through that feat the first time
I consider not being able to use mounts for travel unless my class grants it, and everyone else's companions and familiars not coming within 30ft of me a pretty big drawback.
No one else has companions and familiars are magical beasts.
|
I consider not being able to use mounts for travel unless my class grants it, and everyone else's companions and familiars not coming within 30ft of me a pretty big drawback.No one else has companions and familiars are magical beasts.
So the party has to play classes/styles in accordance with your build? No ones allowed to uses horses or carriages to travel faster in those early levels?
And Familiars aren’t actually Magical Beasts, “but is now a magical beast for the purpose of effects that depend on its type.”
I decided on taking the drawback after everyone made their characters specifically to avoid that, don't treat me like I'm actively trying to negate peoples fun.
As stated previously, there's a vermin-blooded sorcerer and horses aren't the only draft animal in existence. Duergars are known to use beetles for much the same uses as horses.
I misread that magical beast part then, but that doesn't really affect much aside from the niche situation where an ally's familiar would need to approach me, which I can only imagine would be to deliver a touch spell. If it's come to that, there's already something that's gone horribly wrong.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So when you walk down the street in town, the local merchants' oxen balk and stop. The baron's cavalry start rearing and whinnying. Dogs bark, cats hiss, geese honk.
Boy, you're gonna be popular.
Not only does the drawback not do any of that, it's a wilderness exploration game where there won't be any towns, as was mentioned in the very first sentence of the thread.
Try again.
Try again.
Are you this much fun at the table too? :P
Seriously, if your GM encourages you to break the game, go for it. Sounds like a fun, if not wacky adventure.
If you're being antagonistic towards the GM, I hope they kick you from the table.
Most of the most broken things in pathfinder are based on rules interpretation or theorycraft. I find, generally speaking, the majority of PF1e material to be well written. People fixate on the exceptions.
That said, the dual cursed oracle is always a fun argument.
Not only does the drawback not do any of that, it's a wilderness exploration game where there won't be any towns, as was mentioned in the very first sentence of the thread.
Try again.
actually the drawback is free to have whatever thematic non dice rolling effects the gm chooses to apply to it, which is why you should talk about it first.
Beyond which, anything that you push within 30' is going to want to get OUT of that radius. Thats just a logical consequence of the effect.
@Artofregicide: If you like getting insulted and misrepresented, more power to you, but I don't take that laying down.
There is no antagonism here except for what's being shown to me. I saw something exploitable and took it after taking into consideration the people I'd be playing with and the setting.
If you wanna cause arguments, take it somewhere else.
@Ryan: Rules that arbitrarily change based on DM fiat means there's no point to having rules at all. At that point, this turns into 'magical tea time' as it's so often referred to.
When I take an ability that says it does X, I expected it to do X, not Y and Z when the DM feels like it short of there being an actual reason behind the scenes for it. Did I get cursed to have animals actively move away from me? Did I get a save to resist that curse?
If the rules don't matter, then my choices don't matter and that doesn't sound like fun to me.
Okay let me ask this: What do you want from this thread?
Because your title says you want "cheese-filled readings," which is pretty much flat out stating that you're deliberately looking for interpretations of abilities that will let you subvert the rules. But now you're in here furiously insisting that you want a strictly RAW interpretation of everything, so which is it?
My other question is this: Will you tell your GM, before the game starts, what you expect the Warded Against Nature drawback to do for you?
Cheese and misinterpretation can be separate things believe it or not.
A witches slumber hex is cheesy because of its power level for how early it's accessible and scalability, same with color spray being an encounter ender.
The example given before of Escape Route with a mount is cheesy because it's being used in an unexpected way but is still legal RAW.
Spell Cartridges are cheesy due to unrestricted access to force damage on demand, allowing you to not only bypass DR carte blanche but also to damage incorporeal creatures from the get go, not to mention force effects.
I expect Warded Against Nature to do exactly what it says on the text: "Animals do not willingly approach within 30 feet of you, unless you or the animal’s master succeeds at a DC 20 Handle Animal, Ride, or wild empathy check. Animal companions, familiars, and mounts granted by your class abilities are immune to this effect." It's cheesy-reading only in how broad and unrestrained it's effects are.
I am not hiding anything from the DM, they have access to my character sheet and can look up all my abilities, including drawbacks, at their leisure, as they well should.
If they neglect to read it and get upset with the results, that is no longer on me. I'm using Paizo content, as was allowed and as is written.
Seems to me that there is a needlessly high amount of antagonism toward the OP, rather than answering the question. It’s incredibly obvious what type of thing he’s looking for, based on his given example. A comment or two about how it might be a double-edged sword is fine, but that’s been the vast majority of posts so far. We get it, y’all disapprove, move on.
If they neglect to read it and get upset with the results, that is no longer on me. I'm using Paizo content, as was allowed and as is written.
That's about what I expected to hear. I hope the game runs smoothly for you. Maybe you have some experience with your GM and have established that this is acceptable, but I think that you're setting yourself up for a lot of bickering. I highly suggest that you just talk about what you want your abilities to do to your GM. 99% of the time, it leads to a more fun game
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seems to me that there is a needlessly high amount of antagonism toward the OP...
I think the antagonism cuts both ways.
Also it's probably because most of the posters have had a player like them at their table before.
@Artofregicide: If you like getting insulted and misrepresented, more power to you, but I don't take that laying down.
There is no antagonism here except for what's being shown to me. I saw something exploitable and took it after taking into consideration the people I'd be playing with and the setting.
If you wanna cause arguments, take it somewhere else.
I only see one person looking for an argument, but I've been wrong before. *shrug*
Like I said, if there's no antagonism at your table, more power to you. If everyone is buying into the premise that you're breaking the game (including the GM), cool!
There's plenty of weird, unbalanced things in PF1e. Pre-errata scarred witch doctor. Like I mentioned before, if you have a permissive GM, dual-cursed oracle. Throw in a mesmerist for good measure, and none of your enemies will every make another will save. Butterfly's sting with a rapier and scythe combo. Enchantment and Necromancy are fan favorites for building a zoo of minions. Really, there's an endless supply.
What's your party composition? We can probably focus on what you can achieve with that.
|
There was nothing broken about pre-errata SWD if it was only allowed as an Orc(not a half-orc). It gave a d6 class more HP and a higher Fort save. Your bonus spells per day were still Intelligence based, by the way, so if you tanked IQ(or played an Orc like it was intended for) you weren't gonna have extra spells.
Seems to me that there is a needlessly high amount of antagonism toward the OP...
I agree.
Seems like one side could have maybe made themselves a bit more clear and the other made assumptions and started in with the accusations.I get it. We've all had that player who wanted to play "gotcha'!" with the GM. Who wanted the biggest numbers and for everyone else to marvel at their cleverness and superiority. And they're obnoxious.
But I think many of us have also played Theories & Dragons and come up with some absurd nonsense here and there.
I'll say this about this drawback: if it doesn't mean that--in real life, not in the mechanic-vacuum--animals freak out when you're nearby and they don't like you, I would kind of like to know what it's supposed to represent.
In my games, things make sense. Stories are coherent. And if someone had a drawback that made animals unwilling to get within 30ft of them, I would not feel like I was doing much interpreting at all to have the animals react as described above. That's a pretty massive part of the GM's job, after all; adjudicating player/character action. The rules tell us a lot, but they don't tell us everything.
As for similar craziness, the Great Cleave + Cleaving Finish + bag of rats c
combo stikes me as a "technically true but ridiculous application" of the rules.
Two weapon fighting ninja with offensive defense and a bandoleer of hogtied rats. Use your last attack or two (which have little chance of hitting an enemy) to stab a rat and keep your AC boosted.
Also, if an enemy uses Circle of Death or Sleep on you, point out that your rats will be affected before any PCs will.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I assume a tied-up rat is flat-footed, if not helpless, no?
I like that, though. "Want to be an adventurer? Alright. The first thing you're gonna wanna do is get a whole bunch of rats..."
Maybe that's why so many first adventures start off with clearing rats out of a cellar.