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Mazed posted:Cyre's pretty much smack in the middle of everything, and the nice thing about the Mournland is that whatever the gently caress is going on with it can be instantly made a plot hook for any Eberron campaign. That they left what caused it so ambiguous was a truly good design choice. I am finding that the 3.5 books for Pathfinder are super cheap on Amazon so I bought a few (one of them for 38 cents) and I'm going to start working up an idea for what to do in this game. The first thing that comes to mind is starting them off doing something that seems very movie-like. I want to have the PCs break into a train together to steal something. I hope this will kind of convey that feeling of shifting alignment in pathfinder.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 07:38 |
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# ? May 17, 2024 01:22 |
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kannonfodder posted:Cavaliers are garbage hey hey now, cavaliers aren't complete garbage at least at low levels. The big problem is playing a medium sized creature as a cavalier is impossible thanks to dungeons so you're forced to play a halfling which makes them... pretty substandard. Also charge is hosed up and annoying in pathfinder, reach is also annoying and broken which means until you get ride by attack you can't use a lance, charge and have your mount attack too so um crap, you might be right. Could be worse, friend of mine is playing a gunslinger which seems to be the worst class of all time! adaz fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Jun 3, 2012 |
# ? Jun 3, 2012 08:41 |
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adaz posted:Could be worse, friend of mine is playing a gunslinger which seems to be the worst class of all time! Hey they aren't a monk. Man, gunslinger vs monk, I wonder who wins. Or loses. Or which counts as winning and which counts as losing.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 09:41 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:Hey they aren't a monk. I'd put my money on the monk. Ki powers are much more useful than grit deeds, a maneuver monk is going to have a much easier time grappling or tripping (or, hell, disarming) the gunslinger, and the fact that guns can resolve against touch AC won't matter at all since a monk's touch AC is still just as high as their normal AC. Special fist attacks and quinggong powers just make it that much more favorable for the monk. As far as I can tell, there's just not any way the gunslinger is going to end the combat within one round unless they happen to roll a crit, while monks have a variety of tools to disable or significantly cripple a gunslinger on the first turn. The gunslinger might be able to do it if they're ignoring the gun entirely and just striking with some big fuckoff melee weapon like a fighter with less feats, but trying to play as a gunslinger would just get them killed. If you meant which is more useful to a party... hell, I'd still go with monk if only because they get spell access and a marginally better selection of class skills. Speaking of gunslinger class skills, who the gently caress decided not to give them disable device? I'd expect poo poo like locks to come pretty naturally to any class that comes with the ability to craft and repair firearms. lesbian baphomet fucked around with this message at 11:17 on Jun 3, 2012 |
# ? Jun 3, 2012 11:11 |
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MoonwalkInvincible posted:Speaking of gunslinger class skills, who the gently caress decided not to give them disable device? I'd expect poo poo like locks to come pretty naturally to any class that comes with the ability to craft and repair firearms.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 11:49 |
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I wouldn't mind seeing what the Gunslinger and Soulknife were like before the anti-fun brigade got their grubby shitmitts on them. I've been loading up on houserules in my own game and figure I might as well take it a step further.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 15:01 |
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A friend of mine just allow them to have revolvers early instead of just regular pistols as well as making the bullets cheaper. Still has problems, but not as much as before.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 16:09 |
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Fudge Handsome posted:I wouldn't mind seeing what the Gunslinger and Soulknife were like before the anti-fun brigade got their grubby shitmitts on them. I've been loading up on houserules in my own game and figure I might as well take it a step further. Gunslinger was always bad. There were a few fan-made fixes to it when it was in beta that ranged from fairly good to amazingly kickass, but they were all, you know, ignored. 'Fraid I no longer have the alpha documents for the Soulknife. The one ability I remember best was letting them hit with both weapons if they were dual wielding whenever they'd just hit with one, thus fixing almost the entirety of TWF problems. I think they also had a pounce-like for THW fighting too, and a ton of ways to regen their psionic attack thingie in-combat without wasting a full turn on it, so you could actually make a spring-attack-alike fighter without doing piddly middling damage.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 22:45 |
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Cavaliers are not crap. Toting a large creature through a dungeon can be tricky or sometimes impossible, At earlier levels hopefully you have someone in the party willing to throw a few casts of Mount at you, or else you will struggle a bit without your horse. But not too much later a wand of Mount or Phantom Steed can provide you with a pretty solid, if temporary, fix. Any time you're with your proper mount out in the open you are dealing insane amounts of hp damage. I know that hp damage to a single target is not always the best strategy, but a well built cavalier will be one-shotting monsters well above its pay grade at any level, and that's always satisfying. Taking out the Tarrasque with a single charge without a crit and only rolling average damage at the very least qualifies as 'not crap'. Their Challenge ability is alright, and the Banner is underwhelming but not bad for a mostly passive ability. Tactician however is very cool. Some of the teamwork feats are quite good, and you can give them to your allies without your allies needing the prerequisites. In particular this means Barbarian dipped half-orc cavaliers can give amplified rage to their mount, so by the time you have an 8th level Sword Cavalier rage is effectively adding 16 to your strength, which is just good clean fun. Of course your mount can also be learning Dragon Style Kung Fu (no really, even if your DM makes you give the horse improved unarmed strike first it is still awesome) allowing it to charge through allied squares. I like cavaliers, and I wish more people played them, but I do find a lot of players are worried about having one of their main class features absent in a lot of dungeons. Though, my Druid players never seem to worry about toting their tigers (or lately--dinosaurs) around dungeons.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 23:13 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:Gunslinger was always bad. There were a few fan-made fixes to it when it was in beta that ranged from fairly good to amazingly kickass, but they were all, you know, ignored. Do you happen to have any of those fan fixes to Gunslinger, though? Or links to them? I'd be interested in seeing that.
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 23:39 |
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edit: poo poo, ignore this post, literally thought I was in the WoD thread!!
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 23:43 |
ProfessorCirno posted:Hey they aren't a monk. The player loses. I guess SKR wins (ergo, everyone who likes good games loses).
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# ? Jun 3, 2012 23:53 |
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Idran posted:Do you happen to have any of those fan fixes to Gunslinger, though? Or links to them? I'd be interested in seeing that. There were two I remember most, one for it's fairly bizarre name, and the other because it was a full revamp of the class. The first is the, as I mentioned, bizarrely named, the "pickles solution." I have no idea why. It was similar to how the current Gunslinger gets "Dead Shot," only it was way better and didn't cost grit. The idea is that you roll all your attacks and all your damage as you would normally as a full round action, but they counted as a single shot. Unlike the current Dead Shot ability, it cost no grit, and it added everything together as if you had made multiple shots, not just the base damage. The second one was a full revamp I haven't looked over since I stopped being as into Pathfinder, but I remember at the time being really impressed by it. It can be found here. It changes most things about the class and makes the grit mechanic a lot more dynamic as well as building specialty abilities based around different types of guns. I think the overall problem the gunslinger has is actually very related to the monk - the 3.5 and 3.0 monk, to be precise. How it looks and how it plays are dramatically different. When the 3.0 monk was first shown, lots of people thought it was horrible overpowered. Look at that big fat list of abilities! Look at all the attacks it can make! It gains benefits from like all your stats! Of course, in actual play, once you saw the math behind the class, it became very apparent the monk was dramatically underpowered. Gunslingers are the same. He's got a big fat list of abilities - and you can recharge your points!!! - and he can hit touch AC at close range, and his ranged weapons are more powerful then a crossbow. For people who never look at the math or never examine the class critically it can look really potent. For people that do look at the math and do examine the class critically...not quite. ( Also it was really depressing to scan the old beta forums and see people go "I'm sure they'll have a ton of feats and other cool stuff for gunslingers in the actual book!" All the cool feats and abilities in UC were for spellcasters using guns. )
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 00:20 |
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grah posted:
Well, not being able to use your main class feature in a dungeon is annoying as gently caress, and even as a halfling on a wolf i've had to dismount in some dungeons because you had to squeeze and I guess mounts can't squeeze. The impracticalities of charging in confined spaces really hurts them too, and the fact you can't use a lance until level 3 when you get ride by attack is also really annoying. I don't know, it's a class that is really close to being awesome but so far haven't been overwhelmed. It seems like half the time i'm just a generic fighter on a mount because I can't use the cool abilities thanks to positioning/space issues. I'll give it time though. Really though I'd kill for 4e's charge rules. adaz fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jun 4, 2012 |
# ? Jun 4, 2012 00:38 |
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ProfessorCirno posted:The second one was a full revamp I haven't looked over since I stopped being as into Pathfinder, but I remember at the time being really impressed by it. It can be found here. It changes most things about the class and makes the grit mechanic a lot more dynamic as well as building specialty abilities based around different types of guns. Oh, that does look interesting. I'll have to keep that in mind. Also the cavalier talk is making me curious, how would they pan out as a class in a dungeon-free campaign? Something wholly overland or at least nearly so, like I've heard Kingmaker is for the most part. It sounds like the majority of the issues with them are the problems with having a mount in the average campaign, but do they hold up as a class if they actually have full access to their abilities?
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 00:45 |
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adaz posted:Well, not being able to use your main class feature in a dungeon is annoying as gently caress, and even as a halfling on a wolf i've had to dismount in some dungeons because you had to squeeze and I guess mounts can't squeeze. The impracticalities of charging in confined spaces really hurts them too, and the fact you can't use a lance until level 3 when you get ride by attack is also really annoying. Mounts can definitely squeeze in 3.5 and I don't think Pathfinder changed it. There was even the Massed Charge feat to allow multiple mounts to share a space without having to take squeeze penalties. I also don't see why you can't use a lance. Yes you'd forfeit your horse's attacks but that's probably worth it for double damage at low levels. I don't know the specifics of your campaign but if it is very dungeon and tunnel heavy, well, that is not ideal for a cavalier. In a more open high-plains adventure type campaign, they really can shine.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 01:02 |
adaz posted:I guess mounts can't squeeze. I am pretty sure this is wrong. Don't buy it without a citation. I'm not quite sure how mount attacks stack up against lance doubling (particularly since that doubling isn't just dice, but includes strength and power attack). What mount you're using could make a significant difference, too. Anyone think of a way to reduce size without destroying strength? Making a Small character Tiny would solve the reach/no reach issue.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 01:14 |
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Mounts can squeeze just fine though, like any other creature. If the door or hallway can let a medium creature through it, a large creature can squeeze through it, and most spaces have enough room that you can short-charge at the very least (I think you might even be able to charge down a hallway you're squeezing through, it just costs double movement, which is still going to put you on par with non-mounted characters since mounts can have 50 or 60 ft speed normally).
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 01:21 |
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So a full adventure path is supposed to take the players from 1 to 16 right?
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 01:32 |
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Herr Tog posted:So a full adventure path is supposed to take the players from 1 to 16 right? But yeah, the adventure paths are 6 books, usually with level ranges of roughly 1-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 15-17. Obviously it'll vary based on how much your party actually does, and if they miss a bunch of bonus experience or something, the next book usually includes some optional introductory encounters to get them up to the level they need to be.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 02:19 |
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I see. Now I am very new to Pathfinder so I must ask if there is multitasking and if you have to level up each class individually. If so then is it possible that a party may go through multiple adventure paths?
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 03:51 |
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Herr Tog posted:I see. Now I am very new to Pathfinder so I must ask if there is multitasking and if you have to level up each class individually. If so then is it possible that a party may go through multiple adventure paths? The level of a character is the sum of the levels in whatever class they're in. So a Fighter 14 is the same level as a Fighter 7/Rogue 7. So in a sense they do have what you're talking about, but not in the way you were thinking, I imagine. The only way I can think having a party go through multiple adventure paths is if you had the same group of level 1 characters starting out each time, like self-made pregens. Which might actually be kind of interesting? But in terms of the same party going through one and then picking up the next, not really.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 03:58 |
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Thank you very much.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 04:01 |
ProfessorCirno posted:Hey they aren't a monk. This came up last night in a Pathfinder society game. Minus my barbarian/ninja, the Monk would have pounded the gunslinger since in the off chance he hit the touch AC the monk just deflected.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 04:25 |
WAFFLEHOUND posted:This came up last night in a Pathfinder society game. Minus my barbarian/ninja, the Monk would have pounded the gunslinger since in the off chance he hit the touch AC the monk just deflected. I suppose these kind of comparisons are relevant since you end up fighting NPCs often, but I'm pretty sure Cirno was talking about gunslinger vs. monk in a Shittiest Class Contest, not a fight between them.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 04:52 |
Monks are fun as hell to play, no matter how bad they are. My friend was playing his gunslinger and I was just wondering "How is that fun?" but he liked it so vv Then again my plan is Brb 1/Ninja 4/Shadowdancer for the rest, so I can't really talk about not making bad characters. Being able to sustain a rage by drinking is awesome though. Rage one round, hit, drink, use ninja abilities to rearrange myself around the opponent, five foot, hit, drink, etc.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 05:03 |
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:I am pretty sure this is wrong. Don't buy it without a citation. Er, I meant mounts can't squeeze charge as that would reduce your movement ergo by the charge rules not be kosher. To be fair we just happened to go into two dungeons made for small creatures probably exaggerating the issue. We're playing the five kingdoms pathfinder campaign thing, which has a lot of area outside we've just been going into a bunch of random dungeons which happen to be super tiny as they were kobold or other small creature hangouts. The lance thing, math wise, doesn't work out at low levels you're better getting two attacks. However, as I mentioned, when you get ride by attack it lets you wield a lance and charge - at least by the consensus of our group - and get your mounts attacks in. While you have to attack from the first square you are able to (2 squares away with your lance) you can continue your movement after your attack so your mount can then move a square closer and get his attack in. You can get it at level 3, so it isn't a super huge deal I guess.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 07:08 |
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I'm honestly not sure why everyone shits on Monks. So long as you ignore the stupid 'Can't enchant Brass Knuckles and use them to make unarmed attacks with your full unarmed damage' rule from that one stupid guy, they're pretty powerful. Hell, at level six I'm doing 2d8+6+2d6 Damage assuming I hit with both strikes (Which isn't hard), and I have 20 AC. I'm pretty sure that's at least average for level 6, more than enough to keep up with the fighter. Also, having +20 Acrobatics with another possible +20 from High Jump at level 6 is nothing to sneeze at.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 09:46 |
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Level 6 Fighter Str 20(with item) Dex 14 A +1 Greatsword +1 Full Plate Using Power Attack and no other feats(which he'd have tons of) This works out to: To hit: +11/+6 Damage 2d6+13 per hit(avg 20) AC: 22(assuming he didn't buy another +1 from somewhere) A CR 6 monster is expected to have 70hp and AC 19 So hit chances are 12/20 and 7/20. Whereas the monk hits for 2d8+6+2d6 damage with both attacks, which averages to 22. The Fighter is already doing twice the monk's damage, with better AC, and better to-hit bonus without even trying that hard.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 12:27 |
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veekie posted:Level 6 Fighter I think you slightly undercounted the fighter's damage here. Strength 20 should be a +7 to damage (+5 bonus, strength and a half for using a two handed weapon), power attack should add 6 more (+2, plus an additional two for BAB 4, all at time and a half). Then it's a +1 weapon, so we hit 14, and if the fighter hasn't traded out weapon training via an archetype, that will add another +1 to bring us to +15 damage. Not that your point wasn't already made.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 13:09 |
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quote:I think you slightly undercounted the fighter's damage here. Strength 20 should be a +7 to damage (+5 bonus, strength and a half for using a two handed weapon), power attack should add 6 more (+2, plus an additional two for BAB 4, all at time and a half). Then it's a +1 weapon, so we hit 14, and if the fighter hasn't traded out weapon training via an archetype, that will add another +1 to bring us to +15 damage. Colon V posted:The same people that decided to create a class that can only attack every other turn. quote:As far as I can tell, there's just not any way the gunslinger is going to end the combat within one round unless they happen to roll a crit, while monks have a variety of tools to disable or significantly cripple a gunslinger on the first turn. The gunslinger might be able to do it if they're ignoring the gun entirely and just striking with some big fuckoff melee weapon like a fighter with less feats, but trying to play as a gunslinger would just get them killed. [Weapon]+2d6+Intelligence+1d6+1d6(Reflex Saves)+Spash Damage Then again its primarily the gun that is doing it. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Jun 4, 2012 |
# ? Jun 4, 2012 13:14 |
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adaz posted:Er, I meant mounts can't squeeze charge as that would reduce your movement ergo by the charge rules not be kosher. To be fair we just happened to go into two dungeons made for small creatures probably exaggerating the issue. We're playing the five kingdoms pathfinder campaign thing, which has a lot of area outside we've just been going into a bunch of random dungeons which happen to be super tiny as they were kobold or other small creature hangouts. You don't attack from the first square you're able to, on a charge -- you have to move to the closest square you can attack from. But, because a lance is a reach weapon, you cannot attack from 5' away, so 10' is where you must attack from anyway. What I've found is that because the cavalier in my party's mount's attacks are pretty lame (bite +3 (+5 on charge) 1d4+3, hoof/hoof -2/-2 (0/0 on charge) 1d6+1) he's better off charging with the lance (lance +5 while charging, dmg 1d8+3x2) because he already does 8 minimum hp on the charge. Add to that the (small) 3x crit chance, and I find lance charging preferable to As for the whole problem with L sized mounts sucking in dungeons: I agree. That's why as a GM I make sure that my adventures take place, a great majority of the time, either outdoors or in sufficiently large subterranean caverns that charging is at least possible.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 16:11 |
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CAPSLOCKGIRL posted:more than enough to keep up with the fighter. This isn't a good thing.
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 16:26 |
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Why in god's name is it more interesting and dynamic to multiclass into Wizard to pick up a gun rather than pick it up from the Gunslinger?
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# ? Jun 4, 2012 16:34 |
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I'm planning on making a Scholar 1 / Weed Alchemist 1 / Psion, what levels should I be taking the cross-classes in? Also, what are some good Psion spells? I'm reading the list and I see a lot of things I like but I can't really be certain whether or not they're actually good.
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# ? Jun 5, 2012 03:14 |
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Might need to be clearer on the sources, since I don't quite recognize the scholar or weed alchemist(PrC? Archetype? Nickname?). Also is it gestalt or are you seriously losing two manifester levels for this? Its not so bad at higher levels, with ML boosters and good picks of augmentable powers, but at low it could be quite crippling unless you're gaining something really good to make it up. For psionic powers though, anything that deals instant damage is as usual, not that good, since you need to blow a lot of pp just to keep up with damage(barring Mind Thrust, which has a favorable formula and targets a weak save for monsters). What discipline and total character level are you looking at? Overall for 1st level though: -Control Light, particularly useful if you and your party has a lot of natural darkvision, and before you have many decent offensive spells, simply killing the lights gives you a fairly good advantage. It does take concentration though, and thus gets obsolete later. -Deja Vu, Narrow in application, but with a good range at this level, the usual way to use this is to make your target take provoking or risky actions. Also doesn't scale well, too bad it doesn't have augmentable duration. -Demoralize, Unlike many fear abilities, it doesn't specify that it doesn't stack, is mass targeting, not limited by HD, selective firing, and grows in area. Combining this with an ally good at Demoralizing(with Intimidate) or even just shooting it twice works nicely. Even at higher levels, a large area mass debuff can remain useful. -Ectoplasmic Sheen, Well, its augmentable Grease, and as good as ever. -Entangling Ectoplasm, as a touch attack(meaning near impossible to resist), with a fairly tricky check to break free, its fairly good for removing singular foes by entangling them to an adjacent surface. Scales decently. -Far Hand, quite a bit of utility applications, especially with the free manifesting option. -Inertial Armor, Long lasting armor bonus...but then its not really that hard to get armor proficiency on a psion, and manifesting doesn't care about encumbrance. -Sense Link, for scouting use mainly, wire your senses into a party pet/minion and send it ahead. -Syntheste, dealing with sense based attack forms. Not much use otherwise. -Telepathic Lash, Not ALL bad at lower levels, but you'd probably find Entangling Ectoplasm more effective/efficient at disabling. -Vigor, quick and dirty way to get a ton of hp in a pinch.
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# ? Jun 5, 2012 07:39 |
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A friend of mine is making the iconics for his setting that he's selling and I'm looking them over and they just seem so useless and wrong. Like the gunslinger with something like a 14 dex, and 14 wis, and just... well, she's a gunslinger anyway. Why the gently caress would you play one. Or the witch, with 13 str, 13 AC, 17 hp, and feats that boost her Strength (by one, mind you, so to 14). I ask him why she has that, if it's just for flavor, and he says, "No, it's to boost her strength up to 14 so she can melee with her longspear." He says this is the kind of character he wants to play, the kind that is apparently an abyssmal melee person who melees. He told me if I don't like his iconics, I shouldn't pick them to play when we playtest the adventures. I told him me not picking them is not the solution, him not building them badly is. You can't build a fighter with no arms and no armor and go, "BUT HE CAN KICK TOO!" It's retarded. Grabbing a pure casting class, building them badly, and doing it so they can run naked into melee isn't 'iconic,' it's dumb. There's also a support-type character with a high intelligence (that seems to be helping her only for skills; they boost her save DCs too but she has absolutely no spells with DCs so it doesn't matter) is seems to be focused on being a crossbowman, but has a dex of 12 and can barely hit anything. The problem is, whenever I bring up stuff like this, with say, "An Ogre, an equivilent CR 3 monster, would crush your witch with an average roll, and likely kill her with a good one." He says that she's not supposed to be alone. There's supposed to be a fighter in between her and the ogre, and he should be giving her cover while she swings over his shoulder with her spear at the ogre. I told him the ogre also has reach, and can take a five-foot step. Or the giant centipede, or any other CR 3 monster that this witch would try to melee. But that would never happen, the fighter's in the way. Just seems useless to me, I suppose. If he would've said, "It's for flavor, to show people the campaign world!" I could've bought it, but instead he said "these are the kinds of characters I would want to play." Seems like he's just giving the people that're getting a taste of his setting a pretty bad taste, really.
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# ? Jun 5, 2012 18:54 |
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veekie posted:Might need to be clearer on the sources, since I don't quite recognize the scholar or weed alchemist(PrC? Archetype? Nickname?). Also is it gestalt or are you seriously losing two manifester levels for this? Its not so bad at higher levels, with ML boosters and good picks of augmentable powers, but at low it could be quite crippling unless you're gaining something really good to make it up. Well "weed alchemist" being me asking our DM "can I make a Mindchemist whose mutagens and Brew Potions are marijuana?" The reason I wanna grab a level of Scholar from Fistful of Denarii is because at 1, they add their Int to their AC when not flat-footed. Pair that with Cognatogen and Int being the Psion's key stat and I thought they synergized pretty well. I'll keep the spell list mind too, thanks.
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# ? Jun 5, 2012 22:44 |
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The White Dragon posted:The reason I wanna grab a level of Scholar from Fistful of Denarii is because at 1, they add their Int to their AC when not flat-footed. quote:Pair that with Cognatogen and Int being the Psion's key stat and I thought they synergized pretty well. I'll keep the spell list mind too, thanks.
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# ? Jun 5, 2012 22:55 |
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# ? May 17, 2024 01:22 |
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Eh, I'd say go ahead and do it... One level of powers isn't a deal breaker*, esp for psions. You may want to see if your DM would let you take magical knack though. *Unless you're playing with a group thats heavily into charop
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# ? Jun 5, 2012 23:32 |