Pathfinder General /pfg/

All in spoilers just in case
-The initial heist is rather iffy, honestly. Heavily advantages a few specific party compositions over others, at a low level where flexibility isn't reliable.
-Remove tolerance of CE, tune the adventure more towards LE, this is Cheliax for hell's sake.
-Make Fex less cartoonishly villainous, make his plans with somewhat more sense. This is the place with the most intrigue-filled court, the nobles that survive should be comparably smart.
-Give a more law-abiding choice for a patron during the court intrigue part of the AP, maybe a Scourge Hellknight that just wants to see the some of the nobility's gross incompetence during wartimes (aka playing their political games) cleaned up.
-The assembly of the atlatl, it doesn't mention that the sacrifices need to be your own. You don't need to kill your own villagers when the players can easily handle capturing a fort of fresh recruits that should be somewhere nearby and scry-able, with easily enough good people there. The archives of lore of an Iomedaean Temple? Sure, Thrune might want to delete the origins of Cheliax, but nothing stops the players from reading the archives and re-transmitting the whole thing. Particularly when becoming Thrune-bound isn't necessary, nor particularly vital. Heck, the players probably don't even need the atlatl if they just decide to take their time.

Yesterday, I had run my first session of a Spheres of Might playtest campaign. The party was an armiger 5, a blacksmith 5, a gunslinger (gunfighter) 5, and a conscript 3/alchemist (mortal chemist, tinkerer) 1/cavalier (blooded knight) 1.

There is very little to speak of in terms of playtest data. The session was supposed to be mostly noncombat leading into a fight that the party would have time to prepare for, but due to me mismanaging the flow of the session and the complicated circumstances of the players, I had to improvise the session to consist of entirely noncombat challenges.

That highlighted some huge problems with the noncombat utility of spheremighters: they have little to none. The class features of the four characters offered nothing in the way of on-the-spot noncombat utility (more understandable for those with Paizo martial class levels in the mix, less so for the armiger 5 and the blacksmith 5). They did not take noncombat talents, because the vast majority of those noncombat talents were trivialities for martial characters like "gain more skill points" or "verbally counter someone using the social skills you have mediocre bonuses in," and because they still deeply strapped for talents with which to complete the "cool combos" of their combat builds.

Contrast this with the likes of the vigilante, which has a built-in progression of noncombat utility talents, so that players do not have to choose between fighting well and being able to contribute out of combat.

Contrast this with the likes of virtually every half-caster in the game, whose noncombat spells are high-impact enough (e.g. detect magic, disguise self, invisibility, suggestion) that people are actually enticed to select such spells alongside more combat-oriented spells.

The three major noncombat challenges during that session were as follows:

1. The party had to make a good impression at a noble ball and gather information. Do you know what helps with such a task? Having a high Charisma, or failing that, a high Intelligence or Wisdom and a Diplomacy swap trait.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of spheremighters have very little use for mental ability modifiers. The armiger and the blacksmith of the party were prime examples of such a thing. The party still got by through sheer luck and a naturally high roll, but it could have gone much worse.

2. A charlatan was conducting fake séances, supposedly calling down the spirits of deceased loved ones who have since become outsiders. The party had absolutely no way of detecting this sort of the one character with the highest Sense Motive literally rolling a natural 20 against the NPC's supercharged Bluff check, and even then, the party had no way to actually bring proof against the charlatan. Basic magical detection abilities would have gone a long way towards detecting the trickery and also giving proof against the NPC; even the Scout sphere is currently lacking basic means to detect magic, and even if it did, that would be a feat-equivalent to match a cantrip.

3. A (crossdressing) kitsune sorcerer boy was going around using Cunning Caster, metamagic, and charm person spells to beguile a copious amount of beautiful ladies. (This was part of a gag wherein it would all turn out to be part of a perfectly innocent activity.) The party was supposed to retrieve a stolen object from this same NPC.

Three-fourths of the party was female. They blew the Perception checks and the Will saving throws and found themselves charmed. This, I thought, was understandable from a mechanical perspective, since it involved poor rolls from the party.

What was frustrating, however, is that exactly zero party members had a means to actually detect such sorcery after the fact. The one non-charmed party member did not have a Sense Motive high enough to discern that something was wrong, and even if he did, he had no way to snap the PCs out of it. He was simply left extremely confused as to why the party had suddenly dropped the plan to confront the NPC.

Essentially, spheremighters need more built-in noncombat utility, and ways to meaningfully interface with the high-magic world that the Pathfinder system effectively dictates its settings to be by default.

As a bonus, here is an overview of how the session went from a less Spheres-of-Might-focused, more overall-GMing-quality-concerned perspective:

Combat Classes Are Only Good at Combat - Local Autistic Man is Surprised!

Why *should* they be good only at combat?

Why make the noncombat talents relatively trivial in the face of the high-impact combat talents necessary to assemble a combat build, especially at lower levels?

because ur dumb for player martials

...

So basically all classes should have their non combat abilities rolled in alongside the combat stuff on separate tracks.

"Gain skill ranks" should never have to compete with "Gain Bane on your weapon"

What is a good race to fill the roll of "ancient, but technologically advanced society all but forgotten"?

Syrinx, they're that already without the "technologically advanced" part.

humans

Kobolds, Mwangi, Catfolk, Nagaji

This user gets it.

Orcs. No, seriously. I really mean it. Give orcs an ancient society that was destroyed when their own scientific and magical advancements led to some catastrophe that destroyed their civilization. Most of them have regressed evolutionary speaking since then.

Kobolds, iirc, are actually an ancient civ, that got fucked over by dragons and everyone else

Why wait for an NPC to do it?

I ducking hate Kobolds.

You're in a race against her players, so you'll have to hurry!

Because, user, what PC would even be open to such an encounter? More importantly, doesn't Wubu want to control the girl getting the double stuffing?

Well too bad for you pussy, because that's what you got to work with

Another option is to make the non-combat abilities high-impact.

Again, consider virtually every half-caster in the game, whose noncombat spells are high-impact enough (e.g. detect magic, disguise self, invisibility, suggestion) that people are actually enticed to select such spells alongside more combat-oriented spells.

What Spheres of Might actually does:

Fencing:
>Master of Misdirection: You gain ranks in Bluff equal to your Hit Dice. Whenever you gain a Hit Die (such as when gaining a level), you gain a rank in this skill. If you possess ranks in Bluff already, you may immediately retrain them at no cost.
>Read Foe: You have learned to read the subtle cues of your enemy. You gain ranks in the Sense Motive skill equal to your Hit Dice. Whenever you gain a Hit Die (such as when gaining a level), you gain a rank in this skill. If you possess ranks in Sense Motive already, you may immediately retrain them at no cost.
"More skill ranks? Meh."

Boxing:
>While outside of combat, whenever a creature makes a Bluff check against you while speaking, you can make a Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or Sense Motive check opposed by their Bluff check; upon making a successful opposed check, you can force them to either tell the truth (as far as they know) about the subject or take a -5 on Charisma-based skill and ability checks (this includes Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate, even if the target uses an alternate ability score to determine their bonuses with these skills) against everyone who listened to them speak for 1 day.
"Very cool! But my class is [armiger/blacksmith/conscript/striker], and my mental ability scores a not that high..."

Equipment, legendary:
>Oversized Weapons: You may wield weapons sized for creatures 1 size larger than yourself with no penalty, may treat two handed weapons of your normal size as one-handed weapons, and may treat one-handed weapons of your normal size as light weapons.
"Now this is what I will take for 3d6 damage two-handers!"

Is the stereotype of orcs as always CE rapist man-eaters or the stereotype of orcs as a deeply spiritual peoples with a tradition of venerating warriors more overplayed?

CE Rapist man-eaters is still overplayed.

The former is more common but the latter grates on people more. It's a situation where the subversion got popular and poisoned the new well, so everyone realizes the old one was pretty sweet after all.

They're both overplayed, it just depends on whether the orcs are referencing Lord of the Rings/Warhammer, or Elder Scrolls/Warcraft.

I wish more people made Lord of the Rings style Orcs; I want my faceless mooks to be gangly factory workers and lockstep soldiers, not hyper-buff tribals.

Maybe Sphere Mighter classes should be changed so they care more about mentals like Path of War classes do.

i made garret

deleted him tho

So if we were going to take orcs in a new direction, what kind of ideas are there that are worth considering? is a little interesting but if that advanced civilization was in the ancient past then modern orcs are still just CE rape-murderers.

I suppose it would take quite the stretch to get your mind wrapped around something as simple as two being more than one, wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want MORE fun?

And I'd be willing to bet that Wubu will be satisfied as long as She gets to watch

So you're telling me classes that aren't magical CAN'T detect magic? PREPOSTEROUS!

>Hupias are drawn to their past lives by a yearning to live again. In trying to return to their previous lives, they seek to fool friends and loved ones with tales of how they were away traveling for a long time or were busy with something else and forgot to tell everyone that they’d be gone. The ruse rarely holds up, and once the loved ones discover the truth, the results are tragic at best. Most hupias are unable to work themselves back into the life they had due to their indistinct memories and lack of understanding that they are actually dead.
>Even though they don’t need to eat, many hupias still ingest the foods they loved when they were living. They seek out their favorites, even wandering into villages in order to procure them. Many hupias from tropical regions, where they are most plentiful, still love the taste of tropical fruits, specifically guava.
>Some groups of hupias form their own communities. These small settlements are typically secluded in deep jungles, well away from where they might be discovered, though they are often within a day’s walk from where many of the hupias resided in life. In these bizarre communities, hupias carry out mundane tasks in perpetuation of the semblance of a settlement, hoping they appear normal to outsiders who might happen by.
;_;

>Orcs aren't dumb savages
>they were once super technological advanced.
>one of their scientists were on the cusp of figuring out apotheiosis and breaking the soul cycle or something
>this pisses of the gods so they basically all band together to wipe out the orcs
>Orcs survive, but barely
>the orcs managed their civilization back together, they still aren't HYPER advanced but still are on top in the tech department.
>they'll do anything to get back on top
>the god's put a collective hit out on every Orc in existence, which is why most of the mortal races hate them. It's literally part of most major religions to kill Orcs on sight, because reasons.
>Orcs are 100% willing to shit on the other races just as hard as they got shat on
Granted you would need to give them new stat blocks.

Who is?

Sphinxes. In my setting they purposefully erased knowledge of their own advanced society for the sole purpose of messing with the lesser races as they make outrageous claims on the 'enlightened but mystifying' precursor race that left all those perilous dungeons and ruins lying around, many of which almost seem as though they were made specifically to torture adventurers. This is the same race that combined musical theory and mathematics into their own language for the sole purpose of making it more difficult for people to translate and understand.

It's the ultimate riddle and the surviving sphinxes keep a close watch near their ruins for the day someone solves it. The reward for the genius who guesses it will be nothing. The satisfaction of watching someone's life work and thousands of years of dungeon delving and sacrifices is reward enough for the sphinxes.

Me ofc

It sounds sad, but in the Pathfinder planet, imagine the parties they get when adventurers pass by. There's probably drinking and feasting and listening to stories from the Barbarian and the Bard.

They don't remember why they like these people, but they do, if even for a day.

>Hupia
Where are those from?

The owls know more than you think.

The funniest thing is that even Spheres of Power classes can't detect magic without at least a feat worth of investment and 1 minute standing still, because Meyers is trying to force his own idea of a basic meta onto pathfinder

The Scout sphere can detect scrying with one talent (feat-equivalent), Sense and Resist Scrying.

The Scout sphere can also, with a talent, detect magic...
>Heightened Awareness: Your trained senses allow you to receive a Perception check to notice the presence of traps and ongoing magical effects, such as the alarm or invisibility spells, whenever you pass within 10 ft. of them, whether or not you are actively looking. If the target does not normally have a Perception DC, the DC is equal to the original spell DC as determined by the spell’s caster (DC 10 + spell level + caster’s casting ability modifier), or DC 25 if the effect does not originate from a source that would make it possible to determine a spell DC. This does not give you any information about the exact nature of magical effects detected in this manner, you are merely aware that a magical effect is active and the general area it is active in.

But the manner in which Heightened Awareness is written makes it nearly useless. There are all manner of supernatural abilities (supernatural abilities are magical by RAW), magic items, passive buff spells, etc. that would give false positives, and it certainly is not useful for pinpointing enchantment auras and illusion auras.

Only if adventurers actually pass by though, which is hardly guarenteed
And desu the societies they form seem to be functioning anyway, I guess this is probably the closest we've gotten to a functioning undead "civilization" with more members than shit like Liches commanding a trillion skeletons each? Hell you could probably even trade shit for them, they don't even have anything "evil" in their description, only their descriptor. Will Paizo finally stop the Always Evil classification of Undead soon

>they can use magic
>but they don't know what magic is
Hmmm yeah really makes me think

Beast 6, get it on 7ch

Post a cute waifu for us! Write one up and share her.

And yet even low casters can use Animate Dead to make Burning / Bloody Skeletons and a high caster can have burning skeletons with +4/+4 to STR and DEX for three times their hit die total by level 3

I already did

To be clear, Heightened Awareness is the kind of talent that prompts an exchange such as:

"There is some sort of ongoing magical effect on you."
"Tell me something I do not know. Is it my enchanted belt, maybe? The fortifying spells on me? The supernatural abilities augmenting my skills? Something from an external source"
"I cannot do that."

>3. A (crossdressing) kitsune sorcerer boy was going around using Cunning Caster, metamagic, and charm person spells to beguile a copious amount of beautiful ladies.

shhhh broodie go back to bed

>(This was part of a gag wherein it would all turn out to be part of a perfectly innocent activity.)

Suuuure...

Depends on the city. Always a ton of locked up fortresses in folklore, it's easy enough from a player perspective to write off 'this little town' that appeared as just where the plot takes them, unaware for a while about it.

Link her!

Oh good. There's no way that can be a fetish, then! It was merely a joke! I'm glad that it was described in detail in a playtest report!

Because spheres is all about specialization to a degree that no magic system allows. If someone goes all in on necromancy(and don't give me that muh necromancy=muh debuffs shit, we all know what people mean when they want a necromancer) Spheres says you should be damn fucking good at necromancy.

And I agree that that's still healthier for the game than constant at will magic detection

The characters in this scenario are spending upwards of 6 feats worth of stuff to be able to to that and can pretty much do nothing else but that.

Basically Paizo took them from the Taíno, natives of the Caribbean, and forgot to include the bit about them being known for seduction and kidnapping. Which ironically means that Paizo just took a bunch of undead and actually made them much less evil than they were to start with, despite their whole thing about them being always evil.

At-will magic detection is hugely narrative defining, yes.

That's why you're so fucked if the setting assumes you'll have it, and you don't.

Settings that will assume you have it include every paizo AP, and every GM's game where they haven't banned every magic system except spheres. Which is a lot of games.

>See Bestriary 6
>Entothropes!
>Archedevils!
>Four Horsemen!
>MFW
youtube.com/watch?v=s-abGTw2sSk

Me personally, liked this overpriced piece of shit which shows how deep down Goblin Town Paizo is now

Using Detect Magic that doesn't require a fuckload of wasted time requires you to invest 3 fucking talents. You can get it in 1 talent with drawbacks, but that then means you've gimped the utility of it down massively and have still spent a talent to do a cantrip effect. This is retarded.

>Settings that will assume you have it include every paizo AP, and every GM's game where they haven't banned every magic system except spheres. Which is a lot of games.
In this case you'll probably have a party member who can do that anyway, so what's the issue?

>all in
Nigger I can literally have two skeletons with 19 STR and 18 DEX each following me around at level 1. By level 4 I can have 16 hit die worth of skeletons with +4/+4 lasting for up to 4 hours each (Necrosphere, Greater Reanimate x2, Lingering Necromancy, Expanded Necromancy)

Oho, I'm sure a woman like you would know plenty about stretching, have you no shame on who you take to bed, or how many?

Actually scratch that, at level 5 I can have 20 hit die worth of skeletons or zombies with +4/+4 following me. Forever.

>Nigger I can literally have two skeletons with 19 STR and 18 DEX each following me around at level 1.
Yes, that is still a huge chunk of your level one talents even as an Incanter
>level 4
5/8 Talents you get at that level as an Incanter.

Yes, if you invest over half of your talents into a sphere you're going to be pretty good at it.

FotJR is constantly running into awkward problems where every CHA-based member of the party has detect magic at will but bad spellcraft, and the only person with good spellcraft is a spherecaster so he can't see the auras to make the checks.

Are you telling me that a level 5 with the ability to have 25 HD worth of buffed skeletons following it around as long as she cares to keep the bones dancing is more balanced than Detect Magic

Can somebody please explain the Scitalis in Bestiary 5 to me?

It's natural attacks includes it's frills. These are kinda strong, since they provide two attacks with 2d6+STR each. These are also primary natural attacks.

What kind of attack is this? How do you attack with frills? And what damage type do they cause?
There seems to be no other monster with this attack in any bestiary.

I...
I have no idea how to respond to this.

You think it's okay for spherecasters to be crippled at the most basic CASTER things just because non spherecasters can do it for them?

That's on the same level as 3.5's
>People with levels only in the barbarian class can't read unless they take a feat
>It's okay though, their party members can do it for them

I like how you keep pumping that number up with no proof.

And yes because
A. There are very few situations where you can use all those skeletons at once.
B. You have to HIDE all those skeletons and because if you don't literally every major force in the region is about to shit fucking fury on you and the party.
C. It's not like you'll be killing any 25 HD creatures anytime soon.

They slash at the enemy with them, or slap them. I guess.

Well maybe you shouldn't have partied up with a bunch of sluts then.

Speaking of necromancers, I have to ask, does feats like Augment Summoning affect the raising of undead?

FotJR can't resist such a fox of a man, user.

Aren't you happy that they at least did a patrician reference by introducing the Horla?

They do not.

>pumping that number up
An incanter gets what 10 talents at level 5? Greater Reanimate can be taken up to 3 times. You literally still have 4 talents to put whereever you feel like, or spend another one to make the skeletons bloody. When Detect Magic threatens to break the campaign, the DM can literally say "nope this one doesn't ping because reasons".

>HIDE all those skeletons
Skeletons don't need to breathe or anything you could literally command them to bury themselves in some riverbank on the outskirts and have them claw their way out when you're off to adventure.

>any 25 HD creatures
You can't reanimate creatures with more than 20 HD did you even read SoP rules? I can reanimate 6 ogres or 3 hill giants, i.e. 6 CR 3 creatures or 3 CR 5 creatures as a level 5.

What happens when a horla forces someone to go out and whore themselves while sleepwalking?

Surely that's a destructive act that sabotages a social life?

It would be shameful if you had such stupidly enormous companions but failed to put them to good use! It's just sensible!

>RLM
Kek yourself.

Wait actually only two hill giants plus some 5 HD thing
Point still stands, a level 5 could have two CR 5s following him around.

You didn't read the original tale from Maupassant wrote in the late 19th century, did you?

>mfw I thought playing a spherecaster would be easy and fun

You said 4 in the original example that you replied to. I'm not going to keep arguing when you keep escalating the number(and hence the power level). You get 8 at 4, 10 at 5.

>HIDE all those skeletons
And absolutely no farmers, fishermen, sorted number of magical creatures that dwell in those places will notice and tell someone? The DM can pull a someone bumps into them just as easily as a "nope doesn't ping".

Last thing is a fair point, I'm not super familiar with the Death Sphere.

It's not your fault!
You're good.

Are there ANY feats that I can take to mod my undead or do I just have to rely on Desecrating the area near my shrine to boost the power of each individual body?

Fuck off

what crawled into your cereal and died this morning, user

>And absolutely no farmers, fishermen, sorted number of magical creatures that dwell in those places will notice and tell someone?
They're in the riverbed, and you can simply have them not respond to provocation, since an inert skeleton is just, well, a skeleton. Hell, dress them in fishing gear and a net, these guys are long-forgotten drowned folk.

>you said 4
You mean level 4? The point still stands, a level 4 can still have 20 HD worth following him if he spends 6 talents (which is a lot), but either way this is so stupendously broken, imho, 'specialization' doesn't cut it.

>3. A (crossdressing) kitsune sorcerer boy was going around using Cunning Caster, metamagic, and charm person spells to beguile a copious amount of beautiful ladies.
Is there anything wrong with this?

Very Cool, Very Cool.