Pathfinder General /pfg/

Tier 4 is 'good at their job'

What pushes them from 4 to 3 is being able to do shit outside of that.

Yes, rocket-tag is a problem, but PoW makes it worse, UNLESS the opponent is using it as well, thus allowing them to nope the PoW-blender with counters.

This is a problem. PoW could be just as interesting, just as varied, but less powerful, and it would be much better.

While 'you can build whatever you want and it'll work fine' is a great design goal, the problem is that if someone knows what they're doing, that 'works fine' turns into 'oh god what'.

I think the devs know this too and that's why the errata will be full of damage nerfs

So I was taking a look at the Medic and I was actually pretty excited by the concept. Was looking at making a Sanguinist as a reserve character for a future campaign.

docs.google.com/document/d/1fkVJcjXIEZiZj_vpumo_8qy0TZfQl2hZ-tKV4rLnxLM/edit

So I was wondering if I could get some tips on feats, maneuvers, and stats I might want to focus? I know it's main stat is Wisdom but I figure I can either try to get stuff as covered by Wisdom as possible or go a Wisdom/Dex. I'm not used to making PoW characters and my DM allows them at the table.

It literally cannot make it worse *because everybody competent already oneshots enemies*. Like that's literally the only benchmark a character has to meet, and the only thing above that that matters is 'kills or disables an entire encounter in one or at most two actions'. PoW characters flat out cannot do that in the first fifteen levels, and cannot do that with any degree of reliability in the last five. Raising a fuss about PoW is misguided. The actual issues lie with stupid monster damage inflation as you level and the ability of monsters to chuck instakill/instadisable attacks at you, to the point going first and doing it to them is the only good defense. If you want to bitch about something, bitch about the fact PF lacks status effects that aren't horrifically crippling so you cannot 'grind down' a target without either killing them or CCing them into a state resembling death.

Oneshotting anything is a shitty benchmark.

The fact that people bring up PoW's damage at all means that people will NOT always oneshot things, and Initiators have an easier time of it.

Also, be the change you want to see in the goddamn system, don't just do something because it's the only way it's already done.

To be honest, DMs shouldn't be using big instagibbing monsters necessitating such unhealthy levels of damage.

I feel like the whole thing'd work better if people used more, less powerful monsters.

Is there a way to qualify for craft wondrous item besides master craftsman?
I need to get it as earliest as possible so I can get a wand of fireball with 6000 gp

mechanically monsters do one of three things:
-Actually pose a threat
-Waste resources
-Act as treasure chests

Unfortunately number 2 really requires number 1 because you're not going to waste any resources unless you actually absolutely need to.
You might then ask me why you would want to make players waste resources, the reason is simply that they're given a finite amount of for that specific reason. If every class had only encounter powers monster design could change drastically and it'd probably be a more fun game. Unfortunately most of the classes have /day garbage nonsense

Apart from having an actual caster level? Because wands need Craft Wand.

Yeah I just remembered that, so even Master Craftsman wont work.
Alternatively, are there any wealth feats in pathfinder?

There is a trait that'll raise your starting gp to 900.

Yeah, I miss 4e status effects like balls.

I was planning to use that but I am still short.
I was planning to get a half charged wand

So I want to play a fun fighter that isn't PoW or SoP. I was thinking about using DHB's unchained fighter. Has anyone used it before? How does it fair? What tier is it?

Why do you need a wand of fireball? Perhaps you could get something else.

Character concept. Its a one shot campaign so it doesnt matter that I burn my whole wealth on it.
I was recommended to use this: d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/rogue/archetypes/paizo---rogue-archetypes/counterfeit-mage
which fits pretty well with my idea of "fake sorcerer" but seems I am too poor to afford it and I can't into craft.

I'm working on a boss fight for my players. Its CR 10 and I'm kinda worried they'll figure out some way to one shot it or disable it within one or two rounds. I'd ideally like to make this last at least 3 rounds.
Are there any good benchmarks for level 10 dpr and like what sort of save or die or save or suck spells there are at this level? I don't want to make this guy immune to everything but the entire build up for this fight is going to be shit if this giant monster they're about to fight is just going to get it's shit shoved in.

Party is two PoW guys, a wizard, a cleric, and a Oradin Archer. All of whom are pretty well optimized.

Mate, if your party is 5 well optimized level 10 characters, a boss that stands a chance should be on the CR 15-16 benchmark.
Throw them a vilderavn.

Mix in a few traps and summons between them and the boss.

Make them waste a few turns trying to reach the boss while its throwing save or suck spells.

Then when the party gets close enough - annoy them by making the boss an illusion, and that he's been invisible the entire time.

Is there a way to increase the base threat range of my unarmed strikes? I'm playing a Sacred Fist Warpriest and all 3pp stuff is allowed.

I think the Aberrant bloodline gives you an extra 5ft reach(?)

Holy shit that thing is rad as fuck. Yeah ok, fair point I can bump up the cr.
Unfortunately none of that makes sense in context. They're fighting a large stupid but insanely strong non magical monster. They're already by its lair and have preformed through recon.

From the last few sessions I can determine that for this fight to work it needs a minimum of 300 hp, immunity to fear, and immunity to mind affecting. I can justify the first two but I can't justify the second. I also really can't justify a higher will save than the one it has.

*Third.
Maybe I can just give it multiple initiatives

Mess w/feats around. Give it counters like Sanguine Perseverance, Obsidian Sidestep, Temporal Body Adjustment, Eldritch Consumption, or something of the like.

>I can't justify the second. I also really can't justify a higher will save than the one it has.

Intimidate is 30 ft maximum and requires a visual or auditory stimuli to work. You could make the beast use scent or blindsight to locate prey.

Keep your big brute mobile by using spring attack to hit them from beyond their reach.

Use the Grab and Crush monster abilities to hinder the party by keeping the caster pinned down or throw around the martials like rag dolls.

Reposting since I didn't get the answer last thread.

Investigator studied combat said..

>Upon doing so, he adds 1/2 his investigator level as an insight bonus on melee attack rolls and as a bonus on damage rolls against the creature.

Does this mean..

1) add 1/2 level bonus on melee attack roll and melee damage roll
2) add 1/2 level bonus on melee attack roll and
ANY damage roll (range,spell, siege weapon, etc).

Hey /pfg/, I'm reviving Ihys, Asmodeus's brother. As one of the first gods in existence, what should his favored weapon be?

I already know he's gonna be an Aztec god of fitness in appearance.

Some sort of staff or rod, most likely. Appropriately godly, and one of the simplest and most primitive weapons of all - 'large stick'

About to make an Arcanist for a new game. Any essential traits/feats/spells you guys would recommend?

What does this even mean?

Vancian Magic is by far the most balanced system of magic we've invented so far.

Given that Sarenrae was in ye olden days the champion of Ihys, it makes sense that he'd be a sword-lover.

Sacred Geometry.

That or a spear. The first great weapon technology advancement " rock tied to stick."

What is your starting level and starting wealth?

Now that i think about it, A spear sounds fantastic fo Ihys reborn. Especially since he was killed by one.

Basically i'm brewing up The War in Heaven 2.0 (Law VS Chaos again.)

The forces of chaos have started doin shit creating a new cult of Ihys. They've successfully scoured the evil from a two mile expanse of the Worldwound, However leaving the chaotic influence in tact. Good news for the Crusaders; but the same techniques are planned on being used on other parts of the world. Effectively making Anarchic Nukes.

What is the "best" throwing weapon? It seems like you really have to pick between damage and any sort of range.

>That feat

what the shit

Chakram.

Starknife is okay now too.

Hm, I meant critical threat range. Like, 18-20/x2 and so on. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

I dont know if its already been discussed but can maneuvers be considered nonlethal if you use them with unarmed strikes or blade of mercy compatible weapons or weapons enchanted with merciful?

I like to use it in a game that doesn't allow 3pp stuff, to show how "balance" Paizo is.

Being the change in the system is why I'm working on an entirely new game that has nothing in common with pathfinder beyond rolling d20s, my dear user. PF is such a broken mess with so many built-in intentional imbalances that I play it when I actually WANT something broken.

(Also, people bring PoW's damage because it's more obvious and requires jumping through less hoops to deliver. Not because it's actually higher. You won't see anybody bring up Akasha even though it far outdeepses PoW, for instance, because it's less well known and its combos more obtuse.)

Unless they're explicitly a different damage type, its just extra weapon damage, if the weapon deals nonlethal, so does the maneuver.

Do you fucks seriously have that short of a memory?

pastebin.com/YA3rRptE

I remember outfighting him as a Wizard 17 and DHB admitting defeat in this very thread.

By RAW, I'd say any damage rolls - otherwise it'd say "on melee damage rolls)

By RAI, probably meant to be damage and were I your DM, I'd rule it as that.

>mfw level 15 campaign
>mfw 25 PB with free random 18
>mfw templates are allowed and work exactly as they say they do (CR+2 means I am level 13 for a class, example.)
>mfw 240,000 starting gp
>mfw I am encouraged to be from Druma

Help guys help oh my god all the hot dogs.

You know 2hu signed up for that one too, right?

Does this look like a face that cares? 2hu is a good player and real human bean.

I might go for a Slayer written as a Repo Man!

I might join that one just to torment his autism by having fun with a sup-par character and playing chaotic neutral properly.

Who the fuck is 2hu and why do you all keep talking about him?

What are you thinking of making, user? Might be fun to dual-app and make a comedy pair like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

/pfg/ is obsessed with 2hu. The tsundere love affair will never end. She's an autist that likes to post builds and play cutesy characters.

That isn't how CR works at all though.

It is for initial character creation, of course then you'd get bonus levels up to half your CR/2 rounded down distributed throughout your build somewhere.

...

I know there are many /m/anly denizen in here.

How would you create a debtman with Paizo Only content. Eldritch Archer?

Warning: Roleplay/story question here. Feel free to ignore

I'm a player in a game with a couple friends. We're all first time players and made paranoid, untrusting characters (6 sessions in). Our collective mistakes. After three sessions, the DM introduced an NPC who wanted to fight the BBEG and knew how to do it. We didn't trust him, but our sense motive checks turned up nothing, so we let him join.
Long story short, he was the shapeshifting BBEG the whole time. Which would be fine, except now the paranoid, untrusting party knows there's a shapeshifting person out in the wild who wants them dead. Also possibly the leader of the nation's armies and a random Baron. And honestly, I'm mostly fine with that. My character was built for this environment.
Except that we have two new players who want to join our campaign. And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why we would trust anyone right now (the other players tend to agree). I really don't want to reject the other players because no, but the characters shouldn't even trust their families at this point.
Any ideas, Veeky Forums, or are we fucked?

Ya gotta metagame. It's not like metagaming is inherently bad, especially when it lets the game continue like in this instance.

Last session a player character bite the dust. He's allowed me to make his character for him. I was thinking of going with a Pact Wizard archetype, bound to a devil/angel. I was leaning more towards devil, but theirs a Torag Paladin in the party, so I don't know how well it would go. Especially since the character would constantly give off evil. If I was to go with angel, what would be a good deity to counterract Torag's 'don't accept surrender' mentality. You know, for roleplays.

Easy enough.
Option 1: Have the BBEG appear again when these two new people join.
They're seen in the same place at the same time as these two new people, so everyone in the area is clear of being the BBEG in disguise.

Option 2: There is a reliable but extremely inconvenient spell or machine or ritual that proves that someone isn't a shapeshifter in disguise. If you asked a normal guy to let you do it to them they'd tell you to fuck off and stop wasting their time, but these two new players believe in the method and are willing to be screened.

1) You only know of one shapeshifting creature, one of them has to be good.
2) Seriously, why are all of you paranoid this badly in character?
3) The shapeshifting has to be tied to something. Supernatural, magic, whatever. Have the characters enter a null-magic area to prove who they are.

You're characters don't have to force them into a null-magic area, but there needs to be an obvious "hey, magic doesn't work here" into "well, I guess they can't shapeshift and would return to their original form if they were shapeshifting" line of thought from the characters, even if such info might be false in terms of game rules.

Wasn't there a non-magical item in a recent book that can detect shapeshifters?

We're second level. Access to things is fairly limited at this point.
Even if we can prove it's not the shapeshifter through some form of null magic, it could be someone working for them (which we've seen), or someone working for someone else who wants us dead.

We're paranoid because this is our first game and two of the three of us tend to write characters with a lot of suspicions. And then the DM confirmed those suspicions.

I can try. Not sure how well it would go down with the rest of the players (one of them has a tendency toward being hostile to the other party members. Through no fault of his own. Just the character, who acted in untrustworthy or antithetical ways) but I'll ask.

>Through no fault of his own
You mean entirely their fault? They created a character that was specifically hostile to party members.

DM has to provide the field, not you.

Again, null-field + act of "betrayal". Find the new guys destroying BBEG, something they totally wouldn't do if they were his minions.

You could also just level up Sense Motive, you know. At higher levels you can literally use it to read minds.

I begged one of my players to change his one 2nd level spell as a sorcerer because he would have become utterly useless... Is that wrong to do?

Depends. What did he pick, and why would it have been useless?

Depending on how useless the spell they picked was you could just give them another for free.

Don't hide it from me, /pfg/.

Tell me about your most interesting uses for the beguiling gift spell.

You gonna link to that spell?

I have a friend that is less than beer and pretzels player. He doesn't look at anything, barely remembers to use the d20 to roll to hit then rolls it again for damage.

I pick his spells out for him, since he picked up Glitterdust, Invisibility, and Fractions of Heal and Harm after giving him a short list of options.

I found out despite "tactically" picking out those spells, he only ever uses his first level blasting spells.

...

Stricken Heart, with a negative Strength modifier for even landing it, and low Constitution on top. It's like Snowball but melee with lower damage - and a full spell level higher. And inflicting 1-round stagger at melee range does basically nothing at all before +6 BAB.

We created characters with one glaring difference that came to a head. The other was because he didn't trust the BBEG

Fair enough

We had at least two sense motive rolls that were above 20 that yielded no information.

As a DM, you can give the players suggestions sometimes, but don't tell them what to do. If something will be useless specifically because of your campaign, let them know that's not the best option. If it's just generally useless, try to kindly let them know it's not the best option, and then drop it. At 6th level, he can always replace it.

...

Explosive Runes

>yielded no information
You should at least be able to sense something with that high of roll.

Also your DM should be secret rolling sense motive so you have no idea how well you did.

>Hunch
>This use of the skill involves making a gut assessment of the social situation. You can get the feeling from another's behavior that something is wrong, such as when you're talking to an impostor. Alternatively, you can get the feeling that someone is trustworthy.
>Sense Motive DC: 20
Your DM is bullshitting you.

Hey everybody, I found the filthy martial!
d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/b/beguiling-gift

Real talk though
GM > DM__________

With 1pp? forget it. For one thing he's a goddamn mech pilot, and there's no ability that makes you *SO* jew that you break out of mental conditions just from hearing a coin drop.

You may be able to pull something off with the gonzo stuff though...

I mean, I guess? Dungeon Master is a specific reference to D&D, while Game Master is system-neutral enough that it readily applies to everything.

>and there's no ability that makes you *SO* jew that you break out of mental conditions just from hearing a coin drop.
Using Paizo tech rules does that naturally.

But it's what we've got for the moment, so at the very least we can bring up the non-magic classes to a closer level.

Personally, I'd rather use Words of Power to bring casters back down a bit, but the support for that is utter shit (as in, literally none from Paizo at all), so for most games (where players want a wealth of options) PoW is a more palatable option than WoP.

He's pretty open about stats. He tells us AC and health right basically at the beginning of a fight.
It's his first time DMing, so I'm guessing we're being railroaded.

You need Sarenrae

Nemisis. Because it's funny and a million times better than Fast Learner.

Ask your DM if you can buy a wand with less than 50 charges at a reduced price? Wouldn't help much but it's an idea.

Ask your DM. Always.
I'd say any damage rolls. Mostly because it makes sense. But I might make you lose something else small.

Combat Maneuvers aren't damage. I think.

The amount of care I had went out the window when I realized both terms existed.

So I want to run a one-shot horror game and I have very little ideas on how to scare people. All I know is that the characters want to kill each other or need to be convinced to by the end. No/few NPCs. Any tips and/or monster suggestions for seven 6th level players who only have one caster (a Witch)?

As expensive as they are, they won't do much to protect you from mind effects, and there's no mechs. Even if you construct-armored a myrmidon or something, you'd still just be turning it into silly breastplate somehow.

I'd need to know what the other players are before I can give you that advice because certain monsters work better in certain situations.

Although a swarm of chokers scares the piss out of EVERYBODY.