Pathfinder General /pfg/

I want to play a spellsword that uses light and dark themed spells.

Fuckin' A.

I've been wanting to play a Gun-Witch via Eldritch Archer magus.

On that note, does anyone have suggestions for what to name her Coven? The Brimstone Circle is the best I've got so far, brimstone being of course one of the ingredients of gunpowder as well as a spooky substance relating to hell and magic.

>remembering the ridiculous enchantment sorcerer I made for a oneshot
>I will never get another chance to prove to my group that he was indeed a terrible person

As for actual characters I've never gotten to play? A kind of generic "I wanted to be a paladin but dad wouldn't let me!" tiefling magus that runs around in parade armor and uses cold spells. Hexcrafter/Bladebound

>I will never be able to go as full 90's cheese as a werewolf monk that goes full Wolf Style on some unfortunate enemies.

Seriously I've had this skinwalker UC monk on the backburner for an eternity. It's simple, but fun, and I want to play it so bad.

Either a gestalt Occultist/Radiance House Occultist or something out of Gonzo.

Do you plan on multiclassing one or both sides into Arcanist (Occultist)?

>make an edgy fetching ninja with a dark past
>never got to the point where I can show he's just a coward who wanted to have a normal life

I've been wanting to play a Skald with a party of more martials. The ability to give every martial Rage Powers seems really good, and I already like more supporty-type characters already.

On an unrelated note, how good is Vigilante? It looks like "the class that can make a passable version of any other class," with the default being split between Rogue and Fighter, and archetypes like Magical Child being an okay half-caster, and Brute being not-a-Barbarian.

How's this basic setup for a hidden blade rogue?

>Human Unchained Rogue (Scout/Swashbuckler/Hidden Blade) 12
>Traits: Trapfinder, Threatening Defender
>FCB: +1/6 Rogue Talent
>Rogue Talents:
>2 Weapon Training (Weapon Focus: Kukri)
>6 Ninja Trick (Style Master (Outslug Style))
>6 Combat Trick (Butterfly's Sting)
>10 Feat: Outslug Weave
>12 Combat Trick (Improved TWF)

>Feats:
>1 Two-Weapon Fighting
>1 Combat Reflexes
>3 Combat Stamina
>5 Combat Expertise
>7 Extra Stamina
>9 Lunge
>11 Outslug Sprint

A gestalt Lore Warden Fighter/Empiricist Investigator who fights with a whip.
Imagine all the skills.
Imagine all the tripping.
Imagine all the range, all the AoOs and that sweet sweet focused weapon damage with the whip combined with a mutagen, weapon training, gloves of dueling, and studied strike.

Well, the first thing you need to know is that Brute is terrible, and you should never actually use it. That aside, vigilante is actually pretty solid, though the thematics and the social/vigilante divide don't always fit the campaign. A surprisingly decent class with some pretty snazzy options.

A Jiangshi that uses the stuff from the Legendary Vigilantes playtest/book to be a horrible mashup of eastern everything.

>Take the mercurial duelist archetype, take the Genius Vigilante feat to make class features key off Int
>stack inquisitive detective, exposed, and focused hunter
>be the son of some dumb superstitious farmers who also happened to have a nice sword laying around
>did their best to raise him but had no idea what they were doing
>he winds up being a gravekeeper before getting dragged off to go on adventures for whatever plot contrivance
>knows his way around the forest by the graveyard and is book smart as shit, but is still some clueless stiff with a sword

Brute was mostly to accentuate my point on Vigilante being the catch-all martial, since it seemingly can do almost every martial's job, either with the default talents or the archetypes that replace talents for other things, such as Brute's Hulk mode or Magical Girl's spells and familiar. Actual effectiveness of each archetype is up for debate, and I haven't bothered to theory craft hard enough to really have much of an opinion, but that was my impression of the class.

I might have to try it one of these days.

>all that reach with Enlarge Person and Lunge

You missed the Legendary Vigilantes playtest, which actually made your point for you by letting the vigilante steal features from basically everybody. Shit was cash.

Too bad you have to wait until after Gencon for an user to leak it. :^)

Does the google drive link no longer work? I'm sure I have it somewhere in my history, I swear I looked at it before. What did it change?

>take dazzling display and signature skill (intimidate) as well as clever wordplay to use int for intimidate
>be surrounded
>full round action, everyone around you is spooked
>they try to run away and all get fucked to death by AoOs

How the fuck are you building it? I've been kicking around the idea of building an Elf Eldritch Archer/ Hexcrafter, but using guns just costs so many fucking feats, I can't get to competency until like 9th level, and that's still doing a piddly 1d8 per shot with no modifiers.

Also, the 20/x4 on guns doesn't really line up well with spellstrike, but whatever.

I made a copy of it right before Jolly closed, since he said to make copies if we wanted to hang onto them before the book came out. I don't know if he actually wants someone to make one of those public, though, since it's likely the stuff in it will change before release.

Fair enough. Gotta get people to buy the book or whatever somehow.

Okay, that does sound pretty sick. If you do get the chance to play it, I want to hear about it.

There's an 80% chance the playtest doc is going to be split into 2 books, which hopefully will mean a second full fledged playtest.

You're right, there's already some changes (especially to noble soul), a few new talents, and a few other large changes, although the playtest helped shape a lot.

Guns are happiest in very specific builds, or with 3rd party support.

Guns, for example, can easily become 2/3-of-a-bow (that's DPR with the difference in accuracy included) or even 3/4 of a bow if they're the Discipline Blade Shapes of a Warsoul.

A Culverin can become rather dangerous in the hands of someone who's dipped Aegis and turned those pathetic 2d8s into a far more reasonable 12...

Of course you could try to focus on the same things as an archer, but that means dedicating quite a bit of your build to doing so - which as you yourself have stated isn't really worth it.

Personally I like taking them in a vastly different direction, where their damage comes from "counting-as" shit Kaiju would need both hands to wield....

Yes, most excellent

A super beefy human cavalier with a drake friend, going around fucking up "superior races" like the "degenerates" we are, building a biggass hoard of loot we'll never use, stabbing people with lances, being incredibly arbitrary on whether to save peasents or burninate them.

On that note, who's genitals do I have to pleasure clumsily to get the Legacy of Dragons scans?

>using guns costs so many fucking feats
it's just the one feat for proficiency. Two if you count rapid reload. The rest is regular stuff you'd take for any other ranged weapon like PBS and Precise Shot. You can get it online by level 7, or 5 if you're human or elf, or are in a setting where gun proficiency is martial

Can probably bug him about it if he pops b- Oh. Speak of the devil.

>Second full playtest, maybe
>changes to the Noble Soul
>new talents
>all those (you)'s
>mfw

I have at least half a dozen potential characters using stuff from your doc, man. It's so hard to nail down one specific thing character.

Since Horror Adventures came out, I've been working with more content that works with that vibe (no, I do not have it yet, despite the fact that the kineticist guide was updated, a fan of mine sent me the kineticist stuff), although depending on how things go, we'll see about another full playtest.

The current playtest should only run for a week, but if I can finish the two archetypes on which I'm currently working before then, I'll probably stretch it a few days. My publisher gave me WAY too much time for this, and I get antsy when I have time.

Although they're not wrong, just in a different way.
A gun uses Exotic Proficiency, Rapid Reload, and Deadly Aim

Those three put it on par with composite longs that have not yet taken any feats.

But you're three feats down before you touch the regular ranged feats, *and* won't have access to Manyshot, *AND* the bow can eventually grab deadly aim for itself as well, *AND* on top of that several buffs and items will only work on bows.

That's what we mean by always being behind for daring to use a gun or crossbow versus bows. Sure, we could take specific class to at least get a stat to damage, but the archer doesn't have to do that. The archer doesn't have to expend literal "class levels" on top of 2-3 feats to attain basic viability with his weapon.

He just picks up a damn bow.

>What character have you been wanting to play lately?
Hot off the presses.

Bows can't use two weapon fighting. Hexcrafter magus can reload two pistols as a free action (assuming rapid reload and alchemical cartridges) simply by using the Prehensile Hair hex. Tieflings can of course just use their tail.

Of course, even this build would work better with like hand crossbows or something, but fuck it

...

Rifles can't use two weapon fighting either.
And your build would work even better with thrown weapons, which unlike guns and crossbows can get strength to their damage.

>We want you
>We want you
>We want you as a new recruit

Let's all love Lain

i feel like you're under the impression that i'm doing this for optimization purposes, and not just taking a character concept i like while trying to make it as viable as possible

What if I don't want to?

>Yes, but how did you piss the Consortium off?
Just got off my plane, so now I can answer
>be a motley crew of adventurers and mercs
>arrive by boat to some port near the Mwangi
>dragon/dino appears, we kick its arse. I (Drunken Barb) break it's wings and the wizard asplodes it's head
>after the after-party at the tavern, some guy comes and hires us to be guards/muscle for his company's riverboat
>pay is good, so we accept
>kill gargoyles and things, arrive at checkpoint where shipments are being moved and dropped
>get ambushed by elves, beat them up, wizard speaks elvish and ask questions
>apparently goons have been enslaving native elves and have formed a huge gold mining and narcotics smuggling operation.
>Wizard is escaped Gebbite who hates slavers, My Barb has a death wish, so we let the elf go and turn on our employer
>"You can't attack me, I'm with Aspis and they'll hunt you down!"
>we say fuck yo couch, break his back, hogtie him and his second, and burn down five whole warehouses of Opium and other narcotics.
>go up river, ally with army of elves, elves kill employer, we head to the mines
>we rape everything, burn it all, free slaves, and gib both the Consortium Overseer and his necromancer
>after sick rave party with elves, we take all the stolen loot and gold the elves gave us, bought ourselves a ship, and became the A-Team.
>we now spend our time fighting good fights, and assaulting the dogs of the consortium every chance we get.

Can't wait until next session when we blow up more Consortium shit

Especially since DM has okayed rebuilding characters with PoW

Refluff the throwing weapons as guns, duh.

Lain is boring, pretentious drivel for people who think they're smarter than they are.

Sounds pretty dank. I imagine most of the horror adventure stuff in general was pretty shit.

>guide stuff
That reminds me, two things. First, all the warlock "totally not direct buffs guys" stuff should stay about the same, right? The second is more for everyone in he thread, but should I post what I have for the warlock guide at some point, just to make sure I'm not talking wholly out of my ass?

You said "bows can't use 2 weapon fighting" as a response to an explanation of how guns are mechanically behind.

This makes your entire statement read very much (even if that may not have been RAI it was certainly the RAW) as a counterpoint of the "nuh-uh, guns are really strong you can use two of them at a time" variety.

The horror adventure stuff for kineticist was (elemental whispers is okay, not sure if it's worth spending talents instead of feats to get a familiar), but aside form experamenter, the vigilante stuff was pretty cool form what I've seen. We all know corruptions are pretty jank, but I'm holding out hope until my author friends gush at me about what they wrote.

And totally post it, I'd love to see it!

why bother refluffing?

Sure, why not?

Why indeed....

What are your thoughts on Paranoia Agent?

I feel like a bit of a hack, considering several sections are empty and/or incomplete, but here goes nothing. Not exactly going to improve if I sit on it by myself.

>user attempts a warlock guide
docs.google.com/document/d/1qAYaDl9Iz7yoszTHGF5G7BexiiW4pFIG9DLEEUdA6ro/edit?usp=drive_web

>What character have you been wanting to play lately?

A Half-Minotaur Half-Elf Bloodrager.

I just wanna play something fucking stupid for once, honestly

Ha, you should have seen my original alchemist guide, it was nothing but holes. You don't start off great at this whole guide writing thing, you just write what's interesting and eventually get bogged down in magic items, like a pro.

So if I wanted to play a character that poisons, corrupts, curses, and sets fear into the minds of things in Pathfinder, how are some fun ways to go about this? General thoughts are things like Shadow Priests from WoW or some Lovecraftian horror shit.

Not bad, you can tell where it's still rough (Especially since you're including content that isn't technically finished), but from what I'm reading, it does seem like you have a pretty solid grasp of the basics of guide writing. Your formatting is solid (something that I have SUCH a problem with in other guides), the linking is great, and while I can agree it's still early, I think it's already going to be a very useful guide for people who want to run warlocks, which seems like a decently large bunch. You'll have to keep an eye out for when my friend's Vigilantes of Porphyra drops, it should hopefully have some stuff to add.

People being naysays and negativenancyshitstains and people being shits in general

Purge these threads you goddamn fucks

user, I know you'd like to think things could be better. Your hopes, unfortunately, are an illusion.

Purges will do nothing. They'll just come back out of the woodwork the moment you turn your back.

all mediums are influenced by forces, user.

mankind is both force and medium.

be a force for something better.

Is there an initiating class or archetype that allows at-will maneuver usage but with very few maneuvers known?

I already figured it would take a while before I actually got it nice and tidy regardless of my experience. Pretty sure I got distracted partway through some sections and forgot to come back to clean it up and add to it, like the bracers.

Formatting it was probably one of the most fun parts. Learning all these gdocs functions was far more entertaining than it should be. Finding out the bookmark function let you easily link your ToC was sweet, and something I'll need to do with my other stuff. Using unfinished content though... Well, I figure by the time I get on the ball and get the rest of the guide done, the book will be out.

>keep an eye on Vigilantes of Porphyra
>more content for the warlock
>more potential content to totally not swipe for the stregone

Bueno

Warpath disciple, mystic.

Sounds good, I've got work to do on two new archetypes (Hellion and Dread Champion), so I'm gonna bounce, but if you're on the paizo boards or somewhere else, feel free to hit me up, my email address is in my profile.

Peace out, sailor scout!

It's been about a decade since I've seen it, but I remember thinking it was pretty good.

>Dread Champion
Sounds interesting

The fact that guns hit touch AC makes up for the fact you can't get stat to damage as a burst damage focused class. The Magus is a burst damage focused class.

Be a Half-Elf or Human for EWP (gun). Rapid Reload is your first feat, then PBS and Rapidshot. Hexcrafter gets you Prehensile Hair, which gets around reloading issues without Gun Twirling, but you don't care until you dual wield. Deadly Aim and TWF get your damage up mid game, so by level 7 you should be throwing 1d8+7d6+5 with a chance to stagger for your spell shot, and 1d8+5 for your other two (three with Haste), before factoring in weapon enhancements (which you have as a Magus). Between Arcane Accuracy and touch AC, you just hit things.

Eldritch Archer means you have Curse bullets and Ghoul Touch bullets and Staggering cold bullets because you take Snowball, Intensify Spell and a Metamagic reducer trait.

No.
Stop spouting that fucking lie.

The DPR comparisons for bows and guns do not magically ignore the difference in accuracy.

The reality of the matter is that bows have enough additional bonuses (such as the bracers) and enough damage by default combined with additional firepower from Manyshot to completely overtake the difference yes even when crits are taken into account.

A bow is *still* averaging 95% hit rate on its first four shots (Manyshot+Haste, Rapid, Iter1) against a majority of higher-CR opponents at high levels.

The touch-AC hitting makes up the difference with thrown weapons, but not with bows.

Bows also do not have to deal with just ceasing to work 5-20% of the time you use them.

EWP is a feat. Wherever you got it from that's a feat you could have gotten elsewhere.

Rapid Reload is a tax feat. Where you get this, an archer gets something you both need instead, like PBS or Rapid-Shot. The archer is now two feats ahead, and has a stat to damage, which you're still lacking, and soon to be an additional attack ahead, which you will never be allowed to catch up to.

The hexcrafter is exactly what user earlier was talking about by "it expends your build": All of the "archers" above are any class with equivalent BAB growth to an equivalent you're attempting to gunslinger with (20s vs 20s, 15s vs 15s) while you are forced to - even if it's good - choose a specific class for certain amounts of levels to get a specific ability. You could more easiy have curse arrows and ghoul touch arrows, and have more feat slots to fit that metamagic in.

Again, no one's claiming they can't make guns viable. We all know how to. But to claim it can be done as a COUNTERPOINT to "except the bows require less expenditure for greater performance" is deliberate misinformation.

Also, the costs: that gun and ammo at their base, even if crafted, come out vastly more expensive than a bow in arrows, in particular the ammunition; a single firearm shot can be worth *MULTIPLE ENCOUNTERS* of arrows or more!

Whoops, you take TWF at 9, because the static damage of Deadly Aim is more important to you than an extra non-haste attack. You could actually free up Prehensile Hair for something like Flight or Slumber and just not take TWF period.

The multi attack route is kind of a trap for a single big shot class; kind of like how people were trying to make 3.5 blender rogues when the Scout archetype was right there and everything else was nerfed into the ground.

I >> the wrong post, sorry about that 910 user, but my point still stands!

HERESU

I want to make a really hard to kill paladin with as much immunities/resistances as possible.

Paladin 20
Done

Dwarf
Steel Soul
Glory of Old
The new wis based paladin archetype from HA.
Done

Or Stonelord

Yes, with a magic item, an Adaptable bow and at level 10 (if we're still talking about the Magus here), a bow is going to do more damage. That's not being questioned. In general, the bow is more useful for people who want to attack at range. This is a specific case and I'm speaking of a specific build.

The point is, you fucking autist, is that when your damage comes from bonus burst damage, the weapon's profile is unimportant other than can you hit with it. It's why Rogues used flasks in 3.5 and why they still fuck around with Merciful Guns now. A Magus doesn't give two shits about what the weapon's base damage is because their damage comes from Shocking Grasp/Snowball. So *to a Magus* what matters is:

Do I get a good critical range?
Am I more accurate with it?
Can I use it to do silly bullshit?

A gun allows for 2 and 3 (and vaguely 1, with its high critical multiplier), thus making it a solid choice in this specific instance.

The assumption was going straight Magus, not five dropping a non-caster class for the ability to get Dex to damage. The Magus doesn't need to fish for Dex to damage, because they have burst damage. If they were trying to compete for sheer number of attacks, that is possible without a dip as well. Improved TWF comes online at the same time Manyshot does and provides the same number of overall attacks, albeit at a worse to-hit. To make up for the lack of useful gun-related items, the Magus buys a lesser Rod of Intensifed Spell instead of the bracers of archery.

Both builds come fully online for a Level 9 Magus. The Magus doesn't meet the +6 BAB requirement until level 8, and they get a feat at level 9.

Is there a way to make a wizard/sorcerer that specializes in magic missile?

>tfw never going to play oradin gestalt
>forgoing caster levels and ability progression makes me hate myself so non gestalt isn't an option

>its high critical multiplier
Magus spells only ever do x2 damage in a crit

tfw I cast magic never-miss-le

>with very few maneuvers known
Is this part necessary?

Warlord recovers initmod maneuvers as a swift action.
Harbinger and soul hunter stalker recover maneuvers as a swift action.
Bushi recovers one maneuver per round as a move action, free action at level 6.

Sleeping Goddess Style allows to recover one maneuver (and psionic focus) as a standard action at level 3, move action if you take psionic meditation feat at level 6.
Hustle power gives move action for 3-5pp and swift action.
Psychic warrior 7 with Expanded Martial Power feat can manifest any power known as a free action as a part of an attack by expending psionic focus, once per round.
Awakened Blade 6 (minimum character level 11) may regain focus once per round when he recovers a maneuver, or expend focus when manifesting a power to recover one maneuver.
Overpowering Optimism boost (Goddess 6) recovers focus as a swift action.

Some of these options can be used on one character. It might not be at-will, but certainly more maneuvers recovered than you can expend.

It's not unreasonable that someone doesn't want to fuck around with expending/recovering things.

Why is DSP so shitty at designing martials?
The main issue of martials was never, at any point, damage. It was always NICE THINGS, which they needed more - they never needed more numbers, only new things to do. Yet a big part of what PoW does is throw even higher numbers at martials, which is entirely unwarranted and just breaks game balance instead of fixing martials.
At this point, even if you like some parts of PoW, you have to ban shit like EFlux or Broken Blade to make it anywhere near usable.

And don't get me wrong - I like the idea of initiating. I just think the DSP implementation is worse-than-Paizo-tier shitty.

What's wrong with Flux again?
And most Su disciplines are exactly what you are describing - giving weeaboo fightan mages martials nice things. Most Ex disciplines fix combat styles which are bad with paizo content.

Are you the same piece of turdstain that was crapping on that other guys ideas? You Who Fucking Hates Fun

The issue I think, is that they raised the optimization floor.

While this would normally be a good thing, they ALSO raised the CEILING. It's harder to make a bad PoW character, but it's also SO much easier to make one that's a living meatgrinder.

In essence, they gave them more things to do in combat, but they still have access to all the 1pp tools, so it only increased their power. A WARRIOR can do competent melee damage if he goes for the tried and tested twohander power attack rigmarole.

Off the top of my head, I feel like Boosts might've been a poor decision. Them on top of full attacks (Already the frontrunner for damage) is just a recipe for disaster. Didn't ToB not have them? Just Strikes and Counters? I remember there was ONE thing that PoW has that ToB didn't....

Talents are nice things, yet retard planets had been shitting on that other guys ideas, what the fuck is wrong with you chucklefucks

>I don't like thing, guys.
>You must be that other guy who also didn't like Other Thing!
>WHAT'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM WITH OTHER THING?!

Broken blade makes unarmed characters fun AND effective, though.

PoW: E was absolutely a step in the right direction compared to PoW in terms of discipline design.
Almost all the boring 'just do more damage' disciplines are from the PoW1 materials, and the new stuff branches out and adds a number of actually cool effects that don't care so much about extra dpr.

Path of War is far from a perfect product and posts from the devs have told us all about the design issues, team problems, and constraints they had, but I firmly believe it was a solid premise to start on, they're getting it right more often as they go on, and there's a bunch of good stuff already in there.

>Being so new that you don't know that Broken Blade is universally known and publicly acknowledged as OP and will be getting a hard rework