Pathfinder General /pfg/

That's why you combo it with spells and effects that end rage like calm

Well, on the upside, at least you are gimping the ragers to some extent anyway, the exhaustion does nullify some of the bonuses of rage

A spell/effect that ends Rage is going to fatigue the Barbarian anyway, so I'm not sure why it would combo with spells that fatigue them.

Aw man, the full BAB classes looked interesting. What is wrong with them?

After several rough encounters, my players managed to find the hidden shortcut into their target's base. But they were too weak to break the stone slab of a door open, and didn't have any magic prepared to dispel the magic holding it in place.

Rather than come back later, or continue on to the main entrance, they used their one dimension door to teleport onto the other side of the door. Which lead down to the second level of a three level deep tomb inhabited by a lich. Badly wounded, down to about 1/4 of their daily resources, no idea where they were or what to expect, surrounded by enemies, and no escape in sight, I was sure they were going to die.

Motherfucking dice gave them so many crits and nat 20s on critical saves, and I rolled more nat 1s in that session alone than I had in the whole campaign so far, They trapped the lich in a Web and literally stomped him to death with magic hooves while he failed every single roll he made.

The 'low-casters' only get half caster level. A lot of spheres use caster level to determine effect, but there are several spheres where it matters a lot less. Warp, Divination, and especially War (rallies!) work fine with low caster level, and many spheres and classes have ways to bolster your class level. The mageknight and armorist are the two full BAB spheres classes, with the mageknight being more generic, and frankly better. It has a whole lot of ways to do magic even without sphere casting.

mageknight is solidly "okay", but if you combo it with SoM it's pretty ass since magic and might talents draw from the same slow pool

Agreed. The mageknight's mystic combats give you a way to spend spell points without needing to even be a caster, and champions of the spheres has an archetype to make them dual SoP/SoM.

A bit of help? At least for the first question

>champions of the spheres has an archetype to make them dual SoP/SoM.
and it's fucking ass because its half progression with a shared talent pool, when Might is talent-hungry as fuck

Do you have a game you wish you didn't have to play in or run?

strawpoll.me/14602640

How are you gishy with a high CL? If you have a high CL, the world is your oyster. Life require a bit more investment than most other spheres, but SoP healing can be really good. Enhancement doesn't impress me - too much of it is handing out bonuses that compete with magic items. Pick 2 or 3 things as determined by your party role and specialize.

What you've got to realize is that the clever cook puts unlikely things together, like duck and orange, like pineapple and ham. It's called 'artistry'. You know, I am an artist the way I combine my business and my pleasure: Money's my business, eating's my pleasure and Georgie's my pleasure, too, though in a more private kind of way than stuffing the mouth and feeding the sewers, though the pleasures are related because the naughty bits and the dirty bits are so close together that it just goes to show how eating and sex are related. Georgie's naughty bits are nicely related, aren't they, Georgie?

By doing gestalt, so I did Soul Weaver + a more martial class. I would prefer to minimize micromanaging of summons or dealing with action economy problems if possible.

I hear Enhancement can get hilarious but only if you specialize in it and with a higher level(we start at L3 so thats out), I was thinking of a dip in Life...maybe Time or Warp but I do wonder which others stand out especially if I want to emphasize the whole sacrificing your own life for better performance

If you don't like summons, the Dual Channeler archetype for Soul Weaver loses bound nexus for a whole bunch more channeling things. Also, Shaman archetype lets you go Wis instead of Cha. Actually, most of the soul weaver archetypes are good.

...

Mystic Adaptation helps :)

What's that even do? I'm still waiting on CotS to hit, and they nuked the playtest so I can't reference for all the little details I forgot about. I only got the details burned into my retinas. Like fucking INTERNAL CASTIIIIIING

What are the objectively strongest outsiders to summon? Also, is there a good way to gauge the rough power of summoned creatures other than CR? I just feel like there are cool monsters that are probably in line with the spells but are not explicitly allowed.

I went with Lichling to emphasize the whole being cursed thing, so unfortunately channeling is out. I did have an idea for a Shaman instead but I am using Mercurial Duelist Vigilante as a class which uses Charisma alot, sadly. Maybe I need to read up the spheres list when I dont have a headache next time for sphere talents to take

spheresofpower.wikidot.com/mageknight#toc27

I'm assuming you use this to pick up extra martial talent

I'll be perfectly honest, it's been so long I had forgotten that was a thing. At the very least, it makes things less painful, though I'm still not a fan of the way the class progresses in SoM.

The mnemor devil is a good candidate for Lesser Planar Ally or Lesser Planar Binding, as it has a genuine Greater Teleport spell-like ability at-will.

d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/devil/devil-mnemor

This is quite useful for intraplanar party transportation.

Well, they tried to stuff two systems into the class while keeping all of it's unique class features. Better than mystic magus, at least.

Don't remind me. They didn't even translate the features properly, and learned literally the opposite lessons from Spheres of Power.

If a barb exits rage while fatigued they become exhausted, and since the penalties incurred by exhaustion are triple that of fatigued, combined with the other penalties caused by spells that fatigue the target it can really shut a barb down hard

How long after a book's released does it show up in the mega folder?

I had just completed a combat-heavy run of the D&D 3.5 version of White Plume Mountain, converted to Pathfinder for optimized 6th-level characters. We were three characters: a poorly-optimized human unchained barbarian (primal disciple for half-initiation) with two warhammers, a middlingly-optimized soulknife 3/aegis 3 with initiator's soul, and me, a hummingbird tengu voyager (metronome) with an elven curve blade.

The dungeon's tight spaces did not constrain me at all, and momentum was almost never an issue. I was almost always able to build up momentum, close in on targets, and bounce away with Narcissism (The Skirmisher) and blink/dash. It would have been troublesome with Narcissism (The Skirmisher), so again, it would be nice to see its functionality directly implemented into manifestation of speed so as to help non-reach melee voyagers.

The pause parallel action was absolutely, positively my character's mainstay. It mutilated the enemy's action economy to a huge degree. During every one of my turns, I was always on the lookout for a good opportunity to use pause, and I only ever settled for foreshadow or rewind when absolutely necessary. Despite this spam, pause was a very interesting and satisfying parallel action to consider and actually use. I still had to think carefully on which target to pause. I often weighed between pausing a key enemy that would use devastating actions, and pausing a less important enemy so that the party could outright said the key enemy. I worry that it is hard for ranged voyagers to use though, since it requires adjacency from either you or your parallel image.

Thanks to Inertial Armor and Expanded Knolwedge ([Force Screen), my character's AC was so high that even after they became the target for focused fire at several points, they were hit not a single time throughout the whole adventure.

What can we learn from this? Pause is a voyagers's mainstay for parallel actions; others get brought in only during the occasions wherein pause cannot solve all problems.

Use a pastebin you mongrel

So do we have any word on the inside about Intrigue game? I remember DHB talking about how PvP had a legitamite change of happening.

Hey now, they at least has the decency to contain it to only ONE massive post this time. It's a small improvement at least.

It's a small improvement but it's still mindless drivel that you can't make heads of tails over since that sub-human drivel can't tl'dr or summarize

Are there any spells or items that confer weapon enhancements to all weapons thrown by a character?

If anyone else here’s a Starfinder player, DSP just dropped the second part of the playtest on GitP. Looks like actual manifesting is up.

You're being lied to. Mageknight is baller.

It's not the low CL that dicks Armorist though, it's the fact that its class features are dull and anemic besides.

For that dude pondering combat styles from last thread, since Ascetic Style is a weapon style, you can take a feat to make it not count against Styles you have active, so you could have both it and Outslug on at the same time without using Master of Many Styles

Could be the same day, could be a few months. Depends on if an user is generous enough to buy the pdf and share.

Tell me /pfg/.

Would you play in a campaign where beings from another dimension come in, and wreck shit all the while not knowing/caring about the inhabitants.

I'm not talking like demons and shit, but full on Lovecraftian bullshit like Eldrazi and stuff.

The focus of the campaign would be trying to erect safe zones or trying to close areas up that has them spilling into the world all the while seeing how the world and outsiders react to these things.

Think the Zone from STALKER mixed with Eldrazis, but replace the whole eat the plane with causing horrifying weird shit to happen.

Thematically it's right up my alley. Depends on what content is allowed however.

DHB managed to not have PvP and also soften the heart of the most evil person in the party.

Are there any actual practical ways to lifesteal while hitting stuff in 3e/PF? The various vampiric weapon enhancement feels too....weak for its price if anything. Spheres are also okay

Unquiet grave and radiant dawn maneuvers are explicitly designed for you to get HP back and even turn it into temp hp

First party more or less, though stuff like the feat tax and background skill rules I'd allow.

Possibly might also allow some stuff from Dreamscarred press since it might fit right in.

Stat gen is 4D6 drop the lowest, and assign as you please. Starter level would be 5 and leveling up at hard/slow difficulty since I tend to include a shit ton of hazards and traps to give out exp.

I'm currently running a campaign right now, but I have this urge to run something like this that when I'm burned out on working on my other campaign, I find myself setting stuff up for this.

It also doesn't help Death Stranding is getting me hyped since it contains all the shit I'd love like other worldly monsters and beings completely being horrifying.

Do you guys have any ideas or inputs about this campaign idea?

Unfortunate that I cant fit PoW maneuvers into my build now, but thanks user

>4d6 and exp
Hard drop. No thank you.

Sure!
In another system.
Please don't try to use Pathfinder for this, it's just really goofy.

To give my truthful opinion as one user, probably not. Fighting one type of enemy seems like it'd get repetitive over time even if you made the enemies themselves incredibly varied, and the draw of lovecraftian monsters with alien thought processes is how they're not supposed to be fought or understood, only feared and avoided.

Plus, and this is purely personal views, "you're fighting an inevitably losing battle" campaigns tend to lose their charm if the players actually win battles all the time, and Pathfinder isn't designed for the game to continue if players lose. You're stuck between a rock and a hard place where killing your PCs will make the players care less about their future characters, while letting them win will make them care less about the tone you're trying to convey.

I once knew of a person who is utterly obsessed with the idea of despair and hopelessness. He always talked about wanting to make a campaign where the point is about inevitability, despair and stuff like that. Oh no, not in the sense of the campaign having an underlying tone that at least you are buying time or at least going out with a bang or just knowing that your sacrifice will fulfill some higher goal, but rather that you just eventually lose with nothing gained and eventually its all futile and players will be made aware of that from the very beginning

Between him complaining alot about how his campaigns unsurprisingly do not attract any players at all over his weirdness and stuff, he eventually got banned from the community. Seriously, from my POV, why would I play a game where the only winning move is not to play? When people play, at the very least the end goal is to get some sense of victory

Hey folks, I'm fucking around with making cool boss encounters. I really want to have an unassuming if not sinister nun whose true form is actually something horrific like a gibbering mouther. Mechanically how would I do this? Could I gin up a magic item, perhaps a pendant, that keeps her in human form? Or does something similar already exist? I'm kind of new to this side of the system.

So you want some option that gives you life steal... with no changes to your (still unspecified) build?

I was the recurring user who has been asking alot about my soul weaver lichling + vigilante gish if anything. I kind of recognized that I am SoL anyway in most cases so, its okay

For me when I see weapon enhancements for vampiric/lifesteal, either they are REALLY expensive (3e Wrathful Healing) or a bit pricey yet not worth its value(other variants of Vampiric weapon enhancement). Now if there was a sphere ability for a weapon or attack that I didnt know of, that'd be fine but I think I did not see one

I’d be down for such a campaign.

What kind of setting would it be originally?
Our modern world gets invaded?
Typical DND world with a smorgasbord of races gets attacked?

I've lived through a couple of those campaigns. From what I can tell it comes from the thought process of a GM who wants to impress his players, a fine goal to have, but with the fear that they'll lose credibility as a GM if the PCs steamroll his campaign. Extrapolating that fear, enemies become beefier or get "one last shot" attacks when they die, reinforcements will pour in as long as the PCs don't seem too worse for wear, and their plans will inevitably fail due to "bad luck."

I'm sure for some GMs it's purely a power-trip thing, they like having absolute control over the game and want their players to admit that they've been 'beaten' by a clever GM, but usually it's just someone who wants their players to have fun and are afraid that their game will suffer unless the players feel like they've overcome the odds. Either way it ends with a bad game, but the original goal is (in my belief) usually innocent.

>rolling for stats
hyper-dropped

Which Druid archetype/s work best with the Shade of the Uskwood feat?

Rolled 3, 5, 3, 3, 3, 2, 4, 6, 3, 6, 1, 4, 6, 3, 6, 2, 2, 6, 5, 4, 4, 1, 3, 4 = 89 (24d6)

Rolling right now. Let's see this.

>it's just someone who wants their players to have fun and are afraid that their game will suffer unless the players feel like they've overcome the odds.

Pretty shit stats, desu. At least you don't have any negatives.

Ah, thats a different type. For this person? They straight up admit and say it outright that they want to run that sort of game. Nothing about wanting the players to have fun or anything. I genuinely think that person is a bit off because of it

Now as for the type you mentioned, that is another person I have met before. He only feels he has accomplished as a GM when the party either is almost dead or near TPK'd by the end of it, which means that his campaign is a fun and good one. He always feels insecure if the party manages to maybe get a lucky crit in or manage to kill some of his badly-balanced enemies even though it was with some luck. He does this even when everyone already tells him otherwise and even when the known powergamer he specifically wants to challenge hard, does not want anything to do with him BECAUSE of his poor balancing. To this end, he will deploy poorly balanced encounters and encounters that are simply extremely frustrating for it. On top of being a drama queen and a refusal to listen, he got banned too.

One such anecdote about it is how he straight up lies about reassuring his players that he wont deploy bullshit swarm enemies, and then proceeds to do it anyway and the session devolved to turns of flailing. Another example was how he threw out like 2-3 demons who could teleport at-will and had like a DC 30-35 or something Dominate Person against a party of L5 gestalt PCs with combat statistics that only the two strongest PCs could ever hope to fight on something resembling terms, with the rest not being able to do a single thing. I was the victim of such Dominate Person and was only able to break out of it because I had a lot of bonuses to Will and also was instructed to attack a teammate, something that goes against the very core character. We only disposed of them through, well, lucky crits. Good riddance

Vampiric Strike in Death sphere does what you want if you're okay with temp hp instead of real healing. There's also the Ghostblade archetype for the Soulknife, plus the Bodyfeeder weapon special ability from Ultimate Psionics. I know I saw one or two other things in 3pp material that had a lifesteal effect that scaled with the attack's damage but I'm drawing a blank on where right now.

>afraid that their game will suffer unless the players feel like they've overcome the odds
fuck, you hit a sore spot

Continuing a bit from my last post I feel that this kind of approach is fundamentally flawed in general when it comes to DnD/PF honestly. Said second person I know said that he mainly wanted to give a Dark Souls like approach to his quests, where the odds are basically stacked against you but there is indeed a trick and with some hardwork and suffering, you can indeed overcome the odds and win. Given that a typical DnD/PF session is governed by dice rolls, this just plain doesnt work. The caveat for Dark Souls is that the gameplay is not governed by the roll of a dice and its much easier to just restart the encounter and study the encounter to experiment. Not so much in DnD/PF where its either entirely possible to kill a boss in one lucky crit or spell, or fail your best save that you only have a 5% chance of failing or roll several 1s in a row. This is why such a approaches kind of fall apart

Would probably be a DnD style world since my group refuses to try anything other then fantasy or Star Wars games.

Sadly my group only wants 3.5 style games.

Which is sad since they view anything like Dark Heresy or GURPS as systems that deprive the PCs of any fun and not worth playing.

Not to mention they hear Lovecraftian themed and automatically assume I'm out to kill them even though I assured/stated that my plan for these creatures were less Eldrazi or they're gonna automatically win in the end and more towards something from The Mist or even Silent Hill.

It also doesn't help that compared to them, I pull less punches and less likely to fudge rolls in their favor.

>Sadly my group only wants 3.5 style games.
get a better group
like, aren't you online right now? aren't you trying to recruit for an online game?
go try something else

I was thinking of that feat with Reincarnated Druid so I can be a wannabe Lich. It also helps if you don't want to be that memey template monster that is basically a druid lich.

Character flavor is easy too since death is the high cost of living and a perfectly natural part of life, the remains providing sustenance to new life. I was thinking of playing a crotchety old man who dies in his sleep or something before.strolling up to the party the next day either having looted his own grave or requesting his stuff back. I thought it'd be funny for the GM to narrate some hot woman bathing in a stream and having her beckon them in and when they speak to her I just talk instead of the GM. I'd then just flip a coin every time I reincarnate to decide sex.

How much of a faggot am I for that?

No because you can't do Lovecraftian in a game about fantasy superheroes. Lovecraftian doesn't mean that the "like any other fantasy except the monsters have tentacles". Stop it.

For me, I was planning more along giving signs that something is wrong, and treating the inter-dimensional creatures as forces of nature and hold off showing what they are or how they look like til I can get them unnerved, or even if I reveal them at all.

Like one moment in a zone, they're killing orcs or goblins, then something happens. Maybe everyone, including the orcs feel something is off. Then weird shit starts happening.

Gravity starts getting wonky, time and perception starts going to shit. Something to hint as something or someone is coming.

Then something like a shadow floats or swims over head. Not a like a bird or dragon, but something that everyone can only describe as a shadow or feeling goes over them.

That and I dislike the idea that seeing a Lovecraftian monster means you instantly go insane/gibbering.

What I'd do would be either the realization that something far more dark or sinister is going on. Or that it somehow violates some "core" thing about the world or they're understanding.

If failing that, have the knowledge of it isolates or separates them from society.

>it's just someone who wants their players to have fun and are afraid that their game will suffer unless the players feel like they've overcome the odds

obvious samefag is obvious

Ha-ha... yeah, there's only one GM who ever thought that.

Shit, I have that same fear, too. I even make some of the same mistakes, but I'm at least confident that my players are still having fun.

Though they might be lying to spare my feelings getting hurt, which would be even worse.

Thought up an Intimimancer build, is it bad/busted/obvious?

Fighter 6/Antipaladin 3/Brawler 2

Weapon Focus (trough racial bonus feat or Ioun stone + wayfinder)
Dazzling Display
Hero's Display
Performing Combatant
Master Combat Performer

Power Attack
Awe-Inspiring Smash

Soulless Gaze
Fiendskin

Shatter Defenses
Greater Weapon Focus
Deadly Stroke

Master Combat Performer to enable using Hero's Display more than once a turn via free actions (I think this works with Performing Combatant but I'm not too sure)
Awe-Inspiring Smash to make the Performing Combatant check fairly consistent while being less MAD
Soulless Gaze + Fiendskin to let the effects of multiple Hero's Display escalate
Antipaladin for anti-fear immunity
Deadly Stroke so that you have something to do inbetween the spookies
Brawler 2 over Fighter 8 for misc. goodies

(should probably only get the build via retraining at 7, when the basic fear package is available, since some of the parts involved are pretty individually lackluster outside the sum of the whole)

No cornugon smash?

I figure I already got the fear game covered enough by virtue of Hero's Display and the various ways it can be brought out by virtue of performance combat check triggers

How viable is the Oozemorph from Ultimate Wilderness in a standard game? Like I don't mean min/max level 20, I mean like if I played an average Oozemorph in an average party.

Also, some things that aren't really clear. Can an Oozemorph assume their standard look with ease? Like if you made a dwarf Oozemorph, could you take that form easily, or would you need to use their shapeshifting to be the race you chose as your starting character? And do their morphic weapons progress in damage and become magic like a regular shifter? Or do they stay as 1d6 regular natural weapons even at level 20?

nothing related to the oozemorph is viable at all.

>How viable is the Oozemorph from Ultimate Wilderness in a standard game?
Memes aside, not very. You'll still have a d10 hit die and full BAB to whack enemies regardless of what you're doing so with, at least, but their lack of defensive class features despite being a melee-focused class makes them poor combatants in any campaign that wants to be challenging.

>Can an Oozemorph assume their standard look with ease? Like if you made a dwarf Oozemorph, could you take that form easily, or would you need to use their shapeshifting to be the race you chose as your starting character?
The latter: when you take your first level in oozemorph, your 'default' form becomes a shapeless blob, and you have to use your Fluidic Body class feature to shapeshift temporarily back into your default race. There is a weird way around this, as breaking your oath by teaching someone Druidic would take away all of your (Su) class abilities, which in the oozemorph's case is only Fluidic Body.

>And do their morphic weapons progress in damage and become magic like a regular shifter? Or do they stay as 1d6 regular natural weapons even at level 20?
The latter. Instead of getting higher damage dice, the oozemorph gets more natural weapons over time they can form with Morphic Weaponry.

Ah, that's a bit naff. Thanks for answering guys, I really liked the idea of an ooze shifter.

>everyone wants to play a android or mechanic, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
cant blame them tho.
androids and mechanics are sexy as fuck

Helps that androids are a pretty damn good race. +2 vs some nasty status effects and a free armour slot, they're likely one of the more powerful core races.

There's always Oozemorph 1/Other class X which is viable
reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/7efe35/why_oozemorph_shifter_shouldnt_be_overlooked/

Can a creature without hooves wear horseshoes of speed as long as they have four feet?

The simulationist in me says don't put horseshoes on a cat or an alligator but the other part of me wants to put horseshoes on a lion.

>I really liked the idea of an ooze shifter
We all did. We had so much hope.

prolly the best stat block in the game too

Don't let simple things like morals get in the way of stapling horseshoes to your animal companion's paws for that tasty movement speed bonus.

You can't spell "guilty conscience" without "science" after all.

Yeah, Charisma got the ass end of the stick again. Damn shame.

Not to sound fucking contrarian but I fucking hate it. Slime races are fucking stupid, and the only reason people liked it/looked foward to it is muh lewd slime girl bullshit.

>Damn shame.
I think you mean great.
Charisma honestly shouldn't be a stat

>muh lewd slime girl
Quite the opposite for me, I just wanted to be a T-1000.