/pfg/ Pathfinder General

Feels like a downgrade, plus I prefer Arcanist

Is War Soul really compatible with Psychic Armory? I can do that?

I see no tail. I also see no armor, anons! Come on!

Uh...bolted, no. I have some masks, though! I'm assuming you want full-face. Are helmets with faces okay?

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Nero is best bard-a-din

Crashing this art request.

I would prefer masks, and the more bird like the better.

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Not a bird but a mask I think, from the thumbnail in my folder.

>birdlike

Anybody have good images of male Ethumions? If you have any in Jojo poses that would be appreciated.

Well, one person I was responding to was deleted and the other seems to also have been deleted and I'm linking to nothing. Anyway, more armored ladies and a bump for my question.

I'm pretty sure it works but I'm tired and I can't really understand things. I just feel like I've seen a lot of psychic armories NOT using War Soul, and why WOULDN'T they if they could, you know? We live in a golden age of ranged maneuvers in every discipline.

I almost asked if PsyArm stuff counts as thrown weapons for Thrashing Dragon but holy shit those maneuvers are bad. Thrown knifes is cool and I think slipping it into an otherwise very melee Discipline is good design in theory, keep 'em rounded, but they need to be not...awful. Swift throws with low damage for their level but that don't care how much shit is in your hands would be cool. Flat damage is oogey.

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Like this?

This guy's got a mask

This could work. Sucks that it's full plate. I'm making a nameless one with a bird mask for reference. Honestly any mask that is on the unnerving side could work.

Because I fucking hate PoW. If the solution to "make martials better" is "give them spells that they never run out of", then I'd rather be a martial that just fucking sucks. Psychic Armory lets me live my dream of being a sweet knife-thrower, but I'll do it WITHOUT adding being a secret wizard to the pile, thanks.

>any ability that has its own stat block is a spell

Not this shit again. You people were a problem in 3.5 when you claimed that ToB was just spells, and you're a problem now.

This is my most gruesome offering. It's kinda avian to me, and it definitely has that "this is not an optional fashion accessory" quality to it. Searching for plague doctor images will probably get you more birdlike stuff, though, so I'd suggest that if none of this is working for you.

Sleeping Goddess is essentially casting spell, half the maneuvers reference spells. Same thing with any of the more supernatural disciplines. Shattered Mirror, Cursed Razor, Riven Hourglass, Elemental Flux.

War Soul and PsyArm stack, yes.

Personally, I like Ghostblade more, because positive energy swords are cool.

No fuck you dude. I tried PoW. I wanted to like it. I didn't. It's literally spell-like effects that you can use all fucking day. Hell, half the disciplines are LITERALLY magic.

Oh, good! So it DOES work, you just don't do it by choice? Maybe you are the many people I've seen.

Yeah. I could just go with a plague doctor mask. The character himself is called The Songbird, so plague doctor has a much more raven like feel. Might just be out of luck.

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For that matter, any good female ones?

Most of Flux, Razor, and Mirror aren't really casting spells, any more than a Monk's stunning fist is.

They don't really play like spells in practice, and are vastly more limited.

If your objection is characters who should have magic having magic, then I've got nothing to speak to you.

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Uh they play EXACTLY like fucking spells? The hell are you on, they don't play like spells?

And yeah, that is my goddamn objection. When the question is "how do we improve non-casters", the answer shouldn't be "just fucking make them casters".

Well, to be fair, you run out of spells eventually.

>Most of Flux, Razor, and Mirror aren't really casting spells, any more than a Monk's stunning fist is.
Flux, Razor, and Mirror are the lesser offenders, but they still so. They're highly magical disciplines.

Exploiter wizard is an upgrade from Arcanist, though? What feels like a downgrade?

Most Arcanist exploits aren't good, and the few that are (Fast study and... Dimension slide?) can be picked up quickly. As a wizard, you also have faster progression, and anything you give up can be gotten back through exploits.

I could understand not wanting to be a prepared over spontaneous caster though.
War Soul replaces Psychic strike and the 4th and 10th level blade skill
Psychic Armory trades out or modifies: Form Mind Blade, Throw Mind Blade, 1st level bonus feat, Enhanced Mind Blade, Quick Draw, Mind Blade Mastery.

So yes, they do. Isn't needed though, as I think PsyArm is good enough to stand on its own

How the hell do we go about reporting a mod?

>manifesting fire out of thin air is the same as punching a dude in a nerve cluster
u wot m80

>Ghostblade
The Magus one? I like that one too, but I'm working on an E6 character, so I need 5/1 combinations (or straight 6, but WHY BE BORING) of things. Initiating archetypes go up to 2nd-level maneuvers, and then you can pop a single level + the trait to pick up another bevy of 3rd level maneuvers from a real initiating class. Slightly more readied, slightly more bookkeeping, more diverse class feature options (but not usually much better).

I want Stealth a lot, so I need either Dexterity or Wisdom (Wisdom in the Flesh), so I'm looking through stuff that supports that.

I personally love soulknives because gear kind of disgusts me, I don't know, I just never got into it. I hate feeling like a mannequin for the magic items that make me viable, I like being able to either pick up anything and it's good or bring my own it-is-me-in-blade-form stuff to a fight. Magic items should be sparing and have cool stories, and no one has the time to story every +2 belt piece of shit they pick up.

>Exploiter wizard is an upgrade from Arcanist, though? What feels like a downgrade?
School Savant Arcanist is an upgrade to Exploiter Wizard however.

Ghostblade is a Soulknife archetype from Seventh Path, adds posi/nega energy features and bladeskills. I like it too.

Maneuvers play very differently from spells. For one, you don't prepare them in the same way or learn them in the same way. There's no slots, there's no attrition.

Your choice of maneuvers is the several you plan on using in and out of combat, and your use of them is based on timing and recovery, instead of planning ahead. When you use a maneuver, it tends to only last a couple rounds, or it's done immediately. They can't be metamagicked, you don't get progressively-larger piles of lower-level ones as you level up, they tend not to care about your level, and they're almost exclusively weapon-based.

They may a versatile system of abilities you get, but they are NOTHING like spells, except for the fact that they're abilities you can use.

If your definition of "caster" is "has abilities they can use from their class," then something is very wrong. I shudder to imagine what you might think of 4e.

In the sense that it's an ability you use that causes an effect, is distinctly martial, and as noted above, doesn't run in the game in any way like spells other than "it's an ability?" Yeah. I'd say it's similar.

Could Soul Knife 2/Whatever 4 and use that +4 soulknife feat for enhanced EMB.

Is it? You're still behind standard wizard and you give up 3 exploits for it.

>punching a nerve cluster
>in an angel, or a giant blob of ooze, or a fucking walking rock

u wot m8

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>there's no attrition
>thinking this is a good thing
>implying 4e was any good either

>not understanding gaming abstractions
Or are you implying a fucking sneak attack is magical too?

>not knowing 4e is good
>thinking attrition is anything but cancer

Fact is, maneuvers don't play like spells in any way other than being powers.

>we could literally power the earth with how fast gygax is still spinning at the fact 4e saw the light of day
>4e is the reason we're all trapped in fucking paizo hell

4e is the best D&D at being D&D. It's the only edition that wasn't deceptive about what it was, and is SUPER FUN.

I'm sorry you hate it.

The reason you're trapped in Paizo hell is because your group sucks. Find some better players, maybe branch out to non-D&D/D&D-likes.

Gygax was also pretty shit at game design and DMing. Have you READ his writing?

>Gygax was also pretty shit at game design and DMing. Have you READ his writing?
Untrue!
He GM'd for a group of people who had radically different play styles than us.

Gygax was a terrible designer that contributed basically nothing to RPGs other than the brand name "Dungeons and Dragons". Who fucking cares?

My groups played 4e, one for a few weeks, and one for like a year. We hated it, and kept hoping it would turn good. It never did.

One is playing 5e now and we're having more fun than we have since 3.0. The other fell back to Pathfinder and thanks to 4e PTSD won't even look at another game.

Lemme guess, you played with MM1 math?

Gygax made the game. That doesn't make him the smartest in the project. It just meant he started it.

Same with Pathfinder. Paizo started it, but jesus fucking christ, Bhulman, Price and Crystal will be sure to bankrupt it.

I just hope some more competent publisher will salvage PF and 3e's corpse and actually make a better iteration that doesn't mechanically fuck over the players.

>I just hope some more competent publisher will salvage PF and 3e's corpse and actually make a better iteration that doesn't mechanically fuck over the players.

Isn't DSP working on their own system? I'd migrate to that game if its better than PF

I guess so? We bought the books the day they came out. We were still young and naive, eyes shining with excitement for this brand new world, a ground-up reiteration of our favourite game. This was a mistake, and the end of our brand loyalty.

MM1-math 4e is legitimately super fucking terrible. PHB1 4e is also fucking horrible.

Explain?

I played 4e with my buddies. Despite our campaign running for 3 sessions without an issue, we went back to 3e and then migrated and stayed at PF for various reasons.

4e is too restricted as fuck. There's very little room for "the DM gets to decide how this plays out"

2 of us stayed because DSP. I like 3e psionics, the other guy is a massive weeb.

The last guy stayed because it reminded him of 3e and he's lazy to relearn new rules.

>Is it? You're still behind standard wizard and you give up 3 exploits for it.
You're one level behind for spells. How Arcanists prepare spells is more powerful than how a wizard prepares spells.

The first batch of books was using math that wasn't thoroughly playtested. A lot of player options hadn't been introduced. Monsters had too much health and didn't do enough damage/conditions to threaten the party. Combat ended up bland as a result.

WotC shaped the fuck up, and by MM3 the formula was down pat to the point that you can fit the monster design rules on a business card. 4e got continually better as more options were introduced and the math was refined through playtesting and errata that actually responded to playtester experience.

So, you know, the opposite of Paizo.

Not who you were talking about but I'm a 4e Veteran so I can handle this.

4e Started rather poorly due to the devs not entirely understanding their own rules. They were very hesitant on giving any monsters REAL nasty tricks as they might make the game 'Unfun'. As a result, they played mostly with 'Give it more HP, that will make it more of a challenge'.

As a result, monsters were a bit pillowfisted and like trying to punch a sandbag. They learned from this and the MM3 (And the Monster Vault gave new good versions of classic D&D monsters) was a thing of beauty and supreme dickery. Monster with actual immediate actions, terrifying recharge abilities or ability to play like a Leader with supporting allies.

On the other hand, they had to unlearn a lot of 3e thought patterns with designing classes. It's why a lot of 4e Classes from the PHB have non-combat Utility powers that no one really wants to take. This was never truly fixed, they instead doubled down on 'Skills are for non-combat' and made Utility powers almost exclusively Combat Utility. It's not a perfect fix but it worked.

It, along with 4e's other teething problems, (A Murder-Suicide is never good for business) did a lot to harm the initial option of 4e, something that dogged it for a long time.

Fair enough. I always saw the biggest draw for Arcanist being Quick study arcane exploit; hence why I prefer exploiter over arcanist.

As far as feats go, Sacred geometry(As if), Spell Specialization (Your silver bullet for the level) + Potent Magic exploit, Item crafting (Although they nerfed the item eating ability)

>Sacred Geometry
GM said I should grab it if I have room. Not sure which feats to grab with it, though so I'm not too sure if I should grab it. Him mentioning it by name makes me worried about campaign difficulty.

Spell Specialization....I probably will grab that one, actually. Item Crafting...? Probably not. Nothing more than CWI at any rate.

>GM recommends taking Sacred Geometry

Sacred Geometry is just straight up bad design, friend. It's usually best just to avoid it.

The absolute worst 4e monster is the Moon Wraith. An insubstantial monster with an attack that causes Weakness, iirc (Save Ends).

They're undead lycanthropes. What do they look like? A ghostly werewolf twisted into a crescent shape like a moon. Scary.

>muh pure martials
fuck you people are the worst

Well ex-fucking-scuse me for wanting to play a concept you people seem dead set on exterminating.

Sure, play your concept through low levels.
But don't then bitch when your mundane soldier isn't able to keep up with the in-training Hercules.
Pick up some magical items/channel your inner heroic spirit or fuck off back to the trenches you god damn statistic.

No, I'd say that 'You don't like PoW? You must be in favor of perpetuating caster supremacy REEE' people are the worst.

Shocking as it may be, mate, there are people who play pure martials through entire campaigns and still contribute. Despite every desperate meme that PoW is the one true lord and savior, the game IS, in fact, perfectly playable without it.

>there are people who play pure martials through entire campaigns and still contribute.
hue

To be fair, if you like neither caster supremacy nor 3pp that tries to fix it(whether PoW, porting ToB from 3.5, or something else), you probably shouldn't be playing PF.

Tell me what you think about this idea guys?
It's a modern game where the players investigate a mysterious disappearance in the woods
They see a number of staircases, with no accompanying house, just staircases and most seem to be of a spiralling design

They see other odd unsettling things

They discover the hatch for an underground bunker, which they descend and it turns out to be a cathedral of metal

There are windows but the Vistas they see are planets and stars

Turns out they've been transported onto a derelict ship in the deep reaches of space

And that's when the horrifying fun starts

Also plan on using random and hilarious quotes from the newest DOOM game as inspiration

The PCs first descend down into what appears to be barren desert; they're actually in a biodome/habitat and eventually find they're on a space ship (which may be crashed or even at the bottom of the ocean: There are no stars/the stars aren't right)

The ship's AI is malfunctioning and erratic but not malevolent and will try to actively help the PCs

A survivor reaches out to the PCs via intercom but the PCs eventually discover that survivor has been dead long ago

There's also a janitor on board who behaves oddly, seemingly distracted by odd questions and behaves as if the PCs aren't there

The ship has also been doused with temporal energy, and the PCs find time is ever shifting

Hey bro, PoW isn't just 'tries to fix it'

It tries to fix it in a SPECIFIC WAY. A specific way that people are 100% entitled to not like.

>can't come up with any sort of well-reasoned rebuttal
>can't comprehend a game where people aren't jamming high-op and competing to outdo each other

Let me guess, you play solely on Maptools or Roll20 or whatever, with people from /pfg/ and desperate LFG boards

>100% entitled not to like
Well you SAY that, but.

>whether PoW, porting ToB from 3.5, or something else

I play in person with my friends.
Nice assumptions though buddy.
Pot calling the kettle black hmmmm?

Well the topic was PoW specifically.

...What does that even mean?

>Reading Armor Master's Handbook
>Reading Legato
Oh, this look nice, I know few characters, there I can use thi...
>The legate can use this ability a number of times per day equal to her Wisdom bonus plus half her paladin level.
Whaaaaait...
>equal to her Wisdom bonus
PAIZOOOOO
What. The. Actual. Fuck. Paizo?
Why? Why are you doing this to me?
Why are you even bothered to remove wis dependence if you add it again?
My butthurt set my appartment at fire, thank you, Paizo.

I need help figuring out emergency force sphere.
For starters what happens when the dome collapses as a result of unstable terrain? Does it just end the spell prematurely or are there other consequences?

Secondly Can you cast this spell while flying? It says its a hemisphere but I'm not sure if you can control the angle it takes like maybe you can make the dome face downwards to deflect attacks from below.

Pretty good you fuck

This is probably my last post to /pfg/, because thank-motherfucking-god, my crew has seen the light.

I hate Pathfinder. I do. It's a terrible, awful, kludgey system that I only played because I couldn't get my group to try anything else.

Our usual Forever DM (don't scold me, he likes it) was sick three or four weeks back, so I took the opportunity, got everyone over to my house instead of his, bit the bullet, and ran a one-shot in --shocked gasp-- 5e.

And we fucking loved it. I actually had FUN running the game, and they had as much fun playing it. There was no six hour chargen phase, trying to figure out how to make my numbers the Best Numbers. Classes just fucking work. Martials can still play. There's basically no trap options. We don't have to adorn ourselves with magic glintz like goddamn Macy's Day Parades to have a shot in hell of hitting the enemy and not dying in reply. We don't fight the rules tooth and nail to eke out a bare minimum of function. The rules give us what we want and then step out of the way so we can play. We had the kind of blast of a session we haven't had in ten years.

We told Forever DM we wanted to try converting the campaign to 5e. He said he'd give it a shot, but he'd need another week off to do it. That's fine, I said, I'd improvise another one-off that week. And again, it was fucking awesome.

And our next two games have both been back to our old campaign, but in 5e, and it feels like everything is full of life again. Everyone is EXCITED to play, D&D night is the highlight of our week, Forever DM says he's never felt less burnt out. We have a FIGHTER! On PURPOSE!

You know how when you think back on something you loved when you were younger, and you remember only the good parts? 5e is that, for our high school D&D days. It's like playing my perfect, joyous memories.

I'm free of the nightmare that Paizo calls a game, and oh god, it's so beautiful out here.

I'm leaving, brothers, and I hope some of you find the path out too.

See you in a year when you run out of new character options to play in 5e.

hahahaaha
you think fighters are good in 5e

(Paladins are great, though. If someone ever wants to play a 5e fighter, tell them to just refluff a paladin.)

>abrupt reminder that not everyone plays the same character for years at a time

Spellslinger 1 / Eldritch Archer X here again.

Reliable gun wouldn't work since to get free reload I need both Rapid Reload feat and using Alchemical Cartridge (which increase misfire by 1, negating the usefulness of reliable). Without free action reloading, Spell Combat and Spellstrike is useless. Not to mentioned that even with Reliable, my gun can broke anyway if the enemy get 20 on their saving throw.

I guess Shadowshooting + Amateur Gunslinger (for quick clear) is the only real choice here?

Should I drop the spellslinger idea? Having 2 pools and x3 critical hit is a pretty sweet deal though..

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That's a penalty. A "limitation" at the very least, and a severe one at that. It's certainly a functional effect, but it's NOT a positive one; that's a cost-dropper!

I remember the anons were asking "what happens" on weapons that already split damage, for "Expanded Damage Type", not "Can we split it further".

Maneuvers compatible.
Discipline Weapon Shapes NOT compatible.

... Not that you need it, Psychic Armory is the strongest soulknife by a mile.

More likely the monster has DR 15/Alignment, Immunity to one element, and Resist 10 against all the others. You go from 4d6 dealing a bit under half damage on good rolls, to bouncing off on all but crits.

"Expanded Damage Type" ADDS a damage type to the damage you're doing. My only question was if it applies to all the types for the few split-type weapons out there.

The TWO together are a ... not entirely cheap but acceptable way of changing a weapon completely to damage types you can't get otherwise like acid lasers or something, so the overwrite is a good boon, while the splitter is a limiter.

Ah, correction: Since limitations are minors, the cost would be pretty decent; just one slot, not two.

Either he doesn't know what it does, or you grabbing it will be the justification for adding it to all his DMPCs.

Either way, consider those that feat a brilliant, flashing, pulsating red flag.