/pfg/ - Pathfinder General

Yeah, I know the basic lore behind them. Didn't know about them+undead, though. Was reading about the War of the Mark and how aberrant marks work. Kind of a shame, seemed like an interesting mechanic.

The Aberrant Dragonmark feat lets you have some non-destructive powers. Tenser's Floating Disk, Light, Charm Person, for example. The logic for it is there.

Nah, there's even a psionic race right here. Psionics would work. Spheres... well, Eberron works on advanced magic and advanced arcanery, so that's debatable. I'll see if there's something that would make it fit.

Path of War... Well, I guess martial things are fluff agnostic.

All about what people know. It's relatively new, so people need to get used to it and understand how psychic magic works compared to arcane/divine.

Surprisingly, Avowed clicks with Eberron incredibly well!

There was information on Book of Nine Swords on how to convert those styles onto Eberron (Iron Heart was an old Goblin combat-school for instance, and Tiger Claw is common to shifters as a self-defense art). Theoretically then, Path of War would be able to slot in just as easily.

Yeah, but Keith Baker complained about it. He's okay with Charm Person, but not Light and Floating Disk, because they don't have any justification for the predjudice against them. Someone with Light or Floating Disk isn't really an Aberrant dragonmarked character because there ISN'T that risk of controlling someone, there's just 'shit I lit up the room'. Those are more just a new dragonmark.

Also, Tome of Battle makes reference to Eberron in a few places, so yeah, Initiators are MEANT to work there. The Shifter race from Eberron is all over the Bloodclaw Master class.

Second interested guy here again. Spheres... Would honestly be a hit or miss. Could be easy to fluff it as an alternative method that was discovered relatively recently to handle the arcane magics, instead of using spellslots and materials.

Oh, and this might also be of some use: It's a site that converted most of 3.5e's Eberron stuff to PF. Iunno how much of it is useful or even balanced, but it might be worth a passing glance:

sites.google.com/site/eberronpathfinder/Home

For me, it's that they came out at a time when I was frankly done with Paizo's shit design (still am). The ACG was clusterfuck that didn't need to happen, and the way they handled both the vigilante and kineticist playtests really left a bad taste in my mouth. Not to mention psionics operates in a /very/ similar design space both thematically and mechanically, while also not being vancian or as clunky. SoP coming out later just made me not really want to learn more shit. IMO the pathfinder stuff we have access to with just paizo, DSP, SoP, FFS, and Jolly is too much and is really cluttered, not just on paizo's part. Me disliking the occult classes just is a reaction to that.

>it's an important part of established lore.
No it's not. They basically just shoved it where "well if you're gonna put Psionics put it here" areas. Which is basically just Vudra and Elf planet.

Spheres IS fluff agnostic. Spheres can be Arcane Magic, Divine, Psionic, whatever fluff wise. That's what traditions are for.

The current party in the Eberron game I'm in has a Daelkyr Half-Blood Old One Betrothed (a cultist made a pact with their Daelkyr lord as a means of escape) and a Penitent Fiend Pact (who was an attempt by the Lords of Dust to remove the immortality from a Marilith who failed in their service and grant it to a powerful soldier in their service.) Also a Diaboli Mageknight (a subject of the Quori on Dal Quor trapped on the material plane).

The Quori and Kalashtar are a fucking huge part of the setting, and the latter is actually the FIRST RACE he came up with. He shoved it off to the side because he knew people had hateboners for psionics so he wanted it to be possible to ignore it entirely, even though he personally loved 'em.

>Kalashtar
What?
The post I responded to was talking about Golarion, not Eberron unless he made a typo.

hgh I missed we weren't talking about eberron and psionics there, i'm a dumbass.

>Eberron campaign I'm in

Where do you find these people.

That user's DM here. Mostly it was "someone volunteered to run eberron, and the playgroup was interested"

Because the Occultist is the only good one of the bunch

And by part of the setting, I think you mean jammed and crammed into places at last minute

Generally speaking Psionics in D&D settings that aren't Dark Sun are always shoved to the side so people don't feel obliged to use them.

Spiritualist is fairly good too.

Except Eberron, really.

The weird part is.

Occultist feels more like a Wizard than the fucking wizard or any of the Arcane full-casters.

What do you mean?

(reposting in case the user has moved threads) If it exists in D&D, it has a PLACE in Eberron. Keith Baker has stated that means that you can POTENTIALLY slot anything in, not that everything automatically exists in it.

The 'various magical knick-knacks as part of class' thing, I think. It's come up before.

Yes but Psionics does canonically exist in Eberron.

Spheres is a moot point, because Spheres is supposed to represent almost any supernatural phenomena you can imagine.

Oh! Well I hope you guys are having a blast!

Oh shit the interest.

Gah. I should really read up on that.

Oh, convenient. Let me dig up my old copy and see...

I see. Thanks for helping me understand this stuff, I like having as much knowledge as possible before I DM anything in a setting. Not new to DMing, but certainly new to Eberron.

Most of this conversion seems unnecessary. The original stuff works fine with the most minor tweaks. Still, I'll bookmark it.

>Was going to pitch a campaign setting idea
>/pfg/: we only like eberron now edition
Welp, into the trash that goes. If it's not Golarion or Eberron, settings aren't usually found to be interesting by /pfg/

It's John Constantine in Class form, and also feels like magic users from Sword and Sorcery type settings

Pitch it, user! Golarion is kitchen sinky bullshit, and I found Eberron mediocre when I played it last

Oh, stop that!

Tell us!

Just because we're talking about something at the moment doesn't mean that's all we like!

>Was going to pitch a campaign setting idea
Pitch it anyway. Granted I won't be able to join since my schedule is full, but I'll tell you if it's a good idea or not?

I like Dragonlands, even though most of the shit in it never finished getting fleshed out.

Yes, but it also exists in Planescape regardless because Mind Flayers.

or you could not be a manipulative dumbass and post it anyway instead of trying to fish for cuteposting. no-one's goddamn said they won't, they're just interested in eberron right now.

>found Eberron mediocre
You're mediocre! You will never ride into the gates of Valhalla! You will never be Shiny and Chrome!

An attempt at gathering pity huh.

>Yes, but it also exists in Planescape regardless because Mind Flayers.
I don't get your point with this. Psionics is reasonably entrenched with Eberron. If you don't like it you don't like it but don't pretend it isn't part of the setting.

GREASY AND FRIED!

What does Mad Max have to with Eberron?

Well if he wasn't going to share it then he sure as hell won't now.

What doesn't Mad Max have to do with anything, really?

>I found Eberron mediocre
As someone just looking into it, what did you find mediocre? What are some of the issues people have with the setting?

If he needed that confidence boost then we're likely not missing out on anything. He could prove me wrong, but "oh boohoo I'm not good enough I feel sad" is a bad way to introduce yourself to the community.

There's no need to insult everyone and pic-related before you've even put it up unless you know it'll be bad.

>unless you know it'll be bad.
That's generally what people with confidence issues think.

Do what I do and use some self-deprecating humor then. Don't pre-bitch your audience.

My biggest issue is more of a meta-problem than one with the setting, and that's dragonmarks.
Lore is only certain races, and often only certain direct bloodlines, get them; anything else is rare beyond stupidly rare.

So when someone stats up a character that isn't a core race it's like, the fuck do we do now? Let them suck without dragonmark access? Let them break the lore to keep up with the party? etc etc.
Not generally as big an issue as "no jedi or all jedi" at least.

>not taking what you like from different media that you like and patching it all together to make something "original"
>using the shit pre-existing settings
It's like you guys hate fun.

What is a dragonmark do, mechanically and thematically?

Warforged in general don't act very robotic. They come across as Michael Bay Transformers. In addition, most enemies you encounter are usually undead or constructs, in other words boring as fuck to fight if you aren't a paladin

Oof. Upcoming Eberron GM here... just take heart, man. I've run an awesome homebrew setting(based on Dominions 4) and had the time of my life with it.

Like... this, honestly. This is a problem I had when I was starting out GMing. I'd lose confidence in my overarching plotlines and intrigue, lose faith, and drop the whole thing.

You gotta self motivate a bit if you're GMing, but the happiness of your players is worth it when you get going.

Yeah I'm a sap and a ForeverGM, shoot me.

I'm trying to work a setting together that's Legends of Galactic Heroes, Metal Gear Rising, the Crusades, Monster Hunter, and a dash of magitechnical anachronisms.

It's a fucking mess.

>Warforged in general don't act very robotic
I don't think they're supposed to be.

Thematically they generally get used to identify you as the 'rightful' bloodlines of major families.

Mechanically they give you spell abilities and open up several other feats and options, including the almighty DFA prestige class (heir of syberys or something was it?). The spells are decent enough; a level 1-2 a few times per day for the lesser mark, and so on.

So you don't need one to be functional as a PC?

That sounds fucking awesome. Hope it turns out well for you.

>Enemies are all undead or constructs
That does sound like hell to build around, from a player PoV.

Maybe not, but that in itself kind of turns me off to the entire race. They're very 'constructs for the sake of constructs' rather than actually exploring interesting roleplay options by making a lifeform that actually approaches problems differently.

On the subject of settings how weird would it be to restrict power source by race? Assume there's a reasonable in setting reason for it.

Each mark is basically a part of the fate of the world written down; the dragons have been keeping tabs on this shit since forever and a half ago and will be very interested in looking you over.
The phrophecy itself people argue over the endgame of, but they do all agree it's going to cause huuuge changes.

Mechanically iirc you get some neat themed spell-like abilities.

Probably one of the most entertaining ways I started an adventure was for a short, two player game. Another PC and I were preparing to fight a duel for the hand of the woman we both loved. However, before we got very far, the town was attacked by monstrous bandits, and though we slew many, they made off with the girl, and we set out to rescue her together.

Plenty of back-to-back heroism ensued, as we slaughtered our way through increasingly dangerous foes (who kept stealing the girl from her current captor right before we arrived). Finally, we defeated a mighty giant and rescued her at last; however, we'd grown to respect each other greatly, and I decided to step aside and let the two find happiness together. Turns out, the other guy had the same idea, and we soon fell to arguing. The game ended with us preparing to fight a duel to prove the other should find happiness with her, and her undoubtedly marveling at our stupidity.

You're telling me, I was playing an illusionist caster. And this was before Mesmerist, so no psychic inception to get around that.

They do approach things differently though. They're just not "beep boop command master?" robots.

Sounds like you haven't read races of eberron, that book is FULL of the actual meat of the race, which is awesome.

It's a minor mechanical benefit that you can invest in to get some kinda decent spell like abilities, this isn't even close to a make or break for players. Hell, by PF standards, a dragonmark would probably be a trait (which makes more sense if I'm being honest).

>Dem Fleet
>Starfighters are actually cybernetic or nanotech monstrosities capable of wrecking ungodly havoc with their mass-amplitude pre-emptive weapon spells if the capital barrages don't at least reduce their numbers well enough
>The cores of which can detatch for unfuckinggodly boarding actions if required, or sometimes launch a breacher pod full of crusaders
>Land battles are between giant armored bioweapons and squads of religious cyberknights

Tell us more user

You try writing a plot for a game where only 3/5 players are dragonmarked that keeps the other 2/5 interersted.
They're big deals in-universe, you can't have one and NOT be the center of something's attention.

Nah, it's not like being blooded in Birthright or anything.

Well, if you want to be a non-evil DFA you need one, but that's a different story.

They are influenced by their programming, it's just that their programming didn't expect them to have personalities.

That's the impression I get, anyway. The book mentions how they frequently disregard ethical thoughts because they were created to fight, not wonder if fighting is right.

Wouldn't it just be easier to say "no dragonmarked PCs"

Yeah, I've done that, just because they have one doesn't mean it has to dominate the story, that just sounds lazy.

>You try writing a plot for a game where only 3/5 players are Targaryen princes that keeps the other 2/5 interersted.

Personally I've always seen Warforged as kill-bots that suddenly find themselves without a war to fight... at which point their creators are like, what the hell are these personalities doing in here?
There's a whole thing between Warforged who demanded their freedom, warforged who were like "uh, give me a new job, fucko", etc

>MAPW
I Srw what you did there

...

Had something similar happen to me.

Was in a party of six where everyone had hero points. Hero points were a big deal and one physically was a "hero", being a hero was something measurable and quantifiable.

I was the only one who didn't have hero points. I decided to give them up for an anti-hero feat.

The fact that I was not special, yet stood besides them as an equal, made me special in and of itself. That and the fact I was a good deal more meticulous and conniving than the other party members.

Speaking of settings, I miss Godboundposting

I got into a godbound game recently and while the rules and default setting are decent, the players somehow managed to turn a simple "fray die and ranged gift attack" into a 20 minute ordeal.

This is basically as far as I got:

>17th century (maybe 18-19th century technology after accounting for magic)
>Empire vs Alliance of City States
>Phezzan-like 3rd party arbitrator potentially pulling some strings
>City-states surrounded by large untamed wilderness
>Untamed wilderness has MonHun monsters
>Mass transit between Cities via magitech trains or some thing to avoid the big ass monsters
>Empire is HRE/Prussian themed, Noblesse Oblige
>Empire has more tech and is generally more advanced
>Alliance has big heroes from all the monster hunting
>Crusades will probably happen.
>PCs could be from PMCs from arbitrator country, or it could just all be between different city-states
>Or PCs could be an elite task force from either Empire or Alliance
>Land ownership possibilities as either alliance city state govenors or as citizens within empire
>Migration of people between empire and alliance might be an interesting point to look into
>Mass Combat if the subsystem didn't suck, or if I could find a better replacement
>Empire would probably be good, if not a bit ruthless, and may have a Titans/A-Laws elite force a la Gundam
>Alliance would have corruption, but bring forth democracy and social mobility.

I also am considering there to be some sort of "Four Generals" thing with the Empire, with them roughly being elemental themed. And probably a Char Aznable from MSG, Gaius van Baelsar from FFXIV, and some MGR:R type villains. And definitely philosophy on the nature of rule/democracy and the rules of nature.

Twist it a little; everyone expects the empire to be the big evil nobles.

Democratic empire vs alliance of noble-ruled city states. Like if it was Canada that had taken over a continent. It's not all bad at all, but it IS taking over. That way the "attacked underdogs" aren't the scrappy CG good guys yet again.

This also explains WHY they're the ones with the monster-hunters and big-damn-heroes; likely to do with bloodlines and inbreeding no less.

This helps your philosophy stuff on a few fronts, like suddenly having a debate over temples with their cleric magic, versus universal healthcare

>Everyone can get powerful healing treatments, but the wait times can mean sitting there suffering for half a day, worried you might catch whatever the person sitting next to you has got. Limited resuscitation and revival that more people can use particularly when it's carried by them in the military units.

>If you've got the money for it, you can even get grandpa reincarnated. But most people don't have the money for detox let alone remove curse or true-rez, though the heroes and nobility certainly do. Those houses have stood for very long for a reason.

my dmis mad at me because i opened a taco truck.

>Democratic empire vs alliance of noble-ruled city states.
That might make the democratic guys a little too overtly bad though. They'd have democracy, sure, but they'd be corrupt and now expansionist. However I totally get the point of avoiding the CG underdogs thing again. I wanted it to be more LG vs LG if anything, with both sides having less "Good" to them as you look deeper.

So city-states are each ruled by a few houses, and multiple cities ally to defend against the encroaching democratic empire? Might work, honestly. I did have a thought to make the city states all remnants of a former nation that went through a sengoku-jidai/warring states period, but crumbled into individual sovereign states. PCs could probably try to unite the cities in a more formal alliance to restore the broken nation.

Medical tech being available to both sides or just to one? I like the idea of it being on both, with the democratic side being subsidized or something, but the nobility side being semi-difficult to obtain as a commoner

I think I'm going crazy /pfg/. I could have sworn that some book had a version of The King in Yellow play as a Bardic Masterpiece but I can't find it anywhere. Does anybody know if this exists and if so which book it's in?

I hear there's this new play in town, called The King in Yellow. All the reviewers are raving mad about it.

I was commenting on user's different meditech.

The empire has socialized healthcare, while the city-states have temples; it's faster, and they've got the strongest heals, but they demand "donations" if you want anything.

So, basically, Canadian vs the worst of the American private system?

Lawful Good is communism

Found it. It's in the Lovecraft Fantasy Gaming Toolkit.

Hey /pfg/, I want to create a character who focuses on buffing his allies. Think of the War Weaver of Heroes of Battle of D&D3.5.
I thought arcanist or oracle, but what would be you choice?
Thank you!

I want to be at first rank. Take my money.

Functioning-in-practice communism would be lawful good. Pretty much like the UFP on its core worlds.

No idea what the War Weaver is, but buffing in general is by far for Bards.

No other class has a quick "everyone gets +5 to all attacks for this entire fight" button.

Someone explain the Alteration sphere and Transformation feats like I'm a 5 year old with a literal monkey brain. please

You will help others or you will cry and help others
T. Comrade Archon

Because they're a headache to learn, a headache to adjudicate, a headache to play, and suck all the dicks unless you play 3pp rewrites (Kineticist), a Sorcerer with a new paintjob (Psychic) or really liked Iron Heroes (Occultist).

It also doesn't help that the flavor is bad and the mechanics are reheated versions of other classes (looking at you, Spiritualist).

You have 'Forms' (shit like turning into a werewolf, or a shark, or a dragon or something) which add entire package deals of abilities onto you like a dragon's wings and breath weapon and such. and then you have 'Traits' which are individual abilities like fast healing, pounce, etc. that you can add on to any form, but you can only add a certain number based on your level.

Not sure which feats you mean