Pathfinder General /pfg/

Should you be using your traits for options that aren't thematically appropriate just because they are mechanically useful? That's the sort of thing that seems like it would lead to a DM wanting to start picking/making traits for their players.

Rolled 3 (1d8)

Armes
CG/CN male Human Fighter (Lore Warden)|Vigilante
Campaign Trait: Chance Encounter
>From Gundrun, in the Worldwound
>Started wandering out further into the demon-haunted wilderness
>Had to get saved by some stranger marked by Desna who led him to safety
>Finally learned a little humility and started studying up on Desna
>Decided to go join the Crusades when he was old enough to try and do something worthwhile with his life

Well, he's got a personality that comes across in his backstory, and it's even got him starting in on an arc. That's a good start. And this is one of the few profiles I've gone over that actually uses its campaign trait as opposed to just having it as a side detail (looking at you, Touched by Divinity). There's a good, strong backstory going on here. But perhaps it could do with a bit more of an accent on what it's like to live in the Worldwound--you're basically in a post-apocalypse zone, that's not gonna be much like a normal "barter town".

His personality, on the other hand, seems kind of like it's going in too many directions at once. He's a free spirit but he's reserved and shy, he likes to show off but he's easily embarrassed. The admittance that he's got a "weak personality" is more right than it might have been intended. There needs to be more of that briefly-noted "Kellid temper", more of an idea of how his faiths--especially since most characters wouldn't try and juggle two at once--and his background shape him.

If he's a warrior, make him warlike. Don't just let him be wishy-washy until the rare occasions when he decides to SERIOUS THE FUCK UP, that never works well.

Hopefully the DM would also be looking at your build and make something that works with what you're trying to do, even if it's not as powerful as some traits can be. I think that as long as the DM does that, I'd be totally okay with him making traits for all the PCs. Saves me the trouble of finding ones I want anyway.

I meant if he does this at the start throughout the game he might limit feat choices or class archetypes that don't quite belong in the story or fit the character as you've played it up to that point like not letting you take dervish dancer if you're character hasn't shown lots of interest in elegance and dancing

Rolled 6 (1d7)

Lisa Sterling
LG female Human Bard|Wizard
Campaign Trait: Riftwarden Orphan
>Sent to be raised by distant relatives in Ustalav
>Child prodigy who graduated at 14
>Uncle would only confirm that yes, her parents were Riftwardens
>She went looking for more info and met a man named Teneb who taught her, seduced her, and then stole her research and apparently her shadow as well
>She packed up and went to Mendev to find answers rather than stick around and raise eyebrows in Ustalav by having such a suspicious trait

I can't really call bullshit on the child prodigy business since, hey, Player Character. They're supposed to be mildly exceptional. It also feeds into the naivete that led her into her current predicament quite nicely. She's got a strong start.

The personality section continues the trend, confirming that she's basically kind of a sheltered rich kid who's more used to academia than real life. It also highlights her determination quite nicely. This is a good solid character we've got here, and she's not even that overtly fetishy--though for a game like this, some might see that as a hindrance.

And that owl sounds adorable.

Kline's up next, but I'm going to be taking a short break.

I recognize that uniform!

To be honest, I do suspect that there's a wholesale ripoff from some video game going on here.

You're doing a great job user, maybe the stars have aligned but the last few threads have mostly been quality when people decided to focus their energy on reviewing applications and discussing the characters instead of the senseless shitflinging that we usually do.

>Depends on what you mean by "tricked"...
As in the "this treasure chest must have a lot of good magical items in it, better open it immediately" tricked.

> Ascendant feat tax rules

Holy shit. What do I do with all these feats? It's like having a new hand dealt to me.

>Taldor Ascendant GM
>CR is dumb and won't be in play
What does he mean? I'm confused.

Why don't more people worship multiple gods anyways?

That means it's a fake game and the GM will disappear before the first session is supposed to start.

How do you feel about Taldor GM banning ALL psionics?

Few mechanical bonuses, if any.

In Eberron, Clerics could worship pantheons and take the Sovereign Speaker PrC. It gave them a domain from each deity every other level.

In 3.5 Forgotten Realms, Clerics could take the Heresy of the Faith feat, and join churches that let them take domains from different deities.

Everyone else usually worships one deity because that's all that will fit on their character sheet.

I am curious how you feel about this concept:
>Jahni, subject of "A Demon Went Down To Ustalav". An escaped demon from the world wound challenged him to a fiddling match in exchange for possessing him. Jahni won the match and won his fancy fiddle. However he didn't realize when he accepted the fiddle he received a lot more, and that the demon had taken his dues despite losing. Jahni strikes out north to try and break his new Friend Pact and find that damn son of a bitch demon who he beat. Halfling CG Fiend Pact Avowed/Bard.

How did I feel when the fake gm of the fake game made up some dumb ass rule showing just how fake his shit is?

>Darksong Knight
Wot?

Dangit user, I laughed.

I had a GM who blanket banned occults because he hadn't read them yet, and only lifted it after making sure they weren't bullshit.

Though given that this is a level 8 gestalt game with 3pp, it'd seem a lot weirder to think of this as a ban for balance or avoidance.

>break his new Friend Pact
But why would you want to break a Friend Pact?!

>DHB calling him out on 'what kind of balance do you want'

An order of Fighter / Clerics of Eilistraee.

I don't recall seeing any of those in Drowtales...

>Drowtales

DON'T REMIND ME. DON'T MAKE ME REMEMBER.

He also banned Chained Sneak Attack and Unchained Sneak Attack from stacking.

So if you're a UC Rogue 3/Slayer 6 on one gestalt side (let's say after a level up), you'll only have +2d6 Sneak Attack.

How does that make any sense AT ALL?

Jahni didn't want to be friends with that dang son of a whore's bunion demon.

The idea would be I would explain most of his class features with a quote. What I got right now is.

>I'm a man of learnin' ya know, can write my own name n' everythin'
Bardic Knowledge

>Followed me right clear outta Ustalav, couldn't shake 'em if I wanted
His chicken familiar

>I'm the best that's ever been
Massive pile of fiddling feats/traits/racial features

>Demons in the house of the rising son
Aether Eruption

Plan is once I have mythic I am turning my golden fiddle into a legendary item.

You're lucky I lost my old, old computer, cause I had at least 400mb of shitty Drowtales fanart I downloaded from back in the day.

How feat-intensive is an Intimidation build going to be? Am I going to need more than a couple feats to be able to effectively demoralize enemies without gimping my action economy?

see

Weapon Focus, Dazzling Display, Shatter Defenses, Cornugon Smash.

And if Cornugon Smash is banned, is all hope lost?

What about going for Dreadful Carnage instead of Dazzling Display/Shatter Defenses? I think Dreadful Carnage seems better than Dazzling Display, the only thing the latter has going for it is being a requirement for Shatter Defenses.

And am I going to need something like Skill Focus or Intimidating Prowess to regularly meet those DCs?

I forgot that existed. I'm probably not going to bother catching up if it's still ongoing.

They're mentioned in the War of the Spider Queen, and they get more of a focus in the Lady Penitent trilogy.

I'm going to ban occults because I'm too lazy to learn the rules, but I'm allowing DSP psionics.

If you just want to intimidate shit then stuff like Dreadful Carnage is fine. The reason the Shatter Defenses chain is so popular though is that intimidate really just doesn't do thaaaat much without it. You can scare people and all but as much as -2 to basically everything sounds great, the math on it really doesn't come out to much as you scale higher, and the playstyle doesn't come online early enough to be great.

But I mean, totally doable yeah. If it fits your flavor and you've got the feats to spare, go for it. There're a lot of traps but Intimidate, while maybe not a strong option, isn't really going to fuck you in the ass like a lot of styles do.

Nah, it's not all of lost hope. Just grab Hurtful, Bludgeoner, and Enforcer instead.

H i r e l i n g s ! ! !

What do you do when the SRD contradicts your book?

Generally it means it got hit with errata or nerfing.

Can you provide an example?

Yeah, I understand what you're saying- shaken is a decent debuff, but it's probably not so great by itself to be worth investing a lot of your build in (especially if it's only going to last a turn or two). Shatter Defenses definitely gives some bang for your buck. But even though Dazzling Display gives you better action economy for intimidation (sometimes, it's not going to help against a single target) I still can't help but frown when I look at that feat because of the full round action. Dreadful Carnage does a better job of fixing the action economy problem for intimidate builds, but isn't going to give you something like Shatter Defenses. You can take both, of course, but then you've invested a huge amount of feats into being good at intimidation... And still don't have any way of getting around the third weakness of the strategy, which is enemies being immune to fear.

I noticed that Slayer could take a feat as an advanced talent on the SRD but it wasn't in my book. Looked it up and there was an errata to add it as user said.

>Myth-Weavers apocalypse

>d20PFSRD apocalypse

It couldn't possibly get worse... right?

If you were to train an animal tricks, and the animal gets 3+ INT, does it get another 3 tricks per INT or how does that work? It says 3 tricks for 1 INT, 6 tricks for 2 INT, then says nothing about if it's higher.

How do I deal with my GM committing suicide whilst the campaign is going on?

>d20PFSRD apocalypse

It's fine?

Find a new game.

Yeah. d20pfsrd just did some major virtue signalling on their Facebook page.

??? What does this have to do with anything? What caused them to post this?

For what purpose

Considering stuff piazo writes, this isn't surprising.

But ultimately doesn't matter for what people in this thread use them for, they're a convenient data bank of piazos stuff. They even said it through the FB page, which is Extremely useless most of the time, and doesn't impact the Main site.

How does that not make sense? Gesalt rules say that abilities don't stack. You take the best saves, the best BAB, and so on. If you have sneak attack from both sides of the gesalt you take the better one.

Who cares?

You're not going to boycott a free service for being run by people of a specific morality.

They are pulling the EA card ie "any criticism we get for this shitty migration is due to the person being a bigot and homophobe"

I want DHB to leave.

pssst user he wants to have them on the same side of the gestalt

My most sincere condolences to you, user.

Oh! Oh, I misread that. Yeah those should stack. Weird. Then again, multi-classing in a gestalt? Seems excessive. You already get two classes at full power.

Rolled 2 (1d6)

Kline
N female Catfolk Slayer|Warlord
Campaign Trait: Exposed to Awfulness
>Family all killed by demons around the start of the Fourth Crusade, adopted by mercenaires
>Used as a squire and runner, taken into combat in the crusade's final battle
>Started using a mind blade in response to the emotion of seeing the mercenary she was taught by die
>Wandered around for a while until she heard a new Crusade was gearing up

The backstory isn't bad. It's a decent framework, but it stops at being so and doesn't try for more. Kline's most significant relationship is established, and she's got a decent motivation.

The whole application, really, doesn't go beyond "fine", and even then, just because of the little glimmers of personality tucked away. The hinted at idea that she's out for revenge for her family/ies and the possibility of her growing as a person gives the character some merit, but all in all, it's pretty damning to think that for most of the early game at least, this character is probably going to just start as a somber, jaded mercenary capable of little but snark, and that their player will just sit back and wait for "the right moment" to have them come out of their shell.

Protip: Don't give your character the explicit goal of "profit", and don't wait for them to start making their debut. You're only going to get a precious few chances to make your character memorable.

The player must have really wanted Finesse Training, but also wanted the Slayer's BAB.

Valki Ommarra
CG female Human Fighter (Learned Duelist)|Wizard
Campaign Trait: Riftwarden Orphan
>Daughter of an Azlanti from Varisia and a Kellid witch from Ustalav.
>Grew up with a minor noble family. Has lots of siblings, cousins, etc.
>Studied with another Riftwarden who she had a crush on
>Trying to join the Riftwardens, hoping to get into the Worldwound at some point and figure out what happened to her parents

It's very cut and dried, dried being the operative word. Valki, like some others, has no real events in her life beyond a brief list of who she trained with and how. There's a few obvious ways to build upon this--her relationships, especially with her large foster family, are fertile soil for some decent hooks. I'm also interested to hear about her old crush--are they an item? Did they have a falling out? Did she ever realize he was a Riftwarden?

Like backstory, personality is fairly limp. The idea of her being a mischievous sort, a prankster, that could be a thing. But it's basically mentioned and then abandoned, so as of right now, it's basically just so much hot air.

And I'd like Hitomi Tanaka to have my bastard, but we don't get things just by wanting them.

The thing about Sneak Attack is that it can't NOT stack.

It doesn't matter if you have Sneak from Rogue and Sneak from Slayer, or just Sneak from Rogue.

The Sneak from two separate classes would apply when the prerequisites are met, which is, SURPRISINGLY, at the same time.

So having Unchained Sneak and Chained Sneak only ever matters when the enemy has concealment, at which point you'd only get Unchained Sneak.

>multi-classing in a gestalt? Seems excessive
Literally no more so than in a regular game.

I'm starting to think this more and more myself, not sure I want to bother actually making my sheet/character for it now. It just seems so much like Sky Pirates in rules/information given.

It's okay.

I'm a little leery of basing a character on something like a joke or a reference, since those tend to lose their luster surprisingly quick. But if you can think of a way to make him grow beyond the meme, go for it.

I got stabbed in the chest by a chest after I failed a disable device check

The Unearthed Arcana rules say to use two classes, or one class and one prestige class at higher levels.

I'm pretty sure that's what everyone uses.

Is it bad form to do things to characters without rolling save?

hey guys how viable is strength magus when your game's starting level is after they get medium armor access?

This one comes next because it's just so easy to finish up quick.

Caitlin
N female Human Gunslinger|Brawler
Campaign Trait: Chance Encounter
>Orphaned by bandits
>Adopted by wealthy family
>Left home at 15 to be a mercenary, family were totes cool with it
>20 years old now, only at Kenabres because she's hired by someone who's going there

Tellingly, the backstory is a short paragraph, and the applicant still considered it necessary to include a "tl;dr" version. Her backstory pretty much begins and ends with "has a revolver, wants to get paid". Oh, and her campaign trait? Yeah, doesn't get mentioned.

酸素ボンベぐらい自分で買って来なさい

I have really never gotten the point of traps like that. Who would build that? It's a lot of work for 'Likely only going to get a single guy and a bitch to reset'.

I prefer traps that make a situation interesting, rather than just 'You failed a roll, enjoy a minor drain on your resources'. Having a fight in a room with arrow trap pressure pads is more interesting than just 'Roll reflex to avoid damage they'll fix with the wand in 6 seconds'

...why would I need a bottle of oxygen?

That sounds like it could be great if done well. I'm not sure I would trust a random GM to do it well, though.

Yes, because you've removed chance and the character's agency.

They're talking about how other classes that grant sneak attack count as rogue levels for advancing sneak attack progression.

Which is why at level 5, even if you dip one level in five different classes that grant +1d6 sneak attack at first level, you still have 3d6 and not 5d6.

This user is running into the opposite problem, they're getting less dice than they should.

Well the answer to that would just be 'don't give sneak at level 1, give it at level 2' And then not fuck about with this ass-backwards 'effective rogue level' bullshit.

Probably give Rogues something else nice at level one so level 1 rogues aren't so sad.

Anyway.

If it's being ruled that Chained and Unchained Sneak are separate abilities, they'd still both apply whenever they'd apply. Which are the same time, barring concealment.

user, if he were a chained rogue/slayer multiclass, they would have more sneak attack dice at that level than an unchained rogue/slayer multiclass, even though chained and unchained rogue get sneak attack dice at exactly the same rate, simply because of nonstacking.

I know, and I'm disagreeing with the ruling.

You have two +Damage abilities which apply under certain circumstances

Like if you get +5 damage in situation A and B, and +4 in situations B and C, you still get both in Situation B.

It's like saying 'nuh uh you don't get Weapon Training AND Studied Target at the same time'

I don't understand Devastating Strike and the Devastating Strike related combat tricks.

What are some cool classes for a Mummy theme'd character? I'm in an upcoming gestalt game and i've decided to play a royal who seeks immortality through Mummification, looking for something cool and thematic.

Warlord
Cleric
Cavalier

Class doesn't have as much to do with flavor as you might think.

Well, Alchemists can be the Mummification discovery which gives them mummy-like immunities.

And then at level 20 they can stop aging.

Well I can't amuse players who refuse to take any bait
People complain nothing ever happens and this is because they refuse to touch anything
Sometimes I feel like asking why do they even want to play

have you ever screwed them over when they did touch anything?
I remember a dungeon hat should've taken an hour tops took 3 sessions because we obsessively checked every square inch for traps after one oneshotted a partymember

Well that is the dilemma of traps
Avoiding them is smart, but smart traps are the ones you can't avoid
I'm not really talking about asshole instagib traps, but like cursed treasure.
You make ONE cursed treasure and now party is afraid to touch even cutlery. Like I can't even properly hand out gear anymore, they leave it to the dungeon.

Speaking of traps, i'm working on a thing. its still pretty barebones but have a look.

docs.google.com/document/d/1nstmQUI4lu8Ai8pYnVBjjfL0ebT-X4azRL2VJYJavIA/edit

Is there a way to bull rush as a move action?

>/pfg/ games finally free from the 2hu menace

Are we free from autism now?

Is there any class that can effectively use two handed weapons, benefit for high charisma and avoid using armor?

d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo-paladin-archetypes/enlightened-paladin-paladin-archetype/
That's probably the best you're going to get without multiclassing.