Paizo Games General /pgg/ (also /pfg/)

For anyone not an Operative or Soldier, is it worth spending a feat on Longarm Proficiency to be effective in battle?

>Then what are advanced one-handed melee weapons for?

Even better AoO.

Tsurezure Children. It's a super-cute manga that has a super-cute anime adaptation.

>Mechanic
If you go exocortex then you get it for free, if drone then it's doing your damage for you but maybe sure in that case.
>Solarian
You chose that class for melee combat, maybe as a back-up but it feels like a waste.
>Mystic/Technomancer
Spells.
>Envoy
You can only improve on this class, go for it.

Could anyone interested in the operative please have a look at these four posts of Mark Seifter?

paizo.com/threads/rzs2ui01?Starfinder-Early-Impressions#39
paizo.com/threads/rzs2ui01?Starfinder-Early-Impressions#41
paizo.com/threads/rzs2ui01?Starfinder-Early-Impressions#42
paizo.com/threads/rzs2ui01&page=2?Starfinder-Early-Impressions#52

With these in mind, is it a good idea to apply any hotfixes to the operative's skills, or should the operative be run RAW, with halfling and ysoki operative (ghost) builds being the "one true optimal build" for all operatives?

Considering that longarms have decidedly better damage *and* range, and that Weapon Specialization applies only half your level to the damage of small arms, I would say that the following types of characters would benefit heavily from spending feats on Longarm Proficiency and Weapon Specialization (longarms):

• Almost all envoys
• Drone mechanics, since exocortex mechanics, poor as they are, already receive longarm proficiency
• Mystic and technomancer gishes (e.g. low-level technomancer gishes with Supercharge Weapon)

>if drone then it's doing your damage for you but maybe sure in that case.

There is nothing stopping you from firing a longarm while your drone also shoots its own longarm.

>Spells.

Some mystics and technomancers, like Supercharge Weapon technomancers, are gishes.

I'm making an NPC, and want the best options for being able to use a weapon like a Whip or Scourge or similar to pull a "Get Over Here" on enemies and pull them in. Said NPC is going to be around Lvl 6 or so, and is a Hellknight of the Order of the Lash.

I know that in terms of 1pp options, the easiest way to to grab Ascetic Style and Hamatula Strike to grapple people with a chain-like monk weapon, but we're there any others?

Also, in terms of 3pp, what PoW discs and classes would help with this best? I feel like a Warlord with Fool's Errand could work but I'm still unsure if there aren't better options

>Order of the Lash
Sorry, meant Scourge, not Lash

>your drone also shoots its own longarm.
I believe melee drone is better; a combat drone has higher STR than DEX, and the damage reduction is wasted if you're not taking damage.

> Operative
tl;dr

Drones have a poor action economy that makes melee attacking inconvenient for them.

Using a stealth drone and waiting for 3rd-level for longarms may be a good alternative.

Hey, as a relatively new Pathfinder GM, how do you deal with overpowered character builds? I've had some issues making encounters that weren't murderous because of low level insane damage but low health, or too easy.

More weak enemies.
Have them use tactics and combat maneuvers like trip.

Are you people afraid of the words "good enough"?
"This only comes third place in dpr olympics!"
"It is good enough"

Ask the player to make something else.

What did the player make?

Overpowered how?

If they're combat monsters, try using more social encounters and vice versa.

If that doesn't work or isn't an option, there are other ways to incapacitate a player (or enemy) than massive amounts of damage. Poisons, illusions, and similar can screw up any group regardless of level.

Swarms and large groups of minions also do well.

Let's settle this once and for all.

Level 9 Paizo only fighter VMC barbarian (Pathfinder 15 point buy) vs. level 9 soldier (Starfinder 10 point buy), white room.

Both use their own game's WBL, gear, action economy, full attacks, feats, HP systems, etc.

Who wins?

Assume a magic weapon isn't "archaic" or whatever.

We use Gestalt builds (my first mistake, I admit.)

He made the mother of all blasters. Wizard/Sorc using sorc bloodlines to get both Dragon and Orc, for +2 damage on fire spells per dice. Then the trait that increases the CL of a spell on Burning Hands...

They were 1-shotting entire encounters before they got close.

Not really. There are people who struggle with the idea of non-optimal builds seeing play, but they're a minority.

What kind of builds does your party have? Because if your players are 1shotting Mooks, that's not a problem with the build but rather because Pathfinder's math I fucked up and imbalanced, meaning this is actually normal and expected for low-level play. As such it's I stead better to make encounters that rely on numbers if enemies, and smart enemy placement, such as having dudes with towershields with a reach weapon guy or a ranged weapon guy behind him benefitting from the Cover bonus of the shield

Basically it's probably not the players, but rather the system itself that's fucking you over, so you're going to have to adapt to it. Trust me, Martials 1shotting low level enemies, or even CR equivalent enemies if they're a Barbarian, is normal

That's a super cute pupper

>Drones have a poor action economy
not really, you essentially have 3 actions per turn that you split between your PC and drone.

> waiting for 3rd-level for longarms
any group I join will probably dissolve before we reach level 3

Part of the problem is that they can only think in terms of "this class is good because HEUG NUMBERS and CAN DOES EVERTHINK. If it's not utterly optimal, they can't believe there's a use for it or a purpose for it's being there. Worse still, these are the same idiots who scream STORMWIND FALLACY if you suggest that roleplaying has anything to do with the math of the classes, but god forbid flavor have any reason for existing in any class even if that class is suboptimal to their MUST HAS HUEG NUMBAHS thinking.

>not really, you essentially have 3 actions per turn that you split between your PC and drone.

If you want to be attacking while your drone also attacks, this can be accomplished more reliably by giving the drone a ranged weapon.

Well, when you're in a party with even just one person who can outfight the entire rest of the party, you need to be able to pull your weight. More so if you have reason to believe they might try and kill you. Because there's always that one asshole who thinks they're going to be smart and get away with betraying the party.

So, you play with assholes, is what you're telling us.

No, obly 2hu has that problem. The issue is that "good enough" often is a high cieling due to game balance, and also varies widely based on the specific game, level, adventure, and the rest of the party comp. Plus, good enough should always be a minimum of "can actually do its job" which doesn't always happen

An example of Good Enough is a Barbarian with Power Attack, a 16-18 in Strong, and maaaaybe Furious Focus. After that it's generally viewed as acceptable and good enough to do whatever the heck else you want with it.

She's a pupper only some of the time.

>fuck roleplaying
>you have to be able to one shot everyone in your party
>because they'll do it to you first
You're the problem with roleplaying games in general.

Sauce me, papa user

You only need to get burned once before you start feeling like everyone's sharpening a knife, user.

It happened twice in the same campaign to me, and I'm never letting it happen again if I can help it.

Again, you're playing with assholes.

Combat monsters with extremely high stats (we rolled stats on roll20 and they rolled the equivalent of six nat 20s).

As a result, they have insane stats for a caster and their only hindrance is a player introduced one, the character is extremely shy.

The party, only two people, I was gonna add a minor GMPC for balance reasons, was said caster and a Knife Master legendary/unchained rogue. Knife Master was incredibly balanced, the caster just swept away anything in their path at level 2.

Honestly, I like to think I'm not playing with assholes anymore. But I'd rather be ready and not need my OP character than get caught in need of an OP character and not have him, you know?

Think of it from an in-game perspective. If you're being deadweight, and have no use to the party, why would or should they keep you around? What justification would any of the characters have to keeping this arrangement?
>Inb4 because of friendship
Say that to Yamcha. Plus if a character realizes that their existence is nothing more than a burden to their friends D's, and as such could easily become a potential risk to them, would it not make sense for him to leave the party and quit before his weakness gets his comrades killed?

She's also a Lord, too.

Grisherina Efleanor from Dungeon Travelers 2.

So by your logic all 1pp martials should be thrown out of every party that's currently running.

>If you want to be attacking while your drone also attacks, this can be accomplished more reliably by giving the drone a ranged weapon.

i agree that ranged attacks are easier to accomplish than melee attacks. melee can still be more optimal than ranged. my combat drone has damage resist, and he can charge in at level 1 with a 1d8 reach pike, while i shoot with my laser rifle.

That kind of defensiveness is not healthy for a social game like roleplaying

I'm guessing it's because of Color Spray and such?
Sadly, your going to have to play dirty with them, and build encounters specifically around creatures with immunities, or have enemy casters around to debuff the other caster or use counterspells. Or just keep enemies from bunching together, and start building around ambushes, pronged attacks, and prioritising geeking the mage. Sadly though, this may make you look like an asshole who is singling the guy out

I was only the second one, but quick question on the first part: All I'm seeing is that the GM MAY decide to apply it as a hazard but that normally they can't aim at the people? Does it state this anywhere that their Shields and HP are to be multiplied or is this just a guess? It would certainly make sense, and it's something I've seen in other systems (Heavy Gear) but it's not in the little sidebar box.

By the way two linked light weapons is the limit for ships under medium. I can't really agree that doing say 4d12 is in any way going to be keeping up when you're dealing with 300 points of shielding, DT 10, and another hundred points of hull when the return-fire is 2x 7d10 (With room for one more), or worse yet 3x 2d6x10 (with room for a fourth).

O, because Barbarians and Slayers exist, and also because it's better to lower the power cieling by instead restricting/banning the higher power characters, and possibly giving the Martials better alternatives to choose from that allow them to stay useful.

That's why 3pp exists, to fix the shit 3.pf left us with

The big irony of Save or Sucks: you either build around them and you're an asshole (and honestly that's not sarcasm) or you don't and they steam roll the early levels.

(And then you can slowly add more and more immunities, but by then the damage is done and the game will still be a major state of castors only growing *more* defining of party success.)

What's odd is when they're clearly screwing over the party, and you are somehow a bad roleplayer for being the only person in the group who's character takes issue with being betrayed. Goddamn masochists or something.

user, my friends and I had a situation where one of the players basically did exactly what you described (minus the whole "may kill you at any time" part since interparty fighting is banned at our table) and as a group of reasonable, healthy adults we took one look at what we let happen, made an agreement to never let it happen again, and even named that agreement after the character in question to keep each other in line.

This is including the player who made the character, and I'm sorry but if you're in a group where you can't honestly say that you're convinced the people you're with would do the same you're in a bad group and need to find another one with a healthier outlook.

I've been through that. What went wrong was that we all thought he wasn't serious. Even though his express purpose in playing a good character, as he'd stated up front, was to "prove" that optimism was stupid and Good-aligned characters were hypocrites.

Yeah, it took an actual act of betrayal and a narrowly-averted zombie apocalypse to realize that he wasn't joking.

Shoot that person

Not even color spray. They were an evoker that did wicked fire damage that they could switch the type of any time they encountered something immune to fire. They were doing enough damage to kill creatures for CR4 at level 2 in one shot.

Color sprat and sleep were just icing on the savage cake.

honestly i'm depressed /pfg/

Not like suicidal or anything, but I just find like.. Life and existing to be so hard. Mentally.

I would, but the rest of the group likes him for some reason. Bunch of edgelords, they are.

I, on the other hand, got tired of playing with Gen Urobuchi-lite.

>Someone actually building and playing the Michael Bay Admixture Wizard
Color me impressed.

Can you talk to anyone?

Then you know what you must do
Build and play Kenshiro, a warrior with a heart of justice and fists of fury, then have the whole party watch a shitload of Hokuto no Ken

See, the thing about all those anti-That Guy success stories? They don't work when the GM can just say "No, that doesn't happen, and you're out."

>A zen archer cannot use Rapid Shot or Manyshot when making a flurry of blows with his bow.
Why do they gain those feats then??

Life gets better user. Depression can be hard, seek help.

When the one doing it is the GM's GM in another game, the paladins are more than happy to watch the guy torture an NPC to death as a good act.

I feel ya, man. I really do. Hope things get better for ya.

Eat more nuts. Drink cranberry juice. Realize that even though it is your brain chemistry telling you this, the feelings are real and must be overcome. Be self aware; take a moment and consider your life and realize you've done okay.

Guys, I need advice. I'm looking at weapons, and the Kyoketsu Shoge is perfect for the character and build, however there is a snag. The character is Chelish, the game takes place in Cheliax, so there's no way an actual Kyoketsu Shove should be there. How do I refluxed the weapon to not look inappropriately weeb?

Blasting is a really suboptimal way to play a caster. You can easily deal with this by giving enemies fire resistance of however much you deem appropriate. The players don't even need to know.

>so there's no way an actual Kyoketsu Shove should be there
Black Market or trade caravan?

thanks guys. I'm gonna go to bed.

A crowbar on a rope.

You don't gain them, you can choose to pick them up but they're bad choices.

Just take precise shot at 2, imp. precise at 6, and imp. critical at 10.

Neither works because Tian caravans don't travel that far, and the character is a Hellknight, so no black market

Will probably do something like this. Perhaps make it like a Swordbreaker hooked to a chain with a horseshoe on the other end?

So I'm apparently missing something with Starfinder. So it's pathfinder in space, meaning I can take my level 7 Sorceror, give him a spacesuit, and have him start blasting his way through space stations?

Also, geez, I let the hobby drop for a couple of months, I come back, Golarion's gone, everyone has automatic weapons, and nobody knows what happened.

They had admixture was the issue, but this is helpful advice regardless.

Ok, why they take room in your bonus feat list if you can't use them?

>Neither works because Tian caravans don't travel that far, and the character is a Hellknight, so no black market
It doesn't have to come from a Tian caravan. Brigands, bandits, and other travelers could have came across one without knowing exactly what it was or was worth and it got traded around.

Since you're playing a Hellknight, you could have confiscated it from one of the above or stopped a ninja assassin and claimed it.

that's not the mother of all blasters, not even close, but I digress.

Have him be fucking known for this. in combat people fucking scatter IF they know of him (as fame and levels rise). Have folks make quips about his pyromania. He's the first guy anyone suspects when there's an arson case.

Honestly, whether it's burning hands or grease+stabbing or colorspray+throatslitting or sleep or entangle or whatever, full casters can demolish combat encounters easily and readily. If enemies are less clustered and use cover once they see the flamening start, it'll at least use up more of his resources (plus the smarter ones will realize they need to geek the mage asap).

Think of it: Picard always managed to talk his way out of shit. Sometimes it took a show of force, but in the end, the grand majority of his successes were good diplomacy, intimidate or bluff checks. Did he have to deal with mindless deathbots ALL the time (there was that one time with the Borg) as a result? Of course not! Instead his reputation preceeded him, just like every alien woman out there knew that Riker will fuck anything with a pulse that may be female (and sometimes he wasn't even THAT discriminating).

In other words; "how do I stop this" is not really the right mindset, user.

"How do I fucking run with this" is what you need to ask yourself. The guy wants to be known for being a fiery apocalypse, how is that NOT a terrible complication for the party to have to learn to deal with in itself?

youtube.com/watch?v=NAWL8ejf2nM
Are you planning on going to plaid in your Starfinder game, /pgg/?

because paizo hates martials, and monks specially

>The Drift is described as a colorful and riotous void
>Using it chips away at parts of other planes
>Make a big jump, takes out a major chunk of Axis
>The Lawful nature of Axis alturs the surrounding Drift, ordering the chaotic collies into an orderly plaid
Perfect

you can still use them, they just don't work with flurry

idk why they're there, maybe for someone just dipping into zen archer

That's actually a good point...

Like I said, I'm a relatively new GM trying to relieve a forever GM, so I'm trying to make balanced and fun combat encounters, not just for him but the other guy too. It's a bit galling when the rogue feels great for sneak attacking a guy and then the rest of the everyone is gone in one spell.

Thanks for pointing out the error in thinking though, it's a perspective I never considered.

Fucking spaceballs
I need to watch this again sometime.

>This video is not available.

Running a Spaceballs game should have been our first thought when the leaks came out.

>1 week and I can't still watch vids on YouTube because they load ad infinitum

user, we need this.
We *need* this.

Where are you? Because it's just fine here in Burgervania

I think there's a little character conversion to be done, but yup.

Y'know, with all the talk about spaceships, I fully expect this to happen at least once.

Yurop.

>And that is how the Goblins made it to space

>Invisible creatures don't take damage from lasers, as the beams pass through them harmlessly
Haha, yesss

Well think of it. I mean, that's the guy's character concept.

Certainly you can adjust things in encounters a little. Maybe add in more sentries in dark stabbable places for the rogue to handle when they're infiltrating; stuff like that. Back in AD&D that was the main use of backstab (oh there's one ogre around the corner; it'll be one less if I can do this quietly) as opposed to mid-battle DPS like some kind of WoW rogue.

And clumps of enemies here and there should have their reasons. There's a lot of classes and abilities that give great bonuses to adjacents and the such. But later on, what if their leader can use a counter or smash that spell from the air before it lands, protecting his tiny troop? There ARE abilities like this within the rules, and someone focused on tiny bunched up tactics is gonna want to learn them. Make sure it's clear though what happened since few things are worse than just hand-waving away the player's entire abilities because you felt like it failing.

Of course what if someone picks off those sergeants or whatever once it's understood that's how those particular troops function? you're left with big numbers who've lost their defense to another partymember, and who still need to die or else they're a danger.

Sometimes players want to see just what the repercussions and feel the world the GM is building will give their character for making a particular type of expert. And when you populate a world, you need things for them to react to and deal with, and that there's the PCs.

>pic related had people talking about just how heroic and brave she was for taking the hits for everyone... but her party... her party knew otherwise....

I didn't know how much I wanted this

I just saw this and it made me think of you /pgg/.

Night faggots.

I'm too busy.

I finally got around to running the PoW, Psionic, Forgotten Realms barley farming simulator I've always wanted to run.

The PCs made level 3 last session.

Next game, they're going to find a relic for Velsharoon's ascension from demilich to demigod.

A little more for the rogue: uses of characters out of combat can take a bit of inventiveness, but it can be really really worth it.

A rogue, for example; if he's good at stealth and disable device, your first thought might be "traps". But what about his use in intrigue?

If I want to put incriminating evidence in someone's safe, I need to make sure no one knows one of my guys broke into the DNC file cabinets during the night. I need that stuff to be right there, clean as a whistle, "untampered", when the anti-corruption squads show up to pick up all them documents. I don't need a goon: I need a professional boxman.

I really, and I mean reeeeeeeeeally, wanna fuck that dragon