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Reading up on all the vigilante archetypes and stuff, it's kinda obvious the class is really not that good, even if it's flavorful. Probably couldn't make a whole game out of it, sadly.
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Apr 19, 2016 03:03
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You could easily make a whole game out of it. Hell, it has the most diverse set of archetypes in the game I think, with the multiple different spell lists. Plenty of diversity there. And not that good? It's fine, it may not be very optimizable but I'm sure you can easily make suitable challenges for it, both social and combat. Regarding experience: I like tracking experience because it concretely rewards the players for their actions during most/all sessions. Like treasure, it's really nice to see that a big battle results in an easily quantifiable reward, and experience is an effective tool for shaping play expectations for GMs.
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Apr 19, 2016 03:13
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You could also just give them the starting version of the Vigilante's dual identity feature and call it a day after making sure people have the right skill options available. And it would mean that no poor bastard would be stuck playing the awful Brute archetype.
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Apr 19, 2016 03:53
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LightWarden posted:You could also just give them the starting version of the Vigilante's dual identity feature and call it a day after making sure people have the right skill options available. And it would mean that no poor bastard would be stuck playing the awful Brute archetype.
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Apr 19, 2016 04:23
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I have no position on the actual gameplay effectiveness/design chops of the Vigilante, but it's obvious, at least to me, that the intent is to play a game where everyone is a Vigilante of a different archetype, because they're not supposed to compete with a "real" class and they're not going to fit nearly as well in a traditional dungeon crawler.
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Apr 19, 2016 04:39
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I just discovered that Dreamscarred Press' next Path of War class will be the Medic, a maneuver-based healer character. Having just gotten Path of War Expanded, I think that pretty much lets you cover all of the big fantasy archetypes without having to delve into the Paizo classes at all.
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Apr 20, 2016 14:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:I just discovered that Dreamscarred Press' next Path of War class will be the Medic, a maneuver-based healer character. quote:Siren (Su): At 4th level, the ambu-lancer gains a glowing magical siren that announces her presence whenever she rides her mount. The siren emits an ear piercing wail and sheds light like a torch while active, though the ambu-lancer may choose to suppress this effect for one round as a free action. While the siren is active, the ambu-lancer takes a –30 penalty to her stealth checks as the wailing siren gives away her position. When she uses her triage ability with her siren active, her mount gains the benefits of the Improved Overrun feat and creatures she overruns must choose to avoid the ambu-lancer and cannot make attacks of opportunity against her for her movement, as creatures dive out of the way to avoid an oncoming abmu-lance. This ability replaces the additional use of triage gained at 4th level.  This class is amazing.
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Apr 20, 2016 15:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:I just discovered that Dreamscarred Press' next Path of War class will be the Medic, a maneuver-based healer character. Still, Rip_Van_Winkle posted:
Edit: oh wow, apparently DSP has a new Werewolf supplement out too? Edit2: Including a new shapeshifting Martial Discipline in the Werewolf document? And a feat category obviously inspired by 3.5 Shifters, but without the base race. You just have to be a shapeshifter of some kind. Nihilarian fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Apr 20, 2016 |
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Apr 20, 2016 16:11
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Dreamscarred has been knocking it out of the park lately and I hope they keep pushing books out at this clip
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Apr 20, 2016 21:59
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Looking at the werewolf stuff it seems they also had a vampire playtest.
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Apr 21, 2016 01:03
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Nihilarian posted:
Paizo introduced their own line of 'these are totally not shifters you guys' in one of the Player Companions, so I imagine it's probably sort of meant for them: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/more-races/standard-races-1-10-rp/skinwalkers-10-rp
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Apr 21, 2016 05:52
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I eagerly await Dreamscarred literally Pathfinderizing Pathfinder and making their own 3.x.
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Apr 21, 2016 11:09
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ProfessorCirno posted:I eagerly await Dreamscarred literally Pathfinderizing Pathfinder and making their own 3.x. * and I could still be wrong because the Mystic and Harbinger look to be rather spellcastery classes
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Apr 21, 2016 11:15
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gradenko_2000 posted:I know, right? Like, aside from maybe literally Gandalf*, you can already hit most of the fantasy tropes using just playing with Path[finder] of War. Neither quite fully get to the "magic is the best, swords are dumb garbage" niche of the D&D Caster. The Mystic could be pretty drat close to at least Movie Gandalf, where he does mostly sword and staff bullshit with only sparse wizarding aside from wizarding to enhance their swording. However, they're more clearly designed to be the Bender class, considering they're wisdom-focused and presented as martial artists who can attune themselves to Fire/Water/Air/Earth and get various maneuver effects that way, as well as having 3/4 BAB but being able to enhance that quite effectively by spending their obligatory resource, Animus. It's not 100% aping the Avatar series, but it's the best answer for the person at the table who says "I want to play Korra, how do I do that?" They also have a gun-focused archetype that's a far better gun user than any official Paizo class. It gives multiple important feats for free, allows easy reloading, and adds access to initiation modifier to damage at level 3, among other neat features. It's amazing what someone who doesn't hate the idea can do for gun users. Their other archetype, the Knight-Chandler, is pretty neat too. Basically a super earnest hopeful knight who has a magical light that just follows them around like a little wisp. They're paladin-esque, but instead of being hardasses, they're helpful compassionate candle friends. The Harbinger is more Antipaladin/Death Knight, what with all curses and doom and vengeance and angsty bleakness. I'd still be happier playing either of them than an actual wizard though. I'd be super down for an all-dreamscarred classes campaign. Given the surprisingly small amount of actual magic using that most of the older traditional fantasy wizards end up doing, most RPG casters end up being more Harry Potter than Gandalf. e: I checked again and apparently the Mystic has become less disproportionately focused on the Elemental Flux discipline and has become slightly more generic, full of nondescript untameable energies. My bad. They still have built-in elemental tools, though. Rip_Van_Winkle fucked around with this message at 14:06 on Apr 21, 2016 |
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Apr 21, 2016 13:36
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I pushed for them to name that archetype anything but Knight-Chandler, like Candle Knight or something. Few people I've met know what Chandler means and every single one of them pictures the cast of Friends in fantasy garb
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Apr 21, 2016 20:19
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See, I picture scruffy noir detective hero in full plate. Knight Raymond Chandler.
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Apr 21, 2016 20:57
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Rip_Van_Winkle posted:Given the surprisingly small amount of actual magic using that most of the older traditional fantasy wizards end up doing, most RPG casters end up being more Harry Potter than Gandalf.
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Apr 21, 2016 21:03
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unseenlibrarian posted:See, I picture scruffy noir detective hero in full plate. Knight Raymond Chandler. Same here.
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Apr 21, 2016 22:10
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Knight-Chandler is a way better name than Candle Knight, I'm glad they kept it
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Apr 21, 2016 23:02
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Eox posted:I pushed for them to name that archetype anything but Knight-Chandler, like Candle Knight or something. Few people I've met know what Chandler means and every single one of them pictures the cast of Friends in fantasy garb
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Apr 22, 2016 01:36
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Could I BE any more anime?
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Apr 22, 2016 04:05
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so what's so great about dreamscarred? my current pathfinder group only bans 3rd party stuff because most is hilariously broken or stupid. just curious since I've been really annoyed at paizo stuff lately.
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Apr 22, 2016 20:32
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They make super solid tier 3 classes that fill niches which are not already filled by Paizo products (i.e. psionics and martials that get varied and interesting abilities which aren't necessarily ki-based and which allow them to measure up to 3/4th casters that aren't summoner)
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Apr 22, 2016 20:46
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The only broken stuff they put out tends to get errata'd much quicker than Paizo stuff. Path of War does have a damage problem at lower levels but they're working on that
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Apr 22, 2016 20:49
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Dreamscarred stuff is generally better balanced than other 3rd party. And some of their books are so much better than core material that they're auto-includes for me. For instance Path of War actually makes Martial classes fun to play.
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Apr 22, 2016 20:50
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Zmej posted:so what's so great about dreamscarred? my current pathfinder group only bans 3rd party stuff because most is hilariously broken or stupid. just curious since I've been really annoyed at paizo stuff lately. Lots of content that is at a reasonable power level without just being yet another 4- or 6-level spellcaster.
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Apr 22, 2016 20:59
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Dreamscarred was founded initially by people from the WotC 3.x charops forums who also posted prolifically on the psionics forums. They got their start before Pathfinder happened when they wanted a proper psionics expansion (Complete Psionics wasn't very good!). Because they were people from the charops forums rather then just kinda random yahoos they decently knew a lot about balance and it shows. Since then they've either brought in or temporarily hired vaguely big name people from the GitP homebrew forums, who, likewise, knew a lot about the system and how the mechanics worked, and who themselves had a lot of experience working with the engine to make third party materials.
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Apr 22, 2016 21:06
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So last night our DM dropped a shoggoth on us. We're level 8. I can't figure out a way for us to defeat it, aside from figuring out a way to trap it somehow. It's HP, immunities, and resistances make it very difficult to kill, and it swallowed our wizard. How do you destroy a shoggoth in Pathfinder?
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Apr 25, 2016 20:39
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Shoggoth at level 8? I think your only option is telling us about it here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3460258
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Apr 25, 2016 22:09
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It's a cr 19 monster with an at-will, 60 foot radius confuse that ate your wizard. It also has a 30 foot reach, 33 AC and 4 melee attacks per round that will never miss (except on a nat 1) that does 18 damage at minimum (25 on average). The only way I could see a level 8 party beating it without a near tpk is if you had some way to deal reliable int damage to it, since you can make it comatose by reducing that to 0 you're hosed duder Jolyne Cujoh fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 22:22
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Kumo posted:So last night our DM dropped a shoggoth on us. Sounds like more of a plot device or illusion than an actual encounter to me, but maybe your GM is just that big of a jackass.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:34
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Some GMs put in encounters you're expected to run from. Maybe you're supposed to run?
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Apr 25, 2016 22:38
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Rick posted:Some GMs put in encounters you're expected to run from. Maybe you're supposed to run? Which is pretty stupid since the players often have no idea how difficult a monster is and after they find out it's already too late because someone is already down.
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Apr 25, 2016 22:54
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Rick posted:Some GMs put in encounters you're expected to run from. Maybe you're supposed to run? That kind of relies on the party being instantly able to identify the monster and figure out that while this pile of black ooze is something they can effortlessly take, this new one horrifically outclasses them. Then you run into the actual problem of trying to escape. The shoggoth has a speed of 50 ft, which means it will keep pace with anything slower than a light horse. It can double-move or charge faster than a small race or a PC in medium/heavy armor can run, and if it charges it grab you with its 15 ft reach and then begin devouring you. Or it can just run you over. If you start within 60 feet of it then it's a DC 22 Will save to avoid a 75% chance of losing your ability to run away for 1d6 rounds, with each round increasing your chance of losing your turn even harder. It's possible for a level 8 party to kill it, but it's by no means easy- my preferred strategy would be to fly out of reach and pelt it with smite evil arrows but that can take a while to do it. The easiest way would be to dump its Intelligence to 0, but they might not have that option (especially if it involves punching through spell resistance). LightWarden fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Apr 25, 2016 |
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Apr 25, 2016 23:00
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Inverse Icarus posted:Sounds like more of a plot device or illusion than an actual encounter to me, but maybe your GM is just that big of a jackass. Nah, he's actually a pretty good guy, and we're running some weird jungle city with demons thing, so it might have been a scripted encounter. I get that we probably should have ran (and we did), but Will saves were failed. Still even if levels weren't an issue - how do you kill a shoggoth? I'm actually curious if there are clever ideas on how to go about it. It doesn't have any weaknesses as far as I can gather. The only way I can think of is just burning it down with a long, protracted fight, but you'd need some serious damage/healing/buffs.
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Apr 25, 2016 23:06
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Andrast posted:Which is pretty stupid since the players often have no idea how difficult a monster is and after they find out it's already too late because someone is already down. Depends on the kind of campaign you're running. If everyone's onboard with that style beforehand, "anything you encounter might, for all you know, wipe the floor with you" can create the right background tension of fear and caution. OSR-style procedural generation assumes something like this, but it's fundamentally inimical to "here are these cool fight scenes as stations on the Plot Express," "you should expect fair fights that present an enjoyable tactical challenge," and so on.
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Apr 25, 2016 23:11
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Oligopsony posted:Depends on the kind of campaign you're running. If everyone's onboard with that style beforehand, "anything you encounter might, for all you know, wipe the floor with you" can create the right background tension of fear and caution. OSR-style procedural generation assumes something like this, but it's fundamentally inimical to "here are these cool fight scenes as stations on the Plot Express," "you should expect fair fights that present an enjoyable tactical challenge," and so on. The problem with that is that it's extremely difficult to run away in Pathfinder since monsters tend to have better movement options than the players and players can't really help other party members run away any better (except at higher levels thanks to magic). Caution doesn't really help when an enemy seeing you almost guarantees a dead party member.
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Apr 25, 2016 23:15
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Encounters you're supposed to run from obviously need an escape path and/or significantly less aggressive enemies. Encountering a shoggoth that means to kill you on a featureless plain obviously means death. Encountering a shoggoth that lumbers around in some kind of expansive sewers with narrow choke points is different. Have it blast everyone with an effect with an obviously ridiculous save dc, shift to a new target every turn, and be really clear that their attacks are doing effectively nothing. If someone gets disabled, casually hint they could lure it around and double back through a different part of the sewers to save them. The shoggoth is an alien monstrosity that probably doesn't need to eat anyway, there's no compelling reason for it to specifically focus on a single target and eat it even past unconsciousness into death. For story purposes have it easily distracted and generally lethargic, occasionally lunging forward if it seems like the party is going to kite it instead of 'properly' running. From a player perspective, I'm not sure what to say. Assuming this is a module, you're obviously not supposed to fight the thing fairly. Either there's a story provided macguffin to weaken it, or there's an environmental shortcut, or you're supposed to run. A well built party could beat it, but a module isn't really going to rely on it. If this is your GM's show, not sure what to say. You're probably meant to have run. If that was a particularly difficult task that necessitated sacrificing someone to distract it, bad GM.
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Apr 26, 2016 00:45
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Kumo posted:Still even if levels weren't an issue - how do you kill a shoggoth? An "epic" encounter for an average-sized party is the average party level +3. If you're fighting a CR 19 monster, you'd presumably be 16th level or higher, and it's a whole different game there. A sixteenth level Paladin would have +6 (Cha 22+?) to hit and +16 to damage from smite, and would get 4 attacks a round. 5 if hasted by that Wizard you mentioned. As LightWarden mentioned, a Paladin with a bow is probably a better option, Rapid/Many shot would give you another arrow, and make the first one deal double damage. I believe (unsure?) that the smite would double on the Manyshot. So you'd be shooting 3 arrows at full BAB+4, which will have a total of +64 smite damage. The other three arrows are at BAB-1, BAB-6, and BAB-11, and would probably miss a 33 AC, but you never know! That's ignoring all the normal things, like DEX to hit, and STR if your bow is composite. You could also turn on your divine bond and add a +4 enhancement on your weapon. Use +2 of it to make it Holy, adding +2d6 to each hit. Do what you like with the other +2. This is on top of whatever enhancements your bow actually has, with the 315,000gp worth of wealth you'd have. Without optimizing/calculating anything further and only assuming your first three arrows hit in a round, you're at 64+6d6 damage for an average of 85, ignoring all DR. Stay alive for 4-5 rounds somehow, or pray your party members can do something. And you could be doing this while flying over a hundred feet above the stupid ooze, or from further away if you were okay taking range penalties. Standing toe-to-to with one really isn't a good idea, but if you absolutely have to I'd recommend casting displacement on the bruisers to force a second roll for every attack the shoggoth makes. A coin flip on four attacks at means you're probably still going to get slammed and eaten. SR 30 is a bitch, even at 16th level. Casters are not in a good way. Correct me if I'm wrong about any of that Paladin stuff, I wrote most of it while in a teleconference. Inverse Icarus fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Apr 26, 2016 |
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Apr 26, 2016 00:48
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Andrast posted:Which is pretty stupid since the players often have no idea how difficult a monster is and after they find out it's already too late because someone is already down. Yeah, and not many people (I know I wouldn't) are going to be able to identify many monsters by the name alone. LightWarden posted:That kind of relies on the party being instantly able to identify the monster and figure out that while this pile of black ooze is something they can effortlessly take, this new one horrifically outclasses them. Then you run into the actual problem of trying to escape. Yeah, I definitely don't have the experience to solve that if it ever came up. But every campaign I'm in ends before Level 9.
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Apr 26, 2016 09:29
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