Pathfinder General

That doesn't sound like a fighter - its more like the rogue's shtick.

Fighter has a number of free extra move actions per encounter equal to 1/2 her fighter level + a chosen mental modifier, which can be traded 3-for-1 to get standards. At 3rd level those moves can jump as if with a running start and even reach height equal to half the check. At 5th level these can be used as an immediate action at +1 cost.

Rogue's a skillmonkey for breaking into places, doing their deed, and getting out without a scratch, I always thought. The cat-burgular, the phantom thief, the saboteur.

To me, it's the Fighter who goes "see that thing? I've got a bag full of everything and I'm gonna use all of it to kill that thing!"

Granted, I could be wrong, but hey.

You basically just need to take a fat shit all over the action economy to bring Fighter into the ball game with initiators.

Fighter-as-blingmaster totally makes sense to me.

Well, perfect balance isn't possible, but...

I feel like Fighters should get a bonus to all attacks. Not just chosen ones. So make Weapon Training as it is apply to everything, and then let them choose their 'favored' weapon, which gets a bigger bonus. Maybe improve the base bonus by 50%. You can swap your favored weapon selection with 8 hours of training. Or some other expenditure of time.

And then the acquisition of AWT be separate from the progression of weapon training.

So for example, at level 9, a Fighter has a +2 weapon training bonus to everything, and a +3 bonus instead with say, longswords.

Further, maybe at level say... three or five, proficiency with all exotic weapons.

>Implying Initiators are perfectly balanced.

I think a good way to fix fighters is to make them the "dabbler" class.

Think of the Novice class - their whole gimmick is borrowing things from other classes and building themselves with their own niche after that.

So you can get a fighter who dabbled a bit into magic and learned a few tricks from that, such as hitting spells back with a well placed swing, or chanting a very rudimentary incantation to make his weapons hurt ghosts and werewolves (Not as flexible as a magus). Or a fighter who dabbled a bit into druidism and got himself a pet, and a cursory knowledge on animal and plant life (Not as great as the ranger). Or a fighter who dabbled into asceticism and learned how to focus his body to be more lighter and more tougher to shrug off attacks (But not as tough as monks).

Something like that. They can dabble every other level to have cursory broad expertise in several fields. or they can dabble a bit more into one discipline to be much better at it, such as weapon training, martial arts, spellcraft, etc.

So how long does it take for enchantments on a magic sword/shield/etc to fade?

I'd like to include 'potential' magic items in barrow/grave loot in a future campaign. Give the sense that they were enchanted once upon a time, and that if they could discover what the magics on these things were, they could be restored. This would involve discovering the item's name, for one thing.

How's it all sound?

Hello Paizo
No, low numbers for bonking stuff was not the problem for Fighters in 3.5 and it is STILL not the problem now.

But user the dabbler class is the whole point of the Bard

A magic weapon isn't a mundane weapon.
Age will not rust, rot or shatter them.
They will remain in their peak condition.

Consider the Hobbit films when Gandalf rediscovered Orcrist and Glamdring - those swords were buried under a stinking cave in the dirt but they still remained sharp and shiny as always.

Except... the bard doesn't dabble much at all.

Rogue dabbles more with the amount of things they can do a little of with Rogue Talents.

Bard just does Bard things. Magic, Music, and occasionally hitting people.

Here's your reminder that the best armor for spellcasters is a skintight suit that fits like a second skin.

Borrowing from 5e, Bards would be the college-educated guys who learned several disciplines in swordplay, performance and arcane.

Fighters are technical school dudes who pick up and learn several things as they jump from one job to the next.

...

Huh.

I just wanted to give my players a compelling reason to do research into lore and make Knowledge (History) checks.

The funny thing about Orcrist and Glamdring is if you ported them to D&D, those "legendary" weapons are merely a Bane(Orc) and a Bane (Goblin) weapon respectively. Not even +5.

To be fair, for the most part LOTR works pretty well as an E6 setting, barring the random encounter with a Balor and the party's level five wizard secretly being a Solar with five levels in wizard. The things beyond that were back in the Simarillion.

There was a good article I don't have the link to about how by D&D standards, all the high end characters like Legolas and similar would only be around level 4 o 5 at most

DnD powerscales FAST

Well duh. This is a very high magic system with high-reaching power. A LIGHTSABER is best represented as a +x Flaming Corrosive longsword/bastardsword with that one cheap socket gem for collapsing.

Here's what you do -

Give them magical weapons. Crappy +1 weapons at that.

Upon a successful history check, they can discover some old runes on the blade and figure them as a century old. Spellcraft will not discern much except that its a magic weapon hiding a much more powerful secret.

Only by invoking this ancient weapon's name will it reveal itself as a +5 weapon.

This will require a sidequest, travelling to elven towns where the sword was once forged, to an old set of ruins, and finally to the spirit of the long forgotten hero who held the sword before he entrusts it to you if you best him in combat.

Take a look at Weapons of Legacy from 3.5. Basically what you're describing, magic weapons that you need to perform rituals related to the weapons history to unlock higher tiers of powers. Be warned tho, that you take increasing penalties the more powers you unlock, and so most of the premade ones in the book blow chunks. You can make some nifty stuff with the rules for making your own, though.

Listen to this man. This is how you DM.

Oh, sweet. Thanks anons!

Kineticist will actually out utility fighter hard. Hell, aether/air eill out utility a rogue.

At that point it sorta seems like that makes the Kineticist seem like unto a god, as it now has only the fighter and the bestiary to worry about. The aerokineticist with its infinite flight and capacity to make wind walls and have a huge miss chance against ranged weapons seems like it would spend its days shitting on fighty mcgee from the air between strafing him with lightning.

>the party's level five wizard secretly being a Sola

Gandalf always comes across as a Bard to me. Better at talking his way out of trouble than magicking it away.

I think there were also some legacy weapons in the original tome of battle, related to the different initiator schools. Dunno if you use PoW but you could tie them in as weapons from the history of the various disciplines.

God I hate sidequests.
This sometimes tells me the DM got lazy with the main plot and tries to divert us somewhere else.

Don't worry, yours actually sounds thought out. I just had a few bad experiences with incompetent DMs.

How would you stat Anduril then? Ghost-Touch?

>tfw my players won't touch PoW even though I'd allow it

IT'S NOT MY FAULT

Would you embrace me pfg*

Hey /pfg/ hows Swashbuckler? Its always been one of my favorite classes, just in concept and I recently found out that it was in PF. Is it actually worth a damn?

>mfw my players won't touch PoW, spherecasting & Psionics even though I'd allow it
>mfw my player wants to roll swashbuckler even though I told her there are better options of swashbuckler than Paizo's swashbuckler
>mfw my player rolled UC Monk based around CMBing through encounters (grapples, trips, disarms) even though I warned him CMD in PF is the one defense in the bestiary that advances the fastest in terms of CR
>mfw my player rolled Arcanist / Samurai because he likes the Arcanist's teleport ability, despite my warnings a soulknife could do it better without sacrificing his BAB

End me. End me now. I am in an odd circle of hell that I cannot comprehend.

Do succubi fuck nicely before taking souls or is the entire thing a torturefest and only the start to trick you is required? Because I'll only say yes to the latter.

No.

Prepare for CHARMED LIFE memes.

No. I'm a particularly apathetic form of True Neutral. Certainly not Evil enough, or dumb enough, or ambitious enough to make that deal.

No, it's arguably the worst class in the whole game. The unchained rogue will always fit any swashbuckling concept just as well if not better.

Jeez man, just tune down the CR a little. You seem like the kind of GM who has his system mastery down anyway. Give yourself some credit.

Use them in your encounters first. That is likely to catch their attention.

Hey /dspg/,
Would there be anything keeping me from being a Warder that's a Zweihander Sentinel AND an Ordained Defender?

Nope, and that's one of the most popular options for the Warder.

Nothing except for the lack of feats (which ZweiSents don't mind anyway; take Power Attack and go on a-swingin') and the swap from INT to WIS as your focus (arguably an upgrade when it comes to optimization, since there are actually races that HAVE a +Str/+Wis bonus).

He's an inordinately higher-level Wizard who just doesn't use magic that often, but he's got enough BAB and HP that he can get away with it.

Would that be thiiiiiis article? thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2

Jeez, chill out. If all your players are happy playing what they have, there's no need to stress over it.

Swash is hardly that bad. It's at least functional. And before you spit that 'they all use a swift' shite at me, yes, a lot use a swift. You just have to pick what you want to do. Y'know, like people say Fighters and such should be able to do? Not just mash the full-attack button like a hyperactive chipmunk?

Swash's biggest problem is that it's best for certain situations, and outside of those situations it suffers, moreso than other martials.

I so wish there were some way to get UC Rogue archetyped into being full-BAB.

Not really.

It's kinda pidgeon-holed into the worst fighting style in the game, one-handed with nothing in the off-hand, which is already a strike against it, but the main thing is that its saves are fucking terrible for a martial class (poor fort AND poor will means you are a sitting duck to all the "save or you're a nonfactor in this fight" spells in the game) and its action economy is messed up. The class is extremely reliant on having swift actions to use its deeds, but Charmed Life, the band-aid on its aforementioned fucking horrible saves, uses IMMEDIATE actions, which means one of your class features prevents you from effectively using another class feature. You also have the nice distinction of being a fucking MARTIAL class that is reliant on a daily resource that runs out a lot faster than spells.

The Swashbucker's concept as a stylish duelist class with deeds was a neat idea, but the execution was the worst. It can't really do ANYTHING well besides crit-fish with a rapier and be a decent party face.

Not sure you want to look like this...

Run a short game sometime with PoW/psionics only.
That'll get them paying attention to it.

I don't recommend using it on enemies first because that can just build resentment against it. Maybe use it for friendly NPCs but don't let them upstage the party.

>CMD in PF is the one defense in the bestiary that advances the fastest in terms of CR

citation for this?

Honestly, if Charmed Life ABSOLUTELY NEEDS to be limited, why the fuck doesn't it run off Panache rather than its own special snowflake pool?

Thanks! Didn't even think of the better racial bonus synergy.

For an initiating crusader/battlepriest-type character, do you think such a warder would be better or worse than a Warpath Follower inquisitor?

>Oread OD/ZS
Go my brother, make them feel your wrath

Combat Maneuvers are pretty useless in the long run.

Sure, you can build around grappling, disarming, tripping and such and be great at it.

But why would you?
The fighter killed a single enemy with a full attack, compared to you grappling an enemy for several turns.
The wizard casts grease and every enemy is prone, while you can't even trip anything that has more than 2 legs.

How should I change monsters, so that addition of PoW wont turn game into Dynasty Warriors?

Grunts - nothing
Low Level Mooks - Stance only
Tough Mooks - Stance + 1 Counter
Elite Mooks - Stance + 1 Counter + 1 Strike
Mook Boss - Stance + 2 Counters + 2 Strikes
BBEG - Full PoW

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1E2-s8weiulPoBQjdI05LBzOUToyoZIdSsLKxHAvf8F8/edit#gid=3

There's a visual graph floating around, let me try to dig it up.

You should be able to CMB a motherfucker into another motherfucker to deposit them both prone and taking damage, in multiple different ways from the variety of maneuvers we already have - can we even do that shit? In one turn? I bet somewhere there's a feat chain 5-prerequisites deep that drops 1d3 nonlethal on the table and knocks just one of them prone if they fail a fixed-DC reflex save after you just overcame their CMD. I just know it.

(I can't find it)

Sup, /pfg/
I made a homebrew Thriae race
pastebin.com/MJvED5bt

Now I'm working on Thriae racial class archetypes.

Workers get an Alchemist Archetype called the Sculptor
It modifies bombs into a splash attack sticky wax. Low damage, but can entangle and slow enemies.
They can also concoct Merope, a special Thriae honey which upon imbibing, infers an insight bonus to a single d20 roll for 24 hours. and also concoct Thriae Mead, that type of drink known to put their victims drunk, addicted and powerless as they are kept within Thriae hives as "livestock".

Soldiers gets a Magus Archetype called the Spellstinger
They can treat piercing weapons such as polearms, javelins, rapiers, and even bows as one-handed weapons so that they can use spell combat and spellstrike AND ranged spellstrike
They can use their arcane pools to grant a bonus to their flight speed, making them a fast "dragoon" class (refer to falling damage rules to understand why this would hurt a lot)

Harvesters get a Summoner Archetype called the Swarm Queen
Eidolons are changed into the swarm subtype, and their HDs indicate the swarm's size. The Swarm Queen can split up the Eidolon into smaller swarms, allowing a "death by a thousand cuts" style of combat strategy or combine the swarm into a single large mass. (certain eidolon evolutions won't work with swarms)
They can also Merge Forms, turning the swarm queen into a swarm as well (gaining all its benefits such as miss-chance, moving through confined spaces, etc.)

I'll be working on it more. But tell me what you think, /pfg/?

Improved Ki Throw + Vicious Stomp

You know, when you take all the prereqs of Ki throw into account, the development team seems to think that picking up and throwing a motherfucker is considerably harder to learn than MAGIC.

I don't really see why wizards are so damn full of themselves if any fool with a class level to spend can learn their trade but this basic move requires six or so feats.

>tfw GM comes back and says "no" to your character concept the day before the game
Welp

>Finally finished several month long dungeon crawl
>Downtime/Economy session tomorrow
>Still havent done the paperwork for the loot we plan to sell
>Still havent made a shopping list of utility consumables for the next dungeon
>Still havent calculated the income earned by the many businesses
>Cant stop browsing Veeky Forums
Help me!

You should have had it pre approved days before the session.

I ran it by him on Thursday, and he seemed OK with it, and the session's Sunday.

Hope you enjoy being forced to play an iconic premade then.

Tripping somebody without fucking yourself up in the process and igniting some gunpowder to create an explosion require the same amount of intelligence

Remove it entirely. Making something PERFECTLY balanced in a system like Pathfinder is flat-out impossible short of extensive rewriting of the entire system.

This is a hell of your own design, user.

What is your concept? Tell us, let /tg decide who is that guy, your GM or yourself?

Everyone I REQUIRE HELP. I have created part of a class I am writing for a homebrew. I need opinion on the features that are out so far.

>docs.google.com/document/d/1WKwyK10BvzqVb9M3lIJ0ZyraUNSuEr8y0QK6ML6d-6Y/edit?usp=sharing

To explain the feature Facility Expansion it goes as the following.

The Agent gains a facility they can both pack and unpack, while it is unpacked you are able to make use of a number of features. At it's base it just gives skills, but your Facility Expansions provide other bonuses ranging from at low level stored research notes to at high levels a cloning lab.

Both packing and unpacking your facility is something one must consider as for how long it will take. As well as transporting it.

I would love to have some

Do empower spell affect sneak attack dice?

No.

Awakened dog, exploring the world after druid owner's death, wound up in with the followers of Shelyn because "Yes, show me the beauty of the world, everything is wonderful" on her side and "holy shit you are an adorable doggy" on the Shelyn side.

Game story is that a new pass has been discovered through the mountain range that previously blocked off the world, and each party member is heading through for their own reasons: her temple wanted to send someone to spread Shelyn's beauty and love and to bring back knowledge of the arts of the civilisations on the other side, and she was chosen since her survival skills were trusted after having been raised in the wilds with her old druid partner.

GM vetoed it for being too silly, and I guess the other characters are all more standard archetypes: we've got a robin-hood rogue, a pyromaniac teenage demonic-blooded sorceror, a necromancer (cleric of norgorber from the description another player gave, but not confirmed) and a secret-service ranger.

Definitely wouldn't call it a case of "that guy" (assuming it's not me), but it does suck to have to come up with a whole new idea the day before, especially when I'd gotten all excited for this one. Hopefully I can still convince him that the character'll fit into the world, just gotta get his number from another player.

Why not? It is part of the damage right?
Like Arcane Trickster Sneak Attack Fireball's dice would be half, along with the usual damage if enemy beat your DC?

>Why not? It is part of the damage right?
No, it's added to the damage if certain conditions are met. It's not inherently part of the spell's damage, and thus not affected by metamagic such as empower or maximize.

> "Help! My players are having fun WRONG! They're neither min-maxed, nor fully optimized!

Have a +39 to grapple checks at level 18 without even properly min-maxing it, and then having been given low level mythic, an extra d6 to the roll doesn't hurt.

Aside from giving allies the ability to coup de grace the enemy, (If the creature/monster CAN be coupe de grace'd) which is an instant-kill, in most games, unless what you're fighting are minions, you will not "kill an enemy with a full attack." If you're going by pure pathfinder, then you're players will never have a challenge, as you can kill an imperial lord in one full attack as a paladin.

d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/wondrous-items/wondrous-items/m-p/mantis-embrace

This, along with other grapple feats, means on your second round, you can pin and kill an enemy yourself.

Demon Lords*

Not Empyreal. My Bad.

I'm working on a Fighter's fix based on the class being dabblers of different disciplines..

I call it "Fighter's Focus"

Every even levels, a fighter may select a Fighter's Focus in place of the bonus feats normally gained at that level.
A fighter may select any focus equal to or less than his fighter level.

Arcane Focus:
2nd Magical Study - treat all Intelligence-based skills as class skills.
4th Arcane Ally - gain a wizard's familiar equal to their fighter level -3.
6th Arcane Intuition - gain spellcraft as a class skill and receive a +1 insight bonus to saves vs spells for every 5 ranks in spellcraft after successfully identifying a spell.
8th Caster's Bane - As an immediate action, a fighter may move at half his movement speed to make an attack of opportunity against an enemy casting a spell or a spell-like ability. This movement does not trigger an attack of opportunity.
10th Spellwarded - gain SR equal to 10 + his fighter level.

Wilderness Focus:
2nd Frontiersman - add their half their fighter levels to survival and ride checks.
4th Woodland Ally - gain a druid animal companion at their fighter level -3.
6th Fleet-Footed - gain fast movement of 10 ft and ignores non-magical difficult terrain.
8th Horse Whistler - Once per day, a fighter may use the mount spell using his fighter level as his caster level.
10th Feral Form - gain the Hunter's Animal Focus class feature, using his fighter level as his hunter level.

Divine Focus:
2nd Divine Word - treat all Charisma-based skills as class skills.
4th Warrior of Faith - gain double the bonuses from weapon focus and weapon specialization when using their Deity's Favored Weapon.
6th Divine Protection - Add the fighter's bravery bonus as a divine bonus to AC.
8th Faith's Favored - Once per day, a fighter may gain an insight bonus equal to half their fighter level to a single d20 roll.
10th Sacred Weapon - gain the Warpriest's Sacred Weapon class feature, using his fighter level as his warpriest level.

Thoughts?

So that mean successful save won't affect sneak attack damage. Good to know.

>Spellwarded
Make it vs non-harmless, otherwise it's also a disadvantage
>Frontiersman
Survival and Perception instead would be better, there's no particularly hard Ride checks, unless they want to Mounted Combat

What they really need more is 4+Int Skill ranks baseline though.

>Sacred Weapon
Fighters already get this from WMH at the effective cost of a feat, making it a nonfeature.

So, thoughts?

Good to know.
I'll probably just trash Spellwarded actually. Since it doesn't fit with the theme considering fighters are still non-magical martials.

Yes, frontiersman is supposed to be used in conjunction with Mounted Combat, making it very handy as a bonus.

I'll junk Sacred Weapon for something else then.

>Wilderness focus in place of bonus feats
So you're just a worse ranger now?

Same with Divine Focus and warpriest.

Also fighter doesn't have the skillpoints to take advantage of all their new class skills. With 2+INT and no other class features that use Intelligence, they're never going to be the skillmonkey.

Thanks for the input. will be making a fix.

Oddly enough.

The way to make fighter an impressive martial is to just make Myrmidon the default fighter in a setting where full initiators don't exist.

User of loads of different combat disciplines and trained in extraordinary techniques.
It's exactly what the fighter should be.

They get outexpertised by full initiators of course, so that's why they'd need to be the only ones - it's kind of like how 5e improved the fighter, by giving them a pseudo-initiator archetype.

When you level up, can you take the favoured class bonus for a class ability you didn't unlock yet ?

For example taking a +1/4 to the banner bonus as a first level human cavalier.

Forget all that shit, just give them 4 skill points per level maybe make them trade a class feature to up it to 6 per level.

This is the way to think about it:
The fighter in itself has no identity as a class.
It's a shell. Bravery, weapon training, armor training, are just flat modifiers that have no character to them. Bravery is flat out worse than just having a good will save progression.
Its gimmick was that it has double the amount of feats as any other class, and so it could use them to mold itself into whatever it wanted to be by having extra access to feats and their power of customization.

In Fantasy Craft, there's a class called the Soldier that's exactly the same framework, and Soldier is one of the best combat classes. Because Fantasy Craft feats are all worth taking, and PF martial feats are terrible and bogged down with taxes and prereqs.

But that doesn't change the fact that bonus feats are the Fighter's identity. If you're taking them away, you really need to give them something new that lets them stand on their own. Myrmidon gives them maneuvers and grit, which are two entire systems, and it works. The tiny features you're giving them are just generally nothing impressive, nothing that makes them stand out compared to just taking a different class.

Addendum: another thing to keep in mind though is that by that point you've completely remade the Fighter into something else. It's pretty much what you have to do if they're trading out all their bonus feats in normal play range.

Can i use the Halo alternate trait for ansimar, coupled with adopted/scion of humanity, to fuel Minor Wishcraft for infinite uses?

archivesofnethys.com/TraitDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Minor Wishcraft
d20pfsrd.com/races/other-races/featured-races/arg-aasimar