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ProfessorCirno posted:Unfortunately, as is so often the case, a lot of them are conceptually rad and then you read the actual mechanics and realize they're not actually made to be as rad as they sound. That is true, in hindsight I'm still leaning heavily on Path of War for actual good & useful abilities, and mostly took +numbers stuff like Armor Specialist, Bravery to will saves, Weapon training to initiative, and Warrior Spirit so I could spend more WBL on neat items like the Mithral Rose Warrior Spirit seems real rad though, since being able to give your weapon any special ability on the fly is real strong. Question around this actually - it doesn't mention an action used to activate it, so I assume it's a standard to start? If it doesn't take an action to use then white whale holy grail, but that seems too good to be true.
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May 19, 2017 15:17
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I'm building an Gnome Illusion Arcanist in a game and I need a spell to chase for Perfection. Currently leaning towards Phantasmal Killer, but open to other suggestions.
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May 19, 2017 17:22
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Shadow Conjuration and its ilk would get you far
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May 19, 2017 17:24
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Ambi posted:That is true, in hindsight I'm still leaning heavily on Path of War for actual good & useful abilities, and mostly took +numbers stuff like Armor Specialist, Bravery to will saves, Weapon training to initiative, and Warrior Spirit so I could spend more WBL on neat items like the Mithral Rose As a general rule in Pathfinder, you should assume abilities that require you to activate something are a standard action unless otherwise noted. I'm running a game right now (Kingmaker Adventure Path) and the party composition is a bit weird. They've got a Warpriest, a Vigilante (avenger), a Rogue (using PF Unchained), and a Druid. No arcane caster at all, and they don't have a "primary healer" type. We had a 5th player who unfortunately had to drop out several months ago; he was playing a Paladin. For most situations, I find myself dividing encounters into two general categories, minor and major. Minor encounters are basically anything that I eyeball as not being sufficiently threatening to the party to justify altering, such as a pack of a dozen CR 2 or CR 3 enemies, simple traps, or basic "blockades" - crossing a river when the bridge is broken. Combat encounters of this type generally last less than three rounds. Major encounters are basically anything that I think should feel like a challenge, and I find I've basically thrown the standard CR/ECL completely out the window. A party that consists entirely of capable melee combatants just doesn't have a problem chumping even the "big boss monster" types. I mean, it's presumably good encounter design anyways to not do the Single Big Combatant, but Paizo APs seem to have a lot of encounters that seem to just consist of a big monster that's CR+3 or CR+4 relative to the party, and as it turns out these monsters are a lot less threatening when the whole party, rather than just the Fighter, can stand toe to toe with them for more than a single round. I don't want to cheat behind the scenes to keep monsters alive long enough to feel like a threat, but crafting setpieces that let the party make their own decisions on how to approach encounters instead of being locked into a series of carefully tweaked fights in small rooms is labor intensive. I've gotten some good utility out of using Cleave/Great Cleave to justify spreading damage across multiple party members instead of having Single Big Monsters just focus fire single dudes at a time. Does anyone have any advice for making minor encounters seem more threatening? I don't want to turn every fight into a two hour brawl, but I'm trying to retain at least the illusion of danger for more than just the obvious big bads they come across.
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May 19, 2017 21:27
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Olesh posted:As a general rule in Pathfinder, you should assume abilities that require you to activate something are a standard action unless otherwise noted. One way to make single large boss type encounters a bit more of a challenge would be to give them the Agile Mythic Simple template - the dual initiative ability it gives means the boss has two turns.
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May 19, 2017 22:15
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ChrisAsmadi posted:One way to make single large boss type encounters a bit more of a challenge would be to give them the Agile Mythic Simple template - the dual initiative ability it gives means the boss has two turns. I've used the Mythic Invincible simple template before and liked the results, but I've always been worried that the Agile Mythic simple template is a recipe for a brutal TPK. Invincible gives any creature durability, both with DR/mythic and the ability to no-sell one attack per round, but it doesn't really make the creature offensively more dangerous. The agile template doubles a creature's actions, which played ruthlessly seems like too much of a threat bump for anything capable of standing toe to toe with the PCs for more than a round. The last big boss encounter I threw at the PCs had them fighting other monsters before the boss (an advanced owlbear with Mythic Invincible added) showed up and started using Awesome Blow and Trample to prevent the PCs from being able to surround and full attack. It worked out well; had the boss just stood still and used Full Attack they probably would have lost one or two party members, but this slowed down the combat enough on both ends to allow the PCs to intelligently leverage their own HP and kept things focused on the PC's action economy and decisions. Trampling the entire party was more total damage than a full attack would have been, but spread out across 4 party members meant that nobody was going down without warning or an opportunity to back off. I've become very fond of Cleave and Great Cleave for similar reasons. For smaller creatures, has anyone used the "troop" subtype/template yet? It's semi-new in Bestiary 6 (but apparently existed before). I like the idea, sort of a "swarm" mechanic for small and medium sized creatures that don't pose a credible threat even in huge numbers, but I haven't had an opportunity to use them yet.
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May 19, 2017 23:23
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Olesh posted:As a general rule in Pathfinder, you should assume abilities that require you to activate something are a standard action unless otherwise noted. I don't know about all abilities, but I believe it's a Supernatural ability and under the description for supernatural abilities it states that they all require a standard action to active unless otherwise noted.
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May 20, 2017 14:00
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When our GM in my last campaign used the Agile template, it wrecked us something hard. It's the encounter that convinced me the name of the game is "action economy".
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May 20, 2017 17:31
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I've used an Agile template once, and it went pretty well, doubling the effectiveness of the miniboss. I still gave them a pair of tough minions though, so it was more-or-less 4v4, rather than pumping the boss higher. Unusually poo poo rolls made the fight into a chumpfest though, from my part - the two beetle minions attempting to grab people off the safe pyramid and grapple/crush them on the damage-to-living-things field that covered most of the ground, but failed every single roll to do so. The boss did well until one of my players grabbed him, at which point his contribution to the fight became "fail to escape grapple twice per round".
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May 20, 2017 18:14
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Arguably the best DM I've had in terms of the game part of RPGs realized this a while ago and designed all of his actual solo boss encounters to use some variation of the agile template. He tiered them, the tier would represent how many extra actions the boss would get. So a tier 1 boss would get roughly one extra action while a tier 5 boss would get 5 extra actions. The limit that unlike the agile template the bosses would be limited to what kind of actions they could take so part of each boss fight figuring that out and working around it. It's ultimately the only real way to provide escalating more difficult challenges for a higher level party without turning everything into a game of rocket tag.
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May 21, 2017 01:09
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SweetBro posted:Arguably the best DM I've had in terms of the game part of RPGs realized this a while ago and designed all of his actual solo boss encounters to use some variation of the agile template. He tiered them, the tier would represent how many extra actions the boss would get. So a tier 1 boss would get roughly one extra action while a tier 5 boss would get 5 extra actions. The limit that unlike the agile template the bosses would be limited to what kind of actions they could take so part of each boss fight figuring that out and working around it. It's ultimately the only real way to provide escalating more difficult challenges for a higher level party without turning everything into a game of rocket tag. And how much were you paying this DM?
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May 21, 2017 01:10
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Arivia posted:And how much were you paying this DM? Enough to keep you salty for the rest of your sad existence.
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May 21, 2017 05:15
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Arivia posted:And how much were you paying this DM?
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May 21, 2017 06:23
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Terrible Opinions posted:There is no burn you can land on his man that will stick. He publicy advertises that he like re:zero. He is incapable of shame. It's true, in the improv world shame is a demon that must be slain if you are to have any hope of progress.
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May 21, 2017 06:51
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SweetBro posted:It's true, in the improv world shame is a demon that must be slain if you are to have any hope of progress. Ok gimmie a scene! "Sweet bro's parents at thanksgiving dinner"! Alright ahem *bursts into tears*
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May 21, 2017 15:44
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My group has been eyeballing the adventurer's armory player companion book. Dos it work with the bog standard rpg stuff and is it worth it/already covered in ultimate equipment?
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May 21, 2017 19:37
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Bumper Stickup posted:My group has been eyeballing the adventurer's armory player companion book. Dos it work with the bog standard rpg stuff and is it worth it/already covered in ultimate equipment? yes absolutely not, unless you thought Ultimate Equipment was just mind blowing not really It's an overpriced appendix to UE. It has more weapons and armor, a few feats for extremely situational combat tricks, minor drugs, and items with extremely situational boosts to skill checks. Like most of the PPC series, it's about on par, quality-wise, with any randomly-selected third party PDF, except with much nicer production quality.
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May 21, 2017 19:45
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Well the first adventurer's armory came out before ultimate equipment, so some fo the stuff from there was reprinted in the hardback. Adventurer's Armory 2 is the one that came out later and doesn't contain any stuff reprinted later.
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May 21, 2017 20:26
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Gotcha thanks for the info. We saw that was all of 3 bucks on the paizo store and having more gear got our interest up.
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May 21, 2017 21:15
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Bumper Stickup posted:Gotcha thanks for the info. We saw that was all of 3 bucks on the paizo store and having more gear got our interest up. It's worth 3 bucks. Just keep in mind that you're opening a door that can't be closed. Everyone in your party will want an armored kilt from it. Everyone.
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May 21, 2017 21:44
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Arivia posted:It's worth 3 bucks. Just keep in mind that you're opening a door that can't be closed. Everyone in your party will want an armored kilt from it. Everyone. "+1 AC but you increase the armor's weight category by one" is pretty lovely deal.
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May 21, 2017 21:57
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There are a few cases where it's good but generally it's not that great. Especially given that silken ceremonial armor already exists in Ultimate Combat.
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May 21, 2017 22:01
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Roadie posted:"+1 AC but you increase the armor's weight category by one" is pretty lovely deal. All I know is my players go crazy for them.
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May 21, 2017 22:20
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Like maybe if gold was super scarce or something but they can't be used on heavy armor so they guys who are okay to tank the penalties for heavier armor are already probably at the tier where it doesn't work. The only thing I can see is it having 0 check penalty and 0% spell failure meaning it can be used by people who usually use no armor but don't have any class feature requiring them to not wear armor. edit: Mmm I guess there is also the benefit of being able to get a +2 max dex bonus into the heavy armor range Terrible Opinions fucked around with this message at 23:28 on May 21, 2017 |
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May 21, 2017 23:26
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Arivia posted:All I know is my players go crazy for them. It's an optimization/utility thing. You don't actually add an Armored Kilt to an existing set of armor, you wear it by itself. Armored Kilt and Silken Ceremonial Armor have the slightly dubious honor of being armor that provides an armor bonus without an Arcane Spell Failure chance, an armor check penalty, or a limit to the max dex you can apply to AC (Edit: Armored Kilt has a max dex of +6, thanks Terrible Opinions). This means, in practice, that they are strictly better in general than Bracers of Armor for everyone (except monks) who would otherwise use Bracers of Armor, i.e wizards, sorcerers, and the like. An equivalent Armored Kilt is one step cheaper than Bracers of Armor and has extra some secondary benefits. The only thing you lose out on is the defense against incorporeal touch attacks. For comparison: Bracers of Armor +6 cost 36,000 GP, occupy the wrists slot (which doesn't have much competing with it, but still has a couple niche desirable items including Bracers of Archery), and can't have any armor special abilities that cost a flat GP amount - only enhancement bonuses or armor special abilities that "cost" an enhancement bonus. So +5 spell storing Bracers of Armor are okay, but +5 glamered Bracers of Armor are not. The maximum total bonus on Bracers of Armor is +8, which means eventually Bracers of Armor +7/+8 beat out the Armored Kilt in defensive power. A +5 Armored Kilt costs 25,000 GP, gives the same +6 to armor bonus, occupies the armor slot (which has nothing competing with it aside from other armor), and can freely add armor special abilities. The enhancement bonus is limited to a maximum of +5, but the total bonus goes up to a maximum of +10, meaning you can eventually have a +5 enhancement bonus and an additional +5 equivalent in armor special abilities, while also adding fixed-cost abilities. Terrible Opinions posted:edit: Mmm I guess there is also the benefit of being able to get a +2 max dex bonus into the heavy armor range O-yoroi, from Ultimate Combat, provides +8 armor and +2 Max Dex already, and the core rulebook has celestial armor, works like chainmail but which provides a better bonus to max dex than even mithril. The magic item creation section of the core rulebook points out that you can make existing magic items with different weapons or armor, so there's nothing stopping you from creating a "celestial o-yoroi" that functions a +3 o-yoroi that counts as medium armor and has a max Dex of +8. You don't even need heavy armor proficiency to use it without penalty; medium is sufficient. Olesh fucked around with this message at 23:49 on May 21, 2017 |
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May 21, 2017 23:34
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Armored kilt actually has a +6 max dex bonus whereas the silken ceremonial armor actually has no cap.
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May 21, 2017 23:39
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Olesh posted:O-yoroi, from Ultimate Combat, provides +8 armor and +2 Max Dex already, and the core rulebook has celestial armor, works like chainmail but which provides a better bonus to max dex than even mithril. The magic item creation section of the core rulebook points out that you can make existing magic items with different weapons or armor, so there's nothing stopping you from creating a "celestial o-yoroi" that functions a +3 o-yoroi that counts as medium armor and has a max Dex of +8. On a second look, this gets even dumber. By RAW, it looks like nothing besides the GM is stopping you from making "mithril celestial o-yoroi", which would bump the max dex to a ludicrous +10 and reduce the armor check to -1 and the spell failure to a 10% chance while counting as light armor for the purposes of movement penalties and other limitations.
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May 22, 2017 00:01
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Olesh posted:Armored Kilt and Silken Ceremonial Armor have the slightly dubious honor of being armor that provides an armor bonus without an Arcane Spell Failure chance, an armor check penalty, or a limit to the max dex you can apply to AC (Edit: Armored Kilt has a max dex of +6, thanks Terrible Opinions). This means, in practice, that they are strictly better in general than Bracers of Armor for everyone (except monks) who would otherwise use Bracers of Armor, i.e wizards, sorcerers, and the like. An equivalent Armored Kilt is one step cheaper than Bracers of Armor and has extra some secondary benefits. The only thing you lose out on is the defense against incorporeal touch attacks. Sure, but djezet skin armor is distinctly better than either silken ceremonial armor or an armored kilt. Olesh posted:O-yoroi, from Ultimate Combat, provides +8 armor and +2 Max Dex already, and the core rulebook has celestial armor, works like chainmail but which provides a better bonus to max dex than even mithril. The magic item creation section of the core rulebook points out that you can make existing magic items with different weapons or armor, so there's nothing stopping you from creating a "celestial o-yoroi" that functions a +3 o-yoroi that counts as medium armor and has a max Dex of +8. Don't forget to make it out of noqual, so the weight category is reduced another step.
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May 22, 2017 00:12
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Roadie posted:Sure, but djezet skin armor is distinctly better than either silken ceremonial armor or an armored kilt.
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May 22, 2017 01:00
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What is the best caster you can make for 5th lvl+ with pathfinder first party stuff? Party does not have a caster and for stats they are doing a weird rolling system so one group of stats should be better than average.
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May 22, 2017 18:37
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Fallorn posted:What is the best caster you can make for 5th lvl+ with pathfinder first party stuff? Party does not have a caster and for stats they are doing a weird rolling system so one group of stats should be better than average. An exploiter wizard with that one exploit to swap a prepared spell as full-round action.
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May 22, 2017 19:19
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Fallorn posted:What is the best caster you can make for 5th lvl+ with pathfinder first party stuff? Party does not have a caster and for stats they are doing a weird rolling system so one group of stats should be better than average. It is still extremely hard to go wrong with a cleric, druid, or wizard, if all you want is pure power.
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May 22, 2017 19:31
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Another friend was talking about going synthesist summoner, is one druid better than other or one cleric better and not a trap same with archtypes for all of them?
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May 22, 2017 19:53
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Druids don't get much in the way of interesting archetypes because their core class abilities are so strong. It's hard to improve upon wild shape and an animal companion. With that in mind, any archetype that fucks around with those is probably a trap in that it's probably weaker, but it's hard to make a druid that is actually bad unless you also screw up their spellcasting on top of screwing up their class abilities. So definitely don't multiclass, but other than that it's hard to get things wrong. There are some cool cleric archetypes (evangelist, undead lord) but they're all icing on the cake of cleric spellcasting. The only real character-optimization decision to make is how you fight (probably with bows, but clerics can fight in melee or just focus on spellcasting) and what your domains are. Darkness, Glory, Good (and all of the alignment domains, but especially Good), Liberation, Luck, Madness, Travel, and Trickery are all good. Subdomains are archetypes for domains. Feather, Growth, Heroism, Caves, Smoke, and Protean are all nice picks. (A quick note: Protean is very strong but super annoying, since it's a will save for all enemies every single turn.)
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May 22, 2017 23:00
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So I haven't really been paying much attention to Starfinder. How has it been looking? As i mentioned a bunch of pages back, my DM is planning to run Skull & Shackles for our next campaign, and has just suggested he might convert it to Starfinder. Which could be either cool, or an opportunity to discover a whole new set of lovely balance issues. Flipping through the previews, it looks like they may actually have learned something from Pathfinder -- casters seem to be limited to 6 levels, for instance.
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May 22, 2017 23:38
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Is there a Druid archetype that would let me play as a WoW Feral Druid in that I don't have to wait for level 4 to get Wild Shape and can stay in Wild Shape for as often and as long as possible?
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May 22, 2017 23:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:Is there a Druid archetype that would let me play as a WoW Feral Druid in that I don't have to wait for level 4 to get Wild Shape and can stay in Wild Shape for as often and as long as possible? No, but Wild Shape lasts druid level/hours per use and you don't have to shift out of it unless you need hands or the ability to speak. You can even take the feat to cast in wild shape at fourth level.
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May 22, 2017 23:50
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3.5 DnD had something like that, it was nowhere near as powerful as actual Wild Shape, granted Enhancement bonuses to things so didn't stack with magic items, assuming your DM allowed you to Wild Clasp those magic items in the first place to even be able to use them while transformed, gave up another powerful Druid class feature, and unlike Wild Shape there was no feat to allow you to cast spells while transformed. Had specific forms, that you could describe more or less as you wish, but not really much in the way of utility forms. All in all the Shapeshifter was a complete and utter downgrade to the normal Wild Shape Druid. Still I kind of preferred it if for no other reason than at will shapeshift and actually being able to focus the character on that side more. For a long time now people have been wanting an official Shapeshifting focused class in Pathfinder. And they still haven't gotten it. When the "hybrid class" book was in the works a lot of people thought one of them would be a hybrid of druid and fighter or ranger that actually focused more on shapeshifting while being good at combat, perhaps with no spells. We did not get this. Instead any Druid hybrid classes focused more on the spellcasting side of Druid. Because of course they did. EDIT: Pretty sure the Mythic rules had something about Mythic Shapeshifting. But it was of course a spellcasting pillar option, and not something to actually focus a melee shapeshifter build around.
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May 23, 2017 00:01
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Mooncursed barbarians from Horror Adventures turn into an animal when they rage, starting at level 1, but it's limited by turns of rage. Also, you're a barbarian, instead of a nine-level spellcaster. The 3.5e Shapeshifter Druid illustrates the problem Paizo stuck themselves with when they kept Wild Shape based on the rules for Polymorph. You can do anything any animal from any monster book can do. If you make a new ability that is just as flexible and powerful as Wild Shape by writing down a list of all the things it gives you, then you immediately illustrate why Wild Shape is better than the equivalent melee gimmicks for other martial classes. However, if you try to make something closer to Rage or Smite (or Judgement or Studied Strike or whatever), then nobody will bother with it because it's not as good as Wild Shape.
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May 23, 2017 00:33
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There are a few 3rd party Pathfinder classes that do the whole shapeshifting thing, but they don't ever seem to be at will, having their own gimmicks for shapeshifting, and are in the end usually actually worse off at it than a Druid. And at least one is somewhat broken, but not because of the shapeshifting part of it. Piell and I have both made our own attempts at a 3.x Shapeshifter class, both borrowing to some degree from the Shapeshift Druid but without spellcasting. We each went our own ways on trying to turn it into its own class. But they would be better than playing a 3.x Shapeshift Druid who ignores their spells. Of course a Shapeshift Druid who doesn't ignore their spells would likely blow them out of the water, but at that point the Shapeshift Druid probably isn't even using their Shapeshift ability. I am sure I have seen other attempts at fan made shapeshifter classes for 3.x, and possibly for Pathfinder as well. Though there aren't a lot of differences that would matter between the two. EDIT: If anyone is interested my attempt is here and Piell's is here.
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May 23, 2017 00:41
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