Pathfinder General /pfg/

Pathfinder General /pfg/

Spheres of Might edition. What's the verdict on Spheres of Might? Would you ever use it for real? How do you like it vs Path of War?

Unified /pfg/ link repository: pastebin.com/hAfKSnWW

Current Playtests: pastebin.com/quSzkadj

Old Thread:

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app.roll20.net/forum/post/4909491/a-word-on-tone
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>Is there a feat like the Precise Bombs feat except for... not bombs? I'm trying to build a Gloom Chymist and I don't want to nuke my friends by mistake.

Also, any advice for building/playing a Gloom Chymist?

Most of the guides are entirely bomb-focused and glooms don't count as bombs.

For reference.

I think some of the stuff needs to be hammered out still, but making allowances for it being a playtest right now to find how the beta version plays with existing rules I still think it has good potential as a way to make building martial artists more interesting without occupying the same space as Path of War.

It won't be for everyone but that's an asinine criteria because there is literally nothing in this game that everyone who plays it likes.

New thread post, might as well

Lemme see... starting from the bottom of the applications page, and going up, we've got

>Kenna
>Helvetica?
>Olivia
>Crytha
>Cijiska
>Ecaterina
>Yamelia?
>Emilia

Ones with a question mark I'm not sure about

Okay so what the fuck is a sphere of might? Is this some new book I don't know about?

You mean Orbs of Virility? Balls of Strength? Globes of Potency? I don't know either, pal.

I want Olivia to bully Kenna for being optimistic.

Third-party thing.

A couple years ago they did Spheres of Power, which was an alternative magic system based more around mana pools and a modular system of abilities you could combine to make magic than spell slots.

Now they're playtesting a similar system but for skills and weapon combat.

Hrm, yeah those seem about right as far as serious female apps are concerned. I'd probably ship Emilia with some of the male apps, Lucius included.

You're leaping at shadows, hun; bed who you wish to bed, I just request you do so quietly. ᴮᵉˢᶦᵈᵉˢ ᴵ ᶜᵒᵘˡᵈ ᵉᵃˢᶦˡʸ ᶜˡᵃᶦᵐ ʰᶦᵐ ᶦᶠ ᴵ ˢᵒ ᵈᵉˢᶦʳᵉᵈ

Sorry bro, but it's less about AD&D in particular and more that that system just so happened to have something that I feel modern systems lack, and I've felt this way for a while despite only just recently learning about AD&D's rules.

How is that inconsistent? NORMAL people in PF have 10 Con, and as shown with carrying capacity rules higher stats are meant to be exponential as opposed to just linear, which means that at 20 Con you're not twice as healthy as the normal man, you're more like 4-5 TIMES as healthy as the normal man, and are practically superhuman in that respect. How does it NOT make sense that you should get more bonuses for that fact outside of a good Fort save and a few extra hit points?

What is meant by "serious"? People that actually want to play, or ones that are more serious in tone?

As apps that are well written and aren't a meme like Vivienne.

What's your comprehensive ship list, though?

On a sliding scale of silly to serious, compare Succubed to Crytha, Vivienne to Olivia, or KANNA to Cijiska. You can immediately tell that the former are very light in tone, or just plain weird, while the latter... well, aren't. Serious IN TONE is what I'm talking about.

It's just constantly brought up, dude.

Jesus fucking christ. This is basically the definition of autism.
We get it. You want everyone to know that you RP REAL GOOD and DO THE LEWDS.

Right, that makes sense

What tone does the GM want?

app.roll20.net/forum/post/4909491/a-word-on-tone

I think it's a bit too early to tell honestly.

lewdposting is a pox on the general

Oh

That's just "the players determine it!" stuff that isn't helpful at all

Probably because lists of random special bonuses and penalties for each ability score at specific breakpoints over-complicates them, runs counter to the whole design of them being core competencies that determine your base point on the RNG, and makes all the special abilities they're attached to instantly way the fuck less special.

Time to ship LoB&F characters!

Taking all bets!

It really isn't, but I've made my bet and I'll stick with it. I made a serious character because I didn't want to play with a bunch of memes.

Gee, could it be the GM doesn't want to force people to be grimdark? Actually letting players have more agency? Shock and gasp.

>yfw you end up as the serious foil to a meme party

Then he should come out and say what his desired tone is, not do this "well it could be dark but it could also be light-hearted, I dunno lol" thing that potentially wastes peoples time

Honestly you might be able to get away with making clones of all bomb-related feats and discoveries, only applying to glooms.

user, I'm just razzin' ya. That was mean of me, and I apologize. I shouldn't intentionally aggravate Anons; that's not Justice!

Let's talk about you instead. Working on any interesting apps?

Didn't they specify that glooms aren't bombs just so you wouldn't be able to use those feats and discoveries with glooms?

This would require permission from my DM, right? I'm not entirely sure that would fly.

Let's be real here, the thread would be shitposting about how it was too dark if he went serious and grim, too silly if he went light and comfy.

I'm just going to go with what I want to be as a villain.

Being able to rely fully on Strength for opportunity attacks is highly convenient, particularly when it means you can leave your Dexterity at 12 and wear full plate.

It is also much more convenient to gain Parry and Riposte via a combat talent (equivalent to a feat) than via a one-level dip that sabotages your progression.

>The critfishing is cute, but how much do you have invested to massage the numbers for a still less than 50/50 chance to make something explode?
Considering that this is a 1st-level build that still manages to be a skill monkey and a reach-based lockdown build that shuts down ranged attacks, the build has still managed to round itself out even after heightening its offense.

For reference, this is the 1st-level build in question:

I don't care about what the thread shitposts, though? Neither should you. I don't want to waste my time making a light hearted app and have it immediately discounted because the DM decided to pick all serious characters

But who except other anons trying to shill is saying the GM is going to pick all serious characters/all meme characters?

Wait touhou posts here to? I remember him from /wodg/ but didn't expect to find him here
I mean his whole gig is pointing out broken builds right? Thats kind of irrelevant in a game as utterly shattered as pathfinder isn't it?

the meme characters have (mostly) pmed the gm saying that they cant actually meet the time slot

it was just a labor of love for 'em.

Nobody is, the opposite could hold true too, where a serious character is passed over because the others are too silly. Wouldn't it annoy you if you made a serious character and that happened? Especially when all the DM has to do is state what mood he wants the game to have rather than sit on the fence about it?

Not really? I don't need my hand held to make my character. If it's an evil game, I'm going to assume certain things, and just do what I want to play unless otherwise noted.

Is /pfg/ really so used to Adventure Paths that it can't figure out how to make characters independently of a Player's Guide anymore?

They need to leave the tsundere shit to Gonzo and april releases, and not just shove in random terms they don't even understand.

Mechanics are less evocative than PoW, and dedicating Focus to a sphere is just kinda frustrating. I'm personally not a fan of Spheres of Power (not that I think there's anything wrong with the system, honestly, it's just not something I find interesting to build with or play - more power to you if you do like them), and this is looking to be... like that but simultaneously worse balanced and with cringeworthy writing. And the mechanics are more frustrating.

That said I can't touch PoW with a clear conscience given how poorly tuned it is. And I find other martials boring as hell. And I hate vancian casters. And psionics feels bland and free of fluff.

Why am I playing Pathfinder again

Guys help I think I have stockholmes

Some of us don't take getting into a game so seriously. It's not like I got passed over for a job, or rejected by a college, or sent a Dear John letter by a girlfriend.

>And psionics feels bland and free of fluff.
Shit taste.

I've been sitting here while talking to others in the Discord about random crap thinking about this, and I have to ask, what about this is any different from what we already have to deal with now? As it stands Pathfinder is already very heavily into long lists of documentation about what benefits are given to characters, and once you know that at 22 Str your character should have the ability to hold up a 500 lb door with no problem for like, a solid 10 minutes it really isn't that big of a deal to keep track of.

It's literally just "a thing happens". Never "you summon a thing which does a thing", or "you create a thing which shoots a thing."

There's nothing to build off of. I have to make all my character's fluff up on my own, and I suck at that. >

Because Psionics is all about you doing a thing. It's up to you how you style doing a thing. You're character is a powerful mentalist. Have the power's be effect by their state of mind. If you're using energy ray maybe your character clutches their head in pain as the temperature around them shoots up several degrees before belching out a beam of hot fire?

I mean, that doesn't really seem like a complaint all that different from any other magic type in the game. If anything fluffing psionic shit is easier because you don't need to shoehorn verbal and somatics in there.

Check out the psionics augmented stuff that mixes psionic and psychic.

That's fair, but I rely on interesting spell and ability descriptions to come up with my character's fluff, rather than the other way around. I don't get any IDEAS from psionics - there's not a point to jump off of. Same issue I have with Spheres, actually.

>I don't want to fluff things, I want to be spoonfed

Kys my dude

Seriously do this The stuff that line has made has cool mechanics and is full of flavor.

So the main thing here is it can do the OPReflexes build faster than 1pp martial builds, primarily because it's so hard to get OPR onto another chassis without being a 'Buckler. It gets that on top of having a bunch of other random bullshit and an Ill conceived set of numberfucking abilities.

The actual problem, as far as I can tell, is this: the class chassis has too much going on, which interacts in strange ways with the alternative power system that the book is also providing. The solution would be to remove or prune some of the class things or rework the power system.

If anything, it reminds me of the Mystic from PoW.

You want to play a game with no fluff, go play Legend

oh wait

"I literally cannot think for myself."

>I don't need to read books or watch movies for entertainment because I am perfectly capable of imagining an entire story for myself from scratch every time I want something new

I need a damn starting point, and psionics doesn't give me that.

That's your own fault, desu.

>He doesn't write his own shit up for funsies

I bet you don't even write 50 page essays in emacs into latex, you fucking cuck

Your starting point is 'literal physic powers'

The fuck are you talking about? Most people complain Psionics has TOO MUCH fluff. It's crystals, it's spoon-bending, it's new age mysticism! You're a hippy, you're a narc, you're a crazy hobo on the street-corner, or maybe you're an enlightened guru from the East; regardless, you're P S I O N I C.

Barring that, the elevator pitch for the Psion schools, the Wilder whatevers, the PsyWar disciplines, etc.

Instead of insulting you some more over Psionics, what actually gets your creative juices flowing? We can insult you for that instead.

How I make Wrath of the Righteous more heavy metal?

>Add Doom soundtrack
>Describe things as being metal
>Rename everything after bands or artists
Congratulations, you're now successfully the kind of nerd other nerds unironically call "nerd".

Guys, I'm getting annoyed. So I'm starting a new campaign with some friends, but others have found out. We now have about 8 players instead of the usual 4 who want to play, plus an additional 2 who may or may not come. I'm willing to bet that all these people will come for a handful of sessions, no more than maybe 2, then vanish and just fuck up my games every few weeks by appearing with their underpowered characters.


First session is in about an hour. Only 3 of these players have ever played Pathfinder properly, but 2 of the newfags have played about 30 mins of a premade mission.


How would you guys recommend I proceed? I was gonna throw massive amounts of enemies at them (there's an in game reason for that) and let them struggle not to be overwhelmed, but that may not work now, since there's so many players. Plus combat would be slowed right down. Any ideas?


All I can think of right now is killing the shit out of anybody who can't cut it, and let them deal with that.

Long-ass fancy descriptions of what happens and why, like Black Tentacles. You can build a whole character around the idea of whatever the fuck you're tapping into.

Like the biggest issue isn't actually so much the powers (though I've got that too), it's that I don't even get where the class's power COMES from, but they explain it slightly too much for me to just go "Yeah sure it's magic whatever". With a Wizard, it's 'eh, magic'... or there's a longass in-universe explanation of it tapping into the Weave or whatever. With a sorcerer, it's "grandma fucked a dragon and that's genetic". I can shrug that off.

Where Psionics loses me is the point where I go "okay, cool, so WHY does me being hella smart let me move things with my mind". It's slightly too developed for me to shrug off and go "this isn't important", but not developed enough for me to be satisfied with the answer. I don't get what about the Vitalist's willpower/perception/spirituality allows 'em to move their party member's health around, I don't get why a Wilder's emotion has turned into energy blasts, and I don't get what the fuck a damn Psion is studying that lets them throw a motherfucker at another motherfucker with their motherfucking mind.

Without getting that... I don't even know how to START on a character.

try saying 'no i can only DM for 4' next time

So you're literally retarded

But I want to be an Stoklaza nerd who tells fake nerds who are nerds because its trendy now to fuck off my hobbies and stopping ruining them with their low power levels.

No, I mean setting wise you poo brain. As in I change Sarkoris to be a high-tech civilization instead of a barbaric animistic nation so I can add non-magical relics, introduce enemies from Tome of Horros and Bestiaries that came after the AP which would fit perfectly in a Heavy Metal album cover or do references to the literature which inspired late 70s hard rock like that of Mike Moorcock.

It's all fucking explained - was better explained even in 2e of course - but you've obviously done the same as old 2e GMs who called it overpowered, and read it cover AND cover instead of cover to cover.

There is no helping the dishonest.

All I've actually read is the class descriptions and powers, yeah. I don't know where else I should be looking to learn about the fluff.

>Michael Moorcock
Get Out lefty, you don't belong here.

Run one-shots until the newbies leave, you weeping babyman.

You may legit be on the spectrum. Do what you do for Wizards, but read the goddamned fluff for the meaningless subdivisions PF puts on everything. Or suss out in your own head how you think they would do things.

The Wilder is lashing out at what they hate, manifest in mind energy. The Vitalist can see damage as tarry pools in the auras of party members. The Psion has entered The Matrix and realizes there is no fucking spoon.

I actually am on the spectrum. Doctor diagnosis and everything.

The main issue is- what the fuck is mind energy? If the psion is some sort of platonic cave bullshit, then what's the damn fire they're making shadows with? WHY can the vitalist see goddamn hit points?

yeah it's not like there's this gigantic chapter called psionics that starts with stuff like that.

You're a bit too far on the spectrum to be functional. Why are you trying to play with other people? You're not ready yet.

>On the spectrum
Shitfinder confirmed for cretins game.

Where are all the reviewer anons at?

The Psionics chapter in ultpsi's fluff is vague as fuck. Literally just "Psionic powers spring from sentient minds... The exact implementation of how this energy is harnessed – meditation, mental strength, clarity of thought, a third eye, etc – is up to you, but psionics is all about using the power of the mind to affect change in the world."

If there's a giant-ass fluff paragraph I'm missing in that chapter that EXPLAINS how the hell it DOES that, I'd LOVE to know what page it's on so I could stop being so fucking stupid.

Shitfinder confirmed for /pol/acks entertainment.

Read Schopenhauer.
It will give you ideas of how psions work.

What do you want reviewed?

Have you ever heard of the term "magical thinking"? Where people believe they can influence events by thinking really hard about it?

That's Psionics. Only the events are "you catch fire now". If that still bothers you, they manipulate a specific material from the Ethereal Plane (ectoplasm) to make constructs and perform effects. This material is thought reactive.

Immediately consider the fact that mental energy exists in real life in the form of electricity and that different emotions, stimuli, and senses cause different parts of your brain to fire in different patterns.
Then consider the fact that this is the world where Wizards having spells erased retconned from their memory after casting on a regular basis is accepted and common knowledge.

How the fuck does Power Word Kill just flat up end someone?

Well there was an user doing Overlewd reviews and they hadn't managed to roll mine. Is sad.

Pretty sure we call that Meme Magic now

Just say which one's yours and they'll look at it
Speaking of which has anyone done Helvetica yet
I'm not her player but I want to see anyway

Ask and ye shall receive.

Or don't ask, and just continue to shitpost vaugely.

>Overlewd has a CG app
Wew

are you saying that psionics is bioelectricity
is that what we're going with now

Sure you aren't.

I want you to do Emilia even thought I'm not her player.

I'm not, I'm Ecaterina's player.

No, I'm saying that Psionics is to bioelectricity what Vancian casting is to memory.

i want to corrupt her to evil!

Jesus fuck even better
Lawful Good
>there's a GHOOOOOOOOUL guitarist

>as shown with carrying capacity rules higher stats are meant to be exponential as opposed to just linear,
There's no indication whatsoever of that applying to stats other than Strength.

... Huh. Alright.
That actually helps a lot. Thanks, user.

Is overlewd going to have to be entirely monster (ghost/succubi) or none at all?

I cannot imagine a spheres cleric, avowed or any other class really, being in any way balanced with those "without" if gestalted to one of those.

Not to mention the diplomancy...

>Diplomacy
Succubi easily break 25 CHA and have face skills as class skills, what are you on about? Men are so easy.

Overlewd isn't even a real game i'm calling it

the monster class thing is just a fucking disaster

>GHOOOOOOOOUL guitarist
Guess we were overdue for a meme male.

It's either going to be all monster, esp. top tier monster, or he's going to give the humans / nonmonster / shitty monsters like 20 bonus feats and free +2 gear or something.
Also I just realized, is the Gelatinous Cube going to break 35 CON?