Pathfinder General /pfg/

What's an appropriate amount of backstory for a 1st level character to have? I mean, obviously they haven't done any grand adventuring or saved any kingdoms (yet) but I think you can and should do more than only explaining the circumstances of their birth and what made them interested in adventuring. On the other hand, taken too far, you can end up with a much-too-long description of the mundane and possibly trite details of how the character grew up, especially since there's only so much character development that you want to have happened in a character's backstory in my opinion, since it's silly to start playing a character that has already resolved their personal issues.

Jin Imoji
LG male Human Eliciter|Paladin (Enlightened Paladin)*
Campaign Trait: Touched by Divinity (No deity, Luck domain)
>Middle/upper-middle class bourgeoise musician
>Formed a band because why not
>Suddenly demons burning the village down. Because people got mad enough, like it's RWBY or some shit.
>Best friend just walks off, Jin gets KO'd and wakes up in a monastery, having been saved at the last second by his long-lost father
>So he goes to join the crusades. Which, given the naming conventions of his hometown, would be on the other side of the fucking planet.

Let's go with personality first. He's "flighty" and "care-free"--a decent enough start--and has the typical anime protagonist schtick where he just suddenly falls into super-serious I FIGHT FOR MY FRIENDS mode whenever the plot requires it. There's not much depth here, but there might not need to be if the backstory's strong enough and tells about who he is as a person.

But oh boy, that backstory. Looking at the character sheet, seeing that there's a different title than Wrath of the Raunchy written into its "Campaign" section, suddenly it all makes perfect sense.

The backstory is essentially two or three paragraphs stretched out into six. Idyllic hometown, torched by monsters, saved at the last second by mysterious guardian, strikes out to adventure as a verb. Jin as a man, as a product of events? Forget it. The detail of him being from a rich background seems to be just a vehicle for an arbitrary rift between him and another guy with equally shoddy characterization.

Fei Xiahou
NG female Human Psion|Warder (Dervish Defender)
Campaign Trait: Child of the Crusades
>Parents were legendary swordmasters from Quain
>Mom abandoned the family to keep adventuring and died in the Worldwound
>Fei ended up as a teacher after her dad steered her away from the hero life
>Ran away from her happy life for no raisin and built a raft (?!) to travel to Avistan
>Possessed mom told her the truth and revealed that she wanted Fei to keep fighting in her place

This does tell me why Fei is the way she is. But having her mother be the spirit possessing her in addition to being the impetus behind her journey weakens her, as a character. She's basically being bullied into PC-hood, and while that could yet work as a motivation, it leaves a sour taste to realize that her story is basically someone else's.

As for personality, that's more the strong suit of this application. A fish out of water is a pretty good chestnut to build upon, in terms of potential. The problem is that if you alienate yourself too much, you make it that much harder to build bonds with other PCs, or the NPC cast, or the campaign as a whole.

Being a hero nerd doesn't hurt too bad, and the detail of trying to reconcile the fundamental, outlook-shattering betrayal her mother inflicted on her, that's good. But it feels a lot like she belongs in a different campaign, since her backstory basically could swap out any given campaign problem for The Worldwound and you wouldn't have to change a single word otherwise.

>traveled to Avistan via raft
wait what?

>>Bard who won his instrument in a bet with a demon in a "Devil went down to Georgia" style contest. (Fiendpact Avowed/Bard)
150% better character concept. You should switch to it.

I don't know where Quain is, but I wonder if that's actually feasible.

Berserk/Evil Game GM here.

With the success of Evil Game and the resounding failure that was trying to get Berserk game off the ground, I will likely scrap the current character creation rules of When the sun falls. I may just scrap the whole idea for the setting as well and just run something original, since that worked just fine with the other game.

This would be a Tuesday game, and I would like to pick Veeky Forums for what they want to see in a game setting, and what character creation rules you would like to see as well.

The map says "Not to scale", you can't be sure that all these places aren't just like a couple blocks down the street from each other or something.

I dunno, you tell me. Could a "crude raft" make it that far?

/pfg/ not the same user as other summoner guy
I am rather inept at optimization, what kind of build should I do for a shadow caller summoner who buffs his eidolon and himself to holy hell and back and fights alongside it while minoring in battlefield control/area denial

Yeah, no, fuck that.

Maybe a masterwork crude raft could.

Tian Xia to Avistan via raft would be suicide for a level 1. Can you imagine what lurks in those waters? Aboleths, Gillmen, Sahaguin and all sorts of aquatic nasties?

You're a sitting duck with no cover only needing to get bumped before your raft gets turned into debris. And that's before the weather also decides to fuck with you. Not to mention the supplies you would need for such a journey. Imagine Tom hanks and how he didnt last very long while this guy tries to cross a continent life of pi style.

Now the problem is making a character with a good enough Perform at level one to reasonably be able to beat a demon powerful enough to make a pact. Here is what I am working with.

>halfling with 20 cha
>luck domain from trait
>hard working trait
>skill focus perform (strings)
>savant trait
>driven worker racial trait
>masterwork fiddle
I'm looking at a +20 to perform and an average 14 on 2d20. This gives an average check of 34 perform.

This means he is into Extraordinary Performance that attracts extraplanar attention, but 1 more and he can on average manage 35 which is a big milestone.

He could handily beat a Vrock who, if it was a performer, would have around a +15.

The character would be a half-elf named Jahni, and be actual a boisterous performer convinced he was the best that's ever lived.

Lorelei Aldenwood
LE female Human Inquisitor (Living Grimoire)|Wizard
Campaign Trait: Touched by Divinity (though it doesn't appear on the character sheet as of having just read it)
>Andoran farm girl, excelled in school, started turning into kind of a shut in
>Dad misinterprets her collection of pinups of Chelaxian sorceress sluts and sends her to Cheliax--Andoran's sworn enemy nation--to study at wizard school.
>Goes deep, deep into demonology and starts reading a mysterious book she just happened to find
>Book starts talking to her, and it wants to go to the Worldwound; This can only lead to good things
>But hey, she might enslave a succubus waifu or three, so fuck it let's go to Mendev

So yeah, lesbo wants a demon harem. She's aiming high, at least, in her own way. This backstory isn't actually all that bad, apart from the idea that an Andoran girl could just swooce right into Chelish wizard college with a bag of money. It sets up her motivation, establishes how she interacts with the world (answer: poorly) and shows why she's going to Mendev.

Problem is that while she's solidly written, she's just remarkably unpleasant as a character. Her motives are creepy without having much of a reason for them beyond "she's just a lesbo and they're like that I guess". Like, at least Lucius/Irina had a psychological flaw he was trying to turn into a strength. On top of that, her attitude is horrendous. I'd understand starting out as a character who doesn't play well with others, but you've got to leave room for her to actually tolerate *someone*. At best, she's the creepy yandere who's probably going to develop an unhealthy infatuation with another party member, at worst she's just going to stay standoffish the whole game, refusing to do anything more than snark.

>Picking between style and actual effectiveness
This is hell.

The hell is
>hard working trait
?

meant the driven worker racial trait, ended up listing it twice

Doing any more? I don't remember who's left.

As Lorelei's player I gotta say that this is... more or less what I was trying to convey.

She's supposed to be kind of this instance of "well we've got some low resources so we kind of need to accept anyone with a cure spell on deck for the Crusades."

The only thing I wish I brought up more was really the concept of redemption. She's supposed to be more or less someone who's dipped into something FAR too big for her age and is thinking with lust currently. Being around enough strong figures (mentally) would probably be enough to straighten her out. Or if the party turned out to have an evil ting to them she could keep going on her mission.

And now, since I saw him mentioned at the tail end of the last thread,

Uk'Regash Ashenskin
LE Half-Orc Antipaladin (Dread Vanguard, Tyrant)|Zealot
>Son of hellknights, raised by an Asmodean priest, orphaned at a young age
>Trained by Black Thorn Knights, who nurtured his "dominant instincts" and strength
>Joined the BTK when he was old enough
>Now he's going to attend Armasse with them, nothing could possibly go wrong

First things first, find a different word than "austerity" to describe the environment in which he was raised--the repeated use to open both your History and Personality sections remind me uncomfortably of Vizzini yelling "inconcievable". Okay, petty gripe out of the way, let's move on.

The backstory is simple, but disappointingly so. While it's kind of an interesting take on being a church-raised orphan to have him be raised Asmodean, there's not much done with it except just list off the steps of his training and give fluff to his traits.

Uk'Regash works fairly well as a guy who's out for himself, who hides behind the pursuit of order as an excuse for personal gain. But that's about all that gets told about him--that he's a jerk who wants to make it big, and he's moderately okay at hiding it. I don't get much out of this application besides the idea that whoever wrote it decided "I am going to play an Antipaladin and nobody's gonna stop me" and then back-built his way into it, piling excuse on excuse until he'd built something that looked like a character. Uk'Regash is greedy and vainglorious, but he doesn't have any specific ambitions. He doesn't want to get rich, he doesn't particularly want a position of power, he doesn't want to slay a powerful demon, he barely even wants to avenge his parents--and that last one could make for the core of a solid character. But apparently Uk'Regash, as he currently stands, has nothing underneath the veneer of ASMODEUS VULT.

I'm surprised you didn't touch on his Nodachi.

Can someone break down (or link to a breakdown) grappling as simply as possible for me? I saw a flowchart but I recall someone said it wasn't entirely correct.

Also: is there any case where you're denied a saving throw? Not counting the wording of the spell/whatever itself.

1. Mercedes Drovenge
2. Valki Ommarra
3. Francisca Zilant
4. Rath Khulainn
5. Lisa Sterling
6. Soralis Lyso
7. Charlotte Renard
8. Haraa Windspire
9. Artemy Neizvestny Medvyed
10. Aaliya Al-Amin
11. Kline
12. Brihzwald (Buford)
13. Seth, Scion of Thassilon, Faithful of Lissala
14. Arme
15. Caitlin

We've made a dent in the list, at least.

I've been playing and grappling for years and I'm still not convinced I, or anyone else I've ever met, actually understands it.

I figured that would be a pretty petty quibble even for me--it's easy enough to imagine you could pick up a foreign sword from some market and get good with it.

I ran a snake-man in a one-off game once. I don't recall what the game was, except that it reeked of fur (Only animal-humanoid abominations). I was bored though.
He was kind of like a hunter/shaman guy who could commune with nature spirits and shit. In more practical terms, he was kind of like a hippy/rouge. For the most part, I played him as a distant, critical type with a pragmatic approach to things.
He was far less colorful than the other three characters, but I'm not positive if it was because I unconsciously mad him subtle because he was a snake, or if everyone else just made their characters loudly because of their preferences, I dunno. I did actually make use of his snake body once to drop from a ledge and shank someone beneath me with a poisoned shortsword, then yank myself up. It was pretty cool-feeling.

You make a Combat Maneuver check using any Grappling bonuses versus the opponent's Combat maneuver Defense.

If successful, you move into the enemy's square and you start a Grapple with them, a state where you have special rules concerning your intimacy.

At the beginning of your opponent's turn, he will have to spend his action resisting the grapple, rolling his own grapple maneuver against your CMD. If successful, he gains control over the grapple and can perform various actions, including leaving the grapple. If not, then he is limited in what he can do, i.e. shit outta luck.

Alternatively, your opponent could attack instead of resisting the grapple. Natural weapons and light weapons only.

On your next turn if you still have control over the grapple, you may make an attack with the same restrictions, or you can move to Pin. Roll your CMB vs CMD again, if you succeed your opponent becomes Pinned and becomes helpless.

TL:DR - your CMB vs their CMD as an action. Then they spend their action attempting to reverse it with their CMB vs. your CMD. Then on your turn, you can once again roll CMB or you can attempt another grapple action.

There are a variety of things you can do in a grapple, but functionally people usually only care about attacking with natural weapons (Any beastie) or advancing into a pin / resisting to break free.

Step 1: Attempt the maneuver, do you have improved grapple? No AoO then. Dont have it? AoO and if it hits, the damage you took is deducted from your maneuver roll. Basically like trying to go for a takedown and getting kneed in the face during the attempt. If you pass the enemy is now grappled
Step 2: Choose from the list of options, everyone often goes for the pin (another maneuver roll). On the enemy turn he can either break from the grapple or take control of it.
Step 3: Enemy is now pinned and the next natural conclusion would be to roll maneuver again to turn the rape into a murder. Enemy does what he can to escape it or de escalate it to the grappled condition again.
Step 4: The enemy is now helpless, Feel free to hotdog his/her butt, steal their shoes or just shank them.

Feats often either grant bonuses, improves action economy or adds extra options.

I understand it.

Okay so here's the deal.

Step one. The grapple. CMB vs CMD. Easy enough. On success, both people are considered Grappled, but you're in Control.

Then on their turn, they can do whatever things they can, or try to break out of it. If they break free, they can reverse it instead of just ending it, which puts them in Control.

If you're still in Control, then on your turn you need to Maintain the grapple with another grapple check. If you succeed, you can do one of the listed things. If you fail, they break free and the end of your turn. If you can maintain with multiple different actions (Like Greater Grapple) then you only need to succeed at one Maintain to keep them grappled.

Any questions?

You don't move into your opponent's space. They get moved to a space adjacent to you. The move-into-space thing was 3.5 I think.

Y'know, I actually started in on the other gestalt of Paladin and Bloodrager after DHB's guy, so I guess I'll finish him while I'm here.

Basically 3.5 grappling was MMA where everyone rolled around the floor in a homoerotic manner. PF grappling is just two guys holding each other by the collar, sort of like an irish brawl.

>DHB blatantly ripping off Devil Went Down to Georgia
What a piece of shit. At least we don't have to worry about an app like that getting picked.

Rath Khulainn
NG male Angel-Blooded Aasimar Bloodrager|Paladin (Oathbound), Draconic Bloodline and Oath of Vengeance
Campaign Trait: Stolen Fury
>Enslaved as a child and grew up in Numeria
>When his owner realized he was an Aasimar, he started getting sold and re-sold all over the place to various kinds of masters/mistresses
>Eventually got bought by demon cultists, but something undefined went wrong and the ritual triggered babby's first bloodrage
>Another survivor (apparently it was a mass sacrifice?) said go north, young animu, and so they did, Rath raging all the way
>Got some major deja vu in Mendev, like he's just been to this place before, higher on the streets and he knows it's his time to go

The fact that he has amnesia (I don't care how feasible it is that he wouldn't remember his childhood, it's still functionally the same thing) weakens him as a character right out of the gate. Sure, he still has formative years, and yes, he still has people who technically raised and influenced him. But that's all vaguely glossed over.

Other than that the backstory is...okay. Escaped slave, got a lot of rage, that sort of thing, it works as an elevator pitch. And though I personally think it's kind of a cop-out to leave him with so few clues, having him looking for his family as a secondary goal is a decent idea.

Having him admit to being kinda stupid is okay, and having him be self-aware about it makes up for the possible problem of the player just using it to excuse bad behavior. It seems like it's written to be a weakness he's trying to overcome, or at least mitigate. But the big hole in his character is that he has little reason to go crusading besides "it's the right thing to do". You just got done spending your whole life taking orders--I know it might be realistic to be used to it, but Rath should probably have more of an accent on wanting to reclaim his past rather than just a vague idea of "maybe I'll get around to that later".

I hope DHB gets picked just for the thread when it happens. He might be a faggot but he always gets good reactions.

Do Francisca, Charlotte, and Seth!

reminder that fairies are the best

I'll see what I can do for those nerds.

Ask your GM and fellow players what they prefer. The opinion varies quite a bit from person to person.

My GM keeps trying to offer lion-men, fox-folk, and recently a nagaji variant with a tail instead of legs to our resident furry.

Said furry has shut him down every time, just saying "Dude, I want to play something that isn't just an animal. How about you back it down a notch?"

Does that qualify as sexual harassment?

Nah, our GM is really against actually doing anything sexual--I think it's just a misguided attempt to do something nice.

Heart in the right place, but kinda pidgeonholing the dude.

Fuck, gotta head off for the night. I'll handle those three in the morning.

To newbies: please don't play summoners as your first class. When you're new, you are slow to play - that's normal. But as a summoner you are 3, 5, 10 times as slow and make that many times more bookkeeping for the game.

While we can't stop you from rolling a summoning class many people dislike them because it means your turns to many times longer.

Start with a different class. Please.

I agree, adding to this. if you do decide to go summoner, it is not just a courtesy but your *duty* to prepare your shit in advance. Every single possible summon for every conceivable situation should already be prewritten before the session happens. Just because you think you'll be fine with just a dire tiger doesnt mean that you wont ever need an earth elemental for fighting an enemy with earth glide.

For reference this is just part of a page in the autistic book keeping that is summoning.

A backpack holds two cubic feet of items, but I have no idea how big items are.

If you can imagine it all fitting in your backpack (lot of small items, maybe one or two big ones), assume it can. If not, buy a couple sacks.

That idea of "two cubic feet" is basically just there to prevent you from having infinite space in your backpack when that one player wants to have 5,000 spare weapons. Or when the GM asks how you plan to carry the enormous golden idol back to town.

it's not my first class just the first class i've tried to put effort into optimizing i've played rogue and magus poorly before
database of all summonable creatures templates no more than a couple clicks away saved in the same neighborhood as mt character sheet

Yeah, not even GMs who want to track details which are frequently hand-waved will ask you to detail the exact measurements of your backpack items with a diagram. So long as it's generally sane.

Also, to those who're familiar with both: what do you guys think of vanilla ranger vs. the spell-less ranger?

I just did the sheet for Wrath of the Raunchy. Can you guys take a look at my sheet/application and let me know what can be improved?

app.roll20.net/forum/post/4509994/post-characters-here/?pageforid=4580527#post-4580527

I want to take prankster archetype for my half-orc bard (don't ask me why). So I take Racial Heritage (Gnome) Feat, because I already count as human for purpose of prerequisites and now I'm human/orc/gnome motherfucker and can take gnome racial archetypes and feats. That would work and I'm not missing anything, am I?

Nope, you're not missing anything. You have an incredibly strange family tree, but it's legal.

It's not my fault that prankster and Threatening Illusion are gnome-only archetype. Little fuckers get so many cool things.

app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/69792/a-very-deviant-game

Why hasn't /pfg/ flocked to this game yet?

>app.roll20.net/lfg/listing/69792/a-very-deviant-game
Because it's fucking nothing. No setting info, minimal character creation rules and very little info about the GM's writing style.

Because there are like no appealing details at all and it seems to be 12 hours old tops maybe? Tiny number of characters, survival mode, not much setting or ideas, the only selling point seems to be the NSFW label.

It turns out /pfg/ is more about cockteasing than cocks.

I'm certain this would turn out like the one random Roll 20 game I joined, where the GM's idea of an encounter was 10 goblins in a featureless room.

How did that turn out?

What's the best approach to diplomacy with hostile, powerhungry wizards?

They were all clumped up so I Glitterdust'd them. The GM thought that was the most amazing shit for some reason. I bowed out right after that session.

The best approach to diplomacy with a hostile and power-hungry wizard is to be a stronger wizard.

Any way to take Evangelist or Sentinel Deific obedience boons without taking levels in the PrCs?

We have a wizard, witch, and. Medic, all of nearly comparable power on their own. I'd just prefer avoiding a scuffle that could get someone hurt, even if our victory is quite likely.

Chaotic evil? More like CUTEotic evil.

>Medic

Should be Cleric

I don't know how well CE would work as a PC, but I've made some actually kind of interesting CE NPC's. Not all villains, even.

How creepy can be a wheezing laugher if it comes from a tiefling female slayer?

Then you're best chances are to offer him something he doesn't have access too. Besides, if he's like any real wizard, he'd hopefully appreciate the chance to talk shop with a peer in the first place.

I played a vishkanya vivisectionist once. He was a cross between Tommy Wiseau, and Pin Head from Hellraiser.

Flandre is more CN or TN. She's just incapable of wielding her immense destructive power safely.

Now, Assassin of Black, she is both chaotic evil and insane, which is a rare combination. Most insane people fall under chaotic neutral.

And she's cute.

How is she evil

New to pathfinder and in my friends campaign

How viable would a dex/wis inquisitor/gunslinger be? thinking of 15 in inquisitor, 5 in gunslinger.

Would it work? and what should i take feat wise? Trying to do rapier pistol.

Your friend is starting at level 20?

Just be a regular inquisitor20 with a bow.

There's a female soldier you can get in MGSV. Flaming Buffalo. She wheezes really loudly when damaged or sprinting.

It's really disturbing when you use her to wipe out large groups of people.

>How is JACK THE FUCKING RIPPER evil?
Take a wild guess.

No level 1, slow grow campaign, perma deaths.

Probably gonna hate me, but my logic was to take 2 bandoleers, and the beneficial bandoleer since its considered a belt, with like 8 pistols strapped to it with quick draw, loaded with various ammo types to deal with what ever we came up on.

Sounds expensive.

Eh, bandoleer is only like 5 gold, and the beneficial is like 1000 but this is far down the line.

From waht i have read, one way to make the inquisitor pretty good is to utilize your bane, and judgment destruction.

Well shit, son. Starting in rusty dagger shank town and slow level growth is gonna be maddening for attempting long-term builds. That 5-level dip just to get Dex-to-damage on a single gun is going to take an eternity, especially if combat may be rare and/or the GM is stingy with exp.

As far as your concept goes, you're not gonna afford that anytime soon, especially with slow growth. If you're hellbent on getting dex-to-damage on a single gun I'd recommend a dip in Trench Fighter instead. Trench Fighter is a Fighter archetype that gets Gun Training at Lv.3 instead of 5, and since Inquisitor is a bit feat starved, Fighters bonus feats might help. However, a general rule of thumb in Pathfinder is to not dilute your casting, so it may just be wise to simply go pure Inquisitor.

Iono she cute and confused and adorabubbles

Yeah i was not gonna try to rush gunslinger off the bat. i was going to build primary inquisitor to get the judgments, bane, and the group support abilities, since it seems that none combat abilities are going to be just as important as combat abilities. My guy has a lot of knowledge so.

You are a fucking monster and the reason why serial killers check under the bed every night.

What's a good Beastform for a third level Beastmorph Alchemist?
If you had spell casting levels, can you still use that?
Let's say I turned into a goblin, my character would become greenish, get longer fangs, +2 dex (on top of the +4 dex) and gain darkvision 60? (ontop of my Darkvision because I am, let's say a Tiefling?)

Why not just that magic quiver that lets you draw any ammo?

Also if its an adversarial gm, go nature domain and monster tactician archetype.

Im thinking thats really going to benefit the group, if im a character that can just pull out all the info on monsters and nature.

Basically take every special rule you made for berskerk game and flush them down the goddamn toilet.

Either use 3pp or don't, but don't restrict it to one guy, don't make everyone start at different levels, don't make one character strictly better than the others because MUH MAIN CHARACTER etc.

Thanks for the criticism. I'll polish it up some more and turn it into an A+.

Also, thanks to the other user who gave me good constructive criticism last week.

> but my heart threw up looking at an Azata-Blooded Femboy Warlord/Vigilante and his character sheet.

The actual sheet is a mess and I am still trying to make a decent build. I'm terrible at optimizing.

I'm not sure exactly why you hate the concept, but I promise you Lucius will not be a kawaii uggu anime trap nor will I be preaching politics. How I can make Lucius more palatable to people who dislike that kind of character?