Pathfinder General /pfg/

>What is a normal alchemist
>What is an Occultist

All of those things can't keep up with an initiator even if that initiator doesn't have Broken Blade, Primal Fury.

Elemental Flux, Riven Hourglass, Shattered Mirror, crazy ass shit.

What world do you live in where an SoP/SoM character can keep up.

Maybe an autism destruction caster can MAYBE MAYBE keep up with a very badly made initiator.

so you're just going to repeat trite OverPOWered lines without looking at how the math behind disciplines falls off hard compared to self-buffing + spells auto-winning encounters.

Classic retard right here.

>self-buffing
Daily resources, prep time.

>spells auto-winning encounters
You can jack up attack rolls a lot better than spells.

Have you seen what kind of shit a SoM/SoP character can do on full-attacks/amped up Talent attacks? It's pretty gnarly in terms of burst DPR

I haven't honestly. I think there are some shenanigans to be had with dual wielding gun builds since SoM makes it so easy now.

So SoM allows trading of 6th-casting for Adept progression

Should I trade my casting as a phantom blade Spiritualist? What about as a Fractured Mind/Exciter Spiritualist, or Ectoplasmatist? What about a Vexing Daredevil Mesmerist?

>destruction
>Not locking enemies down with gravity well from TK then dropping swords on them
>Not using Darkness Sphere to make the ground beneath you a liquid shadow and pulling them down with you then leaving them there
>Not getting them in a forest and having the trees Pummelgang them to death
>Not turning them into a fish with Alteration Sphere
>Not debuff-stacking with the new affliction options from Life Sphere
>Not turning the ground beneath them into water then freezing it.
>Not locking them behind some barriers then leaving
Not having your army of animated suits of armor swarm them
You are like a baby

>Le all-day memes
Double kek!

Trading your feats instead of your casting is almost certainly a better deal.

I'd say no for the Phantom Blade and Extoplasmist, since those rely on spell combat/spellstrikes, but the others should be fine

I.dont know much about the mesmerist, since I've never paid much attention to it

t. someone who has never played or even looked at SoP/SoM

They are both easily more breakable than PoW, although PoW provides more power overall over the course of a game when optimized, SoP/SoM can keep up extremely easily.

>Daily Resources
Tell me, if your wizard or cleric runs out of spells, do you keep adventuring? No, you stop and take it for the next day, the dungeon will still be there. The same is still true of PoW-users, it's just that they only need to worry about running out of HP. The idea of resources actually MATTERING is fucking stupid.

I've played with Spheres of Power a whole bunch. They are not any more breakable than Path of War and you seriously have to be drinking the DSP koolaid to think to think otherwise.

Take a gander at Life or Destruction spheres.

Given that most of the absurd breakable things in SoP are advanced talents, meaning it's entirely up to the DM. And don't get me wrong, I much prefer SoP/SoM over PoW, but i'm not deluded enough to not believe SoP and SoM aren't just as breakable if not worse.

>daily resources

I roll with parties of PoW initiators and aegises.

We use manuevers and stances to heal all day for free.

Basically we never need to stop and rest.

Checkmate.

>ignores a previous poster's comments to restate incorrect statement again

Oh shit yeah, and avowed.
We REALLY don't need to rest.

Not once, actually. I made a Tian Xia NPC once. I visited Tian Xia with a party once. I've never played with a !Japanese/Chinese character in the party, though. Closest I've gotten is a current game, but it's an Eastern setting similar to central Asia, so like... not even Japanese/Chinese.

>Take a gander at Life or Destruction spheres.
Given that these aren't broken at all, I don't see you're point.

Like destruction, even when you optimize the shit out of it(barring advanced talents) is still inferior to basic Paizo martial.

Life can heal loads of damage, but it's just fucking healing at the end of the day. Unless you get off on killing PCs, that's hardly busted.

SoP has jarring stuff at low levels, but it's not nearly as terrible when you realize that's all the character is capable of usually. And that jarring stuff is seldom as game warping as an Initiator. At least in my experience.

I don't really have enough experience with SoM to comment on it. Does anyone have any actual play experience with it?

What the fuck did I ignore?

Is stuffing DSPs cock so far down your throat depriving you of oxygen so much you're stating to hallucinate?

>life sphere, with heavy investment, can make in-combat healing actually worth bothering with before the Heal spell comes online

holy shit stop the presses we need to ban that

I play humans to much in my games, what other races are fun to play? I've been looking at Tengu since they look pretty neato

>is still inferior to basic Paizo martial
Are you fucking kidding me? CL boosts from both SoP and from Paizo that stack to increase damage, boosts such as Holy Smite or Unholy Smite, and throwing on metamagics like Empowered or Maximize to go even further, you can quite easily do enough damage as a low level SoP to instantly wipe out and kill creatures several CR above you (while ignoring spell resistance because why the fuck not). It doesn't even require serious investment to do, which is the worst part.
Things such as Resuscitate or being able to cure almost any condition while ignoring creature types with minimal investment

Tengu aren't too great, as the Con penalty hurts for the Martials where their Swordtraining would help.

All the Geniekin races are pretty decent, as are the humanhybrid races. Skinwalkers are also pretty good too

I find Kitsune, Tieflins, Aasimar, Elves, Goblins, Dwarves, Hobgoblins, and Half-elves fun to play.

>Holy Smite or Unholy Smite,
You mean those things no one allows ever and advanced talents that I called out
.>you can quite easily do enough damage as a low level SoP to instantly wipe out and kill creatures several CR above you
And that stops being true around level 5 when things stop having the HP amount of a wet paper bag.

Fuck we even established with +2 damage from Elemental Bloodline and Wild Arcana they don't fucking keep up until you go full retard nova with time sphere bullshit and like 20 drawbacks. We've had several threads arguing about this shit.

We're talking about damage into the hundreds, not just "60", all by 5th level.

And don't pretend drawbacks even mean anything in the system, most are negligible or irrelevant entirely.

Dwarves, half-orcs, and rats are pretty fun, in my experience.

Geniekin like Ifrit?
Ratpeople seem kinda cool, but they seem they like they would be best played with another player

>the hundreds
Math now or bullshit. Because considering you normally only deal Kineticist levels of damage with the Sphere I find this to be fishy

>We're talking about damage into the hundreds, not just "60", all by 5th level.
With talents no one allows and even devs acknowledge as busted.
>And don't pretend drawbacks even mean anything in the system, most are negligible or irrelevant entirely.
They are given that you're GM signs off on them and what combo of them you can take. Just like they have to sign off on Holy Smite/Unholy Smite which you seem to be hinging this shit on despite me calling advanced talents out.

Seriously, that "hundreds of points of damage build" involved something you needed to be 7th level to take and a feat a Sphere Caster couldn't even take in the first fucking place i I remember correctly.

I was in favor of no daily resources, don't need to include me in that.
Also, get better taste in Echoes characters

It also required like 30-40 spell points at once.

No, that's a separate build, the 2hu build is the ALL DAY one.

The fuck you on? Geniekin are almost all terrible except for Sylphs, Suli, and maybe Undine sometimes.

That's objectively false though?

The only time they're problems is with minmaxing shitbags, and that type of person will make anything a problem.

The 2hu build doesn't do hundreds of points of damage at level 5. It was more like 55 to 70 and dependent on holy unholy smite.

Minmaxing takes PoW to way higher levels of bullshit than anything but full casters.

Then don't fucking minmax?

incorrect. Min-maxed paizo content can achieve higher bullshit than PoW in the realm of thousands of dpr

Source?

>DPR
Burst damage is what counts and you can't bring your mount into basically every dungeon.

You can't pre buff all the time either.

Swarming is nice if you can use it, but it doesn't make or break them. Plenty you can do with a DEX/INT race that doesn't rely on flanking, after all. Plus, they have some interesting history.

bloodrager/alchemist/fighter multiclass dipping for ridiculous strength score + TWF two-handers + or an eidolon with 32 lances or a horizon walker ranger with +24 to-hit and damage on anything due to terrain bond wands.

Let alone combining any of the above options with a smattering of archery

5th level Incanter, specialized in Destruction (which if you didn't know is awful, incanter is only good as a dip but lets ignore that and pretend we didn't get awful with this build).

CL 5, +1 from specialization, +2 from Overcharge, you ucan go further with more but lets leave it at this for now. CL 8, we can go further if we multiclassed into other classes to grab more CL boosts but lets not for now.
Feat: Energy Specialization. +2 cl, CL 10.

Here I would use a stupid shape, but lets ignore that and just do Focused Blast with our feat on the default shape.

As for our type, we could go for something that pierces energy resistance (Incandescent), but lets go normal, and pick Searing Blast, causing it to be d8 and deal fire damage.

We have used two talents and one feat, and our blasts are currently 10d8+10. Throw an empowered or Maximized metamagic for 15-120 or 90 damage. If you care about spell resistance, you can combine it with Imbue with Nature feat (costing one feat and a talent to gain the Nature sphere, as well as 1 extra SP).

Normally this is where you throw in (Un)Holy Smite to increase the damage by an additional 50%, boosting it into the mid-hundreds. Alternatively, with a bit of setup you can instead do Destructive Harmonics to gain a +50% anyhow (you can stack both). But lets pretends we don't do any of that.

Ultimately, our barebones, not-minmaxed Destruction damage is looking at 90 with Maximize, costing us 1 (do do 10d8 damage), +2-3 spellpoints (metamagic), +1 if spell-resistance is a concern.

It costed us: 1-2 feats (2 if spell-resistance), 2 talents (out of the 10 we have as incanter), 2 drawbacks and is generally not optimized as we're using bad classes and combinations to achieve this with minimal dm-intrusion and looking at all the possible effects from different classes. Without even considering bonus SP from drawbacks, we have a total of 10 SP/day, assuming 20 mental stat.

We can go further and worse, if you want to bother

>You can't bring your Large sized mount into 10x10 corridors
user, what?

>eldritch scion
>dragon knight theme with a lizardfolk
>clear line between me and the monster
>charge with 8 HP
>get hit for 18, dm lets me continue and fall after i've finished my action, as my character is a relentless fucker and won't be stopped for that until he does what he came to do
>jump 10ft into the air and 20ft forwards thanks to Jump
>land a fucking crit with impact halberd + flaming burst + intensified flaming grasp plus blessing of fervor, charge heroism and death from above
>21+6d8+3d10+20d10
>fucking 157 damage
>area of impact explodes in flames
>i fall, letting go of the halberd still impaled to the monster's back, and pass out
>we all cheer
>>dm: oh yeah it's immune to fire
>mfw

>Ultimately, our barebones, not-minmaxed Destruction damage is looking at 90 with Maximize, costing us 1 (do do 10d8 damage), +2-3 spellpoints (metamagic), +1 if spell-resistance is a concern.

>Ultimately, our build that uses the vast majority of it's resources to do this really specific thing while losing out on everything else isn't minmaxed

Are you actually retarded?

You still have 8 extra talents, most of your feats (and bonus feats), and MANY different ways to gain spell-points. You do sacrifice some resources, but don't pretend it's even close to "vast majority".

What was the monster, user?

a metallic dragon thing
metallic dragon not as in copper, bronze, gold, etc, but like a weird mechanical dragon... thing that the dm ported from final fantasy xiv i think

Dyute is Cyute!

I can get behind playing a ratman, I've had an interest in them since I'm also fond of Skaven in WH40K, seems like they would be good for playing a metal gear solid kind of character

Damn, son. You got fucking wrecked.

>Intense Magic (Su)

>Whenever you create a destructive blast that deals hit point damage, add 1/2 your incanter level to the damage dealt (minimum: +1). This bonus damage is not increased by Empower Spell or similar effects. This damage is of the same type as the destructive blast. At 20th level, whenever you create a destructive blast you can roll twice to penetrate a creature’s spell resistance and take the better result.

Sorry, but your build is illegal, as you cannot enhance damage directly to your destructive blast through Empower or other metamagic feats

>I nova half of my resources to take out a single target with a ranged touch attack as a half bab class.
His build isn't dependent on intense magic.

>as you cannot enhance damage directly to your destructive blast through Empower or other metamagic feats
You can, you just can't enhance through Intense Magic or the other traits. Damage gained through focused blast or other methods are fair gain.

> and MANY different ways to gain spell-points.
Do you seriously think any GM would let you come to the table with 10+ draw backs?

Oh, my bad. I did forget to account for the metamagic being a feat on its own, so you *are* sacrificing a little over half your feats (3 feats if spell resist, and you only gain 1 from incanter, so you only have 1 feat left if you care about spell resist.)

Regardless, you are not sacrificing much.

I could have gone further by multiclassing with paizo classes that can get an easy source of +CL, or say, a 1incanter/4elementalist build or similar.

No, you're the wrong one. I didn't even factor that damage in because I completely forgot that ability existed, so thank you. The ultimate damage from the build rises to 92 now.

The ability does not state that Destructive Blast cannot be enhanced by Empower Magic or other metamagics; It states that the BONUS damage gained from this ability is never increased by such metamagics.
Like i said, spell-points are not a difficult resource to attain, and you defeated your own argument as the ability is a ranged TOUCH attack.

If you care about missing, you can easily convert the shape away from Focused Blast to an area-based shape and make it a save/suck instead. Since DC's are directly boosted by CL, your blast's DC would be 20, which is fairly good for a 5th level caster.

And again, all of this with almost none of your talents used. Infact, you can make it *literally* none of your talents used by picking up the drawbacks to only use one shape type and one damage type, as you gain the Destruction sphere for free already.

Wait, in combat healing isn't sh*t now?

>I could have gone further by multiclassing with paizo classes that can get an easy source of +CL, or say, a 1incanter/4elementalist build or similar.
Paizo CL boosts do not affect Sphere CL.

You only need 2 drawbacks, 7 if you wish to gain double spell-points per level alongside the boon.

"Traditional Magic", a base Casting Tradition, already has six. Wizardry has seven, and it would be a simple matter of asking your DM to swap a boon for another boon for this to function.

So, frankly, yes. It's not unreasonable in the slightest to have 7 drawbacks, as several of the base traditions have 5+ drawbacks or more.

>Like i said, spell-points are not a difficult resource to attain, and you defeated your own argument as the ability is a ranged TOUCH attack.
> 1incanter/4elementalist build or similar.
And get significantly less talents.

Also the +CL from other Paizo classes doesn't fucking work.
These miss way more often than people like to meme about them doing.
With spheres it isn't.

>sh*t
Don't do that. This is the internet, more specifically Veeky Forums. Censoring your own curse words makes you look like a fucking cock shitting asscunt bitch

Either curse properly, or don't use curse words at all.

Fudge off, user.

>Regardless, you are not sacrificing much.
I'd say 4 feats on a level 5 character is a fucking lot.

Luck my ballerina shoes you shitake mushroom

>With spheres it isn't.
Is there a specific build or something?

These are fair arguments, though it can be argued that a reasonable DM would not shaft paizo-converted spherecasters by limited such class effects, I will not utilize it for making an example.

The elementalist build was more to say "you can specialize into this much harder to pull off even worse numbers", not that it would be worth doing to preserve having fun in a game.
Three at most, two to pull off the main idea.

Anyways, I hope this is enough of an example that you can 'break' spheres very easily, very much so to keep up/surpass even optimized PoW classes with minimal investment.

I do not condone the use of the build, and I still love SoP and SoM much more than Vancian or PoW, but pretending it's unbreakable and always balanced is a silly argument.

>Level 10
>+3 Dex
>+2 Natural Armor
>+7 from armor
>+1 from a RoP (+1)
>just lost the ring
>22 fucking ac on a magus

fuck, how do i improve my AC beyond mystic focus (+2) and casting shield (+4)? literally everything hits me, there's been only one attack in the past 5 combats that didn't get through

The build isn't even that good because you cherry picked extremely easily countered talents(searing/focus blast) to jack up damage high for less effect than the average character.

if you move away from focused you drop a whole 10 and if you're gm isn't brain dead and includes some fire immune resistant enemies you would have to switch out from searing to even deal damage.

Not to mention spending half or your daily resources+a full round to kill 1 enemy is worth than what normal casters are capable of.

Also doesn't beat BB Sasuken stuff at level 5.
>The elementalist build was more to say "you can specialize into this much harder to pull off even worse numbers",
Except Elemenalists get even less talents and less feats than the In canter. They can't take element specialization at 5, because they only have a virtual caster level of 5 with Destruction.

AC is a sucker's game. Blink and mirror image are your friends.

First you be a mid-to-high caster and grab the Life Sphere. Grab Ranges Healing, and Mass Healing if you have mutliple people getting up close to the enemies. Combine with Revitalise, Fount of Life, and any Restore talents you want to boost your healing. Resuscitate could be useful, as can Latent Healing. If you wanna save your spell points, focusing on just using Invigorate to keep people patched up can be useful

Yes, I specifically pointed out that there are better choices as far as shapes and types that you could pick. If you are against fire-immune characters, then simply adjusting away from Searing to another type is viable- you *do* have the talents to grab another type, and the benefits of other talents will almost certainly outweigh the 20 damage gained from Searing.

But lets not pretend like with this build this is your only options. You still have a whopping 8 more talents to spend on any sphere effect you'd like, which you can easily multiply by using sphere-specific drawbacks as well.
Fair argument as far as specialization, the amount of talents they gain is irrelevant however, given that the idea behind the elementalist build would be to go deeper into damage/the destruction sphere itself. Though at that rate I believe Thaumaturge would work even better.

Give up on AC, start looking for Miss Chances that are reliable; Blur, Mirror Image, Blink, etc.

>Yes, I specifically pointed out that there are better choices as far as shapes and types that you could pic
And those all decrease your damage significantly. like by 20+ points significantly.

For example stone blast with energy orb and maximize lowers the builds damage to about 60, but also leaves it vulnerable to DR(which will come online around level 5 anyway.).

Is that a lot yes. But considering the resources you're expending(over half) to wipe out an encounter(something Paizo casters are doing in ONE SPELL).

Also this damage tapers off really fast a higher levels too. Like you stop keeping up around level 10.

How'd you lose the ring?

This is anecdotal but I played with an Incanter/Sorc/Elementalist X around this level and he wasn't doing nearly as much as this? I can't tell if he was deliberately holding back or if it was because he was using empower instead of Maximize, but it wasn't nearly this bad.

You are expending 4 spellpoints to do so. Assuming you take 7 drawbacks, you will have 15 spellpoints by 5th level. There is almost no reason to take less, but it is a choice.

Additionally, you are not forced to do this. Dealing 5d6 damage at-will with no cost isn't to be underestimated, especially not as a 5th level caster, it's the equivalent of say, a Snowball spell.

If your focus is 'wiping encounters' then that's much more easily performed using another sphere: Nature or Dark to name two as examples. This is just to showcase SoP being able to keep up with PoW damage, not vancian. Vancian in general is much stronger than SoP, especially after the midgame point.

I will not argue against the build tapering off after 10th: SoP in general tapers off very quickly after the midgame point due to the lack of later-game content to grab, aside from advanced talents which on their own are DM-restricted. Though if they were permitted, we would likely utilize Disintegrate or Penetrating blast to deal with energy-resistant folks.

Does a weapon's reach scale at all with its size category?

nope. It augments your size/body-shapes natural reach.

So a medium creature that somehow gets its hands on a size colossal longspear still only has a reach of 10 ft?

Speaking of Destruction Sphere, I have a question.

Say I was making a Soulfire Master Thaumaturge, and wanted to specialise in a specific element, and wanted to theme my character around making explosions all the time. What blast type would you guys recommend?

I guess I will. I'll have to wait until I can swap spells into Mirror Image, which is next level I think. I guess I forgot about it because during the early game it wasn't that useful because AC was enough, but now that everything hits 10 or 15 above me or just does Touch attacks i guess i'll go for them. Any recommendations beyond the ones mentioned?

Got a better ring that serves a different purpose, and it was the lesser loss.

yep.

Oh, well that's a little disappointing.

an original one

If an elf has a child with an orc, is it a half-elf or a half-orc?