Pathfinder General /pfg/

>"I'm going to use you as a societally-approved punching bag for my frustrations and insecurities, and there is nothing you can do about it. You brought this on yourself the moment your plans began."

Grappling, drow can conjure magical darkness that dark-vision cant see through. So you grab 'em and hold 'em until they're dead.

Fucking isn't a martial art.

I'm just going to assume that Drow are more into stuff like karate than tae kwon do. There's not a lot of room to do spinny kicks in a tunnel.

>Fucking isn't a martial art.

I'm pretty sure the martial arts drow are mostly into are "having hidden weapons" and "pretending to be unarmed so you can cheat".

Casters can do it.

it isn't if your doing it wrong.

>Drow noblewoman orders her servants to kidnap a human to help teach her daughter the marital arts
>Due to miscommunication, her servants kidnap someone to teach her daughter martial arts
>Servants have been horribly tortured for their failure, but the noblewoman's daughter really likes practicing kung fu

I think you could conceivably roll these together.

>player makes charisma-based character (oracle)
>every other player's charisma is mediocre at best
>"Well, looks like I'm the face of the party!"
>Within the first minute of interacting with an NPC:
>acts like a smug prick
>insults her mother
>attempts to use a touch attack
>fails the touch attack, instead beats her over the head with his sword
>is surprised when the NPC is not fond of him ("muh charisma") and calls her a bitch

yeah, we had a little talk with him

also, nice quads

>tfw no purple-skinned, red-eyed karate girl to journey with on the Path of Aganhei.

Judrow then.

So hear me out:

I'm a believer in the fact that a paladin can only fall if he willingly abandons his own ideals.
Its not genocide that which gets a paladin following a god of war to fall, not even stopping a war that could happen, is him avoiding going to war at the fear his side might lose, and mascaraing his cowardice under the pretense of " the common good".
Its not torture what makes a paladin of a goddess of love fall, he falls when he loses his faith that love can conquer all.
But most of all, it cannot be a "gotcha" kind of thing. The player, and in consequence, the character, has to say "fuck it". I talk to them before the game starts, and ask him to tell me what his characters believes in. What thing he would have to do for him to evidently having given up his ideals. Then, when they are about to do something that would break his oath, I will tell them that if they go through their character would fall, and they have to say
"fuck it, I fall".
This is why I don't allow restoration in my games. Once you fall, you fall for good. You might retrain your class, but you will never go back to being a paladin- and in my ways, you wouldn't want to anyway.

>once you fall, you fall for good
What if they're a paladin of a god of redemption? Why is this a one way street? And why can't it be a gotcha thing? Obviously if they're doing it without knowledge they shouldn't fall, it shouldn't be a GM trap, but if they're being careless shouldn't they fall?

so looking at the Opportunist fighter archetype I am not actually sure if it is worth those bonus feats. The rogue talents aren't a great list, and the edges are really limited in daily uses (only int mod in bombs and I won't have more than 3-4 int mod as a fighter).

Plus is bars you from taking eldritch guardian and anything that modifies weapon training.

/pfg/ hyped this a bit too much for me.

What feats have the best Combat Stamina bonuses? I'm looking through them but the list is huge.

/pfg/, what's the best use of the vomit swarm spell you've ever heard?

Can someone help me list ways to increase the DC of a poison?

Eh. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like Paladin loses something of itself when any murderhobo can be a Paladin as long as they still believe in the ideals of their god. You don't get to be a champion of Good if you do blatantly evil things like torture.

That said, I do agree that there should be no gotchas. A Paladin doesn't fall because an evil wizard put him into a contrived situation. A Paladin doesn't fall because he was reckless and made a mistake. A Paladin falls because he looks at what he's about to do, realizes that no Paladin should ever do something like that, and then does it anyway.

Well if you are paladin of a god of redemption then by definition you fall when you no longer believe you can be redeemed.

Also if the person is just being careless it robs the fall from any dramatic importance.
Its like saying: " oops your character forgot to pick back your +3 bow which he dropped when he pulled out his sword even if it fell just one feet away from him just because you didnt tell me ooc that you did"

This aint a game of " Simon Says" nigga, this is about DRAMA and CATHARSIS only reachable through LIVING someone else life.

youtube.com/watch?v=sJOPgFb6zb0&t=1m24s

>when you no longer believe you can be redeemed

user, I'm already a Fallen.

Aight Veeky Forums, how should one go about playing a Zyphus cultist in a morally ambiguous party with a healthy dose of nihilism. But without being a melodramatic twat that is such a downer that sparkles the gnome is going to shove a glitter wand up my ass.

Lets say its a ticking bomb scenario where torture is the only way you can get information that can save innocents.

Falling cannot be turned into a discussion of metaethics. There can be many different way to interpret what is " good" and I suppose under many of them murdering every peasant you just because you can may come across is the greatest good of them all ( consider a Nietchzean God, if there could be such a thing)
If he can bullshit his way out if it, I rather let him have it, because it only means he doesn't care enough about what is happening to just say: " fuck it"

>Wants to play a Zyphus Cultist
>Doesn't want to be a melodramatic twat

Please help.

Poison conversion with an alchemist to turn cheap ass posion into that expensive one that gets a cumulative -2 everytime the objective breaths it.
Else everything is a fucking trap

Good is still a single solid concept
The real thing is to not accept stupid situations like that

To be fair, no matter how I pull this the character is going to be a twat just on principle of the matter. I mean more in a sense to the point it's not so obnoxious that the anti paladin bi-sects me for ruining his mood. As a generally happy person in a party of generally unhappy characters being a downer isn't exactly in my usual repertoire of acting skills.

>Well if you are paladin of a god of redemption then by definition you fall when you no longer believe you can be redeemed.
But your god believes you can be redeemed, and you haven't explained why you can NEVER go back, which is what you claimed.

>if the person is just being careless it robs the fall from any dramatic importance
If the paladin orders the destruction of an enemy stronghold without checking if there are innocents and there are then they should fall. That's not a gotcha situation, because it's entirely within reason that there may be collateral damage, so what, you're going to babysit them and say 'but have you considered x y and z?' Perhaps careless was the wrong word, and reckless would be better.

>This aint a game of " Simon Says" nigga, this is about DRAMA and CATHARSIS only reachable through LIVING someone else life.
I never said it wasn't. I said that your idea of what makes something dramatic and cathartic isn't the end all and be all of drama and catharsis.

Simple, be pic related.
He's a perfect scion of Zyphus

Alright anons.

I have a level 4 goblin shaman that's going to be a boss.

How can I best set him up to be a force to be afraid of? Spheres of Power is available.

Hold up
Stripping down your scenario is just "extract information from an unwilling npc"
Why the torture?
Why are other social skills not possible?
Compassion can be as powerful as pain to convince someone.

You want things with "As long as you have 1 stamina point in your stamina pool-"

Things like Strangler, Quick Draw if you're using Mithral Current, Performance Weapon Mastery, etc.

Compassion is even more powerful than pain. Ask anyone with experience in interrogation and they'll tell you that developing rapport is effective, while torture just makes someone tell you what they think you want to hear.

I want to know the connection between the elves and the nazis.

Killing canadian style?
With kindness?

If you kill your enemies, they win!

Half then snuff out the lights, get a Darkness Meld going for darkvision.
Then, go for layering darkness effect on the party flailing in the dark, then run in and smack them with something

This assumes that your DM is aware that such techniques are a viable option for getting information out of suspects. If you have a guy like what I had a while back torture was one of very few viable options we had for getting information out of bad guys because anything less was us just being "too nice for them to take seriously".

I don't want to say that's sociopath behavior but looking back it might have been pretty close.

Do succubi have cloacas? this is important for a game I'm in.

>Lets say its a ticking bomb scenario where torture is the only way you can get information that can save innocents.
Even discarding the fact that torture is a terrible way of acquiring information, the answer is still that paladins don't torture people. Your duty as a paladin in that situation is to find another way. If there really isn't any other way, your duty is to MAKE another way. Being Good means that sometimes you don't get to take the easy way out of a situation.

Maybe you consider it worth it. Having a taint on your soul for saving a lot of people is a trade many good characters would consider worthwhile. And you can still atone, although obviously it won't be easy(and if the bomb went off ANYWAY, it may well be completely impossible - like I said, torture generally does not work when you're doing it to gather information). Or maybe your allies torture the guy while you're out there trying to find another way, despite you clearly opposing the idea - this is clearly less than an optimal outcome, and you probably need to give them a stern talking to, but it doesn't result in you falling.

They do if they want to.

They're motherfucking shapeshifters, ya twatbandit.

Alright.

So what spells while I need to set this up? Representing this on roll20 will be fun.

well maybe the DM then should stick to fucking modules

No I mean in their natural form

They have whatever you want them to have.

That said, is Arueshalae still able to shapeshift? I never noticed that racial ability on her sheet.

There was a wizard who studied at the same magical school as mine who had turned evil and dedicated himself to following the footsteps of some long-dead servant of Zyphus. All throughout the campaign, he had casually committed various atrocities and built himself a little cult of survivors who decided they liked his particular brand of nihilism. When the party had an opportunity to confront him (at the court of a king who had appointed him as an adviser for God knows why), he stepped aside to talk to me about how futile our efforts to stop him were, and how I should just give up, accept Zyphus, and enjoy the power of senseless tragedy.

I retorted that what he called "power" was a comically empty promise, pointing out that he'd used the underlying forces of the cosmos for what amounted to petty banditry. I then told him his inability to find meaning in the universe was due to his own lack of imagination, and mocked his offer to recruit me as a pathetic attempt to validate his own poor decisions. I concluded that he was a failure of a wizard without a single original thought in his head, who had only gotten as far as he had by plagiarizing the work of his idol.

I felt kind of bad, but that guy was a jerk.

The Elves of Golarion are a hippy colony founded by the expansionist Elves of Sovyrian, who would very much like to reactivate the Sovyrian Stone so they can come in force to Avistan.

In their natural form, they're basically winged humanoids with some demonic features, so there's no reason they should have cloacas.

The CIA torture report can be a rough read, knowing that it's all things that actually happened, but it's something that people /should/ read. In short, yes. Don't torture, you tell your prisoner 'you're going to jail, probably for the rest of your life, but let's talk and if you tell us what we need to know, we can make things easier.' Most people will accept that.

It's frustrating, but to be fair in fantasy it's going to be much more common. Take a Kuthite, for example, they're basically Cenobites, and there's no telling how they're going to react.

Still, if it's something like a hardened commander, torture would be ineffective, while other methods wouldn't be.

Nah, he would do that with literally every baddy we'd come across regardless of rank or status. I think he had it in his head that if you follow some kind of evil/antagonistic path that means that you're always, no matter what, going to be an unstoppable wall of silence unless someone breaks you physically or mentally.

Or the other person has something to blackmail you with.

>Take a Kuthite, for example, they're basically Cenobites, and there's no telling how they're going to react

There is a passage in the Linnorm Kings companion book where a group of Kuthites came to the region in the hopes of converting the populace to their dark lord. The local king, in typical Ulfen fashion, captured the leader and gave him a blood-eagle.

He set fire to the rest in uncomfortable disgust after the rest of the Kuthites were enamored with the blood-eagle, and begged to be next.

Not everyone takes mercy or compassion well either. They're expecting to die. They think you're mocking them, telling them they're not even worth killing.

And sometimes they want to suffer. Sometimes they want to die. Sometimes they know they've gone too far and there's no way back to the light, and all they want is to go to sleep.

tl;dr take things case-by-case.

People who desire oblivion are dangerous. The military knows this, that's why those people end up in special forces.

Ask /k/ about the FFL, they'll give you a hoot about it.

Not saying torture works, but saying that if the whole thing turns into a discussion of what is ethical and then it becomes a "what the dm believes is good" and " what the player believes its good" and that is not the point.
Most gods do consider torture to be absolutely evil, and in those cases the paladin would fall. But others might not, why should the paladin follow a code his god does not? would you punish a paladin of Zeus for screwing around?

I am aware that in our world thats how it work, but that doesnt mean an asshole dm cannot come with a fantasy scenario such as: "drowgoblins only tell the truth when being burned alive". In a fantasy setting you can easily go trolley dilemma as hard as you can, what then?

His god might think so, but he chose to decide he himself was nonredeemable. He literally lose faith in his own god, and this is how it should be.

2) Only if his god is the god of really doing things very carefully. Let me put it this way: I think the only way a paladin can properly fall, is if he no longer wants to be a paladin after that. He has to break.

I like you, and that is one of the ways I really want DMs to play it. I'm fine with "lenient" DMs too, but those that actually give you meaningful choices and the choice to develop your character towards his fall are the best.

What about non god-based paladins?

Ugh. Frustrating, but if he's a good DM in other aspects I'd put up with it. There are a ton of things in games that aren't true to reality, and all things considered this is a really minor one. Just don't put points in Bluff or Diplomacy, obviously Intimidate is the only thing that's going to work.

That's pretty funny. So torture is going to do absolutely nothing to get a Kuthite to betray his cause, since he'll just enjoy it. Neither will sensory deprivation, since IIRC that's actually the greatest honor for a Kuthite. I'd accept one of them being unbreakable in the face of torture, but not some average guy off the street.

Yes, I'm fine with that. I'm saying that in real life torture is much less effective than people think it is, and that should be reflected in whatever game you play as well. I have an ulterior motive for this debate. I like playing Paladins, and I want a chance to play my Paladin as having the chance to actually do good.

You're still avoiding the question, if he can change for the worse, why can't he change for the better? There was a time when he didn't want to be a paladin, then one where he did, then where he didn't. I'm not saying that he can flip flop all over the place, but if there's a significant story reason to fall there should be significant story reasons to rise.

>I have a level 4 goblin shaman that's going to be a boss.
>How can I best set him up to be a force to be afraid of? Spheres of Power is available.

Give him death sphere, Drain, and greater ghost strike. Have him area effect a cone that causes everyone to lose a level. For added fun, a +1 Staff of Death will turn that into a 1d2 level drain (assuming he's a full caster), and meta-magic can let him go more than once per round.

So you mean a non-Divine martial?

Sure do whatever the fuck you feel is right

What are some fun broken builds to fuck with my GM?

What do you want to do user? Destroy encounters, or destroy campaigns? What level are you starting at? 3pp available?

>Not saying torture works, but saying that if the whole thing turns into a discussion of what is ethical and then it becomes a "what the dm believes is good" and " what the player believes its good" and that is not the point.
It's not about ethics. It's about what is Good and what is Evil. In D&D/Pathfinder, these are universal forces, not points of view. Torture is an Evil act regardless of the intent and the situation is set up that there's no question of whether the paladin really knows what he's doing, so if he engages in torture, he falls. Obviously if the player isn't aware of it, it's the GM's job to make it clear that this is a fall-worthy action. Like I said, no gotchas.

God Wizard with Scrolls and an army of Constructs
Magaambyan Arcanist Wizard with Summons boosted to high heaven
Bad Touch or Archer Cleric

Oh boy.

Negative levels are always a fun time on roll20.

>I'm not saying that he can flip flop all over the place, but if there's a significant story reason to fall there should be significant story reasons to rise.

Well I could consider that a guy can recover his lost faith, but it would be something worth a whole campaign of character development.
In any case the way down has to be a lot easier than the way back up, after all, either you die a hero or you end up becoming a villain.

>Die a hero or become the villain
Or you could be a slightly less virtuous hero.

Definitely. Destruction is always easier than rebuilding something, it only takes an instant to undo years of work, etc.

I have magic, son. Mending is a fucking cantrip.

>either you die a hero or you end up becoming a villain

>Using a quote from a terrible movie series written by a hack director
>4 AFP (After Flight Plan.)

You know paizo considers absolute evil casting spells with the evil description, right?
Do you want people like that dictating how you want to play something as important as a fall?

>either you die a hero or you end up becoming a villain.
>Not taking a leap of faith, and striving to pursue your own ideal of truth and justice irregardless of your own imperfections
Then again, judging from all your posts, you have very poor taste and very little understanding of paladins, morality, justice, and the nature of Good

Debate of TDK aside, it's the sort of quote I expect from the asshole GM who tries to make you fall whenever possible.

You know you can agree with Paizo about some things without agreeing with them on everything? This is D&D, Good and Evil are not abstract concepts.

I mostly ignore what Paizo says anyway.

That said, if a Paladin is casting spells with evil descriptor, he'd better have a damn good reason.

It's also the quote you will always hear from the DM that tries to frame the protagonists for some terrible act, and spend maybe five months on an arc where the party works their ass off to restore their reputation while NPCs spit in their face.

Constructs are way too expensive.

Necromancy is cheaper, especially if you use Blood Money.

That too.

Relevant story that I found a while ago.
paizo.com/threads/rzs2sby4?GM-just-tried-to-have-my-Fighter-Fall

Encounters and Campaigns. Level 5 start, no 3pp.

But I actually admire Kierkegaard and his way of life, and I consider him a proper paladin in all senses: he did the ultimate sacrifice for his ideal abandoning that woman he loved for the sake of what he believed it was God mission.

Ok I get it I'm not going to quote Nolan shit ever again even as a joke.

>Constructs are way too expensive.
>Not summoning Earth Golems to dig up Gold and precious ore/gem deposits for you
>not Binding then waterbording an Ifrit, under an assumed identity, to get some of their cash
>not just traveling to an Plane of Elemental Earth to collect diamonds the size of football fields
>Not taking the Arclord PrC
>Not using illusions and charms to siphon resources from some noble
>Not just making tour undead into tireless miners and workers to gather mine the stuff for you
Constructs, while expensive, are a better investment, since they can be mended with low level magic, repaired mundanely, are often innately magic resistant, and work in an AMF

What feats do I generally want as a necromancer (spheres oracle with 3pp allowed)?

What kind of dm doesnt know what classes are their characters playing?

The kind that wants to make a paladin fall at the first chance he gets.

>Planning on finally playing a mythic campaign
>Wanting to use a Mythic for a while now since high powered campaigns are fun
>Party wants me to DM
>Still want to play
>Don't want to have a DMPC that overshadows everyone else

Help.

You really think someone would do that

Just go on the internet and lie?

The issue I have with constructs isn't the cost, it's the extreme lack of actually fun customization options, and the fact that construct armor is dogshit. Sure, there's lots of cool stuff to make, but it just feels lacking. Especially since you can't actually make a fucking mecha suit with an AI partner using Craft Construct.

Boundaries. Just say no politely but firmly.

3 Ideas:
>Hell's Rebels for an evil party
>Hell's Vengenace for a good party
>Run both concurrently for a neutral party

I want to play. I also don't mind DMing. The problem comes that the party will likely not want to do another mythic campaign for a while.