Paizo Games General /pgg/

I'm super in love with the race, and unlike centaurs or other things it's not crazy out of line stat wise. It'd be nice if someone published it as a playable race, but for now I'll homebrew.

I leveled the character to 5 to see what sorta damage I'd be doing. Unmodified Flambard with my feats has it at +12 to hit, 1d10+6 damage.
I haven't rolled many characters, or played very far so can anyone tell me if this is decent enough?

Pros: Mechanically stronger martials
Cons: But not in any way that stays true to the class and they really shouldn't have shit all over that design space by giving them the class names they have

They're not bad, but they expand the theme of the class in a way that really doesn't work with the base-class design methodology. It's not 'A Gunslinger but better' it's 'A class which has some Gunslinger elements, but thematically is a different beast'

I would rule you still need Permanent

>But not in any way that stays true to the class
Isn't this a good thing though? The Verb-er Martials are some of the least interesting and most restricted in terms of what they are allowed to do. Isn't expanding actual options for them a good thing?

Yes, but they expand the classes in a way that should be in archetypes. An egregious amount of specificity in character theme.

Like, if I recall correctly, the basic gunslinger is also an engineer with various other random non-gunrelated technologies.

I mean that's alright in itself, but that's not really 'basic gun guy class' stuff, y'know? That's archetype levels of divergence. Maybe if it was called something like Tinkerer or Machinist, but not Gunslinger.

Yeah, you still need Permanent. It doesn't say anything about duration, just what's required to forcibly remove them early.

The gunslinger is the only offender of this. DHB has said that the Fighter was meant to become an iconic Soldier where as the Cavalier was to become an iconic Knight. He said in both of these though you can bend it to become a lot of things from mercenaries, to thugs, to what ever. Equipment training reflects this. For Cavalier they don't have to choose Oaths related to being a knight.

Gunslinger does depart from the original class idea a great deal by becoming a gazetteer. The Mysterious Stranger archetype though is an iconic Cowboy and DHB did a good job of that if you're looking for more pure gunslinger.

>I mean that's alright in itself, but that's not really 'basic gun guy class' stuff, y'know? That's archetype levels of divergence. Maybe if it was called something like Tinkerer or Machinist, but not Gunslinger.
DHB has actually talked about this issue and said for a more pure gunslinger experience the Mysterious Stranger archetype is what you're looking for.

>Fighter
Becomes a Soldier
>Archetypes
Updated Mutation Warrior, Blackjack, and Crossbowman. Also a new weird scroll caster lore master hybrid.

>Cavalier
Becomes a Knight
>Archetypes
Can get a pack of hounds, ride a wyvern for charisma based 4 level casting, or a giant banner cloak.

>Gunslinger
Becomes a Gadgeteer
>Archetypes
Becomes much more just gunslinger as a cowboy, can get shitty alchemy, and can get a construct buddy.

Not just mechanically stronger, but with lots of good tricks for out of combat rather than being purely in combat, and a lot more variety of what to do in combat.

is anime hair a thing in Golarion?
like red or green or blue hair?

Depends on the race. Elves for example have odd colouration compared to humans.

...you know red hair is a real thing, right?

Oh, right.
Imagine I wrote pink then.

>...you know red hair is a real thing, right?
Not on actual humans it isn't.

How do I play a werewolf? Is there even a way without just DM fiat?

I think there's a UA that featured were-creatures as a "playable" race.

UA? Also, no third party stuff. Just official Paizo material

Skinwalker

Quite a while ago. Thriae princess daughteru-type. We saved her from death, and she now dotes on the archer as her hero. Pretty cute.

So last session, my group's DM had a huge fit and left our group. The rest of us have to salvage the campaign he left behind, which we've put a lot of sessions into and enjoy a lot. I'm particularly invested in my character and his goals, plus the party as a whole has some really entertaining interactions.

I'm an experienced Pathfinder DM in my own right. I don't want this game to end. I could step up and take the old DM's place. But I don't know what I should do with my character. I know most people would say the appropriate thing to do would be to phase him out somehow, move him into the background and avoid turning him into a DMPC. But I also think that might just be a kneejerk reaction people have because they get triggered by the word "DMPC". Exactly how bad of an idea would it be for me to keep playing my own PC even as I run the game? Is it going to be impossible to run the game objectively when one of the PCs is mine?

Has anyone ran/played skulls and Shackles? How is it? Anything super egregious in it? I'm thinking about running it for some friends.

Related to last thread's discussion, what would you do to improve the Fate sphere? And Weather while we're at it since it's the same weird position.

>improve Fate Sphere
Delete it
>improve Weather Sphere
I don't know, but it shouldn't be deleted. I suggest ignoring it.

I've got a player who wants to play a dryad, so I used a base template that I found on Reddit.

>+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Str
>Fey Creature Type
>Treespeech
>Natural Armor
>Fertile Soil
>Object of Desire
>Skill Bonus; +1 knowledge (nature) and +1 survival

The initial build also had vulnerability to fire and a Charm Person spell-like ability, but the SLA seemed a bit OP combined with Object of Desire, and without it the fire vulnerability looked like it shifted the balance into the negative too much. Does this seem like a decent build for a dryad, or am I missing something?

Several spheres seem to have identities that are mechanical rather than thematic. Why is Light separate from Illusion? Enhancement and War are also similar, except mechanically. And Dark is just the 'area debuff' sphere.

Fate Sphere should focus on the few things that make it unique, ie alignment shit and weird consecration effects. Example talents I'd add would be
>You can choose any alignment type when using a consecration, and are unaffected by your own negative consecration effects
>A consecration where you and allies get bonuses to crit confirms
>Revamp the motif talent idea from the playtest; now each motif is associated with a particular feat, and characters benefit as though they actually had the feat in question as long as a motif is applied for them

>Why is Light separate from Illusion?
Light is merely about conjuring balls of light, altering illumination, and creating lenses that focus light. Illusion is about creating fake images that that are not real and without substance, or they aren't even real enough to be Light projections

>Darkness is just area debuffs
No, because the newer Shadow and Meld talents from the Handbook allow you to do other things like use shadows to store objects, moves through walls, teleport, and hide/drag people into puddles of darkness. Basically you become a KH villian.

Meanwhile, the difference between Enhancement and War is that Enhancement is altering the immediate physical qualities of an object, while War is mostly about setting Rally/Objective markers and allowing your allies to go towards them. It's basically like playing Brutal Legend or Divinity: Dragon Commander

You're just far too used to the preconceived notions of what certain classes of magic should do enforced by years of using the 8 School system of 3.PF

Really, you'd have a better case if you talked about the real problem of Nature and Alteration trying to step on the toes of Creation

>Meanwhile, the difference between Enhancement and War is that Enhancement is altering the immediate physical qualities of an object, while War is mostly about setting Rally/Objective markers and allowing your allies to go towards them. It's basically like playing Brutal Legend or Divinity: Dragon Commander

Like I said, the difference between the spheres is mechanical rather than thematic.

Honestly, it seems too powerful. I feel like you might be forgetting that the plant type comes with a boatload of immunities. All mind-affecting effects (which is massive on its own), plus immunity to paralysis, poison, polymorph, stunning, and sleep effects... and on the subject of sleep effects, plant creatures eat and drink but don't need to sleep, so you basically have an extra 8 hours of freetime over your typical PC which you could use for crafting or other shit. You're also immune to anything that specifically targets humanoids (most of which are already covered by the other immunities, but still).

If you took away all those immunities, it would leave people questioning why it's a plant creature. So to balance out against that, I'd suggestion you need to do one of three things.

1) Power the race down, remove Object of Desire (they already have Fertile Soil anyway) and give them the fire vulnerability, probably remove the natural armor bonus too.

2) Keep the race's stats mostly the same, but change it from...

Okay, never mind, apparently I didn't read your whole post. Fey type is way less powerful than plant type. But Treespeech can only be applied to plant races, not fey races (which is why I assumed you gave the race the plant type) so you might need to remove that. You could replace it with a Speak with Plant SLA if you feel like. I would still remove the Object of Desire ability, between the CHA boost from race and Fertile Soil, you're already really pushing them towards being casters.

>Honestly, it seems too powerful. I feel like you might be forgetting that the plant type comes with a boatload of immunities

Plant? He said they were fey type.

For Paizo Only, the monsters as PCs rules state that a monster's class level is considered it's CR for the purpose of playing. That's generally not my personal preference (Usually prefer CR +1), but I think it might work for templates.

In character, getting bitten by a werewolf is a guarantee.

For something fitting for actually playing without LA, go with Skinwalker.

>y, the monsters as PCs rules state that a monster's class level is considered it's CR for the purpose of playing
This still requires GM Fiat and permissions in the first place.
>In character, getting bitten by a werewolf is a guarantee.
And is also effective death for the character since the player loses control of them.

>But Treespeech can only be applied to plant races, not fey races
This is why the race builder is pretty dumb at points. Sure, it can give a really basic outline of creating a race, but there's absolutely no reason why a fey creature shouldn't be allowed treespeech.

It gets especially funky when you analyze the [race] magic traits and compare them to custom-building your own... for a new race... that you're making with the RACE. BUILDER.

For instance, what if I wanted to make a race of cool illusion-people. This is gonna suck a lot harder if they have no relation to gnomes.

You did the same thing he did; started writing without reading it properly.
You just posted without completely reading it unlike him

I hope my group remembered that they wanted to play today.

>Okay, never mind, apparently I didn't read your whole post. Fey type is way less powerful than plant type

>You could replace it with a Speak with Plant SLA if you feel like.
That's a really good idea, I hadn't even thought about doing that. I did realize the Treespeech was for plant races only, but I had handwaved it as "they're dryads so it's okay". Still, the SLA is a much better option, since I imagine constant plant speech would get really broken really quick.

As far as the Object of Desire ability, I was on the fence about it already because I loathe traits that affect a single spell, at least Fertile Soil affects entire domains/bloodlines. Still, I wanted to keep Natural Armor since I don't know if the player who initially requested the dryad is going to go caster or melee, and I wanted to give them some kind of perk if they decided to be a fighter or something so they're not completely squishy (though I imagine the way it's set up now the best melee route would probably be bloodrager).

>constant plant speech would get really broken really quick

It could be a lot of fun though, because the plants only know what plants would know

"Hey Mr. Tree, see anybody hostile run through here?"

>Short. Douche. Cut. Brother. Over. There

"...Okay? You're complaining about the Dwarven lumberjacks? How about you, other tree?"

>BIG. BIRD. SHITTING. ON. BRANCH

"Yup, there's a nest up there alright. Fuck, these trees are useless."

If that's the case, you could give them some martially inclined ability they can take as an alternate racial trait in place of Fertile Soil. It's the same way for tieflings and other races that have similar racial features- they can trade it out for something else if they don't plan on being a sorcerer with the specific bloodline. Whether the thing they trade out for should be the natural armor bonus or something else, I'm not really sure. Dropping Object of Desire and reducing Treespeech to a 1/day Speak with Trees SLA is probably enough to bring the race down to a reasonable power level, so letting it keep the natural armor bonus (on top of being able to use Fertile Soil or trade it for some martial ability) might be fine... Doubly so since the race already has to contend with a STR penalty.

More importantly, what are you doing about the fact that dryads are normally bound to a particular tree and can't stray far from it?

Ya ever seen one of those bonsai trees?

>More importantly, what are you doing about the fact that dryads are normally bound to a particular tree and can't stray far from it?
I had one of two ideas:

First option, the PC dryads are a variant "unbound" dryad who are able to walk freely without being bound to a tree so they can protect nature as a whole and spread new life to the world, a variation that costs the dryad the protection and power their treebound cousins have (since no way in hell am I going to give fucking Treemeld to any player).

Second option, the dryad IS bound to a tree, a tiny little sapling they have to carry with them at all times. Since the tree is still small they don't get the aforementioned Treemeld or anything, but they can survive and walk freely because they're never too far from their tree. Should their tree be lost or destroyed, they take some form of penalty that gets worse the longer they're treeless, ultimately culminating in death, but they can bind to a new tree by performing a 12 hour long ritual.

The first option is simpler, but I kind of like the idea of having a character autistically freak out because a goblin got too close to their tree.

Depends on the PC you had. What kind of character we're they and what did they do? How did they join the party?

Remind them once more, then run a game for /pgg/ when they forget

>difference between the spheres is mechanical rather than thematic.
Are you high?
The fluff IS in the presence of Totems Vs Enhancements. A Warmage is someone who raises great flags and inspiring magical displays used to rally and inspire his troops. He's not directly affecting his men, but rather his magic inspires them and invigorates them, and only occasionally aids them directly. It's essentially like Bardic Performance.

Enhancement is the act of directly saturating an object or creature in magic, purposely and directly influencing and altering their physical properties. You aren't using totems and displays to inspire and invigorate, you're directly changing the physical make-up of the target.

The fluff difference is the difference between a Wizard casting Bear Strength, and a Bard doing Inspire Courage. How is that hard to understand?

I'd go with the second option personally, it's too entertaining. I'd make sure it's more of a looming threat than a real drawback though. They should have either an easy way to carry the tree that doesn't use an item slot (like a wizard's spellbook) or be able to stray far enough from the tree that it's not an issue to leave it safely at home most of the time, and they should get plenty of time to rebond with a new tree before death.

After all, this isn't suppose to be a real handicap from what I understand, just a justification for why the dryad isn't bound to a tree.

The party all came together for different reasons, in a sense it's kind of like a mercenary band united by a common goal. My PC is an eccentric wizard, so explaining why they left the party would be a snap. They could even plausibly take up a position as a sort of manager that hooks the party up with new jobs and otherwise supports the party from the background, especially since we're pretty sure the party's current sponsor was getting ready to betray us.

So it's not really an issue of figuring out what I could do with my PC to take him out of the party. It's more about whether I SHOULD take him out of the party if I'm going to become the group's DM.

I remember my group is playing today. Just gotta wait for the game to start this evening. Admittedly, it's not Pathfinder, so that's probably not relevant

It'll be our first game in months. Hopefully it will turn out well

The game is in person.

I'll just use today to add more flavor text for the next game. One player was sick last week, and today's session was decided on a whim. We normally play every other week.

GM is starting a Starfinder game soon.

I'm all about hive minds and insect societies, so the GM says to me "Hey, wanna play a Formian? You'd be out searching for tech for the Hive so they can industrialise a little and expand faster." as a way to entice me to play because she knows I like that shit.

My question to you, /pgg/, is this:
How does one roleplay a Formian accurately? I've got some ideas but I'm not sure how accurate they are or if I should even have agreed to play one in the first place.

Wanted to give this a bump. Running SnS right now. I will say background skills and feat tax rules would be a good idea. The first book is a bit of a slog as a DM, there's approximately 2 metric fucktons of NPCs to run and half of them become important later on without warning.

>tfw the DM makes the enemy faction of the campaign a hivemind that seeks to absorb everyone into it, but you kind of like the idea

Awkward position to be DESU

Gotta be honest amigo, you should retire the Wizard. Have him/her/xer learn something that forces him/her/xer to go off in the sidelines for a while. They can stick around and help, but you can't give them a spotlight to be on the fair side, lest you come back and tell us about how the others complained about a DMPC

>him/her/xer
Yknow, it would've been significantly easier to "them" or "they" and would've conveyed the same thing

Would it be worth trying to be an offensive debuffer/controller with a Silksworn Occultist, or do your DCs not scale well enough, even with a bunch of Spell Focuses, as a 6th-caster for it to be "good"? I know you get the DC booster, but that's really late (16th) so I don't think that's worth really factoring in for most games. I hope they make a way for Silksworn to take Panoplies by RAW, and make a set of Panoplies to help DC-based caster occultists.

Also, tell me about your Silksworn Occultists, I want to know how they played out compared to a 9th caster, or even alongside a 9th caster.

Okay, long shot here, but does anyone remember an Avowed playtest that had a feat that let the Avowed use their Strength score in place of their Charisma modifier for their abilities? Trying to hunt it down to prove that it existed at one point.

I don't remember anything like that existing tho

It was a LONG time ago, you'd have to go dig around the Archive for the pdf that actually had it. It will be missed, though. Muscle caster will be missed.

Ffffuuuuuuu. Alright, thank you.

There's always the goofy chance your DM will allow the 3.0 Bastards and Bloodlines Lost Tradition feat. The feat lets you pick a stat, and doesn't specify mental or physical.

It's a stupidly long shot. But it's there.

Man, a Dragon Disciple from a Sorcerer would be fucking radical if that were allowed.

You should semi retired the character. Either make him Charlie to the party's Angels or have him dissolve into the aether.

Achieving enlightenment and transcending material form is the best way.

I want to run Ironfang Invasion. What subsystems should I include? I own most of the books and like to stick to first party material ... although Path of War is awesome I want to run a Path of War only game some day.

>Deergirls are a thing in Pathfinder

>He doesn't know about the autistically homebrewed deer people that one user made

The ones with the giant dicks?

No, the one that was made by some Fey prince who was pissy about his pet being killed

I want the one with the giant dicks

DSP did a Half-Dryad race that's neat, might be worth a look: d20pfsrd.com/races/3rd-party-races/dreamscarred-press/spring-child/

>DSP races
No thanks.

So, what are your guys thoughts on the multiclass archetypes on that pathfinder community website? I recently found them and have been reading through them, they seem quite good but I have no idea how viable they are in actual play.

How many mules would you need to carry a a big chest full of gold given how heavy it is (basketball made of gold weighs about a ton)?

Link pls

The table says a medium quadraped can carry 1.5 times their carrying capacity and can drag 2.5 to 10 times that number.
A large quadraped can carry 3 times their base and drag 5 times that much.

A standard medium pony has 13 strength LL= 75, ML = 150 HL = 225 Drag average is 1125.
A standard large horse has 16 strength. LL = 225 ML = 459 HL = 690 Drag average = 3450.

If you add muleback cords (or an equivalent yolk) the pony gets a drag of 3450 and the horse gets a drag capacity of 10,500.

Miles are probably closer to ponies in strength with added stamina.

Rules, for a DM, could go up to double with favorable conditions (what favorable conditions are is not explicitly stated, I would guess a nice road and strong wheels).

Iirc, 10 go weighs about a pound.

What are some classes that play nicely with scythes? Clerics/Druids/Oracles come to mind thematically, and obviously you can crank something out with fighter, but what else works? Any builds in particular Spheres-wise?

Psionics has the adaptive warrior archetype if you like CRITS

sorry, prestiege class. It's really fun to play though, so I recommend it

I can't think of anything in SoM that explicitly supports slashing polearms, but there is various stuff that supports criting, which is good with a scythe. Threatening momentum lets you auto-confirm crits, and tactical momentum makes trips better.

No idea, but now I'm curious and will now look into them

I believe they meant actually red-red hair, not orange.

Skinwalker.

Two-handed Fighter archetype gets some stuff that works well, and theoretically (lvl 20 never get to play bs) can get the ability to declare an attack an automatic crit if it lands. With an extra +1 to the multiplier, doubled Str bonus before multiplying and I think doubled power attack damage. Plus earlier stuff like adding trip attacks to normal hits, which scythes work nicely on.

>pathfindercommunity.net/classes/multiclass-archetypes
Holy shit this is a lot of archetypes and options. Where do I start?

is there a way to make a spell have the language-dependant descriptor, if it does not already have it?

I don't understand. Is this gestalt?

No. Apparently they're archetypes that are meant to slam one class's features into the other in order to supposedly make Multiclassing obsolete.

Unfortunately, they're designed by schmucks over at the Paizo Messageboards

Oh man, I remember this thing. It's gotta be at least five years old now.

I was excited, until I looked at them. Damn. That's the fastest I've been disappointed in a while.

Yeah, I was just looking at all the Alchemist options, and was thinking of describing them to answer the op question of how they are.

In summary, it's mostly shit design with a few decent options, or at least Alchemist is. I wonder if the Fighter options are actually any good.

Anons, would it be stupid to include a feat that allowed Striker/Prodigy multiclasses to spend tension to add a link to your sequence or spend sequence links in place of tension

Does anyone actually give a shit about Ruins of Azlant? I want to apply, but I look through and it's all
>Elf
>Elf
>Elf
>Elf

Why are so many applicants fuckin' Elves of all things?