Pathfinder RPG: sqrt(13)th Edition

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Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I liked playing with my friends which was my primary motivation, but when I REALLY liked playing the game for itself was after playing wizard.

It's really easy to die though in early levels, though, so be careful.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 22:39

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 09:17

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

My GM originally rule that anyone with use magical device could use a wand of CLW (I used the rich parent trait as a wizard to get the money to buy it). Which is fortunate because we would not have made it to level 2, let alone survived as long as we have with rules as written. He's making us do the proper DC check now but we also don't really need the wand anymore (and we have a cleric now too).

# ¿ Dec 29, 2015 08:53

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I'm doing an android gunslinger in Iron Gods, and am going with a STR 10, DEX 17, CON 14, INT 14, WIS 14, CHA 5 build (these are all including racial bonuses and penalties) in a 15 point buy.

Is that fine? I thought about going 12 int (10 with +2), or maybe even dumping it to increase my WIS, but my group is very skill poor (we have an alchemist but is very new so I don't want to rely on him) so I thought the party might need the skill points and am basically sacrificing some grit.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 00:24

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Also a mark against stingy magic item gms is that magic items are a lot of fun, and level appropriate gold usually means not actually having anything interesting to spend your money on.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 22:22

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

They've also had 24 hour streams on twitch, like the first part of the day was from Pazio's place and it was interesting to watch them play their own game (although fair warning, it's someetimes hard to hear, they just stuck a mic at one end of the table). They'll eventually be archived.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 05:38

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Feats are a nice level-up treats for classes that aren't dependent on the right one to make the class work.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 16:51

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Inverse Icarus posted:

And boring, foregone conclusions for those that are.

Want to shoot a bow well? Your first 3-4 feats might as well be picked for you.

Yeah definitely. I hope unchained is a sign as to where they are heading since they seemed to just grant most of these classes the feats they need as part of progression.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 21:34

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Arcanist preacher who believes that magic is immoral.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 22:48

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Swashbuckler is quickly joining gunslinger in that the posters of the entire internet can't decide if it's super OP or one of the worst classes.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 18:35

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Andrast posted:

Who the hell says Swashbucklers are overpowered?

At least when it was first out people were debating the fact on Reddit and Pazio's site.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 04:50

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Gilok posted:

It seems like the best move if you want to be a Swashbuckler is to do that until level 5 for the early improved crit and a couple of deeds and such, and then switch to Fighter or Cavalier with Daring Champion or really anything but Swashbuckler because it just doesn't really improve past level 5.

I've seen a impressive-on-paper (I haven't really done or played with anyone using this build) swashbuckler/duelist that gets a ton of AC and basically becomes the Final Fantasy XIII non-buff character sentinel, tanking via constant dodging/parries and counters, but yeah this build abandons the swashbuckler at level 7.

Rick fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Mar 5, 2016

# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 07:14

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Andrast posted:

That guy is probably worse than a straight up Barbarian. Survivability in pathfinder doesn't mean much if you can't do competitive damage (especially if your survivability is just AC and not also high saves).

Or, you know, cast spells.

I was thinking about it, and another difference between the Final Fantasy dudes is that works because they can do things that force the enemies to attack them and no one else (well, and it's a video game). I kind of imagine a good GM would probably just start walking bad guys past the swashbuckler and going after the things that were hurting it.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2016 11:31

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I played with a GM who ran that campaign and we had two deaths in that section, although they were both casters and one was arguably the GM's fault.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2016 01:05

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Gilok posted:

I think my group is like this. Aside from a two-page sheet of house rules, I have not successfully argued in favor of any sort of fudging or adjustment of rules. I haven't tried that hard, but things like "Can I use slashing grace on my two claw attacks?" have been a resounding no. In fact a fair amount of RAW Pathfinder has been forbidden, including any alternate racial traits, anything Asian-flavored, any sort of animal companion or familiar (I snuck in a tumor familiar on my alchemist and got away with it though), etc. It's annoying.

I've found the more that I'm allowed to do as far as weapons and character creation, the more fun I have, and when RAW stuff is heavily restricted I often find it harder to get into the game because I'm always in a point where I'm settling for something.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 00:42

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

The question that comes to me, is, if they are playing an adventure path, would it be balanced to the point that it wouldn't be the end of the world if he played a vanilla rogue? It is pretty clear to me that ninjas and unchained rogues are better even though I've not played any of the three classes but other than when I played with a really lovely magus I never felt that there was a challenge four people couldn't get through.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2016 04:51

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

KittyEmpress posted:

So second game of the campaign I asked for advice with happened, and DM and I came up with some house rules to help the swashbuckler

First of all: She adds Cha to saves, outright. Second of all, she rerolls her saves after rolling the first time obviously.

She gets +dex to damage done with her whip, as well as to damage done if she grapples someone using the whip.

She also counts as having Evasion, but with the requirement of her making a pun or pithy comment or insult about the event/caster. It works p. well, because she's one of the quieter members of the group, but mechanical incentives make her really push ICly commenting.

The rest of us are doing pretty well - I got a houserule so that I can treat Vermin as having intelligence scores of 1, so I'm working on building up my scoprion to have 3 int.

The other two are playing full casters so they didn't get any change.

So far in the campaign we got attacked by a native band of lizardmen and defended our makeshift settlement, then started to cut down some trees to hopefully make nicer homes, because we a storm is coming, only to be lead off by a sealed djinni in a bottle, who might be evil, who wanted us to go find a shrine to a lizardman tribe and put him on it, because it was how to release him.

Three of us [all but my Hunter] decided to do it, so now we're raiding the lizardmen back. Session ended with a Lizard Monstrosity [not sure what the stats are like] showing up, which was described as 'a twenty foot creature that looks like a dozen lizardmen clumped together haphazardly, with seven legs and five arms.

Sounds like a fun game!

# ¿ Mar 15, 2016 07:57

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

My very first group was all newbies, a first time GM and one player who a vet who played a summoner. We definitely needed the help because we were poorly optimized. But, the summoner also got skunk drunk during each session so we'd basically be carried early in the night and then by the end he was too hosed up to do much so all our characters still had a chance to shine. It kind of had a weird balancing effect.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 08:31

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Junkie Disease posted:

We have a friend who has a friend who's summoner shat up a match all by his lonesome. So we're doing a blanket ban on summoner.
I have one guy who wants to play a fighter, and hoping he doesn't get bored with it so im scouring any archetypes I can find.

I think the base summoner isn't so bad, but the master summoner gets out of control pretty fast.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 17:23

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Your GM is capriciously restrictive to the point I'd probably be scared off early but that does sound like a fun group to be a part of.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 17:40

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Andrast posted:

Even if the GM is restrictive that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Different things work for different groups.

You're absolutely right.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 18:00

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

It broke my loving brain to understand craft wonderous item and even when people directly explained it to me I felt dumb, right until someone finally was just like "do you have

1)Time
2)Money
3)A high spellcraft"

If yes to all those do not worry.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 21:38

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Being a healer is probably still a bad idea but it seems like the vitalist is the best of those.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 08:11

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Oh that's right, I think I had those confused because one of my GMs allowed us to choose those a couple games ago, and the occultist stuff at the same time.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2016 09:03

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

In my last wizard game I prohibited enchantment and still found sleep useful to prepare the first couple of levels. That's highly dependent on what's getting tossed at you,of course.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 17:07

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

cheesetriangles posted:

Right now in the game I have had no access to buying any scrolls because the part of the world we were in was kinda a backwater. So my spell selection was rather limited. I hadn't learned any enchantment or necromancy spells at level up. Last sessions we ran into a gnomish community with some wizards so I'm hoping one of them lets me copy out of a book or something. Currently we are prisoners but it's looking good that we will be released on friendly terms. As long as the drow party member doesn't gently caress poo poo up too bad. After that we plan on heading to the capital which will have tons of scrolls to buy but still it would be cheaper to copy out of a book if I can.

To me the essential 1st level spells when you're actually first or second level (there are some other ones you want to pick up later just because they're nice to have) are grease, mage armor, and color spray (and silent image if you have a GM who plays along . . . I've played with a couple GMs who just refused to treat the spell as written, which makes it much less useful spell). I usually will take sleep too as part of my starting set just because it basically one-shots encounters if you get a bunch of hungry animals thrown at you in the first couple of levels. But it's pretty much useless after that.

False life would be useful but in every game I've played a wizard, I've asked the GM if I could use a wand of cure light wounds without the UMD check and they've allowed it.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 20:53

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

sugar free jazz posted:

I found it, I found peak Pathfinder discussion. Behold.

I swear to god though, the most active arguments I've had with GMs is over feather fall. I've had a GM who insisted it had to be prepped (like, you're preparing to cast it as you walk over the bridge or something), another who was fine with it being instantaneous for me but, insists that it doesn't work instantaneous as a scroll or wand (either used by the person themselves via umd or read magic, or by me).

Rick fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Apr 5, 2016

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 19:29

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Andrast posted:

He would be right since activating a scroll or a magic item like a wand is always at least a standard action.

Bummer.

# ¿ Apr 5, 2016 19:55

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

That sounds fun, but I can't commit to anything at the moment.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 19:49

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Would Alchemist Affinity open up the doors to any wondrous item crafting you couldn't get otherwise?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2016 09:47

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

LightWarden posted:

No. It doesn't give you new spells, it just gives a boost to any wizard spell you cast that's also on the alchemist's spell list.

Well the only reason I thought it was possible was because you could copy formulas, but yeah it specifies only shared spell list posts.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2016 21:53

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Some GMs put in encounters you're expected to run from. Maybe you're supposed to run?

# ¿ Apr 25, 2016 22:38

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

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.

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).

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.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2016 09:29

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Arivia posted:

No. You are literally everything that makes 3e bad and unfun to play right now. You need to get all your books taken away until you can act like a goddamn adult and play nicely with others again. gently caress off.

Re-loving-lax home boy.

# ¿ May 11, 2016 20:14

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I just hit level 4 as a gunslinger going through Iron Gods, (I'll put the rest in spoilers in case someone out there likes to go into this stuff dry): and I'm sort of at the point where normally I'd be hosed as a character if I didn't take quick reload, since I wouldn't be able to swift load cartridges and take full round attacks. But, in the same session I also came across multiple laser guns that have ten shots a battery so I am thinking that might be a bad feat investment. We only have about 10 battery disks at this point, which translates to 50 shots, so I guess it's possible I could potentially run out of shots and still need my gun, but my GM is letting me apply dex to these guns like pistols at level 5 so I figure if we come across a battery charger or something I won't ever use my pistol again. I don't know if quick reload is worth it when I'm loading every 10 shots as opposed to every shot. Am I thinking correctly?

# ¿ May 13, 2016 20:14

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Number Ten Cocks posted:

Tech guns are bad against robots due to hardness that can't be beat without adamantium bullets. They're terrible against some high CR robots that also have energy resistances. A -40 to your damage if you face an annihilator robot is tough.

Oh! Yeah definitely sounds like I'll need my pistol then, so I'll probably need to reload it quickly.

sugar free jazz posted:

See if you can get durable adamantine ammunition from your GM, or since you're making the cartridges see if you can use adamantine weapon blanches instead in the creation process. Adamantine alchemical cartridges are otherwise super expensive

Another problem with the lasers is that, depending on the kind of Gunslinger you are, you could be going through 25 or more shots in a fight. Rapid shot, iterative, dual weilding, it adds up fast and those 50 charges aren't gonna last long so rapid reload is probably worth it. Definitely keep the lasers though because it's badass.

Oh, cool! Blanching would definitely be preferable if he'll allow it. Especially since this AP is stingy so far when it comes to raw gold.

I was planning on taking TWF to dual wield instead of rapid reload so yeah, those charges probably won't last very long. Especially since apparently the tech guns I have are considered semi-automatic which means free rapid shot?

# ¿ May 13, 2016 22:36

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Man I feel grateful as a wizard when I don't have to put points in the con to avoid negatives.

# ¿ May 16, 2016 11:22

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

LorrdErnie posted:

Also the rules on death requiring reaching negative constitution are generally a help but some players just LOVE making characters with 8 constitution and they die even easier in Pathfinder than they did in 3.5.

This is the cause of my one death, and I'll never do it again. Like it's tempting in a 15 buy game (which I actually really dislike but it's what most of the adventure paths call for), especially if you're pretty good at avoiding trouble. But you're still basically within the range of a decent single dice roll to death during the first 3 levels and it's just not realistic to expect to never get hit.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 07:48

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Number Ten Cocks posted:

Ultimate Equipment got errata that nerfed into uselessness the Jingasa, Quick Runner's Shirt, Staff of the Master, and a few other too good to be true items.

Noooooooooo . . . quick runner's shirt rules.

HatfulOfHollow posted:

The basic 20 point buy stats are 16, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8
You can mixmax further but that's usually as far as I want to go. If you need a 13 INT you can either stick a 14 in there, wait until 4th level and add a point then, or take something out of one of the other stats, but I like this setup since you only end up with one negative stat and if you take a negative to wisdom (the only other stat you'd want to lower as a fighter you're just asking to get hosed on every will save, which is your worst one.

edit, actually if you absolutely want 13 INT now I'd go 16, 14, 14, 13, 9, 8 and put my level 4 point into WIS but will saves are going to suck for a while. And usually you want your level increases to go into your main stat.

Yeah, especially for a new player. I think if someone pushes the minmax past that they're going to not have the knowledge to avoid the pitfalls that come with having negatives in multiple stats. But also without at least 16 in strength fighter is rough.

Rick fucked around with this message at 16:48 on May 20, 2016

# ¿ May 20, 2016 16:35

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

Kvantum posted:

The bigger issue with that book, at least from where I look at it, is that they're cramming 7 different races into it. Blood of Elements suffered from just having the five genie-kin in it, so seven is going to almost certainly result in a crappy book.

But yeah, the kitsune fans just... No. Kitsune are on my list right alongside Kender. Kill character on sight, kick player unless you and them both know going into it that they're a joke character.

Probably my favorite character I've made was kitsune but he was a wizard-on-the-lam posing as a human bard with a single skill rank in perform: comedy so I guess by definition it was a joke. I pretty much just chose magic where there was overlap with the bard spell list and rolled really well on some perform checks too so I managed to make it 3-4 sessions keeping up the ruse. GM thought it would be funny not to tell the party, and, it was. The reveal actually happened when I went negative HP, since we decided at that point I'd probably slip back to fox.
E: And I was inspired to do this by someone who I played with who I don't know if he wants to be credited or not but is a poster here so if he ever reads it, thanks!

Rick fucked around with this message at 11:15 on May 29, 2016

# ¿ May 29, 2016 11:10

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 09:17

Rick: Feb 23, 2004; When I was 17, my father was so stupid, I didn't want to be seen with him in public. When I was 24, I was amazed at how much the old man had learned in just 7 years.

I'm trying to decide if a one, or maybe eventually two level dip into wizard or cleric is worth it. I am leaning towards wizard because we have a spellbook that contains "all the level 1 spells" although one of the primary motivations towards doing this is to heal (out of combat) which makes a cleric make attractive. Secondary motivation is we have a casterless party. Which actually has turned out to be not so bad in Iron Gods.

I'll be doing this at level 6 if I do it. I have 14 INT and WIS so statwise it's a wash.

I also am thinking bard, but, my character is an android so I don't get to take advantage of any morale boosts.

# ¿ May 30, 2016 01:09

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